Arabella had a brother named John who, you see, was uncle to the little Fitzjames. But for this unclehood and this brotherhood, we probably would never have heard of John. There might have been no Blenheim, no Ramilies, no Oudenard, no Malplaquet, in fine, no duke of Marlborough. James seeing that his morganatic brother-in-law was resolved to be a soldier, sent him to France to serve under Turenne; and John did not waste his time. Another of the boy’s relations was William of Orange who was his first cousin and married his half sister Mary daughter of James. William is the hero, not of this story which is authentic, but of that fascinating romance Macaulay’s History of England. William was endowed with all the talents and perhaps with one or two of the many virtues attributed to him in that romance. He was as licentious as his uncles Charles and James, and was still keeping his odalisques at the very hour when Macaulay pictures him to us, wringing his hands over his dying wife. He was cruel and even blood-thirsty: the massacre of Glencoe has left a stain on his memory which no romance can wash out. As we shall see presently, he would have put to death this very boy, had he not been held back by a hand which the fate of battle had made stronger than his. He was the last able king of England; but he broke down the power of the crown by impoverishing it. (Blackstone, Book 1. Chapter 8.) He squandered the crown lands not only upon the Dutch adventurers who had followed him from Holland, the Bentincks, the Zulesteins, the Auverquerques, the Keppels who thus fattened and battened upon the English people, but upon more questionable favorites, upon the partners of his private vices, to such an extent that at his death parliament took back what he had given to the women, but the men being politicians found means to keep their share. In 1685, Charles II. died. He was but 55. He had been temperate in eating and drinking and had taken plenty of exercise, and in the ordinary course of nature, was good for twenty years yet. But he had caught cold and had a touch of vertigo. The doctors came and bled him. It did him no good, because a bleeding never did anybody any good. The next day they came and bled him a second time, and that did him no good, because a second bleeding never did anybody any good. So they came the third day and bled him a third time and that settled him. A Roman Catholic priest was smuggled up the back stairs; the scoffer was shrived and was gathered to his fathers--the Stuarts, the Tudors, the Plantagenets, the Bourbons, the Valois; and his brother James reigned in his stead. Two years after his accession, James conferred the title of Duke of Berwick on the boy Fitzjames who was now seventeen. It was a barren title no estates annexed; but it was his father’s gift, and with filial piety he cleaved to it his whole life, in preference to other and better endowed patents of nobility which his sword won for him.