She possessed great talents, but was also of a haughty ambitious temper, bent upon aggrandisement, and grievously avaricious; and to the ascendency over her husband, which she maintained unabated from first to last, may perhaps be attributed the development of those features in his character which have excited the grief of honourable posterity, and afforded scope for the foulest misrepresentations of his conduct and motives to contemporary and succeeding traducers, rabid with the virus of political hostility. Though impatient to quit the topic, but only for the present, we shall here advert to Marlborough's inexcusable conduct towards James II., for the purpose of citing a passage in the Duchess's own Vindication, on which Mr Macaulay relies, as conclusively demonstrating the mercenary motives influencing Marlborough. That passage, however, does not necessarily sustain the imputation made by Mr Macaulay, though it may justify a suspicion of the sort of motives which _she_ might have been in the habit of urging on her confiding husband:--"It were evident to all the world that, as things were carried on by King James II., everybody, sooner or later, _must be ruined_ who would not become a Roman Catholic. _This_ consideration made me very well pleased at the Prince of Orange's undertaking to rescue me from such slavery."[12] [10] Vol. ii. p. 298. [11] It would seem that Charles II. would have surprised him, on one occasion, in the company of the Countess; but, to save her credit with the King, he leaped through the window at the risk of his life; in return for which she presented him with £5000. With reference to this latter part of the business may be noted a diversity between two of Marlborough's biographers. Archdeacon Coxe ludicrously attempts to explain this splendid present of £5000, on the ground of Churchill's being in some way _distantly related_ to the Duchess! "If the reverend Archdeacon," says Mr Alison--with a quaint approach to sarcasm very rare with him--"had been as well acquainted with _women_ as he was with _his books_, he would have known that beautiful ladies do not, in general, bestow £5000 on distant cousins, whatever they may do on favourite lovers!" [12] MACAULAY, 256, note.