A Question of Loyalties

by Josephine Bell

  His Uncle Charles was ready with the means – the hand in marriage of Prince William’s cousin, the Princess Mary Stuart, now aged sixteen. The promise of alliance, if not its signed and sealed fact. This did not arrive and William, knowing Charles’s long dependence upon France, scarcely expected it. But William himself arrived to claim his bride and was married to her in November and took her back to the Hague with him a few days later, together with a train of ladies and gentlemen, befitting a Princess who was second in line of succession to the throne of England.

  The people were delighted. Never since the Prince’s mother had married his father, the former Prince of Orange, had a royal marriage been in any way truly popular. The Portugese Queen, the Italian Duchess of York, Papist born, had not been welcome. True, the young Prince was a Calvinist, but they were prepared to tolerate that sect. They rejoiced. Charles, watching, felt his burden lift a little.

  When Princess Mary was told her fate, she cried for a whole day. She had met William on his first visit and had not liked him. He was not tall, he was not handsome. He was lean, with a long thin face and a severe expression. He had been a sickly child, mastering his early bouts of illness with difficulty. This suggested weakness in later years rather than the strength his survival had in fact bestowed on him. To a girl, barely sixteen, he was most unattractive. Her tears were very natural. But in the end she submitted with dignity.

  The Princess Anne found the whole event confusing, terrifying, a disaster. She clung to her sister whom she loved, and could with difficulty be parted from her. She then clung to Sarah Jennings whom she loved still more than she did the Princess Mary. For this reason Sarah remained at Richmond after the marriage. Her service to the Princess Anne had become a fixture for life.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Marriage of the Princess Mary did nothing to resolve the confusion in England over the succession, for in November of the same year the Duchess of York gave birth to a son, a new small Duke of Cambridge. This still further inflamed the Commons against the Duke and brought on an even fiercer demand for his exclusion from the throne together with that of his son who would undoubtedly be brought up in the Catholic faith.

  James, still in Scotland, demanded permission to return to England. He sent Churchill with a message to the King to demand what he called this just right. John had followed his former Master to the northern Kingdom in the hope of scraping some small employment. He was now eager to succeed in his mission, but he saw at once on arrival in London that it was hopeless. Charles dared not allow his obstinate, bigoted brother to show himself again in the capital. In fact the King’s attitude had hardened. Even Scotland was not far enough. He recommended exile abroad.

  While the deliberations were going on, with James in London, where he had of necessity been allowed to return very quietly for discussion, Captain Churchill managed to visit both his parents at Mintern and his beloved Sarah at Richmond. Though Sir Winston was aghast at his son’s extraordinary wish to marry when the family fortunes were so low and the proposed bride had no fortune at all, he did still believe in John’s great military gift. He still looked to a bright, if not wonderful future for him, perhaps not in the present King’s reign, then when the Duke of York succeeded and was in a position to restore the throne to its former glory with the help of a loyal, trained, standing army.

  The old cavalier put these out-dated arguments to his son, at the same time giving no stronger word against the marriage than lack of suitable means.

  So Miss Jennings had won her case. When her faithful lover made his final plea, including the offer of marriage, she was all tenderness, all yielding, no hint of the triumph and self-congratulation she allowed herself in secret. She welcomed John at Richmond with a modest eagerness he knew well how to reward. In all his long courtship he had never yet held her in his arms. His outpourings of love had been all on paper, Now for the first time he could allow his arms and lips to explain his love without words.

  Lady Villiers had allowed them to meet alone in her own small parlour on the first floor of the house.

  ‘Perhaps I should not admit you at all, captain,’ she said when he was brought to her and she had sent for Sarah. ‘You will know that the Princess Anne hath been ill, for three days very ill indeed. We feared smallpox, sir.’

  ‘Smallpox!’ John was horrified, thinking only of the danger to his beloved.

  ‘A rash of spots, very similar. A fever, a congestion. But lasting merely five days. She mends hourly, without pustules appearing. The physician bled her only once.’

  ‘God be praised!’ John said, with heartfelt fervour.

  Lady Villiers fully understood him and admired him for it. When Sarah appeared, subdued, blushing and altogether a gentler, more human creature than she often seemed in her bossy moments, Lady Villiers threw caution to the winds, laid aside her automatic fear of a seduction and left the young couple to enjoy their first meeting for several months.

  They were married later that year and went for a time to Mintern where the elder Churchills were now spending most of their time.

  And now John’s fortunes took a notable upward bound. The King’s unceasing efforts for peace in Europe while preserving England’s neutrality, had at last shown signs of success. France understood that she had reached the limit of her phenomenal success; she saw the end of a conquest that would, if pursued, be self-destroying.

  John Churchill, promoted to Colonel in a new-formed Admiral’s regiment of Guards, was sent to Holland to advise on the military side of the proposed Peace of Nymegen. Sidney Godolphin was sent at the same time to prepare the political approach to the Treaty.

