us,--the one to benefit the country which she virtually ruled,
and the other to accumulate honors and riches by cabals and intrigues in
the court of a weak woman whom she served and despised. Madame de
Maintenon, in a greater position, as the wife of the most powerful
monarch in Christendom, was gentle, amiable, condescending, and
kind-hearted; the Duchess of Marlborough was haughty, insolent, and
acrimonious. Both were beautiful, bright, witty, and intellectual; but
the Frenchwoman was immeasurably more cultivated, and was impressible by
grand sentiments.

And yet the Duchess of Marlborough was a great woman. She was the most
prominent figure in the Court of Queen Anne, and had a vast influence on
the politics of her day. Her name is associated with great statesmen and
generals. She occupied the highest social position of any woman in
England after that of the royal family. She had the ear and the
confidence of the Queen. The greatest offices were virtually at her
disposal. Around her we may cluster the leading characters and events of
the age of Queen Anne.

Sarah Jennings, the future Duchess of Marlborough, was born in 1660. She
belonged to a good though not a noble family, which for many generations
possessed a good estate in Hertfordshire. Her grandfather, Sir John
Jennings, was a zealous adherent to the royal cause before the
Revolution, and received the Order of the Bath, in company with his
patron, Charles I., then Prince of Wales. When Sarah was twelve years of
age, she found a kind friend in the Duchess of York, Mary Beatrice
Eleanora, Princess of Modena (an adopted daughter of Louis XIV.), who
married James, brother of Charles II. The young girl was thus introduced
to the dangerous circle which surrounded the Duke of York, and she
passed her time, not in profitable studies, but in amusements and
revels. She lived in the ducal household as a playmate of the Princess
Anne, and was a beautiful, bright, and witty young lady, though not well
educated. In the year 1673 she became acquainted with John Churchill, a
colonel of the army and a gentleman of the bedchamber to the Duke of
York,--the latter a post of honor, but of small emolument. He was at
that time twenty-three years of age, a fine-looking and gallant soldier,
who had already distinguished himself at the siege of Tangier. He had
also fought under the banners of Marshal Turenne in the Low Countries,
by whom he was called the "handsome Englishman." At the