In England Charles was obliged, following this move, to exclude all the five Catholic peers from the House of Lords and, chiefly for their own safety, house them in the Tower. He did not believe in the Plot; he had heard Oates give evidence and had been sickened by its obvious falseness. But the country in its madness of religious hysteria hailed the perjurer as a great saviour. He was given a pension, a large weekly sum that clothed and fed and housed him better than he had ever imagined possible. A titular degree was bestowed upon him, so that he went about in flowing robes. Unfortunately his former low life and bestial habits betrayed him in respectable company, especially when he was the worse for wine. His mentor, Dr. Tonge, had to rebuke him and try to arrange he would not disgrace himself too frequently in good society. But any little incidents of this sort were soon forgotten in the surge and flow of the great waves of hatred, driven by fear, ignorance and intolerance, that swept into every corner of the land, every class of society, every community, every family.
They even crashed through the sheltered walls of Whitehall itself to eddy about the throne, where Charles sat, covering his near despair with the silent, watchful, cold courage that had never failed him yet and never would do the end of his strange troubled life.
Chapter Fourteen
In Brussels the Duke of York watched the turmoil across the water with anger and a sense of deep outrage. Each Catholic death on Tyburn or in the Tower was an insult to himself, he felt, quite as much as to the Pope and the God all Catholics worshipped. He thought little about the actual victims themselves nor how his arrogant flaunting of his religion had increased the public outburst. He watched, adding up his wrongs, brooding over the injustice of his position. He came to depend more and more upon his faithful followers and servants, among whom John Churchill and a distant cousin of John’s, an army man, Colonel George Legge, were two of the most important.
‘My love,’ John told Sarah one day, ‘the Duke demands I join him in Brussels. I would not leave you again so soon, could I see a way to prevent it.’
‘Nor shall you, my dearest,’ she answered, with sparkling eyes, getting up from her seat to put her arms about his neck. ‘For I have a message and that from her Highness, who would have me travel with her to her father’s Court.’
‘The Princess Anne!’ John was surprised. He doubted the news could be correct. ‘Am I to understand the King hath granted permission for this?’
‘That must be so, for her Highness is quite positive. Old Lady Villiers is to be in charge overall and I am to serve—’
John laughed. ‘But not as maid of honour, for I claimed that maidenhead long since to your delight as well as mine, you wanton.’
She slapped his cheek, pretending anger. ‘Rude soldier! You triumph too freely. No, not as maid but as lady in waiting or some such title. It bears a small salary which I shall keep to buy me a new gown to wear in Brussels.’
‘If I choose you shall,’ John warned her sternly.
She laughed, but she knew she must not go beyond a certain point in alluding to their poverty. It was true they were totally dependent upon any employment John might scrape from his patron. His promotion had been a step forward and his recent reward substantial. But it would soon be spent and unless he found some fresh errand to perform for the Duke they would again be reduced to near penury, a state Colonel Churchill was determined they should not suffer however much his companions criticised what they called his ‘unholy love of money!’
During the journey to Brussels the Princess Anne told Sarah how she had managed to persuade her uncle to allow her to join her father and step-mother.
‘At first the King was quite against my journey,’ she explained.’ ‘He would have it the people would be fearful that I, a Protestant, would be corrupted into changing my religion. As if that were possible!’
‘I know your faith is very firm, your Highness,’ Sarah assured her.
‘Then the dangers of the voyage, the weather being so uncertain of late. My father’s ship was driven up and down the Channel for nine days before he reached harbour and that was only last month.’
‘Are you not afraid of the sea?’ Sarah asked, who had never yet ventured on to a ship.
‘I am in God’s hands,’ answered the Princess, avoiding the question. She added, ‘I would see those two children. Isabella grows into a lively pretty mite. The little Duke is sickly, I hear.’
