CHAPTER VTHE DUCHESS

Itis hard to survey quite dispassionately, or even thoroughly to understand, the attitude of Anne Hyde on safely attaining her new dignity, the dizzy height to which she had climbed by such a thorny path. She seems, unhappily, to have had enemies from the first, but whether they were due to her father’s steadily increasing unpopularity, to her own behaviour, or to envy of her success, easily comprehensible, it is difficult to determine. Probably each of these conditions had something to do with it.

As regards her conduct, James himself says of her: “Her want of birth was made up by endowments, and her carriage afterwards became her acquired dignity.”[146]Pepys, who, as has been already remarked, never lost an opportunity of a fleer at her, says, as early as 13th April 1661, of “Edward Pickering his discourse most about the pride of the Duchess of York.” This may or may not be true, for Pepys wasnothing if not prejudiced, and the man who could, with his eyes open, write with foolish admiration of “my dear Lady Castlemaine,” cannot be considered an authority to be altogether respected. It is however certain, from other sources, that from the first, Duchess Anne was known unfavourably for her arrogance. Even Lord Craven, as we have seen, had noticed it, and he had no reason to be specially biassed. On this point also the French ambassador, the Comte de Cominges, remarks with some covert amusement: “She upholds with as much courage, cleverness and energy the dignity to which she has been called, as if she were of the blood of the kings or of Gusman at the least, or Mendoza.”[147]

146.Macpherson’s “Original Papers.”

147.“A French Ambassador at the Court of Charles II. (Comte de Cominges).” Jusserand.

Bishop Burnet, who evidently held her in great respect, and usually extols her, says: “She soon understood what belonged to a Princess, and took state upon her rather too much.”[148]

148.Burnet’s “History of My Own Time.”

We have to piece together these stray scraps of evidence in the best manner possible, and in so doing come to the conclusion that Anne, onfinding herself publicly acknowledged Duchess of York, and wife of the heir presumptive to the Crown, also found that she had set her foot on the first steps of a difficult and stony road, and that possibly she conceived her only chance in such a position was to assume and maintain a defensive attitude. A perpetual uneasy consciousness of her hardly acquired rank made her afraid of stepping for one moment off the pedestal to which she had been raised, and this of itself would serve to make her unpopular. It must be remembered also that the society which surrounded her, reckless, wild, unscrupulous as it was, was yet one which guarded jealously the traditions of high rank and lofty descent, and in the fervour of the Restoration was inclined to resent hotly the intrusion of a parvenue into the narrow circle of the blood royal of England and was only too ready to find fault whenever a loophole could be given. Poor Anne, it is to be feared, afforded many such.

Perhaps it may be as well to discuss in this place the vexed question of her personal appearance. On 20th April of this year 1661, Pepys writes acidly: “Saw the King and Duke of York and his Duchess, which is a plain woman, and like her mother my Lady Chancellor.”

In fact, if nearly all the pictures of her which exist may be trusted, they certainly dispose of Anne’s pretensions to beauty. They represent for the most part a large, heavy looking woman, with an abnormally wide mouth; and we know from contemporary evidence that she became very fat early in life.

It is true that Sir John Reresby, who is never ill natured, generously calls her “a very handsome woman,”[149]but only one other chronicler, Granger, in his Biographical History, ventures on such an opinion. Bronconi, in his Journal, declares without circumlocution: “La Duchesse de York est fort laide, la bouche extraordinairement fendue, et les yeux fort craillez, mais très courtoise.” The famous Grammont, a professed critic of beauty, alluding to the marriage, says: “The bride was no perfect beauty,” and elsewhere sums up the case judicially:

149.“Memoirs of Sir John Reresby,” 1764.

“She had a majestic mien, a pretty good shape, not much beauty, a great deal of wit [this Reresby and others endorse] and so just a discernment of merit that whoever of either sex were possessed of it were sure to be distinguishedby her, an air of grandeur in all her actions made her to be considered as if born to support the rank which placed her so near the throne.”[150]

150.“Memoirs of the Court of Charles II.,” by Count Grammont, ed. by Sir Walter Scott, revised ed. 1846.

