Duke of Marlborough

“ Without compromising his own sense of what is right, or attempting to conceal or disguise the failings of his hero, Mr Alison has painted a picture, at once noble and affecting, of the Duke of Marlborough, in every aspect of his character, in every position in which he was placed. In private and in public life—as a friend, as a father, as a husband—as a diplomatist, as a statesman, as a warrior—where is his equal to be found, and how can we be too grateful to one who has placed him, in all these characters, so vividly before us? ”

“ Marlborough, the slave of his country, the instrument and the controller at once of states and allied armies,—Marlborough, at length, was free,—at length he was permitted, even constrained, to return to the ordeal of private life; for to all men who have played a conspicuous part on the great theatre of the busy world, a domestic sphere must prove an ordeal which few, so situated, sustain with credit.
Since the first years of their early marriage, the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough had scarcely passed a year of uninterrupted conjugal enjoyment. ”

“ I received with the greatest pleasure imaginable your grace’s commands, as I shall ever do to the last moment of my life, and obey them with a readiness as becomes one to do, who, with all his faults, has not those fashionable ones of fickleness and insincerity, which the dear Duchess of Marlborough has, to my knowledge, so often met with in this false world.
I am sure your grace is overjoyed to hear the Duke is so well, and the more so because it is truth beyond contradiction, that as we owe our liberties to him, so he, under God, owes his life to the care and tenderness of the best of wives. ”

“ Duke, Knight of the Garter and Commander of the British Armies by Queen Anne. Marlborough was one of those men whom conviction astonishes, devotedness confounds; who acknowledge no other law than that of their own interest, no other deity than success, and which the uncontrollable current of human affairs not unfrequently brings rapidly to the surface. Cradled in revolutions, he had seen the Commonwealth pass away, the Stuarts fall, the House of Orange proclaimed. He had taken part in intrigues, plots, apostacies, defections: doubt alone survived every other political instinct of his heart. ”

“ Blackett said with a feeble smile to George, "and must be sent home for a while. But I hope to turn up among you another year."
If to follow up a great victory promptly, vigorously, and fully, be one of the distinguishing marks of a great commander, then the Duke of Marlborough was certainly one of the greatest generals of whom history tells. Hardly anything more striking than his long and rapid series of successes in the weeks after Ramillies can be credited to a military leader, not even excepting Wellington and Napoleon. Louvain, Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges, all fell into his hands. ”

“ The greatest general of the age, the Duke of Marlborough, is one of the basest rogues in history, supported by his mistresses, a niggard user of the pay which he received from them, systematically plundering his soldiers, trafficking on political secrets, a traitor to James II, to William, to England, betraying to James the intended plan of attacking Brest, and even, when old and infirm, walking from the public rooms in Bath to his lodgings, on a cold and dark night, to save sixpence in chair-hire. ”

“ Notwithstanding the great general’s services, it was, however, manifest that his influence, and that of the Duchess, were now, from some cause or other, deeply undermined. The Duke, as well as the Duchess, suffered great vexation from this new and unforeseen apprehension; for it is easy to be happy without tasting power, but difficult indeed to part with it after long possession. It was in the answer to some communications from the Duchess that Marlborough wrote these touching words, betraying all the weariness of worldly anxieties. ”

“ Alban’s, on the 15th of September, 1712, determined Marlborough to quit England, and to reside abroad until better times should return. The Duchess fully concurred in this scheme; which became the more and more necessary to their mutual peace, since not even could she and the Duke enjoy and return the ordinary courtesies of society, without incurring observation and provoking suspicion. Marlborough was furnished with a passport, it is said, by the instrumentality of his early favourite, and secret friend, Bolingbroke; and in October the Duke sailed from Dover for Ostend. ”

“ The biography of John Duke of Marlborough, undertaken by three individuals, was completed only by Lediard, who had served under the hero of Blenheim, and who may be supposed to have felt a sort of personal interest in his illustrious career. The coldness of those to whom the task was deputed, recommended as it was to their zealous attention by the promise of a considerable sum to forward its completion, proves how feebly the public called for such a production. It was not until the Duchess was on her deathbed that she began to arrange the voluminous materials of the life of her husband. ”

“ The 7th duke of Marlborough, John Winston Spencer-Churchill (1822–1883) , a prominent Conservative politician, was lord-lieutenant of Ireland 1876–1880, and when marquess of Blandford (the courtesy title borne by the duke’s eldest son in his father’s lifetime) was responsible for the act of 1856 called the “Blandford Act,” enabling populous parishes to be divided for purposes of Church work. In 1892 his grandson Charles Richard John Spencer-Churchill (b. 1871) became 9th duke of Marlborough. ”

“ After the return of the Duke and Duchess to England, it was the arduous office of the Countess of Sunderland to interpose her mild influence between the hasty temper of her husband and the overbearing spirit of her mother. She was the only one of “Marlborough’s daughters” who could brook the maternal authority, exercised even over her grown-up children with unsparing rigour; and Marlborough regarded this dutiful and forbearing child with peculiar affection, on that very account. ”

“ Maynwaring justly observes, in writing to the Duchess, speaking of the Duke’s desire to exalt his importance as a party-man, “For a man that has no talents to do any one thing in the world, to think that he is to do everything, and to have all preferments pass through his hands, is something so much out of the way, that it is hard to find a name for it.”
The Duchess of Marlborough had, in former days, thoroughly understood, and as thoroughly despised, the shallowness of his grace of Somerset’s understanding, and the unbounded arrogance of his pretensions. ”

