Mistresses
Page 10
The celebrations in the autumn of 1661 may have lacked sophisticated fare but in every other way the Portuguese Crown stepped up to the occasion. Over an entire week, there were marvellous spectacles. Fireworks, bullfights, pageants and processions announced Catherine’s marriage to the populace. Proceedings were chronicled by an anonymous writer, thought to be António de Sousa Macedo, the Portuguese secretary of state, who had represented the country in London during the reign of Charles I. He told his readers that the occasion ‘much exceeded the Coliseum of Rome.’ Conspicuous at the bullfights, among the assorted members of the aristocracy and Church, as well as professional dancers and musicians, was ‘Her British Majesty’, Catherine herself. Her upbringing may not have prepared her for such occasions but by the time she left Portugal the following spring, she would have fully understood the importance of her marriage to her own country.
Edward Montagu, earl of Sandwich, arrived with a fleet to bring Charles II’s wife to England on 1 March 1662, having secured the new English possession of Tangier. His stay in Lisbon was more fraught and protracted than he had hoped, though his dealings with the Portuguese royal family the previous autumn had alerted him to their talent for prevarication. Montagu’s background as a staunch supporter of both Oliver and Richard Cromwell while in joint command of the English fleet under the republic had turned to pragmatic acceptance of the likelihood of a Stuart restoration in the first months of 1660. He was a competent naval commander and diplomat, who, unlike his cousin, Ralph Montagu, in France, was able to avoid getting into serious difficulties. In the spring of 1662, he faced considerable challenges in getting both Queen Catherine and her dowry back to England.
Sandwich started by making sure that he observed all the proprieties. ‘I came with my whole fleet,’ he recalled, ‘and rode above the palace (on the river Tagus), which I saluted with 41 guns and my flag struck.’ The next day, he went ashore ‘to wait upon the Queen of England to see whether she had any commands for me and to present the compliments of my Lord Chancellor (Clarendon) and my Lord Treasurer (the earl of Southampton) unto Her Majesty.’ Catherine received these good wishes graciously and, apparently mindful that there was an important financial dimension to all of this, ‘she did very earnestly recommend into my care the schedule of the portion delivered me the day before by the Conde da Ponte.’ She went on to tell the earl that she had ‘overcome almost all impossibilities to hasten her voyage and that I must put myself to mastering some difficulties also; and that I should consider the poverty of the Portuguese nation caused by the oppression of their enemies.’7 The new queen of England was also concerned to impress on Sandwich that he would need to reinforce Portugal’s naval defences because, as soon as he left, the Spanish would be waiting to invade at the mouth of the Tagus. Catherine was no doubt briefed on what to say by her mother and other political advisers but she clearly handled this interview with firmness and an understanding of the awkward underlying issues that remained between Portugal and England where her marriage was concerned. She does not come across as the clueless ingénue that the English would soon be depicting.
Sandwich gave reassurances about reinforcing the fleet and, on the other matters, of the payment of the dowry and Portuguese obligations under the terms of the Treaty of London, he proceeded with a mixture of tact and rigour. ‘Concerning the schedule of the portion (the dowry), I gave Her Majesty a paper, to avoid uncertainties of interpretation.’ This was a polite way of saying that he did not trust the Portuguese government to pay in full – and, indeed, they never did. Nor was it the only disappointment that he faced. The Portuguese were dragging their feet on loading the sugar that formed part of the treaty. He urged Ponte ‘to put merchandise aboard and not bills of exchange. He told me it was both unreasonable and impossible for all Portugal to do it.’8 Although irritated, Sandwich forbore from pointing out that Portugal seemed to be reneging on key parts of the alliance.