Considering the passion which Anne had certainly inspired in several men, and which in the Duke of York had now raised her to her lofty position, one is forced to the conclusion that, in spite of her lack of physical beauty, she must have been possessed of some conquering charm of manner which, joined to undoubted wit and certain brilliant endowments of mind, made up for the want of personal attractions in an age which, perhaps of all others, most prized such an attribute.

This too would partly account for the steady friendship which her brother-in-law the King always testified for her. He was, it is true, a connoisseur of beauty of all types, but he also greatly valued wit, and keenly appreciated any one who could and would amuse him. He had the strong sense of humour which is often allied to a saturnine disposition, and which we know never failed him to the end. His own wife, with all her good qualities, which were quite definite,with her adoring and pathetic devotion to himself, was nevertheless, we fear, not amusing, and he probably found in his plebeian sister-in-law a quickness of apprehension which appealed to his strain of cynicism and impatience of dullness; and which was not always allied to the radiant and undoubted beauty which he admired in other women.[151]

151.In the year 1661 we find evidence of the King’s kind feeling towards his sister-in-law in a present made to her. The letter is to Sir Stephen Fox:“Charles R.“Our will and pleasure is yt you forthwith pay to Sir John Shaw ye sum of one thousand pounds in ys of a necklace of Pearls given by us to ye Dutchesse of Yorke and for yr soe doing this shal be yor warrt. Given at or Court at Whitehall this 19th of July 1661” (Egerton MS.).

151.In the year 1661 we find evidence of the King’s kind feeling towards his sister-in-law in a present made to her. The letter is to Sir Stephen Fox:

“Charles R.

“Our will and pleasure is yt you forthwith pay to Sir John Shaw ye sum of one thousand pounds in ys of a necklace of Pearls given by us to ye Dutchesse of Yorke and for yr soe doing this shal be yor warrt. Given at or Court at Whitehall this 19th of July 1661” (Egerton MS.).

Duchess Anne had for her part “wit and agreeable manners, but without personal charm,” and Jesse rather ponderously asserts: “In the character of Anne Hyde there seems to have been more to admire than to love. She was possessed rather of dignity than grace, rather of masculine sense than feminine gentleness.”[152]And Burnet further testifies that she was “a woman of great spirit,” “a very extraordinarywoman,” who “had great knowledge and a lively sense of things.”

152.“Memoirs of the Court of England during the Reign of the Stuarts.” John Heneage Jesse.

Thus equipped by nature, by education, by experience, Nan Hyde, the maid of honour in past years of the Mary who now slept hard by among her kindred in the Abbey, began her career as a princess, fully aware, there can be no doubt, of the many pitfalls which menaced her.

The arena into which she stepped was a brilliant one. The Court of England, after the long stormy interval during which such a thing did not exist, became “very magnificent,” and the fact is readily comprehensible.

Charles II. had so long lived an out-at-elbows life, from hand to mouth, as it were, that the inheritance to which he had at last succeeded and the fifty thousand “gold pieces” voted by Parliament must have seemed for the time being inexhaustible, and a character like his would set no bounds to his careless extravagance.[153]His ideas were naturally lavish and picturesque, and there were always plenty of people about him quite willing—and more than willing—to minister to these; many hands in his pockets, moreover, as well as his own.

153.“Royalty Restored.” J. F. Molloy.

This state of things was, too, for a time at any rate, not unacceptable to the people at large. Through the grim years of the Civil War, and during the severe rule of the Commonwealth, they had been condemned to a lack of beauty in life, to sad-coloured raiment, to stern repression, to an absence of all the amusement and colour which had pervaded England in the joyous, if strenuous, Elizabethan age and the first years of the succeeding century.

It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that the commonalty, wearied and fretted by their Puritan taskmasters, should be dazzled by the vision of a gracious young king, easy of access, genial of speech, surrounded moreover by splendour, beauty and gaiety.

We know now what underlay the vision. We know what was destined to become a headlong race of folly—and worse, but it was all at first, at least, very seductive.

