on the unstable throne on which he was soon after seated. He was present at most of the long and momentous debates which took place in the House of Peers on the question on whom the crown should be conferred, and at first inclined to a regency; but with a commendable delicacy he absented himself on the night of the decisive vote on the vacancy of the throne. He voted, however, on the 6th of February for the resolution which settled the crown on William and Mary; and he assisted at their coronation, under the title of Earl of Marlborough, to which he had shortly before been elevated by William.

His first serv

England having, on the accession of the new monarch, joined the continental league against France, Marlbor- 11. ough received the command of the British auxilia- ices in foreign war unry force in the Netherlands, and by his courage and der William. ability contributed in a remarkable manner to the victory of Walcourt. In 1690 he received orders to return from Flanders in order to assume a command in Ireland, then agitated by a general insurrection in favor of James; but, actuated by some remnant of attachment to his old benefactor, he eluded on various pretenses complying with the order till the battle of the Boyne had extinguished the hopes of the dethroned monarch, when he came over and made himself master of Cork and Kinsale. In 1691 he was sent again into Flanders, in order to act under the immediate orders of William, who was then, with heroic constancy, contending with the still superior forces of France; but hardly had he landed there when he was arrested, deprived of all his commands, and sent to the Tower of London, along with several of the noblemen of distinction in the British Senate.

Discreditable

Upon this part of the history of Marlborough there hangs a veil of mystery, which all the papers brought to 12. light in more recent times have not entirely remov- intrigues soon ed. At the time, his disgrace was by many attrib- after with the uted to some cutting sarcasms in which he had in- family. dulged on the predilection of William for the continental troops,

exiled royal

and especially the Dutch; by others, to intrigues conducted by Lady Marlborough and him, to obtain for the Princess Anne a larger pension than the king was disposed to allow her. But neither of these causes is sufficient to explain the fall and arrest of a man so eminent as Marlborough, and who had rendered such important services to the newly-established monarch. It would appear, from what has transpired in later times, that a much more serious cause had produced the rupture between him and William. The charge brought against him at the time, but not prosecuted, as it was found to rest on false or insufficient evidence, was that of having, along with Lords Salisbury, Cornbury, the Bishop of Rochester, and Sir Basil Ferebrace, signed the scheme of an association for the restoration of James. Sir John Fenwick, who was executed for a treasonable correspondence with James II. shortly after Marlborough's arrest, declared that he was privy to the design, had received the pardon of the exiled monarch, and had engaged to procure for him the adhesion of the army. The papers, published by Coxe, rather corroborate the view that he was privy to it; and it is supported by those found at Rome in the possession of Cardinal York.* That Marlborough,

* "About a fortnight ago, I wrote a letter to acquaint you with what I had observed of some people, in hopes Mr. Arden would have called upon me as he promised; but I did not care to send it by the post, so it was burned. We had yesterday Sir John Fenwick at the house, and I think it all went as you could wish. I do not send you the particulars, knowing you must have it more exactly from others; but I should be wanting if I did not let you know that Lord Rochester has behaved himself, on all this occasion, like a friend. In a conversation he had with me, he expressed himself as a real servant of yours; and I think it would not be amiss if you took notice of it to him. If you think me capable of any commands, I shall endeavor to approve myself what I am, with much truth," &c.-Marlborough to the Duke of Shrewsbury (a Catholic leader and Royalist). Wednesday night, no date. Shrewsbury Papers, and CoxE, i., 85.

"During the interval between the liberation of Marlborough and the death of Queen Mary, we find him, in conjunction with Godolphin and many others, maintaining a clandestine intercourse with the exiled family. On the 2d of May, 1694, only a few days before he offered his services to King William, he communicated to James, through Colonel Sackville, intelligence of an expedition then fitting out for the purpose of destroying the fleet in Brest har

