The King's Henchman

by Anthony Adolph

  Next came a hundred paupers dressed in grey, twenty-four criers carrying bells, and then the French heralds, in magnificent gold-embroidered tabards.

  And after them all, a plaintive figure shuffled up the aisle, alone. Because of his gout, he leant heavily on the white wand that denoted his office of Lord Chamberlain to the Queen.

  No elegant hat or vain wig concealed his cropped grey hair or the deep wrinkles of his sorrowful jowls. Abandoning his customary black satin suits, Jermyn had dressed himself in the sackcloth habit of a Capuchin monk.

  He was not a Catholic, but this donning of humble Catholic vestments was his way of paying homage to the piety of the woman he had loved continuously since his youth.

  Behind Jermyn came the principal mourners, led by the Duke and Duchess of Orléans. Henrietta Anne’s tears were obscured by her heavy black lace vale: behind her flowed the long black train of her mourning dress.

  In the centre of the cathedral stood a temporary monument. Eight marble pillars supported a cupola, surmounted by a pyramid decorated with fleur-de-lys and topped by a globe bearing a replica of the Crown of England. Within the mausoleum lay a coffin containing Henrietta Maria’s tenderly shrouded body.

  The congregation took their places. The Archbishop of Reims began the service, assisted by four bishops. The Queen’s coffin was removed from the mausoleum and lowered gently into a vault to lie next to her mighty father, Henri IV.

  Will Crofts, the captain of her guard, stepped up to the entrance to the vault. Taking his staff of office in both hands, he broke it in two and threw it in, symbolising the end of his service.

  Rising from his seat, Jermyn hobbled forward. Holding up his own wand of office between his large hands, he cracked it in two, and let the pieces fall down onto the coffin. Then, with the same tenderness with which he had held her pale white hand so often in life, Jermyn picked up Henrietta Maria’s crown and handed it to one of the French heralds, who took it down into the vault to place it on the coffin.

  It was never a farewell, and nor was the Queen truly dead. Her spirit did not truly pass away until the last time Jermyn himself closed his eyes, many years later, in his house in St James’s Square.

  In mid-December, as the winter snow fell in gentle flurries, Jermyn, his sister-in-law Rebecca and the rest of the disconsolate household boarded a ship at Calais and embarked for England.

  In the Channel a terrible gale struck, throwing them about below decks and blowing the ship right past Dover and up the Kent coast. Their ghastly nine-day ordeal ended on Christmas Day when their ship foundered on the infamous Goodwin Sands.

  A fishing boat put out from nearby Deal, braving the towering waves to haul the travellers off the ship, one by one. Jermyn and Rebecca came ashore shivering violently, their mourning clothes drenched in icy brine, but miraculously still alive.

  XXII

  THE SECRET TREATY OF DOVER

  1669 – 1678

  We have a pretty, witty King,

  Whose word no one relies on;

  Who never said a foolish thing,

  Nor ever did a wise one

  John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, ‘Impromptu on Charles II’.

  The day Henrietta Maria died, Jermyn revealed to Arlington the depth of his grief.

  ‘You will believe me easily’, he wrote, ‘when I tell you no man can labour under the weight of more affliction than it pleased God to lay upon me in this occasion. I hope for some support from the same hand’.

  Writing about him later, Jermyn’s friend the Baroness d’Aulnoy put a short speech into his mouth, which she may actually have heard him utter. Addressing a group of friends, Jermyn told them, ‘I have no tears in reserve… Love has cost me too much that all your pains together cannot in the least approach what I have suffered’.

  Back in London, aged sixty-four, with failing sight and partially disabled by gout, Jermyn embarked on what seems to have been a futile search for a substitute for Henrietta Maria.

  First he developed an infatuation for Katherine Crofts, sister of his former colleague Will. Her London salon, with its blazing fires and merry company, was far more homely than the soulless chambers of his palatial mansion in St James’s Square. Soon Jermyn decided to marry Katherine but was prevented, according to gossip, because his debts were so great he could not raise the dowry. More likely, Katherine realised that Jermyn’s heart would always belong to the dead Queen alone and turned him away as kindly as possible.

