The Duke of Marlborough had continued for some years in the same precarious state of health, to which his first attack of disease had reduced him. He had lingered six years after the first stroke of palsy, suffering repeated attacks of the formidable disorder. His mind, though not totally enfeebled, must, in all probability, have been affected in some degree by those visitations which shackle the limbs, impede the motions of the tongue, and usually render the nervous system cruelly susceptible. Yet still the Duke retained many of his usual habits, underwent the fatigue of journeys, entered into society, and occupied his latter days in arranging the testamentary disposition of that vast wealth which he had laboured so long and so eagerly to accumulate. The Duke of Marlborough is vaguely stated, by his biographer, Dr. Coxe, to have died “immensely rich;” others have declared his fortune to have amounted, at his death, to nearly a million sterling. It therefore became a matter of much solicitude with him, and it appears to have been so with the Duchess, that his grace should make such a will as should prevent any of those harassing and destructive litigations which are sometimes entailed upon a family to whom great wealth is bequeathed. It was, in this instance, more particularly requisite that every precaution should be adopted. The Duke left a numerous posterity of grandchildren, some of whom might, if so disposed, represent their illustrious progenitor as incapacitated by his infirmity from making an adequate disposition of his effects. The Duchess, with her usual acuteness, foresaw that such obstacles to the administration of his affairs, after his death, might arise; and she adopted the plan of writing a detailed account of her husband’s condition, and of his last actions, from which narrative the following extracts are taken.[289] “I think it proper, in this place, to give some account of the Duke of Marlborough’s distemper, and how he was when he signed his will. The Duke of Marlborough was taken very ill at St. Albans, in May, 1716, with the palsy; but he recovered it so much as to go to Bath. He lived till June the sixteenth, 1721; and though he had often returns of this illness, he went many journeys, and was in all appearance well, excepting that he could not pronounce all words, which is common in that distemper; but his understanding was as good as ever. But he did not speak much to strangers, because when he was stopped, by not being able to pronounce some words, it made him uneasy. But to his friends that he was used to, he would talk freely; and since his death, Mr. Hanbury, the dowager Lady Burlington, and many others of my friends, have remarked to me, with pleasure, the things that they had heard him say, and the just observations he had made upon what others had said to him; and he gave many instances of remembering several things in conversation that others had forgot.”