OF SARAH, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH, ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE COURT AND TIMES OF QUEEN ANNE; WITH HER SKETCHES AND OPINIONS OF HER CONTEMPORARIES AND THE SELECT CORRESPONDENCE OF HER HUSBAND, JOHN, DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH. SECOND EDITION. IN TWO VOLUME S. VOL. I. LONDON: HENRY COLBURN, PUBLISHER, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. PREFACE. It is scarcely necessary to tell our readers, as an excuse for the present publication, that the reign of Queen Anne is one of the most interesting and famous in the whole course of our annals, or that there are no documents so capable of illustrating that reign, whether we would know the measures which raised the nation to its glory, or the private intrigues which robbed it of the advantages which that glory promised, and drew upon it for a time we may almost say the contempt of all Europe, as the private correspondence of the DUCHESS OF Marlborough, herself one of the most prominent actors on the scene. One portion of this correspondence, the letters of her husband, the conqueror of the armies of Louis XIV., gives us a tolerably connected account of the progress and events of that celebrated war, from the year 1706 to the period when his further efforts were paralysed by the ambition of Harley and St. John. The letters of Arthur Maynwaring, Esq., M.P., the confidential secretary and friend of the Duchess, throws great light upon the secret progress of the intrigues of Harley's party from 1708 to 1712, the year of Maynwaring's death. In the present state of party feeling many will read with interest the judicious and sensible, though rather long, letters of Dr. Hare on the position and conduct of the parties somewhat more than a hundred years ago. The letters of others of the Duchess's contemporaries, as the famous Earl of Peterborough, her son-in-law Sunderland, the Treasurer Lord Godolphin, the Duke of Shrewsbury, Lords Halifax and Coningsby, Sir Robert Walpole, Ladies Cowper, Scarborough, and Mohun, with a few specimens of the correspondence between the Duchess and the Queen, will illustrate equally the times when they were written and the characters of the persons who wrote them. Unfortunately, there are preserved but few of the Duchess's own letters, written during the reign of |