  After Katherine, he became obsessed with the much younger ‘Miledy’, who may actually have been Lady Falmouth, widow of his young, bellicose cousin Charlie Berkeley. He played court to ‘Miledy’ and she played at being courted. Amused and slightly contemptuous of this old man who found her so attractive, she led him on, arranging trysts she had no intention of keeping and laughing with her friends as he made a fool of himself.

  It seemed to be open-season on Jermyn’s sex-life. Marvell sniggered that Jermyn was ‘membered like a mule’ (though very well endowed, male mules cannot reproduce) while Lord Rochester jested that Jermyn’s only real sexual satisfaction came from a modern innovation recently introduced from Italy:

  St Albans, with wrinkles and smiles in his face,

  Whose kindness to strangers becomes his high place,

  In his coach and six horses is gone to Borgo

  To take the fresh air with Signior Dildo.

  Only Jermyn’s friend and gambling-companion Charles de Saint-Évremond came to his defense.

  The Frenchman was a Protestant – a Huguenot – and as such an exile, living in England. Charles had taken a liking to him, giving him the ridiculous post of Governor of Duck Island, in the middle of the lake in St James’s Park, but with a small salary to go with it.

  Saint-Évremond alone seems to have understood that Jermyn’s emotions were in turmoil, and that behind his false gaiety lay the terrible, open wound caused by the loss of a woman he had loved all his life, yet had never been able to marry.

  That, of course, he could not say openly, but in an open letter, ‘To Monsieur ——, who could not endure that the Earl of St Albans should be in love in his old age’, Saint-Évremond wrote,

  At this age all the springs of ambition leave us, the desire of glory no longer fires us, our strength fails us, our courage is extinguished, or at least weakened… Love alone supplies the place of every virtue; it averts all thoughts of those evils that surround us, and the fear of those that threaten us. It turns aside the image of death, which otherwise would continually present its self to our eyes.

  No wonder Jermyn had been seeking love. But, thus counselled, Jermyn started coming to terms with his own emotions and could recognise his distracted infatuations for what they were.

  In another speech put into his mouth by the Baroness d’Aulony, he reflects on Miledy: ‘it is true that I have greatly loved this lady, and had she wished she might have turned me round her little finger… [but now] I am in a position to view what passes with a tranquil mind’.

  And on beautiful girls in general he was wise enough to conclude that ‘I admire their Beauty, without any design, heaven knows, of making any impression upon their hearts. I only endeavour to please my own self, and study rather to find tenderness in my own breast, than in theirs. ‘Tis by their charms and not by their favours, that I pretend to be obliged’.

  There was still one woman to whom Jermyn could give, and from whom he could receive, unconditional love.

  Although there can be no certainty whether or not she was his biological offspring, Henrietta Anne, Duchess of Orléans, was certainly Jermyn’s daughter in all other respects. Of all the tears shed over the Queen’s grave, those of Jermyn and Henrietta Anne had been the most plentiful. Now they provided each other with a continued emotional connection to Henrietta Maria.

  A cathartic outlet for them both was their work on the project that had been so dear to Henrietta Maria – the Grand Design. By corresponding with Charles and Arlington and talking directly to Loui
s, Henrietta Anne was able to resolve all remaining obstacles. Soon, the secret treaty was ready to be signed.

  It was decided that Henrietta Anne should bring the treaty to England for Charles to sign, disguising her journey as a family visit. Initially the obstreperous Duke of Orléans, who did not suspect his wife of being a secret agent, refused to let her go.

  Even Louis could not persuade his stubborn younger brother to change his mind, but letters, both pleading and flattering, from Jermyn, Charles and James, Duke of York, finally had the desired effect. Jermyn attended to every detail of Henrietta Anne’s journey, reaching Dover with the court on Sunday, 22 May, and even embarking that evening to collect her from Dunkirk.

  This time, the sea was calm and a strong breeze filled the sails of his frigate, speeding him across the Channel to be reunited with his surrogate daughter.

  They sailed back on Wednesday, 25 May, enjoying the sight of rosy-fingered dawn bathing the cliffs of Dover in pink and orange. They stepped ashore beneath the ramparts of Dover Castle, and Jermyn reunited the remnants of Henrietta Maria’s family for the last time.

