Lady on the Coin

by Margaret Campbell Barnes

  This did not seem an altogether absurd threat, for Charles’ two gayest cousins had suddenly made the same decision. It was, he realized, often the most spirited girls, those who seemed most attracted to the world, who could without warning abandon it and turn to the religious life.

  But Frances knew in her heart that she would never retire into a convent, convenient threat though it was to hang over the royal head.

  Twice, while the Court was at Tunbridge and Bath, Frances received a letter from Lennox; but although she had not forgotten him, he now seemed remote, and he wrote in such a stilted style that his letters were disappointing. She began to distrust her memory of him. It might have been nothing more than her own state of mind on that particular evening that had made him interesting and sympathetic to her. He had seemed unusual, but why she did not know. Certainly it was not because he had said anything brilliant. Probably it was his ownership of Cobham Hall which had invested him with charm and importance.

  Now his short, formal letters, which told her nothing at all, seemed to confirm the general verdict that he was dull and oafish. In any case he had gone his way, and while the Court was at Tunbridge, which was not so far from Cobham, he made no effort to see her.

  Frances did not answer his letters. She made one or two attempts, but these were even more stilted than his. A brief interest had flared up and expired. The pen was not her medium and never would be, and her spelling was as bad as ever. She envied the King his fluency, for although she saw him nearly every day, she received many a love letter from him, written with charm and tenderness and promising her all that the heart of woman could desire.

  “Oh, Frances Stuart, a few years ago, who would ever have believed it?” Thus he addressed her reflection in her mirror, as she sat brushing her bright hair. “Then it seemed too good to be true to be chosen as one of the Queen’s Maids, and now the King of England is in love with you and is pushing notes under your door, as might a young spark of no account.”

  Charles frequently gave her jewels as presents, and Frances would sometimes lay these out before her and gaze at them pensively. She was not particularly fond of jewels, but her collection now represented a small fortune. She possessed not only those that Charles had given her, but such as had been showered upon her by other admirers. This was perfectly allowable, for all the pretty girls at Court took a pride in such valuable gifts which were bestowed at Christmas, Twelfth Night, St. Valentine’s Day and on other anniversaries.

  Mistress Stuart, viewing the collection when she called at Whitehall one day, remarked that when her daughter came to marry, these jewels would serve as her dowry.

  “But shall I ever?” Frances queried. “Often I doubt it.”

  Her mother looked at her consideringly. If Frances had changed, so had she. There was a calculating hardness in her expression which before now had struck her elder daughter. Sophie was in France, where the Queen Dowager spent most of her time. She was high in favour and gave promise of beauty. Walter was outgrowing his childish delicacy, and Mistress Stuart had time to concentrate on Frances, who was now in her eighteenth year. With deliberation she replaced in its velvet case the emerald pendant she had been admiring, and said: “A few days past Sir Henry Bennet did me the honour to call upon me. He told me he had had some converse with you of late.”

  “So he did. He is ambitious and seeks to supplant milord Clarendon in office. But why should he have thought that I could advance him?”

  “You have influence.”

  “With the King? But I never attempt to influence him.”

  “Then you are wasting your opportunities. Clarendon is old and his day is almost over, but Henry Bennet, as he assured me, is willing to be your ally. Did he not make that plain to you?”

  “He started to make a speech, but he looked so ridiculous that I had a fit of laughing. George Buckingham used to imitate him perfectly. His pompous manner and repeating his sentences over and over again. I seldom see Buckingham now, we are not on good terms, but I remembered and I couldn’t listen seriously to Bennet. If you feel you must lecture me for that, Maman, I don’t wonder. I was rude and I am sorry. The poor man looked so angry.”

  “He is no longer angry. As he said to me, you — most strangely as he considers — seem to be unaware of your importance. Yet you have acted prudently, Frances, in a way which any mother would commend. Sir Henry came to the conclusion that you and the King…”

  Mistress Stuart broke off in some confusion, but Frances, who had known that such probing was inevitable and had prepared herself for it, was cool.

  “Yes, Maman?” she said enquiringly.

  Mistress Stuart made a gesture which expressed both frustration and appeal.

  “Oh, my child, cannot you be candid with me? I, as your mother, should be in your confidence. Sir Henry, before he spoke to you, was in no doubt, but something you said, or perhaps your general manner, convinced him that it was not so.”

  “The King is not my lover,” Frances said shortly.

  “Oh, my dear child, how clever you have been with him! What a difficult time you must have had! But Sir Henry is certain that all the cards are in your hands.”

  “What cards did he mean?” Frances avoided meeting her mother’s eyes.

  “Do not fence with me, Frances. You understand me. The King is in love with you to the point that no other woman is of any concern to him. This is said not only by Sir Henry, but by all who are personally in touch with the King. If you were to surrender it would be a calamity. His Majesty not only desires you but respects you, and if you continue as you have done, Sir Henry believes that before another year has passed…”

  Frances picked up a chain of pearls and amethysts and held it against her fair curls. She gazed into the mirror and said; “On the whole I think that fresh flowers in the hair are prettier than jewels.”

