he was one of the great men of England, high in the state, high in the army.  He had been created an Earl.  He had a large share in the military administration.  The emoluments, direct and indirect, of the places and commands which he held under the Crown were believed at the Dutch Embassy to amount to twelve thousand pounds a year.  In the event of a counterrevolution it seemed that he had nothing in prospect but a garret in Holland, or a scaffold on Tower Hill.  It might therefore have been expected that he would serve his new master with fidelity, not indeed with the fidelity of Nottingham, which was the fidelity of conscientiousness, not with the fidelity of Portland, which was the fidelity of affection, but with the not less stubborn fidelity of despair.

Those who thought thus knew but little of Marlborough.  Confident in his own powers of deception, he resolved, since the Jacobite agents would not seek him, to seek them.  He therefore sent to beg an interview with Colonel Edward Sackville.

Sackville was astonished and not much pleased by the message.  He was a sturdy Cavalier of the old school.  He had been persecuted in the days of the Popish plot for manfully saying what he thought, and what every body now thinks, about Oates and Bedloe.64 Since the Revolution he had put his neck in peril for King James, had been chased by officers with warrants, and had been designated as a traitor in a proclamation to which Marlborough himself had been a party.65 It was not without reluctance that the stanch royalist crossed the hated threshold of the deserter.  He was repaid for his effort by the edifying spectacle of such an agony of repentance as he had never before seen.  “Will you,” said Marlborough, “be my intercessor with the King?  Will you tell him what I suffer?  My crimes now appear to me in their true light; and I shrink with horror from the contemplation.  The thought of them is with me day and night.  I sit down to table; but I cannot eat.  I throw myself on my bed; but I cannot sleep.  I am ready to sacrifice every thing, to brave every thing, to bring utter ruin on my fortunes, if only I may be free from the misery of a wounded spirit.”  If appearances could be trusted, this great offender was as true a penitent as David or as Peter.  Sackville reported to his friends what had passed.  They could not but acknowledge that, if the arch traitor, who had hitherto opposed to conscience and to public opinion the same cool and placid hardihood which distinguished him on fields of battle, had really begun to feel remorse, it would be absurd to reject, on account of his unworthiness, the inestimable services which it was in his power to render to the good cause.  He sate in the interior council; he held high command in the army; he had been recently entrusted, and would doubtless again be entrusted, with the direction of important military operations.  It was true that no man had incurred equal guilt; but it was true also that no man had