King's Mistress, Queen's Servant: The Life and Times of Henrietta Howard

by Tracy Borman

  Their family ties broken, the Howards turned to friends for assistance. Henry O’Brien, Earl of Thomond, was distantly related to them by marriage. A staunch Hanoverian and former Privy Councillor, he had gone on to a successful military career as colonel of a Regiment of Dragoons. After the death of his father, his mother had married Charles’s brother Henry, 6th Earl of Suffolk, and lived with him at Audley End. Lord Thomond’s estate, Shortgrove, was at nearby Saffron Walden, and he agreed that Charles and Henrietta could stay with him there for the summer of 1712. While he might have genuinely taken pity on the couple, it is more likely that he invited them as a deliberate slight to his stepfather. He did not charge them a rent, and they were only obliged to lay out a few guineas for the servants.

  It was common for the nobility to stay at each other’s country houses during the summer months, when stench and disease made the capital less attractive. The Howards might have succeeded in presenting it as such were it not for the fact that Charles left his wife alone there for all but two weeks of their sojourn while he returned once more to London.

  The humiliation that Henrietta suffered was acute. Her husband had been with her for only a fraction of their six-and-a-half-year marriage, and during that time she had endured a seemingly endless cycle of cruelty, indignity and hardship. Her respectable life as a gentleman’s daughter had been transformed into one of misery and humiliation as the wife of a notorious drunk and philanderer. The shame of her situation compelled her to live increasingly apart from society, ‘concealing myself and my Misery from ye world’, and quietly eking out the meagre funds that her husband’s excesses left her with in order to preserve a semblance of respectability. But with Charles showing no inclination to be discreet in his pursuits, this was an ever more impossible plight.

  Charles’s neglect betrayed what was by now a complete lack of affection towards his young wife – a fact of which she was all too painfully aware. Among Henrietta’s correspondence is a letter that she wrote to her husband some twenty years later. This letter, which runs to several pages, makes up for the absence of surviving correspondence from the early years of the Howards’ marriage. Even though it was written two decades after the events it describes, its accuracy is proven by various other sources, notably the legal papers within the Hobart family archives and eye-witness accounts given at the time of their divorce.

  ‘During ye space of 6 years and a haf yt you pretended to live with me, you were absent above half of ye time,’ she complained. ‘Your absence plainly show’d ye greatest indifference.’ This was hardly the married life that Henrietta had imagined during her childhood at Blickling. But loneliness, shame and neglect were as nothing to what she was about to endure. In the same letter she reflected: ‘I must confess them periods of splendour and happiness comparatively with the dreadful Scenes that followed which I tremble even to repeat, and which humanity wou’d force ye most barbarous to commiserate.’11 At least while Charles was so often absent, Henrietta was shielded from the effects of his temper. Living with him on a daily basis would prove a far worse fate.

  The couple were forced to take up lodgings together in London when they had exhausted Lord Thomond’s hospitality. Although they had lived rent-free that summer, Charles had continued to fritter away their resources, and they were now able to afford only the meanest of dwellings in Beak Street, an unsavoury part of the capital. What was worse, Charles had by now accumulated such substantial debts that they were obliged to assume a false name in order to escape his creditors. So it was that a ‘Mr and Mrs Smith’ and their young son moved into Mr Penhallow’s lodgings towards the end of 1712.

  Living under the same roof as his wife and child did nothing to check Charles’s habits; if anything, it made them worse. To drinking and gambling were added ‘other pleasures which a wife is entitled to call crimes’, for Charles continued to prefer the company of whores to that of his young spouse. Such was his indifference towards Henrietta that he did not attempt to conceal the fact from her.

