Blenheim Palace - Failing Fortunes

Failing Fortunes

...as we passed through the entrance archway and the lovely scenery burst upon me, Randolph said with pardonable pride: This is the finest view in England

On the death of the 1st Duke in 1722, as both his sons were dead, he was succeeded by his daughter Henrietta. This was an unusual succession and required a special Act of Parliament, as only sons can usually succeed to a dukedom. When Henrietta died, the title passed to Marlborough's grandson Charles Spencer, Earl of Sunderland, whose mother was Marlborough's second daughter Anne.

The first Duke as a soldier was not a rich man, and what fortune he possessed was mostly used for finishing the palace. In comparison with other British ducal families the Marlboroughs were not very wealthy. Yet they existed quite comfortably until the time of the Fifth Duke of Marlborough (1766–1840), a spendthrift who considerably depleted the family's remaining fortune. He was eventually forced to sell other family estates, but Blenheim was safe from him as it was entailed. This did not prevent him selling the Marlboroughs' Boccaccio for a mere £875, and his own library in over 4000 lots. On his death in 1840, he left the estate and family with financial problems.

By the 1870s the Marlboroughs were in severe financial trouble, and in 1875 the 7th Duke sold the Marriage of Cupid and Psyche, together with the famed Marlborough gems, at auction for £10,000. However this was not enough to save the family. In 1880 the 7th Duke was forced to petition Parliament to break the protective entail on the Palace and its contents. This was achieved under the Blenheim Settled Estates Act of 1880, and the door was now open for wholesale dispersal of Blenheim and its contents. The first victim was the great Sunderland Library which was sold in 1882, including such volumes as The Epistles of Horace, printed at Caen in 1480, and the works of Josephus, printed at Verona in 1648. The 18,000 volumes raised almost £60,000. The sales continued to denude the palace: Raphael's Ansidei Madonna was sold for £70,000; Van Dyck’s equestrian painting of Charles I realised £17,500; and finally the "piece de resistance" of the collection, Peter Paul Rubens' Rubens, His Wife Helena Fourment, and Their Son Peter Paul, which had been given by the city of Brussels to the 1st Duke in 1704, was also sold, and is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

These sums of money, vast by the standards of the day, failed to cover the debts, and the maintenance of the great palace remained beyond the Marlboroughs' resources. These had always been small in relation to their ducal rank and the size of their house. The British agricultural depression which started in the 1870s added to the family's problems. When the 9th Duke inherited in 1892, the Spencer-Churchills were almost bankrupt.