And in the midst of it all now moved the new Duchess of York, for a few months, at least, the first lady in the kingdom, until the King should find himself a bride.

We have seen that Anne’s father participated in some of the state which surrounded her; the dignities conferred on him, fully as his long-triedservice had merited them, being as much for his daughter’s honour as for his own.

Pepys gives us a glimpse, now and then, of the doings at Court during the spring of 1661. Early in April he is in St James’s Park to watch the Duke of York play at “Pele-mele, the first time that ever I saw the sport.”[154]James, like all his family, was very active in body, loving sport and games of every kind. He was passionately devoted to hunting, and this continued to the end. Long afterwards, along the grassy rides of the forests of Saint Germain or Marly, the banished King of England would sweep down with his train, forgetting for a few exhilarating moments the pain of loss and exile and the green glades of Windsor which he would never see again. It may be remembered, moreover, that when Prince George of Denmark testified some alarm at his own tendency to fat, Charles II. gave him promptly the advice: “Walk with me, and hunt with my brother.”

154.“Diary.” 1st April 1661.

The Duke was also very fond of tennis, but here he was excelled by his cousin Prince Rupert, the best player in England. The Prince Palatine had not accompanied the King at the time of the Restoration, but had arrived inEngland in September of the same year, after the death of the Duke of Gloucester, when he came armed with a commission to ask for the hand of the Princess Henrietta on behalf of the Emperor Leopold. We have seen that this overture was useless, the queen-mother being unwilling to consider anything which could clash with the claims of her nephew the Duke of Orleans.[155]

155.“A Royal Cavalier: The Romance of Rupert, Prince Palatine.” Mrs Steuart Erskine.

The coronation of Charles II. took place on St George’s Day, 23rd April, the culmination of the Restoration rejoicings, but the month of May was to see the withering of the first flower of the royal stem.

PRINCE RUPERT

The little Duke of Cambridge, round whose cradle such a storm of passion had raged, died on the 5th. Pepys spitefully volunteers the opinion that the poor baby’s death, he believes, “will please everybody, and I hear that the Duke and his lady themselves are not much troubled at it”[156]; a conclusion which seems, onevery ground, very unlikely. James was to prove himself a deeply affectionate father, and Anne’s strength and tenacity of feeling were not likely to fail in this direction, though it is quite possible that she made little demonstration outwardly of grief.

156.“Diary of Samuel Pepys,” notes by Lord Braybrooke, 1906.Worthington’s “Diary and Correspondence.” 14th May 1661.—S. Hartlieb to Dr Worthington: “I know not whether I told you before that the Duke of York’s only child is dead and buried.”

156.“Diary of Samuel Pepys,” notes by Lord Braybrooke, 1906.

Worthington’s “Diary and Correspondence.” 14th May 1661.—S. Hartlieb to Dr Worthington: “I know not whether I told you before that the Duke of York’s only child is dead and buried.”

During this year the King’s aunt Elizabeth, the “Winter Queen,” was at last suffered to revisit her native country after so many stormy years. She had been passionately desirous to do so, though England could have been little more than a memory. But at one time she had been enshrined in the hearts and imaginations of the English, some of whom would have willingly set aside her brother’s children and accepted her son, Charles Louis, as king. No doubt the knowledge of this lingered in the Queen’s mind when she set sail once more for her early home, but as happens to many in like circumstances, it meant disillusion. The radiant Queen of Hearts, whom Christian of Anhalt and many another chivalrous warrior had adored, was no more the same, and she came back, we fear, to find herself forgotten.[157]Only Craven was left, to whom she had been the one andonly star, a few—very few—faithful friends, and her gallant son Rupert. At first she stayed at Drury House, the guest of Lord Craven, but later she removed to a house of her own in Leicester Field. Here, only a few months after, she died, in February 1662.[158]

157.Sir Henry Wotton’s famous lyric, “Ye Meaner Beauties of the Night,” was addressed to Elizabeth.

158.“A Royal Cavalier: The Romance of Rupert, Prince Palatine.” Mrs Steuart Erskine.