  The two young men had never been so close in spite of the fact that both were recently married. Their wives were comfortably placed meanwhile. Sarah continued to live at Mintern. Her own mother was still living, but she had quarrelled with her so fiercely that they had both decided they could never meet again, far less exist in the same house. At Mintern Sarah was proving herself a model daughter-in-law, and now that John had been promoted and given a most important and valuable commission in Holland, his future had suddenly leapt from one of real poverty to great and immediate promise.

  The meetings to begin negotiations with France took place at the Hague. It was the first time John had met the Prince of Orange, except as part of a host of onlookers at his few public appearances in London. They were the same age and though Prince William was no warrior he was a very keen strategist and student of arms. He demanded that Colonel Churchill be brought to him alone. He dispensed with all ceremony and used an informal manner of speech.

  ‘I have, as you are well aware, been at war for my life and the life of my country,’ he began, seating himself at a table where a pile of maps lay to hand. ‘Pray be seated, colonel. There is much we have to discuss.’

  When John had taken the chair on the opposite side of the table the Prince went on. ‘I have lost battles, in which you, for France—’

  ‘For Turenne!’ John could not help interrupting, before murmuring an apology.

  William’s eyes had gleamed angrily at this impertinence, but after a few seconds he smiled.

  ‘I forgive you. The Marshal was a great soldier. More over you were not there at the time of my worst peril. Now, the position is this. I have lost that little province of Orange, which doth not grieve me, for it lies in southern France and will never be of value to me again. Here, let me show you—’

  He leaned forward to unroll the topmost map, twisting it towards Churchill and pointing.

  ‘Here, you see, is Orange marked, and here Lorraine, given openly to the Duke but under the control of Louis and likely to be mentioned in any Treaty we sign. Here, the former Spanish Netherlands.’

  John swung the map round towards the Prince, pinning down its edges with various weighty objects he found on the table. He jumped to his feet and moved quickly round the table to stand just behind the Prince.

  For an instant the latter shrank into himsel
f, an instinctive action proclaiming his dangerous, uncertain childhood and youth. John understood it and pitied him. He remembered that William’s widowed mother had died while he was still a child.

  But it was over at once. The Prince did nothing. His hand had reached for a short dagger he wore at his waist, but fell away again. His mouth had opened, but he did not shout for his guards, whom he had sent from the room. He sat still, alert, waiting.

  ‘Your Highness,’ John said warmly, with admiration in his voice. ‘If your Highness will allow me to explain.’

  He began to point about the map with his forefinger, describing the whole progress of the French King’s campaigns, the various attacks upon open ground and citadel, the advances and retreats, the composition of the troops.

  ‘And your own exploits? William asked drily. He pulled out his short knife and offered it to John.

  ‘Show me the siege of Maastricht,’ he said. ‘And how you won it in a personal action. Instruct me, Colonel Churchill.’

  John took the jewelled handle. Using the knife as a pointer he described in detail, upon a larger map William pulled from the pile for him, the exact sequence of events that had led to the surrender of that great fort. He did not leave out his own part entirely, but he added it in such a way that it did not stand out as an act of heroism or reckless bravery or any other individual action. He might not himself, his personal self, have been there at all.

  ‘Excellent!’ Prince William said softly at the end, gently clapping his hands. ‘Clear as a rockpool in the mountains on our side of the Rhine.’

  His voice changed.

  ‘We have no mountains in Holland. No rock pools. Our stiff Dutch merchants do not want such things. Merely peace for their trade. They must have peace.’

  ‘Your Highness,’ Colonel Churchill said. He did not presume to take off the weights and roll up the map. He put down the Prince’s dagger upon the centre of it. He felt that this interview was over.

  He was right. Prince William nodded to him and clapped his hands. Two guards came instantly. John stepped back, bowing low.

  ‘We will speak on these matters again,’ William said. ‘And soon.’

  ‘Your Highness!’ John repeated. He was pleased with the interview. He left it in a state of elation that was plain to Godolphin when he met him a few minutes later as they had previously arranged, in the former’s lodging beside one of the many quays.

  ‘I have found a friend,’ John said enthusiastically. ‘A military mind to match me at every turn. His Highness hath not had sufficient opportunity till now, and no sufficient practice, to his great disadvantage, in actually bearing any arms. But he will be a leader to follow, I dare swear it!’

  ‘A leader! Will be!’

  Godolphin was shocked. He added, purposefully damping the enthusiasm, ‘I thought you were attached to the Duke, had always been so. At least to the King!’

  John stared. He began to realise the enormity of what he had said. Finally he muttered, ‘His Highness is set upon a treaty. So, are they not, are our Masters?’

  ‘That is how I understand it,’ agreed Sidney, calmly.

  And that was how it was settled, with some advantage to France or Louis would not have signed the Treaty. But with Holland saved and the United Provinces relieved from the burden of continuing war and the fear of invading devastation. And with England less than heroic but in affect neutral, as Charles had all along intended.

  England, seeing the Prince of Orange supported, was pleased and would even have become more tolerant of the Duke of York but for the emergence of a criminal whose astonishing success exploded all the anti-Catholic feeling that had been simmering for so long.

