In terms of his physical impact on London, Jermyn remains a largely unsung hero.
Work on Greenwich Palace ceased when Henrietta Maria died in 1669. But at the end of the century Sir Christopher Wren was commissioned to complete what Jermyn had started. Wren expanded his design from two to four blocks, retaining Jermyn’s original plans for the vista between the Thames and the Queen’s House, but making the palace itself much bigger. The palace became the Royal Naval Hospital and is still one of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring buildings in London.
The Church of St James’s, Westminster, which Jermyn had financed to the tune of £7,000, was finished soon after his death. Charles granted the freehold of the site to the Church of England and soon afterwards St James’s became an independent parish as Jermyn had wished.
On Monday, 13 July 1685, while James II was still getting used to his new throne, the Anglican Bishop of London, attended by an impressive retinue of clergy, processed into St James’s Square and up to the doorway of Jermyn’s house.
On the steps stood Jermyn’s faithful lawyer Martin Folkes, who handed over the title deeds of the church to the Bishop. Having worked for so long with his master towards that moment, Folkes alone knew how proud Jermyn would have been with this achievement.
Thanking Folkes graciously, the Bishop rounded the corner and proceeded up Duke of York Street, crossed Jermyn Street and entered St James’s Church. While the Bishop solemnly consecrated the church, Thomas and Harry Jermyn took their seats near Folkes and Sir Christopher Wren. They listened happily as the choir sent the first of very many hymns of praise echoing round the fine barrel-vaulting of Jermyn’s church of St James’s, Westminster.
The Great Fire of London of 1666, which Jermyn had feared might destroy St James’s, actually stimulated its expansion.
From the start, the City fathers had feared St James’s would draw new builders away from their Square Mile. In 1663 they had even lobbied Parliament, unsuccessfully, for legislation banning any further development by Jermyn in Westminster. Although the post-Fire building regulations issued by the Privy Council adopted many of the standards set by Jermyn at St James’s, including wider streets, paving and a sewerage system – all hitherto unknown in the City – many Londoners chose to move to St James’s and build their new houses there instead.
In his later years, Jermyn had the satisfaction of seeing many other developments taking place around St James’s, all inspired by what he had done.
Jermyn’s cousin Jack Berkeley, Sir Thomas Bond and Sir George Downing were amongst the many men who constructed their own classically-styled squares and streets – including Berkeley Square, Bond Street and Downing Street, nearby.
The foundations of King’s Square, Soho, planned in direct imitation of St James’ Square, were laid in 1680. After Jermyn’s death, a chess-board of other squares based on St James’s would spread out across the fields to the north and west to encompass the villages of Knightsbridge, Kensington and Chelsea. That these areas would succumb to brick and mortar is inevitable. But the stately grace of the nature of the developments was set by Jermyn.
Not for nothing has Jermyn been hailed as ‘the founder of the West End’.
Finally, on the sunny evening of Wednesday 28 September 2011, we came back, descendants of Jermyn’s heirs, writers whom he had inspired, and residents of the area he had created, to the corner of St James’s Square and Duke of York Street, to witness the unveiling of a plaque, by the young Marquess of Bristol, Jermyn’s senior ancestral nephew, on the wall of Chatham House, home of The Royal Institute of International Affairs, which stands on the site of the house in which Jermyn died. It reads:
Look left to St James’s Square, and right to St James’s Church in Jermyn Street. All this was the inspiration of one man: HENRY JERMYN, EARL OF ST ALBANS, K.G., 1605-1684, diplomat, favourite of Queen Henrietta Maria and ‘Founder of the West End’, who died in his house on this site.
The wording, like the plaque itself, was my idea, a thankful nod to the man who had proved such a rich and fascinating subject for research throughout my adult life.
For me, the unveiling of the plaque was full of resonance of that first, previous commemoration of his life, back in 1685. A small green plaque, to tell passers-by a little of who Jermyn was, and what he had achieved.
I felt it was the least he deserved.
The Westminster green plaque commemorating Henry Jermyn
ELEGY
January 1684
By thee, St Albans, living we did learn
The art of life, and by thy light discern
The truth which men dispute; but by thee dead
Were taught upon the world’s gay pride to tread
And that way sooner master it than he
To whom both Indies tributary be.
