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

by Tracy Borman

  Lady Suffolk soon developed a reputation for being one of the most successful dressers the Queen had ever had. Just a few months after her appointment, the Duke of Dorset (whose wife had ceded the post to her) wrote of the celebrations in Dublin for the King’s birthday, and claimed: ‘I believe more rich clothes were never seen together, except at St James’s, and some of them so well chosen, that one would have sworn a certain Countess of my acquaintance had given her assistance upon this occasion.’ Two years later, she was entrusted with the considerable responsibility of ordering the clothes ‘and other necessaries’ for the Princess Royal’s wedding.26

  Henrietta derived a great deal more satisfaction from her new position than she had as Woman of the Bedchamber. But its real appeal lay in the opportunity it gave her to pursue a life away from court. She was quick to take full advantage of this. During the summer immediately following her appointment, she spent a great deal of time at Marble Hill, arranging the interiors, organising the household, receiving friends, holding supper parties, and – above all – simply relishing being in the home that she had spent so many long hours dreaming about. One of her most frequent visitors was Alexander Pope. The fact that their letters dried up at around this time suggests that they were able to converse in person far more than before. Lady Suffolk must have been overjoyed that she was now so often in the company of the man who had proved her most loyal and supportive friend during the past few years of strife.

  As well as visiting Marble Hill, Henrietta also went on an excursion to Highclere in Hampshire, the estate of Robert Sawyer Herbert, with whom she had become acquainted when he was a Groom of the Bedchamber to George I. His estate was a convenient distance between Marble Hill and Amesbury, where the Duchess of Queensberry lived with Gay as a more or less permanent guest, and the two friends met there that summer. ‘Those that have a real friendship cannot be satisfied with general relations,’ Gay wrote when he heard of the trip. ‘They want to enquire into the minute circumstances of life that they may be sure things are as happy as they appear to be.’27

  Spending time with her friends that summer was a source of great joy for Henrietta, but it was also one of frustration. If she had longed to be free from court before, now that she had had more than the briefest glimpses of what her life could be like, she was desperate to escape for good. But Caroline was no more inclined to release her than she had been in the past. Even though George was spending more and more time in Hanover, where he was cultivating new romantic liaisons, she still saw Henrietta as instrumental to her hold over him. Knowing from bitter experience that it was futile to try to go against her mistress’s wishes, Henrietta instead began to further isolate herself from the established regime, including Walpole’s Whig ministry.

  As early as 1729, she had set herself firmly in opposition to the Prime Minister by supporting her friend Gay in a fierce controversy prompted by one of his plays. The Beggar’s Opera had been performed to great acclaim at the theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields the previous year, and the royal family themselves had been among the many who had thronged to see it. The play had made fun of Walpole and contained characters who were clearly supposed to be his wife and mistress. The joke was lost on neither the audience nor the minister, and the latter was furious at being so humiliated. The King and Queen had greatly enjoyed the performance, however, so he could do little to prevent its circulation. Only when he heard that Gay was about to put a sequel, Polly, into rehearsal did he decide to act.

  By all accounts, Polly was an even more blatant attack on Walpole because it represented him as a highwayman, robbing the good people of England. The minister heard of this and immediately ordered the Duke of Grafton, who as Lord Chamberlain presided over such matters, to ban the play ‘rather than suffer himself to be produced for thirty nights together upon the stage’. If it could not be performed, however, it could still be printed, and Gay’s friends advised him to publish it by subscription. At a stroke, the court was divided between those who supported the existing political regime and thus declined to subscribe, and those who demonstrated their opposition to it by adding their names to the list.

  The Duchess of Queensberry placed herself very firmly in the latter camp by touting the play everywhere, including the court. She even invited the King himself to subscribe – an act of bare-faced audacity since his own Lord Chamberlain had banned its performance. In truth, George was rather amused by this, particularly as the Duchess was such a comely and vivacious addition to his assemblies. However, after relating to the Queen what had happened, he quickly changed his view, and the next day sent word to the Duchess that she was banned from court. Undeterred, the latter replied that she was ‘surprised and well pleased that the King hath given her so agreeable a command as to stay from Court, where she never came for diversion’.28

  With the Duchess of Queensberry in exile, Henrietta stepped in as Gay’s chief advocate at court. She urged her royal masters to reconsider their ban on his play, arguing that it was stirring up resentment across the capital. She also attested to the author’s excellent character and sincere loyalty to the Crown. ‘Mrs Howard hath declared herself strongly both to the King and Queen as my advocate,’ Gay wrote to Swift in March 1729. In defending her friend so vehemently, Henrietta placed herself in direct opposition not only to the sovereigns, but also to their most powerful minister in government, and therefore put her own position at court in jeopardy. John Arbuthnot wrote anxiously to Swift: ‘he [Gay] has gott several turnd out of their places, the greatest ornament of the Court Banishd from it for his sake, another great Lady in danger of being chasé likewise’.29

  The controversy eventually died down, but Gay had achieved notoriety as a result. As Arbuthnot wryly observed: ‘The inoffensive John Gay is now become one of the obstructions to the peace of Europe, the terror of Members, the chief author of the Craftsmen, and all the seditious pamphlets which have been published against Government.’30 This deterred many at court from having any contact with him, but Henrietta remained steadfast in her loyalty, making a point of seeing him often and maintaining a regular correspondence. She was equally supportive of the Duchess of Queensberry, who took Gay to live with her after the controversy, and the two became firm friends. Henrietta would often write letters to them both at Amesbury, and would receive joint replies in return. In an age when correspondence was frequently intercepted, particularly to and from the court, this was nothing less than an act of open defiance.

