dreds on 1 May in the following year. On the assembly of the new parliament in 1847, he was re-elected for Woodstock, and, although an unsuccessful candidate for Middlesex in 1852, kept his seat for the former place continuously until 1857 when he became Duke of Marlborough, and was in the same year gazetted lord-lieutenant of Oxfordshire. He was lord steward of the household in July 1866, a privy councillor on 10 July, and lord president of the council from 8 March 1867 to December 1868. In 1874, on the formation of Mr. Disraeli's second cabinet, he was offered, but declined, the viceroyalty of Ireland. On 28 Nov. 1876 he succeeded the Duke of Abercom as lord-lieutenant, which post he held down to the resignation of the Beaconsfield ministry in May 1880. He was president of the Shipwrecked Fishermen and Mariners' Royal Benevolent Society for many years. He died suddenly of angina pectoris at 29 Berkeley Square, London, on 5 July 1883. After lying in state at Blenheim Palace, he was buried in the private chapel on 10 July. The duke was a sensible, honourable, and industrious public man. To him Lord Beaconsfield on 8 March 1880 addressed the famous letter in which he announced the dissolution of parliament, and appealed to the constituencies for a fresh lease of power. His administration of Ireland was popular, and he endeavoured to benefit the trade of the country. He is best known as author in 1856 of an act (19 and 20 Vict. cap. 104), which bears his name, for the purpose of strengthening the church of England in large towns by the subdivision of extensive parishes, and the erection of smaller vicarages or incumbencies. His last public appearance was 28 June 1883, when he made an able speech in opposition to the third reading of the Deceased Wife's Sister's Marriage Bill. He married, on 12 July 1843, the Lady Frances Anne Emily Vane Tempest, eldest daughter of Charles William Vane Tempest, third marguis of Londonderry. During her residence in Ireland she instituted a famine relief fund, by which she collected 112,484l., which was sent in seed potatoes, food, and clothing. The duke was succeeded in his title by his eldest son, George Charles. Lord Randolph Cliurchill is his second son.
[Brown's Life of Lord Beaconsfield, 1882, ii. 87, 202, portrait; Times, 6, 7, 9, 11, and 13 July 1883; Morning Post, 6 July 1883; Illustrated London News, 28 Oct. 1876, p. 404, portrait; Graphic, 14 July 1883, p. 32, portrait; collected information.]
CHURCHILL, SARAH, Duchess of Marlborough (1660–1744). [See under Churchill, John, first Duke of Marlborough.]
CHURCHILL, Sir WINSTON (1620?–1688), politician and historian, was descended from an ancient family in Dorsetshire. He was the son of John Churchill of Nunthorn in that county, a lawyer of some eminence, and of Sarah, daughter and coheiress of Sir Henry Winston of Standistone, Gloucestershire, and was born at Wooton Glanville about 1620. In 1636 he entered St. John's College, Oxford, where he is said to have distinguished himself by his sedateness and great application to his studies, although he was obliged, on account of the circumstances of his family, to leave the university without taking a degree. Some time afterwards he married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Drake of Ashe, Devonshire, and Eleanor, his wife, sister of George Villiers, duke of Buckingham. Having during the civil war adhered to the party of the king, he was reduced to such extremities that his wife was obliged to retire for some time to her father's house at Ashe. After the Restoration he returned to his estate, and he was elected to represent the borough of Weymouth in the Parliament which met 8 May 1661. In Jan. 1663–4 he received the honour of knighthood, and in 1664 was chosen a fellow of the Royal Society. In the latter year he was appointed commissioner of the court of claims in Ireland, for the purpose of adjudging the qualifications of those who had forfeited their estates. On his return he was constituted one of the clerk comptrollers of the green cloth, an office of some importance at court. After the dissolution of the Pensionary parliament in 1679 he was dismissed from office, but shortly afterwards was restored by the king, and continued to hold it during the remainder of the reign of Charles II, and also during that of James II. During the reign of the latter monarch he represented the borough of Lyme Regis. He died 26 March 1688, and three days afterwards was buried in the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster. By his wife he had seven sons and four daughters, including John, duke of Marlborough [q. v.], and Arabella Churchill [q. v.]. Churchill's extreme royalist sentiments led him to devote his learning and leisure to the composition of a kind of apotheosis of the kings of England, which he dedicated to Charles II, and published in 1675 under the title 'Divi Britannici; being a Remark upon the Lives of all the Kings of this Isle, from the year of the World 2855 until the year of Grace 1660,' with the arms of all the kings of England, 'which made it sell among novices (Wood).
[Lediard's Life of Marlborough; Collins's Peerage, ed. 1812, i. 365-6; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iv. 235.]
