At the battle of Nymegen the fighting was particularly bitter. The French advanced with their usual rapidity, but were later halted and thrown back from some of the posts they had taken. Marshall Turenne regrouped his forces. He directed the Duke of Monmouth to employ Captain Churchill with a company of his own choosing to recapture one of these posts. He even made a bet with his personal staff officers that ‘my handsome Englishman’ would succeed.
He was right. John brought off the action, using half the number of men who had failed to hold the post in the Dutch counter-attack.
The French advance continued, biting still further into the Netherlands, sweeping up the former Spanish conquests, for Spain was now a spent force, her empire falling apart on both sides of the Atlantic. In June of the following year Turenne was laying siege to Maastricht, the great fortress that guarded the way to the heart of Holland. It resisted the French attack with a courage born of desperation.
But speed was essential. The French Marshall understood the logistics of conquest. The deeper the advance into enemy country the more difficult the problems of supply, in men, in horses, in food, in transport of the great guns, in the supply of ammunition of all kinds.
Campaign sieges were dependent upon the weather, too. In the northern parts of the Continent they depended particularly upon the summer months, perhaps, with luck, up to the early autumn. After that the armies must settle into winter quarters and these preferably not still in siege positions around a town or fortress. Maastricht was both.
Therefore Turenne demanded and got an almost unbelievable response from his army. The fortress with its elaborate defences had been considered impregnable. It fell, at great cost to both the defenders and the attack. And again John Churchill distinguished himself. With the Duke of Monmouth, who did not lack physical courage though his mind worked slowly, he was one of a group of twelve volunteers who made a desperate but successful assault that breached the walls at a vital point.
‘I owe my life to this man, sir,’ Monmouth said, presenting John to his father when they were next in England.
Charles, who had remained impassive during Monmouth’s spirited recital of their joint exploit, in which he gave himself all necessary credit, turned to Churchill at the end of it.
‘A debt we join in honouring, captain,’ he said gravely.
The captain bowed his thanks for this acknowledgement, but when, later on, he described his adventures in battle to Sidney Godolphin, he said, ‘His Majesty spoke of honouring his debt to me for his son’s life, but there hath been no material result of this honouring.’
‘Did you expect any?’
‘I did not. I praise God my army pay is not to be withheld. Or not for very long. And that, I do believe, comes from France.’
And so did the most tangible reward John received. In April of the following year King Louis gave him a commission as Colonel of the English regiment in the French army.
Meanwhile Captain Churchill, as he still was, remained in England attending the two Courts, visiting his parents and his sister, whose establishment was enlarged in prosperity and persons as her family increased. And without the usual number of infant deaths that seemed to dog the efforts of the Stuarts to continue their dynasty. Arabella’s two little sons were healthy and she was again pregnant.
But the Duke of York was making arrangements to marry again. His choice, prompted as usual by Louis, lay with an Italian princess, Mary Beatrice of Modena, whose father was dead and her mother, a devout Catholic, could not withstand the very generous dowry proposed by the King of France, backed by the knowledge that James was now an open convert, the heir to the throne of England. She imagined the future held the promise of a re-conversion of that heretic land to the true faith.
‘You wish to become a nun, my daughter,’ Mary Beatrice’s confessor told the girl. ‘But it will be a greater sacrifice to become the means of saving those five million souls from hell.’
This was perhaps the converse of King Charles’s remark upon the looks and characters of his brother’s mistresses when he declared they must have been chosen by his confessor as a penance for his sins.
So the poor young innocent Italian princess was married to James Duke of York by proxy of Lord Peterborough, who then escorted her to England and was much disappointed when his tour of duty ended, for he had found his charge both charming, pathetic and desirable. But he was relieved of his position at Dover by her middle-aged husband himself, who married her again in person, very quietly, for the match was extremely unpopular with the people.