  Mrs Howard’s friendship with Gay deepened as time went on. His witty and irreverent letters kept her amused during her long hours at court, and she often expressed a longing to see him. The poet valued their friendship just as much, and even contemplated buying a house next to Marble Hill so that the pair could see each other often once Mrs Howard was finally able to leave court. But death was to rob them of their happy schemes.

  Gay had always lived somewhat hedonistically, pursuing pleasure wherever it lay – from the spas of Bath, Tunbridge Wells or the Continent, to the pleasure gardens and country estates of his fashionable friends. He enjoyed his fill of rich food and fine wine along the way, and with a tendency towards laziness and an aversion towards any form of exercise, he grew exceedingly fat. Nevertheless, he always seemed in the rudest of health, so when he was struck down by a fever at the end of 1732, his friends were confident that he would soon recover. Their shock and devastation was profound indeed when, a few days later, the much-loved poet died. ‘Would to God the man we had lost had not been so amiable or so good,’ wrote Pope to Swift on hearing of his death, ‘but that’s a wish for our sakes, not for his. Sure, if innocence and integrity can deserve happiness, it must be his.’ Swift did not open this letter for five days, having had ‘an impulse foreboding some misfortune’. When he eventually managed to steel himself to read its contents, he was so distraught that for many months afterwards he could not even bear to hear Gay’s name mentioned, for it brought on fresh waves of grief.

  None mourned Gay’s pas
sing more than Henrietta. They had been close friends for almost twenty years and had shared the joy and sadness of each other’s lives in equal measure. Gay had been the first to learn of his friend’s plans for Marble Hill, and it was to him that she had written upon hearing that she had become a countess. Even when she had failed to secure him a position at court, he had remained loyal to her. Their affection was mutual and sincere.

  In her grief, Henrietta turned to the Duchess of Queensberry, who felt the loss of her friend and lodger deeply. The two women had loved Gay as faithfully as he had loved them, and they were to miss his amiable presence for many years to come. ‘I often want poor Mr Gay, & on this occasion extreamly,’ wrote the Duchess to her friend in 1734. ‘Nothing evaporates sooner than joy untold, or told, unless to one so intirely in your interest as he was, who bore at least an equal share in every satisfaction or dissatisfaction which attended us . . . tis a satisfaction to have once known so good a man. As you were as much his friend as I, tis needless to ask your pardon for dwelling so long on his subject.’31

  The volume of Lady Suffolk’s correspondence increased after Gay’s death, as she tried to find solace among her remaining friends. The Earl of Chesterfield became a particularly frequent correspondent, and his lively accounts of the society and entertainments at the Hague provided a welcome diversion from life at court. His friendship had something else in common with Gay’s, for the Earl was moving increasingly into opposition to Walpole’s ministry. After years of pleading to be allowed home from an embassy that had long since lost any appeal, Chesterfield’s wish was finally granted and he arrived back in England in early 1732. He was soon presented with an excellent opportunity to avenge himself on the minister who had ensured his virtual exile on the Continent.

  Walpole was now at the height of his power. He bullied and cajoled the Cabinet into submission, he exercised almost complete ascendancy in Parliament, and he enjoyed the full confidence of both the King and Queen. He therefore had few qualms about introducing a scheme that under any other circumstances would have posed a serious risk to his position. Ever since the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the greatest burden of taxation had fallen upon land, but Walpole proposed to ease this by bringing the tobacco and wine duties under the law of excise. This would have effectively put a stop to the wholesale smuggling of these commodities, to which customs officials had hitherto turned a blind eye. George and Caroline, who knew that the Civil List depended to a significant extent upon the duties raised from tobacco and wine, gave their hearty approval to the proposal. Walpole was confident that it would breeze through Parliament without opposition, but this turned out to be a grave miscalculation.

  Both within and outside Parliament, huge numbers of people rose up against the scheme, fearing that it was the start of a slippery slope that would end in every necessity of life being taxed. Walpole stoutly denied this, but suspicions had been aroused and there followed a rush of pamphlets and newspaper reports claiming that it was part of a much bigger plan. Meanwhile, a group of peers holding offices in the royal household gathered together and began plotting the overthrow of Walpole’s measure. They included the Earl of Chesterfield and two other members of Mrs Howard’s circle, the Duke of Argyll and William Pulteney. Thanks to their intervention, and to the huge tide of popular opposition, the minister was eventually defeated and his Excise Bill was thrown out by Parliament.

