into so tortuous and
disreputable a path.

Marlborough, however, was a man whose services were too valuable to the
newly-established dynasty, for him to be permitted to remain long in
disgrace. He was soon liberated, indeed, from the Tower, as no
sufficient evidence of his alleged accession to the conspiracy had been
obtained. Several years elapsed, however, before he emerged from the
privacy into which he prudently retired on his liberation from
confinement. Queen Mary having been carried off by the smallpox on the
17th of January 1696, Marlborough wisely abstained from even taking part
in the debates which followed in Parliament, during which some of the
malcontents dropped hints as to the propriety of conferring the crown on
his immediate patroness, the Princess Anne. This prudent reserve,
together with the absence of any decided proofs at the time of
Marlborough's correspondence with James, seems to have at length
weakened William's resentment, and by degrees he was taken back into
favour. The peace of Ryswick, signed on the 20th of September 1697,
having consolidated the power of that monarch, Marlborough was, on the
19th of June 1698, made preceptor of the young Duke of Gloucester, his
nephew, son of the Princess Anne, and heir-presumptive to the throne;
and this appointment, which at once restored his credit at court, was
accompanied by the gracious expression--"My lord, make my nephew to
resemble yourself, and he will be every thing which I can desire." On
the same day he was re-appointed to his rank as a privy councillor, and
took the oaths and his seat accordingly. So fully had he now regained
the confidence of William, that he was three times named one of the nine
lords justiciars to whom the administration of affairs in Great Britain
was subsequently entrusted, during the temporary absence of William in
Holland; and the War of the Succession having become certain in the year
1700, that monarch, who was preparing to take an active part in it,
appointed Marlborough, on 1st June 1701, his ambassador-extraordinary at
the Hague, and commander-in-chief of the Allied forces in Flanders. This
double appointment in effect invested Marlborough with the entire
direction of affairs civil and military, so far as England was
concerned, on the Continent. William, who was highly indignant at the
recognition of the Chevalier St George as King of England, on the death
of his father James II., in September 1701, was preparing