by Uglow, Jenny
While the evenings were spent in dancing, at plays or at cards and dice, many of the courtiers’ days – in between hard sessions of the Privy Council – were spent in hunting, riding, sailing, tennis. Pepys made constant, laconic notes of the times when the Navy Board were due to meet their admiral, the Duke of York, and found him out hunting. Charles was less keen, but went out often and paid regular sums to his Serjeant of Buckhounds, his huntsmen and his grooms. In fine weather the court walked in the Park, or drove out in their carriages, and on summer evenings they took to the Thames in their decorated barges, with supper and music.
In the early years Charles often dined at the houses of his nobles, or went with James to supper and music at the houses of the French and Spanish ambassadors, being reluctant to miss a good evening’s wine and music among the court beauties and ‘the most illustrious libertines of his kingdom’.15 When Charles dined out, the procedure, as described later by the Italian Magalotti, was a typical mix of the ceremonious and the casual. The table was set for one, but many more covers waited on the sideboard and were brought forward as Charles called the people to dine with him, usually all the courtiers standing round. ‘There the King relaxes, he is wholly intent on eating; above all he no more remembers that he has a kingdom than would the most private gentleman who might sit at that table.’16 Sometimes, too, a large royal party set off to dine at courtiers’ houses in the nearby countryside.17
Francis Barlow’s frontispiece to John Playford, Musick’s Delight on the Cithern. A young man in courtier’s dress is studying his book to learn new tunes for the cithern, a guitar with wire strings, while older instruments like the mandolin, bass viol and kit hang unused on the wall.
Wherever they were, men drank deep. Albemarle’s iron reputation was reinforced by his capacity to hold his drink when all around him collapsed, rising in the morning and going to parliament as if nothing had happened. Some drank to forget – one common feature of the courtiers was that their confidence and glamour disguised staggering debts. They spent money like water, to appear richer than they were, like the Earl of St Albans, who made a point of losing thousands at the gaming table.18 In fact even some of the greatest grandees were as poor as church mice. Ormond had debts of £130,000; the Duke of Norfolk borrowed £200,000; Buckingham was in hock to the tune of £135,000. Nearly all of them were caught in elaborate webs of mortgages and re-financing of loans.19 They had responsibilities as well as grand positions. The older ones were married: Buckingham to the long-suffering Mary Fairfax, Bristol to Lady Anne Russell, daughter of the Earl of Bedford, and Ossory to the well-connected Aemilia van Nassau, whom he had met in the Netherlands in 1659. But although they were no longer single men filling empty hours, they behaved as though they were. They lived for the moment, strutting and playing.
Drunken evenings ended in quarrels and scuffles and the drawing of swords. Courtiers brawled at taverns and fought at the cockpit. Violence was in the air. Abroad, these young men had fought duels over trifles – in 1659 Richard Talbot had wounded a man over seven sovereigns won at tennis, while Clarendon defined his younger brother Gilbert Talbot as the most useless type of courtier, ‘a half-witted fellow who did not meddle with any thing nor angered any body, but found a way to get good clothes and to play, and was looked upon as a man of courage, having fought a duel or two with stout men’.20 They brought the habit back, following the dangerous French pattern whereby the seconds also fought, with swords and short knives. In August 1660, when Bristol taunted Buckingham that he had done little during the years of exile to deserve his wealth, Buckingham immediately challenged him. A full-scale duel was only stopped by Charles treating his two courtiers like children and confining them to their lodgings until their tempers cooled. At the end of the month he issued a proclamation forbidding duelling altogether, but it had little effect. Two years later, on 18 August 1662, when Harry Jermyn fought and killed Colonel Giles Rawlins. Pepys spoke for many when he wrote that ‘The Court is much concerned in this fray; and I am glad of it, hoping that it will cause some good laws against it.’21 He hoped in vain. Only five months later the House of Lords issued a formal ‘reprehension’, demanding an apology to the house from Lord Middlesex, who had challenged the Earl of Bridgewater in a furious letter, full of ‘many expressions most unfitting and most unworthy of a Person of Honour’. Middlesex’s rage stemmed from his belief that Bridgewater had conspired in the absconding of his Turkish servant, being ‘partial and privie unto the going away of my Moore’.22 This spat, like many, was food for gossip. Through letters, newssheets, lampoons and satirical ballads, the doings of the court spread like idle chatter. The gilded honour that courtiers defended in their duels seemed already tarnished.
