Author’s Note
The end of Barbara’s reign as Charles’s mistress had been predicted for so long that when she finally left for France in 1676, most people at court believed she’d be back within a few weeks. To their surprise, she stayed abroad for the next three years, and when she did at last return to England in 1679, it was for the second wedding of her son Henry, Duke of Grafton (now sixteen) to Lady Isabella Bennet (twelve), now considered suitably of age for a “real” marriage. Though Barbara and Charles sat side by side at the wedding supper at Whitehall (the diarist John Evelyn, never a fan of Barbara’s, cruelly described her as “the incontinent Duchess,” as opposed to Isabella, “the sweet Duchess the bride”), Barbara afterward kept clear of the court and the king.
The rest of her life was markedly less flamboyant than her glory days. In Paris she reconciled with her husband, Roger Palmer, and their relationship seems to have been surprisingly cordial and centered around Barbara’s children. Those same children also kept Charles in touch with Barbara. There were many letters back and forth between them that sound like those of any other parents concerned with their children’s welfare.
Barbara left the court an extremely wealthy woman, and was able to lead the rest of her life without the penury that often plagues former mistresses. Yet she did have her share of money woes. Constant gambling for high stakes ate away at her fortune (one night of legendary bad luck was said to have cost her twenty thousand pounds in money and jewels), and while the Duke of York continued to pay her allowances and pensions after he became James II, his successor, William of Orange, ended all payments to her and the rest of his late uncle’s mistresses as soon as he came to the throne.
After Roger’s death in 1704, she made an unfortunate second marriage to a notorious womanizer named Beau Fielding, who spent a good deal of her money before she discovered he already had another wife, and charged him with bigamy in a much-publicized trial. Her children, now grown, were there at her side in support. She spent her last days living with her favorite grandson. She died in 1709 at sixty-eight, of complications from dropsy, that old-fashioned word for edema. Modern medical historians suspect it was only a symptom of long-standing venereal disease.
Charles II lived until 1685, dying of complications from a stroke at fifty-five. On his deathbed, he was granted last rites by a Catholic priest invited by Louise de Keroualle and his brother; no one is certain whether it was Charles’s final wish to convert to Catholicism, or theirs. While his legacy includes the restoration of the English monarchy as well as parliamentary reform, he is today best remembered for ruling at the time of momentous events like the plague and the Great Fire, and for earning the label of “the merry monarch” on account of his lighthearted, immoral court—a reputation that Barbara certainly helped him to build.
He was succeeded by his brother the Duke of York, who became James II. With no regard for the doctrines of tolerance that were so dear to Charles, James’s three-year reign was oppressive, disastrous, and mercifully short. He was overthrown in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, a bloodless coup led in part by John Churchill and his wife, Sarah. He lived the rest of his life in exile in France, while William of Orange and his wife, James’s older daughter Mary, assumed the English throne as William and Mary.
Though Charles is credited with siring at least fifteen children, none of them were legitimate. The most famous of these was the first, James, Duke of Monmouth. Though handsome and charming, Monmouth was easily led by others, and ended up as the figurehead of a rebellion against his uncle James. He tried to claim the crown for himself as Charles’s true Protestant heir, maintaining (fancifully) that Charles had in fact wed his mother, Lucy Walter. Instead the rebellion failed, and Monmouth was bloodily beheaded; among those who helped capture him were his old friend John Churchill, and Barbara’s son, Henry, Duke of Grafton.
Barbara’s first known lover, Philip, Earl of Chesterfield, was also a fixture of the Restoration court, but more for the immoral antics of his second wife than his own. In a wry twist of fate, she was reputed to have had so many lovers, including the Duke of York, that Philip finally had to banish her to his remote country estate to keep her from mischief. When she died early in their brief marriage, he was rumored to have poisoned her in desperation. His third wife proved to be the charm, and with her he retreated to a quiet life in the country.