Sarah sighed. ‘Alas for all royal babes,’ she said. She would have liked to add ‘except for those healthy bastards, both the King’s and his brother’s.’ But she knew she must not speak of them to her young mistress, who was only just fourteen and barely a woman.
Instead she repeated her question. ‘Then if the King opposed this visit, how did you in fact persuade him?’
‘It was not I,’ the girl answered. ‘It was in part his advisers, Mr. Godolphin among them, and in greater part the woman they call ‘Mrs. Carwell’.’
Sarah laughed. She wished the proud lady who was now the Duchess of Portsmouth, Louise de Kéroualle, Breton born, spy for Louis of France, chief mistress of King Charles, could hear herself so described. She controlled her mirth.
‘Perhaps,’ she answered, ‘her Grace of Portsmouth hath great influence with the King. Moreover she is French. She may think it would be to your Highness’s advantage to see more of the world.’
It was the Princess’s turn to laugh. ‘It is very much to my advantage to have you with me, Sarah,’ she said. ‘I grow tired of Richmond. Besides, my father promises me I shall go to Holland to see my sister. I have missed her sadly.’
Which was very true, Sarah thought, though she did not venture to speak further of it.
So to Brussels the Princess Anne proceeded in all safety and with no great delay either upon the sea or land. She did gain much from her reunion with her family and especially from the visit they all made to the Hague to see the Princess Mary and her husband.
The sisters were delighted to meet again. Mary was astonished to find her little companion of former days now grown to be as tall as herself, no longer speaking in a childish voice nor saying childish things but dignified, calm, sensible and as firm as ever in her religious beliefs and practice.
Early in the Churchills’ establishment in Brussels John was sent off to Paris on a fresh mission for the Duke. It was clear that his position with James was as firm as ever and certainly more intimate. So Sarah’s worst fears were proved unnecessary, though she was now pregnant for the first time and with poor Margaret Godolphin’s sad fate still very much in her mind the separation from John distressed her greatly, though she knew she must keep her normal cheerfulness before the Princess.
It was a great relief and pleasure therefore when her sister, Frances, arrived at the Duke’s Court. She was alone, for her husband, Count. Hamilton, had been killed, some time before, while fighting for France in Louis’s recent, ill-judged campaign. She was still very beautiful and had overcome her early grief. In fact she already had begun to consider her former many admirers with a view to remarriage.
‘They tell me I must not fret away my youth in perpetual widowhood,’ she told Sarah, very seriously.
‘Youth and beauty,’ Sarah answered. ‘You do not look a day older than when I last saw you and that was before the Count, God rest his soul, met his most untimely death.’ She added, without a pause, ‘Who told you you must re-marry? Was it, perhaps, that mad Dick Talbot, so ardent in pursuit when you gave your heart to George Hamilton?’
Frances began to look angry but decided to laugh instead. ‘And here was I thinking my young sister in her ignorance and seclusion with her dedicated soldier would have no knowledge of the world, the great world!’
‘You mean the world of the great,’ Sarah answered sharply. ‘You forget that my soldier husband moves in that world as he hath from a boy and that he never forgets a rumour, nor fails to understand it.’
‘Marry come up!’ Frances said, putting on a face of disdain. ‘Temper again! I ma
rvel your John has not found a means to improve it. Nay, sister, we must not quarrel.’
They were sitting together on a hard-backed, carved seat. Frances leaned sideways to kiss Sarah’s cheek and found to her surprise that it was wet with tears.
Their reconciliation was immediate, followed at once by Sarah’s confession of her state and all her misgivings over it. Frances, who had no children of her own, nevertheless felt competent to give advice on the subject. But she soon came to an end of her second-hand knowledge and by returning to her own affairs and the renewed wooing of her old admirer, soon had Sarah laughing again at the antics and extravagances of men in love.
‘Poor Dick!’ Frances told her. ‘He succeeds to that Irish earldom of Tyrconnel, but he may not find a way to enjoy it, for all this fury against Catholics, even Irish ones.’
