by Roger Powell
In later life, despite her large girth, she was still considered to be very handsome. In the first six years of their marriage Lady Baltimore bore her husband four sons and two daughters, but unfortunately after the birth of the second child, his attitude towards her changed. Initially he was ‘so fond of her that tis said he scars sturs out of her chamber’, however after the birth of their son in 1699, he took a mistress and began to beat her. In an attempt to please her husband Lady Charlotte became a Catholic to the intense grief of her father Lord Lichfield, who declared that
‘my joy in the birth of this little boy is quallifyed by … my daughter turning papist being a great affliction to me who had taken the utmost care to have her well grounded in the Protestant religion’.
In the style befitting her grandmother, Lady Baltimore retaliated by taking several lovers, among them her grandmother’s husband Robert ‘Beau’ Feilding, Count Briancon and Count Castelli, each of whom fathered a child on her. The relationship with Beau Feilding began during the five months she stayed with her grandmother, the Duchess of Cleveland, from November 1705 to March 1706. Her presence there was surprising given the latter’s reputation. In March 1706 she moved to lodgings in Westminster where Feilding visited her amost every day and it was not long before she became pregnant. In September she was ejected from her lodging by her landlady and found alternative accommodation in Stratton Street, Westminster where Feilding continued to visit her. However, shortly after she had settled in, she began to receive visits from ‘a tall lusty brown man and a very civil well bred gentleman’ called Count Briançon. Charlotte’s child, a daughter, was born in April 1707 and maintained by Feilding but their relationship was to all intents and purposes over.
The following year, Charlotte presented Count Briançon with a son who died shortly thereafter. At the end of the year the Count also died suddenly and Charlotte found herself without a protector and with only £200 a year to live on. However, by the end of 1709 she had found another in the person of Count Castelli. She eventually remarried and died in her 42nd year after a bout of dancing, being six feet tall
‘yet withall very nimble and active’ having shown ‘great agility that night in dancing, tho’ she went to bed extraordinary well, and slept extraordinary well, yet an alteration followed next day, and she continued languishing more than a month, and then died’.
Lady Lichfield was famous for her beauty when young, and later for her ‘very great sense and virtue’. She was painted by Lely and Simon Verelst and engraved by Peter Vandebanc and in miniature by Richard Gibson. Thomas Hearne describes how she used (at the request of His Majesty) to scratch the King’s head, when he slept in the elbow chair.
Sir George FitzRoy, formerly Palmer, KG, 1st Duke of Northumberland (1665–1716)
George was the third and youngest son of the infamous Barbara Villiers and King Charles II. He was born in 1665 ‘in a Fellow’s chamber’ at Merton College, Oxford, and like his brothers and sisters was given initially the surname of Palmer. He was not recognised by the King as his son until 1673 when he was granted arms in the surname of FitzRoy and put in special remainder to his elder brother’s earldom of Euston. The following year he was created Earl of Northumberland in his own right and in 1683 Duke of Northumberland and a KG.
If John Evelyn is to be believed he was
‘the most accomplished and worth owning of Charles II’s children, and ‘a young gentleman of good capacity, well bred, civil and modest…extraordinarily handsome and well shaped and skilled in horsemanship’.
His portrait by W. Wissing (as engraved in Doyle’s Official Baronage), supports this, and Mackay describes him as ‘a tall black man, like his father, the King’ adding that ‘he is a man of honour, nice in paying his debts’.
When Northumberland reached his eleventh year, the King sought to arrange his betrothal to a great heiress Lady Elizabeth Percy, but her grandmother objected on the grounds that he was a bastard. Annoyed by the grandmother’s opposition and impatient at the delay, the Duchess of Cleveland took it upon herself to call on Ralph Montagu the English Ambassador in Paris, Lady Betty’s stepfather, and in order to assist her endeavours, proceeded to befriend his wife, a task in which she was eminently successful. So much so, that Lord Danby was able to write to Montagu and declare that as
‘The Duchess of Cleveland and your lady are upon such good terms with one another … He believes the notion might perhaps now be agreeable to your lady, though it hath not been so formerly’ [He then concluded] ‘If yet the same difficulties remain … His Majesty will look upon it as a good service if your Excellency can procure it for Lord Plymouth.’
