The King's Henchman

by Anthony Adolph

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  NOTES ON SOURCES

  FOREWORD

  ‘a soul composed of the eagle and the dove…’ Abraham Cowley, The Civil War (1643).

  ‘his agents were his own servants…’, John Cooper, The Queen’s Agent, p. 163.

  PRELUDE – THE GREAT COACH Thursday, 12 September 1678

  Thursday, 12 September 1678. The gates of Windsor Castle are thrown wide open…’ The Prelude is a fictionalised account of his visit to the French Ambassador. The visit really took place that day. The ongoing negotiations for the French subsidy were discussed and the ambassador did, when reporting the meeting back to Paris, express his surprise that someone who held no ministerial office should have been so closely involved with such sensitive negotiations. Jermyn’s world-view is extrapolated from his Freemasonry and a careful study of how 17th Century Britons saw their past, and his views on international politics are extrapolated from letters he wrote from the Restoration onwards. The purported savagery shown by the Spanish to the Incas was much reported. Jermyn’s appearance is taken from the portrait painted of him by Lely some six years earlier and knowledge of his health extracted from his and other people’s letters.

  ‘recalling prolific tales’ Nathaniel Angelo of Eton, a friend of Milton’s, raged that all of Henrietta Maria’s children ‘were Jermyn’s bastards’, 13 August 1660, Captain Francis Robinson to Nicholas, S.P.Dom., 10.

  ‘had entrusted these incredibly sensitive negotiations…’ The letter in which Barillon described Jermyn’s visit to his lodgings in Windsor on 12 September 1678 is in Correspondence politique, sous-serie Angleterre, vol.130, f. 281-282v, including his comment ‘qu’un homme si esloigne du ministere ne devroit estre’.

  EDUCATION OF A COURTIER 1605-1622

  ‘he has long used it and finds no hurt…’ quoted without source in the History of Parliament’s article on Sir Thomas Jermyn.

  ‘They found her sweating and shivering violently…’ Elizabeth Jermyn’s death is described in a letter of J. Packer to Winwood dated 31 January 1604/5, which related that Lady Jermyn ‘has forsaken Hanworth till time efface the memory of the lamentable accident to Sir Thomas Germayne’s only daughter (a child), who was poisoned by eating a piece of bread and butter spread with rat’s bane. One of Sir Maurice Berkley’s sons was also in danger from the same cause’ (Buccleugh MSS at Montagu House, quoted in Hervey, Rushbrook p. 344). The opening of this chapter is an imaginative reconstruction of the events that surrounded this event. The precise time that Jermyn was taken to Rushbrook is not recorded.

  ‘Brutus’s temple of Apollo, where Brutus’s body lay…’. John Hardynge’s Chronicle, ch. xvi.

  ‘too short to read all sorts of books…’ Gramont’s Memo
irs, 1859 edition, p. 353.

  THE MADRID EMBASSY 1622-3

  ‘On Friday, 7 March 1623, there was a sharp knock…’ This story is told in Lockyer, Roger; Buckingham, The Life and Political Career of George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham 1592-1628. Longman, London and New York, citing the Denmilne Mss 33.1.10.21; Harl. Ms 1581.352 and Harl. Ms 3638 f. 125; HMC 8 Pt 1 Appendix, Digby Mss.

  PENETRATING THE LOUVRE 1624-8

  ‘Little Madame…’ Cabala.

  ‘a soul composed of the eagle and the dove…’ Abraham Cowley, The Civil War (1643).

  ‘saw him gladly…’ Paris, 5 August 1627, Venetian Ambassador to Doge and Senate, S.P. Ven.

  ‘to set Buckingham’s party by the ears…’ August 1627, Venetian Ambassador, S.P. Ven.

  TWO DISPUTED CASES OF PATERNITY 1628 – 1635

  Tom Killigrew was performing this task…’ The story of Tom Killigrew is in Cunningham, P., Letters of Horace Walpole, London, 1857-9.

  ‘There are several other stories of similar incidents…’ Other stories referred to here are one recorded by Sir John Percival and heard by him from George Clarke, who became a Page to the King on 20 March 1627/8 (H.M.C. vol. 7 p. 244, Earl of Egremont’s Mss); by Lord Dartmouth (in a footnote to Burnett), who had it in turn from Sir Francis Compton, whose mother heard it from Mrs Seymour who claimed to have witnessed the event; and one by Peyton, quoted in Jesse.

  ‘as to faith, or sin of the flesh…’ 25 August 1636, Gregory Panzani to Rome, repeating the words of her confessor, Fr Phillip’s words, in Vatican Papers vol. 39 p. 96 qu. Green, Letters.

  ‘he is so dark that I am ashamed of him…’ Henrietta Maria to Mme de St George, Bethune MS 9293 f. 5, Bib. Du Roi, quoted in Strickland, p. 187.

  ‘His size and fatness supply the want of beauty…’ 1630, Henrietta Maria to Mme de St George, Imperial Library, St Petersburg quoted in Strickland, p. 187.

  ‘he is so fat and so tall…’ 1630, Henrietta Maria to Mme de St George, Bethune MS 9293 f. 5, Bib. Du Roi, quoted in Strickland, p. 187.