One of old Marlborough’s capital mortifications sprang from a granddaughter.  The most beautiful of her four charming daughters, Lady Sunderland,(123) left two sons,(124) the second Duke of Marlborough, and John Spencer, who became her heir, and Anne Lady Bateman, and Lady Diana Spencer, whom I have mentioned, and who became Duchess of Bedford.  The Duke and his brother, to humour their grandmother, were in opposition, though the eldest she never loved.  He had good sense, infinite generosity, and not more economy than was to be expected from a young man of warm passions and such vast expectations.  He was modest and diffident too, but could not digest total dependence on a capricious and avaricious grandmother.  His sister, Lady Bateman, had the intriguing spirit of her father and grandfather, Earls of Sunderland.  She was connected with Henry Fox, the first Lord Holland, and both had great influence over the Duke of Marlborough.  What an object would it be to Fox to convert to the court so great a subject as the Duke!  Nor was it much less important to his sister to give him a wife, who, with no reasons for expectation of such shining fortune, should owe the obligation to her.  Lady Bateman struck the first stroke, and persuaded her brother to marry a handsome young lady, who, unluckily, was daughter of Lord Trevor, who had been a bitter enemy to his grandfather, the victorious Duke.  The grandam’s rage exceeded all bounds.  Having a portrait of Lady Bateman, she blackened the face, and wrote on it, “Now her outside is as black as her inside.”  The duke she turned out of the little lodge in Windsor Park; and then pretending that the new Duchess and her female cousins (eight Trevors) had stripped the house and gardens, she had a puppet-show made with waxen figures, representing the Trevors tearing up the shrubs, and the Duchess carrying off the chicken-coop under her arm.

Her fury did but increase when Mr. Fox prevailed on the Duke to go over to the court.  With her coarse intemperate humour, she said, “that was the Fox that had stolen her goose.”  Repeated injuries at last drove the Duke to go to law with her.  Fearing that even no lawyer would come up to the Billingsgate with which she was animated herself, she appeared in the court of justice, and with some wit and infinite abuse, treated the laughing public with the spectacle of a woman who had held the reigns of empire, metamorphosed into the widow Black-acre.  Her grandson, in his suit, demanded a sword set with diamonds, given to his grandsire by the Emperor.  “I retained it,” said the beldam, " lest he should pick out the diamonds and pawn them.”

I will repeat but one more instance of her insolent asperity, which produced an admirable reply of the famous Lady Mary -Wortley Montague.  Lady Sundon had received a pair of diamond ear-rings as a bribe for procuring a considerable post in Queen Caroline’s family for a certain peer; and, decked with those jewels, paid a visit to the old Duchess; who, as soon as she was gone, said, “What an impudent creature, to come hither with her bribe in her ear!” “Madam,” replied Lady Mary Wortley, who was present, “how should people know where wine’ is sold, unless a bush is hung out?”