by Linda Porter
The court lapped up this sort of gossip and often much worse. In the same diary entry, Pepys noted reports that at a recent ball, ‘a child was dropped by one of the ladies in dancing; but nobody knew who, it being taken up by somebody in their handkerchief.’ This sounds like the description of a very public miscarriage. In order to protect the identity of the young lady concerned, all the maids of honour had appeared the next morning as if nothing had happened but it was noted that one of them, Winifred Wells, had fallen sick in the afternoon and then disappeared from court. Winifred’s name had been connected with the king before and Charles II was believed to be the father of the child she had lost. There was an even more distasteful rumour that the king, whose interest in science was well known, had subsequently dissected the foetus in his laboratory. While none of this may actually be true, the fact that such lurid stories circulated widely reveals the moral bankruptcy of the Restoration court.
A young woman like Frances Teresa Stuart had to tread very carefully in such surroundings. She evidently liked being the centre of attention and did nothing to discourage Charles II, who petted and caressed her in public. After his marriage, with Frances in regular attendance on Catherine of Braganza, it was said that the queen dreaded going out from her bedchamber into her dressing room in the morning for fear that she would find her husband canoodling with Frances. But though the king would have liked to have showered Frances with expensive presents she seems to have refused anything that was not appropriate to her role as the queen’s servant and she consistently refused to sleep with him. Nor did she exhibit the slightest interest in playing a part in factional politics. Buckingham thought she might be of use in furthering his own ambitions and balancing the influence of Lady Castlemaine but soon realized that Frances had nothing to offer him in that respect. Henry Bennet also tried to gain her good offices and fared even worse. It was said that during their discussion she had been reminded of how effectively Buckingham had mimicked him behind his back and was unable to suppress her laughter.
In a court full of self-serving, untrustworthy political operators, no one had realized that Frances Teresa Stuart was more than able to match them when it came to manipulation. Even the duke of York was said to have fallen for her and during Catherine of Braganza’s illness the word went around that the king was intent on marrying Frances if his wife died. Frances had held Charles II in thrall for so long precisely because she would not give him what he desired most – a fully sexual relationship. Yet what she herself wanted has never been easy to comprehend. It may have been nothing more than attention and fame, gratification that her beauty was an achievement in itself and that its purity was not for sale. She had played a dangerous game with remarkable consistency and much more intelligence than anyone realized. By 1667, after five years as the darling of the court, she knew that she could not keep it up for very much longer.
Chapter Ten
The One Who Got Away
‘The court in Farthing yet itself does please
And female Stuart there, Rules the four Seas’
Andrew Marvell, ‘Last Instructions to a Painter’, 1667
MARVELL’S BITTER, BRILLIANT poem demonstrated the disdain he felt for the English Crown, court and politicians at the end of the First Dutch War. Underneath the brittle hedonism of the first decade of the reign, there was a palpable sense of fury and despair. What was a man who had tutored Mary Fairfax, the unhappy wife of the duke of Buckingham, written a stirring ode to Oliver Cromwell on his return from Ireland, and yet still entertained hopes for the Restoration, to make of the humiliating end of a conflict that had seen Dutch warships destroy the English fleet at anchor on the River Medway? To the Great Plague of 1665, followed swiftly by the Great Fire of 1666, was added the loss of Surinam and Nova Scotia to a more effective enemy, while any hope of compensation for English merchants was abandoned. Though the profligacy and immorality of Charles II’s court rubbed salt into wounded national pride, there was a deeper, inescapable reality that at least absolved the king of dallying with his mistresses at the expense of national interest: ‘As during the previous hundred years, the English monarchy was simply priced out of the market of sustained European warfare.’1 Lack of funds was a powerful restrictive force on Charles II, as it had been on the Tudors. The country Charles ruled was still a marginal player in the seventeenth-century world. Small wonder, then, that he looked elsewhere for financial support, since squeezing it out of his Parliament was such a thankless task. And while his mind ran over the consequences of defeat at the hands of another small country – ruled, nominally, by his own nephew – he was still hopelessly in love with a girl regarded by most of those who thought they knew her as an empty-headed flibbertigibbet, who continued to refuse his advances despite the temptations of titles and property. The general feeling was that the king would give Frances Teresa Stuart anything she wanted so long as she agreed, at last, to sleep with him.
