The Mistresses of Cliveden: Three Centuries of Scandal, Power and Intrigue in an English Stately Home

by Natalie Livingstone

  Plymouth and West Devon Record Office, Plymouth

  SR

  Staffordshire Record Office, Stafford

  TNA

  The National Archives, Kew

  URSC

  University of Reading Special Collections, Reading

  WL

  The Women’s Library @ LSE, London

  INTRODUCTION

  1 James Crathorne, Cliveden: The Place and the People (London: Collins & Brown, 1995), p. 186.

  2 Quoted in Dominic Sandbrook, Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles (London: Abacus, 2006), p. 645.

  PART I

  1. THE DUEL

  1 Pepys, The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 26 May 1667 (accessed online at www.pepysdiary.com).

  2 Peter Ackroyd, Thames: Sacred River (London: Vintage, 2008), p. 436.

  3 Pepys, 17 January 1668.

  4 Andrew Browning, ed., Memoirs of Sir John Reresby (London: Offices of the Royal Historical Society, 1991), pp. 58–9; Pepys, 22 July 1667; Carl Niemeyer, ‘Henry Killigrew and the Duke of Buckingham’, The Review of English Studies, 12/47 (1936), pp. 326–8.

  5 Christine Phipps, ed., Buckingham: Public and Private Man. The Prose, Poems and Commonplace Book of George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1985), p. 170.

  6 Pepys, 17 January 1668.

  7 Crathorne, Cliveden, p. 13.

  8 John Cockburn, The History of Duels (Edinburgh, 1888), p. 205.

  9 Charles II, A Proclamation against fighting of duels, 12 August 1660; quoted in Markku Peltonen, The Duel in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 206.

  10 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 88.

  11 Pepys, 17 January 1688; newsletters of Henry Muddiman, quoted in J. G. Muddiman, ‘The Duel between Buckingham and Shrewsbury, 1668’, Notes and Queries, 165 (1933), pp. 22–3.

  12 For accounts of the duel, see: Pepys, 17 January 1668; Anthony Hamilton, The Memoirs of Count Grammont, ed. Sir Walter Scott (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1905), pp. 360–1; newsletters of Henry Muddiman, quoted in Muddiman, ‘Duel between Buckingham and Shrewsbury’.

  13 Newsletters of Henry Muddiman, quoted in Muddiman, ‘Duel between Buckingham and Shrewsbury’.

  14 Pepys, 19 January 1668.

  15 Bulstrode Papers, 16 & 18 March 1668, quoted in John Harold Wilson, A Rake and His Times: George Villiers 2nd Duke of Buckingham (London: Farrar, Strauss and Young, 1954), p. 98.

  16 Newsletters of Henry Muddiman, Thursday 19 March 1668, quoted in Muddiman, ‘Duel between Buckingham and Shrewsbury’.

  2. ‘BEDS OF JEWELS AND RICH MINES OF GOLD’

  1 Rachel Newport to Sir R. Leveson, 27 March 1658, in HMC, Fifth Report (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1877), p. 145.

  2 Joan Wake, The Brudenells of Deene (London: Cassell and Company, 1953), p. 115.

  3 J. C. Gent, ‘An epithalamium upon the auspicious nuptials of the Right Honorable the Earl of Shrewsbury and the vertuous Lady Anne Brudnel’, 1658. Microfilm in University Library, Cambridge.

  4 Edward J. Dent, Foundations of English Opera: A Study of Musical Drama in England during the Seventeenth Century (New York: Da Capo Press, 1965), p. 106n.

  5 Antonia Fraser, King Charles II (London: Phoenix, 2002), p. 210.

  6 Faramerz Dabhoiwala, The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution (London: Penguin, 2013), pp. 304–5.

  7 Hamilton, Memoirs of Count Grammont, p. 132n.

  8 Pepys, 21 May 1662.

  9 Ibid.

  10 Dabhoiwala, The Origins of Sex, p. 51.

  11 ‘On the Ladies of the Court’, lines 30–35, in Court Satires of the Restoration, ed. John Harold Wilson (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1976), p. 4.