However young George was not without competition as Montagu related:
‘All the [Villiers] family do reckon that the King has engaged himself to My Lady Duchess of Cleveland to do all he can to procure this match for my Lord Northumberland, who himself is already cunning enough to be enquiring of me after My Lady Betty Percy, and has taken such an aversion to My Lord Ogle about the report, that when they meet at my house he is always ready to laugh or make mouths at him, so that the governor now will never scare let them meet’.
Unfortunately despite all her best endeavours, the Duchess’s carefully laid plans came to naught when she discovered that the Ambassador had been sheltering her errant daughter Lady Sussex, whom she had placed in a convent. Naturally the Duchess put the worst possible interpretation on this situation, and wrote furiously to the King demanding Montagu’s recall. As a result Northumberland did not marry Lady Betty and for a good number of years afterwards all thoughts of making a splendid marriage were put aside.
In 1681, at the age of sixteen, Northumberland made his first trip to the Continent without parental supervision, on this occasion taking with him a Mr Cornwallis and a Mr Lewis, his chaplain Mr Wickail and governor, a Frenchman, one Monsieur Lachevaye. He travelled to Venice in 1682, when he was in receipt of Secret Service funds, and joined the Army in 1683 being present as a volunteer at the Siege of Luxembourg. On the journey there he had the mortification of seeing one of his companions, a nephew of Richard Rigby, killed when a cannon ball blew off his head whilst sitting down to dinner with his fellow officers. His gallantry and bravery were duly noted at the siege by Lord Preston:
‘The Duke of Northumberland is given a very honourable account by all those here of his behaviour at Courtnay where he was all the first night at the head of those who opened the trenches’.
The following year, 1684, Lord Preston again sent to the King a report of his progress:
‘This King [Louis XIV] hath on all occasions honoured him [Northumberland] with particular marks of his esteem and since the business of Courtnay hath never failed to speak very advantageously of him and I do not believe that any one hath in so short a time gained more the value of this Court (which as your Majesty knoweth is not over favourable to strangers) than hath his Grace done...’
Northumberland became Colonel of the 2nd troop of Horse Guards from 1685–89 and 1712–15. He was Colonel of the Royal Horse Guards in 1702 and became successively Brigadier General, Major General and finally Lieutenant General in 1710.
He was also a Gentleman of the Bedchamber to James II and under William III was appointed Lord Lieutenant of both Surrey and Berkshire, Constable of Windsor Castle and Ranger of Windsor Park, acting Great Chamberlain, Chief Butler of England and a Privy Councillor.
The sudden death of his father, King Charles, in 1685 affected the fortunes of all his bastard children, including Northumberland. On his deathbed he particularly recommend the young Duke to his uncle the Duke of York saying ‘I desire brother, that you will be kind to George, as I am sure he will be honest and loyal.’ He was according to Thomas Hearne, the antiquary ‘the only son who did not degenerate from good principles’.
The following year, 1686, aged just twenty-one, Northumberland secretly married Catherine Lucy, a Catholic, described by the Countess of Norton as:
‘rich only in beauty, w
hich though much prized, will hardly maintain the quality of a Duchess’.
She was the widow of Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote, and daughter of Robert Wheatley, of Bracknell, Berkshire who was allegedly a poultry merchant, but for which there is not a scrap of evidence. He had seen all his three daughters make good marriages, the first, Anne, to the Earl of Dumbarton, whilst the second, Elizabeth, became sister-in-law of the Duke of Berwick. King James was extremely angry having just negotiated a marriage for his young nephew with a daughter of the Duke of Newcastle, a sister of the Lord Ogle, who had been his rival in the affections of Lady Betty Percy.