The corridors of Whitehall resounded to quarrels as well as mirth. Sometimes, too, cries of angry despair. The main cause of this grinding of teeth was gambling. Gaming was only officially sanctioned during the Christmas feast and Charles himself, it was said, disapproved. Yet on Twelfth Night in January 1662, Evelyn was horrified to see the king open the revels by throwing the dice in the Privy Chamber. ‘He lost £100, the yeare before he won 150 pounds: The Ladyes also plaied very deepe: I came away when the Duke of Ormond had won about 1000 pounds.’ When Evelyn left the courtiers were still playing cards and dice. He shook his head at ‘the wicked folly vanity & monstrous excesse of Passion amongst some loosers, & sorry I am that such a wretched Custome as play to that excess should be countenanc’d in a Court, which ought to be an example of Virtue to the rest of the kingdome’.23 In this complaint, he was not alone.
Even the starchiest of court events could turn into a rout. ‘All the Chancellor has put forward is nothing for me as compared to a point d’honneur, connected, were it ever so slightly, with the fame of my crown.’ Thus, in Jusserand’s translation, with its 1890s flavour, wrote the young Louis XIV to his ambassador in London, Godefroy comte d’Estrades, in January 1662.24 It is hard for us today to make sense of the ludicrous lengths to which monarchs went to protect their honour through formal gestures, whether it be in saluting ships at sea (Charles was obsessively concerned that all other nations should salute the English men of war) or in being placed at a royal reception on the right hand of the monarch rather than the left. Yet as with the crowds coming to Charles to be touched for the King’s Evil, the symbolic gesture embodied genuine belief. An ambassador – however pot-bellied and pompous – was the king, his incarnation on foreign soil. Any slight was felt as keenly as a physical assault or an act of war, and honour was defended, sometimes to the death.
Foreign ambassadors tripped over themselves in their rush to greet Charles now that he was back on the throne. There were ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary’ ambassadors, the latter being nobles sent for special celebrations or to add weight to a diplomatic move. Charles greeted them all with great dignity, employing his warmest charm on representatives of countries that had helped him during the exile, and presenting a chilly face to those that had not. The custom was for an ambassador to settle in the capital, sometimes for several weeks, setting up his households, complete with livery, foot soldiers, coaches and assorted finery, so that he had a stylish entourage before making his formal entrance. This entrée, as it was called, was a finely staged fiction. The ambassador had to go back downriver to Greenwich and ‘arrive’ as if he had just sailed from his home port. From there he was rowed up the Thames in a state barge to the Tower, where tumultuous crowds watched his welcome to the City. Then he was driven to Old Palace Yard in Westminster, at the head of a grand parade, in which the ambassadors of all the other countries also rode in their carriages.
One of the first emissaries to go through this elaborate charade was the Prince de Ligne, Ambassador Extraordinary of Philip IV of Spain. The Prince arrived at Tower Wharf on 13 September 1660 with, as the traveller Peter Mundy recorded, three hundred followers and 280 horses. He had sixteen gilded coaches, drawn by black horses, escorted by trumpeters and pages whose capes were so laden with gold an
d silver lace that ‘the ground was hardly to be discerned’.25 A day or so later, as was the custom, the Prince was received in great splendour in the Banqueting House. The walls were lined with tapestries, musicians played in the balcony, and courtiers and officials crowded in on all sides, thrusting themselves forward between the Yeomen of the Guard to get a good view.
