The Queen's Comrade; The Life and Times of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, Volume I

This is Volume I of II and was published in 1901.

If, as Carlylc says, " Biography is the most universally profit-
able, universally pleasant of all things, especially biography
of distinguished individuals, "it must be admitted that few
life records so incontestably combine pleasure and profit
as those of Sarah Jennings, first Duchess of Marlborough;
who, born at the Restoration, took some part in the
Revolution, who defied one sovereign, swayed another,
and saw six reign.

In relating the eventful story of her days it is indispensable
that pictures should be given of the courts in which she
figured, the incidents that amused or the storms that
shook them, the political events that led to comedy or
tragedy, the characters who played important parts as
kings or queens, princes and princesses, sycophants or
conspirators, great officers of the state, courtesans,
whispering pages of the back stairs, bedchamber women,
petty clerks of the palace; all puppets of a brief hour,
unconsciously posturing for posterity, their antics illustrating
the Annals of their time, and producing the ever-changing
drama known as history.

In the following pages, politics have been avoided as much
as possible, and merely treated as pivots on which human
interests turned; whilst letters -- always a reflection of
their writer's minds -- have occasionally been given at
length, to illustrate a character, or describe an event.
And though no statement is made without authority,
and scandal is not sedulously avoided, the unnecessary
task of pointing a moral, that so frequently disfigures a
tale, is unheeded.

Many of the heretofore unpublished statements, anecdotes,
and letters in this strange eventful life story, have been
found in the thirty-four volumes of manuscripts originally
collected by Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, as materials
for the memoirs of her husband; only an inconsiderable
part of which could be used by their writer, Archdeacon
Cox; who in describing the historic exploits of the duke;
left little space to speak of the social episodes in the career
of the indomitable duchess. At the biographer's death,
these papers passed to the peaceful security of the
British Museum, where time-stained and faded they still
bear silent witness to the ambitions, passions, schemes,
and ferments that stirred the souls of those whose actions
made history.

The " Account of her Conduct " and her " Vindication"
written by the duchess shortly before her death, together
with her "Private Correspondence" and her "Opinions",
have been freely quoted from; and letters are given
which were for the first time printed in the Reports of
the Historical MS Commission, on the papers in Blenheim
Palace. The author is much indebted to Lord Wolseley's
valuable "Life of the Duke of Marlborough to the Accession
of Queen Anne", for some letters written before his
marriage by Colonel Churchill to Sarah Jennings.

The Stuart, the Hanoverian, the Wentworth, Lockhart,
Marchmont, and Kimbolton papers; the Spencer House
Journals; the numerous memoirs, diaries, histories,
biographies, correspondence, news sheets, pamphlets,
and ballad literature of the period, have contributed their
choicest, most intimate passages, to present a likeness
of the first Duchess of Marlborough, and to paint a vidid
panorama of the stirring times in which she lived.