After innumerable honours paid to the victorious general, and, among others, a combat of wild beasts for his entertainment at Berlin,[47] the Duke was able to return to his home, where all his real happiness was centered. He had owned, in one of his letters from Weissemberg, that his heart ached at the anticipation of a journey of eight hundred miles, before he could reach the Hague: and innumerable obstacles delayed his return until the fourth of December, when the wearied general sailed up the Thames in one of the royal yachts, landed at Whitehall stairs, and proceeded the same afternoon to St. James’s, where he was graciously received by the Queen and Prince George.[48] The French prisoners, whom he was said by his political enemies to have brought for the purpose of adorning his triumph, were sent to Nottingham, for the ministry did not venture to trust these foreigners at Oxford this year; a singular, and as some persons thought, an indecorous respect and attention having been shown two years before, by the Oxonians, to some French prisoners of war who were quartered in their city.[49] This was a proud era in the life of the Duchess of Marlborough. The year 1705 began with splendid processions, in which she and her husband acted a conspicuous part. On the third of January the trophies reaped in the battle of Blenheim were removed from their first place of deposit, the Tower, to Westminster Hall. Companies of horse and foot-guards led the way; persons of rank were intermixed with the troops, and a hundred and twenty-eight pikemen, each bearing a standard, closed the triumphal procession. The Queen viewed the whole from the windows of the Lord Fitzharding’s lodgings in the palace, attended by her favourite, who heard, in the triumphant acclamations of the excited multitude, signals of destruction, ominous not only to our foreign foes, but presaging the downfal of political party opposed to her at home. A grand entertainment at the city, in the Goldsmiths’-hall, succeeded this interesting display. Marlborough was conveyed to the banquet in one of the royal carriages, and gazed upon with curiosity and enthusiasm by the multitude. At Templebar he was received by the city marshals with the usual ceremonies.[50] On the eleventh of the same month, the House of Commons unanimously agreed to send up an address to the Queen, humbly desiring that she would graciously be pleased to consider of some proper means to perpetuate the memory of those services which had been performed by the Duke of Marlborough.[51] The Queen, having returned an answer that she would give the subject her consideration, on the seventeenth sent a message to the House, acquainting the members that she did incline to grant the interest of the crown in the honour and manor of Woodstock, and hundred of Wootton, to the Duke of Marlborough and his heirs; and desired the assistance of the House on this extraordinary occasion.