by Roger Powell
Moll’s portrait painted by Kneller, shows an attractive woman with a fine figure but her liaison with Charles did not last as long as Nell’s. She was also painted by Sir Peter Lely, William Pawlett and Gerald Valck. Her rivalry with Nell Gwyn led to one notable incident when having boasted of her Royal conquest, Nelly invited her to tea and then fed her with sweetmeats doctored with a purgative drug, with disastrous results in the Royal bed! In 1681 she is recorded as singing at Court in John Blow’s Venus and Adonis ‘I give you freely all delights, with pleasant days and easy nights’.
Mary, who was the youngest of Charles II’s fifteen officially recognised bastards, was almost certainly born in Suffolk St, where her mother lived from 1667–76 and from 1676–81 she lived in St James’s Square. After the birth of her daughter, Moll received a pension of £1,000 and after the King’s death she married James Paisible, later court musician to Prince George of Denmark. Paisible, a Frenchman, arrived in England about 1674 and was described by one contemporary as ‘indolent, but with easy and agreeable manners’. When King James II left England in 1688, the Paisibles followed him to France but were given permission to return in 1698. James Paisible died in 1721/2 leaving a will but making no mention of a wife. However, he did have a son and namesake who was apprenticed in 1717 to a London weaver and then granted the freedom of the City in 1726.
Mary was acknowledged by her father in 1680, when she was granted a warrant of precedency as the daughter of an earl, with the surname of Tudor and in 1683 as a duke’s daughter. She was granted the royal arms, with due differences, by King James II in 1687 viz; within a bordure quarterly erminois and counter compony argent and gules. Her first husband, whom she married aged only fourteen in 1687, was Edward Radcliffe, 2nd Earl of Derwentwater (who died 1705), and they had three sons and a daughter. For the last five years of his life, however, the Earl was separated from his wife, and within two weeks of his death, she had married again to Henry Graham, of Levens, MP for Westmoreland ‘with whom she had lived in her husband’s lifetime’. Unfortunately Lady Derwentwater’s second husband died within eighteen months of the marriage, but she found another, James Rooke, only eight months later who outlived her, she having died in Paris in 1726. On the occasion of her third marriage a contemporary noted that:
‘This town is full of nothing but of … and Lady Deringwater (sic) whoe last Tewsday cam and went in her moarning coach for Mr Grims (sic)to church, and was marryed to Jamse Roock, Coll Roock’s son. Grims has been dead not thre qrs of a year yet; she turned Lady Tuften’s children out of the church, and said she would not be marryed tel they went out. She was marryed in whit satin. She has settled fower hundred a year upon him for her life, and the rest she keeps for her self and hous. She ows a great deal of money hear;
Twickenham, August 28 1707’.
Although Lady Mary’s marriage had been arranged by her uncle, King James, there is no evidence to suggest that she felt herself beholden to him for the honour, or that she showed any attachment to his cause when in exile. The same, however, could not be said for her sons James and Charles. They quite literally gave their lives for the Stuart cause.
James, the eldest son, who became the 3rd Earl on the death of his father, was brought up at the court of King James and was a companion of the young Prince of Wales. With the Dukes of Burgundy, Anjou and Berry, Louis XIV’s grandsons, and the young Prince of Wales, he hunted boar and stag in the forests surrounding Versailles. However, in 1705, at the age of sixteen he left St Germain in order to complete his education by making the Grand Tour, and only returned to England in 1709/10.
Within two years he had made a splendid marriage with a Catholic heiress, and had settled down to what, at first, seemed happy domesticity. Unfortunately, however, within five years his situation changed completely, the Government suspecting him of being an active Jacobite. Naturally in the run up to the 1715 uprising in Scotland, his Jacobite connections made him a natural figurehead for Catholics in the north of England and the Government issued a warrant for his arrest. The rest is history. He commanded a troop of horse in the Jacobite army consisting of 1,500 foot and 600 horse under General Thomas Forster, despite having no military training. After their defeat at Preston, he surrendered himself and was imprisoned in the Tower of London where, despite entreaties from many of his kin, he was beheaded, aged just twenty-six, in 1716, a year when the aurora borealis shone especially bright. Just before his execution he wrote these words to his mother:
‘Within four hours of the time of execution, I write these lines to ask your blessing; to assure you, that though I have not been brought up with you, I have all the natural love and duty that is owing to a mother, who has shewn her tenderness, particularly in my last misfortunes…’ ‘I wish Mr Rooke very well too; he is a man of great honour, and I hope you will bear with one another, as married people must and make each other happy’.
