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

by Tracy Borman

  Adored though she was, Miss Hotham did have a rival for her great-aunt’s affections. Lady Elizabeth Berkeley was Lady Suffolk’s god-daughter, and spent much of her childhood at Marble Hill. The youngest daughter of the 4th Earl of Berkeley, she would have been the great-niece of Henrietta’s second husband George. She was a pretty but somewhat neglected child whose mother had cultivated ‘a dislike both unjust and premature’ towards her. Lady Suffolk, who was always greatly disposed towards any relative of her late husband, immediately took pity on the girl and made sure that she came to visit whenever her family was in London. Lady Betty Germain, Elizabeth’s great-aunt, was often among the party, and the two elderly ladies showered her with affection. This may have been partly why the girl grew up to be rather spoilt and self-centred, although she later proudly claimed in her published memoirs that she had ‘made Lady Suffolk a pattern for my manners’.26

  The effort of looking after two such wayward charges took its toll on Henrietta’s health. Walpole noted with some concern that his friend had greatly exerted herself in throwing a party in Miss Hotham’s honour, despite suffering from acute pains in her eyes and going without sleep for several weeks. ‘What spirits, cleverness, and imagination, at that age, and under those afflicting circumstances!’ he marvelled in a letter to a friend. Indeed, she was so ill at this time that Walpole feared for her life. ‘Alas! I had like to have lost her this morning!’ he wrote. ‘They had poulticed her feet to draw the gout downwards, and began to succeed yesterday, but to-day it flew up into the head, and she was almost in convulsions with the agony, and screamed dreadfully; proof enough how ill she was. This evening the gout has been driven back to her foot, and I trust she is out of danger. Her loss would be irreparable to me at Twickenham, where she is by far the most rational and agreeable company I have.’27 She fell ill again later that year, and although she did her best to conceal her discomfort, it did not escape the sharp eye of her great-niece. ‘I wish it was in my power to give you a better account of Lady Suffolk,’ Miss Hotham wrote to her father in October, ‘but she has got a bad cough which keeps her from sleeping.’28

  As Lady Suffolk’s health deteriorated, she became less and less able to keep up the correspondence with her many friends and acquaintances. She therefore relied increasingly upon Henrietta Hotham and Horace Walpole to act as her scribes, and it is evident from the resulting letters that although her body was weak, her mind was as sharp as ever. She certainly had need of her wit, for one of her correspondents was her old friend Lord Chesterfield, whose humour had abated little with the onset of old age. In a letter written towards the end of 1766, he assumed the character of his footman. ‘I cannot well understand why my lord would rather employ my hand than his own in writing to your Ladyship,’ it began, ‘because I have heared him say that there was no body in the world that he honoured and respected more than your Ladyship, and that you was the oldest acquaintance, friend and Fellow servant that he had.’ He concluded that his ‘maser’, who, like Henrietta, was now in his seventies, ‘often complains that he feells a sensible decay both of body and mind’.

  Lady Suffolk enlisted Walpole’s help in replying, and the ensuing letter was written as if from her maid, ‘Elizabeth Wagstaff’, who apparently spoke with a marked Irish accent. ‘Lack a day, Mister Thomas,’ she exclaimed, ‘here have I been turmoilin and puzelin my poor brains to write to a Jackadandy . . . They says as how your Lord is the greatest Wit in all England, & so I suppose you fansis yourself the second, & will make a mock of a poor Girl.’ ‘Mrs Wagstaff’ went on to report that her mistress was ‘pure well’, although she ‘coffs a litel now & tan all day long’, and that she had scoffed at the notion that Lord Chesterfield was growing old, ‘for he never was spritlier in his born days, & to be sure between you & I, My Lady is hugely fond of him, & I wishes with all my heart so I do, that it proove a match, for she is as good a Lady as ever trod in shoolether’.

