Prince George was so ill from gout and asthma, and had grown so excessively fat, that he could not get up or down stairs without a great deal of suffering; therefore he was lodged on the ground-floor of the palace, whence he could walk out in the grounds and enjoy the air whenever he felt able. The queen shared his apartments, and as he often required care at night to prevent his suffocating during his paroxysms of coughing, the bed-chamber women were placed in the adjoining rooms, so they could be summoned in case of need.
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On arriving at the palace, the duchess ordered the housemaid to open her suite of apartments, and moved towards those on the ground-floor, although part of them were situated on the one above. The maid replied that she could not do so, because they were divided between Mrs. Masham and the bed-chamber women in waiting. That was just what the irate duchess had come to find out; so she immediately made an indignant complaint to the queen, which resulted, after too much absurd wrangling to be worthy of recital, in the removal of the royal household to a house in Windsor Forest, which her majesty had purchased in the days when she was forbidden by Queen Mary to appear at court. In this quiet retreat she watched over her sick husband and sought to relieve his sufferings; but the duchess declared that the reason Queen Anne spent the summer in that place, "which was as hot as an oven," was to enable Mrs. Masham to admit such persons as desired secret interviews with her majesty, and they could be let in from the park without anybody being the wiser.
While at this cottage, the victory of Oudenarde was announced to her majesty. When she heard that it had been won at the cost of two thousand lives, she exclaimed: "O Lord! when will all this dreadful bloodshed cease?" Nevertheless, etiquette required her to write a letter of congratulation and thanks to the victorious Duke of Marlborough, which she did at once.
Public thanksgiving for the victory took place in the usual way at St. Paul's Cathedral on the nineteenth of August. As her husband was the victor, the Duchess of Marlborough considered herself the heroine of the day, and bustled about to make herself as important as possible. Her office of mistress of the robes imposed upon her several duties, and among others, the arrangement of the queen's jewels as she chose to have them worn. When the royal cortège was approaching the cathedral, the duchess chanced to cast her eyes over the costume of her majesty, and observed that the jewels were absent. This was a mark of disrespect that she would not stand, so she began scolding in such way that the queen lost her temper, and the two ladies quarrelled and abused each other until they got inside the church, when the duchess angrily bade the queen "to hold her tongue." This was too much. Her majesty had borne a great deal from her friend, but such an insult aroused her indignation. Perhaps the duchess repented of her hasty speech; for a day or two later she took occasion to send the following humble note with a letter from her husband:—
"I cannot help sending your majesty this letter to show how exactly Lord Marlborough agrees with me in opinion that he has now no interest with you, though when I said so in the church last Thursday you were pleased to say it was untrue."
"And yet, I think he will be surprised to hear that when I had taken so much pains to put your jewels in a way that I thought you would like, Mrs. Masham could make you refuse to wear them in so unkind a manner; because that was a power she had not thought fit to exercise before.
"I will make no reflections on it, only that I must needs observe that your majesty chose a very wrong day to mortify me when your were just going to return thanks for a victory obtained by my Lord Marlborough!"