himself in the favour of the
Duchess, and gain her over to his interest, that he hit upon a plan
which succeeded to the utmost, as trifles often do when more important
engines fail. The one he used was ready to his hand in the person of the
bedchamber-woman, who had been placed about the Queen by the Duchess
herself. In a letter, supposed to have been addressed to Bishop Burnet,
the Duchess gives a brief account of this person, who was her kinswoman,
in explanation to his inquiry as to the first cause of her disagreement
with the Queen.

Abigail Hill--a name rendered famous from the momentous changes which
succeeded its introduction to the political world--was the appropriate
designation of the lowly, supple, and artful being on whose secret
offices Harley relied for the accomplishment of his plans. Mistress Hill
at this time held the post of dresser and chamber-woman to her Majesty.
The world assigned certain causes for the pains which the proud
favourite (the Duchess) had manifested to place her cousin in a post
where she might have easy access to the Queen's ear, and obtain her
confidence. The Duchess, it was said, was weary of her arduous
attendance upon a mistress whom she secretly despised. She had become
too proud to perform the subordinate duties of her office, and proposed
to relieve herself of some of them, by placing one on whom she could
entirely depend, as an occasional substitute in the performance of those
duties which even habit had not taught her to endure with patience.
Since after the elevation of the Duke, in consequence of the battle of
Blenheim, she had become a princess of the empire,[44] she was supposed
to consider herself too elevated to continue those services to which she
had been enured, first in the court of the amiable Anne Hyde, then in
that of the unhappy Mary of Modena, and since, near her too gracious
sovereign, the meek, but dissembling Anne.

[44] Lediard, vol. ii., p. 2.

The ungrateful kinswoman had been early acquainted with adversity, which
was the remote cause of her ultimate greatness. "Mrs. Masham," the
Duchess tells us, in her succinct narrative, "was the daughter of one
Hill, a merchant in the city, by a sister of my father. Our grandfather,
Sir John Jenyns, had two-and-twenty children, by which means the estate
of the family, which was reputed to be about four thousand pounds a
year, came to be divided into small parcels. Mrs. Hill had only L500 to
her fortune. Her h