King Charles II

by Fraser, Antonia

  He disapproved of the connection with Hortense. Nevertheless, Anne, who had some of her mother’s obstinate temperament, persisted in it. The two ladies took fencing lessons together, proceeding to St James’s Park for the purpose on one occasion, with drawn swords beneath their nightgowns. The crisis came when Anne announced her intention of sharing a balcony in Cheapside with Hortense at the Lord Mayor’s Show in November. Barbara, like many another mother with a purple past, found it in her to write an extremely priggish letter to her daughter from France, advising ‘wifely obedience’.13 Eventually Lord Sussex took his wayward spouse in high dudgeon to the country. But he should have been warned. His troubles with her were not over – nor, for that matter, were Barbara’s.

  Returning to Hortense and her brief but victorious sway over the King, this was still sufficiently marked in February 1677 for her to be quoted by the French ambassador as being ‘in a very prominent position raised above all the other ladies’ at the opening of Parliament.14 By the summer however the eternal Eve in Hortense had reasserted itself. She indulged in a prolonged and public flirtation with the Prince de Monaco. Hortense was dismissed. Louise dried her tears. The King settled back with a shrug into her waiting arms. Since Hortense had not presented the King with a child, alone among his mistresses-in-chief to fail to do so, the main residue of her reign was the unfortunate political impression she created. Marvell expressed the general indignation

  That the King should send for another French whore

  When one already hath made him so poor.

  Charles II had not sent for Hortense. But the smear remained.

  William of Orange, with the necessary tenacity of the ruler of a small country, had forgotten nothing of his plan for wresting England away from France. Nor after the Treaty of Westminster was he in any position to rest on his laurels. The military campaigns of Louis XIV proceeded apace. The year 1677 would see spectacular advances by the French. Before that date William had already put out feelers concerning marriage with his first cousin Mary, Protestant daughter of the Duke of York.15 He found a receptive audience in the English Ambassador, the erudite and agreeable Sir William Temple.

  Temple had viewed with deprecation England’s entanglement with France. He was now in a much stronger position to exert pressure to end it. Having been withdrawn from the Netherlands in 1671 when his pro-Dutch views were clearly incompatible with the pro-French ones of the English government, he was recalled to government service over the negotiation of the Treaty of Westminster. Shortly afterwards, declining both the Embassy at Madrid and a Secretaryship of State (leaving it scornfully to Sir Joseph Williamson), Temple took up residence at The Hague.

  The spring of 1677 brought a wave of victories for Louis XIV. ‘I have loved war too much,’ declared the French King on his death-bed. But his triumphant campaign brought him at the time not only his own heart’s desire but also his country’s. In the United Provinces William girded himself for another span of heroic defence. Much depended yet again on the attitude of England. Charles II had shown himself able and willing to act as a mediator in the past, once the forced Treaty of Westminster had put an end to his more ambitious plans. Louis XIV, who was paying good money over to his cousin, naturally hoped for Charles’ French sympathies to be exhibited in a more positive manner: neutrality would however be better than nothing. The pro-Dutch party in England, on the other hand, keenly desired England to come to the rescue of that poor beleaguered country.

  This projected marriage of the Prince of Orange and the niece of Charles II was one subterranean manoeuvre. Having been backed by Temple in Holland, it was taken up by Danby at home. However, early in 1677 there was a renewed opportunity for Parliamentary interference on the subject of foreign policy. It was time for Parliament to reconvene after its prorogation – high time, in the opinion of such leading members as Buckingham. Indeed, so long had been the gap (fifteen months) that a new and wily argument was developed by Shaftesbury and others for the necessity of a general election. The King had prorogued Parliament beyond the legal limits, so ran the proposition, and thus automatically ensured a dissolution.

