T HE QUEEN'S The Life and Times of Sarah Duchess of By FITZGERALD MOLLOY WITH 18 PORTRAITS VOL. I London HUTCHINSON & CO. NEW YORK: DODD MEAD AND COMPANY ཉ PREFACE IF, as Carlyle says, "Biography is the most uni versally profitable, universally pleasant of all things, especially biography of distinguished individuals," it must be admitted that few life records so incontestably combine pleasure and profit as those of Sarah Jennings, first Duchess of Marlborough ; who, born at the Restoration, took some part in the Revolution, who defied one sovereign, swayed another, and saw six reign. In relating the eventful story of her days it is indispensable that pictures should be given of the courts in which she figured, the incidents that amused or the storms that shook them, the political events that led to comedy or tragedy, the characters who played important parts as kings or queens, princes and princesses, sycophants or conspirators, great officers of the state, courtesans, whispering pages of the back stairs, bedchamber women, petty clerks of the palace; all puppets of a brief hour, unconsciously posturing for posterity, their antics illustrating the Annals of their time, and producing the ever-changing drama known as history. In the following pages, politics have been avoided as much as possible, and merely treated as pivots on which human interests turned; whilst letters-always a reflection of their writers' minds-have occasionally been given at length, to illustrate a character, or describe an event. And though no statement is made without authority, and scandal is not sedulously avoided, the unnecessary task of pointing a moral, that so frequently disfigures a tale, is unheeded. Many of the heretofore unpublished statements, ancedotes, and letters in this strange eventful life story, have been found in the thirty-four volumes of manuscripts originally collected by Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, as materials for the memoirs of her husband; only an inconsiderable part of which could be used by their writer, Archdeacon Coxe; who in describing the historic exploits of the duke, left himself little space to speak of the social episodes in the career of the indomitable duchess. At the biographer's death, these papers passed to the peaceful security of the British Museum, where time-stained and faded they still bear silent witness to the ambitions, passions, schemes, and ferments that stirred the souls of those whose actions made history. The "Account of her Conduct" and her "Vindication" written by the duchess shortly before her death, |