Courtiers: The Secret History of the Georgian Court

by Lucy Worsley

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  When he visited his family, the king had both ostentatious and discreet ways of getting around the palace. On the grand, public staircases, he always appeared with attendants: a Vice-Chamberlain holding up a candle to light the way, equerries like Peter Wentworth following on behind.

  On other occasions he would cut conveniently through the behind-the-scenes areas and labyrinthine passages that were used by the palace’s scurrying servants. The narrow ‘back-stairs’ to his private apartments were useful for making a discreet exit. The royal chamber pot descended down this secret staircase, and the king’s most intimate visitors were brought up it when they came to visit him. Using the back-stairs circumvented the pomp, publicity and many watchful eyes ever present on the King’s Grand Staircase. The enduring phrase ‘back-stairs gossip’, signifying insider information, was born in this part of the palace.

  As time went by, more and more of the courtiers considered themselves to be entitled to the privilege of using the back-stairs. The result was that the little staircase became positively crowded, with constant ‘contriving, undermining and caballing at the backstairs, the great ones hurrying back and forward, and the little ones cringing after’.54 One experienced diplomat thought that multitudes using the British back-stairs showed a shoddy lack of management: ‘I have lived in four courts, and this is the first where I have ever seen anybody to go up the back stairs unless such as the Prince would have come to him unobserved.’55

  Anyone trying to get up to the king’s private chambers via the back-stairs would find one of the pages keeping guard. These gatekeepers to the king wielded enormous power, all the more so since Charles II had in the previous century delegated much control to one particular page. William Chiffinch, this favoured servant, became ‘a man of so absolute authority’ that even government ministers obeyed his commands.56 Some people, knowing that his duties included bringing in women for the king, called him the ‘Pimpmaster General’.57

  Eventually, Chiffinch’s unofficial power was acknowledged with an official title: the first among the pages became known as the ‘Keeper of the King’s Closet’. Exactly the same title was given to his successor, Mohammed, George I’s chosen gatekeeper. That’s why such a lubricious mythology grew up around the Turk. It was claimed that he too smuggled people in to fulfil the king’s bizarre and excessive sexual desires, or even that he fulfilled them himself. But no evidence exists for this beyond salacious rumour.

  The complex palace geography that Peter Wentworth and his colleagues found so familiar was difficult to learn, and journeys were inevitably hindered by the servants leaving upon the backstairs ‘a pail of dirty water with the mop in it, a coal-box, a bottle, a broom, a chamber-pot, and such other unsightly things’.58

  One night, Wentworth witnessed an unusual bet between Princess Caroline and her courtier Lord Grantham about whether it was possible to reach a particular room without using the backstairs. ‘She bade him go and see,’ Wentworth wrote. When he came back unconvinced, the princess took charge:

  ‘Well’, says she, ‘will you go along with me if I show you the way?’ ‘Yes, madam,’ says he. Up she starts, and trots away with one candle, and came back triumphant over my Lord Grantham.59

  Many of the courtiers thought that Lord Grantham was a nincompoop, possessing the ‘animal gift of reasoning in so small a proportion that his existence was barely distinguished from a vegetable’. 60

  To be fair to him, though, the back-stairs and passages were infernally complicated.

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  The characters inhabiting the warren-like world ‘below stairs’ had more influence than their position might suggest. As Lord Chesterfield recognised, a slighted servant could ‘do you more hurt at court, than ten men of merit can do you good’.61 ‘No man’, as the adage has it, ‘is a hero to his valet,’ and John Hervey begged an indiscreet correspondent not to leave his letters in a coat pocket, where they would inevitably be read by the nosy manservant giving the coat a brush.62

  Peter Wentworth had to accompany the king on horseback if he left the palace, so he often had business in the stable yard. Peter the Wild Boy, too, took ‘vast pleasure in conversation with horses’, and had two ‘intimate acquaintances in the king’s stable’.63 Making their daily way to the stables, Wentworth and the Wild Boy could take the temperature of the nether regions of the palace. The voices heard below stairs were doubtless different from those of the drawing room: perhaps rougher, perhaps warmer; maybe less articulate, maybe more direct. Lord Chesterfield considered that ‘common people, footmen and maidservants, all speak ill. They make use of low and vulgar expressions, which people of rank never use.’64