  There were scenes of great rejoicing across the capital, and the peers who had led the rebellion were triumphant. The Queen, meanwhile, was as devastated as her minister, and her husband was outraged. He demanded to know the names of the upstart peers. Lord Hervey was delighted to supply them, and as he read each one out in turn, the King spluttered, ‘Booby!’, ‘Blockhead!’ and ‘Whimsical fellow!’, vowing to exclude them from court for good. Walpole took rather more direct action, and none felt it more keenly than Lord Chesterfield. Two days after the Excise Bill had been dropped, he was climbing the great staircase at St James’s Palace to attend the King as usual when he was halted by a guard and presented with a summons demanding that he surrender his office and absent himself from the court. Astonished at such an abrupt dismissal after so long a service to the Crown, Chesterfield insisted upon an audience with the King. Once admitted to the royal presence, he proceeded to make a well-reasoned and dignified protest, pointing to his eighteen years of good service and insisting: ‘I declared at all events against a measure that would so inevitably lessen the affections of Your Majesty’s subjects to you . . . I thought of it as the whole nation did.’32 But George would have none of it, and Chesterfield was obliged to retreat in disgrace to his father’s estate in Yorkshire.

  As she had with Gay, so Henrietta maintained her friendship with the Earl as openly as before, and the two exchanged regular correspondence for the duration of his time in exile. She wrote to him as soon as he had left court, and he was clearly grateful for this proof of her loyalty. ‘This is the case of your letter, which, though I should at all times have valued as I ought, yett in this perticular Juncture, I must look upon it, as a most uncommon and uncourtlike piece of friendship,’ he replied, adding: ‘It may, for ought I know have brought you within the statute of Edward the Third,33 as aiding, abetting and comforting the King’s Enemies, for I can depose that I am an enemy of the King’s, so that, by an induction not very much strain’d, for the law, your generosity has drawn you into high treason.’ Although he wrote this somewhat light-heartedly, he was only half in jest, for he knew how much his friend risked in allying herself with a disgraced courtier and an avowed enemy of the most powerful politician in the land. He also knew that written communication was as clear an indication of her allegiance as if she had invited him to tea in full view of the court. ‘As to the contents of your letter, did you reflect upon the strict examinations it was to undergo before it reached me’, he chided, reminding her that it would have been subject to the ‘penetration’ of Edward Carteret, the Post-Master General, as well as ‘others of not inferior abilitys, and known Dabs, at finding out misterys’.34

  In his exile, Chesterfield gathered about him a number of disaffected peers, including the Duke of Argyll, who had accompanied him to Yorkshire. Henrietta’s friends Lords Bathurst and Cobham were also among the party. But the most formidable member of the group was undoubtedly Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke. Although he had been debarred from his seat in the House of Lords upon his return from exile on the Continent in 1725, Bolingbroke was a man of considerable cunning and intelligence, more so even than his despised rival Walpole. During the crisis over the Excise Bill, he had succeeded, through his political writings and his genius for intrigue, in doing more than any other man to stir up public feeling against the measure. With his exceptional powers of organisation, he had used the members of the Opposition as puppets in his game to defeat the Prime Minister. Lady Suffolk’s private supper parties had provided the cover for many of their meetings, as they carefully planned the storm that would bring the mighty Walpole to his knees. Their eventual victory was only slightly marred by the minister’s continuance in office, and Bolingbroke stepped up his campaign with even greater vigour than before.

  He soon found an ally who was at once more powerful and more dangerous to Walpole than the King’s mistress. Frederick, Prince of Wales, had been a thorn in his parents’ side ever since arriving back in England five years before. He had grown up bitterly resenting them for leaving him behind in Hanover when his grandfather George I had become King. Any expectation that he would soon be sent to join them had turned into fierce disappointment when, year after year, he had been kept at Herrenhausen, apparently to satisfy their desire to retain a representative of the Hanoverian family there. Only when he had deliberately gone against George II’s wishes by entering into negotiations for a politically unsuitable marriage had his parents grudgingly acceded that he was more trouble away from them than he would be with them.

  Frederick landed in England in December 1728, aged twenty-one. His
arrival was greeted with none of the ceremony that would be expected for a royal prince, and instead he was obliged to enter St James’s Palace by the back stairs. This rather inauspicious beginning was a sign of things to come. Although Caroline made an effort to be amiable at first, George did little to hide his distaste for this troublesome young upstart. Before long, relations were as frosty between them as they had been between George II and his late father. ‘Whenever the Prince was in a room with the King, it put one in mind of stories one has heard of ghosts that appear to part of the company and are invisible to the rest,’ observed Lord Hervey. ‘Wherever the Prince stood, though the King passed him ever so often or ever so near, it always seemed as if the King thought the place the Prince filled a void space.’35 The Hanoverian tradition of loathing between fathers and sons was thus rigorously upheld.

  Frederick was as affable and cultured as his father was sour and boorish. He also had a love of intrigue, and naturally became a focus for all those who opposed the King or Walpole. The wits and writers, in particular, found favour with him, for he had a genuine appreciation of the arts and a respect for talent. Chesterfield and Pulteney both appealed to him, and he was greatly in awe of Bolingbroke, who became his political mentor. Under his guidance, the Prince secretly stirred up opposition to Walpole’s excise scheme and played a key part in its overthrow.