““Marlborough echoed his monarch’s hope that consensus politics could prevail. ‘There is nothing more certain than what you say, that either of the parties would be tyrants if they were let alone,’[111] he wrote to Sarah. ‘All parties are alike. And as I have taken my resolution of never doing any hardship to any man whatsoever, I shall by it have a quiet in my own mind; not valuing to be a favourite to either of them.’[112]””