  In appearance, though, the superior servants were sometimes indistinguishable from their betters. Swept up in the eighteenth-century craze for fashion, an aristocrat might well have met ‘a puppy at an assembly, perhaps who gets £50 or £60 a year, dress’d in his bag [i.e. his wig] and sword and the next morning you’ll see him sweeping his master’s doorway’.65 He would also ape his master’s arrogance: ‘the servants of a great man are all great men. Wou’d you get within their doors, you must bow to the porter.’66

  In the palace the only really clear visual distinction was between those who wore the lower household’s livery and those who didn’t. ‘If she is Mrs with a surname, she is above the livery and belongs to the upper servants,’ explained a correspondent of Henrietta Howard’s, ‘but if she be Mrs only with her Christian name, as Mrs Betty, Mrs May, Mrs Dolly,’ then she will ‘look as low’ as anybody. 67

  One of the most important female servants at Kensington Palace was Mrs Jane Keen. In 1723, she purchased the reversion of the post of housekeeper against the time when the present incumbent, Henry Lowman, might die, and over the years she would become the motor that kept the palace running.68 Princess Amelia poked fun at the Earl of Hardwicke for bowing just as low to Mrs Keen as he did to the king.69

  The world below stairs could be rowdy, full of running feet and fists ready to throw a punch, while unsavoury characters lurked in its corners. Wentworth records the scuffle to get ready when the king ‘took us at a surprise’ by calling for his carriage with only an inadequate forty-five minutes’ notice.70 Then there were complaints that ‘idle persons’, ‘vagrants & beggars’ were ‘commonly seen within the King’s palace’.71 A royal wedding was marred by ‘bad company’ and ‘scrub people’, and no wonder, for footmen were seen in the coffee houses beforehand, selling the tickets intended for peers ‘to any who would purchase them for three shillings’.72

  On one occasion Wentworth won ‘immortal fame among the liverymen’ for speaking up for a palace groom who’d beaten up a carter (‘a very saucy fellow’) obstructing the way of the royal coach.73 More seriously, Princess Caroline had to sack one of her sedan chairmen because he was ‘strongly suspected of having too good an understanding with some highwaymen’.74 The bodies of condemned highwaymen and other felons were displayed at Tyburn Gallows, only a mile or so from Kensington Palace.

  A kind of committee called ‘the Board of the Green Cloth’ was the mechanism for regulating these menial and sometimes troublesome reaches of the royal household. Its officers took their name from an actual table or ‘board’, covered with a green cloth, around which their predecessors had met since the reign of King Edward IV. Piles of tokens pushed across the table stood for provisions in and out.

  The provisioning, cleaning and security of the palace was the responsibility of the Lord Steward, one of the great officers of the realm. He, along with the Treasurer, the Comptroller, the Master and the Cofferer of the household, plus clerks, made up the Board of the Green Cloth. Together they ran the entire below-stairs department, making contracts with suppliers and paying the bills.

  And, importantly, the Board maintained discipline. It had judicial responsibility for all offences committed in or near the court. Before the Board appeared disobedient servants, pickpockets, prostitutes and the unruly scrum of chairmen touting for
business and overcrowding the palace courtyards.75

  Although he had a jester’s traditional freedom of speech, the court comedian Ulrich Jorry’s wayward attitude managed to land him in serious trouble from time to time. On one notorious occasion he complained to the Board of the Green Cloth that he’d been abused and attacked by two footmen ‘belonging to the Countess of Portland’ (governess to the little princesses).76

  Court gossip, however, revealed that Ulrich had deserved his beating. He’d tried to kiss a certain ‘damsel’ or maid who worked for Lady Portland. The damsel’s lover, a Welsh footman, had given Ulrich a punch in punishment. When the affair reached the king’s ear, though, ‘some of the biggest people at court’ supported Ulrich’s cause. This resulted in the footman being made prisoner in the palace guard room ‘by His Majesty’s particular direction’.77