  While Charles enjoyed a life of excess and increased the burden of their debts, Henrietta and their six-year-old son Henry were forced to endure penury and degradation. ‘I there Suffer’d all that Poverty and ye whole train of miseries that attend it can suggest to any ones imagination, nor was this all, I was unpitied by him who had brought me into these calamities, I was dispised and abused by him tho’ he often knew me under the pressure and Smart of hunger . . . he has known me rise and go to bed without meat, when he could have come home in surfeits to me who was actually starving.’ Her drawn and wasted appearance attracted the pity of a neighbour, Mrs Anne Cell, who often invited her to take dinner or supper at her house. Henrietta accepted gratefully, but Mrs Cell guessed that she would not have done so ‘had she not been in ye utmost want’.12 Her clothes also betrayed the impoverished situation into which she had sunk. They were by now so worn and threadbare that her landlady, Mrs Hall, offered to mend them for her in exchange for Henrietta looking after her young child for a few hours.

  In the shame and humiliation that such circumstances wrought upon her, Henrietta must have been glad of the need to disguise her true identity with a false name. Her only solace was her son, upon whom she lavished as much care and attention as her circumstances would allow. Neighbours observed that the pair were inseparable, and that Henrietta was constantly looking out for Henry’s welfare – giving him the best offerings from their meagre fare, repairing his clothes while her own were threadbare, and keeping him amused during the long and lonely days in their shabby lodgings.13

  When Charles was at home, he treated his wife little better than a servant. She cooked, cleaned and carried out any other task that her husband demanded. Mrs Hall described how she once saw Henrietta struggling to carry a grate ‘with a Red Hot fire in it’ from one room to another and back again on the same night, while her slothful husband looked on.14 The couple were evidently no longer able to afford enough coal to heat more than one room at a time.

  The harder Henrietta worked, the more disdain she incurred from her husband. According to Mrs Cell, she behaved in ‘ye most Engaging & obedient manner that was possible’ towards him, but he never showed any tenderness or compassion towards her.15 The couple’s debts continued to mount and Charles was obliged to keep a low profile at home. Frustrated at being deprived of his treasured vices, he sought solace in tormenting his young wife. Frustration turned increasingly to violence, and Henrietta now bore the full brunt of her husband’s temper.

  Although Charles’s frequent absences had caused misery and humiliation for his wife, she soon came to realise that they were far preferable to the times when he was with her. In a testament that she later wrote about her marriage, she recalled that ‘such frequent separations screened me in some measure from the effects of your temper which I afterwards severely felt’.16 With the prospect of violence ever present, Henrietta lived in a state of permanent terror. Her landlady noticed that she seemed to always be ‘under a Constant Awe, & Apprehension, scarce daring even to speake to him’. She often saw her in tears, which she believed was ‘owing to his ill usage of her’.17

  Trapped in a loveless and violent marriage, forced to endure poverty and deprivation, and unable to call on friends or family for help, Henrietta’s plight was now desperate. But she refused to follow the path to certain ruin that her husband was driving them along. In the depths of her misery, she hatched a plan to restore their fortunes. The means of salvation was a far cry indeed from the insalubrious lodgings of London’s Beak Street.

  The Electoral court at Hanover, in Germany, had for some time been a source of great interest and speculation for politicians and courtiers in England, for it was from here that the successor to Queen Anne looked set to hail. The House of Hanover’s claim to the British throne had arisen from a period of turbulence and dynastic uncertainty in Britain towards the end of the seventeenth century. In the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688, the Catholic King James II had lost his kingdom to his n
ephew and son-in-law, the Protestant William of Orange. William, who ruled from 1689 until 1702, and his wife and co-ruler Mary II (James’s elder daughter) had no direct heirs. Their successor, James’s younger daughter, Anne, had had many children from her marriage to Prince George of Denmark, but none had reached adulthood. William, Duke of Gloucester, the last to survive, had died in 1700. This had made the issue of the succession, which had been pushed to the fore when James II had been driven from the throne, even more acute. In order to exclude the Jacobite claimants and a variety of other Catholic individuals with better claims than the Hanoverians, Parliament had passed an Act of Settlement in 1701 which had provided for the succession of the Electoral House of Hanover.