While she still resisted, Frances was set to be remembered for something more than being the eternal object of the monarch’s desire. At the height of her fame at court, she sat as the model for Britannia on the new coinage. If Charles could not yet possess the young lady’s body, he could have her face immortalized and she would become, in effect, public property. In 1667, Frances was the model for the Flemish-born artist John Roettiers, who was chief engraver at the Royal Mint. Unlike Marvell, Pepys and Evelyn both applauded the choice of Frances as Britannia. At a difficult time, her depiction represented a positive hope for the future, an antidote to cynicism and the loss of Britain’s reputation in the world. Pepys noted that, while visiting his goldsmith, ‘[I] did observe the king’s new medal where in little there is Mrs Stewart’s face, as well done as ever I saw anything in my whole life I think . . . and a pretty thing it is that he should choose her face to represent Britannia by.’2 Writing later, Evelyn complimented Roettiers on how well he had caught Frances’ expression: ‘Monsieur Roti . . . so accurately expressed the countenance of the Duchess of R – in the head of Britannia, in the reverse of some of our coin . . . as one may easily and almost at first sight know it to be her Grace. And though in the smallest copper . . . such as may justly stand in competition with the ancient Masters.’3 So, indeed, she remained, her image surviving on British coinage until decimalization. But the reference to Frances as duchess of Richmond rather than Mrs Stewart is revealing. For, by March 1667, at the age of twenty, even as she sat for Roettiers, Frances had realized that she could not fend off Charles II for much longer. She desperately needed a husband, preferably of high birth, with a title and wealth, who could protect her and keep her in the manner to which she had become accustomed. Luckily for Frances, one such gentleman had just lost his second wife at the beginning of the year.
*
CHARLES STUART, SIXTH duke of Lennox and third duke of Richmond, was one of the most prominent, if not necessarily the most popular or influential, members of the aristocracy at Charles II’s court. He was of noble descent on both sides, his father, George Stuart, being a member of the Franco-Scottish d’Aubigny branch of the Stuarts and his mother, Katherine Howard, the daughter of the second earl of Suffolk. Despite this illustrious pedigree and the possession of extensive lands in England and Scotland, the course of his life had not always been easy. His parents’ marriage had been a love match, undertaken in secret despite the disapproval of her family and Charles I, the guardian of the children of this junior branch of his dynasty. Katherine Howard (in itself a name with unfortunate associations) was a considerable beauty, as can be seen in Van Dyck’s portrait of the young couple, which bears the motto, ‘Love Conquers All’. It could not, alas, ensure safety against the perils about to convulse the nation. In 1642, when he was only three years old, Charles Stuart’s father had been mortally wounded at Edgehill, the first battle of the English Civil Wars. His mother moved to join the royalist court at Oxford the following year but was imprisoned in the Tower because of her involvement with the Waller plot, an attemp
t to rouse support for the king in London. She later remarried but remained true to her royalist past, joining the exiles at The Hague and dying there in 1654.4
Wardship of the fifteen-year-old Charles Stuart now passed to his second cousin, the Parliamentary general Charles Fleetwood, who was Oliver Cromwell’s son-in-law. Hopes were entertained by senior politicians of the English republic that the young man might fit well into the new Cromwellian elite but Charles’s sympathies, like his appearance, were those of his mother. By 1658 he was in Paris, living with his uncle, Ludovic Stuart, the man who would later officiate at the Catholic marriage ceremony of Charles II and Catherine of Braganza. France suited Charles but he had inherited his mother’s penchant for conspiracy and, when he took part in the unsuccessful royalist uprising of Sir George Booth in August 1659, the Council of State sequestered his goods and lands. The fall of the English republic changed his fortunes once again and not long after he accompanied Charles II on his triumphal entry into London, the unexpected death of his young cousin, Esmé Stuart, brought him the dukedoms of Richmond and Lennox. This confirmed him as a significant power in Scottish politics and a leading courtier in Whitehall.
