Mistresses

by Linda Porter

  Louise would have been mortified by this scathing dismissal of her true value. Had she known, she would certainly not have spoken up for Essex to the king, telling Charles II that she heard he was a very good man ‘and serves you well.’ It does not seem to have occurred to the king to wonder what on earth Louise actually knew about Irish affairs but, as neither of them had ever set foot in the country, perhaps he thought her views were as good as anybody’s. By 1677, Louise had turned against Essex and was championing the duke of Monmouth as his replacement. If true, her efforts proved fruitless, for it was the time-worn Ormond, ever faithful to the Crown, who returned to his native Ireland and survived in charge of its seething tensions and political rivalries until Charles II’s death in 1685.

  *

  AS WELL AS latching on to English politicians, Louise also had to manage her relationship with the country of her birth. Four successive ambassadors from the court of Louis XIV were her major contacts with France. Charles Colbert de Croissy, a younger brother of the Sun King’s chief finance minister, was in the post when Louise arrived. It was Colbert de Croissy who reported her seduction by Charles II at Euston Hall and though he thought this gave France an undoubted hold over the English king, his view of Louise herself was not always favourable. He lacked confidence in her staying power, given Charles II’s roving eye, and was irritated by Louise’s interference in the choice of a second wife for the duke of York after the death of Anne Hyde. Louise tried to interest the heir to the throne in one of the beautiful Elboeuf sisters, whereas the French court favoured the widowed duchess of Guise. In the end, neither party was successful. James chose the fifteen-year-old Italian noblewoman, Mary Beatrice d’Este, who became known as Mary of Modena. But Louise’s matchmaking efforts soured her already uncertain relations with Colbert de Croissy and threatened the respectability she sought in France as well as Britain. Louise had set her heart on a French title and estate and her pretensions offended the French ambassador. His family were renowned for their brusqueness and Colbert did not mince his words in reporting the duchess of Portsmouth’s vaulting ambition: ‘I own I find her on all occasions so ill-disposed for the service of the king [Louis XIV], and showing such ill-humour against France (whether because she feels herself despised there, or whether from an effect of caprice), that I really think she deserves no favour of his Majesty.’ However, he tempered this criticism with a realistic analysis of the lady’s hold over Charles II, acknowledging that the king’s likely reaction to the acceptance or refusal of Louise’s request must be taken into account: ‘But as the King of England shows her much love and so visibly likes to please her, his Majesty can judge whether it is best not to treat her according to her merits. An attention paid to her will be taken by the King of England as one paid to himself.’5

  The estate on which Louise had set her hopes was the manor of Aubigny-sur-Nère, in the Berry region of central France. It was in the heart of the countryside, in what the French today call la France profonde, and it had a long association with foreign, rather than French, ownership, having originally been granted to John Stuart, the head of a branch of the Scottish royal family, who had made a career as a soldier and courtier in fifteenth-century France. Today, this pretty town with its half-timbered houses is still known as ‘the city of the Scots’ and proudly displays its historic associations with the Auld Alliance. In 1673, the dukedom was vacant following the death of Frances Teresa Stuart’s husband, the duke of Richmond, and the estate had, in theory, reverted to Charles II himself, as Richmond’s nearest male relative. He wanted to gift it to Louise for the rest of her life, with the additional assurance from Louis XIV that she could dispose of it freely. This proved something of a stumbling block. Louis took his cousin’s request to mean that the estate would eventually pass to Louise’s son by the king, but as little Charles was illegitimate and Charles II had no legally recognized male heirs apart from his brother, Louis’s first thought was that the lands and title should revert to the French Crown. Encouraged by Colbert de Croissy, and perhaps by his own lack of inclination towards a woman he viewed as potentially useful, but still something of an unknown quantity, with pretensions well above her place in society, Louis was not minded at first to meet Charles II’s request. Eventually a compromise was reached whereby it was agreed that Louise should have the estate during her lifetime but would not become a French duchess in her own right. The final arrangement did include a provision for Aubigny to pass to the male descendants of Louise’s son and only in default of them would it revert to the French Crown. Charles II was not actually granted the duchy of Aubigny by Louis XIV until March 1684, at the end of his reign.6

