have not been transported but lived in the place where their remains
are found. As mollusca of this kind thrive best in open stretches
of clear water, the sites of the marl deposits must have been shallow
lakes and open pools.
Among the older strata it is not uncommon to find beds which have the same composition and in many cases the same origin as shell marl. While some of them are fresh-water deposits, others are of marine origin. The “crag beds” of the Pliocene formation in Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex are essentially sand and gravel, which are often rich in shells; with them occur clays such as the Chillesford clay; and many of these beds have actually been used as marls for dressing the surface of agricultural land. Better examples occur among the Oligocene beds of the Hampshire basin and the Isle of Wight, where the Steadon, Bembridge and Hempstead marls are clays, more or less sandy, containing fresh-water shells. In the Cretaceous rocks of the south of England soft argillaceous limestones of marine origin, which may be described as marls, occur on several horizons. At its base the white chalk is often mixed with clay, and the “chalk marl” is a rock of this kind; it is known in Cambridgeshire, at Folkestone, in the Isle of Wight, &c. The chloritic marl, which underlies the chalk and is well developed in the Isle of Wight, is a greenish argillaceous limestone, the colour being due to the presence of glauconite, not of chlorite; it is often very fossiliferous. The Gault, an argillaceous type of the Upper Greensand, is a stiff greyish calcareous clay, beneath the white chalk, well known for the excellent preservation of its fossils. It outcrops along the base of the escarpment of the North and South Downs; the original name given to it by William Smith was “the blue marl.” In the Jurassic rocks of England there are marls or shelly fresh-water clays in the Purbeck series and also in the estuarine beds of the Great Oolite, but the name “marlstone” has long been reserved for the argillaceous limestone of the Middle Lias. It ranges from the Dorset coast, through Edge Hill in Warwickshire and Lincolnshire, and thence to the sea in the north of Yorkshire, presenting many variations in this long extent of country and often accompanied by, or converted into, beds of clay ironstone. The marlstone is typically a firm, greyish limestone weathering to a rusty brown colour, and is always more or less argillaceous.
In the Triassic rocks of Britain there is a very important series of red, green and mottled clays, over a thousand feet thick in some places, which have been called the New Red marls. They belong to the Keuper or uppermost division of the system, and in Cheshire contain valuable deposits of rock salt, the principal sources of that mineral in Great Britain. In the strict sense these rocks are not marls, being ferruginous clays rather than calcareous clays. Most of them appear to have been laid down in saline lakes in desert regions. As a rule they contain very few fossils, and often they have little or no carbonate of lime, but beds and veins of fibrous gypsum occur in them in considerable profusion. These rocks cover a wide area in the midland counties extending to the south coast near Exmouth, and reappear in the north in the Vale of Eden and a few places in southern Scotland. The clays are used for brick-making, and yield a stiff soil, mostly devoted to pasture and dairy farming. In the Rhaetic beds which immediately overlie the Triassic rocks there are three seams of calcareous clay, often only a few feet thick, which have been called the “grey marls” and the “tea-green marls.”
To rocks older than these the name marl has not often been given, probably because, though argillaceous limestones are often common in the Carboniferous and Silurian rocks, they are usually firm and compact, while marls usually comprise rocks which are more or less soft and friable. In other countries, and especially in Germany, many different kinds of marl and of marl-slate are described. Two of these are of especial importance—the dark copper-bearing marl slate of the Permian rocks near Mansfeld in Germany, which has been long and extensively worked as sources of copper, and the white or creamy Solenhofen limestone, much quarried in Bavaria, and used as a lithographic stone. (J. S. F.)
MARLBOROUGH, EARLS AND DUKES OF. 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.
