MARLBOROUGH 



MARLOWE 



51 



created him a prince of the Holy Roman Empire. 

 Diplomatic negotiations occupied the principal part 

 of Marlborough's time and attention in 1705, but in 

 1706 he resumed that career of victory which broke 

 the force of the spell surrounding the great power 

 of France under Louis XIV., who gloried in calling 

 hi MI-. -It' the 'Invincible.' On the 23d May 1706 

 the battle of Ramillies was fought, when the French 

 were obliged to desert the line of the Scheldt and 

 evacuate the whole of Spanish Flanders. The 

 campaign of 1707 was an almost wholly inactive 

 one ; hut in 1708 the attempt by the French under 

 Vendome to recover Flanders led to the battle 

 of Oudenarde the only battle of Marlborough's 

 engaged in front of a fortified town fought on 

 July 11, and resulting in the total defeat of 

 the French forces. Marlborough then laid siege 

 to Lille and (Jhent, and the surrender of these 

 two towns ended the long and arduous cam- 

 paign. The year 1709 was distinguished by the 

 battle of Malplaquet in Marlliorough's words, 

 'a very murdering battle.' The numbers were 

 practically equal, hut the French had an infinite 

 superiority of position. There are few battles in 

 history of which it can so certainly be said that the 

 best men won. The carnage was tremendous 

 20,000 on the side of the allies and 8000 on that of 

 the French. The blood of Malplamiet the last 

 of the four engagement* which gave Marlborongh's 

 name a unique position in the roll of generals 

 did not bring about peace; and in 1711 he was 

 afield again, taking town after town from the 

 French. This eventually led to the treaty of 

 Utrecht, which gave thirty years of peace to 

 Europe. 



Meanwhile important events were taking place 

 in Britain. The queen, tired of the tyranny 

 exercised by the Duchess of Marlborough, shook 

 off the; yoke, dismissed her ministers, Godolphin 

 and Sunderland, paving the way for the elevation 

 to power of the Earl of Oxford ami the Tories. 

 Thereupon a charge was preferred against Marl- 

 boKMgn of having embezzled public money, and 

 li.' wjis deprived of hi* offices, till the accession 

 of (irorge I., when, in a day, he was restored 

 to the position in which he stood after the battle 

 of Blenheim. A stroke of apoplexy on 28th May 

 1716, although it impaired Ins speech, did not 

 preclude his attendance in parliament till within 

 six months of his death, which occurred on 

 Kith June 1722. His funeral oWquies in West- 

 minster Abbey were celebrated with great magni- 

 ficence, and all ranks and all parties in the state 

 ji>iiii>il in doing him honour. Charges of avarice and 

 peculation have been brought against Marlborough 

 --among others, by Hallam, Mahon, Macaulay, 

 and Thackeray. Despite this, and the certainty 

 that he thought more of his own interest than the 

 cause in which he was engaged, his character had 

 many elements of excellence. He was generous 

 in action, gentle in temper, a devoted husband, 

 and a man of religious fervour. 



His wife, SARAH JENNINGS, was bom on 29th 

 May IfifiO, and when about twelve years of age 

 entered the service of the Duchess of Vork, and be- 

 rani" the chosen and most intimate friend of her step- 

 daugliter the Princess Anne. Like Marllioroiigh 

 him-i-lf, Sarah came of an ancient but ruined 

 royalist family. On the accession of Anne to the 

 throne, the duchess exercised over the young queen 

 the influence due to a superior and singularly active 

 mind. Her power was almost boundless ; the Whifj 

 ministry relied npon her support, and she disposed 

 of places anil offices at her pleasure, and is 

 said to have accumulated money by the trans- 

 actions. Her fair fame, however, apart from this, 

 was never, even in those days of scurrilous lampoon, 

 tarnished by the breath of scandal. Her rule, 



which lasted for a considerable time, at last became 

 unbearable, and she was supplanted in the favour 

 of the queen by her own cousin, Mrs Masham, 

 whom she herself hail introduced to court. She 

 retired from the queen's service in January 1711 ; 