Anon, An elegy on the death of the most illustrious lord, the Earl of St Albans.
In spring 1684, before the Glorious Revolution had set Europe on such a different course to the one Jermyn had intended, Mr Deacon the bookseller put a pamphlet on sale at his shop at the sign of the Angel in ‘Guilt-spur Street-Without-Newgate’.
It was entitled An elegy on the death of the most illustrious lord, the Earl of St Albans and included an epitaph:
Hail! sacred house in which his relics sleep;
Blest marble, give me leave t’approach and weep.
Unto thy self, great spirit, I will repeat
Thy own brave story; tell thy self how great
Thou were in Mind’s empires, and how all
Who out-live thee see but the funeral of glory;
And if yet some virtuous be,
They but the apparitions are of thee.
The Elegy included some curious lines:
Let us contemplate thee (brave soul), and though
We cannot track the way which thou didst go
In thy celestial journey, and our heart
Expansion wants to think what now thou art,
How bright and wide thy glories, yet we may
Remember thee as thou went in thy clay;
Great without title, in thy self alone
A mighty lord, thou stood obliged to none
…….
And now my sorrows follow thee, I tread the milky way
And see the snowy head of Atlas far below, while all the high-
Swollen buildings seem but atoms to my eye.
How small seems greatness here! how not a span
His empire who commands the Ocean,
Both that which boasts so much its mighty ore,
And th’ other which with pearl hath paved its shore!
The elegy was anonymous but the style is remarkably similar to D’Avenant’s. It may have been written as a parting gift, in anticipation of Jermyn’s inevitable demise, before the poet felt the chill embrace of death in 1668. Only D’Avenant, after all, could have had the temerity to follow Jermyn’s soul beyond death, just as his spirit had flown in pursuit of the dreams Jermyn had shared with Rupert and Endymion Porter half a century earlier.
The day after New Years’ day 1684 dawned bitter and clear. In Jermyn’s bedchamber in St James’ Square the fire blazed bright. Outside, the hoar frost bit deep and the Thames was frozen solid.
We can dare imagine the final scene.
Jermyn’s old servant, Sarah Jamett, came in and stoked the fire. She turned to smile at Jermyn, but it was not her face that he saw. Pale as ice and framed by dense red curls, it was the face of Elizabeth I, his little sister’s putative godmother.
Sitting on his father’s knee, enveloped happily in a sweet-smelling cloud of tobacco smoke, Jermyn listened now as the old man told him the sorrowful story of the little sister who died, on a bitterly cold day such as this, so soon before he was born.
The tobacco smoke lifted and with it the darkness. He found himself standing in sunlight. He sniffed the sneezy smell of the meadow grasses and saw the dog-roses that choked the hedgerows with their flower-burdened stems. D
own to the Lark he ran, through the haze of golden pollen thrown up into the noonday air by his grandfather’s munching cows. The cows lifted their heads to stare in surprise as he and his brothers, Robert and Thomas, dashed past, whooping with joy.
Calling after them, he tripped but felt gentle hands catching him. It was his mother, her face young again, now older, and now it was the face of Lord Bacon, his brows furrowed quizzically. Through the heady meadows they strolled and, while the woodpeckers drummed on the trees in the wood, Bacon talked to him of cows, of journeys to Venus and of the swift passage of souls through the heliocentric solar system.
The drumming was louder now, the beat of drums themselves, and Jermyn peeked eagerly round Bacon’s legs to see the oak doors of the audience chamber at St James’s Palace fly open.
Sweeping down like a bejewelled wave, the double row of courtiers bowed low to James I and his fair-faced consort Buckingham, who tipped his sombrero jauntily at Jermyn as he swaggered past. Turning his head to follow him, Jermyn saw him pass through the archway of El Escorial and into the bright sunlight of the grand salon of the Louvre.
Jermyn followed Buckingham in, his entire frame trembling in anticipation of what might happen next.
The stately drums thudded louder as he approached the crowd of half-remembered courtiers. His heart racing, he ran through the throng, pushing people aside, searching everywhere.
