Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/347

 tried in vain to preserve the ancient manor-house of Woodstock, alleging very excellent reasons (, ii. 529-47). She afterwards accused him of extravagance, and forbade him to enter the huilding. The quarrel was complicated by his taking part in arranging a marriage between the duchess's grandaughter Lady Harriet Godolphin and the Duke of Newcastle. She accused Cadogan of misapplying the 50,000l. entrusted to him in 1712, and carried on a successful lawsuit against him (, iii. 626). She had another series of quarrels with the Duke of St. Albans arising out of the rangership of Windsor Park, and others about a permission to pass through St. James's Park. This last was part of an endless series of quarrels with Sir Robert Walpole, who had wished her to lend a large sum of trust money to the public funds, and who, as she thought, had got the better of her in the transaction. Hatred of Walpole seems to have become her pet antipathy.

She fell out with the two daughters who survived the duke — Henrietta, wife of Francis, earl of Godolphin, who became duchess on her father's death, and died in 1733; and Mary, duchess of Montagu, who alone survive her. Lady Anne Egerton, the only daughter of Lady Bridgewater, offended her, and the grandmother got a portrait, blackened its mce, and hung it up in her room with the inscription 'She is much blacker within.' Her son-in-law, Lord Sunderland, had annoyed her by a third marriage. He afterwards brought to the duke in a report that the duchess had been engaged in a Jacobite plot. She called upon George I and the Duchess of Kendal to express their disbelief in the story, and received an unsatisfactory answer. The quarrel led to a breach with Lord Sunderland, which was increased by his share in the South Sea schemes. His son Charles Spencer, who became Duke of Marlborough m 1733 on the death of his aunt, was not a favourite with his grandmother, but she had a weakness for his brother John, to whom she left all her disposable property, in spite of his dissolute and extravagant life (see, vol. ii. for details of the disputes). The least unpleasant account of the duchess comes from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (Works, ed. Lord Wharncliffe, i. 76). From her comes the story that the duchess had one day cut off her hair to annoy the duke, who took no notice at the time, but laid up the curls in a cabinet, where she found them aft«rhis death. At this point of the story she always burst into tears (see Walpole's 'Reminiscences' in, vol. 1. cxxxix-clxi, for other anecdotes).

The duchess spent much time in writing memorials and arranging papers for her own and her husband's lives. She did not publish her account of her 'conduct' until 1742, though some draft had been prepared in 1711 and suppressed by Burnet's aavice (Historical MSS. Commission, 8th Report, p. 26). She was helped in the final redaction by Nathaniel Hooke [q. v.1, and is said to have given him 6,000l. for nis trouble. It provoked various replies, and was defended by Fielding. In 1740 she had been told by ner doctors (Walpole to Mann, 10 Dec. 1741) that she would die if she were not blistered. 'I won't be blistered, and I won't die,' she replied, and she kept her word for the time. She died, probably at Marlborough House (Life of Sarah, late Duchess Dowager of Marlborough, 1745, a catchpenny production), on 18 Oct. 1744. She is said to have left 60,000l. a year. The most remarkable bequests were 20,000l. to Lord Chesterfield, 10,000l. to William Pitt, for the 'noble defence he made for the support of the laws of England,' and 600l. apiece to Glover and Mallet to write the history of the Duke of Marlborough. No part of the history was to be in verse. None of it was ever written. Her will shows that she had spent large sums in buying landed estates. After the South Sea she bought Wimbledon Manor from Sir Theodore Jansen, who was then ruined, and there built a house, which became her favourite residence. The manor descended to the Spencers; the house was burnt down in 1786. The duchess was not an amiable woman. It would be wrong, however, to overlook her remarkable ability, and her writing, if spiteful and untrustworthy, is frequently vigorous and undeniably shrewd. It would be less easy to show that iier policy was mistaken than that she was wrong in trying to scold it into a weak mind. She probably exaggerated her influence with the duke, who rather temporised with her fury than gave way to her wishes. Of him it may be said that he really possessed such virtues as are compatible with an entire absence of the heroic instincts. Not only is his paternal tenderness touching, but he was signally humane in the conduct of war. He was supreme as a man of business, and allowed no scruples to interfere with the main chance. Every one who saw him declares the dimity and grace of his manner to have been irresistible. Lord Chesterfield's characteristic theory that he owed his success principally to this quality is partly due to the love of an epigram, but is also significant of the limitations of his intellect. His judgment was of superlative clearness, but