At this time the feeling against Papists had grown to such an extent that Parliament had repealed the former act to promote tolerance of all sects of Christians and had replaced it by a new Test Act, whereby all who held office were obliged to swear allegiance to the Anglican Church and take the sacrament according to the Anglican ritual. This James could not do now and so left the Admiralty for good in spite of his overall success as Lord High Admiral.
But the Duke of Monmouth pronounced himself a true Protestant. One of his reasons for being in England that year and the next was in order to proclaim his faith and comply with the Test. He saw, or others explained it to him, that should the new Duchess of York have a son, who would inevitably be second in the line of succession, his own doubtful prospect of becoming his father’s heir would fade even further into the background than at present.
As for John Churchill, his Protestant outlook and allegiance never wavered. He took the Test as a matter of course, being an officer of the Crown. None of his fellow officers gave it even as much thought as he did. After all there was no similar ban at that time in France that would alter his new position in Louis’s troops.
The Duchess of Cleveland teased him about it. He had come to her as a matter of course, tall, mature, more handsome than ever, no longer a boy nor even a young man obsessed with first love, full of romantic visions, but a man arrogantly sure of himself and his power to bestow perhaps more than he would receive. Her Grace was sadly aware of the disparity in age between them. But she was willing to renew their friendship upon his terms, upon any terms, for her hold upon the King had slackened considerably in the last two years.
‘You have been shocked, I warrant, by your old Master’s fall from grace,’ she said, when he told her about the Duke of Monmouth’s taking the Test to win favour with his father and with the Parliament.
‘With his father I doubt if Monmouth hath increased his favour,’ John answered. ‘The King loves him but will never, I think, do anything to make him legitimate. As for the Duke of York, yes, I grieve his loss to the Navy, for neither the Prince Rupert nor my Lord Albemarle had any success of any kind and this makes the people mad against the French.’
‘The French!’ the Duchess said with a bitter laugh. ‘Do not remind me of the French!’
John did not fully understand then why she spoke so slightingly of their great ally; he thought she meant her rival with Charles, the French spy, ‘Mrs. Carwell’. But later, when he was spending an evening with Hugh Offord, he brought the conversation round to the Duke of York arid his affairs.
‘You have not told me,’ he said, ‘why you are here again in London of a sudden. I understand you were with your regiment again in the West country.’
Hugh blushed and lowered his head at first but then looked up and smiled. ‘I follow my destiny,’ he said, using a well-known phrase.
‘You mean some wench or other? Is Bristol so destitute?’
‘By no means. This is more serious. Most serious.’
‘Tell me – if you can. If you betray no desperate secret.’
He spoke lightly, which made Hugh laugh. ‘No secret but my own sorrow, or constancy, or foolishness.’
‘Well then. Tell me.’
‘You remember that evening we played the knight errant outside the Duke’s theatre, when the play was nought and we rescued the two orange girls that turned out—’
‘To be two silly maids of honour, riskin
g their honour, indeed apeing low wenches, which they were not, and known by Henry Brouncker to be come from the palace.’
‘Miss Frances Jennings and Miss Price.’
John waited but Hugh did not go on.
‘Miss Frances Jennings and Miss Price. What of them?’
‘Not directly of them. Of another, who was with them when I called to pay my respects and inquire for their well-being.’
‘’S truth! Such eagerness! I confess I never gave them another thought. But this other? She caught your eye, did she?’
Hugh had to laugh again. ‘They were lively, all three. ‘But Miss Firle. Dorothea Firle—’
It was John’s turn to laugh. ‘Why have I never found you until today? I have been back from the wars two full months. While you have been about the Court in a full bevy of kind ladies, gaming, dancing, singing, at balls, masques,—’
‘No, no! I am here but for two days. It is all upset, all changed, that happiness of three weeks soon passed, for Miss Price was sent into the country and forbid the Court for indiscretion over a lost love, and Miss Jennings was assailed for a time by my Lord Talbot, but he wanted no marriage. No more did Jermyn, lately returned and with whom she was inclined to fall in love.’