By mid-April, he was relieved to be able to set sail finally with the new queen of England on the Royal Charles, the ship that had brought Charles II and his brothers from Breda two years earlier. Catherine was given an appropriately regal send-off by her family, going aboard with her brothers, King Afonso and Dom Pedro, after she had taken an affectionate but restrained farewell of her mother outside the royal palace. She knew that it was unlikely that she would ever see any of them again. Her last gesture to the country of her birth was heavily symbolic. ‘As I passed by the Castles,’ Sandwich wrote in his diary, ‘the Queen commanded me to loose the Standard, which was done.’ But very soon human frailty overcame regal bearing. Once they were out on the open sea, Catherine and her ladies were all violently seasick.9
The voyage to England was stormy and Sandwich’s fleet of fourteen ships, five ketches and three accompanying merchantmen only sighted Land’s End on 4 May. A week later, off Torbay, James, duke of York, came aboard with the duke of Ormond to greet Catherine, and did so every day until she reached Portsmouth. She landed from his yacht, the Anne, on 14 May, and almost immediately took to her bed to recover from the journey and a heavy cold. The king, who had been in Barbara Palmer’s bed until just before he set off for Portsmouth, was in no hurry to meet his bride.
*
CATHERINE HAD LEFT her native land in a blaze of fireworks, serenaded on her last night by sweet music below her cabin. She was to find a much colder, quieter reception in England. Surrounded by her Portuguese ladies-in-waiting, she was no longer a proud Iberian princess but a virgin queen, waiting to have sex with a stranger. What she felt about her husband’s dilatory attitude to welcoming her we do not know but it cannot have been an easy time. Charles I had been so keen to meet Henrietta Maria in 1625 that he had made an early-morning dash from Canterbury to Dover and arrived before she was ready to receive him. His son’s attitude was in stark contrast. Charles justified his tardiness by claiming he needed to be in London for an important parliamentary session at which the Act of Uniformity, settling the shape of the restored Church of England, was passed. His presence did not, in the end, assure the passage of any of the amendments to the legislation that he wanted. He found consolation elsewhere. Pepys reported that ‘the King dined at my Lady Castlemaine’s and supped every day and night the last week. And that the night that the bonfires were made for the joy of the Queen’s arrival, the King was there.’10 There were joys of another sort to be found in the arms of the heavily pregnant Barbara.
Apart from bonfires, the greatest celebrations of Catherine’s arrival were left to the writers of ballads, often in the most appalling verse. One such was ‘A Votive Song for Her Sacred Majesty’s Happy Arrival’, composed, if that is the right word, by Edmund Gaiton, a captain in the duke of York’s regiment at Oxford. In its triumphal tone, it captures both the national and international implications of the Portuguese marriage:
What general joy is here in our glad land
All parties will agree, join hand in hand,
Contented loyalists do patient stay
And swear, if ever, now they’re like t’have pay.
Come then and quickly land, thy Charles doth fear
No winds blow fast enough till thou art here.
’Tis not your fragrant oranges are wanting
Of China breed, but better by transplanting.
Nor your rare bacon, fed from chestnut-trees,
(which brings Westphalia hams upon their knees)
Nor Brasil sugar nor your Indian gold.
Thou art the purchase, which thy Charles will hold.11
At breakfast time on the morning of 21 May, the king wrote to Clarendon with details of his first meeting with Catherine. He had found her in bed, ‘by reason of a little cough and some inclination to a fever, which was caused, as we physicians say, by having certain things stopped at sea which ought to have carried away those humours. But now all is in their due course and I believe she will find herself very well in the morning as soon as she wakes.’ He was somewhat relieved to find that ‘I was not
put to the consummation of the marriage last night; for I was so sleepy by having slept but two hours in my journey as I was afraid that matters would have gone very sleepily.’12 The king’s frankness about his postponed wedding night was amplified in a letter written two days later to his sister, Minette, in France: ‘I was married the day before yesterday but the fortune that follows our family is fallen upon me, car Monr. Le Cardinal m’a ferme la porte au nez, and though I am not so furious as Monsieur [Minette’s husband, the duke of Orléans] was, but am content to let those pass over before I go to bed with my wife, yet I hope I shall entertain her at least better the first night than he did you . . .’13 Poor Catherine. Already her menstrual cycle was becoming the subject of international comment.
