myself in anything that is now doing, nor have I appeared at either Councel or Cabinet.

with great truth,

Yours."

I am

It was at this period, that the Duchess of Marlborough found it, at length, incumbent upon her to resign her various offices in the royal household; and, accordingly, the Duke, however unwillingly, carried the Gold Key to the Queen, and at the same time tendered the surrender of all his wife's employments. The Duchess, it may be remarked, held at one and the same time, the offices of Groom of the Stole, Mistress of the Robes, and Keeper of the Privy Purse. The two former appointments, immediately on her dismissal, were conferred on the Duchess of Somerset ; the latter on Mrs. Masham. Up to this period, the house of Marlborough may be said to have constituted the Court of Queen Anne.

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CHAPTER IV.

Marlborough's downfall determined on by his enemies.-He is attacked in the House of Lords and defends himself with pathos and eloquence. He is accused of bribery, and dismissed from all his employments.-King of Prussia's remark on hearing of the Duke's disgrace.-Extract from Burnet.— Charge of peculation brought against the Duke.-His explanation of the affair.-Attorney-General ordered to prosecute him. He is constantly attacked by the hireling scribblers and pamphleteers of the day. He suddenly quits England for Ostend.-Probable causes of his departure.-Erasmus Lewis's statement of the Duke's intrigues with the French Court in 1706.-Extract from a letter of Louis the Fourteenth to the Marquis de Torcy.-Private interview between the Duke and the Earl of Oxford.-Anecdote related by Dalrymple.-Extract from the Biographia Britannica.-Curious anecdote of the Duke and Lord Harley.-Marlborough makes overtures to the Tory Ministry during his absence in France.-His intimacy with Lord Bolingbroke.-His letter to the Duchess of Berwick. He renews his professions of attachment to the exiled Court.-Extract from Swift's letters to Stella.-The Duke's double-dealing with the Elector of Hanover and the Pretender. Bolingbroke's character of Marlborough.

If the Duke's return to London, at the close of the former campaign, had been attended with mortifying and embarrassing circumstances, his appearance in the capital, on the cessation of hostilities in 1711, was even more humiliating. His military career was now at an end, his last battle had been fought,—and, if not a ruined, he was at

least a disgraced and fallen man. Whatever might have been his public faults or his private failings, a man whose career had been so glorious, whose services for his country had been so unparalleled, might have expected, after a life of labour and glory, a somewhat better reception than now awaited him.

On the 17th of November the Duke arrived in England. The night on which he approached London was the anniversary of the inauguration of Queen Elizabeth, and as the populace were occupied in their usual rejoicings, the Duke, in order to avoid publicity, passed the first night of his return at Greenwich. The next day he waited upon the Queen, and exchanged visits of ceremony with her ministers. Notwithstanding, however, these and other deceptive evidences of returning cordiality and good-will, the downfall of Marlborough was fully determined upon by his enemies; and the mode of attack was no sooner settled than it was put in practice. The first blow was struck in the House of Lords, where Marlborough was openly accused of having protracted the war to suit his private ends. He defended himself from the charge, in a speech which was as spirited as it was pathetic; his eloquence, moreover, being rendered the more effective, in consequence of the Queen,-to whose conviction of his innocence he solemnly appealed,-being present, though in a private capacity, in the House. " I can declare," he said, "with a good conscience, in the presence of Her Majesty, of this illustrious

assembly, and of God himself, who is infinitely superior to all the powers of the earth, and before Whom, by the ordinary course of nature, I shall soon appear, to render an account of my actions, that I was very desirous of a safe, honourable, and lasting peace, and was always very far from prolonging the war for my own private advantage, as several libels and discourses have most falsely insinuated; my great age, and my numerous fatigues in war, make me ardently wish for the power to enjoy a quiet repose, in order to think of eternity."

Whether the accusation against the Duke was true or false, certainly such an appeal from such a man would, with any woman less cold and less insensible than Queen Anne, have produced the desired effect.

Unfortunately for the Duke of Marlborough, his public conduct presented other and more tangible points of attack, of which his enemies did not scruple to avail themselves. In addition to the previous charge of having criminally protracted the war, an offence of a graver, or at least of a more disgraceful character, was imputed to him. A commission, it seems, had been appointed to examine into the public accounts, who reported, among other evidences of corruption and abuse, that there was full proof of the Duke of Marlborough having received, in the shape of a bribe, an annual present of five or six thousand pounds from the contractors of bread for the army. The evidences of the

Duke's guilt having been laid before the Queen in Council, she came to the strong determination of dismissing him forthwith from all his employments. Her final resolution the Queen announced to the Duke in a letter in her own handwriting. Marlborough returned a respectful letter, in which he ineffectually attempted to vindicate himself from the charge: at the same time, his daughters, the Countess of Sunderland and Lady Railton, resigned their appointments as Ladies of the Bedchamber, and the Duke retired into a private station.

That the melancholy failing of avarice, which was unfortunately inherent in the Duke of Marlborough's composition, carried him, on more than one occasion, almost to criminal lengths, there is every reason to believe. Nevertheless, it is impossible not to lament that the private failings of the great victor of Blenheim and Ramillies should have been permitted to become the topic of vulgar gossip and public censure;

* Charges of corruption had been brought against Marlborough as early as 1692; and, indeed, his dismissal from office in that year was occasionally attributed to the circumstance of his venality having been discovered. Evelyn inserts in his Diary of the 24th of January, 1692-3,-"Lord Marlborough, Lieutenant-General of the King's army in England, Gentleman of the Bedchamber, dismissed from all his charges, military and others, for his excessive taking of bribes, covetousness, and extortion on all occasions, from his inferior officers. This was the Lord who was entirely advanced by King James, and who was the first who betrayed and forsook his master."-Diary, vol. ii. p. 30.

VOL. I.

2 D