that he would attain a higher point of military glory than any subject William possessed, the phlegmatic monarch relaxed so far from his usual taciturnity as to reply with a smile, “he believed that Marlborough would do his part to make his words good.” But all these services were obliterated shortly afterwards from the royal mind; and a cloud of adversity, though not of disgrace—for nothing can disgrace the virtuous—lowered over the fortunes of Marlborough. CHAPTER VII. State of Parties—Character of Lord Nottingham—of Bentinck—Influence of the Villiers family—Of Lady Orkney—Quarrel of the Queen and Princess—Marriage of Frances Jennings to the Duke of Tyrconnel—Suspicions of the Earl and Countess of Marlborough entertained at court—Disgrace of Lord Marlborough. 1689. In order to understand the vicissitudes of favour which Lord and Lady Marlborough experienced, some insight into the state of parties, and some acquaintance with the characters of public men, are essential; although a lengthened discussion upon the subject, in a work of this nature, would be wearisome and inconvenient. Scarcely had William the Third ascended the throne, than he found that “his crown was encircled with thorns.”[197] In the hurry and stir of events, carried away by the strong current of sympathy, the Tories had promoted his elevation; but when dangers were past, they remembered, too late to retrieve, what they considered to be their error—that in so doing they had departed from all their established maxims; they recollected, not only that they had dethroned James, but that they had preferred his daughters and the Prince of Orange in the succession, to the infant Prince of Wales; and, to excuse their inconsistency, they were forced to pretend a mere submission to events which they had actively promoted. This faction, reluctantly styled by Burnet, in the portion of his history[198] relating to this period, “Tories,” were therefore avowedly hostile to the court, and yet not to be considered as its sole, nor indeed as its most dangerous enemies. The clergy, the majority of whom had inveighed from the pulpit against the right of infringing upon the order of succession, were, from motives of the same description, inimical also to the Calvinistic King, whose known attachment to Dissenters inspired a jealousy of him, and towards his numerous adherents of the same tenets with himself, which was quickly manifested by the Bishops. Among the seven prelates who had been persecuted by the late King, only one, the Bishop of St. Asaph, did homage to the new monarch, and took the oaths. And when Mary sent to ask Sancroft’s blessing, the cutting reply of the Archbishop was, “that she must seek her father’s first, otherwise his would not be heard in heaven.”[199]