have just quoted, we discover from
himself the singular incident of Vanbrugh's having been _born in the
Bastile_.[65]

Desirous, probably, of concealing his alien origin, this circumstance
cast his early days into obscurity. He felt that he was a Briton in all
respects but that of his singular birth. The father of Vanbrugh married
Sir Dudley Carleton's daughter. We are told he had "political
connexions;" and one of his "political" tours had probably occasioned
his confinement in that state-dungeon, where his lady was delivered of
her burden of love. This odd fancy of building a "Bastile-House" at
Greenwich, a fortified prison! suggested to his first life-writer the
fine romance; which must now be thrown aside among those literary
fictions the French distinguish by the softening and yet impudent term
of "_Anecdotes hasardees!_" with which formerly Varillas and his
imitators furnished their pages; lies which looked like facts!

FOOTNOTES:

[62] The name by which Pope ruthlessly satirized Sarah Duchess of
Marlborough.

[63] I draw the materials of this secret history from an unpublished
"Case of the Duke of Marlborough and Sir John Vanbrugh," as also
from some confidential correspondence of Vanbrugh with Jacob Tonson,
his friend and publisher.

[64] Parliament voted 500,000_l._ for the building, which was
insufficient. The queen added thereto the honour of Woodstock, an
appanage of the crown, on the simple condition of rendering at
Windsor Castle every year on the anniversary of the victory of
Blenheim, a flag adorned with three fleur-de-lys, "as acquittance
for all manner of rents, suits and services due to the crown."

[65] Cunningham, in his "Lives of the British Architects," does not
incline to the conclusions above drawn. He says, "I suspect that
Vanbrugh, in saying he began his days in the Bastile, meant only
that he was its tenant in early life--at the commencement of his
manhood." The same author tells us that Vanbrugh's grandfather fled
from Ghent, his native city, to avoid the persecutions of the Duke
of Alva, and established himself as a merchant in Walbrook, where
his son lived after him, and where John Vanbrugh (afterwards the
great architect) was born in the year 1666. His father was at this
time Comptroller of the Treasury Chamber. Cunningham thinks the
Cheshire part of the genealogy "unlikely to be true."