In the old days at The Hague and Breda, as we have seen, Elizabeth had been good to Chancellor Hyde’s young daughter, and had strenuously backed the Princess Mary’s choice of the girl as maid of honour, little dreaming how nearly they were destined to be related.

Did the Duchess of York remember the many kindnesses shown to Nan Hyde, now when it had become possible to repay them? One must hope so, for there is no record to tell us.

The day of the Queen of Bohemia’s funeral, on 20th February, there was a terrible storm, a type indeed of the unquiet life now closed.[159]

159.“Merry Monarch: England under Charles II.” Davenport Adams.

That spring of 1662 saw the expected change in the position and prospects of the Duchess of York, for the negotiations for the King’s marriage were now completed. One of thebasest of the many slanders current against Clarendon was that he pushed on the match with Catherine of Bragança by every means in his power, knowing that she would never bear children, in order to ensure the succession to the Crown to his daughter’s offspring.

As a matter of fact, though the Queen was destined never to become the mother of a living child, it is yet certain that more than once she had the hope of maternity.

However, scandal of every sort and kind was never more rife than in the reckless, pleasure-loving, unscrupulous Court of Charles II. Every one seems to have said whatever he or she chose, without the slightest reference to truth, if that was likely to spoil a piquant story, and no one was more victimised in this respect than the Lord Chancellor, who thus paid the penalty of success. His friend Evelyn was among the few who never wavered in their loyal attachment, and who never said a bitter or ill-natured thing. This friendship, by the way, brought the diarist into closer relation with the Duke of York, for in January we find the latter announcing that he intended to visit the garden at Sayes Court, already famous for its rare and lovely plants, the care bestowed onit, and the culture of its gifted owner.[160]The next month, too, Evelyn records that he is present at a comedy acted before the Duchess at the Cockpit.

160.Evelyn’s “Diary.” Wm. Bray. 1850. “1662, 16th January.—Having heard of the Duke of York’s intention to visit my poor habitation and garden this day I returned.”

But the new queen was soon to be expected. On the 23rd April, the anniversary of the coronation, she set sail for England, arriving at Portsmouth on 14th May.

The Duke of York, in virtue of his office of Lord High Admiral, was despatched to receive her as his brother’s representative, and she welcomed him in her cabin, sitting under a canopy on a chair of state, but displaying frank, if shy cordiality.[161]Charles himself was in no violent hurry to see his richly-dowered bride, for he did not leave London till the 19th, travelling in Lord Northumberland’s coach. However, when he did arrive, no further time was lost, for the pair were married by Sheldon on the 22nd, in the great hall or presence-chamber in the governor’s lodging (now swept away) at Portsmouth. The register is in the Parish Church of St Thomas. They finallyreached Hampton Court, where the honeymoon was to be spent, on the 29th, the King professing himself perfectly satisfied with his new wife.

161.“Royalty Restored.” J. F. Molloy.

On the same evening the Duchess of York arrived to pay her duty to the Queen. It must have cost her an effort, for her second child, Mary, destined in after days to be queen, had been born barely a month previously, on the 30th of April—Prince Rupert, by the way, being her godfather. The Duchess came by water, in her own beautiful barge, and as she landed at the steps the King was waiting at the garden gate near by, and taking her by the hand, he led her along the straight, smooth alleys into the ancient palace, and so into the new Queen’s bedroom. Anne would have knelt to kiss her hand, but Catherine prevented the act of homage, and raising her, kissed her affectionately.[162]

162.“Life of Catherine of Bragança.” L. C. Davidson.

The poor little lonely bride, fresh from her convent and narrow upbringing, much younger than her actual years, bewildered by the racket in which she found herself, was perhaps already hungering for some one of her own sex to whom she could venture to unbend, and saw an augury for future friendship and confidencein the assured carriage, the fresh face, the steady, resolute eyes of English Nan. If so, she was not likely under present circumstances to be disappointed; even the King was perfectly willing to sanction such advances.

