Such a victory, Sarah believed, would have equalled that of Blenheim. What would Marl think if he could look down from Heaven and see his granddaughter Princess of Wales?

Alas for Sarah! Robert Walpole, the enemy, heard of Sarah’s plans and put an end to them. And Sarah had to be content with the Duke of Bedford for Dye.

And when Dye was married she could not stop herself interfering, telling her granddaughter what was wrong with her town house, what improvements should be made, and quarrelling fiercely with her husband.

It was twelve years after the death of Marlborough when death came again to Langley Marsh.

Abigail lay in her bed, her family about her and her mind drifted back and forth from past to present. Her son Samuel knelt by her bed. Her husband was there too with her brother John and her sister Alice.

She knew she was dying; and as she looked at her sister and her brother she was reminded of the day Sarah Churchill had called and how they had received her, trembling with awe and expectation.

Alice was plump and unmarried still; she had lived well and contentedly during the years; John was an old man, his life behind him, and for her and Samuel there were the children.

If Sarah Churchill had not come to them, if she had not given them a helping hand, where would they all be now? No one had had a greater effect upon her life than Sarah—or perhaps than she on Sarah’s.

She saw her coming into the shabby house—resplendent in her power and beauty.

“The beginning …” she whispered.

And those about the bed looked at each other significantly.

Abigail had left them forever.

Sarah lived on for another ten years. Eighty and as vigorous as ever in mind if not in body, she continued to harry those about her.

Lady Dye had died when she was only twenty-five after only four years of marriage; next to the death of Marlborough that was the greatest blow of Sarah’s life.

It occurred to her then that she was living too long; that too many of those she loved were going on before her.

She thought little of the past; she did however write her memoirs which was an account of how she had first governed the Queen and then been ousted from her favour by Abigail Hill.

Momentarily she recalled all the venom she had felt for that whey-faced creature whom she had taken from a broom.

If I had never taken pity on her, if I had never found a place for her in the Queen’s bedchamber … everything might have been so different. She was the true enemy. She with her quiet ways, her respectful curtsies and her “Yes, Your Grace!”

“No, Your Grace!” Who would have thought that one so plain, so insignificant … such a nothing … such an insect … could have made so much mischief in the life of people such as herself and the great Duke of Marlborough!

That gave her pause for thought … for a while. But she was never one to brood on the past.

Occasionally she took out John’s letters to her and read them through and wept over them.

“I should destroy them,” she said. “They can give me nothing but pain now.”

But she could not destroy them. She took out the coil of golden hair which he had kept and which she had discovered in his cabinet and she wept into it.

Then resolutely she put away these souvenirs of the past which so bitterly recalled his love for her; and went once more into battle.

But she was old; and even she could not live for ever.

She was in her bed and the doctors were there, whispering … waiting for her to die.

“She must be blistered or she will die,” they murmured.

But she lifted herself from her pillows and shouted: “I won’t be blistered and I won’t die.”

Nor did she … just then.

But even she could not stave off death for ever; nor did she wish to.

There was nothing in her life now to make her cling to it even if she was the richest woman in England.

Deliberately she made plans for her burial. She would be buried in Blenheim chapel where she had had John’s body brought from Westminster Abbey.

“It is meet and fitting that we should lie together,” she said.

“Old Marlborough is dying.” The news spread through the Court. No one cared. She was a tiresome old woman who was amusing because she was continually making trouble, nothing more.

And on an October day in the year 1744, twenty-two years after the death of the Duke, Sarah died.

She was buried as she had wished; and although the members of her family attended her funeral, there was no one to mourn her.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Memoirs of the Duke of Marlborough with his original correspondence. 3 vols. William Coxe

An Account of the Conduct of the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough Sarah Jennings Churchill Marlborough

Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough Kathleen Campbell

Duchess Sarah: The Social History of the Times of Sarah Jennings Mrs. Arthur Colville

John and Sarah: Duke and Duchess of Marlborough Stuart J. Reid with introduction by the Duke of Marlborough

Sarah Churchill Frank Chancellor

Marlborough’s Duchess Louis Kronenberger

Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford: A Study of Politics and Letters in the Reign of Queen Anne E. S. Roscoe

Lives of the Queens of England Agnes Strickland

Anne of England M. R. Hopkinson

That Enchantress Doris Leslie

Notes on British History William Edwards

Journal to Stella Jonathan Swift, edited by Harold Williams

Three Eighteenth Century Figures Bonamy Dobrée

Letters of Two Queens Lt.-Col. The Hon. Benjamin Bathurst

British History John Wade

Dictionary of National Biography Edited by Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee

The National and Domestic History of England William Hickman Smith Aubrey

Bishop Burnet’s History of His Own Time Gilbert Burnet

England Under the Stuarts G. M. Trevelyan

History of England G. M. Trevelyan

English Social History G. M. Trevelyan

England Under Queen Anne G. M. Trevelyan

Marlborough, His Life and Times Winston S. Churchill