Such rises from menial positions became progressively harder as the centuries progressed; one of the last families able to jump the widening chasm between servants and nobility was that of Louis XIV's valet, Alexandre Bontemps, whose descendants, holding the office for a further three generations, married into many great families, even eventually including the extended royal family itself. Queen Victoria's John Brown came much too late; the devotion of the monarch and ability to terrorize her household led to hardly any rise in social or economic position.