“I repeat to you that I find Lord Churchill very lean. He is very tractable and good-humoured, and without any one ill inclination that I can perceive. And I think he is grown more solid than he was, and has lost that impatience of diverting himself all manner of ways, which he used to have. This is truly just as I find him, and I thought it might not be improper to give you this account, that you might be the better judge whether you would desire to see him now, according to the proposal I made in my letter of yesterday, or stay for that satisfaction until my Lord Marlborough comes over.”[477] This was in August, 1703. In October, Lord Godolphin received the young nobleman as a guest in his house at Newmarket, where, unhappily, the small-pox then raged. But it was vainly hoped, by precautions, to avert the risk of infection. “What you write,” thus Lord Godolphin addressed the anxious mother, “is extremely just and reasonable; and though the small-pox has been in this town, yet he, going into no house but mine, will, I hope, be more defended from it by air or riding, without any violent exercise, than he could probably be anywhere else.” In a few days afterwards, more particular accounts reached the Duchess, and her maternal pride must have been highly gratified by the encomiums which so consummate a judge of character as Lord Godolphin passed upon her son. “Your pretty son,” as the lord treasurer terms him, “whom I have just now parted from; and I assure you, without flattery or partiality, that he is not only the best natured and most agreeable, but the most free-thinking and reasonable creature that one can imagine for his age. He had twenty pretty questions and requests, but I will not trouble you with the particulars till I have the honour to see you.” The foregoing opinion was the last expressed by this well-judging and warm friend, concerning him upon whom the fondest hopes were placed. How gratifying, yet how mournful! Yet the noble youth was prepared for that better sphere to which he was thus early called, to spare him, in mercy, from the snares and troubles of the world, in which he might otherwise have acted a conspicuous, but probably not a happy part.