r favorite, and still wrote to her as her beloved Mrs. Freeman, and
signed her letters, as usual, as her humble Morley. Her treatment of the
Countess continued the same as ever, full of affection and confidence.
She could not break with a friend who had so long been indispensable to
her; nor had she strength of character to reveal her true feelings.

Meanwhile a renewed war was declared against Louis XIV. on account of
his determination to place his grandson on the throne of Spain. The
Tories were bitterly opposed to this war of the Spanish succession, as
unnecessary, expensive, and ruinous to the development of national
industry. They were also jealous of Marlborough, whose power they feared
would be augmented by the war, as the commander-in-chief of the united
Dutch and English forces. And the result was indeed what they feared.
His military successes were so great in this war that on his return to
England he was created a duke, and soon after received unusual grants
from Parliament, controlled by the Whigs, which made him the richest man
in England as well as the most powerful politically. Yet even up to this
time the relations between his wife and the Queen were apparently most
friendly. But soon after this the haughty favorite became imprudent in
the expressions she used before her royal mistress; she began to weary
of the drudgeries of her office as mistress of the robes, and turned
over her duties partially to a waiting-woman, who was destined
ultimately to supplant her in the royal favor. The Queen was wounded to
the quick by some things that the Duchess said and did, which she was
supposed not to hear or see; for the Duchess was now occasionally
careless as well as insolent. The Queen was forced to perceive that the
Duchess disdained her feeble intellect and some of her personal habits,
and was, moreover, hostile to her political opinions; and she began to
long for an independence she had never truly enjoyed. But the Duchess,
intoxicated with power and success, did not see the ground on which she
stood; yet if she continued to rule her mistress, it was by fear rather
than love.

About this period (1706) the struggles and hostilities of the Whigs and
Tories were at their height. We have in these times but a feeble
conception of the bitterness of the strife of these two great parties in
the beginning of the eighteenth century. It divided families, and filled
the land with slanders and intrigues. The leaders of bo