between King and Parliament, between Cavalier and Roundhead. By the
times of Queen Anne the terms Whig and Tory, replaced in our days for
the most part by Liberal and Conservative, had come into common use,
and no one who desires to understand the history of her reign can
wholly neglect the movements of these two opposing parties in
politics. For Marlborough--with his wife--may be said to be the last
powerful statesman who ruled England without the formal and
acknowledged help of party. Since then the "party in power" has
always, through its chief member, the Prime Minister, and his Cabinet,
been the actual ruler in the State.

At the beginning of Anne's reign the Whigs were leading in matters of
state, but presently Rochester and Nottingham, the former a very
strong Tory, came into power. Later on, in 1703, the former was
replaced by a more moderate Tory, Harley, and in the following year
St. John succeeded Nottingham. The truth was, Marlborough, beginning
to see that he was more likely to receive support in his great wars
from the Whig side, was working gradually towards the placing of their
party in office, though he himself had all along been a Tory. Thus it
was that he tried to rule with a coalition, or a mixture of Whigs and
Tories. This was in the year 1705, a little after the time to which
this story has as yet been carried. But Marlborough and his Duchess
were still the real power in the land.

We may rejoin George Fairburn, some three weeks after the day when he
had been picked up by the Dutch transport. With others he had been
landed in the Tagus, and at once drafted into one of the regiments
under the Earl of Galway, a Frenchman by birth, but now, having been
driven out of France by the persecutions he and the rest of the
Protestants had had to endure, a general in the English army. George