  It was nonsense, of course. Buckingham addressed the House of Lords on the subject in February. The great Duke had lost his sense of personal magnificence – or did not care. By 1679 not only was he wearing false teeth, but Nell Gwynn, who remained his friend, begged him at least to wear new shoes and a new periwig when he knocked at her door, so as not to stink the place out.16 Was this the son of the gorgeous George Villiers, whose sheer physical beauty had fascinated two generations? To the King he may have seemed like a curio, preserved for the sake of ancient loyalties from youth and childhood, where a Henry VIII might have employed the purgative axe. Buckingham, no longer the peacock he had once been, was in fact more like a wasp, an angry wasp at that, determined not to recognize the end of his own personal summer; like a wasp, he retained his sting, as the King and Danby would soon discover.

  In the House of Lords he certainly made a bold show, attended by a host of followers ‘in great bravery in liveries of blue’.17 The argument was nonetheless rejected by both Houses. The King was furious. He was also deeply worried by the implications of the incident. Was this perhaps that first rumbling of the revolution he had long, consciously or unconsciously, dreaded? Danby pounced forthwith on the four principal peers involved. At the orders of the House of Lords Buckingham was imprisoned in the Tower, as were Shaftesbury, Salisbury and Wharton. It was held at the time to be an over-reaction. Later, when Danby too found himself in the same ominous prison, Bishop Burnet at least thought it a ‘just retaliation’ for the ‘violence’ of this incident.18 But if Danby was the public instrument, there is no doubt that the King approved of the gesture.

  Latterly the officials of the law in general were being subjected to his critical scrutiny. There were complaints that the quality of the King’s judges was declining. Following the departure of Matthew Hale as Lord Chief Justice in 1676, tenure itself was insecure. In June Sir William Ellis was dismissed from the Court of Common Pleas on the advice of Danby. His substitute, William Scroggs, a sinister if clever fellow described by Roger North as ‘a great Voluptuary’ whose debaucheries were ‘egregious’, was, in addition to all this, very much a royal nominee. In 1678 the process continued, Chief Justice Ramsford departing in May and Twisden in December, their respective ages of seventy-three and seventy six being given as an excuse (although even today these ages do not debar incumbents from such positions).19

  Obviously such a campaign did not pass without remark. Marvell chose to comment on it in his trumpet blast, published in 1677, Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government in England: ‘What French counsel, what standing forces, what parliamentary bribes, what national oaths, and all the other machinations of wicked men have not yet been able to effect,’ he cried, ‘may be more compendiously acted by twelve judges in scarlet.’ He saw it as part of the general decline in English life, set off by the noxious spread of Catholicism; on which topic itself he exploded with eloquent bigotry: ‘Were it either open Judaism, or plain Turkery, or honest Paganism, there is yet a certain bona fides in the most extravagant belief … but this [Popery] is a compound of all the three.’

  The meeting of Parliament itself was dominated by the needs of the Navy. The continuation of the quarrel between the two Houses over the issue raised by the Shirley v. Fagg case helped Danby to maintain some kind of control. A stirring speech by Samuel Pepys secured a supply of £600,000 for the ships. So far, so good, even if Danby was probably over-confident in those MPs he listed as supporting the Crown – because such type of prognostication was still in its infancy.

  In addition, Danby’s strategy was leading him into some strange paths. He may not have fully thought out the significance of what he preached when he urged the King to declare the war in April – against France – on the grounds that then Parliament would have to grant him a fully paid-up Army and a Navy, and then he would be independent of
them….20 The first implication of this was that the King might well use these forces for a purpose other than that for which they were voted by Parliament. That was not only outside his powers as generally understood at the time, but was also of course the development that many Members of Parliament had been ostentatiously dreading over the years. Had Charles II not constantly denied such suggestions as ‘malicious’ and ‘jealousies’? The second implication, more serious still, was that he might use the Army and Navy to suborn the rule of Parliament.

  But the King declined to declare war, either at the instance of Danby or of the House of Commons. The Dutch partisans there continued to agitate for some show of help for Holland, in face of the sweeping French victories. On 23 May the Commons asked in plain terms for an offensive and defensive alliance with Holland. This was quite beyond their rights: public interference with foreign policy undeniably invaded the royal prerogative and the King said so sharply. To mark his displeasure and his determination to preserve his prerogative, he prorogued Parliament until 16 July.

