As if misfortune had set its mark upon him, the death of Godolphin was followed by that of his faithful friend, and the affectionate correspondent of the Duchess, Arthur Maynwaring, whose death was caused by a cold caught in walking late in the gardens of St. Albans, with the Duchess. The sentiments of the Duke upon the subject of his wife’s consent to quit, for the first time, when no longer in the prime of life, her native country—a sacrifice in those unsettled days,—are expressed in a letter written before the Duchess joined him at Aix-la-Chapelle, with a warmth of gratitude truly touching. At Frankfort the Duke and Duchess resided for some time, and there they heard, in security, but in dismay, of events which affected the interests of the country they had left behind. The peace of Maestricht, the details of which “our enemies will tell with pleasure,” as Bishop Fleetwood observed, was a source of the deepest mortification to Marlborough, who thus beheld the labours of his life, the blood of thousands, and the resources of his country, utterly thrown away. The secession of England from the grand alliance, and the renewed intercourse between her court and that of France, first clandestinely, and afterwards openly, must have added sharp stings to the private vexations of Marlborough. Yet the people of England, indignant at the suspected project of altering the succession, marked their sense of the attempt by heaping insults upon the Duc d’Aumont, the French ambassador. They assembled for days before the gates of Ormond-house, where he resided; they uttered acclamations whenever they saw him of “No Papist! no Pretender!” and put up a bunch of grapes at his door, in derision of his alleged sale of French wines and other goods, free of duty, for his own and his master’s profit.[205] The return of several noted Jacobites who had been outlawed, their insolence in the elections, and the publication of popular tracts in favour of the Pretender’s title, all contributed to this party clamour. In the midst of these discontents, the increasing maladies of the Queen were the subject of universal alarm, both to Whigs and Tories,—the former dreading lest her death should again engage the country in a civil war; the latter trembling for that power of which her life was the sole stay.