Chapter 11

124.Sandford’s “Genealogical History.”

125.“Royalty Restored.” J. F. Molloy.

Meanwhile, immediately following the arrival of the Princess of Orange, a mysterious silence fell on everything concerned with the marriage of the Duke of York. To Anne, waiting in her seclusion at Worcester House for both the return of her husband and for the birth of their child, now near at hand, the suspense must have been little short of maddening. As we have seen, the queen-mother’s bitter letter to her son on the score of the marriage which she believed to be not yet accomplished, had been shown to his wife. The anger of the Princess Mary, too,deep as it was, could not account for the Duke’s non-appearance. Had he not made assurance doubly sure by the second ceremony? What then was brewing?

The clue to the mystery lay in the infamous conspiracy now to be related.

Sir Charles Berkeley, belonging at this time to the Duke of York’s household, and certain others, were destined to prove themselves with a vengeance, the “naughty people” whom Charles II. trenchantly denounced as having too much weight with his brother.

There is no evidence that the queen-mother had any knowledge whatever of the matter. Passionate, prejudiced, and headstrong as Henrietta Maria had often shown herself, it is impossible to attach to her any of the guilt of this abominable plot, although it is true that it played into her hands; but she was far too outspoken and impetuous to be concerned in it, or to be taken into the confidence of the conspirators.

The Berkeley above mentioned, who was nephew to John, Lord Berkeley of Stratton, James’ former tutor and bad adviser, had, it appears, himself fallen in love with Mistress Hyde, and his suit being rejected, made up hismind to gain her on any terms. It is to be supposed that he was ignorant of the Worcester House re-marriage, but at this moment he came forward and with devilish effrontery declared that the unhappy girl had been his mistress, succeeding, moreover, in convincing Jermyn, Arran, and Talbot of the truth of this assertion.[126]

126.“Memoirs of the Court of Charles II.” Count Grammont, edit. Sir W. Scott, revised ed. 1846.

Besides his own ulterior views, Berkeley was influenced by an inveterate spite against the Chancellor, and being entirely unscrupulous he took this dastardly means of gratifying his enmity.

The curious point about this transaction is the ease with which the Duke of York fell into the trap; but we are here confronted with the most salient point of his character, which has been noticed previously. He possessed what might be called an obstinate fidelity to his friends, or those whom he chose to consider as such, and a singular obtuseness as to the nature of their motives. Long before, as we have seen, he had quarrelled with his elder brother because Charles had discovered the treason of the elder Berkeley in “trafficking” with Cromwell, andhad refused to dismiss him from his service: now he clung stubbornly to the nephew, believing, in spite of his own deep anguish, the horrible slanders which the latter had coined with regard to his wife. It was just this trait in the character of James II. which was to prove his undoing at the close of his stormy reign. He trusted traitor after traitor, almost against the evidence of his senses, till the end came, and crown and kingdom had passed from him for ever.

On this occasion there is ample evidence of James’ misery and despair. He was, besides, in deep grief for the death of his brother the Duke of Gloucester, who had been so closely associated with him through the Spanish campaign, and whom he loved with a protecting and indulgent affection: and indeed at this time he had himself fallen ill, having refused food in his grief.

And now, just a month after Gloucester’s untimely death, in the midst of this web of deceit, of false witness, of distress and unbearable anxiety, an event occurred to which the persons most nearly concerned looked with mingled sentiments, but which was likely to prove of profound consequence to the kingdom. On22nd October, Anne, Duchess of York, gave birth to her first-born son.

As matters then were, this child, it must be remembered, stood in the line of succession, the King not being yet married; and he, at any rate, fully recognised the importance of the occasion, for he despatched Lady Ormonde and Lady Sunderland (Waller’s “Sacharissa” of other days) to Worcester House to be present at the birth of the expected heir.[127]Dean Morley, Anne’s spiritual adviser since her childhood, was also summoned, and in view of the aspersions against her now current, the poor mother was solemnly exhorted in that extreme hour to make profession on oath of her innocence in respect of Berkeley’s hideous accusations, which she did with a vehement earnestness and passion in a degree which seems to have carried conviction to those present.

127.“Life of Henrietta Maria.” J. A. Taylor.

