by Roger Powell
‘She was a woman of great beauty, but most enormously vicious and ravenous; foolish but imperious; very uneasy to the King, and always carrying on with other men’.
Charles FitzRoy first saw the light of day in June 1662, shortly after the marriage of his father King Charles to Catherine of Braganza. Initially baptised by a Roman Catholic priest at the behest of Lord Castlemaine, he was subsequently baptised on 16 June 1662 at St Margaret’s Westminster, with the King as his sponsor, declaring ‘He is my son’. The other sponsors were the Earl of Oxford and Lady Suffolk. However, he was entered in the register as the son of Lord Castlemaine:
‘1662 June 18 Charles Palmer Ld Limricke s to ye right honorble Roger Earl of Castlemaine by Barbara’.
As Barbara was married to Roger Palmer at the time, Charles was passed off as Castlemaine’s son, with his legal father’s courtesy title of Lord Limerick. His real paternity was not recognised by King Charles II until 1670, when he took the surname of FitzRoy and was styled Earl of Southampton, the courtesy title of his mother, who had been created Duchess of Cleveland. Young Charles himself had to wait until 1675 to be created Duke of Southampton in his own right, although he had been appointed a KG and granted arms two years earlier.
Of his education little is known other than that he was educated at Oxford, but his mother’s attitude to learning in general was unequivocal
‘I care for no education other than what nature and I myself can give him which will be sufficient accomplishment for a married man’.
Indeed her meddling was notorious. On one occasion Humphrey Prideaux reported that
‘My friend Mr Bernard, who went into France to attend upon two bastards of Cleveland, hath been so affronted and abused there by that insolent woman that he hath been forced to quit that employment and return’.
When the Duke reached the age of nine in 1671, his mother decided that he should be married. She chose as his bride Mary, the daughter and heiress of Sir Henry Wood, Bt, Clerk of the Green Cloth, who possessed extensive landed estates in Suffolk producing an income of approximately £4,000 a year. This ceremony had to be repeated in 1677 when both parties were of age, but only three years later, in 1680, the young bride died of smallpox at the age of sixteen, without any issue. After much litigation, her great fortune passed to her husband who remained a widower for the next fourteen years until he married in 1694 Anne, the daughter of Sir William Pulteney.
The latter was one of the leading members of the House of Commons during the reign of King Charles II, and his grandson and namesake was created Earl of Bath in 1742 despite being an opponent of the government then in power under Sir Robert Walpole. By his second wife, the Duke, who as his mother’s eldest son and heir, had succeeded her as Duke of Cleveland upon her death from dropsy in 1709, had three sons and three daughters. The eldest son William, duly succeeded to his father’s dukedoms, but both became extinct upon his own death in 1771, his other brothers having died young.
Unlike his sister Lady Sussex, (see page 50) the Duke of Southampton did not follow his uncle King James to France in 1688. Indeed it would have been folly to have done so given that all of his income came from the state. Nevertheless he, together with the Dukes of Grafton and Northumberland plus the Earls of Lichfield and Yarmouth, opposed the offer of the Crown to William of Orange in 1689, and he was suspected of intriguing for the restoration of his uncle James II in 1691. However, he signed the 1696 Association following the attempt by Jacobite agents to assassinate William, and thereafter, to all intents and purposes, he accepted the new regime, despite his oath of allegiance to King James.
Like his sister Lady Lichfield, (see page 63) no scandal appears to have sullied the Duke’s good name and to all appearances he was a sober and happily married man. However, the character of his second wife was the subject of much ridicule and derision on more than one occasion. The first, whilst her husband was still alive, occurred in 1727, when she developed an overwhelming passion for her husband’s nephew Lord Sidney Beauclerk, 5th son of the 1st Duke of St Albans (see page 75). The event was recorded by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in a letter to Lady Mar:
‘The Man in England that gives the greatest pleasure and the greatest pain is a youth of Royal Blood with all his grandmothers beauty wit and good qualitys; in short he is Nell Guinn in person with the sex altered and occasions such a fracas amongst Ladies of Gallantry that it passes belief. You will state to hear of her Grace of Cleveland at the head of them. … In good ernest she has turned Lady Grace & family out of doors to make room for him and there he lies like leafe gold upon a pill. There was no so violent & so indiscreet a passion’.