  It seems that Louise was emboldened by the success over Aubigny to ask for further favours for her relations in France. Through the new French ambassador, Ruvigny, a Protestant, who kept his feelings about Louise to himself, she asked Louis XIV for a position as abbess for her aunt and the office of procurer-general of the Estates of Brittany for a male relative. Both requests were refused, though the blow to Louise’s self-esteem was somewhat offset by the present of an expensive pair of earrings from the French king. But while the duchess of Portsmouth’s place in the king’s affections was recognized in England soon after her arrival, it was not until 1675 that Louis, his ministers and ambassadors demonstrated any belief that she might have tangible political influence in England. They wanted Charles II to dissolve his strongly anti-French Parliament and hoped that Louise could encourage him to do so. In fact, Parliament was prorogued for fifteen months but the impetus – apart from Charles’s consistently fraught relationship with his legislators – is more likely to have come from the grant of 100,000 crowns that he accepted from the French than from any blandishments coming from Louise de Kéroualle. His paymasters insisted that he make formal acknowledgement of such payments in writing and kept his receipts in the records of their Ministry for Foreign Affairs. ‘I have received,’ he wrote, in his own hand, in September 1676, ‘from his most Christian Majesty, by the hands of M. Courtin, the sum of a hundred thousand crowns, French money . . . to be deducted from the four hundred thousand crowns payable at the end of this year.’7

  The Monsieur Courtin referred to in Charles II’s businesslike note was the ambassador who replaced Ruvigny in 1676. Honoré Courtin was a genial and cultured man from a prominent Parisian family. He was an experienced diplomat who had already spent time in England and he knew Louise from her time at the French court. But though Louise had been in England for six years, Courtin was the first French diplomat whose instructions explicitly mentioned Louise and the service that might be expected of her. Distrust of her motives and dislike of her pretensions had made Louis XIV and his foreign ministers, Louvois and Pomponne, slow to realize Louise’s potential. Now they considered that she could, in effect, become a spy, passing on information and representing French interests in her day-to-day relations with Charles II.

  The belated recognition of Louise’s usefulness may seem like an oversight but it should be remembered that Charles II was not the focus of Louis XIV’s attention. England could be useful to him but his schemes were on a grand European scale and the situation of his cousin, in a country known for its internal restiveness, did not necessarily inspire confidence. He was happy to send Charles financial sweeteners, since they had little impact on his own exchequer, and to take British military aid in his endless wars, but it was not an alliance of equals. In this respect, the relationship between Charles II and Louis XIV has parallels with that of Henry VIII and the emperor Charles V in the sixteenth century, and Charles II’s disastrous foreign policy is a salutary reminder that, while Frances Teresa Stuart may have sat for the portrait of Britannia that graced British coinage, it would be a long time before Britannia ruled the waves.

  Despite her friendship with the strongly anti-French Danby, there were clearly advantages in encouraging Louise. She had been shown kindness by Louis XIV and was expected to repay it. It was time to profit from the English king’s
known weakness for women. Yet though Louise evidently did form a working relationship with Courtin, who pointed out to Louis XIV the advantages of his twice-daily access to Louise’s apartments, where the king was often to be found, their influence over Charles II’s actions was minimal. He listened but then made up his own mind. And in 1677, Courtin was replaced by Paul Barrillon d’Armoncourt, marquis de Branges. His instructions, as regards Louise, reiterated the usefulness of her access to the English king while still refusing her continued requests for positions for her relatives in France.