Barbara’s children turned out much better than many with more traditional upbringings. They all survived to adulthood, and all but one were married in the matches that Barbara arranged for them, with surprising success. None of them had the celebrity or charisma of either of their famous parents, but they were quietly happy, which is probably worth more in the long run.
The first, Anne Palmer, though recognized by Roger and his family as his daughter and heir, was nonetheless given away by Charles in a splendid wedding at Hampton Court, and like her sister, granted a dowry of twenty thousand pounds. (Her title of Countess of Sussex was another example of Barbara’s long memory for slights; it had been carefully chosen by Barbara to spite her stepfather, who’d left his entire estate not to her but to his sister, an earlier Countess of Sussex.)
Her son Charles, the least promising of Barbara’s children, inherited her titles at her death and became the Duke of Cleveland. Despite Barbara’s own money woes later in life, she’d scrupulously provided and invested well for her children; by the middle of the eighteenth century, her grandson’s annual income from interest alone was over one hundred thousand pounds.
Charles’s favorite among the children, Charlotte, Countess of Litchfield, was a model of the virtuous English lady, happily wed for forty-two years, and even more happily the mother to twenty children of her own. Only Barbara’s last daughter, Barbara Fitzroy, was truly scandalous: she had a brief, intense affair that resulted in an illegitimate child of her own, and then promptly retreated for the rest of her life to a French convent.
In the small world of the seventeenth century, Barbara’s favorite son, Henry, Duke of Grafton, rose through the ranks of the navy, taking part in the Glorious Revolution and serving with John Churchill in James II’s campaigns. He died at twenty-six of wounds sustained while fighting alongside Churchill at the Siege of Cork in 1689.
Her third son, George, Duke of Northumberland, was the child who most physically resembled the king. Even the ever-critical diarist John Evelyn praised George as “civil, well-bred, and modest” (adjectives he’d never use with Barbara), and the “most accomplished and worth the owning” of all of Charles’s children.
John Churchill married Sarah Jennings. With money given to him by Barbara rumored to be as much as one hundred thousand pounds, he embarked on a political and military career that made him one of the greatest generals in English history, his wife the most powerful woman at the court of Queen Anne, and the two of them together the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, and the wealthiest couple in Europe.
More than three hundred years after her death, Barbara Villiers continues to be one of the more reviled women in English history. A glance through the Internet message boards on the many sites devoted to the Restoration proves that whenever her name appears, the controversy does, too. The standard openings to such posts seem to be: “The Duchess of Cleveland was an ugly, greedy, stupid whore.” And that’s only the beginning.
Barbara has consistently been painted through history in the darkest colors imaginable. She is always the villainess, the evil woman of horrifying appetites, even, in the words of John Evelyn, “the curse of the nation.” Because she was regarded as a genuine threat to the king and to England’s stability during her own lifetime, a great deal was written about her, much of it patently false in the glorious tradition of tabloid celebrity bashing. Yet many modern historians who should know better accept these stories and perpetuate them to the point that, over the centuries, it’s hard to tell fact from slander.
It’s also impossible to feel the power of her much-lauded beauty. Tastes have changed, an
d modern eyes look at her famous portraits by Sir Peter Lely and wonder what the fuss was about. Beauty and sexual attractiveness are among the most transient and fleeting of qualities, yet even Barbara’s harshest critics admitted she was the most stunningly beautiful woman of her day. Wherever she went, crowds would gather for a glimpse of her.
When I began to write this book, I’d no intention of becoming Barbara Villiers’s apologist. It’s impossible to gloss over some of her less appealing attributes—she was self-centered, vain, and avaricious. But she was also witty, passionate, and generous to those she loved, and to me she was clearly the one woman among all of Charles’s mistresses who was his equal in every way except royal blood. If theirs was not one of the great traditional love stories of history, then it was certainly a great friendship between two people in complete sympathy.
