favourite servants as his enemies.  So late as the year 1696 he had been heard to say, “If I had been a private gentleman, my Lord Marlborough and I must have measured swords.”  All these things were now, it seemed, forgotten.  The Duke of Gloucester’s household had just been arranged.  As he was not yet nine years old, and the civil list was burdened with a heavy debt, fifteen thousand pounds was thought for the present a sufficient provision.  The child’s literary education was directed by Burnet, with the title of Preceptor.  Marlborough was appointed Governor; and the London Gazette announced his appointment, not with official dryness, but in the fervid language of panegyric.  He was at the same time again sworn a member of the Privy Council from which he had been expelled with ignominy; and he was honoured a few days later with a still higher mark of the King’s confidence, a seat at the board of Regency.

Some persons imagined that they saw in this strange reconciliation a sign that the influence of Portland was on the wane and that the influence of Albemarle was growing.  For Marlborough had been many years at feud with Portland, and had even—­a rare event indeed—­been so much irritated as to speak of Portland in coarse and ungentlemanlike terms.  With Albemarle, on the other hand, Marlborough had studiously ingratiated himself by all the arts which a mind singularly observant and sagacious could learn from a long experience in courts; and it is possible that Albemarle may have removed some difficulties.  It is hardly necessary, however, to resort to that supposition for the purpose of explaining why so wise a man as William forced himself, after some delay caused by very just and natural resentment, to act wisely.  His opinion of Marlborough’s character was probably unaltered.  But he could not help perceiving that Marlborough’s situation was widely different from what it had been a few years before.  That very ambition, that very avarice, which had, in former times, impelled him to betray two masters, were now sufficient securities for his fidelity to the order of things which had been established by the Bill of Rights.  If that order of things could be maintained inviolate, he could scarcely fail to be, in a few years, the greatest and wealthiest subject in Europe.  His military and political talents might therefore now be used without any apprehension that they would be turned against the government which used them.  It is to be remembered too that he derived his importance less from his military and political talents, great as they were, than from the dominion which, through the instrumentality of his wife, he exercised over the mind of the Princess.  While he was on good terms with the Court it was certain that she would lend no countenance to any cabal which might attack either the title or the prerogatives of her brother in law.  Confident that from this quarter, a quarter once the darkest and most stormy in the whole political horizon, nothing but sunshine and calm was now to be expected, William set out cheerfully on his expedition to his native country.