I was told, he suddenly answered, "That her majesty need not be in pain; for he would undertake, whenever she commanded, to seize the duke at the head of his troops, and bring him away either dead or alive."
About this time happened the famous trial of Dr. Sacheverell, which arose from a foolish passionate pique of the earl of Godolphin, whom this divine was supposed, in a sermon, to have reflected on under the name of Volpone, as my lord Somers, a few months after, confessed to me; and at the same time, that he had earnestly and in vain endeavoured to dissuade the earl from that attempt. However, the impeachment went on, in the form and manner which every body knows; and therefore there need not be any thing said of it here.
Mr. Harley, who came up to town during the time of the impeachment, was, by the intervention of Mrs. Masham, privately brought to the queen; and in some meetings, easily convinced her majesty of the dispositions of her people, as they appeared in the course of that trial, in favour of the church, and against the measures of those in her service. It was not without a good deal of difficulty, that Mr. Harley was able to procure this private access to the queen; the duchess of Marlborough, by her emissaries, watching all the avenues to the back stairs, and upon all occasions discovering their jealousy of him; whereof he told me a passage, no otherwise worth relating, than as it gives an idea of an insolent, jealous minister, who would wholly engross the power and favour of his sovereign. Mr. Harley, upon his removal from the secretary's office, by the intrigues of the duke of Marlborough and
the
