onable and the most contrary to true policy, than all the most
judicious, the most voluble, the most insinuating persons could obtain
from him in matters infinitely reasonable and just." Without attributing
to the Duchess of Portsmouth a power of action so prejudicial to the
interests of the British nation as her anonymous biographer has done,
who wrote under the excitement of discontent caused, says Lyttleton, by
"the strengthening of the alliance with France, the secret enemy of
England and the Protestant religion, as well as by a costly war with
Holland, her natural ally," Hume states that "during the rest of his
life Charles II. was extremely attached to Querouaille, and that this
favourite contributed greatly to the close alliance between her own
country and England." Voltaire, without particularising the effects of
the ascendancy of the Duchess of Portsmouth over Charles II., says that
that monarch "was governed by her to the very last moment of his life."
He adds that "her beauty equalled that of Madame de Montespan, and that
she was in England what the other beauty had been in France, but with
more influence." This assertion, accurate as it is so far as concerns
political influence--for Madame de Montespan never exercised any over
the government of Louis XIV.--is not equally so with regard to the
question of beauty. On that head, indeed, the Duchess had her
detractors. "I have seen that famous beauty, Mademoiselle Querouaille,"
wrote Evelyn in his _Diary_, about a month after her arrival in England;
"but, in my opinion, she is of a childish, simple, and baby face."

PART III.

BOOK I.

CHAPTER I.

TWO LADIES OF THE BEDCHAMBER DURING THE WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION,
LADY CHURCHILL AND THE PRINCESS DES URSINS--POLITICAL MOTIVES FOR THEIR
ELEVATION IN ENGLAND AND SPAIN.

AT the outset of that historic period known as the _War of the Spanish
Succession_ a remarkable feature presents itself in the fact that two
women were chosen to be, as it were, its advanced sentinels--the one of
the Austrian party in England, the other of the French party in Spain.
These were Lady Churchill (wife of the famous soldier, Marlborough),
first lady of the bedchamber to our Queen Anne, and the Princess des
Ursins, fulfilling, under the title of _Camerara-Mayor_, the same
functions for the new Queen of Spain, Marie-Louise of Savoy, first wife
of Philip V.

The perpetual struggle previously waged between