  Although Ulrich Jorry’s attacker had been locked up, Ulrich appeared again before the Board of the Green Cloth the following day to make further accusations. Now he was pushing his luck, ‘arraigning the justice of their proceedings’ and ‘behaving himself very insolent’.78

  So Ulrich was threatened with imprisonment himself, for contempt of the Board, and he was taken off to the ‘Porters Lodge’. But it looked like he would be able to use his charm to escape punishment, by ‘begging pardon and acknowledging his fault’.79

  Once again, however, the king came to hear of the matter, and this time he was disinclined to be lenient. George I ordered that Ulrich must be ‘taken into custody by the guards’ and put ‘into the hole at Kensington’ for a fortnight on a diet of bread and water.80 In the event, this imprisonment only lasted twenty-four hours before there was a relaxation and Ulrich was released. Presumably he emerged having learnt that even favourites are not always above the palace rules.

  There was a continual tension between the Lord Steward’s courtiers department (supervised by the Board of the Green Cloth) and the servants employed in the ‘above-stairs’ part of the palace, which was controlled by the Lord Chamberlain. The Lord Chamberlain’s servants griped about the poor food provided by the Lord Steward’s department: so little meat that they ‘had much ado to make a dinner’. They also complained that the Lord Steward’s men were so mean with candles that the courtiers ran ‘their noses against the hangings’ in the dark. ‘Do not suffer us to be governed by the Board of Greencloth!’ was a frequent cry to be heard among the Lord Chamberlain’s servants.81

  But this slapstick, knockabout type of conflict could become more serious, especially for the female employees. Punishments could be exceptionally harsh for servants caught stealing from the royal palaces. In 1731, servant Sarah Matts was put in prison for ‘feloniously stealing a quilt’ out of a palace guard room.82 While incarcerated, she brought an accusation of rape against a guard. With heart-rending circumstantial detail, she reported how he ‘thump’d me’ and ‘then he flung me a-cross the bed, so as my head hung down, and he tore my legs asunder … I scream’d, and cry’d out, Murder; but he would lie with me.’

  A character witness who appeared in support of Sarah’s assailant said that she was a prostitute, just ‘a common vile woman’ who deserved no better. He announced that she’d previously been seen ‘in bed with a man, in the guard-room, at St. James’s’, and that ‘the greatest black-guard may lie with her’ for sixpence.83

  It comes as no surprise, given the blackening of her character, that her attacker was found innocent and poor Sarah was subjected to a whipping.

  Matters took an even worse turn for one Catherine Pollard, employed for thirty years in the silver scullery at Kensington Palace. She was accused of stealing four silver plates and selling them to a dealer who performed the treasonable action of filing off the royal arms. He, however, escaped punishment by giving evidence against Catherine herself, while she was tried for a capital felony at the Old Bailey.

  The plea she made in her own defence was pitifully inadequate: ‘I believe there was a spell set upon me, or else I was bewitch’d.’84 She was condemned to death.

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  The court was constantly changing. In October of 1726, George I’s trusty aide Mohammed fell ill. He had suffered from dropsy in the summer and sought to cure it with the waters of Bath. In the autumn it returned, and between ‘thirteen and fourteen quarts’ of fluid were drawn from his swollen body.85 Two days later, on 1 November, he gave up the unequal fight.86 He died, as he’d lived, at Kensington Palace.

  Mohammed was widely mourned as a good man. His reputation for kindness and generosity was enhanced by his will, which included the instruction to spend money from his estate upon releasing three hundred debtors from prison. ‘Forty years attendance upon COURTS,’ it was said, ‘those nurseries of flattery and deceit, made not the least impression upon him.’ He also decreed that his children should inherit his property in Hanover, including ‘tapestries, beds, chairs, tables, looking-glasses, pictures’. 87 His widow became very interested in the fate of a wallet containing 1,500 ducats, which she thought her husband had mislaid in the king’s closet, but her quest for its restitution ended fruitlessly.88

  Mohammed’s duties – paying for the king’s hats, suits and wigs, meeting the bills for theatre subscriptions, looking after the king’s precious objects – were taken over by Mustapha, but there were only months to go before the death of the master they had both served for forty years.89

