On the 27th of January they entered a forest. Daniel was astonished by its size. He thought they were somewhere near Oxford—it went without saying that they were avoiding the city itself. He saw a fragment of Royal heraldry, but old and ivy-grown. They must be on the estate that, in his day, had been known as the Royal Manor and Park of Woodstock. But Queen Anne had given it to the Duke of Marlborough in gratitude for his winning the Battle of Blenheim, and Saving the World, ten years ago. The Queen’s intention was that a magnificent Palace was to be thrown up there for Marlborough and his descendants to dwell in. If this had been France, and the Queen had been Louis XIV, it would have been done by now—but it was England, Parliament had its knobby fingers around the Monarch’s throat, and Whigs and Tories were joined in an eternal shin-kicking contest to determine which faction should have the honor of throttling her Majesty, and how hard. In the course of which, Marlborough, a quintessential Tory, and son of a Cavalier, had somehow been painted as a Whig. Queen Anne, who had decided, very late in life, that she much preferred Tories, had stripped him of military command, and in general made life so unrewarding for him in England that he and Sarah had gone away to Northern Europe (where he was considered the greatest thing since beer) to bask in the gratitude of Protestants until such time as the Queen stopped fogging mirrors at Kensington Palace.