  The Hanoverians’ claim to the British throne derived from King James I’s daughter Elizabeth, who in 1613 had married Frederick V, Elector Palatine. In 1658 their youngest daughter, Sophia, had married Ernest Augustus of the staunchly Protestant house of Brunswick-Luneburg, in north Germany. The marriage had been an outstanding success in dynastic terms, bringing forth six sons and a daughter, all of whom had survived into adulthood. Widowed in 1698, Sophia was now the heiress-presumptive to the British throne.

  Political events in Germany must have seemed very distant to the Howards. Indeed, in their impoverished state, even the court in London was well beyond their reach. But they nevertheless inspired Henrietta’s plan for advancement, for she seized upon the idea that they could go to Hanover in an attempt to secure themselves positions in the future royal court. Given that she and her husband were out of society, and therefore not party to the latest news from court, it is extraordinary that she should conceive such a plan on her own. Her correspondence contains no clue as to what provided the inspiration.

  It was certainly a bold move. Throughout history, royal families have been petitioned for favour by high-born ladies and gentlemen, and the Hanoverians were no exception. But Henrietta had little apart from her aristocratic connections to recommend her, and these were in a country with which the Hanoverians were not yet familiar: it is doubtful that Electress Sophia would have known of either the Hobarts of Blickling or the Howards of Audley End. Neither would Henrietta be able to impress the German courtiers with fine clothes or extravagant hospitality: the voyage alone would take up most of any funds that she managed to raise. The plan therefore rested upon Sophia having enough of an eye to the future to fill her court with English nobility, regardless of the paucity of their means.

  Henrietta risked everything to bring her plan to fruition. Heavily in debt and with no more funds to call on, she decided to sell what little furniture and goods they had left, ‘Beds & Bedding not Excepted’.18 The shame of doing so was great, and Henrietta disguised herself with a hood and cape as she made her way to the nearby merchant’s, where she sold every last piece. This raised enough money to pay for the voyage to Hanover. The road to salvation was now tantalisingly close. But for all her careful planning, she had not accounted for one crucial detail: the need to keep the money safe from her husband’s grasping reach.

  Henrietta had told Charles about the Hanover scheme and had persuaded him of the need to sell their goods in order to fund it. But while she had enthused about everything that was to be gained from a connection with the Electoral family, all Charles had seen was the prospect of some ready money. As soon as she returned with it, he stole and squandered the lot.

  Henrietta was devastated. She seemed destined to live a life of abject poverty, no matter how hard she tried to claw her way out of it. Her plan had not only failed, it had left her worse off than she had been before. With no resources, in either money or goods, the Howards were now unable to meet their weekly rent payments. Although their landlady, Mrs Hall, had been sympathetic towards Henrietta’s plight, she could not afford to let the couple live in her house for nothing, and they were once more obliged to seek new lodgings.

  Still going by the name of Smith to protect Charles from his creditors, the couple lived in a succession of cheap lodgings. The first of these was in Red Lion Street, Holborn, which was further east than Beak Street, in an even less desirable neighbourhood. Charles’s creditors soon caught up with him and, fearing arrest, he left Henrietta on her own as he sought alternative shelter. Her husband’s absences were no longer a thing to be feared, however; they brought her a welcome respite from his cruelty.

  Left to her own devices, Henrietta’s thoughts again turned to Hanover, and she began to save what little money she could from the modest half-yearly allowance provided by her inheritance. Charles was, unfortunately, integral to her plans. Their chances of success would be far greater if they were presented to the Hanoverian court as a respectable noble couple; the strict codes that governed high society would not have tolerated a noblewoman making the journey without her husband. Neither could they escape the country and travel under false names, since it was their family name that was the key to their success. But if Charles were to come out of hiding, he would almost certainly be arrested at the behest of his creditors. Henrietta took the bold step of going in person to entreat them to give him more time to pay his debts. The names of these creditors are not provided in Henrietta’s papers. We only know that she went to see them because of the long letter she wrote to her husband many years later, in which she recalled this and other episodes from her miserable early married life. That she succeeded in winning a temporary reprieve is as much a testament to her determination to improve her situation as it is to her skill in negotiation.19