Charles did not reveal much about his wife and her appearance to Minette, saying that Lord St Albans, his mother’s right-hand man, would do so, though he added, ‘I must tell you I think myself very happy.’ To his mother-in-law, Queen Luisa of Portugal, he managed a more flowery response, saying how much he was enjoying, ‘in this springtime, the company of my dearest wife.’ He was the happiest man in the world, ‘and the most enamoured, seeing close at hand the loveliness of her person and her virtues . . .’ All these reminded him of his obligations to Portugal itself but it was Catherine who was his chief delight: ‘I wish to say of my wife that I cannot sufficiently either look at her or talk to her.’14 Perhaps the canny Queen Luisa, who had apparently heard the tales of Charles II’s fondness for women and the fact that he had a mistress, was comforted, if not entirely convinced, by these professions of devotion. If so, she would have been right. The king was an accomplished liar.
To Clarendon, he was much less effusive in his description of his bride:
Her face is not so exact as to be called a beauty, though her eyes are excellent good, and not anything in her face that in the least degree can shock one. On the contrary, she has as much agreeableness in her looks altogether, as ever I saw: and if I have any skill in physiognomy, which I think I have, she must be as good a woman as ever was born. Her conversation, as much as I can perceive, is very good; for she has wit enough and a most agreeable voice. You would much wonder to see how well we are acquainted already. In a word, I think myself very happy; but am confident our two humours will agree very well together.15
Much of this was damning with faint praise and Charles was later reported to have reacted to Catherine’s unusual hairstyle by saying that he thought they had brought him a bat rather than a queen. The diarist John Evelyn was also struck by Catherine’s hair, which he described as, ‘her foretop long and turned aside very strangely.’16
Unaware that she and her ladies were being viewed as deeply unfashionable, olive-skinned oddities by the English, Catherine was soon entranced by her husband, who was dark himself. She seems to have fallen deeply in love very quickly and her affection for him never diminished. He was always her Prince Charming, despite his behaviour towards her. The marriage ceremonies – one Anglican, the other Catholic (despite Charles having been explicitly warned by Clarendon that he could not be married by ‘a Roman priest’) – took place on 21 May 1662. Whether deliberately or through carelessness, Charles was playing a dangerous game, potentially undermining his position as head of the Church of England by marrying in a secret Catholic ceremony. The officiating priest was Ludovic Stuart, Lord d’Aubigny, a member of a distinguished Scottish Catholic family whose links with France went back into the Middle Ages. He was Henrietta Maria’s almoner and would serve Catherine in the same capacity. This marriage ceremony, which took place in Catherine’s bedchamber, actually preceded the Anglican ceremony in the Governor’s House in Portsmouth, which was conducted by the bishop of London, Gilbert Sheldon.
Charles did not use the marriage as an occasion for prolonged public celebrations or spectacle. The idea that he was a man of the people, eager for his subjects to have access to him, is false. Like his father, he wanted display to be controlled. There was symbolism in the royal couple’s arrival at Hampton Court on 29 May, his birthday and the date of the Stuart dynasty’s restoration, but there was little possibility of crowds flocking to see their new queen, since the royal party did not arrive till late in the evening, as it was growing dark. There were spectators, as there had been along the route from Portsmouth, but they were kept well away from the king and his bride. The Scottish Stewarts had gone out among the people and their accessibility and visibility were key to the dynasty’s success. The English Stuarts lived in different times and had different priorities. There was still considerable discontent in England in 1662 and security could not be guaranteed at large gatherings. But it is possible to make too much of Charles II’s failure to put on lavish celebrations in connection with his marriage. The last major royal wedding had been that of Princess Elizabeth, daughter of James I, to the elector palatine nearly fifty years earlier. There was not much of a tradition in England of royal weddings being public events or opportunities for the monarchy to enhance its standing – a contrast with such occasions nowadays. The opportunity for merchandising was not, however, lost. Commemorative plates and embroidered boxes of carved wood, decorated with silk, linen and metal threads, showing Charles and Catherine in central panels, were produced. It has been said that this was the first time a royal marriage was marketed for public consumption.17
The newlyweds did not make their official entry into London as king and queen for another three months. This may seem dilatory but was probably dictated by a number of factors, not the least of which was that the court always avoided London in the plague months of the summer. London was also prone to rioting and its sizeable population of Protestant dissenters was often at odds with the Crown on religious matters. When, at very short notice, the City of London was asked to put on a pageant to celebrate the king and queen’s arrival in the capital, it responded with an aquatic display that featured the livery guilds rather than the royal couple. Pepys wrote that he could not even make out which barge the king and queen were sitting in, though Evelyn, better positioned, gave a detailed description: ‘His Majesty and the Queen came in an antique-shaped open vessel, covered with a state or canopy of cloth of gold, made in a form of a cupola, supported with high Corinthian pillars wreathed with flowers, festoons and garlands.’18 The themes of the pageant were a mixture of chivalry and Roman values, with echoes of the kinds of entertainments so loved by the young Henry VIII. Almost overlooked, it was reported that Catherine appeared uncomfortable, ‘like a prisoner at a Roman triumph.’19 Certainly the speeches made by the sea deities reinforced the idea of an England cut off from the European continent but still powerful enough for its name alone to strike fear into its enemies’ hearts. There was also praise for the Anglo-Portuguese alliance, albeit in terms harking back to the past rather than the present.
