“The lad will be somewhere in a French prison,” the father said, “and some day he will be set free and come home to us again.”

The spring of 1703 brought Matthew Blackett’s seventeenth birthday, and with it an ensign’s commission in a well-reputed regiment of foot.  He already stood six feet one in his stockings, and mighty proud he felt when his lanky figure was clothed in his gay uniform.

“Perhaps I shall come across George in my wanderings,” he said, when he went to bid a very friendly adieu to the Fairburns.  “Won’t it be jolly if we do meet!” And the parents were constrained to smile in spite of their sadness.

One of the commonest subjects of conversation in our days is the state of “political parties,” and every child of school age can tell you which is “the party in power.”  Three hundred years ago such expressions would not have been understood at all, in their modern sense, and “government by party” was a thing as yet undreamed of.  Usually the strongest man of his time, whether sovereign or subject, was the real ruler in England.  Elizabeth, for instance, was the sole mistress in her own realm, though even she was greatly helped by the famous minister Burleigh.  In later times a Strafford, a Laud, an Oliver Cromwell, a Clarendon presided over the destinies of England.

But in the second half of the seventeenth century there began that division of politicians into two sides or parties which has continued ever since.  This division sprang, no doubt, from the civil wars between King and Parliament, between Cavalier and Roundhead.  By the times of Queen Anne the terms Whig and Tory, replaced in our days for the most part by Liberal and Conservative, had come into common use, and no one who desires to understand the history of her reign can wholly neglect the movements of these two opposing parties in politics.  For Marlborough—­with his wife—­may be said to be the last powerful statesman who ruled England without the formal and acknowledged help of party.  Since then the “party in power” has always, through its chief member, the Prime Minister, and his Cabinet, been the actual ruler in the State.

At the beginning of Anne’s reign the Whigs were leading in matters of state, but presently Rochester and Nottingham, the former a very strong Tory, came into power.  Later on, in 1703, the former was replaced by a more moderate Tory, Harley, and in the following year St. John succeeded Nottingham.  The truth was, Marlborough, beginning to see that he was more likely to receive support in his great wars from the Whig side, was working gradually towards the placing of their party in office, though he himself had all along been a Tory.  Thus it was that he tried to rule with a coalition, or a mixture of Whigs and Tories.  This was in the year 1705, a little after the time to which this story has as yet been carried.  But Marlborough and his Duchess were still the real power in the land.