On the 15th August Evelyn mentions a visit paid to him by the Lord Chancellor. Hyde, as we know, had a year before received the earldom of Clarendon,[163]and though this occasion seemed to have been simply a friendly one, yet his purse and mace were borne before him when he came to Sayes Court. The diarist further notes: “They were likewise collationed with us, and were very merry. They had all been our old acquaintances in exile.”[164]

163.He was created Lord Hindon in November 1660, and Viscount Cornbury and Earl of Clarendon in April 1661. (Kennet’s “Chronicle.”)

164.Evelyn’s “Diary.” Wm. Bray. 1850.

Before the year was out the queen-mother came to pay her second visit, after the Restoration, to England. This time it was to welcome the new daughter-in-law who, besides her royal blood and rank, had brought such a splendid dower to the needy crown of England. The first meeting took place at the ancient palace of Greenwich, which had been little used formany years, its day having almost passed. Here Henrietta made the gentle Portuguese bride sit on one arm-chair on her right hand, while she herself occupied another. The King, waiving his precedence, of which, indeed, he was never very tenacious in such matters, took a stool, while the Duchess of York sat on one also, and the Duke stood by them.[165]It sounds very much as if they grouped themselves with an eye to portraiture, but it was really a matter of some importance, and thus Anne was, we see, accorded what in France was called the right of the “tabouret” by the dreaded queen, who less than two years back had declared that if the hated interloper were to enter the room by one door, she herself would leave by another. But time has its revenges, and on the return visit, which was paid at Hampton Court, which to the queen-mother must indeed have been full of bitter-sweet memories, when she, naturally, was placed on Catherine’s right hand, the Duchess of York was even provided with a chair a little to the left.[166]

165.“Life of Catherine of Bragança.” L. C. Davidson.

166.Ibid.

As far as the young Queen was concerned, the auspicious beginning with regard to Anne wasjustified. She always remained on friendly terms with her sister-in-law. Her yielding, placable nature deferred readily to one whose qualities provided the complement of her own, and later events knitted a closer bond of union between them.

Meanwhile the Duke and Duchess of York took up their quarters in St James’s Palace, the traditional residence of the heir presumptive—the ancient manor of Henry VIII.—of whose building little remains now but the brick gate-way.[167]It seems to have been furnished with great splendour, and under Anne’s resolute sway her Court was more stately and ceremonious than that at Whitehall, where the motto might have been that of Medmenham in later days: “Fais ce que voudras.” In an idle age, moreover, the Duchess was not idle. “She writ well,” says Burnet, “and had begun the Duke’s life, of which she showed me a volume. It was all drawn from his journal, and he intended to have employed me in carrying it on.”[168]

167.“Old and New London.” Thornbury.

168.Burnet’s “History of My Own Time,” ed. 1766. “She writ very correctly” (Appendix).

It was on account of this piece of literary work that Horace Walpole gave the writer aplace in his catalogue of noble authors, although, it is true, he never saw the work in question. Anne also took a more or less intelligent interest in the art of her time and country, for it was she who projected the Series of Beauties to be painted by Lely, whose genius was employed for many years of this reign.[169]She could at least appreciate beauty in others, if she had but little herself, and for this scheme we certainly owe her a debt of gratitude.

169.“Some Beauties of the Seventeenth Century.” Allan Fea.

The Christmas after the King’s marriage was marked by more than the usual festivities. Secretary Pepys, always on the watch to see and retail all that was to be seen, went eagerly to watch the royal party dancing at Whitehall. The Queen, it seems, did not dance, but the King, who “danced rarely,” took out the Duchess of York, and the Duke the Duchess of Buckingham, to dance the bransle, where hands were taken in turn. After this the King led a lady through a lively coranto, in which dance it appears he excelled; and another of the best performers was the little Duchess of Monmouth, Anne Scott, the greatest heiress of her day, who in her childhood had been givento the unlucky pretender who was to suffer so grim a fate in after days.