  This train of events, however, was slow to start, though appallingly hard to bring to an end. The two friends were not aware of anything amiss when they travelled back from the Hague. They were praised for their endeavours, they were thanked and rewarded. John was re-united with his Sarah, and they went back to London to his former rooms in Jermyn Street for he could not long to be parted from his patron, Sidney was re-united with his Margaret, who was very near her time. She had been staying in Paris with her friends, the Berkeleys, but was now at home again.

  And then tragedy, unexpected, inexorable. Mrs. Godolphin was delivered of a healthy son whom they named Francis. A few days later she developed a fever; in ten days she was dead.

  It was a shock from which Sidney never recovered. His courtship and marriage had been unspectacular, but his love was genuine. He did not blame himself for the disaster as a young man of the romantic age two hundred years later might have done. Illness and death had haunted all the ways of nature, uncontrolled at that time by any real medical knowledge and hindred rather than helped by ancient ways and superstitions. God willed the sorrows of life for a Divine Purpose. Sidney Godolphin and Margaret, she even more fervently than her husband, accepted God’s will and prayed for understanding even as she sank to her death. Mr. Evelyn too, deeply grieved, could only sorrow for the untimely removal of a saint. The baby survived and flourished.

  While Godolphin and his friends were absorbed in their grief, and Charles was enjoying a short-lived approval on the part of his difficult parliament, an incident occurred that should have warned him of the violence about to erupt on the land.

  The King was walking with his favourite spaniels in St. James’s Park one morning when a man came up to the group of gentlemen attending him and tried to push through to speak urgently with his Majesty.

  He was restrained. Charles glanced at him, motioned to others to question him and passed on. But later he asked what the fellow had wanted.

  ‘A madman perhaps, sir,’ he was told.

  ‘But what did he want? What did he say?’

  ‘To warn your Majesty of a plot. Some garbled nonsense—’

  Charles looked keenly at the speaker. ‘You seem unimpressed. What kind of plot? Against the State? Against our person? Of no consequence?’

  The gentleman grew red in the face; trying to pretend the matter was trivial he had botched his account of it. Now his confusion rendered him speechless. A lord in waiting took over the affair, to mend it if possible.

  ‘The fellow seemed much in earnest, sir,’ he said. ‘So we passed him to the guards, who have taken him for questioning. If it be not the raving of a lunatic, it will be gone into.’

  ‘This so-called plot, you would say?’ Charles hesitated. ‘Against our person, we see by your looks, our lords and gentlemen! Well, bring us news of it when the wretch hath been wrung dry.’

  The King continued his walk. The man was held, declared all he had been told to say and was finally discharged, for he had himself attempted nothing and had been unarmed. He was not even punished for his impertinence in approaching the King. Quiet inquiries continued to be made.

  Behind this action the promoters met to discuss their plans. The master mind was a certain Ezerel Tonge, a middle-aged, somewhat mentally unstable clergyman, very bigoted in religion, very anti-Papist in mind and feelings. He had, some years before launching the Plot, met a young man who exactly suited his chief need of a supporter and agent. This was Titus Oates, who though only twenty-seven at the time the two met, already had a long history of fraud, indecency, lies, perjury and slander. Oates was powerfully built, with a long chin and small, shifty eyes. He claimed to have a degree in theology, but this was not true. In fact his loud, confident voice never spoke the real truth in anything. His father, too, had been a liar and cheat; he had held a clerical post, but had been turned out of it.

  Dr. Tonge had at first merely encouraged and supported Oates in worming his way into Catholic groups in order to discover their secrets. He even lied his way into Jesuit circles abroad for a time. When eventually the two conspirators felt they had enough garbled and perjured evidence to proclaim in public, they launched the Popish Plot.

  They swore they had discovered a plan to assassinate the King and his chief ministers, put the country in the hands of the Papi
sts by invasion and conquest, set a Catholic king on the throne and bring about the destruction of the Protestant Church in England.

  The faked plot was sparked by a spectacular murder. A respected magistrate, Sir Edmund Godfrey, was discovered dead, his body pierced through by his own sword. It was found that death was by strangling; the body must have been brought to the spot where it was found and then run through in ghastly emphasis.

  No final explanation of the mystery was ever made, but many innocent lives were claimed by Titus Oates and his accomplices in perjury. For the whole country rose in anger, fear, outrage and cries for revenge upon the Catholics. Informers bred, like flies. No Catholic was safe, however unimportant, from personal enemies, even of his own religion. No Catholics of importance escaped, unless he fled the country.

  The Duke of York had hoped that his daughter’s marriage, together with the new Peace of Nymegen, would soften the Parliament party, the new-formed, so-called Whigs, under the Earl of Shaftesbury, but was disappointed. They seized the opportunity to bring another Act of Exclusion to prevent James’s future accession or that of his baby son. To defeat this move Charles had to prorogue and finally dissolve the Parliament.

  But he had to banish his brother from the country. Discussion, persuasion, gave place to orders. James, with his Duchess, and the two children, the Princess Isabella and the Duke of Cambridge, went to Brussels, where the Duke set up his exiled Court in less than luxurious state.

  He had not his brother’s way with their cousin of France. Louis had been willing in the past to employ him in his army, from time to time, since he was a very young man. But he was not inclined to give him the money he needed so sorely now.