  “Frances, will you listen to me?”

  “I am listening, Maman, or would if you did not so twist the meaning of what you say.”

  “It can be said with crudity if necessary. The Queen is unlikely to give the King an heir, and she has little hold on him. Nor has Lady Castlemaine, whose last babe is said not to be his. You alone have his heart. He would marry you if he could.”

  “Yes, perhaps he would — if he could,” Frances agreed.

  “All things are possible. You may yet be his Queen.”

  “Are you out of your senses, Maman?” Frances tore the jewelled chain from her hair and flung it aside.

  “My child, I am only saying what many others are now saying. Last summer the Queen had a second miscarriage and now it is said that she is again enceinte, and…”

  “She has been so for nearly six months,” Frances interrupted. “She wished — it was only natural she should wish there to be no talk about it, after two disappointments.”

  “But naturally — the poor soul. She looks sadly frail and ill. These unsuccessful pregnancies have undermined her health.”

  “You are hoping she may die,” cried Frances fiercely.

  “No — no! But should it be God’s will…”

  “I wonder that any woman has the courage to marry, with the ghastly spectre of death in childbed always hovering,” Frances said with passion, and suddenly burst into tears, thus confounding Mistress Stuart who immediately set about comforting her.

  “Dear, foolish one,” she murmured, “there are many for whom it is safe and easy. It was so for myself. I was always in the best of health, and then only a few hours of pain. So it will be for you, Frances.”

  “If the Queen died, it would go harder with Charles than you imagine,” said Frances through her tears.

  “Mayhap. But all men forget. They are so constituted. If the Queen again miscarries but recovers her health she may see the hopelessness of this marriage and choose of her own free will to seek refuge in a convent.”

  “And then there would be an annulment and the King would marry me? Is that what you think?”

  “It is wh
at many think. Do not misunderstand me, Frances. I would never counsel you to surrender your virtue. It is a girl’s greatest treasure.”

  “Because then a bargain can be struck,” Frances retorted. “And suppose I say that even if the chance of being Queen were mine, I would not grasp at it.”

  “Would you expect me to believe that, my child?”

  Frances dried her eyes and looked hopelessly at her mother. She said slowly: “I suppose not. Nobody would believe me.”

  She was not even sure that she believed in herself. She was certain that she would detest the position of the King’s mistress, even though he might be faithful to her and shower honours on her, but to be the Queen if Catherine died or voluntarily embraced the religious life was a different matter. Frances was not ambitious, but she had sufficient imagination to be enthralled by the pictures that floated before her mind’s eye. To be the first lady in the land, to be crowned, to have great possessions and royal homes. And what could she not do for her family? Sophie would almost certainly make a brilliant marriage. Walter could adopt any career he chose, and Charles, probably, would make her mother a duchess. How that would entrance her. Frances giggled.

  “Oh, it’s all a fairy-tale,” she cried, “though not a pleasant one.”

  “It has happened before,” Mistress Stuart said stubbornly.

  ‘And if it has, is that any reason? Do not speak to me of Anne Boleyn. Do not remind me of her.”

  “But, dear one, the circumstances then were quite different. Poor Katherine of Aragon, one thinks of her with pity; but if the Queen died, or if she decided that the religious life was God’s will for her…?”

  “What would count with the Queen, devout though she may be, is the King’s will,” Frances said. “Please, Maman, stop thinking in this way. If the Queen looks wan it is because she is but three months from her delivery. This time all will go well with her.”

  She waited with scornful eyes for her mother’s insincere “God grant it”, but Mistress Stuart was silent. When she spoke again, she said in her usual placid manner: “I am glad we have had this talk, child, for tomorrow I start on the journey to Scotland. London in the hot weather is no place for a delicate child such as Walter. Last summer I scarce felt safe even when we lodged by the sea, and the expense was great. In the Highlands the plague is scarcely known.”

  “How long will you be away?” Frances asked, knowing that she would miss her little brother more than she would miss her mother from whom she had now grown apart.

  “Until the autumn, until the cold weather. In Scotland there is always a welcome for us from the Blantyres, and Walter is happy there. The Court will be at Hampton, will it not?”

  “Perhaps — though I did hear that the Queen wished to be at Windsor for her lying-in.”

  Mistress Stuart continued to talk about their Scots kinsfolk, while Frances, giving her only a particle of her attention, made mechanical replies. She was far more worried than her mother supposed.

  “And let us hope,” said Mistress Stuart, “that when we meet again this war with the Dutch will be over. It is grievous to think of the deaths there have been. But now the end seems in sight and victory will bring greater prosperity to the country.”

  “But always there will be wars,” said Frances. “Men glory in them. Wars and long voyages of exploration and wresting their possessions from one another. The King was transported with joy when our navy took New Amsterdam from the Dutch, and of course the Duke of York is proud that it is to be called New Yorke after him, though as success has come about through his leadership it is no more than he deserves. Maman, I forgot to tell you. I am to sit for my portrait.”

  “But that you have done already, and more than once.”

  “Oh, this is not just a picture in oils, but an engraving and it is to be used on new coins from the Mint, and from the Guinea gold which is being brought from there by the Royal Adventurers of England, as these swashbucklers call themselves.”

