King's Mistress, Queen's Servant: The Life and Times of Henrietta Howard

by Tracy Borman

  The downward turn of fortune that had begun with the death of their father in 1698 dealt the young family another blow when, in the spring of 1702, Anne was taken ill and died a few days later. Their happy and carefree early childhood had been replaced by the constant fear of death and ill fortune. These fears were to be realised again and again, for during the following three years, three more of the siblings were borne to the churchyard at Blickling.28

  By 1705, Henrietta, aged sixteen, was the eldest of the surviving Hobart children, and assumed responsibility for their care. They did have two uncles, John and Thomas, brothers of the late Sir Henry, but both were practising law in London and there is no record that they provided any assistance. Members of the household at Blickling would no doubt have supported the children as much as possible, but the main burden would still have fallen on Henrietta as the oldest surviving representative of the family. Her brother John and sisters Dorothy and Catherine were all under twelve years old. The latter fell dangerously ill the following year, and the abundance of apothecary bills among the family papers suggests that the threat of further tragedy continued to hang over Blickling. With her mother and elder sisters dead, and the estate virtually bankrupted by her late father, Henrietta’s future looked bleak indeed.

  Having taken on responsibility for the care of her siblings, she decided to appeal to the Suffolks for more active assistance. It was a step that she would soon live to regret.

  Chapter 2

  ‘Man’s Tyrannick Power’

  * * *

  HENRY HOWARD, 5TH EARL of Suffolk, was an old man of seventy-seven when his wife’s young kinswoman Henrietta sought his assistance. He had held a few minor appointments during his life, including Commissary General of the Musters in Charles II’s reign. A staunch Royalist, he had fought at the Battle of Roundway Down in 1643, but otherwise his military career had been of little note and he preferred the more leisurely pursuits that life in the country could offer. He was described as ‘A Gentleman who was never yet in business, loves cocking, horse matches, and other country sports.’1

  The Earl and his second wife Mary divided their time between Gunnersbury House and Audley End, the spectacular Jacobean mansion near Saffron Walden where he had spent his childhood. His impoverished elder brother James had been obliged to sell it to the Crown for use as a royal palace, but Charles II had soon tired of it, and succeeding monarchs had paid it little attention. In 1701, Sir Christopher Wren had urged King William III to rid himself of this unnecessary burden, and the house had duly been returned to the Howard family, which was now under the direction of the 5th Earl.

  Henry Howard had had three sons by his first wife, Mary Stewart, the daughter and heiress of Andrew Stewart, 3rd Baron Castle Stewart, an Irish peer. It was said that the infusion of Irish blood into the Howard strain accounted for certain unpredictable elements in their offspring. The Castle Stewarts had a history of reckless behaviour, the 1st Baron having ruined himself through expensive living.

  The youngest of the Howard sons, Charles, born in 1675, had pursued a military career, as was traditional for the younger sons of noble families. At the age of twenty, he was awarded a captaincy in Lord Echlin’s Regiment of Dragoons (mounted infantry), and given command of a troop. This was not as great an honour as it might appear. Dragoons were third in rank behind the Household Cavalry and Regiments of Horse, and attracted a much lower rate of pay. Commissions were therefore less expensive, and this is possibly why Charles ended up here rather than in one of the more prestigious regiments, for he had already frittered away most of his modest allowance. Nevertheless, he retained the post for the following nine years. During this time he served mainly in Ireland, but also saw action in the War of the Spanish Succession, when he served as aide-de-camp to the Duke of Ormonde in the Cadiz expedition of 1702. Later that year, he was recommended for further promotion by the Earl of Nottingham. In 1704, he was appointed a captain in Lord Cutts’s Dragoons. Nicknamed ‘Salamander’ on account of his courage in the hottest parts of the battlefield, Lord Cutts had fought alongside the Duke of Marlborough at Blenheim a few months earlier.