At the time the Duchess was 63 and Lord Sidney was 25. The Duke’s reaction to this affair is not on record. That the Duchess was indeed a woman of strong passions is further illustrated by her treatment of her eldest daughter Barbara, whom she disowned. The reason for this is unknown, but the poor woman died at the age of 38 and was buried in the choir of the collegiate church of Manchester. Buried with her was a gentleman named William Dawson, who in his will, explained his reasons why
‘to testify his gratitude to a kind benefactress, but because his fate was similar to hers; for she was disowned by her mother, and he was disinherited by his father’.
Her Grace was singularly unfortunate in her relationships with her daughters. When she married for a second time in 1733, none of her children were made aware of her intention to marry again or invited to the ceremony. Her second daughter Lady Grace discovering the truth in the following manner:
‘I din’d to day at Capel More’s with Lady Grace Vanes, who cryed at relating Her mother’s marriage which she did not know till last Saterday when she din’d with her grace. As she was going away she desir’d Mr Southcoute to carry him (sic) home, but he answered that he was at home already, for the Duchess had done him the honour to marry him. As the Duchess had ask’d her to return the next day to meet the Duke and Duchess of Cleveland, she went and when she told the Duke that her mother was married to Mr Sout., he cry’d pho pho, it cant be I am not such a fool neither as to believe that; and she says that all she do will never make him believe it.’
A few months later in 1733, Her Grace’s youngest daughter Anne dishonoured the family name further by marrying her footman, John Paddy. Fortunately the Duke was spared all of these problems for he had died three years earlier in 1730, in his 69th year and was buried in Westminster Abbey. His widow and sole legatee, was to survive him for another sixteen years.
Sir Henry Fitzroy, KG, formerly Palmer, 1st Duke of Grafton (1663–90)
The Duke of Buckingham described his King as ‘father of his people’ adding sotto-voce ‘of a good many of them’. Rather in the same vein, Rochester dared to write:
Nor are his high Desires above his strength;
His sceptre and his – are of a length.
And she that plays with one may sway the other,
And make him a little wiser than his brother.
Charles II had no less than five children by Barbara Villiers, and no less than thirteen prime ministers descend from Villiers stock as indeed does the present Queen.
Henry was born in 1663, but in view of his mother’s fearsome reputation, Charles delayed in recognising him as his son for some time and it was not until 1675, aged twelve, that he was created Duke of Grafton. Three years earlier in 1672, he had been created Earl of Euston, in recognition of his marriage to five year old Lady Isabella Bennett, the only daughter and sole heiress of 1st Earl of Arlington, (which included the Euston estate), from which Henry’s earldom was taken. Despite some opposition from the Arlington family, they were re-married in 1679, when Evelyn described it as the union of ‘the sweetest and most beautiful child’ to a ‘boy that had been rudely bred’ He was appointed a KG the following year.
Despite Charles II’s alleged reluctance to accept young Henry as his child, portraits of him show a strong resemblance to the King. The rumours that Charles Berkeley was the father of a
nother of ‘Barbara’s Brats’ as Nell Gwyn described him, have no foundation whatsoever. That Charles Berkeley spent a great deal of time with Lady Castlemaine is beyond dispute, he was, after all, a favourite of the King and the Duke of York. According to Bishop Burnet his relationship with the King and Lady Castlemaine was of an exceedingly dubious nature for the said gentleman and Sir Henry Bennet ‘had the management of the mistress [Lady Castlemaine] and all the Earl of Clarendon’s enemies came about them, chief of whom were Buckingham and Bristol’. Others, including Dr Clerke, simply declared that the gentleman’s greatness ‘is only his being pimp to the King, and to my Lady Castlemaine’.
