had been exhausted on Blenheim, the Duchess observes:

"Upon the subject of Blenheim, which every friend I have knows I was always against building at such expense, and as long as I meddled with it at all, I took as much pains to lessen the charge every way, as if it had been to be paid for out of the fortune that was to provide for my own children; for I always thought it too great a sum even for the Queen to pay, and nothing made it tolerably easy to me but my knowing that as she never did a generous thing of herself, if that expense had not been recommended by the parliament, and paid out of the civil list, she would have done nothing with the money that was better. But I never liked any building so much for the show and vanity of it, as for its usefulness and convenience, and therefore I was always against the whole design of it, as too big and unwieldy; whether I considered the pleasure of living in it, or the good of my family that were to enjoy it hereafter; besides that the greatness of the work made it longer in finishing, and consequently would hinder Lord Marlborough from enjoying it when it was reasonable to lose no time; and I made Mr. Vanburgh my enemy by the constant disputes I had with him to prevent his extravagance, which I did effectually in many

instances, notwithstanding all the follies and waste which, in spite of all that could be said, he has certainly committed."*

Letter to Mr. Hutchinson, Coxe MSS.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Old age and decline of the Duchess-Her incessant wrangling with Sir Robert Walpole-Her occupations - The compilation of her Memoirs.

It is now necessary to touch upon the closing scene of the Duchess's long and eventful life. Let it not be supposed that it passed in a calm retirement from the turmoils of the world, or in the agitating though small sphere of domestic faction. She was a politician to the last; but the gales which had in early life driven her along, now blew from a different direction. She despised and reviled the Whig administration of Sir Robert Walpole, with as much inveteracy as she had formerly manifested towards Lord Rochester and Lord Oxford. She considered the mode of managing public affairs to be disgraceful to her country. She professed to deem it a sacred duty *Life of Sarah Duchess of Marlborough. Published in 1745.

to use every exertion to defeat the measures of the minister, Walpole; and perhaps that profligate minister had, in the three kingdoms, no enemy more potent, as far as the influence of property was concerned, and certainly not one more determined, than Sarah Duchess of Marlborough.

It was in vain that the minister attempted to conciliate her by proffered honours. Few of the favours which he had to confer came up to her ideas of what her family and her influence merited. Sir Robert had revived the order of the Bath, a measure described by his son as an “artful bank of thirty-six ribbons to supply a fund of favours in lieu of places." "He meant too," adds the lively historian, "to stave off the demands for garters, and intended that the red should be a step for the blue, and accordingly took one of the former himself." He offered the new order to the Duchess for her grandson, the Duke, and for the Duke of Bedford, who had married one of her granddaughters. The answer he received was a haughty intimation that her grandson should take nothing but the garter. "Madam," answered Sir Robert, "they who take the Bath will sooner have the Garter." He proved the sincerity of this assurance, by taking the

garter himself in the year following, with the Duke of Richmond, who, like himself, had been previously installed knight of the Bath.*

On the accession of George the Second, the hated ascendency of Walpole, greatly to the wrath of the Duchess, gained fresh strength. The King doubtless preferred another man, but the Queen's influence was all-powerful; she had long desired Sir Robert, whose stability in power was, in this instance, based upon his knowledge of mankind, and who proffered to her Majesty that respectful devotion which the rest of the world assigned to the mistress, not to the wife of George the Second. The Queen repaid this proof of discernment by a preference which ceased only with the existence of the minister. Before the real choice of the King had become public, and when it was still supposed that Sir Spencer Compton was to be premier, the King and Queen received the nobility at their temporary abode at Leicester-house. Lady Walpole, as her son relates, could not make her way between the scornful backs and elbows of her late devotees, nor approach nearer to the Queen than the third or fourth row. But no sooner did the gracious Caroline perceive her, than she exclaimed, "There, * Walpole's Reminiscences, p. 293.