  Charles may have led an exemplary military career, but this was in sharp contrast to his private life. Free from the shackles of family responsibilities (as the youngest of three sons, he was not expected to inherit his father’s title and estates) he indulged in a life of excess and became addicted to drinking, gambling and whoring. A contemporary observer described him as ‘wrong-headed, ill-tempered, obstinate, drunken, extravagant, brutal’.2 The fact that he could conceal the darker facets of his character beneath a veneer of charm and respectability made him all the more dangerous.

  Charles took a period of leave from his military service during 1705 and returned home to stay with his parents at Gunnersbury. He arrived to find a guest at the house. Henrietta Hobart had been invited to live at Gunnersbury on a more-or-less permanent basis. At sixteen years of age, she was already an attractive young woman: her fine chestnut-brown hair, large clear eyes and pale complexion gave her an appearance that was at once striking and untainted. She was also bright and quick-witted, and had inherited the keen intellect of her learned forebears. But her mental and physical qualities were of less interest to Charles than her potential fortune. As the eldest surviving daughter of Sir Henry Hobart, she was entitled to a significant dowry when she married, on which occasion she would also receive an inheritance from her late great-grandfather, Sir John Maynard.

  At thirty, Charles was fourteen years Henrietta’s senior. What drew her to him is something of a mystery. In his published sketches of the principal characters at the Georgian court, Lord Chesterfield, Henrietta’s friend in later life, shrewdly observed: ‘How she came to love him, or how he came to love anybody, is unaccountable, unless from a certain fatality which often makes hasty marriages, soon attended by long repentance and aversion.’3 Perhaps she was taken in by his charming and easy manners. Perhaps his military bearing evoked memories of her cherished father. Or perhaps she saw this as the only means to ease the burden on her siblings, who were now apparently living under the sole care of the household staff at Blickling, for the terms of her father’s will had ensured that her generous dowry would be protected even though the rest of his estate was in financial difficulties. What was more, she would also receive a regular – if modest – income paid every half-year after her marriage. Whether captivated or calculating, she very quickly decided to marry him.

  For his part, Charles could appreciate the advantages of giving up his protracted bachelorhood for the sake of his young kinswoman. The Earl and Countess of Suffolk approved of and encouraged the romance. Henrietta presented a highly appropriate match for their troublesome youngest son. The aristocracy preferred to keep to its fairly close circle, and Henrietta was from one of the oldest and most respected noble families in East Anglia. Within a very short space of time, the pair were betrothed.

  Henrietta may have been enraptured by her fiancé, but her uncle, John Hobart, was considerably less so. Charles Howard’s reputation had apparently reached as far as his chambers in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Although he had had little to do with Henrietta and her siblings since their father’s death, he now provided a valuable service by insisting upon drawing up a marriage settlement that would prevent Charles from getting his hands on a large part of her fortune. He made himself an executor of this settlement, along with the family’s solicitor, Dr James Welwood. As one might expect from a family that had such a distinguished record in law, the settlement constituted an impenetrable barrier to Henrietta’s future husband. It stipulated that £4,000 of her £6,000 dowry would be invested by her executors, and that the interest would provide her with ‘clothes and other expenses of her person with which the said Charles Howard her intended husband is not to meddle or have any power or disposeing thereof’.4 Even if Henrietta were to die before her husband, Charles would still be unable to access this money, for the arrangement provided that it would pass to her child
ren. The foresight of Henrietta’s family in insisting upon this arrangement was to prove all too justified.

