Royal Sisters: The Story of the Daughters of James II

by Виктория Холт

  “You must go at once to him, dear Mrs. Freeman,” said Anne, “and write to me every day that I may know what is happening to you.”

  Sarah promised and when, arriving at St. Albans, she found the child with a high fever, she immediately put all her energies to nursing him.

  It was pleasant to be home with her family, but not, as she told her husband, for such a reason.

  “This ridiculous state of affairs must be over soon,” she said. “Time is being wasted.”

  “Anything can happen in the next few weeks,” replied Marlborough. “There are going to be mighty battles either at sea or on land and they may well decide great issues.”

  “And Marlborough skulking at home … in disgrace!”

  “Which may be as well,” he said grimly. “It is difficult at this stage to know which side one should be on.”

  Sarah was ready to launch into discussion of great plans, but the sickness of the child worried her and as the days passed he grew worse.

  She was in the sickroom one day when she heard the sounds of horses galloping and looking from her window she saw a company of guards coming toward the house.

  She called to her husband, but he was already on his way down. Rushing after him she was in time to hear what the leader was saying.

  Marlborough was arrested on a charge of high treason, and orders were to conduct him without delay to the Tower of London.

  * * *

  Sarah was in despair. She thought of the letters Marlborough had written to James and trembled. Had one of these fallen into the Queen’s hands? If so, he was doomed. But Sarah was not one to believe the worst until it had happened.

  Marlborough must be freed from the Tower. He must be proved innocent.

  How?

  She must go to him. She could be with him in his lodging, make sure that he was well cared for, plan his escape if necessary.

  She was preparing to leave when one of the nurses came to her and begged her to come at once to the child’s sickroom.

  Little Charles had taken a turn for the worse.

  * * *

  Sarah, numb with misery, sat reading a letter from the Princess Anne.

  “I am very sensibly touched with the misfortune that my dear Mrs. Freeman has in losing her son, knowing very well what it is to lose a child, but she, knowing my heart so well, and how great a share I bear in all her concerns, I will not say more on this subject for fear of renewing her passion too much.”

  Anne was right. There must be no renewal of passion. The grief was overwhelming. Her beloved son for whom she had planned such a grand future—a corpse in a coffin. But that was past. There were the other children—her dear son John still left to her; her girls, Henrietta, Anne, Elizabeth, and Mary. She still had them.

  And her own dear husband, that other John, who was at this moment a prisoner in the Tower.

  She must go to him at once. She would take up her lodging there that they might be together.

  No. Wait a while. She would go to see him, but she would not stay. She would return to the Princess Anne, because there she could work more hopefully for his release.

  * * *

  Meanwhile there was heartening news for the Queen. The fleet, under Admiral Russell, had beaten the French at La Hogue after a mighty sea battle lasting five days and nights. It was a complete victory. How delighted Mary was! All the anxieties of the last days seemed to be lifted if only temporarily.

  Her first thought was for those men who had been wounded in the battle and she sent fifty doctors and hospital supplies to Portsmouth; she gave thirty-seven thousand pounds to be distributed among those who had taken part in the victory; she ordered all the bells to be rung throughout London.

  “This has decided the issue,” was the comment. “James will never come back now.”

  Young, who feared that, since the paper Blackhead had deposited in the Bishop’s house would never be discovered and therefore the plot founder, sent Blackhead back to the house in Bromley to recover the paper.

  Blackhead this time went as an emissary of the government and forced the astonished servants to allow him to search the house. He went straight to the disused parlor and there found the paper where he had put it. He carried it back to Young, who immediately sent Blackhead with it to the Secretary of State.

  Meanwhile the Bishop of Rochester had been questioned; so had his servants; and he certainly had the air of an innocent man.

  Blackhead had brought the document to them so it was decided to bring both the Bishop and Blackhead before the Council and question them together.

  This was more than Blackhead had bargained for, and he was terrified when he was brought into the great chamber and saw the lords seated around the table. He was even more alarmed when the Bishop was brought in.

  “This fellow came to me with a letter from his Deacon,” cried the Bishop.

  “So you are a servant of a Deacon. His name please?” Blackhead could not remember. “Er … sir … he was a very good master …”

  “His name?”

  Blackhead bit his lips. For the life of him he could not think of a name. Young had not prepared him for this.

  “The fellow’s scared out of his wits,” said one of the men at the table. “Give him time to think.”

  Blackhead thought hard and he mentioned a name and a town he knew. This was written down. He breathed more easily.

  The Bishop said: “There is no such Deacon. There is no such living.”

  “Well, you had better tell the truth.” Blackhead’s knees were shaking.

  “It were no fault of mine,” he said. “Then whose fault was it?”

  “Well ’twere Robert Young. He said as how it would be easy like. These men had plotted against the King and Queen and ’twere the only way to bring ’em to justice.”

  “Why did you take this false letter to the Bishop?”

  “So as I could put the paper there.”