It also appears that the King at this time laid the facts of the contract at Breda before “some Bishops and Judges,” and that they pronounced that “according to the doctrine of the Gospel and the law of England it was a good marriage.”[128]The second ceremony, that at Worcester House,which was thus rendered unnecessary, was kept for some time a secret, but John Evelyn was one of the first persons to have any accurate information on the subject. As early as the 7th October we find him entertaining at a farewell dinner a French count with Sir George Tuke, “being sent over by the Queen Mother to break the marriage of the Duke with the daughter of Chancellor Hyde. The Queen would fain have undone it, but it seems matters were reconciled on great offers of the Chancellor to befriend the Queen, who was much in debt, and was now to have the settlement of her affairs to go through his hands.”[129]

128.Bishop Burnet’s “History of His Own Time.”

129.“Diary of John Evelyn,” introduction by Austin Dobson.

Evelyn is too weighty and dispassionate as a chronicler for his evidence to be set aside, but this account reads a little strangely in the face of Hyde’s anger and dismay, which no one supposed other than sincere, when he was first made aware of the matter, even begging the King’s permission to give up office and go far from the Court. On this point Burnet further declares that all Clarendon’s enemies rejoiced at the marriage, “for they reckoned it would raise envy so high against him, and make the King jealous,” and so “end in his ruin.” One mustarrive at the conclusion that finding how far things had gone, the Chancellor had for his own sake, his daughter’s, and indeed for that of the country, set himself to deprecate the wrath of Henrietta in the readiest manner possible to him. Most of her dower-lands had been parted among the regicides, and he was probably able to adjust some sort of restitution.

Pepys, inquisitive as he was, like all inveterate gossips, was entirely ignorant of the real facts of the case till much later. On 24th October he speaks of the Duke’s “amour,” though he knows of the birth of the child. Even as late as 16th December he writes: “To my Lady’s [Lady Sandwich] and staid with her an hour or two, talking of the Duke of York and his lady, the Chancellor’s daughter, between whom, she tells me, all is agreed, and he will marry her.” This, it must be remembered, is more than three months after the Worcester House ceremony.

But before this the principal enemy to the marriage had arrived in England.

On 2nd November King Charles came up by water from Gravesend,[130]escorting, with all due respect, “Mary the Queen Mother.” Henrietta, it must be remembered, was alwaysknown in England in her own time as Queen Mary.

130.“Side-lights on the Stuarts.” Inderwick.

HENRIETTA MARIA, “MOTHER QUEEN”

In the grey November weather the banks of the Thames were not at their best, neither were the feelings of the exiled Queen, who was coming home at last. She too was changed. The short-lived beauty of expression and grace and vivacity had long fled, and it was a “little plain old woman” who sat on the deck of the royal barge, and gazed at scenes once familiar through a mist of tears. So she came back, an honoured guest indeed, but with all the wine of life drained to the lees, to a country which had dealt her the heaviest blows a woman could endure, in the past. She was coming, too, with a heart full of bitter wrath against the upstart who had forced herself, so she considered, into the circle of royalty. The Queen’s extreme anger, it may be noted, was, in her case, in some degree inconsistent, seeing that at one time she had contemplated a match between her elder son, the King of England (at that time if notde factoat leastde jure), and one of Mazarin’s nieces, that bevy of lovely Mancini sisters, whose beauty was so famous in their day, for they, we are told, “sprang from the dregs of the people.”[131]Otherwise no one can wonder at the indignation of the haughty Bourbon princess, the daughter, on one side at any rate, of a line of kings (and even of the proud Hapsburg blood, through the once despised Medici ancestry); and she came now, as she said, “to prevent with her authority so great a stain and dishonour to the Crown,” by hindering her son James at all costs from publicly recognising his marriage.[132]Indeed her anger knew no bounds, and all her old prejudices against Anne’s father had awakened once more, adding fuel to the fire. At the moment, too, the Duke of York played into his mother’s hands, for he was then, as it were, reeling from the frightful blow of Berkeley’s base accusations, and only ready in his despair to repudiate alike his wife and child.

131.“Lives of the Queens of England.” Agnes Strickland.

132.“Life of Henrietta Maria,” J. A. Taylor; “Princesses and Court Ladies,” Arvède Barine.

There was also, it appears, a general opinion that the whole business spelt disaster to the Chancellor.