In response to this, Northumberland and his brother the Duke of Grafton attempted to redeem the situation by conspiring to place Catherine in a convent. The episode caused a major stir in Court circles, and the events surrounding it were reported avidly by numerous correspondents to Sir William Trumbull, the then English Ambassador in Paris. The first was John Mountstevens who reported that:
‘The Duke of Northumberland went abroad in his coach this morning to take the air with his new Duchess and about Chelsey (sic) the Duke of Grafton met with them and they all went aboard a barge that lay there for Gravesend. It is said that she intends to put herself into a nunnery beyond sea’.
Six days later Dr Wynne wrote to Sir William informing him that ‘The King is said to have expressed his concern for the Duke, that he should be imposed upon by the lady’. On the 3rd of April 1686 the arrival of the errant Dukes was duly noted in a newsletter:
‘The Dukes of Northumberland and Grafton after having landed and disposed of the Lady at Ostend; her relations are mightily concerned at it and are resolved to prosecute the matter to the utmost, which if they do, it is believed they will be obliged to fetch her back again’.
Dismayed and angered by his brother’s folly, the Duke of Grafton made enquiries ‘to see if a way could have been found for a divorce’ but he did not receive any encouragment from the party he approached. Once they had placed the unfortunate Duchess in a convent, the two Dukes arrived incognito in Brussels and presented themselves to Sir Richard Bulstrode. They were then brought
‘privately to his Excellency, who received them with all possible respect and did what the Duke of Grafton desired in commanding the Lady Abbess by letter not to suffer the Lady to go out of the cloister without his particular order’.
Realising by now that the Lady had been done a great injustice, King James ordered Grafton to bring her back immediately. But although Northumberland took his wife back, he refused to live with her and took as his mistress the woman whom he was to make his second wife. Whilst his uncle James was King, George remained loyal, and unlike his brother Grafton, did not actively intrigue to have him replaced with his son-in-law William of Orange. Indeed when William of Orange first landed, the Duke refused to join him, but the following year, due to the non payment of his pensions, he was forced to go cap in hand to that Prince and make his peace. By May 1689 it was reported that he
‘is now mightily in his Majesty’s favour and has received his arrears and has 3,000 l per annum settled’.
Unfortunately the royal favour did not last long, for the Duke did not receive any office under that Prince until the very last year of the reign, when he was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Surrey and Constable of Windsor Castle. William’s opinion of him as being ‘a great blockhead’ clearly influenced his initial decision to keep him out of government.
At the end of Queen Anne’s reign, the Duke was made a Privy Councillor, but this was small recompense for his having been kept out of office for the previous two reigns. However, this may have been due to his preference for an army life. Nevertheless he seems to have been singularly unfortunate because on the accession of George I he was dismissed from all his posts. The reason was almost certainly due to the ill nature of the Prince of Wales, as illustrated by the occasion when
‘the Duke coming one day into Court, happened to touch the prince as he passed; upon which, the Prince turning said, What can’t a Man stand still for a Bastard; upon which the said Duke readily and aptly replyed, Your Highness is, tho’, the son of no Greater a King than my father, and as for Mothers, we will neither of us talk upon that Point’.
Although Northumberland did not have any legitimate issue, he is credited with at least one illegitimate child who was born shortly before his first marriage. The child, a son John, was baptised in 1685/6 at St Margaret Westminster, the son of Jane Leviston (sic); the Duke’s name was also given in the register. Nothing further is known of the child and the mother’s identity is uncertain. For instance it is not known if she was a spinster or a married woman. However it is possible that Jane Leveson-Gower (1670–1725), daughter of Sir William Leveson-Gower, Bt., and wife of Henry Hyde, Lord Clarendon, could be a contender. For she was a celebrated beauty, was for a time the mistress of firstly Henry Boyle, Lord Carleton by whom she had a daughter, Catherine, Duchess of Queensberry (1701–77); and secondly, allegedly Matthew Prior, the poet and diplomat.
