While Marlborough was commanding the English forces in the Low Countries, the execution of the plan was necessarily left to his wife; and she acted, not as he would doubtless have acted, with prudence and temper, but, as is plain even from her own narrative, with odious violence and insolence.

Indeed she had passions to gratify from which he was altogether free.

He, though one of the most covetous, was one of the least acrimonious of mankind; but malignity was in her a stronger passion than avarice.

She hated easily; she hated heartily; and she hated implacably.

Among the objects of her hatred were all who were related to her mistress either on the paternal or on the maternal side.