  The flirtation between these two old courtiers continued in Chesterfield’s reply, although he admitted that he had a ‘shattered Carcase’ as a result of living ‘a little too freely formerly’, and was therefore a less energetic lover than he had been previously. Like Henrietta, for all his frailty, he had lost none of his wit, and as a parting shot he made fun of the new fashion among women to wear inordinately high wigs. ‘A Gentleman having said at Table that women dres’d their heads three or four storys high, yes said my Lord, and I believe every story is inhabited like the lodging houses here, for I observe a great deal of scratching.’29

  This amusing exchange between Lady Suffolk and her faithful old friend is among the last of the surviving letters in her collection. Shortly afterwards, her health took a turn for the worse, and throughout much of the long and bitterly cold winter of 1766, she was confined to her bed. Against the advice of all her friends, she managed to venture out for Lady Betty Germain’s New Year celebrations in January 1767. The snow had fallen so heavily that she was obliged to wear several layers of clothing in an effort to keep warm in the coach, but by the time she reached the house she was chilled through. She was immediately ushered to a place by the fire, but sat so close to it that her ruffle set alight. The other guests looked on in horror as the flames leapt up her arm. Lord Vere rushed to her aid, getting badly burnt in the process, and it took the intervention of another gentleman to finally extinguish the flames with his hat. The doctor was called to attend Lady Suffolk, who had sustained serious burns to her arm, and it was several weeks before the pain began to subside.

  Meanwhile, the attacks of gout continued with increasing severity, and in February Henrietta was so ill with a fever that it was reported she was dead. Frantic with worry, her nephew dispatched his wife and eldest daughter to stay with her at Marble Hill. Although her spirits were lifted by the visit, her health continued to deteriorate, and by May she was no longer able to receive visitors. This was a worrying sign indeed for the members of her social circle, who knew that ill health had never stopped this most committed of hostesses before.

  The onset of warmer weather improved her condition sufficiently for her to be able to leave her bed and welcome a small number of guests. Among them was Lady Mary Coke, who noted that Henrietta spent a good deal of time talking about her beloved husband George and his surviving relations, many of whom she had kept in touch with during the years following his demise.30 Lady Suffolk had apparently rallied so much that her death, when it came, proved a shock to her friends and family.

  One evening in late July 1767, Walpole paid one of his regular visits to Marble Hill and was concerned to find his old friend ‘much changed’, although he did not believe her to be in any great danger. She told him that she was suffering from the effects of gout and rheumatism all over her body, and particularly in her face, but insisted upon sitting and talking ‘below stairs’ when she should have been in bed. Walpole sent for word of her the following morning, 26 July, and was told that she had had a bad night. By the evening, however, she seemed much better and was able to receive the two visitors who called on her: Lady Dalkeith, daughter of her late friend the Duke of Argyll; and the faithful Will Chetwynd. She was obliged to sit close to the fire, however, for it was an unseasonably cold evening. After Lady Dalkeith had left, Henrietta told Will that she would take her supper in her bedchamber. He escorted her up there and thought she appeared well enough to enjoy a good night’s sleep. But upon sitting in her chair to prepare her toilet, she suddenly gripped her side and collapsed. She died half an hour later.

  News of Lady Suffolk’s death spread quickly throughout polite society. It was published in the newspapers, which refrained from making any reference to her affair with the King and instead described her simply as ‘for many years Keeper of the Wardrobe to her late Majesty Queen Caroline’.31 Her friends and family were devastated by her death, and none more so than Horace Walpole. ‘I am very sorry that I must speak of a loss that will give you and Lady Strafford concern,’ he wrote to his friend Lord Strafford three days late
r, ‘an essential loss to me, who am deprived of a most agreeable friend, with whom I passed here many hours . . . as it was not permitted me to do her justice when alive, I own I cannot help wishing those who had a regard for her may now, at least, know how much she deserved it than even they suspected. In truth, I never knew a woman more respectable for her honour and principles, and have lost few persons in my life whom I shall miss so much.’ He continued in another letter: ‘She was discreet without being reserved: & having no bad qualities, & being constant to her connections she preserved uncommon respect to the end of her life.’32 Miss Hotham was just as inconsolable at her great-aunt’s death, and Will Chetwynd had to stay with her at Marble Hill until her family could come from East Yorkshire to take her away.

