on her part as to the contrast between her gentle and genial character and the stronger temper of the Duchess: Sarah's influence, after many years of undisputed sway, had perhaps finally become intolerable to the Queen. The first intimation that Sarah Churchill had of her protégée's growing favour with the Queen came to her in the summer of 1707. She learned that Abigail Hill had been privately married to Samuel Masham, a gentleman of the Queen's Household: the Queen had been present at the marriage. Sarah then found out that Abigail had, for some time, enjoyed considerable intimacy with her royal mistress, no hint of which had previously reached the Duchess. Abigail was also, on her father's side, a cousin of Robert Harley (his mother Abigail Stephens was a niece of her grandmother, also named Abigail Stephens), and after Harley's dismissal from office in February 1708, she assisted him in maintaining confidential relations with the Queen. Harley was later created, in May 1711, the 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer. The completion of Abigail's ascendancy was seen in 1710 when the Queen compelled Marlborough, much against his will, to give an important command to Colonel John Hill, Abigail's brother. Sunderland, Godolphin, and the other Whig ministers were soon dismissed from office, largely through Abigail's influence, to make way for Harley and Bolingbroke. In the following year, although she was Duchess of Marlborough, Sarah was dismissed from Court. Abigail, now known as Lady Masham, took her place as Keeper of the Privy Purse. In 1711, the ministers, intent on bringing about the disgrace of Marlborough and arranging the Peace of Utrecht, found it necessary to secure their position in the House of Lords by creating 12 new peers known as Harley's Dozen. One of them was Samuel Masham, Abigail's husband, who was created Baron Masham, though the Queen showed some reluctance to raise her bedchamber woman to a position in which she might prove herself less ready to give her personal services to the Queen. Lady Masham remained as a Woman of the Bedchamber as of 1713. Abigail soon quarrelled with Harley, who was now known as Lord Oxford and Mortimer, and set herself to foster by all the means in her power the Queen's growing personal distaste for her minister. Harley's vacillation between the Jacobites and the adherents of the Hanoverian succession to the Crown probably strengthened the opposition