The duke was already a keen, though often unsuccessful, gambler and this was a hand he did not play at all well. Scotland had been neglected by the Stuart monarchy since James I came south in 1603 and to thrive in its politics took far greater cunning, ruthlessness and intelligence than Richmond possessed. Though a member of the Scottish Privy Council, he rarely attended meetings, preferring instead to exercise his hereditary rights as lord of Dumbarton Castle and fit out privateers, a particular interest of his. A clumsy attempt to strike at Charles II’s powerful lieutenant in Scotland, the earl of Lauderdale, by reforming the Edinburgh parliament failed badly. Charles II had never shown much personal warmth towards his cousin and now he actively disliked and distrusted him. This did not stop Richmond from fighting duels or amassing further titles in England. He had not actively courted royal displeasure but he was to feel its full fury when he secretly married Frances Teresa Stuart at the end of March 1667.
Richmond’s second wife, Margaret, had died just three months earlier but a remarriage within this time frame was not necessarily thought unseemly in those days. It was not the brevity of his widowerhood but the identity of his new spouse that mattered, and, in particular, the way they had gone about tying the knot. Charles II seems not to have suspected that Frances had any interest in Richmond until the nervous couple approached him for permission to marry. Evidently stung, and perhaps hoping that he could still win Frances by stalling, the king agreed to the match, with the proviso that Richmond must make an appropriate financial settlement on Frances. In theory, this would not have been difficult, but Richmond’s extravagant lifestyle was already well known and making provisions that would have met with royal approval might have been time-consuming. Frances feared that the king would not, ultimately, give his consent. She left London secretly and travelled by coach with Richmond to his mansion, Cobham Hall, in Kent. They were probably married on Saturday, 30 March 1667.
The circumstances of Frances’ departure are open to speculation. Gramont has a characteristically entertaining story that the elopement (for that is what it amounted to) was triggered by the jealous Lady Castlemaine, who, wishing to cause trouble between the king and her rival, suggested that Mrs Stuart’s excuses that she must leave the royal presence one evening because of fatigue had an altogether different cause. The king, so accustomed to cuckolding other men, did not take kindly to the idea that the duke of Richmond might be enjoying a lady who had resisted him for five years. Marching angrily into Frances’ apartments at Whitehall, he found her lying in her bed with the duke seated beside her at her pillow, talking to her. This scene was sufficiently compromising to enrage him even further: ‘The King, who of all men was one of the most mild and gentle, testified his resentment to the Duke of Richmond in such terms as he had never before used. The Duke was speechless and almost petrified . . . he made a profound bow and retired, without replying a single word to the vast torrent of threats and menaces that were poured upon him.’ He left immediately. Frances was said to have responded with some spirit, saying that she considered herself a slave in a free country and that ‘she knew of no engagement that could prevent her from disposing of her hand as she thought proper.’ She claimed that the duke’s intentions were honourable though she could offer no other justification for his being in her bedchamber at midnight.5 Whatever the truth of this tale, Frances and Richmond were clearly not inclined to wait around any longer.
Despite the drama surrounding the beginning of their married life together, Frances and Richmond do seem to have been genuinely in love. Like many other men at the Restoration court, he was evidently smitten by her beauty but seems also to have trusted and valued her judgement. After the early death of his first wife and a far from happy relationship with his second, he was looking for a woman who would not just enhance his status, since that was high already, but of whom he was genuinely fond. Richmond was not greatly admired by contemporaries, some of whom dismissed him as a spendthrift and drunken sot with a weakness for gambling, but it is unlikely that Frances would have married him on the basis of that reputation, no matter how imperative it had become to escape the clutches of Charles II. Both Richmond and his new wife seem to have seen in one another something that commentators at the time did not discern – a desire to live comfortably and companionably and an ambition to succeed on their own terms. They had behaved with some daring, a quality not until then associated with either of them, and it was widely thought that they would pay the price. Pepys reported on 3 April that ‘the king hath said that he will never see her more’.6
They were certainly testing the waters when they arrived back in London on the same day as Pepys’s diary entry, staying with Mrs Sophia Stuart in her lodgings at Somerset House. When it was made clear to them that they would not yet be welcome back at court, they retired again to Cobham Hall. Their return coincided with the fall of Clarendon and rumours circulated that he had encouraged Richmond to marry Frances to prevent the king from divorcing Catherine of Braganza and marrying Frances himself. Given his consistency in rejecting the idea of divorce, it is unlikely that Charles ever realistically harboured the idea of making Frances Stuart his queen. She was not of appropriate rank and though he had lusted after her for years any remarriage would surely have been for political rather than personal reasons.