He had been found guilty of high treason and was attainted when all his honours were forfeited. His younger brother was also arrested and condemned to death, but managed to escape to France. However, upon returning to England thirty years later, he too was arrested and beheaded on Tower Hill. Although the male line of the family survived until 1814, Moll’s descendants are still to be found in the Petre family.
Chapter V
The Bastards of James II (1633-1701)
Henrietta, Baroness Waldegrave, later Viscountess Galmoye, née FitzJames (1667–1730)
Henrietta FitzJames, was born in 1667, the eldest surviving daughter of the Duke of York later King James II and Arabella Churchill. Her mother, despite Gramont’s comments, was not an ugly woman; she was in fact very beautiful as her portrait at Althorp shows. She captured the Duke’s attention in the mid 1660’s, whilst a Maid of Honour to his first wife Anne Hyde, and gave birth to her first child at the age of twenty. She went on to present the Duke with three more children before making a respectable marriage with Charles Godfrey, a Captain in the Life Guards. During her liaison with James she received a yearly allowance of £1,000 and a freehold house in St James’s Square, which she later sold for £8,000.
At the age of sixteen, Henrietta married her first husband Henry Waldegrave, the eldest son of Sir Charles Waldegrave, Bt, who three years later was created 1st Baron Waldegrave of Chewton. When King James retired to France in 1688, Lord and Lady Waldegrave followed him and settled at St Germain-en-Laye, but shortly afterwards Lord Waldegrave who was Comptroller of the King’s Household, died at the young age of twenty-eight.
Of Lady Waldegrave’s character little can be discovered, but what is known points to a headstrong young woman. However, in her youth she was a dutiful and obedient daughter and it seems that James was very fond of her. In 1682, before her marriage, she visited the Continent and reports of her good conduct reached James from his cousin, the Abbess of Maubuisson (Louise of the Palatinate). In his letter to her he declared how glad he was to hear that
‘you behave yourself so well and that she gives you so good a character. I hope you will do nothing to give her reason to alter her opinion of you, and that you will do nothing to make me less kind to you as you can desire’.
However, she struggled to come to terms with her sudden widowhood and angered her father in 1695 by becoming pregnant, as the Marquis de Dangeau declared:
‘Madame de Waldegrave, fille naturelle du roi d’Angleterre, et qui etoit a Saint Germain avec lui, est par son ordre dans un convent a Paris. On l’accuse d’etre dans un etat ou une femme veuve ne doit pas etre; elle ne veut point dire qui l’a mise dans cet etat.’.
Her father promptly ordered that she should retire to the Benedictine convent at Pontoise, until she had given birth. Rumour had it that the father was Richard Talbot, Duke of Tyrconnell, but in reality it was almost certainly Piers Butler, Viscount Galmoye, whom she later married. However, she left him a few months later, returning to England, and never saw him again. Despite having served in the Irish campaign and being created Earl of Newcastle by King Jame
s, the latter did not approve of the match. Nevertheless, this disgrace did not prevent Galmoye from becoming a Lieutenant General in the French army.
Lady Waldegrave had three children by her first marriage, two sons, James and Henry, plus a daughter Arabella, who became a nun. James was brought up as a Catholic at the court of St Germain-en-Laye, but, like his cousin Derwentwater, returned to England to marry an heiress with a portion of £10,000. On her death in 1719, he renounced his Catholic faith, and was then allowed to take his seat in the House of Lords. He rose high in the favour of George II, was appointed Ambassador to the Court of Vienna and created a KG and then Earl Waldegrave.