  There was an uncomfortable feeling of stalemate by the summer of 1677. Parliament would not vote all the money needed for a war until the King declared that war. The King naturally would not declare war without money. Nor was the opposition quashed. Buckingham emerged from the Tower in July. Marvell believed it to be at the instance of the King’s boon companions: ‘This was by Nelly, Middlesex, Rochester and the merry gang….’21 He had already been allowed out for two days in June to oversee the building of his grand new palace at Cliveden – a sign of the King’s indulgence or Buckingham’s priorities. Shaftesbury attempted in vain to secure his own release by appealing to the King’s Bench for a writ of Habeas Corpus. He lingered there for the next six months. But his confinement was now much less severe; and, as he was able to receive visits from his colleagues, he was by no means cut off from the opposition’s continuing intrigues.

  Still without proper funds from Parliament, Charles II signed his third secret agreement with Louis XIV, by which Charles was to hold off his anti-French Parliament until the following May, and in return Louis was as usual to pay up. At the same time Danby was making progress in the negotiations for the Dutch marriage: in this area the King wished to accommodate his minister. It was as though the King were astride a giant see-saw, with William and Danby on one side, Louis XIV on the other, and Parliament determined to upset the whole structure. Rather than let that happen, Charles determined to shift his weight dexterously now to one side, now to the other, rather than lose his balance.

  Danby therefore was able to derive comfort from the success of the Dutch marriage project. Temple’s mission to tie up the details of the marriage between William and Mary was accomplished. William had characteristically made enquiries about the girl’s disposition. Fortunately, Lady Temple was a close friend of the Princess’ governess, so that William could satisfy himself on this score: the link with England was evidently not his sole consideration. To Sir William Temple he observed prosaically, if sensibly, on the whole subject ‘that if he should meet with one to give him trouble at home, it was what he should not be able to bear, who was like to have enough abroad in the course of his life’.22 The only unhappy principal in the whole affair was the fifteen-year-old Princess. She wept ‘grievously’ when she heard the news. She saw herself being exiled for political reasons to an unappealing country, on the arm of an equally unappealing bridegroom: William was several inches shorter than she – to her hysterical eye, virtually a dwarf.

  Queen Catharine, ever kind-hearted, tried to make things better by pointing out: ‘Child, when I came to England I had not even seen the King.’

  ‘Madam, you came into England!’ exclaimed Mary with the despair and cruelty of youth, ‘But I am going out of England.’23 Shades of earlier Stuart princesses who had made suitable Protestant matches abroad – her great-aunt Elizabeth of Bohemia and her aunt Mary Princess of Orange. The odd thing was that the marriage of this Mary, begun in tears, was to turn out the most successful of them all in a worldly sense. Not for this Mary the years of impecunious exile endured by her great-aunt, the premature widowhood of her aunt. Not only would she occupy the throne of England, but, probably even more to her satisfaction – for she had an essentially shy nature – her marriage of convenience turned into a love affair on her side. She loved her William devotedly and dutifully, becoming a true Dutchwoman in the way her proud aunt had never condescended to do.

  It may seem surprising that Charles II should welcome or even tolerate a public event calculated to outrage the susceptibilities of Louis XIV. It is true that Danby pressed the match with great firmness, so that in a sense Charles was able to plead political pressure with perfect accuracy. But Charles, now that he was in his balancing mood, could see another advantage to it. Mary was the heiress presumptive to the throne in the younger generation, or, as it was put at the time of her wedding, ‘the Eldest Daughter of the Crown’, who was now happily sleeping in ‘Protestant Arms’. In his speech to Parliament the following January, Charles referred pointedly to the fact that he had done all he could ‘to remove all sorts of jealousies, I have given my niece to the Prince of Orange; by which I hope I have given full assurance that I shall never suffer his interest to be ruined’.24

  The King trusted that the nuptial arrangements of Mary, deposited in Protestant arms, would distract attention from the fact that her father, who was even closer to the succession, was sleeping in Catholic ones. What was more, Mary Beatrice was pregnant; this always aroused the fear that she might give birth to a son to be brought up a Catholic (she had already borne two daughters). In fact, the baby, born just three days later, was a boy. But the public, who received the news coldly, might have spared their disapproval: by December, this latest Duke of Cambridge had perished like his half-brothers, who had in turn borne the unlucky title.fn3