But happy and triumphant as one may picture her, the personal troubles of the Duchess had already begun. In the autumn just past there occurred the Duke’s ephemeral passion for Elizabeth Butler, Lady Chesterfield, the daughter of Ormonde, who on her part by no means reciprocated it, but to put an end to the situation, which she probably found embarrassing, promptly retired into the country from London.[170]

170.“James II. and his Wives.” Allan Fea.“January 19, 1663.—This day by Dr Clarke I was told the occasion of my Lord Chesterfield’s going and taking his lady (my Lord Ormond’s daughter) from Court. It seems he not only hath been long jealous of the Duke of York, but did find them two talking together, though there were others in the room, and the lady by all opinions a most good, virtuous woman. He the next day (of which the Duke was warned by somebody that saw the passion my Lord Chesterfield was in the night before) went and told the Duke how much he did apprehend himself wronged in his picking out his lady of the whole Court to be the subject of his dishonour, which the Duke did answer with great calmness not seeming to understand the reason of complaint; and that was all that passed, but my Lord did presently pack his lady into the country in Derbyshire near the Peake” (Samuel Pepys’ “Diary”).

170.“James II. and his Wives.” Allan Fea.

“January 19, 1663.—This day by Dr Clarke I was told the occasion of my Lord Chesterfield’s going and taking his lady (my Lord Ormond’s daughter) from Court. It seems he not only hath been long jealous of the Duke of York, but did find them two talking together, though there were others in the room, and the lady by all opinions a most good, virtuous woman. He the next day (of which the Duke was warned by somebody that saw the passion my Lord Chesterfield was in the night before) went and told the Duke how much he did apprehend himself wronged in his picking out his lady of the whole Court to be the subject of his dishonour, which the Duke did answer with great calmness not seeming to understand the reason of complaint; and that was all that passed, but my Lord did presently pack his lady into the country in Derbyshire near the Peake” (Samuel Pepys’ “Diary”).

ELIZABETH, COUNTESS OF CHESTERFIELD

Poor Duchess Anne, however, took it passionatelyto heart, and complained vehemently not only to the King, who was scarcely likely to give her much sympathy—though he did remove Lord Chesterfield from his office of Groom of the Stole to the Queen—but to Ormonde himself, who, it must be remembered, was her father’s old friend. It is also probable that she and Lady Chesterfield must have had some degree of intimacy.

Pepys, of all people, took it on himself to moralise on the subject. “At all which I am sorry,” he writes, “but it is the effect of idleness and having nothing else to employ their great spirits upon,” which seems an insufficient reason. Lady Chesterfield, who never returned to London, died two years later at Bretby, leaving a daughter who eventually married Lord Strathmore.[171]

171.“Royalty Restored,” J. F. Molloy. Lord Chesterfield himself is said to have been in love with Lady Castlemaine, a fact which did not interfere with his jealousy of his wife.

By the month of January 1663 the Duke and Duchess appear to have made up their differences, for they appeared together at the Cockpit to seeClaracilladone by the King’s players, and there scandalised the ubiquitous Secretary by “dalliance there before the whole world, such askissing and leaning upon one another,” a very curious picture of the manners of the time.[172]

172.“Diary.” 5th January 1662-1663.

In the autumn of the same year Charles II., wishing perhaps to familiarise the Queen with her new country, as well as to procure for himself the change and variety for which he was always restlessly seeking, set out on the first of his royal progresses, on which he was accompanied by his brother and the Duchess, with a brilliant train.[173]The party first visited Bath, which was recovering from the paralysing effect of the Civil War, and about to enter on the era of its fame, though its best period was not reached till the succeeding century; but its waters had been long known and valued, and had been sought by Queen Anne of Denmark fifty years earlier.

173.“Calendar of Domestic State Papers.”News Letter, 21st September 1663: “The Duke and Duchess are leaving Portsmouth, and the Duke’s guards are to meet him on the way.” 17th September, Portsmouth.—Thomas Lancaster and Hugh Salisbury to the same (Navy Commissioners): “Arrived of the Foresight at Spithead, the Duke and Duchess of York being in Portsmouth on their way to Winchester, boats have been sent by Mr Coventry’s order to bring the Duke down to see the Dock,” etc.