  Ensconced in Dover Castle, Charles and Henrietta Anne agreed the final points of the treaty. It was to remain absolutely secret until Louis sent the money that would safeguard Charles from having to call Parliament to ask for permission to raise taxes. Louis was planning to attack Flanders again once its overlord, the sickly king of Spain, had died. At that point, Charles would become a Catholic and send 50 ships and 6,000 soldiers to join Louis’s forces.

  The Secret Treaty of Dover was signed behind the closed doors of Dover Castle on Wednesday, 1 June 1670, by French ambassador Colbert de Croissy; Secretary of State Lord Arlington and three Catholic royal officials, Lord Arundell, Sir Thomas Clifford and Sir Richard Bellings. Because Jermyn and Henrietta Anne were not royal officials, their names do not appear amongst the signatories (thus giving historians the completely false impression that they were not closely involved – which is exactly the sort of subterfuge they intended).

  They spent a happy sojourn in Kent, including a ballet and feast at St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, where Henrietta Maria had been married. Then, Henrietta Anne sailed back to France on Sunday, 12 June. At the quayside, they said farewell and parted, she for Paris and he for London.

  After supper at home on Wednesday, 29 June, Henrietta Anne suddenly felt an acute pain in her side. She cried out in agony and fell to the ground. Her attendants carried her to bed as gently as they could and summoned Louis’s doctors. As courtiers and friends crowded round her bedside, she spotted Ralph Montagu, the English ambassador. In a weak voice she told him to take some of her money to repay her debts, including one she said she owed Jermyn. At 3 am on Thursday, 30 June, the lovely eyes of Henrietta Anne, Duchess of Orléans, daughter of Queen Henrietta Maria of England, were closed by the indifferent hand of death, never to shine in life again.

  Henrietta Anne had in fact died of acute peritonitis contracted whilst swimming in the Seine a few days earlier.

  Gossips spread the story that the Duke of Orléans had poisoned her, and to allay such stories in England, Louis sent the Marshal de Bellefonde over to London.

  In an attempt to keep loneliness at bay, Jermyn had recently moved into a suite of rooms at the end of the Matted Gallery in Whitehall Palace. Here, on the warm evening of Thursday, 14 July, Jermyn entertained Bellefonde, Charles and a select group of guests who had known and loved Henrietta Anne, including the poet Edmund Waller, to dinner.

  Having accepted Bellefonde’s assurances that the princess had not been murdered, they relaxed over their wine, reminiscing about Henrietta Anne’s life, Jermyn no doubt describing the dramatic circumstances surrounding her birth in Exeter only twenty-six years ago.

  Jermyn went back to France to see Henrietta Anne buried in great solemnity next to her mother at Saint-Denis.

  He took with him the young Duke of Buckingham, whom he had primed to perform a piece of political intrigue. In order to maintain the secret of Charles’s proposed conversion, Arlington had presented the predominantly Anglican Privy Council with a pretend version of the Grand Design, for their eyes only, but without the clause about Charles’s conversion to Catholicism.

  In France, Jermyn and Louis fooled Buckingham into ‘negotiating’ this pretend treaty with the French government. After some mock-arguments, Louis agreed to it and Buckingham returned to London triumphantly, believing he alone had achieved this splendid Anglo-French treaty.

  After the funeral, Jermyn travelled back to England with Buckingham. What memories crowded his mind as the sails billowed above him and the French coastline receded from his blurred vision? The last time he saw the Queen alive? His life with her at the Louvre and Colombes? Or maybe the first time Henrietta Maria’s young Tuscan eyes, sparkling in the candle-light of the Louvre, had settled on him in the days when they were both young and had all their lives in front of them.

  On Wednesday, 21 December that year, back in England, Buckingham’s pretend treaty was signed by all the King’s principal ministers. Later the same day Charles, Arlington and Colbert de Croissy secretly signed a confirmation of the real one.

  The plan which Jermyn, Henrietta Maria and Henrietta Anne had worked so hard to fulfil was now official government policy. By ‘joining together to surpass all others’, as the Venetian ambassador had written, France and England would be unbeatable.