She was right about the fury, for in England the informers, the perjurers and the slaughter of the innocents continued unabated. Even the Earl of Stafford, one of those lords committed to the Tower, largely for their own safety, was impeached for high treason upon the flimsiest of evidence. He was convicted and beheaded. Charles, who knew the old man was wholly innocent, dared not save him.
Meanwhile the popularity of the Duke of Monmouth grew, particularly in the west and north of the country. He was declared to be a fervent Protestant; he was known to be the King’s son. If only he could be declared legitimate, the succession would no longer be a matter of dispute. So with the support of Shaftesbury’s Whigs in both houses of Parliament, rumours were put about that there had been a secret marriage between his parents, hitherto suppressed. Monmouth himself declared his belief in this. He came back from the Hague and even began to travel about the country, claiming his rights and finding ardent supporters wherever he went.
It was about this time that John Churchill had a letter from Hugh Offord, sent from Exeter, where his regiment was now serving to secure that barrier to the all-important ports on the Devon and Cornwall coasts, both north and south.
Hugh began by regretting his prolonged absence from the capital. ‘It hath grieved me sorely,’ he wrote, ‘that I have had no sight or sound of you and my other friends at the Court. You will have heard, I doubt not, that Miss Firle was married three years hence to a country squire, a near neighbour of her family. It was a sad blow to me, though you know that I never had any high hopes of a happy outcome for my love. But God be praised consolation did reach me at length in the person of my dear wife, Anabel, third daughter of a ship-master of Bristol. His vessels trade with the New World colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Outlandish names, but conferring such good fortune that my family could raise no objection to our union. I already have two sons, healthy and thriving.’
‘We have recently had a visit to our barracks of that late Commander-in-Chief of his Majesty’s forces, who is looked upon with such great favour in these parts. I share their enthusiasm and remember your tales of his valour in battle abroad under the great Marshall Turenne—’
The letter ended with expressions of congratulation on John’s marriage and upon his promotion in the King’s army. He himself was now a captain, but looked no higher at present.
John felt some remorse for his neglect of his former friend and also some astonishment at his knowledge of events. But he remembered some fellow officers who had transferred themselves to the west to join the semi-private forces of certain of the great lords. Cromwell’s type of organisation had inspired many changes in the method of recruitment and the ordering of the King’s own forces, but feudal bodies of men still existed, recruited in the first place by those nobles and members of the gentry who had lost the King’s battles in the Civil Wars. It would seem that Hugh must now belong to, or at any rate have contact with, such forces.
In the next year Charles fell ill, and that so seriously that a message came to James in Brussels that it was advisable he should travel to his brother’s side immediately.
Colonel Churchill was chosen to accompany the Duke. They set off at once. His Grace decided to disguise himself, for fear he should be recognised in England by hostile mobs. He wore an inferior suit of fustian, without decoration of any kind, and a plain sword. On his head a simple periwig, surmounted by a plain, black, wide-brimmed hat, without a feather but calculated to hide his features if he lowered his head. Churchill wore his uniform, making no alteration at all in it.
They crossed in reasonable time and rode straight to London at speed, leaving the Duke’s servants to bring on the luggage in a hired coach.
They found Charles reclining in bed, pale, a little breathless, but clearly not in any immediate danger of dying.
He greeted them with a cynical smile and his usual friendly warmth.
‘Your anxiety should have been relieved, brother,’ he said, looking from one to the other of his visitors with less than the usual sparkle in his black eyes. ‘But I know there are some who would promote it for their own ends. I think you are not of that crew, colonel,’ he added, resting a keener look on John, who stood slightly behind his Master.
The pair of them could only nod and bow and, after a few more exchanges, withdraw. The visit, with all the hurried preparations, the absurdity of the Duke’s disguise, the anti-climax of Charles’s bland welcome, was a complete failure. James retired to St. James’s Palace in a deep fit of the sulks, to which he had always been prone. His escort were left to their own devices.
