agreeable. This was preceded by quarrels with
almost all the oldest and steadiest friends of her husband, such as
Cadogan, Stanhope, Sunderland, and secretary Scraggs, which were not
composed till after the growing infirmities of the duke had taught them
to think of what he once had been, and what he was likely soon to
become. Nor was the death of Sunderland, which took place in April,
1722, without its effect in harassing the Duke of Marlborough. That
nobleman not only died in his father-in-law's debt, to the amount of
10,000_l_.; but the sealing up of his papers by government occasioned a
tedious suit, Marlborough being naturally anxious to secure them to
himself; a measure which the government, on public grounds, resisted.

"Besides being involved in these vexatious disputes, Marlborough was
again harassed by the workmen employed at Blenheim, who in 1718 renewed
their actions against him for arrears of wages due since 1715. He
resisted the demand; but a decree issued against him, from which he
appealed, though without effect, to the house of lords. No doubt there
was excessive meanness here on the part of government, of which
Marlborough had just cause to complain. Yet was it beneath the dignity
of the greatest man of his age to dispute with his ungrateful country
about 9,000L. Better would it have been had he paid the debt at once;
for the sum was not such as to put him to the smallest inconvenience,
and posterity would have more than recompensed the loss by the judgment
which it would have passed on the entire transaction. In spite, however,
of these multiplied sources of disturbance, it does not appear that the
latter years of this great man's life were spent unhappily. Frequent
returns of illness he doubtless had, each of which left him more and
more enfeebled in mind and body; but his intervals of ease seem to have
been passed in the society of those who were well disposed to cheat him,
as far as they could, into a forgetfulness of his fallen condition. He
played much at chess, whist, piquet, and ombre; he took exercise for
awhile on horseback, latterly, on account of weakness, in his carriage;
he even walked, when at Blenheim, unattended about his own grounds, and
took great delight in the performance of private theatricals. We have
the best authority for asserting, likewise, that he was never, till
within a short time of his death, either indisposed or incapable of
conversing freely with his friends. Whether i