  12 Charles Beauclerk, Nell Gwyn (London: Macmillan, 2006), p. 87.

  13 Hamilton, Memoirs of Count Grammont, p. 225.

  14 Ibid.

  3. ‘HE CAME, HE SAW AND CONQUERED’

  1 Brian Fairfax, Memoirs of the Life of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, ed. Edward Arber (London, 1869), p. 4.

  2 Phipps, Buckingham: Public and Private Man, p. 5.

  3 Winifred Burghclere, George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham, 1628–1687: A Study in the History of the Restoration (London: John Murray, 1903), p. 89.

  4 Quoted in Burghclere, George Villiers, p. 81.

  5 Ian J. Gentles, ‘Fairfax, Thomas, third Lord Fairfax of Cameron (1612–1671)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008, accessed 9 July 2014).

  6 Hester W. Chapman, Great Villiers: A Study of George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham, 1628–1687 (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1949), p. 89.

  7 Quoted in Pierre Legouis, Andrew Marvell: Poet, Puritan, Patriot (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), p. 19.

  8 Original: British Museum. Quoted in Chapman, Great Villiers, p. 96.

  9 Letter to a lady’s confidante or servant, BL Add MS 27827, fols. 1, 2, quoted in Burghclere, George Villiers, p. 6.

  10 Fairfax, Memoirs of the Life of George Villiers, p. 6.

  11 Andrew Hopper, ‘Black Tom’: Sir Thomas Fairfax and the English Revolution (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), p. 117.

  12 George Villiers, ‘To His Mistress’, in Phipps, Buckingham: Public and Private Man, p. 141.

  13 Samuel Butler, Posthumous Works vol. 2, p. 72, quoted in Hamilton, Memoirs of Count Grammont, p. 163n.

  14 John Evelyn, The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. William Bray (London: Gibbings 1890), 19 September 1676.

  15 George Villiers, The Works of His Grace George Villiers Late Duke of Buckingham (London, 1715), vol. 1, pp. 137–8.

  16 Quoted in Chapman, Great Villiers, p. 100.

  17 Evelyn, Diary, 21 October 1671; Butler, Posthumous Works vol. 2, p. 72, quoted in Hamilton, Memoirs of Count Grammont, p. 163n.

  18 Pepys, 19 December 1666; Journal of the House of Lords, vol. 12, 1666–75, pp. 52–3.

  19 See the account of Cosimo III of Tuscany, quoted in Edward Langhans, ‘Post-1660 Theatres as Performance Spaces’, in A Guide to Restoration Theatre, ed. Sue Owen (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001).

  20 BL Harley MS 7005, fol. 56; Niemeyer, ‘Henry Killigrew and the Duke of Buckingham’.

  21 HMC, Seventh Report, Appendix, (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1879), p. 486.

  22 Countess Dowager of Roscommon to Mrs Frances Frescheville, quoted in Niemayer, ‘Henry Killigrew and the Duke of Buckingham’, p. 327; Pepys, 22 July 1667.

  23 Newsletter of Henry Muddiman, 19 September 1667. Quoted in Muddiman, ‘Duel between Buckingham and Shrewsbury’.

  24 Antoni Mączak, Travel in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), p. 49.

  4. A LONDON LOVE TRIANGLE

  1 Stuart Handley, ‘Talbot, Charles, duke of Shrewsbury (1660–1718)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn 2008).

  2 Dorothy H. Somerville, The King of Hearts: Charles Talbot, Duke of Shrewsbury (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1962), pp. 17–19.

  3 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, vol. 8 (November 1667–September 1668), p. 192.

  4 David C. Hanrahan, Charles II and the Duke of Buckingham (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2006), p. 104.