  “Your portrait on coins?” Mistress Stuart looked perplexed. “How can that be? It is the King’s head that must always be seen. How glad I was when the circulation of the Commonwealth money was forbidden.”

  “Oh well, yes, so was I. Cromwell had such a coarse, ugly face…not that the King is handsome, but his features are a great improvement on those of the Protector.”

  “Then what do you mean by saying that your face will be on the new Mint coins?”

  “Not only my face but my figure,” Frances said, forgetting tears and misgivings, and amused because her mother was so thoroughly perplexed.

  “And yet you say…” Mistress Stuart started on a speech which she recognized to be absurd. No Queen Consort’s face or figure would ever be engraved on English money. “What is this foolishness?” she demanded.

  “It is sober truth, Maman. Like this — or something like this…”

  Frances struck an attitude, sitting upright with head poised high and left hand outstretched as though she grasped an invisible weapon. “Of course when I am really posing for Roettier, the engraver, I shall wear a helmet and hold a trident and I shall have flowing, Grecian robes. It was altogether the King’s idea, but James of York thought it should be called Britannia. To represent the nation’s might.”

  Slowly Mistress Stuart grasped the implication.

  “You on one side of the coin and the King on the other,” she said, and looked so overwhelmed that Frances hastened to say:

  “There is really no great significance to it — I mean that I should be chosen. Any girl would do just as well, except that my nose seems to be particularly suitable.”

  “Your nose?”

  “It’s described as a Roman nose,” Frances laughed, “and is supposed to make me look very haughty and dignified. Though that is about the hardest thing in the world to be — for me at least.”

  Mistress Stuart wholeheartedly agreed, though she knew that her daughter’s frivolity was largely superficial. A mask, she thought, for a strength of character that few suspected. She did not wholly understand Frances and never would. Henrietta-Anne, who never forgot her fondness for Frances and corresponded with her, still thought of her as one who refused to grow up. The Queen Dowager, when Mistress Stuart had the opportunity of discussing her daughter with her, championed Frances and said she was naturally innocent and good; and the so obviously infatuated King made no attempt to analyse her, though he granted her virtue through her resistance to him. Probably Catherine of Braganza understood her better than anyone else, which accounted for her tolerance. She had nothing to fear from Frances, who kept the King in a state of unwilling chastity.

  “Giving sittings to the engraver will at least be a change and something interesting to do while waiting for the Queen to decide whether or not she will retire to Windsor,” Frances said.

  “It is a great honour, but so many honours are now being given to you, and you take them so lightly,” her mother complained.

  Frances did not contradict her, though as a fact her imagination had been fired by the King’s command. She and she alone was fitted to represent Britannia, he had said, and a few days after Mistress Stuart’s departure for Scotland, Frances gave Jan Roettier, the eldest of several brothers who were all engravers, his first sitting.

  Although the Roettier family was of Dutch extraction, and the new coins were being struck partly to substantiate England’s claim to the “Dominion of the Seas” and the victories over the Dutch navy, Roettier was proud of his commission as the chosen new die-sinker. He had been preferred above Thomas Simon, the English die-sinker, who had competed with him for the honour. An unpopular choice with the people as a whole, who also resented the fact that the mill-and-screw method of coining which now replaced the old hammered coinage, was in the charge of a Frenchman named Blondeau.

  But Charles, who took a great personal interest in the new coinage, was unaffected by criticism, and merely remarked that Blondeau and Roettier were finer craftsmen than any England could produce at th
e moment, and that as work would be given to many English workmen under them, there was no legitimate cause for complaint.

  Frances was sufficiently interested to make enquiries about the die-sinking process, and Charles was delighted to take her with the usual trail of attendants to the Tower where the Mint was installed.

  Here they were received by Master Slingsby, the Master of the Mint, who with pride explained all that could be explained easily to the beautiful Britannia. He was soon surprised by her intelligence and the questions she put to him, for the ladies and gentlemen of the Court who laughed and chattered amongst themselves were mainly enthralled by the heaps of gold coins which they would have gladly appropriated. Frances, however, was genuinely interested in the complicated process of minting coins from the long flat bars of gold and silver cast out of the melting-pot, and she marvelled when these were drawn through a mill and emerged in different thicknesses.

  A cursory inspection would have been enough for most of the party, who were forced to feign an interest and to stifle their yawns while the King and Frances listened attentively to the disquisition of Master Slingsby, who was naturally delighted to have the chance of airing his knowledge, not only to the King, but to the lovely girl who was eager to understand each stage by which the milled money was fabricated. The cutters, the weighing machines and the engines which engraved the lettered edges of the larger coins all fascinated her, as did the revolving cylinders which finally dried the coins after they had been blanched in diluted acid.

  “I had no idea — I couldn’t have imagined,” Frances exclaimed more than once. “How we all take things for granted. Shall I really be on every coin from henceforth?”

  “Every single one, for generations,” Charles assured her, laughing at her ingenuous wonderment, but as proud as he was amazed by her grasp of the various complications.