“ The Duchess was, at the time of the Duke’s death, sixty-two years of age. Her health appears to have been still unbroken; her beauty far less impaired than that of many much younger women. Her income was more than ample, since she found means, even when maintaining a princely establishment, to accumulate sums, and to purchase lands, which she left to her grandchildren. Her wit, her experience, her consequence in society as the widow of Marlborough, all contributed to give her a proud distinction in that gay world to which she was devoted. ”

“ To his delight Marlborough recognized him at once. The Duke was full of sympathy, and not only readily granted the young captain any reasonable leave of absence he might desire, but held out his hand with a smile, as he dismissed him: "Major Fairburn, you go with my sympathy and my regard. I have few young fellows under me of whom I think more highly." And in spite of his terrible bereavement the newly-promoted officer left his master's presence with a swelling heart.
With him travelled home Matthew Blackett, whose release George, to his delight, had managed, though with difficulty. ”

“ Lord Marlborough answered. "It is cunningly thought of. If he will save his head he must give up some one. So, as he will not give up his friends he will ruin his enemies; if the King is a fool, and can spare us."
"The King is no fool!" said the Duke, rather coldly. It was no secret that between William and Lord Marlborough love was not lost. ”

“ The frequent separations, which war had rendered necessary, had been a perpetual source of regret to the good Duke, whose heart was framed for domestic life. In all his letters, he expresses that longing for home, that desire for an uninterrupted union with one whom he idolized, which hitherto had been precluded, both by the great general’s arduous duties, and by the necessary attendance at court, imposed on the Duchess by her offices, even during the short intervals when Marlborough was permitted to relax from his toils. ”

“ The French have always denied the Duke of Marlborough's military talents, though he always beat them. The Duke of Argyle said that he had general talents (like William Murray, Lord Mansfield) , which would have enabled him to make pretty much the same figure in whatever line he adopted. He was most undoubtedly an excessively wise man, with wonderful command of temper, and uncommon sagacity, a master of intrigue, but no literature whatever. ”

“ A more satisfactory and genial occupation, one would suppose, than wrangling for rights and sums of money which would soon be useless to her, might have occupied many of the Duchess’s declining days. In the month of September, previous to her death, she describes herself as having entered into a “new business,” which entertained her extremely; tying up great bundles of papers to assist very able historians to write a Life of 487the Duke of Marlborough, which would occupy two folios, with the Appendix. ”

“ In a situation requiring above all others the mixture of civil and military talents, to a degree that the Duke of Marlborough scarce possessed them, and for which we must provide by sending some old woman in a red riband that has not a grain of either. ”

“ Clayton [286] a glowing description of a visit to Richmond, which she had paid to their 333royal highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales, whose reception, as she declares, “of the Duke of Marlborough and poor me” would fill more than the paper on which she wrote. Not only was she graciously received by the Prince and Princess, but by the Lord Chamberlain and attendants, even to the pages of the bedchamber; so that the Duchess, long unused to receive such certain demonstrations of favour, fancied herself in a new world. Music of a superior kind gave gaiety to the entertainment ”

“ Four living writers—of high personal character, of great eminence in the ranks of literature, and characterised almost equally by painstaking industry in the collection of materials, but clothing the results of their researches in very different styles of composition—have respectively placed on record their deliberate estimate of the moral and political character of the Duke of Marlborough. ”

“ He was resolute for peace; but he pressed on the work of peace with an utter indifference to all but party ends. As Marlborough was his great obstacle, his aim was to drive him from his command; and earnestly as he admired the Duke's greatness, he hounded on a tribe of libellers who assailed even his personal courage. Meanwhile St. John was feeding Marlborough's hopes of reconciliation with the Tories, till he led him to acquiesce in his wife's dismissal, and to pledge himself to a co-operation with the Tory policy. ”

“ In 1697 he was restored to favour, and on the breaking out of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1701 he was chief commander of the Forces in the United Provinces. In this war his victories made him the most famous captain of the age. In December, 1702, he was made Duke, with a pension of five thousand a year. In the campaign of 1704 Marlborough planned very privately, and executed on his own responsibility, the boldest and most distant march that had ever been attempted in our continental wars. ”

“ The Duke wrote hotly home at the news of the pressure which the Whigs were putting on him. "England," he said, "will not be ruined because a few men are not pleased." Nor was Marlborough alone in his resentment. Harley foresaw the danger of his expulsion from office, and even as early as 1706 began to intrigue at court, through Mrs. Masham, a bedchamber woman of the Queen, who was supplanting the Duchess in Anne's favour, against the Whigs and against Marlborough, whom he looked upon as in the hands of the Whigs. ”

“ The injustice and invective which scarcely drew forth an angry exclamation from Marlborough, produced a feverish heat in the warm temperament of the Duchess.
“In this camp,” writes the Duke to Lord Godolphin, his bosom friend and confidant, [73] “I have had time to read the pamphlet called ‘The Memorial of the Church of England.’ I think it the most impudent and scurrilous thing I ever read. If the author can be found, I do not doubt but he will be punished; for if such liberties may be taken, of writing scandalous lies without being punished, no government can stand long. ”

“ Before Marlborough died George Fairburn was a lieutenant-colonel, and, as he happened to be stationed for a time at Windsor, he and his wife, the Mary Blackett of old, had more than once the honour of an invitation to Windsor Park, the Duke's favourite abode, his great palace of Blenheim being not yet ready for him. ”

“ He was actually on the borders of France, victorious, the French army behind him. He was eager; the home Government would almost certainly have approved of the step. The heart of many a young fellow under the great leader beat high, when he thought of the mighty possibilities before him. But it was not to be. The Prince raised the strongest objections to the Duke's bold plan, and the Dutch were terrified at the bare thought of it. So Marlborough turned him to another task, the siege of the great stronghold of Lille. ”