‘My God!’ John interrupted. ‘You are worse than a low Presbyterian preacher describing hell! So what of that true love of yours, Miss Dorothea Firle? She hath not fallen to the smallpox, I hope?’
‘She was asked in marriage of a worthy knight and the parents forbid it. So what chance is there on this earth for me? None.’
‘You have answered yourself, but explained nothing. Did the lady love her admirer?’
‘She was ready to love a fortune and a title.’
‘It was her parents then that forbid it?’
‘The title was a minor one earned by his father. The fortune ill-spent already. The man was bankrupt and hath gone abroad. She was saved from going with him to a life of misery. But her heart is broken.’
John nodded. His friend’s position was serious, if indeed his love was as deep as he professed it to be. But it was in no way desperate.
‘Have comfort,’ he said. ‘May you not win the lady on the rebound, as it were? Broken hearts mend easily in Court circles.’
‘On a captain’s pay?’
‘Ah! You have had promotion!’
‘A plodding one. I look no higher for many years.’
His tone was very bitter, which caused John some embarrassment for he could hardly blame his friend’s superior officers when the whole organisation and payment of soldiers was so much at fault and therefore overwhelmingly insecure.
Besides, constancy was not a virtue John was eager to pursue. He knew perfectly well that his intrigue with Barbara Villiers was risky, most indiscreet and of its nature temporary. He had not so far in his life sought marriage. He had not even considered it. He clung still to his first real love but he knew in his heart that it was fading.
Its total collapse was brought a long step nearer by a second dangerous interruption, again from the arrival of the King himself.
This time there was less warning. No time at all to dress or even to jump from the window half clothed.
‘The cupboard!’ her Grace directed in a desperate whisper.
John tumbled in, pulling the door shut behind him.
But Charles, whose observant eye had never lost its early training in the detection of hidden perils, had seen the cupboard door fall shut, so gently that it madeono noise. While Barbara on the couch tried with an ardent welcome to distract her royal lover’s attention from the cupboard, he continued to stare beyond her and finally strode across to drag open the door.
John dropped out upon his knees, a truly ridiculous sight, his breast bare, his shirt open, flowing wide over his unbuttoned breeches, his stockings down to his ankles, his natural dark curls dishevelled, falling about his face and neck. He dared not move until the King’s foot struck his side sharply and the King’s voice said with even greater icy sharpness, ‘Rise, coward rogue!’
Young Churchill leaped to his feet, stung to anger even in the depths of his misery.
‘So,’ said Charles, ‘it is our army’s hero, is it? Our new military genius? Our Cousin France’s discovered miracle!’
John stood his ground, erect, a respectful eye level with his Master’s, for he had grown to be the King’s height. He held himself in parade ground rigidity, expressionless, because he believed he had nothing left but his courage and that must stand against his despair.
Charles liked what he saw. All this time he had neither looked at his mistress, nor spoken one word to her and she, after her first false welcome, had held her tongue, waiting with confidence for his quick anger to fade into indifference. She knew his self-control to be infinite.
At last he broke the uneasy silence. ‘You are a rascal,’ he said to John, his wide mouth curved in contempt.
‘But I forgive you, for I know that you do it to get your bread.’ And with that he turned away and left the room.
In silence, with inward curses and tears of humiliation at those spoken and implied insults, the casual lovers dressed and tidied themselves until, with further tears for their disappointment they parted, each of them sufficiently restored to play their accustomed parts in public.
And so the Court knew nothing of the incident until a long time later, when it need cause no stir and no danger to anyone and only went to confirm the settled opinions the world, or at least the Court, held of those three involved.
But it did become a matter of fact and also of informed conjecture, that Colonel John Churchill had enlarged his holding with Lord Halifax to a probable maximum of 5,000 pounds.
And it did become a surmise, upon no direct evidence, for there could be none, that the Duchess of Cleveland’s fourth and last child, with nothing of the Stuart in his appearance or character, had been sired by the future Duke of Marlborough, himself —
Chapter Eleven
Though John put on a brave face to the world after his dangerous encounter with the King, he avoided Court functions for several weeks, largely on the advice of his friend, Godolphin.
‘His Majesty’s behaviour was typical of him,’ Sidney remarked. He had been shocked by John’s account of the unhappy incident, not indeed by the moral aspect, which was deplorable but only too common, but by the recklessness that set it off.
‘You are quite old enough to show more sense,’ he scolded. ‘Charles will never abandon her Grace entirely, though she has a very serious rival in his French mistress. You have heard she is created Duchess of Portsmouth?’
‘I heard,’ John answered. ‘Moreover I have seen her. A notable beauty indeed.’
‘Just so. But Charles will never abandon Castlemaine. He hath known her too long, been faithful to her, after his own special fashion, too long.’
‘A very special fashion!’ John exclaimed, but could not excuse his own folly, even to himself. ‘What irks me most,’ he went on, ‘is that insult implying I sold myself like any common prostitute. He must know the whole of my circumstances, my careful savings, my thrift—’
He stopped, for he had never told Godolphin the true source of his investments with Lord Halifax. And yet the King must have that knowledge to have used his cruel wit as he had.
‘The King makes it his business to know all that concerns his throne,’ Sidney answered. ‘People imagine he is indifferent to all but his personal pleasures and the magnificence, the luxury of his Court, that he is lazy in business of State, disregards its needs, appoints useless ministers. I don’t agree.’
He spoke with passion in defence of his Master. John had nothing to bring forward in his own defence. He had been reminded very sharply of the King’s abilities, his shrewdness, his wit, his kind-hearted tolerance and his overwhelming royal presence. Though he could show unlimited courage in war John was genuinely frightened not only of Charles, the King, Lord and Master, but of Charles the man, the rival in love, the suprem
e rival in love.
Encouraged by Sidney he decided to take this opportunity to pay a visit to his grandmother at Ashe, combining it with an inspection of his father’s family home at Wootton Glanville. He found it easy to get leave from his regiment. Hugh Offord was also about to go back to Bristol. So the two young men set out together on horseback.
Old Lady Drake received her grandson with guarded pleasure. She was clearly very frail, a crumpled, skinny figure, sunk in an oaken armchair padded well with cushions, her knees covered by a thick woolen rug, though the season was mid-autumn and the weather mild.
John gave her news of his mother and father, who still held office in the King’s household. He described their new house near the village of Knightsbridge to the west of the royal parks. But when he began to speak of Arabella, Lady Drake stopped him with a return of her old manner.
‘I want no news of that arrant whore!’ she cried. ‘They tell me she is unrepentant, glorying in her adultery, displaying the fruits of it most shamelessly, even now when her royal partner in sin hath doubled his fault by his apostasy.’
She would have gone on, but a fit of coughing nearly choked her. John lifted her up, patted her shrunken back, piled up her cushions behind her and let her sink back, panting and trembling but no longer in danger of suffocation. He would have liked to explain Arabella’s position, particularly how her sin was regarded as nothing unusual, certainly not unfortunate but rather the opposite. Also that it would not, in the nature of such things, be permanent, but might well lead in time to an advantageous marriage to some worthy partner who thought it no shame to marry a former royal mistress, moreover one who had proved her ability to breed and had managed to secure a very useful fortune.
But John knew he must not attempt any such explanation, so he began to describe the re-building of London, the speed with which it was being achieved, the new wide streets, the large brick and stone facades, the wonderful designs of Mr. Wren and others.
‘There have been one or two fires lately,’ he said. ‘But in these new brick houses. And the walls hold, it is all kept within, and falls down inside without spreading to the houses nearby.’
A Question of Loyalties Page 11
