Marlborough left no son to inherit his honors and his fortune. His titles and estates descended to his eldest daughter, the Countess of Godolphin. She died without leaving a son, and the titles and estates passed over to the Earl of Sunderland, the son and heir of Marlborough's second daughter, at that time long dead. From the day when the victor of Blenheim died, there has been no Duke of Marlborough distinguished in anything but the name. Not one of the world's great soldiers, it would seem, was destined to have a great soldier for a son. From great statesman fathers sometimes spring great statesman sons; but Alexander, Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Charles the Twelfth, Alexander Farnese, Clive, Marlborough, Frederick, Napoleon, Wellington, Washington, left to the world no heir of their greatness. {211} CHAPTER XIII. THE BANISHMENT OF ATTERBURY. [Sidenote: 1722--Funeral of Marlborough] On Thursday, August 9, 1722, the "pompous solemnity" of Marlborough's funeral took place. The great procession went from the Duke's house in St. James's Park, through St. James's and the Upper Park to Hyde Park Corner, and thence through Piccadilly, St. James's Street, Pall Mall, Charing Cross, and King Street to Westminster Abbey. A small army of soldiers guarded the remains of the greatest warrior of his age; a whole heralds' college clustered about the lofty funeral banner on which all the arms of the Churchills were quartered. Marlborough's friends and admirers, his old brothers-in-arms, the companions of his victories, followed his coffin, and listened while Garter King-at-Arms, bending over the open grave, said: "Thus it hath pleased Almighty God to take out of this transitory life unto His mercy the most high, most mighty, and most noble prince, John Churchill, Duke and Earl of Marlborough." In Applebee's _Weekly Journal_ for Saturday, August 11th, two days after the funeral, we are told that the Duchess of Marlborough, in honor of the memory of her life-long lover, had offered a prize of five hundred pounds for a Latin epitaph to be inscribed upon his tomb, and that "several poets have already taken to their lofty studies to contend for the prize."