  “So you put the paper in the flowerpot did you?”

  It was no good. He couldn’t think of any story to tell them, so had to tell them the truth.

  Young was brought before the Council.

  “Do you know this man Stephen Blackhead?” he was asked. “Yes, my lord. He was in prison with me. I was wrongly accused …”

  “And you used him in this plot, to incriminate the Bishop, my Lord Marlborough, and others?”

  “My lord, I have never spoken of the matter to this fellow.”

  “Yet he seems to have a good knowledge of the plot which you promised to disclose.”

  “It is all simply explained, my lord. The Bishop has bribed Blackhead to tell this preposterous story.”

  “Yet you informed us that this letter was in a flowerpot in the Bishop’s house?”

  “That is not so, my lord. It is part of the plot against me.”

  Young defended himself fluently and with an aplomb which suggested innocence; but his story lacked authenticity. He had in fact warned the Council to search the flowerpots; moreover, he had a criminal record.

  When the results of the examination were brought before the Queen she said that Young was a rogue and that the plot against the Bishop had clearly been fabricated by him.

  She still believed the men implicated to have Jacobite leanings, but they could not be found guilty in this case.

  “Send Young and Blackhead back to Newgate,” she commanded, “there to await their trial. As for Marlborough …”

  She looked at the members of her Council. She would have liked to keep Marlborough a prisoner; but that would be unjust. He had been sent to the Tower for being implicated in this plot and the plot was proved to be a sham, fabricated by a villain with a criminal record.

  Marlborough must be released.

  “On bail,” was the verdict. Marlborough was not entirely free from guilt, they were sure.

  Thus Marlborough was released from the Tower, but suspicion of guilt clung to him and he could not call himself a free man.

  * *
*

  Even as the bells were ringing for the victory of La Hogue came the news of the defeat of William’s army at Namur.

  Mary was astounded.

  “Such a sudden change,” she cried to Lady Derby, “is more than I can bear.”

  She had been planning great celebrations, for it had not occurred to her that William could be defeated; it seemed ironical that he should have failed, and the fleet which was operating under her jurisdiction should have been victorious. She would, in her heart, have preferred it to be the other way about, just for William’s satisfaction; but of course that was folly. The victory of La Hogue was of far greater consequence than the defeat at Namur. That sea victory might well have made a future invasion impossible.

  “But,” she insisted, “I am quite stupefied.”

  There was more bad news to follow. Turning from Namur where he had failed to break the siege William was defeated at Steinkirk, but fortunately inflicted such losses on the enemy that it was impossible for them to take full advantage of the victory.

  Moreover, there was news of a plot to assassinate William which had been miraculously discovered in time. A French officer named Grandval was caught by the English and executed; but before he died disclosed that James II and his wife had been involved in the scheme.

  When Mary heard this, although horrified at the danger through which William had passed, she could not help feeling a kind of exultation. Her father was guilty of such a thing! It seemed as though there was a balance of their sins—hers against her father, his against her.

  A little of the guilt which had oppressed her so often was lifted. She talked often of the Grandval affair with those about her, stressing the part her father had played in it.

  “When I heard that he whom I dare no more name father was consenting to the barbarous murder of my husband, I was ashamed to look anyone in the face,” she declared.

  * * *

  William came home from Holland, not this time a conqueror, planning to return again after a time.

  Robert Young faced a trial for perjury and Blackhead promised to turn King’s evidence. Having been granted freedom because of this, he promptly disappeared which meant a delay of the trial.

  Eventually Young was found guilty of conspiracy and perjury; the plot was proved to be one fabricated entirely by himself, and the people whose signatures he had forged were clearly innocent.

  Young was sentenced to imprisonment and to be set in the pillory where he suffered greatly from the attentions of the mob before he was returned to Newgate.

  Marlborough still remained on bail and neither the King nor Queen were eager to grant him his freedom. But Marlborough had no intention of submitting to such treatment and had his case brought before the Lords, declaring that it was an infringement of privilege to retain bail after the charges against him had been dropped.

  William presiding, was very loth to allow Marlborough to escape. He wanted to keep a close watch on the man, for he was well aware that he was corresponding with James and that although he was guiltless of implication in the flowerpot intrigue, he was nevertheless as much a traitor to the present regime as Young had implied.

  There was a noisy session and William, knowing the Marlboroughs, could well imagine their using this to represent themselves as martyrs in the public eye. Martyrs were the biggest enemies a King could have, and the Marlboroughs were not going to be allowed to join that band.

  Marlborough should be watched; he should be excluded from favor; but he should be free.

  William therefore exercised the royal prerogative and brought the case to an end.

  So Marlborough returned to his wife, but there was little to make them rejoice.

  They had lost all they had carefully built up; their son was dead; they had little money. All they could rely on was the bounty of Anne; and her fortunes were not very high at this time.

  She was living at Berkeley House and thither she invited the Marlboroughs.

