th favoring friends. From his early
youth he had been attached to James the Second and James the Second's
court. One of Marlborough's {23} biographers even suggests that the
Duchess of York, James's first wife, was needlessly fond of young
Churchill. The beautiful Duchess of Cleveland--she of whom Pepys said
"that everything she did became her"--was passionately in love with
Marlborough, and, according to some writers, gave him his first start
in life when she presented him with five thousand pounds, which
Marlborough, prudent then as ever, invested in an annuity of five
hundred a year. Burnet said of him that "he knew the arts of living in
a court beyond any man in it; he caressed all people with a soft and
obliging deportment, and was always ready to do good offices." His
only personal defect was in his voice, which was shrill and
disagreeable. He was, through all his life, avaricious to the last
degree; he grasped at money wherever he could get it; he took money
from women as well as from men. A familiar story of the time
represents another nobleman as having been mistaken for the Duke of
Marlborough by a mob, at a time when Marlborough was unpopular, and
extricating himself from the difficulty by telling the crowd he could
not possibly be the Duke of Marlborough, first, because he had only two
guineas in his pocket, and next, because he was perfectly ready to give
them away. Marlborough had received the highest favors from James the
Second, but he quitted James in the hour of his misfortunes, only,
however, it should be said, to return secretly to his service at a time
when he was professing devotion to William the Third. He betrayed each
side to the other. In the same year, and almost in the same month, he
writes to the Elector at Hanover and to the Pretender in France,
pouring forth to each alike his protestations of devotion. "I shall be
always ready to hazard my fortune and my life for your service," he
tells the Elector. "I had rather have my hands cut off than do
anything prejudicial to King James's cause," he tells an agent of the
Stuarts. James appears to have believed in Marlborough, and William,
while he made use of him, to have had no faith in him. "The Duke of
Marlborough," William {24} said, "has the best talents for a general of
any man in England; but he is a vile man and I hate him, for though I
can profit by treasons I cannot bear the traitor." William's saying
was strikingly like that