Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 October 1880 — Duches of Marlborough. [ARTICLE]

Duches of Marlborough.

Bntli Jennings, Duchess of Mari barengh. Not only was she beautifhl, but witty and vivacious. Her conversation was interesting, and a vein of keen but delicrie satire often gave to was bat sixteen When she first appeared at the Court of the Duchess or York. A crowd of adorers was soon sighing at her feet; James himself being amongst the most ardent of worshipers at the shrine of the new divinity. Unavailing, however, were hi. sighs and hia languishing airs to win her smiles and geod graces; and the profligate bigot was soon made to comprehend that,*though engaged in the servids of hi* duchess, “la belle Jennings” was not at all disposed to engage in his. Her conduct occasioned unspeakable in Charles’ fioentioos Court. A young girl who was both beautiftil and virtuous waa there a phenomenon, and the king thought it something so novel, so piquant, that he had a fiuiey to attempt to prevail where his brother’s powers of seduction had friled. After tne duke’s death the duchess lived in peat seclusion at Marlborough House, which she held by a lease es fifty years from the crown. Within the first year and a half of her widowhood she had offers of marriage from Lord Coningsby and the Duke of Somerset; the latter waa persistent, saying he had admired her for years. She was then sixty-two, hut still very handsomeHer beautiful hjsir was unchanged in selor. which she attributed to her constant use of honey-water. She, nowever, very properly replied to her suitors that she was toe eld to marry again. “Were L” she said to the Duke of Somerset, i>ut thirty insteed of past sixty, I would not consent that an emperor mould succeed to a place in my heart, which was wholly given to the Duke of Marlborough* She survived all her children except the youngest—the Duchess of Montagus —and lived en untroubled by file infirmities incidental to old age until 1741, when she was taken ill, and so seriously that she believed death to be near at hand. But she recovered, and survived three yean longer; her death ’occurring on the 30th of October, 1744, in hsrstehty-flfthyear. “Old Marlborough is dying,” said Horace Walpole, a few days before her death occurred; “but who ean tell 7—last year when she had lain a great while without speaking, the physician said: “She must be blistered or she will die ;** she called out, “I won’t be blistered, «nd I won’t die. She, however, did not fear death. She said “there was one great happiness in dyia& that one would never near more of anything that was done in this world.” Lady Wortley Montague and the Countess of Bute often spent their mornings with htr. She herself had quite given up going into society, in which she had never taken delight, so absorbed had she been by affairs of state. Her interest in >olitics remained. In her boroughs of Woedstock and St. Albans she put whom she pleased. Sir Robert Walpole and Queen Caroline were the chief objects of her political hate and invective. Of the former she writes: “’Tis thought wrong to wish anybody dead; but I hope ’tis none to wish he may be hanged for having brought to ruin so great a coun-