Firsthand accounts of Charles’s reign are surprisingly plentiful. Living as we do today in a security-conscious society, it’s hard to imagine how freely Charles and Barbara moved through London. Together they walked with his dogs in the park, fed the ducks on the canal, and attended the same churches and theatres that his subjects did. They also didn’t mind fighting (and reconciling) before an audience, either. Unlike his autocratic father, Charles believed in being accessible to his people, high and low, and his personal involvement in fighting the Great Fire is a testament to his rare empathy with his fellow Londoners. Everyone in the city recognized Charles, and they recognized Barbara with him.
James II, Lord Clarendon, and Bishop Burnet each wrote personal histories of the times, heavily based on their own experiences. The memoirs of the French Comte de Grammont, a visitor to the English court, make wonderfully gossipy reading. Two of the greatest English diarists of all time—John Evelyn and Samuel Pepys—were witnesses to much of Charles’s daily life, and dutifully noted the details. While Evelyn despised Barbara (to him she was “that great Imperial Whore”) and the hedonistic lifestyle she represented, Pepys was unabashedly obsessed with her, buying engravings of her portraits and carefully noting each time he saw her. He had many opportunities, too; in his position in the Admiralty Office, he was often at Whitehall on business or at the house of Lord Sandwich, which happened to be next door to Barbara’s house in King Street.
For example, this entry in Pepys’s diary for July 13, 1660, inspired the scene of Barbara’s musical party for the king and his two brothers:
Great doings of music at the next house, which was Whally’s; the King and Dukes there with Madame Palmer, a pretty woman that they have a fancy to, to make her husband a cuckold. Here at the old door that did go into his lodgings, my Lord [Sandwich], I, and W. Howe did stand listening a great while to the music.
I’ve tried hard to keep to historical fact, and when historical fact was wanting, to the spirit of the times and people. I’m not a historian; I’m a novelist. Yet as challenging as Barbara could be, I’ve enjoyed the time I’ve spent in her company. I hope she’d approve of the result.
Susan Holloway Scott
December 2006
Acknowledgments
No book comes into being without a slew of beneficent fairy godmothers (and a few godfathers, too) to guide it on its way. Heartfelt thanks are in order to those whose patience, wisdom, and combined senses of humor helped keep Royal Harlot on track.
First, of course, is my editor, Claire Zion, for her constant support and enthusiasm for these books, and for understanding that a final delivery day can sometimes be as ever-changing and elusive as the morning mists.
Next in line is Meg Ruley, the unquestionable Queen of Agents; Annelise Robey, surely the Princess; and everyone else at the Jane Rotrosen palace. Long may you reign!
For giving me a long-neglected presence on the Internet, and dragging me from the seventeenth century into the twenty-first, special appreciation must go to my webmistress, Mollie Smith, and to her mother (and my good friend), Jenny Crusie, for pushing me there, too, when I needed pushing.
I’d also like to thank my fellow blogging-wenches at www.Word-Wenches.com: Jo Beverly, Loretta Chase, Susan King, Edith Layton, Mary Jo Putney, and Patricia Rice. There’s none better at understanding both the joys and the challenges of writing.
It’s impossible to write historical fiction without research, and equally impossible to conduct research without libraries. I’ve been most fortunate to have had access to some of the best. Many thanks to the following libraries, and their staffs: the Mariam Coffin Canaday Library, Bryn Mawr College; the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library, Colonial Williamsburg; the Earl Gregg Swem Library, College of William & Mary; and the Pattee Library, Pennsylvania State University, University Park.
Susan Holloway Scott is the author of more than thirty historical novels. A graduate of Brown University, she lives with her family in Pennsylvania. Visit her Web site at www.susan-hollowayscott.com.
READERS GUIDE
Royal Harlot
A NOVEL OF THE COUNTESS OF CASTLEMAINE AND KING CHARLES II
SUSAN HOLLOWAY SCOTT
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. By telling Barbara’s story, the author also tells the story of Charles II’s return to the throne. How would this story have been different if Charles had been the narrator?