Northumberland’s wife, Catherine, died without issue in 1714 and the following year he married again his lover Mary, daughter of Henry Dutton, with whom he had lived during the lifetime of his first wife. But just over a year later, George himself died suddenly without any legitimate issue and was buried in Westminster Abbey when all his honours became extinct. Following his second Duchess’s death in 1738, her will excited so much curiosity from her deceased husband’s relatives, that her immediate heirs became seriously alarmed, as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu commented:
‘The Duchess of Northumberland’s will raises a great bussle among those branches of the royal blood. She has left a young neice very pretty, lively enough just fifteen to the care of Captain Cole who was the director of Lady Bernard (Grace FitzRoy, dau of 1st Duke of Cleveland). The girl has 300 pound per annum allowed for her maintenance till she marries which she is not to do without his consent and if she died without issue her 20,000 pounds to be divided between the children of the Duchess of St Albans (Ladies Diana and Caroline) & Lord Lichfield (Ladies Harriet and Anne, daughters of the 2nd Earl). The heirs-at-law contest the fantastical will etc’.
Dame Cecilia FitzRoy (1670/1–1759)
Dame Cecilia, her real name is unknown, is often confused with Catherine FitzCharles, sister of the Earl of Plymouth, (see page 46) who actually died an infant, according to Francis Sandford’s ‘Genealogical History of the Kings & Queens of England’.
Cecilia, according to the archivist of the Benedictine congregation, was just a little older than her sister Barbara, (see page 85) who was born in 1672. If taken literally, this could mean that she may have been born 1670/1, thus making her 87 years old when she died in 1759. Such an age would thus account for the reference to her being ‘very aged’ at death. However, there is the possibility that she was in fact born even earlier. Curiously, none of King Charles’s bastards lived to a great age, the Countess of Sussex and the Duke of Southampton living the longest, dying at the age of 69 (see page 50). Dame Cecilia’s long lifespan makes her unusual amongst the children usually attributed to Charles, and this very fact could be used to argue against her being a royal bastard.
On the possibility of her having been born even earlier, it should be remembered that Lady Castlemaine was certainly pregnant with a child in July 1667, when King Charles declared
‘that he did not get the child of which she is conceived at this time, he having not as he says lain with her this half year’.
However, Lady Castlemaine insisted that the child bear the name FitzRoy, rather than her husband’s name of Palmer, and demanded of the King ‘God damn me but you shall own it. Whoever did get it, you shall own it’. By this date the distracted Charles was taking his pleasures elsewhere, most notably with Nell Gwyn and Moll Davies.
This child, possibly the fruit of the Countess’s brief affair with Harry Jermyn, is not heard of again. The news of her pregnancy is recorded in the pages of Samuel Pepys’ Diary under the date 27 July 16
67 and for a short time, about a week, caused a rupture in her relations with the King. However by the end of the first week of August, she and the King were friends again and he resumed his visits to her, going two days a week. If she did carry the child to its full term, then the birth must have taken place by the end of December 1667, because she was back at Court on 14 January 1668 attending a performance of ‘The Indian Emperor’.
Little is known of Cecilia’s life except that she entered the Dunkirk monastery of the Benedictines about 1713. Her mother had died four years earlier in 1709, and Cecilia was professed in or about 1715. The little that is known is due to the lucky survival of some of the Congregation’s archives during the French revolution. It is recorded of her that she was an excellent musician and a number of her books survive with her name on the fly leaf. One was given by her ‘dear cosen John Darral’ September 1725 and another by Sister Gertrude Darrell, novice; grandchildren perhaps of Marmaduke Darrell, of Fulmer, Bucks and his wife Catherine Palmer, who was sister of Roger, Earl of Castlemaine, the husband of Dame Cecilia’s mother Barbara.
In some of Dame Cecilia’s books, appears the mysterious cipher CH and it is probable that the letters relate to Charles Hamilton, the alleged illegitimate son of her sister Barbara (see page 85). This discovery, plus the knowledge that Cecilia was still in England when Charles was born in 1691, unlike her sister Barbara, suggests quite strongly that he was Cecilia’s child and not hers - the fruit of Cecilia’s liaison with James Hamilton, Earl of Arran (later Duke of Hamilton). It is clear that the Earl’s intentions were less than honourable from the fact that he was married at the time, as well as already being the proud father of several bastard children.