  5 Pepys, 6 February 1668.

  6 Quoted in Burghclere, George Villiers, pp. 196–7.

  7 Burghclere, George Villiers, p. 154–5.

  8 Roy Porter, London: A Social History (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1994) pp. 87–8.

  9 Evelyn, Diary, 7 September 1666.

  10 Pepys, 14 September 1668.

  11 Quoted in Alastair Bellany, ‘The Embarrassment of Libels: perceptions and representations of verse libelling in early Stuart England,’ in The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England, ed. Peter Lake and Steve Pincus (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), p. 154.

  12 Vicomtesse de Longueville quoted in Chapman
, Great Villiers, p. 95.

  13 Pepys, Friday 15 May 1668.

  14 Brian Fairfax quoted in Chapman, Great Villiers, p. 95.

  15 Quoted in Fairfax, Memoirs of the Life of George Villiers, p. 10.

  16 Brett Dolman, Beauty, Sex and Power: A Story of Debauchery and Decadent Art at the Late Stuart Court (London: Scala, 2012), pp. 94–5.

  17 Butler, Posthumous Works, vol. 2, p. 72, quoted in Hamilton, Memoirs of Count Grammont, p. 163n.

  18 William Wycherley, The Country Wife, 5.4.116–17.

  19 Kate Colquhoun, Taste: the Story of Britain through its Cooking (London: Bloomsbury, 2007); Joan Thirsk, Food in Early Modern England: phases, fads, fashions 1500–1760 (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2007).

  20 Hanrahan, Charles II and the Duke of Buckingham, p. 129.

  21 Hamilton, Memoirs of Count Grammont, pp. 356–9.

  22 Colbert to Lionne, 20 May 1669, quoted in Allan Fea, Some Beauties of the Seventeenth Century (London, 1907), p. 234.

  23 For other accounts of the incident, see HMC, Twelfth Report, Appendix, Part VII (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1890), p. 63; Pepys, 19 May 1669. Another attack on Killigrew is recorded in Hamilton, Memoirs of Count Grammont, pp. 358–9.

  24 Wilson, A Rake and His Times, p. 124.

  25 Nicholas Cross, The Cynosura, or, a saving star that leads to eternity (London, 1670), BoL.

  26 Pepys, 19 May 1669.

  27 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, vol. 10, 1670, p. 390; Hanrahan, Charles II and the Duke of Buckingham, pp. 119–20.

  28 Wilson, A Rake and His Times, p. 139.

  29 Sir E. Harley to Lady Harley, II March 1671, in Historical Manuscripts Commission, Manuscripts of his Grace the Duke of Portland preserved at Welbeck Abbey (London: H.M. Stationery Office) vol. 3, p. 322; Sir Dernard Gascon to Williamson, 9 January 1674, Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, November 1673–February 1675 (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1904), p. 98.

  30 Pepys, 23 November 1668.

  5. THE DRAMA OF POLITICS

  1 Villiers, The Works of His Grace George Villiers, vol. 1, p. 132.

  2 Wilson, Court Satires, p. 19n.

  3 Vicomtesse de Longueville quoted in Chapman, Great Villiers, p. 95.

  4 George Villiers, The Rehearsal, ed. A. G. Barnes (London: Methuen & Co., 1927), pp. 11–13.

  5 Quoted in Wilson, A Rake and His Times, p. 126.

  6 Montague Summers, The Restoration Theatre (London: Kegan Paul, 1934), p. 293.

  7 For a full account of the rivalry between Buckingham and Dryden, see John Harrington Smith, ‘Dryden and Buckingham: The Beginnings of the Feud’, Modern Language Notes, 69/4 (1954), pp. 242–5.

  8 John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, ed. W. D. Christie (Oxford: Clarendon, 1946), lines 547–54.

  9 Pepys, 28 June 1667.

  6. CONCEPTION

  1 Ackroyd, Thames, p. 167.

  2 Ibid., p. 125.

  3 Evelyn, Diary, 23 July 1679.

  4 Crathorne, Cliveden, p. 12; David Jacques, ‘Garden Design in the Mid-Seventeenth Century’, Architectural History, 44 (2001), p. 365.

