Marlborough (81 page)

CHAPTER 1
:

Young Cavalier

1
  For Churchill genealogy see Kate Fleming
The Churchills
(London 1975) and G. Cokayne et al. (eds)
The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom …
(13 vols, London 1910–59) VII p.491.

2
  Peter Young (ed.) ‘The Vindication of Richard Atkyns’ in
Military Memoirs: The Civil War
(London 1967) p.23.

3
  Churchill
Marlborough
I p.22.

4
  A.L. Rowse
The Early Churchills
(London 1956) p.11.

5
  See http:www.stirnet.com/HTML/genie/british/dd/drake 01/htm. This suggests that an Elizabeth Drake married Winston Churchill: elsewhere her name is given as Ellen, Elinor and Helen. In the contemporary way, her mother’s maiden name is sometimes spelt Butler.

6
  Churchill
Marlborough
I p.17.

7
  Ibid. p.27 and Louisa Stoughton Drake
The Drake Family in England and America 1360–1895
(Boston 1896) and Coxe
Marlborough
I p.1 are among those favouring Ashe House. For a contrary view see W.G. Hoskins
Devon
(London 1954), currently supported by the Devon Libraries Local Studies Service.

8
  Churchill
Marlborough
I p.26 suggests that there were twelve children in all; my figure is from
Burke’s Peerage
and http://www. thepeerage.com/p100559.htm

9
  Anon.
The Lives of the Two Illustrious Generals
(London 1713) p.18.

10
  Ophelia Field
The Favourite: Sarah Duchess of Marlborough
(London 2002) p.6

11
  Lady Drake’s sister was married to James Leigh (or Ley), 1st Earl of Marlborough of the first creation: James, the royalist admiral, was the 3rd Earl, and William, who died in 1679, the last of that creation.

12
  ‘The Declaration of Breda’ in S.R. Gardiner (ed.)
Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution 1625–1660
(Oxford 1962) pp.465–7.

13
  Pepys
Diary
pp.52–3.

14
  Evelyn
Diary
p.165.

15
  Gardiner
Constitutional Documents
p.lxiii.

16
  Churchill
Marlborough
I p.44.

17
  ‘Flavius Vegetius’ in Gérard Chaliand (ed.)
The Art of War in World History
(Berkeley, California 1994) p.217. Flavius Vegetius Renatus probably lived in Constantinople in the late
fourth century AD, and dedicated his
Epitoma rei militaris
(its proper title) to the Emperor Theodosius.

18
  Pepys
Diary
pp.476, 556, 1006–7.

19
  Catharine MacLeod and Julia Marciari (eds)
Painted Ladies: Women at the Court of King Charles II
(London 2001).

20
  Burnet
History
I p.273.

21
  Pepys
Diary
p.320.

22
  Henry Hanning
The British Grenadiers
(London 2006) p.13.

23
  John Childs
The Army of Charles II
(London 1976) p.196.

24
  In practice the cabal was not a unified ministry, for its members, though loyal servants of the king, rarely agreed with one another.

25
  ‘The English Brigade in French Service 1672–8’ Appendix D to Childs
Army of Charles II.

26
  
The Diary of Dr Edward Lake
(London 1846) p.vi. Charles was actually being even more bawdy than we might think. In contemporary parlance ‘to ride the St George’ was the precise opposite of the missionary position, and Charles may have believed that the weedy-looking William would be well advised to surrender himself to the rather sturdier Mary.

27
  Norman Tucker (ed.) ‘The Military Memoirs of John Gwyn’ in
Military Memoirs: The Civil War
(London 1967) pp.99–100.

28
  Anthony Bruce
The Purchase System in the British Army 1660–1871
(London 1980) p.6.

29
  Ibid. p.20. Officer ranks began with ensign in the infantry and cornet in the cavalry: these gentlemen, with the lieutenants, who took seniority immediately above them, were, then as now, termed subalterns. Captains, the next rank up, commanded troops in the cavalry or companies in the infantry: thus ‘to buy a company’ meant to purchase the rank of captain. During and after the Civil War the next rank up was formally styled sergeant major, and its holder was the regiment’s principal drillmaster. A Devon militia commission of 1677, for instance, appointed ‘Edward Greenwood, gentleman, ensign of the militia, in the company of foot of which Arthur Tremayne, sergeant major, is captain, and of which Sir Edward Seymour, Bart, is colonel’. The rank was more generally known as major
tout court
, and a generation later the sergeant major emerged as the senior non-commissioned member of the regiment. The lieutenant colonel deputised for the colonel, who might have weighty duties elsewhere which kept him away from the practical exercise of regimental command, or who might (like the Duke of Grafton with 1st Foot Guards) not really know much of what he was about. In the British service at this time most regiments had a single battalion, and battalions might be combined into brigades commanded by the senior colonel, sometimes styled brigadier by courtesy, or given a formal commission as brigadier general.

Major generals confusingly ranked beneath lieutenant generals: the latter were, as the title of their rank suggests,
expected to stand in for their general, just as lieutenants could take their captain’s place and lieutenant colonels deputised for colonels. The rank of field marshal did not then exist in the British service, but the army’s overall commander enjoyed the title of captain general. This being the British army, there were numerous exceptions and variations, notably in the Life Guards, to understand whose rank system one must consult Barney White-Spunner’s majestically produced
Horse Guards
(London 2006).

All of the above held a commission signed by the monarch, the captain general, or (for militia officers) the lord lieutenant of their county, and at the time were styled ‘commission officers’. Non-commissioned officers were corporals and sergeants, appointed by their colonels.