Unfortunately the amorous proclivities of his mother and grandmother re-appeared in his eldest daughter, Henrietta, who, when the widow of Lord Edward Herbert, fell in love with John Beard, the actor and singer, and wished to marry him. The episode caused grave concern to her father who threatened the unfortunate pair with the direst of consequences. To their credit they ignored the threats and were eventually married. However, in an attempt to break up the union, the bride’s brother sought to besmirch his character by claiming that
‘her lover had the pox and she would be disappointed of the only thing she married him for which was her lust for that he would continue to lie every night with the player that brought them together and give her no solace. But there is no prudence below the girdle’.
Her extraordinary behaviour led Lady Pomfret to declare that
‘Her relations have certainly no reason to be amazed at her constitution but are violently surprised at the mixture of devotion that forces her to have recourse to the Church in her necessities which has not been the road taken by the matrons of her family’.
Lady Henrietta was not the only member of her family to exhibit the amorous proclivities of Lady Waldegrave and her mother Arabella. For Arabella Dunch, Lady Waldegrave’s neice, the daughter of her half sister Elizabeth, wife of Edmund Dunch, was rusticated (sic) for ‘gallantrys’ by her husband Edward Thompson in 1727. Miss Dunch’s father Edmund had died in 1719, aged forty, and was well known for his predilection for gaming having been drawn into it purely to please his lady (Elizabeth, the daughter of Charles and Arabella Godfrey). When Lady Waldegrave died in 1730, at the age of sixty-three, she was immediately followed a month later by her mother Arabella, at the age of eighty-three, who was buried in Westminster Abbey in the grave of her brother Admiral George Churchill.
James FitzJames, 1st Duke of Berwick Upon Tweed (1670–1734)
Born in France in August 1670 at Moulins in the Bourbonnais, James was the eldest illegitimate son of James, Duke of York, later King James II and Arabella Churchill. He was perhaps the most accomplished and renowned of all the royal bastards who appear in this book. His military talents – for he was a superb tactitian and strategist - were clearly inherited from his Churchill forebears and after his death Montesquieu wrote
‘such indeed was the fate of this House of Churchill that it gave birth to two men who were destined, at the same time, each of them to shake, and to support, the two greatest monarchies of Europe’.
He first displayed his considerable military talent when his father sent him to fight for the Emperor Leopold I against the Turks, in 1686. He was just sixteen years old but the Emperor made him welcome and declared
‘here we have a new volunteer who is a natural son of the King of England but who is less remarkable for his birth than for his good sense and ideals and who, I am sure, will distinguish himself in the future by his exploits’.
Berwick served ‘with remarkable gallantry’ at the seige of Buda under the Duke of Lorraine, Commander in Chief of the Imperial Forces and returned to England the following year to be created Duke of Berwick with an allowance of £5,000 per annum.
His apprenticeship under such a distinguished and capable commander as the Duke of Lorraine would prove invaluable to Berwick throughout the remainder of his life. The benefits were first displayed during his service in the Jacobite War in Ireland, between 1689 and 1691, when he was initially given the commission of a Major-General and placed under the command of Lieutenant-General Richard Hamilton. His finest hour, however, came in 1690 when at the age of twenty he was left in sole command of all King James’s forces after his father left the country to raise reinforcements in France. During the period that he was in sole command he sought to check the progress of the forces under the command of his uncle Lord Churchill, reestablish the morale of the army, dissipate any factions within it and consolidate the Jacobite position within the kingdom. He succeeded in all of these endeavours and greatly increased his reputation and prestige by doing so. It was during the Irish campaign that he learnt the three cardinal rules of battle, to only fight on ground of his own choosing, always develop a good intelligence of the enemies’ movements and strength and make sure that your soldiers were well fed, well paid and supplied with plenty of ammunition and arms.
After the Treaty of Limerick, however, Berwick withdrew into France where he soon joined the French Army, rising to become a Marshal of France (1706), a fitting honour for a man of his undoubted military talents but which necessitated him becoming a naturalised Frenchman. In all he served in twenty-nine campaigns, commanding fifteen some on the opposite side to his uncle the Duke of Marlborough. The pinnacle of his career, however came in 1707 when he soundly defeated an English army sent to oppose him at the Battle of Almanza.
‘the only battle recorded in which an English general at the head of a French army defeated an English army commanded by a Frenchman (Henri de Ruvigny)’.