  5 Charles Saumarez-Smith, ‘Supply and Demand in English Country House Building 1660–1740’, Oxford Art Journal, 11/2 (1998), pp. 3–9.

  6 Frank T. Melton, ‘A Rake Refinanced: The Fortunes of George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham, 1671–1685’, in Huntington Library Quarterly, 51/4, pp. 301–2.

  7 Ibid., p. 310.

  8 Ibid., pp. 300–1.

  9 Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, lines 561–2.

  10 Hanrahan, Charles II and the Duke of Buckingham, p. 131.

  11 Ibid.

  12 Melton, ‘A Rake Refinanced’, pp. 304–5.

  13 Ibid.

  14 William A. Pettigrew, Freedom’s Debt: The Royal African Company and the Politics of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1672–1752 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), p. 23.

  15 ‘Goodchild vs. Villiers’, TNA, C4/419/78, 1684.

  16 Chapman, Great Villiers, pp. 190–1.

  17 ‘Goodchild vs. Villiers’, TNA, C4/419/78, 1684.

  18 ‘Winde, William (?-1722)’ in Howard Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600–1840 (London: John Murray, 1978) pp. 902–5.

  19 Parklands Consortium, Cliveden: Landscape and Archeology Plan (unpublished report), vol. 1, p. 33.

  20 Evelyn, Diary, 23 July 1679.

  21 ‘Signior Dildo’, lines 45–48, in Wilson, Court Satires, p. 15.

  7. BETRAYALS

  1 HMC, Ninth Report, Part II: Appendix and Index (London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1884), pp. 35–6.

  2 Crathorne, Cliveden, p. 26.

  3 W. D. Christie, ed. Letters Addressed from London to Sir Joseph Williamson while plenipotentiary at the Congress of Cologne in the years 1673 and 1674 (London, 1874) vol. 2, pp. 105–6.

  4 Hanrahan, Charles II and the Duke of Buckingham, p. 158.

  5 Quoted in Burghclere, George Villiers, p. 295.

  6 Quoted in Burghclere, George Villiers, pp. 299–301.

  7 HMC, Ninth Report, Part II: Appendix and Index, pp. 36–7.

  8. ‘YOUR MOST UNHAPPY MOTHER’

  1 Joan Wake, The Brudenells of Deene (London: Cassell, 1953), p. 178.

  2 Anna Maria to Charles, NR, Buccleuch Collection, no. 45, vol. 1, letter 9.

  3 Ibid.

  4 Wilson, Court Satires, p. 29n.

  5 Charles to John Talbot, 27 November 1674, NR Buccleuch, no. 45, vol. 1, letter 26.

  6 Ibid.

  7 Charles to John Talbot, 27 March 1675, NR Buccleuch, no. 45, vol. 1, letter 28.

  8 Charles Talbot to John Talbot, undated, NR Buccleuch, letter 31.

  9 Charles Talbot to John Talbot, 27 November 1674, NR Buccleuch, no. 45, vol. 1, letter 26.

  10 Charles to John Talbot, 22 June 1675, NR Buccleuch, no. 45, vol. 1, letter 33.

  11 ‘Colin’, lines 64–75, in Wilson, Court Satires, p. 25.

  9. CONSTRUCTION

  1 Fairfax, Memoirs of the Life of George Villiers, p. 8.

  2 Hanrahan, Charles II and the Duke of Buckingham, p. 184.

  3 ‘Goodchild vs. Villiers’, TNA C6/419/78, 1684.

  4 Parklands Consortium, Cliveden: Landscape and Archeology Plan (unpublished report), vol. 1, p. 38.

  5 Christine MacLeod, Inventing the Industrial Revolution: the English Patent System, 1600–1800, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 26.

  6 Buckingham to Charles II, undated, BL Add MS 27872, fol. 34.

  7 ‘Goodchild vs. Villiers’, TNA C6/419/78, 1684.