  Barrillon arrived in London in August 1677 and was immediately faced with a delicate situation. James, duke of York had given his permission for his elder daughter, Mary (the second in line to the British throne), to marry her cousin, William of Orange, the son of James and Charles II’s sister, Princess Mary Stuart. This development dismayed the French, since William himself had a claim to the throne of Britain via his mother, and the possibility that the union might upset the balance of power in northern Europe was something that Louis XIV and his advisers correctly anticipated, though eleven years would pass before their fears were realized. Charles II appears to have used Louise to convey soothing words to the French about his nephew’s marriage but he was prepared to risk their displeasure because he was well aware of William’s popularity in England. That popularity did not extend to the distraught bride herself. Fifteen-year-old Mary was ripening into a great beauty but her education was patchy; she lacked the Greek and Latin of Queen Elizabeth I, though her French was fluent and she was more widely read than some of her biographers have supposed. But she had lived quietly at Richmond Palace during her girlhood and was now to have her entire existence changed in ways that would have challenged someone of considerably greater maturity. Her chief pastimes were playing cards, gardening and writing impassioned letters to female friends. She had in abundance the looks her much shorter husband obviously lacked (her sister, Princess Anne, called him Caliban, after the monster on Prospero’s island in The Tempest), and Mary found the idea of marrying him so repellent that she is said to have wept solidly for eighteen hours when told of her forthcoming nuptials.

  Louise had known William of Orange since she arrived in England and he was often in her apartments during his visits to his uncle. While this is indicative of the widely accepted realization that anyone who wanted more informal access to Charles II would find him with his French mistress, it should not necessarily be interpreted as demonstrating any warmth between Louise and William themselves. Indeed, if such feeling had ever existed, it was soon to be snuffed out, overtaken by events. The political landscape was changing. In January 1679, the Cavalier Parliament was dissolved after twenty-eight difficult years. The king hoped for a more accommodating House of Commons but he had disastrously miscalculated. The general election the following month returned a House that favoured the opposition by a margin of two to one. The great crisis of Charles II’s troubled reign was approaching. In its swirling currents, not just Louise but the restored Stuart dynasty itself would be nearly swept away.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The Exclusion Crisis

  ‘At my return [to London] I found men’s minds more disturbed that ever I remember them to have been’

  Algernon Sidney, September 1679

  THE ATTEMPT BY Parliament to change the succession to the English Crown during the years 1679–81 is known as the Exclusion Crisis, though some historians have questioned the accuracy of this description.1 The attempt to exclude the duke of York as Charles II’s rightful heir and replace him with James, duke of Monmouth was only one aspect of a much wider crisis of confidence in the Restoration settlement, which encompassed many of the underlying issues that had led to civil war in 1642. Profoundly different beliefs on how government should be conducted, the relationship between the king and Parliament, and the management of religious differences had lain simmering not far below the surface in the first two decades of Charles II’s reign. His approach to managing these tensions was largely a sleight of hand – something that he was good at – using ministers to shield him from popular discontent and Louis XIV to prop up his finances, since Parliament would never vote him the monies he needed. The one thing that would not go away, that grew ever more problematic as the years went by, was his lack of a legitimate heir of his own body. There was no precedent for a bastard ascending the throne, no matter how personable and loved by his father. Henry VIII had changed the course of English history in his desperate search for a legitimate male heir. Charles II had seven surviving sons by five different mistresses. Was it time to rethink the entire concept of monarchical succession?

  The duke of Monmouth was the king’s first child and eldest son by the long-dead Lucy Walter. He had much of her looks and many of her weaknesses. Monmouth was now thirty years old, handsome, experienced as a soldier, married, albeit unhappily, to a rich heiress and, most significantly, a Protestant. He also had the ability of courting popularity at a time of political upheaval, when those who either did not know or did not care about his largely dissipated youth, expensive lifestyle and frequently poor judgement could be easily swayed by his public image. He would be whatever they wanted him to be. Before the fall of Danby (deserted by Louise de Kéroualle, who had grown weary of his implacable opposition to a French alliance) in 1678, Monmouth seems not to have considered himself as a political player at all. But others, most notably the earl of Shaftesbury, once a king’s man but now the leader of the opposition, were keen to profit from the political vacuum Danby left behind. They wished to encourage in Monmouth the idea that his destiny might be taking a different turn. The young man already knew that his uncle, the duke of York, Charles II’s legal heir, had intervened to have his situation spelled out in his latest military commission, when Monmouth was described as the king’s ‘natural son’. It was an early warning shot in what would become an increasingly vicious battle, as the complex family ties of the Stuarts began to unravel.