2. Lord Clarendon, Barbara’s enemy at court, called her a “woman of appetites.” What do you think he meant by that?
3. Though the future of the English succession depended on Charles fathering a male heir, he refused to “put aside” his barren wife, Catherine of Braganza, in favor of a more fertile queen, as his ancestor Henry VIII repeatedly did. Why do you think he refused?
4. The rootless generation of young Royalists who came of age between the 1650s and 1670s were in many ways similar to the post-World War I generation that fueled the excesses and social changes of the 1920s. How are they alike? How are they different?
5. Do you think Barbara would have played a role in the politics of the Restoration court if she’d been born a Villiers man, like her cousin the Duke of Buckingham, instead of a woman?
6. One of the criticisms leveled at Barbara by her enemies was that she was an “unnatural” mother. What do you think was meant by this?
7. At the French court, the King’s Mistress was an accepted, official post—the “titled mistress”—yet in England, Charles encountered great resistance and outrage to the amount of favoritism he showed Barbara and his other mistresses. Why do you think this was? Why would the cultures of the French and English courts have been so different?
8. Barbara was always conscious of her appearance, saying, “I was my beauty, and when my share of it would finally drain away, I’d no notion of what else would be left” (p. 342). How did she use her beauty?
9. If Barbara had been married to Charles instead of Roger Palmer, do you think she would have been a more faithful wife?
10. Seventeenth-century England was largely an Anglican nation, with only about 20 percent of the population worshipping as Roman Catholics. Yet because a much higher percentage of the noble families at court were Catholic, anti-Catholic hysteria was a real factor of the times. Do you think these fears were reasonable?
11. The promiscuous gentlemen of Charles’s court were called libertines, while the equally promiscuous Barbara was called a whore. Discuss this double standard.
12. Throughout history, Barbara has been regarded as an evil, immoral woman who purposefully set out to bewitch the king for her own gain. How much of her immorality was a product of her times, and how much do you think was a part of her character?
13. The artist Sir Peter Lely painted numerous portraits of Barbara, regarding her as not only his muse but the most perfect representation of feminine beauty. It also made good business sense for him to be so closely linked to the king’s favorite. In an era before photography and television, how could painted portraits like those of Barbara influence public opinion?
Read on for a preview of Susan Holloway Scott’s next novel of Restoration England
; The King’s Favorite
A NOVEL OF NELL GWYN AND KING CHARLES II
Coming from New American Library in 2008
I never claimed to be a lady.
Why should I? In truth I’m proud of who I am, and what I made myself to be, and that is worth a score of the highborn idle dissemblers that chatter like magpies about Whitehall Palace. I am content to be Nellie Gwyn, no more, no less. That is enough for me, and for my great love the king as well.
To be sure, my life has been a merry path, full of cunning turns and twists. Anything seemed possible in those first early days, when Cromwell’s sour-faced Puritans had at last been turned out and King Charles new returned to the throne. Even as I toiled away my nights at Madam Ross’s, I wasn’t afraid to dream beyond my station, or to vow to do whatever I must to make those dreams become golden truth.
Madam Ross’s house stood off Drury Lane, a slanting, slatternly place whose slipshod front was a match for what went on upstairs. The front room was thick with smoke and grime that never faded, the low beams overhead blackened with it. There were round tables at the back for gaming at cards or dice, and benches at another long table for those who wished victuals with their drink.
But most men who came through the narrow door sought nourishment of a different sort, the saucy company of a willing slut that half a crown would buy. With the one-eyed fiddler to play the jigs, it was a jolly enough house for men. Ale and brandy-water swelled them fat with roaring good humor and boastfulness, as if they were the greatest cocksmen the mortal world had ever seen. With a smile and a sly wink, we women let them believe it, too, and in return neatly emptied their pockets when their backs were turned: the same trade practiced by females of every rank, low and high, and where, I ask, is the sin in it?
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