  Lady Suffolk’s will was read a few months later. She had made it in September 1758, two years before her pension from George II had ceased, and had evidently expected to have a rather greater fortune to bequeath than actually proved to be the case. It included generous gifts of money, such as £8,000 for her niece, Dorothy, which, although not considerable when compared to the vast sums bequeathed by wealthy noblemen and women, was generous within the context of Henrietta’s more modest resources. She also left half a year’s wages to her servants, and various other monetary bequests to friends and family.

  In fact Henrietta had lived in increasing hardship after the King’s death, and had had to apply such strict economy that she had gained an ill-deserved reputation for covetousness. She had also been unable to make the necessary repairs to her Thames-side house, which had begun to show signs of considerable neglect during the last years of her life. By the time of her death, it was estimated that it would cost between £2,000 and £3,000 to put it right. In spite of such frugality, Walpole claimed, she had exceeded her income considerably, and the ‘anguish of the last years of her life, tho’ concealed, flowed from the apprehensions of not satisfying her few wishes, which were, not to be in debt, and to make a provision for Miss Hotham’. Unaware that his friend had made her will at a time when her prospects had been rather better, he predicted that its reading would ‘surprise those who thought her rich’.33

  While Lady Suffolk’s ability to fulfil her financial bequests may have been in doubt, there was one possession that she could dispose of as she chose: her beloved house, Marble Hill. She had clearly been anxious to ensure that the house, contents and estate that she had so lovingly created over the past forty years should stay together, for she had made detailed provisions to this effect. The will specified that ‘all the Household Goods and Furniture . . . shall go along with my said house as Heir Looms’. The recipient of this most treasured bequest was her nephew, John, and on his death without male heirs, it was to pass to Henrietta Hotham and her heirs. Lady Suffolk’s affection for her great-niece was further demonstrated by the provision of a dowry of £3,000 for her, as well as ‘all my State Jewells China and Japan in whatever shall be contained in cabinets chests or Boxes under Lock and Key’.

  Lady Suffolk’s decision to bequeath Marble Hill to a female relative in the event of there being no male heirs to inherit after her nephew was extraordinary for the time. In a male-oriented society, women were all but barred from inheriting titles, property or estates. If there was no direct male heir, these almost always passed to distant male relatives rather than to the wives or daughters of the deceased. Indeed, this had been the case when Lady Suffolk’s own son had died. But the inheritance of Marble Hill by a female relative was far from being intended as a last resort: Henrietta had stipulated that after Miss Hotham’s death it should pass to her daughters, or if she had none then to those of her uncle, John Hobart. Although this provision was highly unusual, it was typical of a woman who had fought so long for independence in a world dominated by men.

  Lady Suffolk’s will also proved her enduring love for her late husband, George. She bequeathed a number of legacies to his family, including £2,500 in trust for Lady Betty Germain and £1,500 to be divided amongst the sisters of the present Earl of Berkeley, ‘as a mark of my respect to Mr Berkeleys Memory’. The most touching indication of this love, however, was the request that came before all others in the will: that she should be ‘buried as Mr Berkeleys widow very Privately as he was and with the Earl of Berkeley’s leave near him’.34 This wish was honoured, and the mortal remains of Henrietta, Dowager Countess of Suffolk, were interred next to those of her second husband in the family mausoleum at Berkeley Castle.

  Epilogue

  * * *

  AMONG LADY SUFFOLK’S BEQUESTS to her nephew John was the voluminous collection of letters and memoirs that she had preserved with great care from the time of her entry into the Georgian court to her death at Marble Hill. In terms of their historical worth, they were perhaps the single most valuable item of her entire inheritance. Many years later, they would breathe new life into the characters, events and places of one of the most fascinating periods in Britain’s history.

