[62] The name by which Pope ruthlessly satirized Sarah Duchess of
Marlborough.
[63] I draw the materials of this secret history from an unpublished
"Case of the Duke of Marlborough and Sir John Vanbrugh," as also
from some confidential correspondence of Vanbrugh with Jacob Tonson,
his friend and publisher.
[64] Parliament voted 500,000_l._ for the building, which was
insufficient. The queen added thereto the honour of Woodstock, an
appanage of the crown, on the simple condition of rendering at
Windsor Castle every year on the anniversary of the victory of
Blenheim, a flag adorned with three fleur-de-lys, "as acquittance
for all manner of rents, suits and services due to the crown."
[65] Cunningham, in his "Lives of the British Architects," does not
incline to the conclusions above drawn. He says, "I suspect that
Vanbrugh, in saying he began his days in the Bastile, meant only
that he was its tenant in early life--at the commencement of his
manhood." The same author tells us that Vanbrugh's grandfather fled
from Ghent, his native city, to avoid the persecutions of the Duke
of Alva, and established himself as a merchant in Walbrook, where
his son lived after him, and where John Vanbrugh (afterwards the
great architect) was born in the year 1666. His father was at this
time Comptroller of the Treasury Chamber. Cunningham thinks the
Cheshire part of the genealogy "unlikely to be true."