30
  Liza Picard
Restoration London
(London 1997) p.3.

31
  Lever
Godolphin
p.45.

32
  Evelyn
Diary
p.465.

33
  Ibid.

34
  Burnet
History
II p.482.

35
  Whinney and Millar
English Art
pp.322–3.

36
  Churchill
Marlborough
I p.52.

37
  See
The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
(Oxford 1996) p.446. There are many versions of this quotation, but there will be few soldiers reading these lines who do not understand precisely what the lady meant.

38
  Coxe
Marlborough
I p.3.

39
  Pepys
Tangier Papers
p.90.

40
  Ibid. p.93.

41
  Ibid. p.96.

42
  Childs
Army of Charles II
p.142.

43
  Churchill
Marlborough
I p.56. Roger Palmer was created Baron Limerick and Earl of Castlemaine in December 1661, with a remainder limited to his heirs male by Barbara, ‘the reason whereof everybody knows’, muttered Pepys.

44
  Ibid. p.57.

45
  For contrasting views see Childs
Army of Charles II
p.72 and N.A.M. Rodger
The Command of the Ocean
(London 2004) p.129.

46
  Sir Charles Lyttelton to Christopher Hatton 21 August 1671, in E.M. Thompson (ed.)
Correspondence of the Family of Hatton …
(2 vols, London 1878) I p.66.

47
  S. Wynne ‘The Mistresses of Charles II and Restoration Court Politics, 1660–1685’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cambridge 1997) p.32.

48
  Pepys
Diary
pp.353–4.

49
  Maurice Ashley
Charles II
(London 1973) p.150.

50
  S.M. Wynne ‘Palmer, Barbara’ in
The New Dictionary of National Biography.

51
  Rowse
Early Churchills
p.144.

52
  Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield,
Letters
(5 vols, London 1892) I p.232.

53
  Ashley
Charles II
p.161, Churchill
Marlborough
I p.61, Bryan Bevan
Marlborough the Man
(London 1975) pp.26–7.

54
  Philip W. Sergeant
My Lady Castlemaine
(London 1912) pp.207, 214, 271.

55
  John B. Wolf
Louis XIV
(New York 1968) pp.218–19.

56
  For a scintillating glimpse of Louis and his ladies see Antonia
Fraser
Love and Louis XIV
(London 2006).

57
  Wolf
Louis XIV
pp.213–15.

58
  Evelyn
Diary
p.210.

59
  The best account is Anne Somerset
The Affair of the Poisons
(London 2003).

60
  Nancy Mitford
The Sun King
(London 1966) p.72.

61
  Fraser
Love and Louis XIV
p.259.

62
  Rodger
Command
pp.82–3.

63
  Churchill to Richmond 15 October 1692, BL Add Mss 21948.

64
  David Chandler
The Art of Warfare in the Age of Marlborough
(London 1976) p.234.

65
  Captain George Carleton
Military Memoirs
(London 1929) p.49.

66
  Ian A. Morrison ‘Survival Skills: An Enterprising Highlander in the Low Countries with Marlborough’ in Grant G. Simpson (ed.)
The Scottish Soldier Abroad
(Edinburgh 1992) p.93.

67
  Carleton
Memoirs
p.50.

68
  ‘That’s ripe, that’s nice and ripe.’

69
  Chandler
Art of Warfare
pp.245–6.

70
  Richard Kane
Campaigns of King William and Queen Anne …
(London 1745) pp.26–8. For the Danish account see J.H.F. Jahn
De danske Auxiliairtropper
(2 vols, Copenhagen 1840) II pp.29, 150ff. I am indebted to Dr Kjeld Galster for this reference.

71
  Alington to Arlington SP 78/137 f.142. As if the names of the writer and the addressee are not perplexing enough, in the original Villiers is spelt ‘Villars’, which often gives rise to confusion. He was probably the Hon. Edward Villiers, Lord Grandison’s son, and so Barbara Castlemaine’s brother: he died as a brigadier in 1690. The fact that his family name was easily mistaken for that of Louis Hector de Villars (also present at the siege as a French officer, and later commander of the army that Marlborough beat at Malplaquet) meant that it is probably Edward’s brother who was nicknamed ‘the marshal’. D’Artagnan was the real-life model for the hero of Alexandre Dumas’
The Three Musketeers.

72
  Christopher Duffy
The Fortress in the Age of Vauban and Frederick the Great
(London 1985) p.10.

73
  Burnet
History
III p.55.

74
  Childs
Army of Charles II
p.246. Churchill’s amalgamated regiment was apparently given seniority over the existing Royal English Regiment, which had Monmouth as its colonel in chief and Robert Scott as its commanding officer, because many of its recruits had been drafted in from Guards regiments. However, more work needs to be done on these British regiments in French service.

75
  Historical Manuscripts Commission
Le Fleming Papers
(London 1890) p.108.

76
  Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley
The Life of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough …
(2 vols, London 1894) I p.146.

77
  J. Laperelle
Marshal Turenne
(London 1907) pp.318–19.

78
  Ibid. p.331.

79
  Raguenet
Vie de Turenne
pp.259, 268.

80
  
C.T. Atkinson
Marlborough and the Rise of the British Army
(New York 1921) p.53, Churchill
Marlborough
I pp.108–9. For a French view see Capt. J. Revol
Turenne: Essai de Psychologie militaire
(Paris 1910) pp.319–22.

81
  Atkinson
Marlborough
pp.57–8.

82
  Troops of horse, the equivalents of companies of infantry, continued to carry their own standards long after infantry companies had ceased to have their own colours. In this passage Churchill actually calls the standards ‘colours’, an easy enough slip for an infantry officer to make.

83
  Laperelle
Turenne
p.340.

84
  Coxe
Marlborough
I p.8. As Winston S. Churchill points out, the dates do not quite add up: the widow thanks Churchill for his kindness ‘thirty-four years ago’, whereas Turenne’s devastation actually took place thirty-seven years before.