He is liberat

disgusted with the partiality of William for his Dutch troops, and irritated at the open severity of his government, should have repented of his abandonment of his former sovereign and benefactor, is highly probable. But it can scarcely be taken as an apology for one act of treason that he meditated the commission of another. It only shows how perilous, in public as in private life, is any deviation from the path of integrity, that it impelled such a man into so tortuous and disreputable a path. But Marlborough was a man whose services were too valuable to the newly-established dynasty to be per- 13. mitted to remain long in disgrace. He was soon ed from prisliberated from the Tower, as no sufficient evidence on, and ere long restored of his alleged accession to the conspiracy had been to favor. obtained. Several years elapsed, however, before he emerged from the privacy into which he prudently retired on his liberation from confinement. Queen Mary having been carried off by the small-pox on the 17th of January, 1696, Marlborough wisely abstained from even taking part in the debates which followed in Parliament, during which some of the malcontents dropped hints as to the propriety of conferring the crown on his immediate patroness, the Princess Anne. This prudent reserve, together with the absence of any decided proofs at the time of Marlborough's correspondence with James, seems to have at length weakened William's resentment, and by degrees he was taken back into favor. The peace of Ryswick, signed on the 20th of September, 1697, having consolidated the power of that monarch, Marlborough was, on the 19th of June, 1698, made preceptor of the young Duke of Gloucester, his nephew, son of the Princess Anne, and heir-presumptive to the throne; and this appointment, which at once restored his credit at court, was accompanied by the gracious expression, "My lord, make my nephew to resembor."-CoxE's Marlborough, i., 75. "Marlborough's conduct to the Stuarts," says Lord Mahon, "was a foul blot on his memory. To the last he persevered in those deplorable intrigues. In October, 1713, he protested to a Jacobite agent he would rather have his hands cut off than do any thing to prejudice King James."-MAHON, i., 21, 22.

D

+

ble yourself, and he will be every thing which I can desire." On the same day he was restored to his rank as a privy counselor, and took the oaths and his seat accordingly.

So fully had he now regained the confidence of William, that he was three times named one of the nine

14.

ed to the su

mand in the

And appoint- lords justiciars to whom the administration of afpreme com- fairs in Great Britain was subsequently intrusted Netherlands. during the temporary absence of William in Holland; and the War of the Succession having become certain in the year 1700, that monarch, who was preparing to take an active part in it, appointed Marlborough, on the 1st of June, 1701, his embassador extraordinary at the Hague, and commander-in-chief of the allied forces in Flanders. This double appointment in effect invested Marlborough with the entire direction of affairs, civil and military, so far as England was concerned, on the Continent. William, who was highly indignant at the recognition of the Chevalier St. George as King of England on the death of his father, James II., in September, 1701, was preparing to prosecute the war with the vigor and perseverance which so eminently distinguished his character, when he was carried off by the effects of a fall from his horse, on the 19th of March, 1702. But that event made no alteration in the part which England took in the war which was commencing, and it augmented rather than diminished the influence which Marlborough had in its direction. The Princess Anne, with whom, both individually and through Lady Marlborough, he was so intimately connected, mounted the throne without opposition; and by one of her first acts the queen bestowed on Marlborough the order of the Garter, confirmed him in his former offices, and appointed him, in addition, her plenipotentiary to the Hague. War was declared on the 15th of May, 1702, and Marlborough immediately went over to the Netherlands to take the command of the allied army, sixty thousand strong, then lying before Nimeguen, which was threatened by a superior force on the part of the French.

At which pe

heim Papers

It is at this period-June, 1702—that the great and memorable, and, withal, blameless period of Marlbor- 15. ough's life commenced. The next ten years were riod the Blenone unbroken series of efforts, victories, and glory. commenced. He arrived in the camp at Nimeguen on the evening of the 2d of July, having been a few weeks before at the Hague, and immediately assumed the command. Lord Athlone, who had previously enjoyed that situation, at first laid claim to an equal authority with him; but this ruinous division, which never is safe save with men so great as he and Eugene, and would unquestionably have proved ruinous to the common cause had Athlone been his partner in command, was prevented by the States General, who insisted upon the undivided direction being conferred on Marlborough, Most fortunately, it is precisely at this period that the Dispatches commence, which present an unbroken series of his letters to persons of every description, down to his dismissal from office in May, 1712. They thus embrace the early successes in Flanders, the cross march into Bavaria and battle of Blenheim, the expulsion of the French from Germany, the battle of Ramillies, and taking of Brussels and Antwerp, the mission to the King of Sweden at Dresden, the battle of Almanza in Spain, those of Oudenarde, Malplaquet, and all the sieges in Flanders, and all the important events of the war down to its close. More weighty and momentous materials for history never were presented to the public; and their importance will not be properly appreciated if the previous condition of Europe, and imminent hazard to the independence of all the adjoining states, from the unmeasured ambition and vast power of Louis XIV., are not taken into consideration.

16. Great power

Accustomed as we are to regard the Bourbons as a fallen and unfortunate race, the objects rather of commiseration than apprehension, and Napoleon as the only sovereign who has really threatened our independence, and all but effected the subjugation of the Continent, we can scarcely conceive the ter

of the Bourperiod, and general alarm

bons at this

which it ex

cited.