 and for nearly a quarter of a century she survived 

 her husband, living in complete retirement. She 

 was of a very pugnacious disposition, only happy 

 when quarrelling with her friends or engaged in 

 lawsuits, such as those arising out of the comple- 

 tion of Blenheim. She died on 29th October 1744, 

 leaving a fortune of three millions sterling, of which 

 she bequeathed 10,000 to William Pitt. As the 

 Marquis of Blandford, the only son of the Duke 

 and Duchess of Marlborough, died young, the title 

 was inherited by the descendants of one of their 

 daughters, the Countess of Sunderland. 



See the Memoirs by Coxe (1819), the short Life by 

 Saintsbury ( 1885 ), Leslie Stephen in Itift. Nat. Siou. ( vol. 

 x.), and the early life by Lord Wolseley (2 vols. 1894). 



Marlincspike, an iron pin, with a large head 

 and taper point, used on shipboard for separating 

 the strands of rope preparatory to splicing or 

 marling ; also employed as a lever in tightening 

 rigging, &c. See KNOTS AND SPLICES. 



Marlitt, EUGENIE, the pseudonym of E. JOHN, 

 a German novelist, born at Arnstadt in Thuringia, 

 on 5th December 1825. Her beautiful voice and 

 musical talent gained her the favour of the Princess 

 of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, who sent her to 

 Vienna, where, after three years of study, she 

 appeared on the stage. But a successfully-begun 

 career was cut short by an affection of the ear, and 

 Friiulein John acted as reader to her patroness till 

 1863. Retiring in that year into private life, she 

 spent her time in writing romances, interesting 

 enough, but with strong didactic tendencies and 

 somewhat unreal. Of these the most successful 

 was Goldelse (1866; 18th ed. 1885); others, such 

 as The Old Maid's Secret (1867), Princess of the 

 Moor (1871), Second Wife (1873), Countess Gisela 

 (1869), and Thuringian Stories (1869) all except 

 the last translated into English, 1870 to 1873 

 have also passed through many editions. She 

 died at Arnstadt on 22d June 1887. A collected 

 edition of her Rmnanzen und A'ovellen was issued in 

 5 vols. in 1889. 



Marlow, GREAT, a town of Buckinghamshire, 

 on the Thames, 29 miles W. of London by rail, has 

 manufactures of lace and paper, an iron suspension 

 bridge, a house where Shelley lived in 1817, and a 

 grammar-school (formerly a blue-coat school). It 

 sent two members to parliament down to 1867, and 

 one till 1885. Pop. of parish ( 1891 ) 5283. 



Marlowe, CHRISTOPHER, Shakespeare's great- 

 est predecessor in the English drama, a shoemaker's 

 son, was baptised at Canterbury, 26th February 

 1563-64. From the King's School, Canterbury, he 

 was sent to Benet College (now Corpus Christi), 

 Cambridge; proceeded B.A., 1583, and commenced 

 M.A., 1587. How he employed himself after tak- 

 ing his bachelor's degree is not known. A ballad 

 printed from MS. by J. P. Collier asserts that he 

 was an actor at the Curtain Theatre, and ' brake 

 his leg in cne lewd scene when in his early age ; ' 

 but the ballad is evidently spurious. Colonel 

 Cunningham suggests that he may have served as 

 a soldier in the Low Countries. 



The earliest of Marlowe's extant plays is Tnm- 

 burlaine the Great, in two parts, first printed in 

 1590, and probably produced in 1587. In spite of 

 its bombast and violence it is infinitely superior to 

 any tragedy that had yet appeared on the English 

 stage. By his energy and fervour, his aspiring 

 imagination and majestic utterance, he confounded 

 his rivals and won immediate supremacy. Very 