While the court may have missed Frances and her warmth and spontaneity, the new duchess of Richmond was enjoying the first months of married life at Cobham Hall, a house that captured her heart and where she was to spend increasing amounts of time. By June, news that she was pregnant reached Richmond’s tenants in Scotland. His agent wrote of the enthusiastic response that had come from far and wide: ‘I am afraid the news of her Grace’s being with child will make all your Grace’s vassals mad; some of them have come to me almost 100 miles only to be informed of the certainty. It is looked upon here as no small miracle to hear so great brutes as they be so heartily zealous for both your Graces and the young Lord Darnley . . .’ This suggests that, as well as displaying their loyalty, Richmond’s tenants were relieved that, at last, they might have assurance for their own futures. They were, however, to be disappointed. If Frances was pregnant, she must have miscarried, for there was to be no heir then or in the subsequent five years of her marriage.
Frances and her husband hoped for a reconciliation with the king but it was so slow in coming that they appear to have seriously considered moving to France to take up residence on the duke of Richmond’s estates there. The marquis de Ruvigny wrote to Louis XIV in late October 1667, saying that, ‘the duchess of Richmond, formerly Miss Stuart, is preparing to go to France soon to request your majesty to place her husband in possession of the estate of Aubigny.’ It was believed that Frances would join Henrietta Maria’s household once again, taking the place of the countess of Guildford, who had rec
ently died. Ruvigny went on to add that, ‘she despairs of a reconciliation [with Charles II] and she is right.’ But he was, in fact, wrong, though it took a dangerous illness for the past to be suddenly forgotten and forgiven. In March 1668, almost exactly a year after her marriage to Richmond, Frances contracted smallpox.
Though very ill, Frances was expected to recover. No one believed, however, that her famous beauty would survive unscathed. Smallpox could permanently disfigure the most handsome of men and women. In the previous century, Lady Mary Sidney nursed Elizabeth I through smallpox, only to succumb herself to the disease, with heartbreaking results for her appearance. Her husband, away on royal business, recorded: ‘I left her a full fair lady, in mine eye, at least, the fairest, and when I returned I found her as foul a lady as the smallpox could make her.’7 This was the future that many believed now awaited the duchess of Richmond, and the king himself, immediately forgiving Frances for her behaviour, was only too well aware of the dangers: ‘I cannot tell whether the duchess of Richmond will be much marked with the smallpox,’ he wrote to Minette, ‘she has many and I fear they will at least do her no good.’ The damage to Frances’ much-admired beauty was less than feared, but did affect one of her eyes, which was left with a permanent slight droop. Noting that he had not seen Frances in over a year, Charles II was able to reassure his sister that Frances was ‘not much marked with the smallpox . . . and I hope she will not be much changed, as soon as her eye is well, for she has a very great defluction in it and even some danger of having a blemish in it.’8 Frances’ illness had, he said, ‘made me pardon all that is past.’ Her rejection and betrayal, as the king saw it, was now put to one side, if never entirely forgotten. He had experienced the bitter taste of the kind of humiliation he consistently wreaked on his wife, though it would not suddenly turn him into a faithful husband. Nothing could change his essential nature. The duchess of Richmond, meanwhile, was relieved to have survived her illness and to be able to enjoy royal favour once more. She returned to court as a lady of the bedchamber to Catherine of Braganza, who seems always to have liked her regardless of Charles II’s infatuation, and remained resolutely loyal to the queen when Louise de Kéroualle became the king’s mistress.
