The Duchess of Cleveland had been brought to bed while the court was at Bristol; and never before had she recovered from her lying-in with such a profusion of charms.  This made her believe that she was in a proper state to retrieve her ancient rights over the king’s heart, if she had an opportunity of appearing before him with this increased splendour.  Her friends being of the same opinion, her equipage was prepared for this expedition; but the very evening before the day she had fixed on to set out, she saw young Churchill, and was at once seized with a disease, which had more than once opposed her projects, and which she could never completely get the better of.

[Churchill—­Afterwards the celebrated Duke of Marlborough.  He was born midsummer-day, 1650, and died June 16, 1722.  Bishop Burnet takes notice of the discovery of this intrigue.  “The Duchess of Cleveland finding that she had lost the king, abandoned herself to great disorders; one of which, by the artifice of the Duke of Buckingham, was discovered by the king in person, the party concerned leaping out of the window.”—­History of his own Times, vol. i. p. 370.  This was in 1668.  A very particular account of this intrigue is to be seen in the Atalantis of Mrs. Manley, vol. i., p. 30.  The same writer, who had lived as companion to the Duchess of Cleveland, says, in the account of her own life, that she was an eye-witness when the duke, who had received thousands from the duchess, refused the common civility of lending her twenty guineas at basset.—­The history of Rivella, 4th ed. 1725, p. 33.  Lord Chesterfield’s character of this noblemen is too remarkable to be omitted.

“Of all the men that ever I knew in my life, (and I knew him extremely well,) the late Duke of Marlborough possessed the graces in the highest degree, not to say engrossed them:  and indeed he got the most by them! for I will venture, (contrary to the custom of profound historians, who always assign deep causes to great events,) to ascribe the better half of the Duke of Marlborough’s greatness and riches to those graces.  He was eminently illiterate, wrote bad English, and spelled it still worse.  He had no share of what is commonly called parts; that is, he had no brightness, nothing shining in his genius.  He had, most undoubtedly, an excellent good plain understanding, with sound judgment.  But these alone would probably have raised him but something higher than they found him, which was page to King James ii.’s queen.  There the graces protected and promoted him; for while he was an ensign of the guards, the Duchess of Cleveland, then favourite mistress to King Charles ii., struck by those very graces, gave him five thousand pounds; with which he immediately bought an annuity for his life, of five hundred pounds a-year, of my grandfather, Halifax; which was the foundation of his subsequent fortune.  His figure was beautiful; but his manner was irresistible