  Having eased the burden of their debts, albeit temporarily, it was with renewed vigour that Henrietta now set about raising what money she could for the voyage. She gave up the rooms that she and her young son had shared in Red Lion Street and moved into Charles’s squalid lodgings.20 These consisted of one ‘very bad Room’, and the rent was one tenth of what their first London lodgings had cost almost three years before. Charles was evidently content to live in squalor if it meant he could spend what little money he had on drinking and whoring. Henrietta found him fully engaged in both pursuits when she and Henry arrived towards the end of 1713. By now she was all but immune to his depravities. As long as she could drag him away from them long enough to save the family from utter ruin, she would be content.

  Living in a ‘wretched manner’ and with no furniture left to sell, Henrietta cast about for other means to raise the money for Hanover. Some years before, she had been obliged to pawn the few items of jewellery she owned, and she now sold them all for good. But this still did not give the Howards sufficient funds for the voyage. Increasingly desperate, Henrietta contemplated selling her own hair and visited several wig-makers. Even this sacrifice was not enough, however, for the highest price she was offered was a mere eighteen guineas, which was significantly less than she had hoped for. Rather than being humbled by the fact that his wife was prepared to take such a step, Charles sneered that she should have accepted the money because it was more than her hair was worth.21

  Eventually, after more than a year of carefully putting by what she could from her inheritance, Henrietta had accumulated enough money to fund their trip to Hanover. While she was delighted at being at last able to carry out her plan, the prospect of Hanover also brought with it some anguish, because it meant being separated from her young son. Whether she could not afford to take him with them, or whether she judged the voyage too hard for a seven-year-old boy is not certain. Neither is it clear to whom she entrusted his care, although the strongest possibility is that he was taken in by his paternal uncle at Audley End. Whatever the case, Henry had become her only joy and comfort during the years of misery and hardship she had suffered, and the prospect of leaving him behind must have been painful.

  Thus, with only her wayward husband for company, and no great prospect of success, Henrietta set sail for Hanover.

  Chapter 3

  Hanover

  * * *

  THE ELECTORATE OF HANOVER lay between the Elbe and Weser rivers, the North Sea and the Harz mounta
ins, in what is today north-west Germany. Lacking both strong natural defences and manmade fortifications, this loosely united patchwork of territories was seen as easy prey for invaders, and therefore relied heavily upon the protection of the Holy Roman Empire, of which it formed part. The lack of unity within the Empire, however, made it an unreliable source of security, and Hanover’s vulnerable geographical position was further weakened by the lack of an army large enough to see off any would-be attacker. The Electorate therefore needed to find a powerful international ally, and thanks to the Act of Settlement of 1701, there was an ideal candidate: Britain, a country whose population and military forces dwarfed those of Hanover, now became her chief hope.

  When Queen Anne named the Hanoverians as her successors, it had a dramatic effect upon the prestige and importance of the Electorate. This in turn had a marked impact upon its architecture and culture. Hanover had changed little since medieval times. At the turn of the seventeenth century, when the nearby court began to rise in status, the appearance of the old city of Hanover was transformed. Handsome new public buildings and houses sprang up on every side, and the outskirts of the town, beyond the walls, also began to expand. It became the resort of wealthy nobles, eager to enhance their position at court, and new entertainments were introduced for their amusement.

  For all of Hanover’s improvements, it remained rather modest in scale and did not really compare with the magnificent new towns and cities that were springing up across Europe at this time. A contemporary English traveller, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, described it as ‘neither large nor handsome’, and the only thing that she found worthy of note was the opera house, which she declared was one of the best she had seen and even eclipsed that of Vienna.1 Lady Mary’s acerbic accounts form one of the best sources for Hanover and its court during this period. Although sometimes exaggerated for effect, they provide a shrewd – often unforgiving – reflection of the characters and customs within.