Henry was ‘a kockish, idle boy’ who displayed all of his mother’s tempestuous and arrogant nature in his youth. In character he was well suited to the military and naval life, and surprisingly in time developed into, according to one contemporary:
‘A man of good sense and extreme good nature, affable to all, without partiality, and ready to support men of worth without regard to the unhappy factions in the fleet with which he served, for he judged only of each man according to his capacity and because he himself was educated to the sea. A very gallant man, his courage and skill extremely recommended him to the esteem and affection of all the seamen, with whom he was very familiar, and by who he was extremely beloved, for he was always well disposed towards them and often joined with them in their rough sports’.
Clearly he had his father’s common touch, but on occasions he was prone to the excesses of character displayed all too readily by his mother. One notable instance was the episode of his brother Northumberland’s marriage (see page 67) to the beautiful widow Catherine Lucy. No sooner was he married to her, than Grafton persuaded him to spirit her away to a convent in Ghent, much to her anger and the consternation of the Court. In two duels he also killed both his opponents – namely, Jack Talbot, brother of the Earl of Shrewsbury and Mr Stanley, brother of the Earl of Derby. Both events took place in 1686, the latter because Mr Stanley had stated that the Duchess of Cleveland, had just given birth to a son by her then lover, Cardell Goodman.
Young Henry, described by one contemporary as ‘exceeding handsome, by far surpassing any of the King’s other natural issue’ became, as we have seen, a brave and resourceful sailor. Evelyn described him as ‘a plain useful and robust officer, and were he polished, a tolerable man’. Although serving as Colonel 1st Foot Guards from 1681–88 and promoted to Brigadier General of Foot, Henry served predominantly at sea and took part in a number of expeditions. He served as Vice Admiral of England from 1682–89 upon the death of Prince Rupert, an Elder Brother of Trinity House and sometime Master, Governor of the Isle of Wight and Lord High Constable for the Coronation of James II as well as carrying the Orb at William III’s Coronation.
In 1683 he became captain of the Grafton and the following year visited King Louis XIV, and at some personal danger gained military experience at the Siege of Luxembourg. He distinguished himself by commanding a part of the King’s forces which suppressed the rebellion of his half brother the Duke of Monmouth (see page 36), and he narrowly escaped with his life at Philips Norton in Somerset in 1686 and was present at Sedgmoor the following month.
Although openly supporting his uncle James II, acting as conductor to the Papal Nuncio D’Adda on his public entry to London in 1687, and accompanying his uncle on a march against William, he soon turned against him when Dartmouth had been given command of the fleet in preference to him. Thereafter he excited discontent and joined the conspiracy, later running away with John Churchill, later 1st Duke of Marlborough, to join William of Orange at Axminster in 1688, who duly restored him to his regiment. Henry, along with most of his other half-brothers, supported the cause of the Prince of Orange and he was one of the first to desert his uncle King James II when William III landed in 1688.
His brilliant action in Grafton at the Battle of Beachy Head in 1690 saved the Dutch from the French and was much praised. But only three months later, as a volunteer under Churchill, now Lord Marlborough, he was mortally wounded during the storming of the City of Cork, dying a fortnight afterwards, aged only 27.
Grafton was regarded as the most popular and ablest of the sons of Charles II, his strong and decided character, his reckless daring, and rough but honest temperament, caused him to be widely lamented. His widow, by whom he had an only son and heir, was painted by Kneller and Lely and was among the ‘Beauties of Hampton Court’. She went on to marry Sir Thomas Hanmer, a Tory statesman, but having become Countess of Arlington in her own right upon her father’s death, it was in this title that she was thereafter known.
However, the family motto: Et Decus et Pretium Recti (the ornament and recompense of virtue) does not seem particularly apt but accompanies the Royal arms of King Charles II debruised by a baton sinister, which were granted to him.
Of Charles’s three sons by Barbara Villiers, only one, Henry founded an enduring and direct noble line. His descendants include Augustus Henry, 3rd Duke who became Prime Minister from 1766–70 and thereafter Lord Privy Seal. The present male line descendant is Hugh Denis Charles, KG, 11th Duke, (born 1919), who has been actively involved in preserving historic buildings and churches and cathedrals and still lives at the ancestral seat, Euston Hall in Suffolk. His wife continues to serve as Mistress of the Robes to HM The Queen as she has done since 1967.