The reception of the Prince de Ligne in the Banqueting Hall, with the crowded gallery above
The Prince’s entry set a standard for grandeur and ceremony which the French ambassador was determined to meet. D’Estrades was a sinuous, courtly figure renowned for his cold-blooded duels. In July 1661 Louis XIV sent him to London with instructions to forward a treaty with England and to protect the dignity of the French crown, ‘allowing no ambassador to go before him’, except that of the Holy Roman Emperor, keeping the Spanish on his left (rather than the distinguished right), and the Venetians firmly behind.26 Unfortunately Londoners always took against the French. In addition, the Spanish ambassador of the day, Baron de Watteville, lived in great style and spent money freely, a sure route to popularity. The tension was serious because both France and Spain, perpetual rivals, wanted an alliance with England. Charles had ended Cromwell’s war with Spain, which was already petering out, by a formal treaty two months after he reached London, but his family links to France, reinforced by Minette’s marriage to Monsieur and his own admiration for all things French, tilted the balance towards Louis.
The inevitable conflict between the ambassadors was sparked, to no one’s surprise – although the scale did genuinely shock – by competition over their position in a procession. The French insisted on preceding the Spanish, and vice versa. Guessing that there would be trouble, when the Venetian ambassadors arrived Charles persuaded both the French and Spanish to stay away. Louis, however, was mortally offended and insisted that d’Estrades be present when the Swedish delegation made their entrée in October. While his ambassador was making preparations, Louis heard from a spy in Albemarle’s household that the General (as Albemarle was known) had offered to send Scottish and Irish soldiers to guard the Spanish coach. They would be waiting in the streets near Tower Hill. D’Estrades, he said, must make sure his coach took prime position and must keep his guards close ‘for fear that at the crossing of some street these Scotch and Irish rush in with might and main and stop you and let Watteville go’.
Londoners looked forward to a good brawl. Early on the morning of 10 October 1662, the streets were full of soldiers and echoed with the noise of people running. When the procession gathered, the French shouted and jeered. The Spanish stayed silent. Seeing this, Pepys was sure they would lose. Quickly he had breakfast and ran from the Tower to Cheapside, only to find he had already missed the fight. Contrary to his expectations, the Spanish had won. De Watteville had taken the precaution of putting iron chains beneath the horses’ harness, so that the French could not cut their carriage loose; the French had not. Having marooned their coach, the Spanish fell on the French with their swords, and then charged on in their coach, all the way to the Royal Mews at Charing Cross. ‘I ran after them’, wrote Pepys, ‘through all the dirt and the streets full of people, till at last, at the Mewes, I saw the Spanish coach go, with fifty drawn swords at least to guard it, and our soldiers shouting for joy.’27 When he had seen it turn in ‘with great state’ at York House, where the Spanish Ambassador had his rooms, he ran to the French headquarters, full of glee ‘for they all look like dead men, and not a word among them but shake their heads’. The Spanish victory was all the greater, people said, because the French had outnumbered them four to one and were armed with a hundred pistols as well as swords. ‘We had a great battle here upon the intrado made by the Swedish ambassador,’ wrote the Bishop of Elphin, adding more details of the ungodly fray with considerable relish.28 ‘The King’s guard of horse and foot were spectators, but let them fight on without parting them.’
This was no trivial affray. D’Estrades told his boss, the French Foreign Minister Lionne, that five of his fifty guards had been killed and thirty-three wounded. In addition he had been attacked personally twice, a musket ball had whizzed through his hat, and a mob had surrounded his house.29 Charles was aghast, particularly at rumours that his own courtiers and soldiers had aided the Spaniards.30 Quickly, he sent John Evelyn on a fact-finding mission, with detailed instructions as to whom he should interrogate. Evelyn scurried around town, questioning officers at the Tower and others, and wrote ‘a narrative in vindication of his Majestie & carriage of his officers and standersby &c’.31 As soon as the ink was dry, Charles wanted to send the papers to his ambassador in Paris. Next day he had second thoughts, spotting Evelyn at Whitehall and asking him to soften a passage or two in his report. It was late before Evelyn gave it in, ‘and slip’d home, being my self much indispos’d & harrass’d, with going about, & sitting up to write, &c.’