On 6th November, just after the Queen’s arrival therefore, Pepys notes that “Mr Chetwind told me that he did fear that the late business of the Duke of York’s would prove fatal to my Lord Chancellor,”[133]and the latter in hisown History avers that he “looked upon himself as a ruined person,” and says bitterly that previous to this the Duke’s manner to him “had never anything of grace in it.”[134]Meanwhile Mary, Princess of Orange, had also come to England, and was adding her voice to the chorus of indignant reprobation. She could not for a moment think, so she said, “of yielding precedence to one whom she had honoured over much by admitting her into her service as maid of honour.”

133.“Diary.” 6th Nov. 1660.

134.“Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon: Continuation,” by himself. “Said to be helped on by enemies of Hyde, to bring disgrace upon him.”

So matters stood when suddenly a complete reversal, in one direction, occurred.

Whether Berkeley was touched by his master’s misery, which to say the least of it seems unlikely, or, which is more probable, he foresaw that his own ends were unlikely to be served as he expected by the slander he had coined, he made at this time a full confession, and a powerful auxiliary also came forward in the person of the King, always henceforth a kind and steady friend to his sister-in-law.

On escaping from the sea of intrigue which had almost fatally engulfed her, Anne did atleast display great generosity and a lofty capacity for forgiving injuries, for she pardoned Berkeley the vile slanders with which he had loaded her name, and even suffered him to kiss her hand in token of amnesty, when with brazen effrontery he presented himself before her. Perhaps the revulsion was too great at the time to admit of anything but relief; perhaps she thought she could afford to be magnanimous, seeing that her enemy had found himself unable to drag her from her pride of place.

James, on his part, at once and joyfully acknowledged the marriage in defiance of his family, and sent an affectionate message to his wife, “bidding her to keep up her spirits for Providence had cleared her aspersed fame, and above all to have a care of his boy and that he should come and see them both very shortly.” It is evident that he had only been waiting for the chance, for Lady Ormonde, who with her husband was always a stanch friend to the Hydes, and had been steadily convinced of Anne’s innocence, said of the Duke that she “perceived in him a kind of tenderness that persuaded her he did not believe anything amiss.”

He had now to withstand anew his mother’sresentment, for when they first met, after his reconciliation with Anne, the Queen refused to speak to her son. She, however, adroitly turned the circumstances of the King’s acknowledgment of the match into a means of gaining his consent to his younger sister’s marriage, for she represented to him that he must consent to the Princess Henrietta becoming Duchess of Orleans, for “she could not suffer her to live at his Court to be insulted by Hyde’s daughter.” The fact of the case was that in England the Duchess of York would take precedence of the Princess. Whether this consideration weighed with Charles or not, he made then no opposition to the marriage of his favourite and “dearest sister” with the cousin for whom he entertained, with good reason, the strongest dislike and contempt.

On 26th November Lord Craven was writing to the Queen of Bohemia of Anne: “She is owned in her family to be Duchess of York, but not at Whitehall as yet, but it is very sure that the Duke has made her his wife. Your Majesty knows it is what I have feared long although you were not of that opinion. The Princess [Mary] is much discontented at it, as she has reason.”

He wrote again on the 28th: “I cannot tell what will become of your godson’s business: the child is not yet christened, but it is confidently reported that it shall be within a few days, and owned. The Princess is very much troubled about it; the queen is politic and says little of it. There is no question to be made but that they are married. They say my lord Chancellor shall be made a duke.”[135]

135.“James II. and his Wives,” Allan Fea; “Life of Henrietta Maria,” J. A. Taylor.

The Duke of York was godson of his aunt Elizabeth, it must be noted here.

So things were, but before the year had ended death was to lay once more effacing fingers on discord and bitterness.

The Princess Royal, who had come, as we have seen, to rejoice with one brother on his long delayed Restoration, to resent hotly the other’s unwelcome marriage, was seized like Henry of Gloucester with smallpox on the 18th December.

It has been hinted that she was a party to Berkeley’s plot, though, in view of her character, this is very unlikely; and it is also said that on her uneasy deathbed in the grip of that ghastly and relentless pestilence, she declared herselfrepentant of the part she had taken against her brother’s wife and her own quondam maid of honour.[136]

136.“Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia.” M. A. Green, revised by S. C. Lomas.

Be that as it may, Mary Stuart passed away at Somerset House on Christmas Eve 1660, just three months after her youngest brother.[137]

137.Madame—Julia Cartwright (Mrs Ady).

