o the interview.

Bulkeley soon made a third attempt. By this time Godolphin had
learned some things which shook his confidence in the stability of the
government which he served. He began to think, as he would himself have
expressed it, that he had betted too deep on the Revolution, and that
it was time to hedge. Evasions would no longer serve his turn. It was
necessary to speak out. He spoke out, and declared himself a devoted
servant of King James. "I shall take an early opportunity of resigning
my place. But, till then, I am under a tie. I must not betray my trust."
To enhance the value of the sacrifice which he proposed to make, he
produced a most friendly and confidential letter which he had lately
received from William. "You see how entirely the Prince of Orange trusts
me. He tells me that he cannot do without me, and that there is no
Englishman for whom he has so great a kindness; but all this weighs
nothing with me in comparison of my duty to my lawful King."

If the First Lord of the Treasury really had scruples about betraying
his trust, those scruples were soon so effectually removed that he
very complacently continued, during six years, to eat the bread of one
master, while secretly sending professions of attachment and promises of
service to another.

The truth is that Godolphin was under the influence of a mind far more
powerful and far more depraved than his own. His perplexities had
been imparted to Marlborough, to whom he had long been bound by such
friendship as two very unprincipled men are capable of feeling for each
other, and to whom he was afterwards bound by close domestic ties.

Marlborough was in a very different situation from that of William's
other servants. Lloyd might make overtures to Russell, and Bulkeley to
Godolphin. But all the agents of the banished Court stood aloof from
the traitor of Salisbury. That shameful night seemed to have for ever
separated the perjured deserter from the Prince whom he had ruined.
James had, even in the last extremity, when his army was in full
retreat, when his whole kingdom had risen against him, declared that
he would never pardon Churchill, never, never. By all the Jacobites the
name of Churchill was held in peculiar abhorrence; and, in the prose and
verse which came forth daily from their secret presses, a precedence in
infamy, among all the many traitors of the age, was assigned to him. In
the order of things which had sprung from the Revolution,