Adrift on the Thames, surrounded by a gaggle of little bobbing boats, Charles took his wife to Whitehall. After the formalities of her departure from Portugal, this was probably not the stately entry into London that Catherine might have envisaged. Yet in its gaudy shallowness it was a metaphor for the Restoration court. It would be an exaggeration to claim that, during the three months they had spent together at Hampton Court, Charles had grown tired of his wife because, despite saying all the right things to his mother-in-law, the king’s lack of enthusiasm for his bride was always hard to disguise. He had signed himself, in his first letter to Catherine in 1661, as ‘the very faithful husband of Your Majesty’. The queen was soon to discover how very empty those words were. Charles did not actively dislike Catherine but his passion for Lady Castlemaine was unabated. The little Portuguese princess could not compete with Barbara or any of Charles’s subsequent mistresses. She would learn, eventually, to accept this reality and forge a life for herself, but only after much humiliation had been heaped upon her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘Full of sweetness and goodness’
‘As for the queen . . . you may credit her being a very extraordinary woman’
Philip Stanhope, earl of Chesterfield, lord chamberlain to Queen Catherine
HISTORIANS HAVE LARGELY been dismissive of Catherine of Braganza, writing her off as an unsophisticated Iberian princess, out of her depth in Charles II’s dazzling court, prone to hysteria and retreating into religiosity as her only defence against the entirely unfamiliar, unkind world in which she now found herself. In this interpretation, Catherine retreats to her chapels and apartments, surrounded by Catholic priests and the Portuguese ladies whose age and appearance so appalled English commentators, an overlooked irrelevance in Charles II’s hedonistic lifestyle. The truth, as is so often the case, is rather different. For, as Chesterfield’s views suggest, there was much more to the new queen than the enduring popular image of a wronged, neglected wife.
She was, of course, both, but over time she learned to deal with humiliation and sorrow and to forge a separate identity for herself. Her good qualities were immediately apparent to all who saw her. Chesterfield went on to describe them in more detail and they echo those of Charles II in their depiction of her piety, discretion and intelligence. The earl noted that she was very fond of her husband and was ‘exactly shaped, and has lovely hands, excellent eyes, a good countenance, a pleasing voice, fine hair, and, in a word, is what an understanding man would wish a wife.’ Yet one detects a note of caution in this last phrase and he went on to make his reservations clearer, without naming names: ‘I fear all this will hardly make things run in the right channel; but, if it should, I suppose our court will require a new modelling . . .’1 Chesterfield was an accomplished letter-writer. He could charm mistresses, wives, even his mother-in-law with his pen, but he was also a fair judge of what was going on around him. He was grati-fied with the roles he and his second wife, Lady Elizabeth Butler, had been given in Catherine’s household but he had no illusions as to the main – and perhaps insuperable – problem that the royal marriage would face. There was no escaping Charles II’s passion for the recently ennobled Lady Castlemaine. She had been Chesterfield’s own mistress just a few years ago and he knew her all too well.