  ‘The Earl of St Albans’, wrote a courtier in May 1671, ‘is grown young again… and will be as youthful when he gets the white staff and blue ribbon as when he was Harry Jermyn’.

  Despite his increasing infirmity, Jermyn was as unwilling to retire into obscurity as Charles was to lose his sage advice. In the spring of 1671, Charles granted Jermyn the highest-ranking office in the whole court by appointing him Lord Chamberlain.

  Jermyn could now fill up his days licensing plays; hiring and firing royal household staff; making sure the King’s furniture was looked after properly, and dozens of other welcome distractions.

  With the job came a new set of apartments at Whitehall behind the Banqueting House, in the block leading up to the Gothic towers of the Holbein Gate. From his narrow windows, Jermyn could peer out across the box hedges and bright flowers of the Privy Gardens to the pavilion in which the elderly Freemason Sir Robert Moray performed mysterious chemical experiments.

  On Sunday, 30 June 1672, Charles further honoured Jermyn by making him a Knight of the Garter. Jermyn now joined Charles, James, Duke of York, Prince Rupert, a handful of European sovereigns and the foremost luminaries of the English government in membership of England’s most elite order of chivalry.

  Jermyn’s main concern remained the Grand Design. Typically indecisive, Charles had chosen not to rule through a First Minister but through a group of five ministers: Clifford; Arlington; Buckingham; Ashley and Lauderdale, whose initials conveniently spelled out the word for a group of conspirators and gave rise to the nickname of the ‘C.A.B.A.L. ministry’.

  Rivalries emerged at once, the now pro-French Arlington pitted against the feckless Buckingham who, simply to spite him, decided to become the leader of the pro-Spanish faction. In a wider sense, Arlington represented the court party, willing to suspend their personal preferences in obedience to the King, while Buckingham stood for the majority anti-French, pro-Anglican views of Parliament.

  As before, the main battlefield was Charles’s bedroom, where two new mistresses, Louise de Keroualle and former orange-seller Nell Gwyn, vied with each other to influence the King on behalf of Arlington and Buckingham respectively.

  Twenty-two year old Louise, with her alabaster skin and beguiling eyes, had been brought over from France by Henrietta Anne in 1670, specifically to become a royal mistress-cum-French agent. It was naturally enough with Louise, Arlington and Colbert de Croissy that Jermyn spent much of his time, working out how to counteract Buckingham’s increasingly bold assaults on the Grand Design.

  To prepare for the momentous announceme
nt of Charles’s conversion, Jermyn held secret talks with Dr Innes, the leader of the English Presbyterians. Faced with Jermyn’s astute powers of persuasion, Innes agreed to support Charles, come what may, in return for a promise of increased religious toleration.

  In March 1672, Charles issued a Declaration of Indulgence, greatly increasing religious freedom in England. Arlington provoked war with the Dutch by accusing them of damaging the East India trade and the English fisheries.

  On Saturday, 6 April, Louis’s 110,000-man-strong army stormed into Flanders. At the same time, a great fleet of Dutch ships sailed across the North Sea to attack England.

  The Dutch encountered the English fleet in thick fog at Solebay (also referred to as Southwold Bay) off the Suffolk coast on Thursday, 6 June. James, Duke of York and Lord High Admiral of England, destroyed many Dutch ships and chased the rest back across the North Sea. Meanwhile, Louis’s armies burst through the Flemish defences and ploughed on into Holland, the Sun King’s hawk-like eyes now set on the spires of Amsterdam, only twenty miles distant.

  Far from siding with Charles and Louis against the Dutch States General, however, the 21-year-old William of Orange took command of the Dutch forces and fought back against the invasion.

  As the Sun King’s troops bore down on him, William ordered his men to open sluices and cut dikes, flooding the approach to Amsterdam. Boldly ignoring Louis’s indignant calls for a truce, William attacked the retreating French forces and sent his remaining ships back to menace the English coast.

  The predominantly Anglican Parliament now demanded an end to the war. When the King asked for money to continue fighting, Parliament, goaded by Buckingham, would only agree if the King cancelled the Declaration of Indulgence – which he had no choice but to do.