The Duke of York remained obdurate, and thus played into the hands of his personal and political enemies. Colonel Wardle seized the opportunity. He gave Mrs. Clarke 100_l_. for present necessities, to induce reliance in those liberal promises which were later repudiated. The lady's natural sagacity, and her experience of life, furnished her with strategic abilities almost equal to the combined talents of the respective factions between which she found herself; and on the strength of the assistance which she finally consented to afford to Colonel Wardle and his supporters through Major Dodd--who, though less seen, was the more active agent in organising the attack on the Commander-in-Chief--she secured the house in Westbourne Place as an earnest of the benefits she was to receive hereafter, and succeeded in making Colonel Wardle become security for the furniture. In her disappointment it must have proved at least somewhat of a consolation to have out-manoeuvred the Colonel; who, for his reward, reaped in the end the obloquy attending exposure and ridicule instead of the glorification which at first appeared likely to crown his exertions. Thus the combination was successfully set in motion, and, in spite of all its discordant elements, compelled to work with something like consistent unison, or its individual members were left to take the consequences of any attempted retrogression, as in the instances of Captain Sandon (Mrs. Clarke's ally), on the one hand, and General Clavering,[17] whose sympathies were with his chief, on the other. The opponents of the Duke of York were thus prepared to open the campaign in the manner we have seen.
In 1810 Mrs. Clarke took up her pen to endeavour to prove that the Duke of York's fall was actually brought about by the successful ingenuity and masterly tactics of his brother the Duke of Kent. In a pamphlet entitled _The Rival Princes_ she argued there was feud between the two Dukes, a fact which was sufficiently accepted out of doors, before the appearance of her publication, and that of the refutation which followed it under the title of _The Rival Dukes_. It will be remembered that early in 1802 the Duke of Kent obtained the governorship of Gibraltar, and that when possessed of the supreme command he determined to introduce all the rigour of German discipline, in accordance with the school in which he had received his military education. His efforts to remodel the existing regulations, and to substitute a system of severer subordination and rigid restraint, were not attended with auspicious results; on the contrary, a mutiny took place, December 24, 1803, in which, it is said, the Governor's life was actually aimed at. On this occasion several officers distinguished themselves by their zeal and activity; while the timely arrival of a detachment of artillery under Captain Dodd, not only endeared that officer to his royal highness through the remainder of his life, but contributed not a little to restore order in the garrison. The Duke of Kent was soon after recalled, and although he requested that the Commander-in-Chief should hold a court-martial on his conduct, the Duke of York declined to sanction the proceedings--Mrs. Clarke alleged out of fraternal kindness, as he declared to her, that if he had acceded to his brother's wishes, the Duke of Kent would certainly have been dismissed, which would have resulted in the loss of his emoluments, and this would have occasioned a reduction of some 2,000_l._ per annum in his income, at a time too when he was in sufficiently straitened circumstances.