At last he caught sight of her – again, again, after so many years. Tears welled up in his eyes as she turned to face him. Following Lord Kensington’s lead, he swept a low bow, the drums thudding now in his own temples as he raised his head again. Her deep brown Tuscan eyes flashed bright as her gaze settled on him. Her brows furrowed, as if struggling to remember the details of some precious vision. Yet this vision was not some fragment of memory from the past, but a glimpse OF the decades that stretched out before them.
He stood staring at her, his mouth half-open, trying to speak.
‘The future…’, he stammered.
‘No’, he heard Richelieu reply sharply, ‘nothing is certain: it is for you to forge your own destiny’.
Now he and Henrietta Maria ran, her hand in his, through the flower gardens of St James’s Palace and out onto the terraces of Saint-Germain. Together they stopped, breathless, gazing out over the valley of the Seine, their hands resting on the damp moss on the stone balustrade. In the forest, pheasants rasped their klaxon-mating calls. ‘Wake! Wake!’ they seemed to cry.
As the drumming continued, he turned to Henrietta Maria as they stepped out onto the balcony of the Queen’s House and gazed with pride over the newly laid-out gardens of Greenwich. Henrietta Maria looked old now, grey hairs whisping around her temples and onto the pillows of her deathbed at Colombes.
He spoke softly: ‘May God and the angels protect you’.
‘Adieu’, she whispered back.
The drumming was stately now, and more remote. He was alone, standing at the window of his house in St James’s Square, gazing out across the rooftops to the crenelated towers of St James’s Palace. Somewhere nearby, the voice of Saint-Évremond was repeating words from that memorable letter he once wrote to Jermyn, about love in old age. ‘Monsieur des Yveteaux… He died at eighty years of age, causing a Saraband to be played to him, a little before he expired, that his soul, as he expressed himself, might slide away the easier.
You’ll not pitch upon music to soften the hardships of that voyage…’
No music, then.
Below him, and silent in the rosy-fingered dawn, England lay peacefully under her blanket of snow. Villagers dragged what little firewood their lords had allowed them home to their dank cottages. Farmers sat by warm hearths in village alehouses complaining, as they had since time immemorial, about the weather. Young nobles, splendid in their plumed hats and long, richly-braided coats, admired the elegant spirals their sharp skates were carving on the frozen surfaces of lakes.
Jermyn glimpsed the glint of the Channel and saw the verdant hills of Albion spread out below him. About him, the silvery clouds were alive, as he had always imagined they would be, with cherubs. Above them smiled down Aphrodite and Dionysius, whilst Apollo’s chariot described its stately arc through the broad heavens.
Speeding over France, he caught sight of the snow-capped peaks of the Pyrenees below his feet. At high noon he passed over Madrid and then the shimmering peaks of the Sierra Andalusia, and the dazzling expanse of the Mediterranean lay before him.
He turned, suddenly hesitant as the cool afternoon air brushed his cheek. D’Avenant hovered behind him, smiling.
‘Go on’, cried the poet. ‘You know the way!’
Beyond the sea, the snowy head of Mount Atlas rose majestically above the North African coast. He crossed Africa, pink and brown, below him.
He reached the eastern coast at sunset and started to cross the narrow strip of ocean, glittering in the last rays of the sun.
There, before him, lay Madagascar.
And, turning, he saw her by his side again.
APPENDICES
THE CALENDAR IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
Until 1752, the English legal year began on 25 March; thus, 24 March 1660 was recorded as 24 March 1659, or 24 March 1659/60. Until 1752, the English did not use Leap Years and were, in consequence, an increasing number of days behind the Continent.
When Jermyn was alive, there was a lapse of 10 days, and thus the date of Henrietta Maria’s death, 31 August 1669 in England was 10 September 1669 in France. Confusing in itself, these discrepancies become yet more mentally-taxing when Englishmen on the Continent, writing to England, sometimes used the French calendar and on other occasions the English. A further layer of complexity is added when editors of printed letters correct dates to modern style without saying so, leading further writers to think they were original dates, and thus to correct them again.
Thus, although Henrietta Maria died on 10 September in France, which was 31 August in England, the ambiguous renderings of these dates have led some writers to re-correct, making her date of death, as it would have been in England, 21 August – which is wrong.
In the endnotes, the dates of documents are given as they were written in their original form. In the text, dates between 1 January and 24 March are corrected to the modern English year and are given from point of view of seventeenth century England, even when they took place (and thus were dated differently) on the Continent.