In 1689 John Churchill was created earl and in 1702 duke of Marlborough (see below). After the death of his only son Charles in 1703 an act of parliament was passed in 1706 settling the duke’s titles upon his daughters and their issue. Consequently when he died in June 1722 his eldest daughter Henrietta (1681–1733), wife of Francis Godolphin, 2nd earl of Godolphin, became duchess of Marlborough. She died without sons and was succeeded by her nephew Charles Spencer, 5th earl of Sunderland (1706–1758), a son of the great duke’s second daughter Anne (d. 1716). Although at this time Charles handed over the Sunderland estates to his younger brother John, the ancestor of the earls Spencer, he did not obtain Blenheim until Sarah, the dowager duchess, died in 1744. His eldest son George Spencer, the 4th duke (1739–1817), left three sons. The eldest, George Spencer, the 5th duke (1766–1840), was summoned to the House of Lords as Baron Spencer of Wormleighton in 1806, and in 1817, after succeeding to the dukedom, he took the name of Spencer-Churchill. The 4th duke’s second son was Lord Henry John Spencer (1770–1795), envoy to Sweden and to Prussia; and his third son was Lord Francis Almeric Spencer (1779–1845), who was created a peer as Baron Churchill of Whichwood in 1815. His grandson Victor Albert Francis Charles Spencer (b. 1864) succeeded his father as 3rd Baron Churchill in 1886, and was raised to the rank of a viscount in 1902.
The 7th duke of Marlborough, John Winston Spencer-Churchill (1822–1883), a prominent Conservative politician, was lord-lieutenant of Ireland 1876–1880, and when marquess of Blandford (the courtesy title borne by the duke’s eldest son in his father’s lifetime) was responsible for the act of 1856 called the “Blandford Act,” enabling populous parishes to be divided for purposes of Church work. In 1892 his grandson Charles Richard John Spencer-Churchill (b. 1871) became 9th duke of Marlborough.
MARLBOROUGH, JOHN CHURCHILL, 1st Duke of (1650–1722), English soldier, was born in the small manor house of Ash, in Musbury, Devonshire, near Axminster, in May or June 1650. Arabella Churchill, his eldest sister, and the mother of the duke of Berwick, was born in the same house on the 28th of February 1648. They were the children of Winston Churchill
of Glanville Wotton in Dorset and Elizabeth the fourth daughter of Sir John Drake, who died in 1636; his widow, after the close of the civil war, received her son-in-law into her own house. From 1663 to 1665 John Churchill went to St Paul’s school, and there is a tradition that during this period he showed the bent of his taste by reading and re-reading Vegetius De re militari.
When fifteen years old he became page of honour to the duke of York, and about the same time his sister Arabella became maid of honour to the duchess, two events which contributed greatly to the advancement of the Churchills. On the 14th of September 1667 he received through the influence of his master a commission in the Guards, and left England for service at Tangier but returned home in the winter of 1670–1671. For a short interval Churchill remained in attendance at the court, and it was during this period that the natural carefulness of his disposition was shown by his investing in an annuity a present of £5,000 given him by the duchess of Cleveland.
In June 1672, when England to her shame sent six thousand troops to aid Louis XIV. in his attempt to subdue the Dutch, Churchill was made a captain in the company of which the duke of York was colonel, and soon attracted the attention of Turenne, by whose profound military genius the whole army was directed. At the siege of Nimeguen Churchill acquitted himself with such success that the French commander predicted his ultimate rise to distinction. When Maestricht was besieged in June 1673 he saved the life of the duke of Monmouth, and received the thanks of Louis XIV. for his services. In 1678 he was married to Sarah Jennings (b. June 5, 1660), the favourite attendant on the Princess Anne, younger daughter of the duke of York. Her father, Richard Jennings of Sandridge, near St Albans, had twenty-two brothers and sisters; one of the latter married a London tradesman named Francis Hill, and their daughter Abigail Hill afterwards succeeded her cousin the duchess of Marlborough as favourite to Queen Anne.
On the accession of James II. the Churchills received a great increase in fortune. Colonel Churchill had been created a Scotch peer as Lord Churchill of Eyemouth on the 21st of December 1682; and as a reward for his services in going on a special mission from the new monarch to Louis XIV. he was