On the 22nd September the King and his train left Bath and proceeded first to Badminton,where they dined, their host being Lord Herbert. They went thence to Cirencester, where they were received by Lord Newburgh, and remained for that night. The next day they went on to Oxford, and were met on the border of the county by Lord Cornbury (Duchess Anne’s elder brother) with the high sheriff and two troops of horse militia, besides volunteers. Further on they were met by Clarendon himself as Lord-Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, and he entertained them with great splendour and hospitality at his house of Cornbury. Then on the 28th the expedition passed on to Oxford itself, near to which they were received by the heads of houses, the vice-chancellor in a short speech giving the usual presents to the King and Queen.

Oxford, who had seen within her grey walls the dwindling Court of the martyred king, who had vindicated her loyalty so stoutly, who had suffered with such constancy, received now the recognition of her fealty. None could express gratitude with more consummate grace than Charles II., nor clothe appropriate sentiments with more fitting words, and if the hearers were forced to the conviction that they were words and nothing more, still they left their own impress behind them.

The King and Queen, the Duke and Duchess of York, and most of the train were on horseback, and the cavalcade as it swept up the High Street, past University, and Queen’s and St Mary’s Church made a very goodly show by means of colour and movement, waving plumes and fluttering ribbons, glitter of jewels and sheen of satin and velvet. Just so had the Cavaliers who had rallied to the royal standard twenty years back adorned the same streets with life and colour. For them, too, the bells had pealed out and the citizens stood to watch, and they were gone—and some of them forgotten.[174]

174.News Letter, 28th September: “Entering the town, the Recorder made a speech, and the Mayor gave a present. The City militia guarded them to the North gate, the gownsmen to Christ Church, and the scholars of Christ Church made them a guard in the great quadrangle to their lodgings, where Dr Fell the Dean and the Canons received them with a short speech. On the 24th the University went in procession to Christ Church to know when they would visit the University, and the 28th was fixed upon. On the 25th the King and Duke went to Cornbury to see Woodstock Park and the places near, returning to Oxford to dinner. On the Sunday they all attended service at Christ Church, when Dean Fell preached a seasonable and excellent sermon” (“Calendar of Domestic State Papers”).

In 1665 there seems to have been another combined excursion westward.

The ambassador Van Gogh, writing to theStates General from Chelsea, on 24th July records:

“The King and Duke of York go on Thursday from Hampton Court for three or four days and then to Salisbury, whither the Queen and Duchess are already gone.”[175]

175.“Calendar of Domestic State Papers.”

Somewhere about this time an idea seems to have got about that the Duke of York was completely ruled by his wife, submissive to her will in all things.

An opinion to this effect was openly expressed by the King, whose tongue was never too scrupulous, and who nicknamed his brother “Tom Otter” after the henpecked husband in Ben Jonson’s “Epicene, or Silent Woman,” and elsewhere we are told that James “seemed in awe of his wife.”[176]If so, this state of things did not long continue, and in any case it is altogether foreign to the character of the Duke of York, as we know it. He was at no time a person to be easily overawed, whether by his wife or another. That she influenced him upto a certain point is very probable, but there were distinct limits to that. Even the amount of influence which Anne exercised in the early days of their marriage was destined to decrease before long, and that for a reason which must now be given. The grounds for this reason cannot be satisfactorily examined nor the evidence sifted, for that is no longer possible. There are, as almost always occurs, conflicting and contrary accounts; that is in the nature of things.

176.“Charles II. and his Court,” A. G. A. Brett; “History of My Own Time,” Burnet, ed. 1766.

It is no happy nor welcome task to trace the progress of disillusionment, estrangement, coldness, following the ill-assorted union of the King’s brother and the Chancellor’s daughter. One can so easily picture the eager bystanders murmuring with unctuous satisfaction the time-honoured conclusion: “I told you so!” And yet—“The pity of it, Iago, the pity of it!” One would gladly omit from the record of that marriage the chapter which must now perforce be set down, if only for the sake of all that went before, of all that was to follow.