  In Kensington Mary found the outlook disturbing. The Marlboroughs influencing Anne; the quarrel with her sister growing; the people cheering her and disliking William.

  The people were cruel and they did not hesitate to express their thoughts in the fashion of the day.

  Lampoons and verses were circulated in the streets and the latest one, calling attention to William’s failures and the success of La Hogue which they called Mary’s triumph ran:

  Alas, we erred in choice of our commanders.

  He should have knotted and she gone to Flanders.

  She hoped William would never hear that cruel couplet. How she wished that she could make everyone see him as she did! But that was impossible. He would make no concessions. He was only friendly with his intimate friends … like Bentinck, and now Keppel, and Elizabeth Villiers.

  Bitterly Mary thought of that intimate circle in which even she was locked out.

  But she would not dwell on it. She must continue to see William as the hero she had made him in her thoughts.

  HIS HIGHNESS’S SOLDIERS AND STAYS

  During the months which followed Mary’s health was not good; there were frequent attacks of the ague, that disease which had first attacked her in Holland. To add to her troubles there were constant rumors of Jacobite plots; William was obliged to return to the Continent which meant that she must give up the role of Queen Consort which she happily took on when he was in England and become the reigning Queen.

  She had a natural aptitude for ruling; perhaps it was something she had inherited; her flashes of wisdom still astonished her Parliament for she was apt, when William was present, to offer no suggestions and thus appear to be merely a figurehead.

  She was popular, for she had a natural dignity and because she liked to go among the people they were reminded of her uncle’s affable manners. She was a Stuart, they told themselves; she looked like a Queen; she acted like a Queen; she was what they expected in a ruler.

  With her ladies she often made excursions from the Palace; and would visit the fairs and, to the delight of the stallholders, made her purchases. She was a fine figure—large enough for three Queens, was the comment; but they preferred this to meagre William. Had she not been so big she would have been extremely beautiful in her coronet headdress consisting of three tiers of guipure point; beneath it her hair, drawn back from her forehead, showed dark and glossy. Her brocade dress was magnificent with the bows of ribbon at the shoulders; diamonds and pearls were about her neck and her garments. A Queen, said the people, of whom they could be proud.

  But there were many, of course, who favored the Princess Anne. Why should she not have the friends she wanted? Did it not show how faithful she was to insist on keeping the Marlboroughs with her? There was the Princess Anne, heiress to the throne, not received at Court, deprived of her privileges.

  It was interesting, though, to have such a quarrel in the royal family. What material it provided for the lampoon writers! And all the time, of course, there was the excitement of having a King over the Water.

  The rumor was circulating that Mary and Anne had passed when driving in Hyde Park and Mary had pretended not to see her sister.

  What next!

  As for William, nobody wanted him. The English had never liked the Dutch and the idea of having a Dutchman for a King was intolerable, in some respects. He was so small, and to see him pulling on the arm of the Queen when they took their walks in the gardens about Kensington Palace was a comic sight, and therefore provided some amusement; but they would never like him.

  Oh, for the days of good King Charles who gave them peace and pleasure! Wars, wars, it was all wars now—and there had to be taxes to pay for them. But what could be expected with a King over the Water and his daughter on the throne, and her not on speaking terms with her sister!

  It was something to laugh at and as long as the English could laugh they were ready to be lenient.

  But Mary was the one they cheered; nobody was going to raise one little shout for Dutch William.
/>
  Fortunately he was often abroad. “Let him stay there,” said the people.

  Anne was now living at Berkeley House, although she had apartments in Campden House where her son, at this time about four years old, had his household. Anne was a devoted mother and could not bear to be long away from her son; consequently she was often at Campden House.

  The little boy’s health caused constant anxiety; although he was extremely intelligent his body did not keep pace with his mind and the members of his household who loved him were terrified that, like his brothers and sisters, he would not survive. But that one of Anne’s children should have lived four years was a triumph; Anne herself was continually fretting about his health and talked of it until, as Sarah complained to John, she nearly drove her mad.

  The young Duke of Gloucester suffered from hydrocephalus and his head was out of proportion to the rest of his body so that it gave the impression that it was a great burden he had to carry around. He found difficulty in walking and had to be carried almost everywhere so that he was never without a retinue of nurses and attendants. Wherever he happened to be, his high young voice could be heard asking questions. Although only four, he wanted to hear about his uncle’s campaigns in Flanders and what the war was all about. His manner was that of an adult, and although those whose duty it was to look after him were anxious about his physical state they were extremely proud of his mental capabilities.

  When he was taken into the parks, in his carriage, he would demand to stop when he saw a soldier and discuss his uniform, medals, and campaigns with him like a veteran.

  The Duke of Gloucester was by no means the least picturesque member of the family.

  Anne adored him; so did Mary. Even William had to turn away to hide a smile at some of the boy’s drolleries; and when he visited Campden House it was noticed that he would linger by the boy’s side and answer his questions with a patience, and amusement, that no one had ever seen him display before.