  On 2 March 1706, Henrietta Hobart married Charles Howard at the church of St Benet Paul’s Wharf, in the city of London. St Benet’s had been built by Wren in the style of a Dutch country church. Its dark red brick façade was offset by white marble swags and cornerstones, together with a decorative lead spire. The royal arms of King Charles II were mounted over the entrance, and the interior would have been illuminated by the bright spring sunshine flooding in through the vast windows on either side of the nave. The calibre of the building was further enhanced by a tomb within the chancel, which contained the mortal remains of Inigo Jones.5

  The location of the church, opposite the College of Arms, made it a popular wedding venue for those in military service, and this could have been why Charles and Henrietta chose to marry here, rather than at either of their family’s estates, as was more customary. The groom may have worn his military uniform, which consisted of a stiff-necked jacket with yellow cuffs, white breeches, black leather boots and a tricorn hat. But most gentlemen who served in the army wore their civilian clothes for formal occasions, with the addition of a sash across the chest to denote their military association.

  Meanwhile, it was common for eighteenth-century brides to wear one of their ‘best’ or evening dresses, which were often white but could have been any colour, for there was no standard attire for weddings at this time.6 A passing reference to some ‘weding cloaths’ in Henrietta’s papers indicates that she at least had a new dress for the occasion. Her betrothed had been obliged to contribute £300 to her apparel, but this would prove to be one of the last sums he ever laid out on her behalf. Indeed, it seems to have exhausted his resources, because three months later he sold his commission in the Regiment of Dragoons for £700. His financial circumstances were now ‘the reverse of opulent’, as one contemporary observed.7

  The Howards moved to London soon after their marriage, although the surviving records do not reveal in which part of the capital they were living – or in what degree of comfort. It might be supposed that the latter was not considerable, however, for they had barely enough money to live on. Now that Charles had sold his commission, their only source of income was the interest from Henrietta’s personal fortune, which her executors had intended to ensure her comfort alone. Rather than providing for her clothes and other personal expenses, it was soon frittered away by Charles on drink and gambling.

  The Howards’ married life could not have got off to a worse start. In the face of financial hardship, the initial attraction that had brought them together quickly faded. Within weeks of their wedding, Charles’s true character had been revealed all too clearly. His carelessness with money might have been forgiven, but his temper and violence could not, and Henrietta soon felt the full force of it. Her infatuation turned to hatred, and she bitterly regretted tying herself to such a loathsome character. Society viewed marriage as a binding and everlasting commitment, however, and no matter how miserable or badly treated a woman was, she was expected to stand by her husband. There was therefore nothing that Henrietta could do about it. As Lord Chesterfield later observed: ‘Thus they loved, thus they married, and thus they hated each other for the rest of their lives.’8

  There was another tie that bound Mrs Howard to her new husband. She had fallen pregnant almost immediately after the marriage, and on New Year’s Day 1707 she gave birth to a son, whom she named after her father Henry. What should have been a joyful occasion merely served to put an increasing strain on the couple’s relationship, not to mention their already limited resources.

  Even as Henrietta was entering the final stages of pregnancy, Charles was scheming to get his hands on her fortune. Shortly before his son’s birth, he brought a lawsuit in the court of Chancery against Henrietta’s brother John, who he claimed had cheated her out of her full inheritance. According to his suit, he and his wife were entitled to the £4,000 that her executors had tied up in investments. John Hobart’s lawyers, meanwhile, pointed out that according to the terms of the marriage settlement, Henrietta was entitled only to the interest on that sum. Among the Hobart family papers are several boxes of correspondence relating to the case. It was to drag on for the next six years, and by the time it was concluded in 1712, most of the money had dwindled away.

  The interesting – and potentially lucrative – diversion that Henrietta had presented during their courtship was now tedious to Charles, and the added burden of a new baby to provide for made him crave the freedoms that he had enjoyed to the full as a bachelor. He therefore sent his young wife and infant son to live in the country while he remained in London. The ‘mean lodgings’ that he hired for them in Berkshire, and that Henrietta still recalled vividly in an accusatory letter written to him some years later, formed a sharp contrast to the comfort that she had enjoyed in her early years at Blickling and Gunnersbury.9 There was barely enough food to live on, and if she ever wished or needed to travel anywhere, she was obliged to hire a coach from Reading, like any commoner. Even the more straitened circumstances in which she had lived after her father’s death were as luxury compared to her onerous new life.