  The duke of York’s conversion to Catholicism was tacitly acknowledged when he was compelled to resign the post of lord high admiral in 1673 because he would not take the Test Act. Publicly, he continued to prevaricate until 1676, despite having married a Catholic second wife. His was a personal journey a long time in the making. Like all his siblings except Henriette Anne, who was raised in the Catholic court of Louis XIV, James had been brought up as a Protestant. He was certainly not close to his mother, Henrietta Maria, but he was well aware of her devotion to the Catholic religion. While in exile, he came to respect the Catholics he knew, and he had served as a soldier of fortune with two Catholic powers, France and Spain, but at the time of the Restoration he was still outwardly conforming to the Church of England. By the late 1660s, both James and his first wife, Anne Hyde, were privately worshipping as Catholics. Charles II, aware of the political fallout that would ensue if his heir and sister-in-law made public their conversion, urged complete silence on the subject. James, though as unfaithful a husband as his brother, was greatly distressed by Anne’s painful death in 1671 from breast cancer, her condition apparently exacerbated by an eighth pregnancy. He had been with her in the final hours of her life and felt the disapproval of her brothers and domestic servants. The experience left its mark on him and deepened his faith. James would never be swayed in his commitment to Catholicism from this time. He had found a certainty that would underpin him for the rest of his life. Yet James’s very rigidity presented the king with a seemingly intractable problem. Public opinion, as the Popish Plot so clearly demonstrated, was dangerously volatile, and popery was an emotive term. It could readily be exploited by government opponents. Opinions were hardening and the emergence of different political groupings, representing the more conservative Court and the increasingly radical Country interests, would soon transform English politics by the creation of two distinct parties, the Whigs and the Tories.

  Between 1679 and 1681 there were three attempts to introduce bills into Parliament that would exclude the
Catholic duke of York from the succession. Charles II decided that it would be better if his brother were removed from the scene altogether while he attempted to control the situation, sending the duke and duchess to Brussels. James was unhappy at this new exile but could only wait on events. At home, Danby was forced from office and impeached; Louise de Kéroualle had decided some months previously that he was no longer of any use to her. Determined to stay at the heart of politics, she had already found a new ally in Robert Spencer, earl of Sunderland. Working with the earl of Essex, who had been so dubious about courting Louise’s support for his role in Ireland, and with the marquis of Halifax, Sunderland hoped to be able to steady the ship of state and secure the legitimate order of the succession, in defiance of Shaftesbury, who, as president of the Privy Council, had come out for exclusion in April 1679. A serious rebellion in Scotland during the early summer was put down by Monmouth, whose standing rose as a result, alarming Louise’s allies in government. The solution to the multiple problems that now beset the chronically underfunded king was hotly debated in council and the decision to recommend the dissolution of Parliament split Charles II’s warring advisers. It must also have brought some relief to a worried Louise, who had been criticized in Parliament and her removal demanded.

  The duke of York was not the only one watching anxiously from abroad. An alternative to the growing popularity of Monmouth was to balance his presence in England with that of William of Orange, an idea that Sunderland considered for a while, realizing that Louise’s attitude towards William, given her influence with Charles II, might be key to the success of this project. Henry Sidney, younger brother of that Algernon Sidney who had once sought Lucy Walter’s favours, was the British envoy to The Hague. He was to get William to write to Louise,