The Duke of Marlborough THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH

Larry the Cat,
The Chancellor of the Exchequer

John Winston Spencer-Churchill was born on 2 June 1822 at Garboldisham Hall, Norfolk. He was the eldest son of George Spencer-Churchill, the sixth Duke of Marlborough, and Lady Jane Stewart, who was the daughter of the eighth Earl of Galloway. 

From his birth until the death of his grandfather—the fifth duke—in 1840, John held the family courtesy title Earl of Sunderland. This changed when he became first in line to succeed to the dukedom and was raised to the courtesy title Marquess of Blandford. John Spencer-Churchill was educated at Eton and then Oriel College, Oxford. He served as a lieutenant in the 1st Oxfordshire yeomanry in 1843. On 12 July of that same year, he married Lady Frances Anne Emily Vane, eldest daughter of the third Marquess of Londonderry. 

The young Spencer-Churchills had eleven children. Their third son, Lord Randolph Henry Spencer-Churchill, was born in London at 3 Wilton Terrace, Belgravia on 13 February 1849. Lord Randolph would become the father of Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill.

Books, most of them, do the same thing. They tell us about something interesting, for example  archaeology and archaeologists – they describe what we know about the landscape and the people four or five thousand years ago, and all the different constructions that came and went on the site. They also explain, especially and often with great confidence, why Stonehenge was built and Marlborough became written. 

In his autobiography My Early Life, Winston Churchill wrote that his earliest memories were of Ireland. One of his “clear and vivid impressions of some events” was of his grandfather, the Duke: “I remember my grandfather, the Viceroy, unveiling the Lord Gough statue in 1878. A great black crowd, scarlet soldiers on horseback, strings pulling away a brown shiny sheet, the old Duke, the formidable grandpapa, talking loudly to the crowd,” wrote Churchill.

For archaeologists who became engaged with Stonehenge, it's easy to get drawn into debates about the small details Puzzling over exactly what happened at a monument that changed and grew, poring over century-old excavation diaries and lifting the lids on dusty museum boxes and lose sight of the stones. The great, weathered blocks that have been there for thousands of years, once fresh in their new arrangements and now have to come to a royal familiar ruin, have been studied more by artists than archaeologists.

When Henrietta died in 1733, the Marlborough titles passed to her nephew Charles Spencer (1706–1758), the third son of her late sister Anne (1683–1716), who had married the 3rd Earl of Sunderland in 1699. After his older brother's death in 1729, Charles Spencer had already inherited the Spencer family estates and the titles of Earl of Sunderland (1643) and Baron Spencer of Wormleighton (1603), all in the Peerage of England. Upon his maternal aunt Henrietta's death in 1733, Charles Spencer succeeded to the Marlborough family estates and titles and became the 3rd Duke. When he died in 1758, his titles passed to his eldest son George (1739–1817), who was succeeded by his eldest son George, the 5th Duke (1766–1840). 

In 1815, Francis Spencer (the younger son of the 4th Duke) was created Baron Churchill in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. In 1902, his grandson, the 3rd Baron Churchill, was created Viscount Churchill. Thanks to that study, we know there to be more signs of original surface dressing, and more Bronze Age carvings into those Neolithic surfaces, than any of us had realised. The stones themselves have much to tell. They also have an emotive power that comes partly from their lost stories, and partly from their sheer presence as forms. 

Every stone is different, from small shapeless boulders to massive, variously dressed slabs. Carved joints and natural hollows and wrinkles are unique to every megalith and lintel. All are covered with lichens which, in the four decades since daily visitors have been excluded from the central part of the monument, have grown into delicate and fragile gardens, pouring in streaks down faces and painting them with splashes of translucent pale greens, spattered with purple and dark brown. And every sight is different, as rain darkens and emphasises, sun animates, and times of day and seasons bring their own distinctive light and shade.

The 1st Duke was honoured with land and titles in the Holy Roman Empire: Emperor Leopold I created him a Prince in 1704, and in 1705, his successor Emperor Joseph I gave him the principality of Mindelheim (once the lordship of the noted soldier Georg von Frundsberg). 