Lady Charlotte FitzRoy, formerly Palmer, later Countess of Lichfield (1664–1718)
Lady Charlotte FitzRoy, a notable beauty in her day, was the fourth child of Barbara Villiers by Charles II, and reputedly the King’s favourite daughter. She was born in 1664 with the surname of Palmer, but was not formally recognised by the King until she was eight, when with her older sister Anne (see page 50), she was granted in 1673 the surname of FitzRoy, the rank of a duke’s daughter and granted arms. In the patent they were described as ‘his dear and natural daughters by the Duchess of Cleveland’.
Charlotte had an angelic face as shown in Lely’s painting of her ca 1672 with an unidentified servant. Two years later, aged only ten, she was married to Sir Edward Henry Lee, Bt, who, in anticipation, had been created Earl of Lichfield. The King provided her with a dowry of £18,000 together with an annual allowance of £2,000. In 1676 she accompanied her mother to France and was placed in a convent for her education, but returned the following year, aged only twelve, to marry her husband for the second time.
Lichfield was a Gentleman of the Bedchamber and Colonel of the 12th Foot and 1st Foot Guards and Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, but being a staunch Tory, he retired from office at the Revolution. When James II retired to France in 1688, Lichfield was one of the few loyal peers of the realm to attend him during his last days in England – the others were Lord Ailesbury, the Earl of Dumbarton and Lord Arran, subsequently Duke of Hamilton. The event was recorded by Lady Dartmouth who wrote to her husband that ‘Lord Midleton and Lord Alsbery and Lichfield attended him (James II) to the last with great tendernesse...’ Like her husband, the Countess was a staunch Jacobite and immediately wrote to the Queen, offering her services to which she replied:
‘I hope you do not think I am so unreasonable as to expect you should leave your husband and children to come to me. I am in too miserable a condition to wish that my friends should follow it, if they can be in their own country ... No change or condition shall ever lessen the real kindness I have for you’.
The Countess had also been present at the birth of the Princess of Wales prior to the Queen departing for France and could thus vouch for his legitimacy. Lord Lichfield was universally regarded as a man of honour and principle a fact that was noted by Mackay in his Characters:
‘A man of honour, never could take the oaths to King William; hath good sense; is not yet come to Queen Anne’s court; 50 years old.’
However, in 1702, Lady Lichfield did ask Queen Anne if she could attend Court but was told not until her husband had taken the oaths.
As a young girl Charlotte was ill used by her mo
ther. On one occasion she
‘being in her mother’s coach in the park happened to break the glass of the coach and thereupon her father the King passing by in another coach, happened to stop and asking his daughter what made her cry so (for she cryed as soon as the glass was broke) she answered, because she was afraid that her mother would beat her soundly. Upon this the King took her into his own coach and shewed a particular dislike of the Duchess’s ill usage, by sending an express message to her never to strike her more, under pain of loosing his sight and favour for the future, if she should offer any such thing’.
Lady Lichfield proved to be a model wife and presented her husband with thirteen sons and five daughters during their thirty year marriage, but like all large families, not all survived the rigours of childhood – three sons and one daughter died in infancy. All of their births and the names of the godparents were recorded by their mother. King Charles stood godfather to the eldest son and daughter. The Duke of Northumberland (Lady Lichfield’s brother – see page 67) was also a godfather to two of the children as was his brother the Duke of Grafton (see page 60). Several of the Countess’s half-brothers and sisters also stood as godparents viz: The Duke of Richmond (see page 88), the Earl and Countess of Derwentwater (see page 92) and the Duke of St Albans (see page 75). But even this was not enough to secure the Lichfield line which was extinct by 1776 with the death of her 13th son, the 4th Earl, who died as a result of a fall from his horse when hunting. Her present day representative is the 22nd Viscount Dillon (born 1973).
Like her mother, of whom King Charles used to say that if she had had as much sense and wit as she had beauty, she had certainly ruined mankind, Charlotte was not spared the traumas of parenthood. Her eldest child and namesake, born when she was just fourteen years old, married at a very early age the eldest son of Lord Baltimore. She was according to a contemporary account a ‘comely, portly fair woman’ ‘of a sweet and courteous humour and disposition’ and ‘a tender and affectionate mother to her children’.