Fac-Simile of a Letter of the Duchess of Marlborough.
J. Netherdift Lithog.

MEMOIRS

OF THE

DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH.

CHAPTER I.
From 1660 to 1678.

State of the country previous to the birth of Sarah Jennings:—Her parentage—Account of her sister, La Belle Jennings—James the Second—Characters of Anne Duchess of York, and of her successor Maria d’Esté—The Princesses Mary and Anne—Origin and character of John Churchill—His family and circumstances.

The period which preceded the birth of the distinguished individual whose singular course is traced out in these Memoirs, was one of apparent luxury and security, but of actual and imminent peril to the national welfare. Charles the Second, in the decline of what could scarcely be deemed his days of prosperity, had not, indeed, experienced the bitterness of grief, which, in the fatal events that succeeded the rebellion of Monmouth, reduced the afflicted monarch to a state of depression which hurried him to an unhonoured grave. That painful scene, which in its effects upon the health and happiness of Charles recalled to remembrance the anguish of the royal mourner for Absalom, had not been as yet enacted: Monmouth was to appearance still loyal, at least, still trusted; and the ascendancy of the Roman Catholic persuasion over our Established worship was, at that time, problematical.

The opinions of reflective men, hushed by the wise determination not to anticipate the effect of probable events, which might accomplish all that they secretly desired, were resolving, nevertheless, into those famous schools of politics, which it were wrong to denominate factions, and which were afterwards divided into the three parties interwoven with all modern history, denominated Jacobites, Tories, and Whigs.

It is true it was not until some years afterwards that these celebrated appellations affixed to each combination certain characters, which have ever since, with little variation, retained the stamp which each originally bore; but the names only were wanting. Public opinion, in those worthy to assert its importance, had actually arranged itself under three different banners; although it required some signal manifestations on the part of government, to draw forth the forces marshalled under these, from the state of inaction in which for the present they remained.