is first ancestor, Roaldus de Richmond, rode by William
the Conqueror's side on Hastings field. "We were gentlemen, Esmond," he
used to say, "when the Churchills were horse-boys." He was a very
tall man, standing in his pumps six feet three inches (in his great
jack-boots, with his tall fair periwig, and hat and feather, he could
not have been less than eight feet high). "I am taller than Churchill,"
he would say, surveying himself in the glass, "and I am a better made
man; and if the women won't like a man that hasn't a wart on his nose,
faith, I can't help myself, and Churchill has the better of me there."
Indeed, he was always measuring himself with the Duke, and always asking
his friends to measure them. And talking in this frank way, as he would
do, over his cups, wags would laugh and encourage him; friends would
be sorry for him; schemers and flatterers would egg him on, and
tale-bearers carry the stories to headquarters, and widen the difference
which already existed there, between the great captain and one of the
ablest and bravest lieutenants he ever had.

His rancor against the Duke was so apparent, that one saw it in the
first half-hour's conversation with General Webb; and his lady, who
adored her General, and thought him a hundred times taller, handsomer,
and braver than a prodigal nature had made him, hated the great Duke
with such an intensity as it becomes faithful wives to feel against
their husbands' enemies. Not that my Lord Duke was so yet; Mr. Webb had
said a thousand things against him, which his superior had pardoned; and
his Grace, whose spies were everywhere, had heard a thousand things more
that Webb had never said. But it cost this great man no pains to pardon;
and he passed over an injury or a benefit alike easily.

Should any child of mine take the pains to read these his ancestor's
memoirs, I would not have him judge of the great Duke* by what a
contemporary has written of him. No man hath been so immensely lauded
and decried as this great statesman and warrior; as, indeed, no man ever
deserved better the very greatest praise and the strongest censure. If
the present writer joins with the latter faction, very likely a private
pique of his own may be the cause of his ill-feeling.

* This passage in the Memoirs of Esmond is written on a leaf
inserted into the MS. book, and dated 1744, probably after
he had heard of the Duchess's death.

On presenting himself at the Commander