  But in the years immediately following Henrietta’s death, it was her estate that most preoccupied her nephew. As executor and chief beneficiary of her will, the disposal of her property fell to him. He sold the Savile Street town house in February 1768,1 and also attempted to sell Marble Hill. This might seem a betrayal of his aunt’s last wishes, but the estate comprised a complicated series of leases and agreements, for Lady Suffolk had gradually extended it over the years by investing in plots of adjacent land as they became available. She had, however, protected the house and estate too carefully in her will for it to be sold off by her heirs, and John therefore resigned himself to its care and upkeep. A detailed inventory of the contents was drawn up, which survives intact today and conjures up an image of an elegant country villa, tastefully decorated with fine ornaments and furnishings – from the large marble tables and ‘looking glasses’ in the Great Room, to the mahogany card table and ‘India fire screen’ in the Paper Room.

  The Earl let Marble Hill, fully furnished, to various tenants during the first few years of his ownership, before moving there himself in 1772 and subsequently using it as an occasional retreat. Horace Walpole once visited him there, but was saddened by the memories of his old friend that it invoked and described it as ‘a melancholy day to me, who have passed so many agreeable hours in that house and garden with poor Lady Suffolk’.2 On Buckinghamshire’s death in 1793, the house finally passed to Lady Suffolk’s great-niece, Henrietta Hotham. Perhaps, like Walpole, she found it too poignant, for she only lived there a short time before deciding to let it out to others.

  The first of Miss Hotham’s tenants was Maria Fitzherbert, the mistress (and almost certainly secret wife) of George II’s great-grandson, the future George IV. Anxious to escape London before the day appointed for her lover’s ‘official’ marriage to Caroline of Brunswick, Mrs Fitzherbert chose this most fitting of rural villas as her refuge. In order that the gossips at court would not hear of her absence, she left instructions that her town house was to be illuminated on the wedding night. However, Prince George heard of her flight and rode furiously to Twickenham to see her. Maria refused to grant him an audience, and he rode backwards and forwards outside Marble Hill for some considerable time, before reluctantly turning back to face his future bride. As she waited for news that the marriage had been concluded, Mrs Fitzherbert may have reflected wryly on the appropriateness of her surroundings. Sixty years earlier, another mistress of a Hanoverian prince had fled there to escape her royal lover – albeit for rather different reasons.

  It was an irony that would not have been lost on Henrietta.

  Notes

  * * *

  Abbreviations

  BM Add. MS British Museum Additional Manuscripts collection

  HMC Historical Manuscripts Commission

  NRS Norfolk Record Society

  PRO Public Record Office manuscripts, The National Archive

  RA The Royal Archives

  UHA University of Hull Archives

  Wilton MSS Wilton Manuscrip
t Collection

  WRO Wiltshire Record Office

  CHAPTER 1 ‘A BACKWATER IN TIME’

  1. Narcissus Luttrell, Diaries, 6 vols. (London, 1867).

  2. The best account of the duel, and the circumstances surrounding it, is given in R. W. Ketton-Cremer, ‘Oliver Le Neve and his duel with Sir Henry Hobart’, in Norfolk Portraits, 58–68.

  3. According to the National Trust staff who now manage the property, the screams can still be heard from time to time, reverberating around the house and grounds.

  4. Luttrell, op. cit.; NRS MC 1601/78 862 X8.

  5. HMC, Lothian, 81.

  6. The Characters of Lord Coke and Lord Hobart by Judge Jenkins’, BM Add. MS 22629 f.225.

  7. J. Maddison, Blickling Hall (National Trust, 1989), 5.

  8. Pocock, x.

  9. According to Horace Walpole, Maynard had given his granddaughter to Sir Henry out of gratitude because he owed his distinguished legal career to Hobart’s grandfather, who had first advised him to ‘pursue that branch of the law which he afterwards practised’. Walpole, Reminiscences, 129–30.

  10. NRS 21089 71 X5.

  11. Baird, 18.

  12. Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fenelon, ‘Treatise on the Education of Daughters’ (1687), quoted in Jones, 102. In a similar vein, Richard Allestree, a Royalist clergyman, proclaimed that women were naturally ‘below men’ in their intellects: ‘The Ladies’ Calling’ (1673), quoted in Hill, The First English Feminist, 22.

  13. Mary Astell, ‘A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, for the Advancement of their True and Greatest Interest’ (1694), quoted in Jones, 197.