Although men had died, no one could be arrested or tried for murder because all involved claimed diplomatic immunity. His pride hurt, d’Estrades refused to attend the English court. Louis supported him and protested furiously, both to Charles and to the King of Spain. He won this round outright, as Philip IV of Spain – nervous that this might even be a pretext for war – recalled de Watteville and conceded French precedence on all state occasions. In London, Charles issued a decree forbidding ambassadors to send their coaches to follow any entrée at all. Yet this in itself provoked more upsets and the word ‘decree’ had to be changed to ‘resolution’. No one could decree anything to the King of France.
The life of the envoys and ambassadors could be wearing on the soul. Like a man waving frantically from a quagmire, in June 1662 the diligent Venetian envoy Francesco Giavarini burst out in one of his despatches. ‘Hard necessity forces me to break silence,’ he wrote. ‘This is my seventh year at this Court after six in Zurich and in France. I hoped I should be removed from a country always agitated by strange events, always subject to serious peril, never free from expense and unbearable discomfort.’32 He longed to go home.
10 The Coming of the Queen
She has as much agreeableness in her looks altogether, as ever I saw: and if I have any skill in physiognomy, which I think I have, she must be as good a woman as ever was born.
CHARLES II to Clarendon, 21 May 1662
BARBARA PALMER, by then obviously pregnant, had stayed quiet through the sombre autumn and winter of 1660, when Whitehall was mourning the deaths of the Duke of Gloucester and the Princess of Orange. Her baby, Anne, was born in February 1661. Roger Palmer accepted her as his child, but she was also later publicly acknowledged by Charles. By April Barbara herself was back in the public eye. Three days before the coronation, where her Villiers relations were conspicuous in the ceremony, Pepys spotted her at a play in the Cockpit. He eyed all the beauties there, but ‘above all Mrs Palmer with whom the King doth discover a good deal of familiarity’. Pepys fell for her badly. He lusted after her – she appeared in his dreams – partly because she was the king’s. His desire made him one with the king, and at the same time it made the king like other men, just as the sight of the little dog shitting in the boat had done. Pepys ‘filled his eyes’ with Barbara, he said, watching her again in July and August and September, when, he sighed, ‘I can never enough admire her beauty.’1
Charles clearly felt the same. But he was also realistic. Since the autumn of the previous year, he and Clarendon had been hunting for a suitable wife, who would bring a substantial dowry and provide healthy heirs. The European powers who had shunned him in exile were now keen to cement an alliance. The French ambassador allegedly offered the Chancellor £10,000 to push their interest, which Clarendon declined with public proclamations of horror. Instead he proposed protestant princesses from Germany, whom Charles roundly turned down, saying that German women were ‘all foggy and I cannot like any one of them for a wife’.2 Tensions between the House of Orange and the Dutch government ruled out princesses from the Dutch Republic, and Charles also refused to co
nsider any woman who had rejected him during his exile. In the end, since all protestant candidates were eliminated, and there were no possibilities in France or Spain, the choice fell on the Portuguese Infanta, Catherine of Braganza.
Portugal was keen to claim an ally against Spain, from whom Catherine’s father King John had wrested his country’s independence twenty years before. Such a match had been proposed years earlier and now Portugal offered an unheard-of dowry of £360,000 – two million crowns – and threw in the trading posts of Bombay and Tangier (which Charles had to look up on the map). Mesmerised by such potential wealth, and intrigued by a flattering miniature proffered by the Portuguese ambassador, Dom Francisco de Mello de Torres, in return Charles promised ten thousand troops as support in the struggle with Spain.
The marriage contract took many months to bring to fruition. The Spanish were set against it, spreading rumours that Catherine was deformed and could never bear children. The pro-Spanish Earl of Bristol even travelled to Parma to look at two Habsburg princesses – abandoning the idea when he saw that one was very fat and the other very ugly. (Charles banished Bristol from court for his impertinent interference, not for the last time.) The French, by contrast, favoured the match, and Henrietta Maria, who had been so horrified by James’s marriage to Anne Hyde, for once sided with her old enemy Clarendon, seeing in Catherine a safe Catholic soul.