It was then that John went to Sidney Godolphin to exchange news. He told him of the letter he had received from Hugh Offord, quoting most of the salient points though he had left the letter behind in Brussels.
Sidney was much impressed by the discreet allusion to Monmouth. ‘His Grace makes mischief that will bring him no good,’ he said. ‘Captain Offord always seemed a most sensible young man when I knew him in London.’
‘But given to enthusiasms,’ John said with an expression of distaste on his handsome face. ‘As witness the pursuit of Miss Firle. A near disaster at one time. Now happily relieved. It is plain he may have another enthusiasm for the Duke.’
‘His Majesty will destroy all that,’ Sidney said with prim certainty. And he was right, for Charles directed his son to leave the country. Monmouth went to the Hague and waited.
‘Pray God he may,’ John answered his friend and went on to ask for direct news of the Popish Plot as it was still called. Though the ramifications of the early accusation were now countrywide, the King was in no danger from any of his subjects, but only from his physicians with their near-lethal methods of cure.
‘The slaughter of innocent men continues,’ Godolphin told him. ‘Perhaps the worst concerns the confession of a man called Prance. He claims to be the strangler who killed Sir Edmund Godfrey. He turned King’s Evidence, naming three accomplices. For this he escaped punishment while the others were convicted and hanged. His Majesty believes, and I agree, that this whole dreadful sequence was planned by Oates and executed by Prance. And so it continues.’
The King recovered completely from his illness. The physicians had been unable to declare its nature, but were not slow in claiming that their great skill and care had overcome it. They also declared that there was some danger of a recurrence unless his Majesty followed certain strict rules of conduct and diet that they prescribed. Everyone knew that his Majesty would do no such thing. But the physicians usually made like pronouncements in most of their cases, particularly those they did not, and at that time could not, understand.
Once Charles’s health was re-established and the rumours of his state, amounting almost to panic, had subsided, the nation seemed, by discharging this additional load of hysteria, to become calmer, more cheerful. In fact to be reaching back to its true basis of gentle laziness. Titus Oates was nevertheless at the height of his popular esteem, enjoying his extraordinary prosperity, while continuing his evil work of deadly perjury. Though there were no direct attempts upon the King’s life, he was insulted on his brother’s account and even his Queen was accused of
trying to poison him.
In these circumstances it was obvious to Charles that the Duke of York must either return to Brussels or go, once again, to Scotland.
James had to agree. Colonel Churchill was sent off to bring the Duchess with her family and small Court home to England. They then proceeded in a body to the northern kingdom.
Chapter Fifteen
James was gratified by a much warmer welcome in Edinburgh than he had expected. He explained his new purpose to Colonel Churchill.
‘Since we may not continue our rightful inherited influence in the English realm,’ he said in his usual humourless, pompous fashion, ‘we shall endeavour to bring some order to this other, our true native land, though it be but a province.’
His grating voice as much as the words persuaded John to reply as quietly as he could, if only to subdue his irreverent inner laughter at such silly pretension. ‘Your Highness has full scope for the betterment of this unruly but most vigorous kingdom. It hath suffered too long from murderous savagery. As I understand it, the western clans have never ceased to make raids on peaceable folk in the east and upon the borders, while at the same time fighting continuously with one another.’
The Duke found little support in this answer and understood as well the carefully veiled rebuke. He turned to his other chief advisers, Laurence Hyde, brother of his first wife and Colonel Legge, Churchill’s cousin and former friend. The latter was now equal in rank, for his promotion had overtaken Legge’s, who did not expect to rise any higher. His present position under the Duke was as a military adviser in a country and terrain that he knew well.
Neither of these men ventured to speak. They saw that James was offended by Churchill’s manner; also that his obstinacy would always keep him from any real enlightenment.
But afterwards when the three came away from the audience they went to Hyde’s rooms to discuss the future. They found it ominous.
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