  But the pregnancy had at least played its part in persuading James to agree to Mary’s match, which was otherwise most distasteful to him. Nor, on the occasion of the marriage, could there be any doubts where the popular sympathies lay. According to Pepys, nobody had been pleased at Mary’s birth: a disappointing girl and Clarendon’s grand-daughter at that. Now, in contrast, such ‘bells and bonfires’ and general rejoicing had not been seen since the Restoration, wrote Sir Charles Lyttelton.25 Edmund Waller, the Court poet, represented it as a romantic union of a soldier king and a beautiful princess:

  Nor all the force he leads by land

  Could guard him from her conqu’ring eyes…

  It was a measure of the general satisfaction at the Protestant combination that it should be rumoured – quite falsely – that Mary had been adopted as the King’s own daughter.

  All that Charles II actually did at the ceremony in November 1677 was to play the part of a jolly, slightly bawdy uncle. He told the groom to remember ‘Love and War do not agree very well together’. When William put down the traditional handful of gold on the prayer book (symbol of all his worldly goods), Charles said briskly to his niece, ‘Take it up, take it up. It’s all clear gain to you.’ And he urged on the prim William on his wedding night, ‘Hey nephew, to your work! Hey, St George for England!’

  It was left to Louis XIV to exclaim with predictable disgust and horror at the consummation of his worst fears. His reported reactions ranged from the disagreeable (‘two beggars were well-matched in public’) to the histrionic: he behaved as if he had just lost an army when he heard the news, and told the Duke of York, ‘You have given your daughter to my mortal enemy.’26 More to the point, Louis XIV stopped payment of the latest subsidy to Charles II. He also attempted to prick the King’s exposed flank by its own Machiavellian means. An obvious weakness of Charles II’s position was the dislike of the opposition for Danby – an emotion only sharpened by his imprisonment of Buckingham and Shaftesbury. From the point of view of the French King, Danby’s resolute pro-Dutch stance could therefore be circumvented by the time-honoured expedient of pressing money into the palms
of his political enemies.

  Thus men like Lord Russell and Algernon Sidney – later advertised as champions of liberty – as well as Buckingham were in correspondence with Barrillon, the representative of Versailles (a home of Catholic absolutism, if ever there was one), and, what was more, were receiving funds from that tainted source. At the time, the intrigue was not exactly shocking: it was merely one more manoeuvre in the endlessly complicated wheeling and dealing which went on in Europe at the time, before Louis XIV would and the Dutch could make peace.

  Charles II retaliated against Louis XIV’s blocking of the subsidy by summoning Parliament for early February – not May, as proposed; he then brought it forward another ten days. By this time he had already allowed Laurence Hyde to sign a defensive alliance with the Dutch on 10 January. Yet the Dutch never ratified the treaty, and the English never went to war as promised; this treaty should be seen as yet another manoeuvre.

  Charles’ speech at the opening of Parliament on 28 January had a noble ring. He recalled his own efforts at mediation, by which he had hoped to procure ‘an honourable and safe peace for Christendom’. It was not his fault, he said, if he now came before them seeking supplies for the Navy and Ordnance, finding that peace was ‘no longer to be hoped for by fair means’ and that which ‘be not obtained by force … cannot be had otherwise’.27 But the King’s inner hope was not for war. He trusted that Louis would accede to this form of blackmail and negotiate a peace all the same, along lines acceptable to Charles and his nephew William.

  The fall of Ghent to Louis XIV on 27 February made the possibility of a compromise peace more remote. At the same time it increased the demands for a positive Dutch alliance in Parliament. In general, the mood there was obstreperous, even ugly, especially on the subject of supplies. William Sacheverell, the rising orator, declared on 4 February that he knew ‘what mind the country are of. They will not be pleased if we thrust a sum of money blindly into those hands that have so ill managed affairs.’28