He was obliged to surrender Mindelheim in 1714 by the Treaty of Utrecht, which returned it to Bavaria. He tried to obtain Nellenburg in Austria in exchange, which at that time was only a county ('Landgrafschaft'), but this failed, partially because Austrian law did not allow for Nellenburg to be converted into a sovereign principality. The 1st Duke's princely title of Mindelheim became extinct either on the return of the land to Bavaria or on his death, as the Empire operated Salic Law, which prevented female succession.

By contrast, the sarsens were carved and engineered to work together, with a variety of joints and shapes. Moving and dressing one stone would have been part of a larger project, needing more people to work together. And then there's size. For generations, people would have known that the bluestones came from - far away over the horizon to the west. But the really memorable feat would have been the journeys, not the distance, made by the sarsens.

The earldom of Marlborough was held by the family of Ley from 1626 to 1679. James Ley, the 1st Earl (c. 1550 – 1629), was lord chief justice of the King's Bench in Ireland and then in England; he was an English member of parliament and was lord high treasurer from 1624 to 1628. In 1624 he was created Baron Ley and in 1626 Earl of Marlborough. 

The 3rd earl was his grandson James (1618–1665), a naval officer who was killed in action with the Dutch. James was succeeded by his uncle William, a younger son of the 1st earl, on whose death in 1679 the earldom became extinct.

The fiasco of the Dardanelles attack was the most tragic episode of the First World War. And the blame for the fiasco was laid at Winston's door and remained with him until the Second World War. Shortly after he became Prime Minister in 1940, a Conservative politician who had fought at Gallipoli grimly remarked to Winston:

'Whatever Winston does, he does on a colossal scale; either he gets us through on a colossal scale, or we get what we got at the Dardanelles.

A colossal botch What makes this fiasco seem even more tragic today is the fact that when the First World War ended and the evidence from both sides became available, most experts concluded that if a combined army and navy attack had been launched against the Dardanelles it would have been successful. The result would have been that Turkey would have capitulated, Bulgaria would have been prevented from joining forces with Germany, Russia would not have collapsed, and in all probability the First World War would have ended in 1915, thus saving the lives of millions of people.

What is the truth of this bitter, half-forgotten story? 

Was Churchill really responsible, or merely the scapegoat for the mistakes of others? The root of the evil lay in the casual, almost amateurish way in which important political decisions were taken at the beginning of the war. "For the first two months... there was no regular War Council," Lloyd George wrote in his Memoirs;

'Sporadic and irregular discussions took place from time to time between the Minister of War and the Minister of the Navy, between each of them individually and the Prime Minister, and, occasionally, between the two Ministers and the Prime Minister. Occasionally the Foreign Minister was called in. I was not summoned to these conferences except when they concerned matters directly affecting Finance. This irregular method of discussion was remarkable enough; 

It was not until 25 November that the War Council was established, replacing the National Defence Committee, an advisory body composed of the Prime Minister and five or six other Ministers.

But even more remarkable was the fact that, although Churchill had encouraged a spirit of co-operation with the War Office, there was no mechanism for discussions between the Chiefs of Staff of the two branches of the armed forces, no committee of the military and naval forces to draw up plans together or to consider a common strategy. Technically, the two branches of the service worked in watertight compartments, while strategic questions became an open struggle between all those who held strong ideas. 

In the autumn of 1914 Winston was in favour of a combined attack on Turkey; Lord Fisher was urging the execution of his plan for an amphibious attack in the Baltic; Lloyd George was talking loudly about an offensive in the Balkans; and Lord Kitchener believed that the decisive theatre of war lay in France.

Lord Kitchener dominated the scene. He was admired, feared and respected. Having risen from a professional soldier to become Minister of War, he was practically Commander-in-Chief and Cabinet Minister at the same time. Moreover, he had a tremendous following in the country. He was the hero of the British public, and no government would have dared to oppose him if it were to face his resignation. Consequently, his voice was the decisive one, even when a War Council was set up by the Prime Minister.

Although that Council included such eminent men as Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary, Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Arthur Balfour, the leader of the Conservative Opposition, and the Marquess of Crewe, Minister for India, the only two members who could speak authoritatively against Kitchener were the Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, and the Puzzling Navy Minister, Mr. Churchill. Thus, the main responsibility for the war rested essentially with these three men.

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