  George I had felt a premonition of death in the same month that Mohammed passed away. His long-estranged wife, still confined in her faraway prison-castle at Ahlden, finally died after thirty-three years incarcerated. George I’s reaction was to place the briefest of notices in the London Gazette, countermand the mourning dress that the court in Hanover had adopted, and to go to the theatre.90 Nor would he allow his son Prince George Augustus to wear mourning dress for the woman who was, after all, his mother.91

  There was much whispered hearsay in London about a ‘French prophetess’ who’d predicted that George I himself would not long outlive his wife.92

  On 20 December 1726, George I departed from Kensington Palace after what would prove to be his last extended residence there. Early in 1727, he returned to the palace for a brief tour with the housekeeper Henry Lowman. Ironically, it was during this final visit to the palace that George I looked forward to the completion of the project. William Kent’s finished Grand Staircase ‘pleased him much’, and the king was happy to hear that the scaffolding would be taken down the following Monday.93

  On the king’s sixty-seventh birthday in May, John Hervey complained that ‘the occurrences of all the Birthdays are alike’. There was ‘a great crowd, bad music, trite compliments upon new garments … a ball with execrable dancers’.94 The king’s reign seemed somehow to be winding down. A few days later, on 3 June, he made his departure from England, intending to spend the summer in Hanover.95

  George I travelled as usual by boat across the Channel and embarked upon the wearisome three-day coach ride towards Hanover. On the evening of 9 June 1727, he had a large and varied range of dishes for supper in the town of Delden, which is situated in the modern Netherlands. One theory had it that the melons he’d eaten at Delden caused the ‘indigestion’ that would play havoc with his body the following day, while an ‘excess of strawberries and oranges’ was proposed as an alternative hazard to an elderly digestive system.96

  Mustapha would have known exactly what George I had eaten, for he was present as usual to look after the king. He was later able to inform the doctors that during the night the king had in fact visited the toilet several times and had not required any of his usual laxatives.97

  The next morning, George I drank a cup of hot chocolate before continuing his journey. Despite evident discomfort, he was determined to make progress towards Hanover. Mustapha was once again at hand when, later that day, the king collapsed completely. Everyone thought that he’d experienced a ‘violent cholick of which he suffer’d very much’.98 Rather than a digestive disorder, though, this event in the coa
ch was probably a second and even greater stroke, for ‘his hand fell down as if lifeless, and his tongue hung out of his mouth’.99

  Instead of stopping, though, the king shouted at the coachmen to drive on in the direction of Hanover, the place that he had never really wanted to leave.

  When he reached the town of Osnabrück later that day, George I finally admitted that he was unable to continue travelling towards home. He died there at about one in the morning of 11 June 1727. His last words were reported to be ‘C’est fait de moi [I’m done].’ This final thought was as bald, factual, drab – and yet as honest and unpretentious – as the king himself had been.100

  Melusine was summoned to the deathbed as soon as possible, but arrived too late to see her long-time lover alive. She was distraught and inconsolable, laid low by ‘the signs of extreme grief’.101 The king’s cadaver was ceremoniously carried from Osnabrück along the rough road to Hanover. His funeral procession entered the town late at night, with servants on horseback carrying lighted flambeaux. Even Hanover’s traditionally unemotional and phlegmatic townsfolk were moved to great grief at the sight. Despite the late hour, ‘there was a great concourse of people from all parts to see, with tears in their eyes, this last honour paid to their late sovereign, once the joy and delight of his subjects’.102 The natives of Hanover mourned their born ruler much more than did his adopted British subjects.

  George I’s corpse was eventually taken on to Herrenhausen, and lies today in the Hanoverian royal mausoleum, cloaked by oaks and situated on a rise looking out over his beloved gardens.

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  Back in London, the wigs and silver and crockery for the king’s daily use were divided up among the former servants of his bedchamber. 103 Now Prince George Augustus would become King George II, and Caroline his queen. The palaces of Kensington and St James’s were theirs at last, and the battle between father and son was finally won. Yet there must have been a bleak streak in Prince George Augustus’s victory: any lingering hope of a tender reconciliation between himself and his father was now extinguished.