On the 29th December her body was brought by torchlight to Westminster Abbey, and laid in the Stuart vault by that of Gloucester, her brother James again officiating as chief mourner. On this occasion one can only contemplate with amazement what appears the entire callousness of the queen-mother. Whether her anger at the marriage of the Duke of York occupied her mind to the exclusion of all natural affection, it is hard to say, but there is no record of any great grief on her part for poor young Gloucester’s untimely end, and she certainly showed extraordinary indifference with regard to her elder daughter, according to most chroniclers; though one account certainly does credit her with the wish to remain with her till forbidden by the doctors. In terror for her youngest, the mother fled from Somerset House when the sicknessdeclared itself, and betook herself with the Princess Henrietta to St James’s, leaving Mary to her fate. But it is to be remarked, that from the time her youngest child was restored to her by Lady Dalkeith after their escape, the Queen concentrated all the force of her affection on her. Possibly the fact of her being allowed to bring her up in her own religion undisturbed may have had something to do with it, but the fact remains that for the last few years of her life she showed comparatively little affection for her other children.

One of Mary’s oldest attendants was destined to make her home in England. The minister Van der Kirckhove Heenvliet died in March of this year, and his widow, Lady Stanhope, to whom Charles II. allowed the title of Lady Chesterfield, to which her first husband would have succeeded, married as her third husband the adventurous Daniel O’Neill of whom mention has already been made.[138]

138.Lady Chesterfield was with the Princess at her death. (“Lives of the Princesses of England,” M. A. Everett-Green.)“The Tower of London,” Richard Davey. Daniel O’Neill had been imprisoned in the Tower in 1643, but escaped and reached Holland in safety.

138.Lady Chesterfield was with the Princess at her death. (“Lives of the Princesses of England,” M. A. Everett-Green.)

“The Tower of London,” Richard Davey. Daniel O’Neill had been imprisoned in the Tower in 1643, but escaped and reached Holland in safety.

Immediately on the death of the Princess Royal, the queen-mother suddenly announcedto her son James that she withdrew her opposition to his marriage. It is just possible that the loss of her daughter may have exercised a softening influence, but it is more probable that this change of front was owing to a warning from Mazarin, who sent her a peremptory message to keep on good terms alike with her sons and the English Ministers of State, and the impoverished Queen could not afford to disregard the powerful adviser of Anne of Austria.[139]Whatever the motive, the result was plain. Three days after the funeral of Mary, her mother so far did violence to her own strong and bitter prejudice as to consent to receive not only her son, but the hated daughter-in-law. On 1st January Pepys records the fact: “Mr Moore and I went to Mr Pierce’s, in our way seeing the Duke of York bring his lady to wait upon the Queen, the first time that ever she did since that business, and the Queen is said to receive her with much respect and love.”

139.“Life of Henrietta Maria.” J. A. Taylor.Hyde was informed of this communication by that industrious go-between Walter Montague, who was in England at this time.

139.“Life of Henrietta Maria.” J. A. Taylor.

Hyde was informed of this communication by that industrious go-between Walter Montague, who was in England at this time.

This latter statement may be taken with a grain of salt, but Henrietta did control her feelings sufficiently to behave with dignity and self-restraint. As she passed to dinner, her ladies following her, through the corridor of St James’s Palace, Anne was waiting, white and trembling, with a thickly beating heart, and she fell on her knees as “Mary the Queen Mother” swept by in her mourning robes. With the stately gesture the latter could assume at will, she turned, and raising the girl, she kissed her, and leading her to the table placed her at her side.[140]

140.“Calendar of Domestic State Papers.” 3rd January 1661.—Secretary Nicholas to Bennet: “The Duke and Duchess then came to Court. The Queen received them very affectionately.”

On the same day, the Queen made a still further concession. She consented to see Hyde himself, receiving him graciously and speaking at length of the matter in hand. “He could not,” she said, “wonder, much less take it ill, that she had been offended with the Duke, and had no inclination to give her consent to his marriage, and if she had in the Passion that could not be condemned in her, spoke anything of him that he had taken ill, he ought to impute it to the Provocation she had received though not from him. She was now informed by theKing, and well-assured that he had no hand in contriving that Friendship, but was offended with that Passion that really was worthy of him. That she could not but confess that his Fidelity to the King her husband was very eminent and that he had served the King her son with equal fidelity and extraordinary success. And therefore she had received his daughter as her Daughter and heartily forgave the Duke and her and was resolved ever after to live with all the affection of a Mother towards them. So she resolved to make a Friendship with him, and hereafter to expect all the offices from him which her kindness should deserve.”[141]

141.“Continuation of the Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon,” by himself.

