Mary, in conformity with her invariable practice, followed to the very letter the wishes of her royal husband, and endeavoured to make the Countess of Marlborough her agent upon this occasion. But her Majesty had yet to learn the fiery temper of her with whom she attempted to deal. “She sent a great lord to me,” says the Duchess, “to desire I would persuade the Princess to keep the Prince from going to sea, and this I was to compass without letting the Princess know that it was the Queen’s desire.” The Countess’s reply was, that she had all the duty imaginable for the Queen, but that no consideration could make her so treacherous to her mistress as she should consider herself, if she attempted to influence her in that matter, without telling her the reason; and she intimated that she “would say what her Majesty pleased to the Princess, if she were allowed to make use of the Queen’s name.” The affair ended in Prince George’s submission to a peremptory message, forbidding him to go to sea, and conveyed through the Earl of Nottingham. He justly felt himself rendered ridiculous to the public, by being obliged to recal his preparations, to obey like a school-boy, and to remain at home. Whilst these minor events were disturbing the peace of the royal household, the first campaign in Ireland called Marlborough away from the home and the wife whom he loved so well. Every letter to the Countess which he penned during his absence, breathes a devotion which time and distance seem only to have heightened. In the hurry of military movements, in the excitement of unparalleled triumphs, his heart was ever with her. “I am heart and soul yours,” was his constant expression. “I can have no happiness till I am quiet with you.” “I cannot live away from you.”[191] Again, he beautifully concludes one letter: “Put your trust in God as I do, and be assured that I think I can’t be unhappy as long as you are kind.” So true and elevated was the attachment of that affectionate heart. “Pray believe me,” he says, writing in 1705, immediately after the battle of Ramilies, “when I assure you that I love you more than I can express.”[192] These and other innumerable fond asseverations, even when his wife had passed the bloom of youth, and, it appears, no longer possessed (if she ever did) equanimity of temper, speak an attachment not based upon evanescent advantages. With a candour inseparable from a great mind, he generously took upon himself the blame of those contentions by which the busy and harassing middle period of married life, that period in which love often dies a natural death, is, in all stations, apt to be embittered. On one occasion, after thanking her, as for a boon, for “very many kind expressions” to him in a letter, he says, “in short, my dear soul, if I could begin life over again, I would endeavour every hour of it to oblige you. But as we can’t recal what is past, forget my imperfections, and as God has been pleased to