While Sarah was playing with her Royal charge in the Palace nursery, John Churchill, son of a West Country knight, whose life was to be so closely linked with hers, had already climbed several rungs of the ladder at the summit of which he was to find a Duke's coronet. He had made his first appearance at Court while she was still in the cradle at Sandridge; and although, no doubt, she had caught many a glimpse of the handsome young courtier and favourite of the King, in her eyes he moved in a world apart, as far removed by his splendid environment as by his ten years' superiority in age.
John Churchill was, at least, no better born than herself. He was son of one Winston Churchill, of a stock of West Country gentry, who had flung aside his cap and gown at Oxford to wield a sword for King Charles; and who, when Cromwell took the fallen reins of government into his own hands, was made to pay a heavy price for his loyalty by the forfeiture of his lands and a fine of £4,000. When Charles I.'s son came to his own, Winston's star shone again; his acres were restored, he was dubbed a knight, and was rewarded with well-paid offices under the Crown. Moreover, a place at Court, as page-boy, was found for his young son John; and another, as maid-of-honour to the Duchess of York, for his daughter Arabella.
From the day young Churchill entered the service of James, Duke of York, Fortune smiled her sweetest on him. The Duke was captivated by the boy's handsome face, his intelligence and charming manners, and took him at once into favour. By the time he was sixteen he was a full-blown officer of the Guards, and the idol of the Court. His good looks, his graces of person, and powers of fascinating wrought sad havoc in the breast of many a Court-lady; and, boy though he was, there were few favours which might not have been his without the asking.
Even Barbara Villiers, my Lady Castlemaine, who had for many years been the King's "light o' love," and had borne him three sons, all Dukes-to-be, cast amorous eyes on the handsome young Guardsman; and, what is more, succeeded where beauty failed, in drawing him within the net of her coarse, middle-aged charms. Strange stories are told of the love-making of this oddly-assorted pair, which had a ludicrous conclusion. One day King Charles was informed that if he would take the trouble to go to Lady Castlemaine's rooms he would be rewarded by a singular spectacle—that of young Churchill dallying with his mistress and the mother of his children. And so it proved; for when the King made an unexpected appearance he was just in time to see the lieutenant-Lothario disappearing through an open window and his inamorata on the verge of hysterics on a sofa.
One cannot blame the "Merrie Monarch" for deciding that such activities were better fitted for another field of exercise. The young Lothario was packed off to Tangier to cool his ardour by a little bloodshed; but before he went Lady Castlemaine handed him a farewell present of £5,000 with which, according to Lord Chesterfield, "he immediately bought an annuity of £500 a year of my grandfather Halifax, which was the foundation of his subsequent fortune."
A young man so enterprising and so gifted by nature could scarcely fail to go far, when his energies were directed into a suitable channel. He proved that he could serve under the banner of Mars as gallantly as under the pennon of Cupid. He did such doughty deeds against the Dutch, under Monmouth, that he was made a Captain of Grenadiers. At the siege of Nimeguen his reckless bravery won the unstinted praise of Turenne, who, when one of his own officers cowardly abandoned an important outpost, exclaimed, "I will bet a supper and a dozen of claret that my handsome Englishman will recover the post with half the number of men that the officer commanded who has lost it." And the "handsome Englishman" promptly won the supper for the Marshal. Moreover, by an act of splendid daring, during the siege of Maestricht he saved the Duke of Monmouth's life; and returned to England a hero and a colonel, having thoroughly purged his indiscretion in Lady Castlemaine's boudoir. If he had toyed dangerously with the King's mistress, he had at least saved the life of his Sovereign's best-loved son.
It was at this time that Churchill seems to have first set eyes on Sarah Jennings, now standing on the verge of womanhood, and as sweet a flower as the Court garden of fair girls could show. He saw her moving with queenly grace and dainty freshness among a crowd of the loveliest women at a Royal ball, her proud well-poised head rising above them as a lily towers over meaner flowers. And—such are the strange ways of love—from that first glance he was fascinated by her as no other woman ever had power to fascinate him. When he sought an introduction to her, the bright spirit that shone in her eyes, her clever tongue, and her graciousness quickly forged the chains which he was proud to wear to his life's end. Seldom has a woman's spell worked such quick magic—never has the love it gave birth to proved more loyal and enduring.
But Sarah Jennings was no maid to be easily won by any man—even by a lover so dowered with physical graces and so invested with the halo of romance as John Churchill. She knew all about his heroism on battlefields; she knew also of that little incident in a palace boudoir, and of many another youthful peccadillo of the gallant young colonel. She was no flower to be worn and flung aside; and she meant that Colonel Churchill should know it. She could be gracious to him, as to any other man; but she quickly made the limits of her indulgence clear. To all his amorous advances she presented a smiling and inscrutable front; his ardour was as unwelcome as it was premature.
Had she designed to make a conquest of her martial lover she could not have set to work more diplomatically. Colonel Churchill had basked for years in woman's smiles, often unsought and undesired; to coldness and indifference he was a stranger; but they only served, as becomes a soldier, to make him more resolute on victory. As a subtle tongue and a handsome person made no impression on this frigid beauty, he had recourse to his pen (since his sword was useless for such a conquest) and inundated her with letters, breathing undying devotion, and craving for at least a smile or a look of kindness.
"Show me," he writes, "that, at least, you are not quite indifferent to me, and I swear that I will never love anything but your dear self, which has made so sure a conquest of me that, had I the will, I had not the power ever to break my chains. Pray let me hear from you and know if I shall be so happy as to see you to-night."