RED HERRINGS
There are three contemporary portraits of Henry Jermyn: a miniature in the Royal Collection at Windsor; one of Jermyn as a young cavalier by Van Dyck (the full-length original was at Rushbrook, and at least one copy, at Ickworth, and various engravings based on it exist) and Lely’s 1674 portrait of Jermyn in his Garter Robes, copies of which are at Ickworth, Cirencester Park and Kedleston Hall. In addition, several cartoons of Jermyn appear in anti-Royalist propaganda news-sheets.
However, he also appears in John Singleton Copley’s painting Charles I Demanding the Five Impeached Members of the House of Commons, now in Boston Public Library, Massachusetts. Working in the 1790s, Copley researched his painting meticulously, and based the depictions of each character on original sources, hence Jermyn is depicted faithfully from his portrait by Van Dyck. But Copley’s research let him down on one point: on 4 January 1642, when this dramatic event took place, Jermyn was already in exile in Paris.
In the course of research I found two letters supposedly by Jermyn but which are not. The first is addressed to William Murray in 1642 and was printed by Parliament (‘Three Letters of Dangerous Consequence’ Harvard Library; Gay 642.1710). It stands out for its uncharacteristically florid style and was clearly composed by hostile propagandists. The second is an undated clerk’s copy at Woburn Abbey (HMC 39(9)) of one from ‘H. St Albans’ to Lord Southampton in which the writer begs leave to attend Parliament after three years’ disgrace. Between the Restoration and Southampton’s death in 1667, the records of the House of Lords show that Jermyn was n
ever absent for such a long period. Apart from the name at the bottom – which I believe the clerk simply got wrong – the letter seems to have nothing to do with Jermyn at all.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Copious thanks go to the many people who have helped me in this work since it began in 1992, including my mother, who bought me my first word-processor to help me start working on this book, and also the Earl Bathurst; Peter Beauclerk-Dewar; W. B. Bellinger; Edmund Berkeley jnr; Martin Biddle; Mary Billot; the Marquess of Bristol; Dean Bubier; Ian Burton; Sir Michael Bunbury; Janice H. Chadbourne; Alan Clark; Nick Crowe; Dan Cruickshank; Jane Cunningham; Elizabeth English; Aude Fitzsimons; Simon Fowler; Michael Gandy; Lita Garcia; Paul Gaskell; John German; Craig Goldman; Adam Green; J. M. Hamill; Mrs W. H. for her great generosity; Dr Kate Harris; Dr Mary Hesse; Professor Ronald Hutton; Leslie Jermyn; David H. Johnson; Dr Henry Lancaster; Maggie Lewis; Cécile Maincion; Justin H. Martin; Rosalind K. Marshall; Christine Mason; Ann Mitchell; Dr Richard Mortimer; Dr Maureen Mulvihill (for her pioneering work on the Villiers clan); Pamela Palgrave; Jeremy Palmer; Dr N. Aubertin-Porter; Vincent Quesniaux; Mary Robertson; A.M.J. Rothschild; Chris Schofield; Dr Malcolm Smuts; Chris Stanton; Gillian Tindall; S.R. Tomlinson; Cliff Webb; David Williams; Dr Louise Yeoman: and also the staff at the Beaney Institute, Canterbury, the British Library and the Bodleian Library.
I would like to acknowledge the advice and encouragement of Tony Bentley; Paul Sidey; Michael Alcock; Anna Power and Andrew Lownie. James Essinger, author of Jacquard’s Web, Spellbound and Cantia, gave me an enormous quantity of enthusiastic encouragement and advice on the text. Without him, this book may never have emerged from its chrysalis, nor taken the form it has now. The novelist Fiona Mountain also provided this book with an extraordinary boost, when she decided to base her novel Cavalier Queen on it, turning the real Jermyn into an admirably believable, and enormously likeable romantic fictional hero. My great thanks go to the Canterbury Literary Agency for representing this boom so successfully, and to Martin Rynja of Gibson Square, for having the vision to accept and publish it. Finally, though any remaining faults are entirely mine, Scott Crowley has expended much time checking and proof reading the manuscript at various stages of its existence – and encouraging me, unfalteringly, throughout.
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