“To what proximate cause this attack is to be attributed,—­whether to excess of sorrow, or, which is more probable, to an accumulation of predisposing occurrences,—­we possess no means of ascertaining; but on the 28th of May he was smitten with paralysis, and became deprived on the instant both of sense and of speech.  The best medical aid being at hand, he was speedily relieved from the fit, and under the skilful management of Sir Samuel Garth, gradually regained his strength; but from the usual effects of such a stroke he never wholly recovered, neither his articulation nor his memory being restored to their original tone.  He was able to proceed, it is true, so early as the 7th of July, to Bath, where he drank the waters with benefit, and he returned in a certain degree into society, resuming with apparent ease the ordinary course of his employment.  That his faculties were not absolutely impaired, moreover, is demonstrated by the fact, that it was subsequently to this his first seizure that he played his part on the trial of Lord Oxford; while his successful speculation in South Sea stock, by which, contrary to the custom of the adventure, he realized 100,000_l_. proves that the talent of making money, at least, had not deserted him.  But it seems an idle as well as an uncalled for perversion of truth to contend, that from the date of his first attack he ever was the man he had been previously.  If ‘the tears of dotage’ did not flow from his eyes, it is certain that much of the vigour of mind which once belonged to him was lost, and even his speech continued embarrassed in the pronunciation of certain words, as his features were slightly distorted.  Nor did the events which accumulated upon him, both at home and abroad, by abstracting him from painful subjects, tend to facilitate his recovery.  The duchess, not less the slave of caprice now than formerly, managed to involve herself in a serious misunderstanding with the king, and withdrew, in consequence, her attendance on a court where her presence ceased to be agreeable.  This was preceded by quarrels with almost all the oldest and steadiest friends of her husband, such as Cadogan, Stanhope, Sunderland, and secretary Scraggs, which were not composed till after the growing infirmities of the duke had taught them to think of what he once had been, and what he was likely soon to become.  Nor was the death of Sunderland, which took place in April, 1722, without its effect in harassing the Duke of Marlborough.  That nobleman not only died in his father-in-law’s debt, to the amount of 10,000_l_.; but the sealing up of his papers by government occasioned a tedious suit, Marlborough being naturally anxious to secure them to himself; a measure which the government, on public grounds, resisted.