Hyde, as might be expected, showed himself equal to the occasion, though he must have felt that the Queen did him no more than justice when she thus acknowledged his services to her husband and son.

“She could not,” answered the courtier, “show too much anger and aversion, and had too much forgotten her own honour and dignity if she had been less offended.”

But nevertheless the wounds which Henrietta’s unbridled tongue had inflicted in time pastwere not so easily healed. Clarendon himself remarks bitterly: “From that time there did never appear any want of kindness in the Queen towards him, whilst he stood in no need of it, nor until it might have done him some good.”[142]

142.“Life of Henrietta Maria.” J. A. Taylor.

Yet a truce was signed as it were, and peace was in a fair way to be established. But still the Chancellor was never entirely reconciled to his daughter’s lofty alliance, on which he looked with doubt and misgiving to the end.

Some ten days before this momentous interview Evelyn speaks of the marriage as fully acknowledged. Under the date of 22nd December he writes:

“The marriage of the Chancellor’s daughter being now newly owned, I went to see her, she being Sir Richard Browne’s intimate acquaintance, when she waited on the Princess of Orange. She was now at her father’s at Worcester House in the Strand. We all kissed her hand as did also my Lord Chamberlain Manchester, and the Countess of Northumberland. This was a strange change. Can it succeed well?”[143]

143.“Diary of John Evelyn,” ed. Edw. Bray, 1850.

Strange indeed, and no one can wonder that a mind so thoughtful, uplifted, and restrained as that of John Evelyn, who had known the father through good and evil days, who remembered from her childhood the girl, now a princess of England, should doubt the final issue of such a turn of fortune.

Two days after Anne’s reception at Court her child was baptized at Worcester House by the name of Charles, the King and Monk, now Duke of Albemarle, being godfathers, while the queen-mother sealed her reconciliation by undertaking the office of godmother, the other being Lady Ormonde, and the boy was created Duke of Cambridge.

During this same month of January, Henrietta closed her first visit to England after the Restoration. It had not been a happy one. It had been clouded with heavy grief and bereavement, besides reviving poignant recollections, and she had moreover sustained the vexation and disappointment which her second son’s marriage had inflicted on her, from which she had by no means recovered, in spite of her altered attitude towards the offenders.

JOHN EVELYN

She was impatient to escape, and eager besides for the marriage of her sole remaining daughter,the disastrous results of which it was impossible for her to foresee. She was also anxious, on account of her health, to visit the baths of Bourbon which then enjoyed a great reputation.

The King accompanied his mother and sister to Portsmouth, where they embarked, but the Duke of York remained in London. He was still ill and depressed. He had passed through a period of acute pain and anxiety; he had really felt deeply the death of the sister who had always been to him, at least, staunchly affectionate, at a time when he needed affection, and now he “being indisposed was at Whitehall with the Dutchess.”

At the time of the Restoration Hyde had refused a peerage, but now, for obvious reasons, he signified his acceptance of one, and on the 6th November he had taken his seat as Baron Hyde of Hindon in Wilts (near Hatch, where Laurence Hyde, his ancestor, had lived). Moreover the King made him a grant of twenty thousand pounds out of the amount (fifty thousand pounds) which Parliament had sent the latter at The Hague, at which time the Duke of York, by the way, had received ten thousand pounds and Gloucester five thousand pounds. Later, that is in April 1661, Hyde received hisfinal honours, being created Earl of Clarendon and Viscount Cornbury.

A closing epilogue to the drama of the marriage comes from the pen of Lord Craven. Writing to the Queen of Bohemia on 11th January 1661 he says: “I have this morning been to wait upon the duchess; she lies here and the King very kind to her: she takes upon her as if she been duchess this seven years. She is very civil to me.”[144]And on 23rd February: “The greatest news we have here is that upon Monday last, the duke and duchess were called before the Council and were to declare when and where they were married and their answer was that they were married the 3rd of September last, in a chamber at Worcester House, Mr Crowther married them; nobody but my Lord of Ossory and her maid Nell by; but that they had been contracted long. That is all that I can hear of the business.”[145]

144.“Lives of Princesses of England.” M. A. Everett-Green.

145.“Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia.” M. A. Green, revised by S. C. Lomas.

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