His victory drew the praise of none other than Frederick the Great who considered Berwick’s tactics at Almanza a classic example of a text book battle. His campaigns and victories in Spain also ensured the survival of the fledging Spanish Bourbon monarchy during the War of the Spanish Succession between Louis XIV’s grandson Philip and the Archduke Charles. ‘We are very foolish to get ourselves killed for these two simpletons’ commented Lord Peterborough after the battle of Almanza.
Following the debacle of the Monmouth Rebellion it is remarkable that Berwick was even considered as a possible candidate for the crown. But his situation during the brief period of his father’s reign was similar in a number of respects to that of the Duke of Richmond, Henry VIII’s bastard son. Between 1670 and 1688 James II had no surviving legitimate male heir, only two illegitimate sons. The succession to the crown appeared to be securely vested in his two legitimate daughters Mary and Anne. Rumours did circulate, however, that James wanted the Pope to legitimize Berwick and place him first in the succession or alternatively after his sisters much the same as Louis XIV did with his bastard sons the Duc de Maine and the Comte de Toulouse. In the event that this had occurred there is no doubt that he would have made an excellent monarch. Fate, however, decreed otherwise and Mary of Modena proceeded to give James II a legitimate son.
Throughout his father’s lifetime Berwick was the model of a dutiful son but after his father’s death he faced a dilemma of major proportions. In his quest to provide for his growing family he was forced to become a subject of the King of France a move that had the approval of his half brother James but only with the proviso that Berwick would be available to command any Jacobite forces in the event of a rebellion or invasion of England. It was a scenario that would bedevil many Jacobite emigres and in Berwick’s case would have catastrophic consequences. There is no doubt that had Berwick accepted his half-brother’s commission to command the forces raised to fight his cause during the 1715 rebellion, the course of English history would have taken a very different turn. Initially Louis XIV did give Berwick permission to lead the expedition but later changed his mind, possibly as a result of pressure from the English Ambassador Lord Stair. As it was, his considerable abilities were placed at the service of the French king, who benefited enormously and his half brother and true sovereign, rued the day that he allowed him to become a naturalized Frenchman. Berwick undoubtedly suffered a crisis of
conscience over the whole affair but eventually common sense prevailed and a number of years later he set down his views on paper to his son the Duke of Liria who faced a similar situation:
‘The King’s letter to you is very strange. He always speaks of duty, as if he were master to allow people making their fortunes, and seems to mean that he consents to your establishment in Spain only upon condition that you will abandon all whenever he will be pleased to call upon you: this is following his maxim again with me. Methinks that he should caress people, and not always speak of duty, of which perhaps he knows not the extent. We ought to always wish him well, and even render him service, but it is out of principles of honour, and we are not obliged to abandon all our establishment, and leave our children to starve for his projects or fancy…’
Berwick was a brave, highly-principled man who, according to some, was cold, reserved, sarcastic and exceedingly haughty. However, he did have a sardonic sense of humour. At the funeral oration of his father James II in 1701, the preacher declared that the deceased James had never committed a mortal sin. To this Berwick replied ‘And what of me?’ ‘I am then a venial sin!’
In recognition for his considerable military talents James received many honours. In 1707 Philip V of Spain created him Duke of Liria and Xerica, as a reward for winning the battle of Almanza and driving out the forces of the Archduke Charles. In France he was created Duke of FitzJames in 1710, with special remainder to the issue of his 2nd wife having already been appointed a Marshal of France in 1706.
James married twice – firstly in 1695 to Honora de Burgh, (d.1698), the widow of Patrick Sarsfield, Earl of Lucan (in the Jacobite Peerage) and daughter of William, Earl of Clanricarde. They had a son, before she died in 1698. He married again two years later in 1700 Anne (who died 12 June 1751), dau. of Hon. Henry Bulkeley, 4th son of Thomas, 1st Viscount Bulkeley, and had further issue. Berwick was killed at the siege of Philippsburg in 1734, when his head was blown off by a cannon ball, his passing lamented by the whole of France where he was regarded as a hero. ‘One could say with truth’, wrote Montesquieu his great friend, ‘that he had in him more grandeur than he had occasion to let appear, acting, as he did, always in the simplest way and never seeking estimation’.