He was twice married. Both of his wives were Irish: the first was the daughter of the earl of Clanricarde; the second the daughter of a gentleman who had married one of the maids of honor of Queen Mary Beatrice. In his memoirs Berwick despatches his two wives in just ten lines, five to each. He does not even tell us their christian names. He was too busy fighting to think of the women.
He had an own brother, the offspring like himself, of James II. and Arabella Churchill, and bearing like him the surname of Fitzjames. This brother also rose to distinction: he took to the church and became bishop of Soissons. It was he who stood at the bedside of Louis XV. when the king was supposed to be dying, and refused him absolution and extreme unction till he would dismiss his favorite, Madame de Chateauroux. The king yielded; the favorite was sent away, and he was absolved and anointed for Heaven; but
The devil fell sick; the devil a saint would be.
The devil got well, the devil a saint was he.
The king recovered and recalled Madame de Chateauroux.
Some time after my return from Europe in 1874, I read in the New York World a notice of the marriage in Paris of a Spanish nobleman with a Miss Stuart who the account said was a descendant of the duke of Berwick and of James II. It was added that the bride’s family were once known as the Fitzjameses, but that they had subsequently taken the name of Stuart as more indicative of their royal extraction.
So it seems the Berwick branch of the Churchills was extant twenty years ago, and we hope is extant still, though its existence may not be known to Lord Alfred.
The Captivity of Babylon
PETRARCH who lived in the fourteenth century, gave the name of the Captivity of Babylon to the condition of the Church of Rome which was then in exile. No longer on the banks of the Tiber she held her seat, but on the banks of the Rhone; and Avignon not Rome was the assumed mistress of the world. Petrarch did not live to see the end, but in one respect the appellation was a prophecy: the Captivity lasted seventy-two years; and the name is often applied to that period, especially by Roman Catholic historians.