  Charles, meanwhile, was busy squandering their limited funds on a life of excess in London. Henrietta rarely saw or heard from him during her first year in Berkshire, and he only deigned to make one or two visits. She grew increasingly miserable with her solitary existence, and felt keenly the shame of living in such mean circumstances with her new son. In 1709, therefore, after two years alone, she resolved to go to London and seek out her husband. What she found there was shocking, for Charles had soon fallen back into his old ways. Any residue of tender feeling that she had felt towards him was now destroyed for ever.

  Nevertheless, the prospect of returning to her miserable life in the country was scarcely more appealing to Henrietta than that of staying with her errant husband. At least the latter offered some hope, however misguided, that she would be able to reform his debauched habits. This proved to be a hopeless cause, however, and within a year he had run up huge debts from his addiction to the capital’s gambling tables and brothels. Henrietta now suffered the humiliation of having their goods seized and being ejected from their lodgings in both London and Berkshire.

  Homeless and in debt, they had no choice but to call upon Charles’s wealthy family for assistance. His father had died in 1709, and his eldest brother Henry had succeeded as 6th Earl of Suffolk. Henry had little time for the feckless Charles, but judged it the lesser of two evils to have him close at hand, where his wayward behaviour could be checked, than to risk his bringing further disgrace on the Suffolk family name in London. He therefore allowed the couple and their young son to come and live at Audley End. That he did so reluctantly and with ill grace is demonstrated by the fact that he insisted on treating them as boarders and charged them a rent of £20 per year.

  Charles found this situation equally repugnant, and it was not long before he strayed from the family home and resumed his life of immorality in London, leaving Henrietta alone with her brother-in-law and his wife. In fact, during the year and a half that the Howards boarded at Audley End, Charles spent only a fraction of his time there. When Henrietta came to make up the accounts with Lady Suffolk, she found that there was only five months’ rent due from her husband because he had been absent for the rest of the time. But Charles proved incapable of honouring even this meagre sum. His patience tested too far, the Earl of Suffolk promptly expelled the couple from his house.

  Determined not to suffer the humiliation of yet another separation from her husband, this time Henrietta insisted that they find lodgings together. Charles reluctantly agreed, but only on condition that they move to London, where his favoured haunts would be within easy reach.

  At the beginning of the eighteenth century, London was a city shaped by the substantial rebuilding that had taken place after the Great Fire in 1666. This had focused initially on what is now the W
est End. A mass of houses had been built in the streets around Covent Garden, St James’s Palace and Lincoln’s Inn. Elegant squares had been created in Soho and Gray’s Inn Fields, and avenues tightly packed with new houses had sprung up around them. Along the Strand, old palaces had been replaced by small streets and courtyards filled with lodgings. The city that had emerged by the end of the seventeenth century was marked by regular red-bricked streets and white stone churches, with the crowning glory of St Paul’s Cathedral, newly rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren. It was no longer two cities (Westminster and the rest of London) as it had been a century earlier, but ‘one huge dragon of a town spread along the arc of the Thames’.10

  Henrietta and Charles made their way back to London towards the end of 1711. The quality of lodgings that they could afford was hardly commensurate with what was expected of a noble couple, but having now alienated both of their families, they had little choice. They moved to St Martin’s Street in Covent Garden, which was at this time an unfashionable and rather shabby part of the city. The gabled houses that lined the street had been built fifty or so years earlier and were now somewhat faded and in need of repair. The couple’s lodging was secured for a rent of 35 shillings per week, which although more expensive than their house in Berkshire, was relatively cheap for London and would not have bought them any great luxury. They were able to afford only one servant, and even that was apparently on a part-time basis. The regular payments from Henrietta’s dowry would have been enough for them to live on fairly modestly, but Charles was not one given to moderation. Within just seven months, he had spent all of their funds and they were again forced to seek shelter elsewhere.