In the year 1640, when the Earl of Leicester—who was afterwards to be half guardian, half jailer, of Princess Elizabeth and her youngest brother at Penshurst—was ambassador at Paris,the youngest of his famous sons, Henry, was born there. When he was eighteen his mother, whose favourite he is said to have been, died, and in 1665 he was attached to the household of the Duke of York as Groom of the Bedchamber.[177]

177.“Memoirs of the Court of England during the Reign of the Stuarts,” John Heneage Jesse. “She is said to have proposed the Duke’s journey to York in 1665 to be more with Sidney.”“Diary of the Times of Charles II.,” by Henry Sidney, Earl of Romney. Edit. R. W. Blencowe (Introduction).“History of My Own Time,” Burnet. “A very graceful young man of quality that belonged to her Court.” “The Duke took up a jealousy, put the person out of his Court.”

177.“Memoirs of the Court of England during the Reign of the Stuarts,” John Heneage Jesse. “She is said to have proposed the Duke’s journey to York in 1665 to be more with Sidney.”

“Diary of the Times of Charles II.,” by Henry Sidney, Earl of Romney. Edit. R. W. Blencowe (Introduction).

“History of My Own Time,” Burnet. “A very graceful young man of quality that belonged to her Court.” “The Duke took up a jealousy, put the person out of his Court.”

He had his full share of the hereditary beauty of his family, the beauty which distinguished his sister Dorothy, married three years after his birth to the gallant young Sunderland who fell at Newbury, and his brother Robert, believed by many of his contemporaries to be the father of Monmouth, and who was known in his day as the “handsome Sidney.”

Conscious or not of his personal advantages, Henry Sidney fell passionately in love with the Duchess, but that wild adoration was no secret. Such things never were at that time, and the Court speedily rang with the tale.Pepys licks his eager lips over the matter. “Pimm tells me,” he writes, “how great a difference hath been between the Duke and Duchess, he suspecting her to be naught with Mr Sidney. But some way or other the matter is made up, but he was banished the Court, and the Duke for many days did not speak to the Duchess at all.” Anthony Hamilton pronounced her guilty, but Reresby, always kind and never scandalous, says stoutly the Duchess “was kind to him and no more.” One thing is certain, James was hotly jealous of his servant. If there really was any truth in the aspersion on her, if Anne, in her lonely splendour, conscious of her husband’s waning affection, resenting his infidelity, turned to the love laid humbly and adoringly at her feet, then we can but say: God pity her! for she was destined to drink deep of sorrow.

But it is quite as easy and fully as reasonable to give her the benefit of the doubt. From what we have already seen, from what we have still to see, it can be argued that she was too resolute, too self-contained, too guarded, to succumb at this period of her life to mere personal attraction. She had risked too much, had won her honours too hardly, to venture them easily.That she was accused goes for nothing. Almost every one was accused sooner or later, and the particular accusation may very well have been an ill-natured tale invented to blacken an unpopular princess. The hero of the romance, Henry Sidney, “the handsomest youth of his time,” was destined to a brilliant career in after days.[178]The short-lived disgrace which was the immediate consequence of his passion for the Duchess, did him no harm. Much later, it is true, he was dismissed from office, but he was made envoy to the States of Holland, and remained there two years, having declined the embassy in Paris. It is said that he voted for the exclusion of the Duke of York from the succession, in the Parliament which met in 1680, when member for Bramber, and perhaps the recollection of that early, ill-starred love had more than a little to do with his action then. At the coronation of James, so the story goes,the crown nearly fell from its wearer’s head, a sinister omen, as many people considered it. Henry Sidney standing by, promptly averted the accident, and adjusted the diadem, remarking with happy audacity “it was not the first time that a Sidney had supported the crown.” He became, however, one of the stanchest upholders of the Revolution, and took with him to The Hague, in the fateful year of 1688, the invitation of the plotters to William of Orange. On the coronation of the latter, Sidney received the reward of a peerage, being created Viscount Sidney and Baron Milton, and a few years later, in 1693, he was made Earl of Romney and also became Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland and Warden of the Cinque Ports. Henry Sidney died in 1704, unmarried. It was, possibly, a tribute to the memory of a long dead romance—at least, one is free to think so.

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