  8 Estate vouchers, receipts and accounts, NLW, Cwmgwili Collection, nos. 838–49.

  9 George Villiers, The Lost Mistress, in Phipps, Buckingham: Public and Private Man, p. 147.

  10 ‘Goodchild vs. Villiers’, TNA C6/419/78, 1684.

  11 Ibid.

  12 John Fletcher. Gardens of Earthly Delight: The History of Deer Parks (Oxford: Windgather, 2011), p. 182.

  13 Cliveden Garden (National Trust, 2002), p. 3.

  14 Cliveden (National Trust, 1984) pp. 8–9; Evelyn, Diary, 23 July 1679.

  15 Andrea Wulf and Emma Giemen-Gamal, This Other Eden (London: Little, Brown, 2005), p. 18.

  10. THE LOST MISTRESS

  1 Alexander Pope, The Works of Alexander Pope (London: Gall & Ingliss, 1881), vol. 3, p. 153; see also Arthur Mizener, ‘Pope on the Duke of Buckingham’, Modern Language Notes, 53/5 (1938), pp. 368–9.

  2 ‘Commonplace Book’, in Phipps, Buckingham: Public and Private Man, p. 204.

  3 Melton, ‘A Rake Refinanced’, p. 299.

  4 Nicholas Cross, The Cynosura, or, a saving star that leads to eternity (London, 1670), BoL.

  5 Albert H. Tricomi, ‘Counting Insatiate Countesses: The Seventeenth-Century Annotations to Marston’s “The Insatiate Countess’”, Huntingdon Library Quarterly, 64 (2001).

  6 Burghclere, George Villiers, p. 151.

  PART II

  1. FROM RICHMOND TO ‘ROYAL WHORE’

  1
Hester W. Chapman, Mary II: Queen of England (London: Jonathan Cape, 1953), p. 96.

  2 Jonathan Swift, The Works of Jonathan Swift (Edinburgh: Archibald Constable & Co., 1814), Vol. 3 p. 103.

  3 Samuel Johnson and Alexander Chalmers, eds., The Works of the English Poets (London, 1810), vol. 6, p. 22.

  4 See John Cloake, Richmond Palace: Its History and Its Plan (London: Richmond Local History Society, 2000).

  5 John Van der Kiste, William and Mary: Heroes of the Glorious Revolution (Stroud: The History Press, 2008), p. 33.

  6 Molly McClain, ‘Love, Friendship and Power: Queen Mary II’s Letters to Frances Apsley’, Journal of British Studies, 47 (2008), pp. 505–27.

  7 Elizabeth Hamilton, William’s Mary: A Biography of Mary II (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1972), p. 19; Anne Somerset, Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (London: Harper Press, 2012), pp. 16–17.

  8 Frances Harris, A Passion for Government: The Life of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 15.

  9 Benjamin Bathurst, Letters of Two Queens (London, 1924), p. 44, p. 49, p. 58, p. 60.

  10 Somerset, Queen Anne, p. 27.

  11 ‘Diary of Dr Edward Lake’ in The Camden Miscellany (London: Camden Society, 1847) vol. 1, p. 5, 6, 8, 10.

  12 Ibid., p. 12.

  13 Van der Kiste, William and Mary, p. 51.

  14 Andrew Marvell, quoted in Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (London: Fontana, 1988), p. 263.

  15 Hamilton, William’s Mary, p. 51.

  16 Van der Kiste, William and Mary, pp. 72–5.

  17 Quoted in ibid., pp. 74–5.

  18 Hamilton, William’s Mary, pp. 155–8; Van der Kiste, William and Mary, pp. 81–2.

  19 Benjamin Bathurst, Letters of Two Queens (London: Robert Holden, 1924), p. 51.

  20 Quoted in Chapman, Mary II, pp. 101–2.

  21 David Onnekink, The Anglo-Dutch Favourite: The Career of Hans William Bentinck, 1st Earl of Portland, 1649–1709 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), p. 23.