A fate seems to hang over certain estates and houses. The Restoration gave back Wimbledon to Queen Henrietta, who sold the house to Lord Bristol, and he to the Marquis of Carmarthen, whose trustees sold it to Sir Theodore Janseen. Sir Theodore, for what reason does not appear, pulled down the magnificent house in which Charles and his Queen had resided, and began to build a new one, probably on a smaller scale than the old building. The South Sea business involving Sir Theodore in the general ruin, the estate was purchased by the Duchess of Marlborough. She, in her turn, destroyed what Sir Theodore had built, and erected a new house on the north side of the knoll on which the present house stands, after a design of the Earl of Burlington.[365] This fabric was not doomed long to stand, for the Duchess, not approving of the situation, desired his lordship to give her a design for a house on the south side; and having obtained a plan, she pulled down her partly-erected house, and constructed another. But this mansion was destined to destruction also; it was bequeathed by her to John Spencer, Esq., from whom it came to his son, Earl Spencer, in whose time, and on Easter Monday, 1785, it was almost entirely burnt down by accident. The ruins were cleared away, and the grounds levelled and turfed, so that scarcely a trace even of the foundation was left. Such was the fate of this abode of the Duchess, which, in her later days, she preferred to all others. The present house was built in 1798. It stands in a park seven miles in compass, containing about twelve hundred acres, (laid out by Browne,) which affords a beautiful home prospect, with a fine piece of water towards the north, and an extensive view over Surrey and Kent to the south. The Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, could they have foreseen these occurrences, might have been excused if superstitious fears had assailed them, when on the eve of devoting a portion of their wealth to some new structure. The desire of Marlborough, so feelingly expressed, that he might live at Blenheim in peace, was not to be gratified. The progress of that structure was attended by difficulties and vexations truly inimical to quiet; and various accounts have been given of the cause and details of those wearying disputes and disappointments which embittered Marlborough’s associations with Blenheim. Upon the proposal of Queen Anne, and the vote of Parliament, it had been determined, in 1704, that the British nation should build the Duke of Marlborough a structure suitable to the residence of their great and wealthy general, and emblematic of national gratitude and of royal munificence. Half a million was voted for the building, and on the eighteenth of June, 1705, the first stone of the Castle, as it was called, was laid.[366]