for that fatality
which he inherited from his fathers along with their claims to the
English crown, King James the Third might have worn it. But he neither
knew how to wait an opportunity, nor to use it when he had it; he was
venturesome when he ought to have been cautious, and cautious when
he ought to have dared everything. 'Tis with a sort of rage at his
inaptitude that one thinks of his melancholy story. Do the Fates deal
more specially with kings than with common men? One is apt to imagine
so, in considering the history of that royal race, in whose behalf
so much fidelity, so much valor, so much blood were desperately and
bootlessly expended.

The King dead then, the Princess Anne (ugly Anne Hyde's daughter, our
Dowager at Chelsey called her) was proclaimed by trumpeting heralds
all over the town from Westminster to Ludgate Hill, amidst immense
jubilations of the people.

Next week my Lord Marlborough was promoted to the Garter, and to
be Captain-General of her Majesty's forces at home and abroad. This
appointment only inflamed the Dowager's rage, or, as she thought it, her
fidelity to her rightful sovereign. "The Princess is but a puppet in
the hands of that fury of a woman, who comes into my drawing-room and
insults me to my face. What can come to a country that is given over to
such a woman?" says the Dowager: "As for that double-faced traitor, my
Lord Marlborough, he has betrayed every man and every woman with whom he
has had to deal, except his horrid wife, who makes him tremble. 'Tis all
over with the country when it has got into the clutches of such wretches
as these."

Esmond's old kinswoman saluted the new powers in this way; but some good
fortune at last occurred to a family which stood in great need of it, by
the advancement of these famous personages who benefited humbler people
that had the luck of being in their favor. Before Mr. Esmond left
England in the month of August, and being then at Portsmouth, where he
had joined his regiment, and was busy at drill, learning the practice
and mysteries of the musket and pike, he heard that a pension on the
Stamp Office had been got for his late beloved mistress, and that the
young Mistress Beatrix was also to be taken into court. So much good,
at least, had come of the poor widow's visit to London, not revenge upon
her husband's enemies, but reconcilement to old friends, who pitied, and
seemed inclined to serve her. As for the comrades in prison and the
l