The feuds which had commenced between the Duchess and Vanburgh never subsided. Some years after all communication between them had ceased, it was the wish of the architect to visit Blenheim, which his patroness, Lady Carlisle, and some of her family, were desirous to inspect. Sir John stayed two nights at Blenheim, but there was an order issued to the servants, under the Duchess’s own hand, not to let him enter the castle, and lest that should not mortify him sufficiently, having heard that his wife was to be one of the party, she sent an express the night before they came to Woodstock, with orders that if Lady Vanburgh came to Blenheim, the servants should not suffer her to see the house and gardens. The enraged architect and his lady were therefore obliged to remain at the inn whilst the Castle Howard ladies viewed the building.[381] Such petty revenge augured a miserable old age; but the Duchess gloried in the storm. With all her immense revenue, computed to be about forty thousand pounds a year, she continued to wrangle about the building debts of Blenheim, and obtained an injunction against Sir John Vanburgh in Chancery, on the score of a sum which she could much better afford to lose than the poor artificers, or even the architect, whom she refused to pay, alleging that they were employed by government, and not by the Duke of Marlborough. Upon this, Vanburgh produced Godolphin’s warrant, and for once his interests and those of the Duchess coincided. Long and curious details of this cause are to be found in the Coxe manuscripts; but, however agitating and anxious the subject may have been to the Duchess and to her enemy, the litigation to which they were obliged to have recourse has lost its interest in modern eyes. There is, however, no doubt but that Vanburgh was justly accused by the Duchess of extravagance in many instances, and of exceeding his commission in others. She even taxed him with building one entire court at Blenheim without the Duke’s knowledge. She detected his bad taste and grasping spirit, and despised his mismanagement,—of which latter the best proof was, that when, upon the death of the Duke, the whole charge of the building fell into her hands, she completed it in the manner, and at the reduced expense, which has been described. That “wicked woman of Marlborough,” as Sir John Vanburgh termed the Duchess, had perhaps no greater error in his eyes than the penetration with which she discovered his narrow pretensions, his inadequacy, and wanton waste, not to say peculation. It may not be deemed impertinent to sum up the foregoing account of all the perplexities and errors which attended the building of Blenheim, by an extract from the Duchess’s opinions of the whole affair, written many years after the virulence of her animosity may be reasonably supposed to have ceased. Regarding the attack upon herself in the Examiner, which gave an account of the sums which had been exhausted on Blenheim, the Duchess observes: