The Countess and the King: A Novel of the Countess of Dorchester and King James II
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There is, however, no doubt that James Stuart loved her. While not as promiscuous as his brother Charles II, James had his share of extramarital lovers, but Katherine was both the last and the most lasting. His devotion to her mystified even Katherine herself: “He cannot love me for my beauty, for I have none,” she once said, “and as for my wit, he has not enough of his own to judge it.” But while James might not have been quick with a witty remark himself, he delighted in Katherine’s irreverence, and their relationship remains one of the great contradictions of his life. Even as he grew increasingly more devout and attached to the Catholic Church, he continued to defend his bawdy, swearing, Protestant mistress as long as he could.
Katherine’s “exile” in Ireland was short-lived. By the fall of 1686, she had returned to England, buying a large estate, Ham House, at Weybridge, Surrey. Here James was rumored to visit her occasionally, but the intensity of their affair was gone, and she never returned to her former power or place at Court. She continued her acquaintance with John Churchill, and was rumored to have taken a part behind the scenes in ousting her former lover. Still, when James was finally overthrown in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Katherine was considered a Jacobite sympathizer, her actions watched with suspicion for the remainder of her life.
She certainly found no favor with the conservative new regime of William and Mary, who disapproved both of her and her former relationship to the old king. Katherine freely returned their hostility: “If I have broken one commandment, madam,” she told Queen Mary, “then you have another [by dishonoring and overthrowing her father], and what I did was more natural.”
Katherine finally did find respectable love and marriage. In 1696, just shy of her fortieth birthday, Katherine married Sir David Colyear (1656-1730), a one-eyed career soldier under William of Orange who was soon raised to Earl of Portmore in honor of his military success. It was enough to inspire her old gadfly, the Earl of Dorset, to write one final unpleasant poem at her expense:
Proud with the Spoils of her Royal Cully,
With false pretense to Wit and Parts,
She swaggers like a batter’d Bully,
To Try the tempers of Men’s Hearts.
Tho she appear as glitt’ring fine,
As Gems, and Jet, and Paint can make her,
She ne’er can win a Heart like mine,
The Devil and Sir David take her.
But Katherine was thoroughly happy with her soldier and bore Lord Portmore two sons, famously imparting her brand of maternal advice before they left for school: “If anybody calls either of you the son of a whore, you must bear it, for it is so; but if they call you bastards, fight till you die, for you are an honest man’s sons.” Well content with her life, she died at Bath in 1717 at the age of sixty.
Her daughter with James, Lady Katherine Darnley (1680-1743), inherited both her mother’s outspoken tongue and a propensity for scandal. First wed to the Earl of Anglesey, her marriage was dissolved by an act of Parliament on grounds of his cruelty. She next became the third wife of author, statesman, and libertine John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham and Normanby, and lived with him in haughty splendor, always conscious of her royal blood. Their London home, Buckingham House, is today known as Buckingham Palace, one of the official residences of the current British royal family.
Katherine’s royal lover, James II (1633-1701), did not fare nearly as well after their parting. He continued to promote his Catholicism to an unwilling nation and pursue a course of absolutism that made him increasingly unpopular. When Queen Mary Beatrice finally gave birth to a male heir in 1688, the child was widely believed to be an imposter, and despised as the Catholic successor to the throne. By the end of 1688, James’s former supporters in the army led the rebellion to depose him in favor of his daughter Mary and her husband, William of Orange, in what became known as the Glorious Revolution. James, Mary Beatrice, and their infant son were permitted to escape to France, where they lived out their lives in unhappy, impoverished exile. Their son James (1688-1766) was known as the “Old Pretender” to the English throne, and became the centerpiece of the disastrous Jacobite rebellions in eighteenth-century Scotland.
Katherine’s father, Sir Charles Sedley (1639-1701), was one of the Whig gentlemen who welcomed William and Mary to London in 1688. He certainly had the best remark to make at their coronation: “As the king [James] has made my daughter a countess, the least I can do, in common gratitude, is to make his daughter [Mary] a queen.”
Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester (1641-1711), fell from James’s favor soon after Katherine, and when he refused to convert to Catholicism at James’s request, he was removed from office. He returned to the Privy Council under William and Mary, and continued in politics as a Tory leader until his death.
The careers of Katherine’s two earlier lovers went in opposite directions after the Glorious Revolution. James Grahme (1650-1730) remained loyal to James II and figured in numerous Jacobite conspiracies throughout his life, finally dying in financial difficulties. John Churchill (1650-1722) abandoned James II and instead supported William of Orange. He became a noted statesman and legendary general, and, with his wife, Sarah, was often promoted as the special favorites of Queen Anne. He died as Duke of Marlborough, and one of the wealthiest and most famous men of his times.
In telling Katherine Sedley’s story, I have tried to remain true both to her irrepressible spirit and her times. By necessity, I’ve compressed the intricacies of Court politics and religious conflicts, but I have let Katherine and her circle speak for themselves in their own words whenever possible (even if those words come in the form of a scurrilous poem or two). As I’ve often said before, I’m a novelist, not a historian. I can only hope that Katherine would approve my version of her story.
Susan Holloway Scott
November 2009
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QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Most royal mistresses are famous for their great beauty, but Katherine Sedley was better known for her plain face and wit. What do you think her life would have been like had she been born a beauty instead?
2. James II has been traditionally portrayed as one of England’s worst kings: a religious fanatic, a bigot, a sadist, and a tyrant. Recent historians, however, have been more sympathetic, viewing James as a man whose responsibilities exceeded his abilities, and whose strong personal beliefs and principles did not reflect those of his subjects. He also had the misfortune to follow his older brother, Charles II, a charming, charismatic ruler much loved by his people and endlessly skilled at the behind-the-scenes diplomacy so popular in Baroque courts. In other words, James wasn’t so much a bad king, as the wrong king for seventeeth-century England. Do you agree?
3. Katherine and James made unlikely lovers. Katherine embodied so many things that James claimed to be against: she was a Protestant, the daughter of an outspoken Whig, and a ribald participant in Charles II’s decadent court. Yet even after three hundred years, there’s little doubt that he cared for her, and repeatedly defended her against his political and religious advisers. Why do you think he loved her? How do you think he reconciled their love with his own strict Catholic beliefs?
4. James’s first wife, Anne Hyde, was born a commoner. While it would have been politically disastrous (and very unlikely) for him to have chosen another wife who wasn’t a foreign princess, would Katherine have fared better as James’s wife than his mistress? Do you think James would have been a better king if Katherine had been his queen?
5. Sir Charles Sedley could hardly be called a responsible father to Katherine, yet throughout their lives, their relationship remained much closer than many other noble fathers and daughters of the seventeenth century. What do you think he did right—and wrong—as a father to a girl like Katherine?
6. Born shortly before Charles II’s return to the throne in 1660, Katherine was very much a product of her times. Unlike the well-bred girls of the Elizabethan era who read Greek and Latin, few ladies of the 1
660s were educated beyond the social “graces.” Katherine, however, was exposed to much more literature and drama through her father and his friends. How do you think this shaped her personality?
7. Katherine often stated that she was more comfortable in the company of men than women, and certainly her intelligence and sense of humor were viewed in her time as more “male.” How do you think posterity would regard her now if she’d been a man in Restoration England? Would she have been a politician in Parliament, a witty courtier, or a poet like her father?
8. Few seventeenth-century English ladies were heiresses in their own right like Katherine, and even fewer had fathers who permitted them to choose their own husbands. How did Katherine’s fortune free her? How did it hamper her?
9. While no one now will know for certain, there is reason to question the extent of the “madness” of Katherine’s mother. Some historians today view her as a truly tragic figure, an inconvenient wife who may have been pushed toward madness by the mercury-laden potions prescribed by physicians at her husband’s urging. How do you think this would have affected Katherine and her attitudes toward love and marriage?
10. While Katherine had a rich, full life that many would envy, she always remained self-conscious of her appearance and how it affected her interactions with others. Do you think she would have felt the same insecurities if she lived today?
READERS GUIDE
Susan Holloway Scott is the author of more than forty historical novels. A graduate of Brown University, she lives with her family in Pennsylvania. Visit her Web site at www.susanhollowayscott.com.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Author’s Note
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