She may laugh at my cares and so false she may be
To say all the kind things she before said to me.
O then, ’tis O then, that I think there’s no hell,
Like loving too well.
But when I consider the truth of her heart,
Such an innocent passion, so kind without art;
I fear I have wronged her, and hope she may be
So full of true love to be jealous of me:
And then, ’tis I think that no joys be above
The pleasures of love.’
And who that has ever loved cannot find their own feelings reproduced in the stanzas of this very human King. The fears expressed in the second verse of the song were to be realized only too soon. Castlemaine, becoming jealous of her protegee, took Charles on a surprise visit to the young lady’s bedroom, when she had pleaded illness as an excuse for keeping to her room—and there, seated on her bed, was the Duke of Richmond. The King was furious; he had paid her such very marked attention, and, lenient as he was by nature, he deeply resented being made to look a fool in public. He blazed out at the unfortunate Richmond, who mildly replied that, after all, he was prepared to marry the girl, which was more than the King could do, but for once Charles’ sense of humour failed to respond to a joke against himself. Cut to the quick, he gave way for once to an outburst of real temper, dismissing the Duke, with a torrent of abuse, from the bedroom and his Court.
The matter did not end thus, however. Richmond returned secretly one night to Whitehall and, under cover of darkness and a violent storm, abducted the lady from under the King’s very nose. Together the lovers fled on horseback to the country, and were married the next day. Once more the King had difficulty in restraining his anger, but later he had his own back, for on her return to Court, the beautiful Duchess of Richmond freely accorded him those favours as a wife which she had denied him as a maid.
That his outburst in Frances Stewart’s bedroom was contrary to his nature is shown by his treatment of Mrs. Roberts, who also for some time had been one of his mistresses. This lady deceived him in order to satisfy the ardour of the tempestuous Rochester. When her infidelity was discovered, she sorely wished to regain the King’s affections, and, seeing him pass down the corridor one morning when she was dressing, she rushed out of her bedroom with her lovely hair all in disorder and, flinging herself at his feet, implored pardon for her frailty. Charles, overcome by these simulated agonies, raised her up, took her in his arms and protested that ‘no man could see her and not love her’. Then he waited upon her in her lodgings, where the reconciliation was completed.
That he was apt to wander through all parts of the Palace we see from the episode of his pausing one morning opposite the apartments of the Maids of Honour, his attention caught by the treble rendering of an exceedingly lewd song about himself, in which he was compared to his lusty stallion, ‘Old Rowley’. He knocked upon the door. ‘Who’s there?’ came the voice of Mrs. Howard, the mistress of the Maids. ‘ ’Tis Old Rowley himself, ma’am,’ replied Charles, with a smile, as he poked his nose round the crack of the door.
Other mistresses there were who held the Royal favour for a little time, and others again who in after years played an important part, but of these we shall speak later.
The Duke of York had also married, and that within four months of the Restoration. In Holland he had conceived a wild passion for Anne Hyde, Clarendon’s daughter. As heir to the throne, it was his duty to consult the King, and in due course to submit to a foreign alliance for the benefit of the country—but he married Anne in secret. The following morning he fell upon his knees before his brother and broke the news in a flood of tears. Charles was naturally upset, but he sent for two of his oldest and most trusted counsellors, Ormonde and Southampton, and asked them to tell the lady’s father as tactfully as possible—but Hyde was furious. He declared that he would rather see his daughter the Duke’s whore than his wife, and suggested cutting off her head as the speediest way of annulling the marriage. Malicious gossip was spread about that Anne had had a number of lovers, and James weakly allowed himself to be persuaded into a scheme for disowning her, but Charles refused to listen to these slanders. His attitude throughout this sordid affair shows the true nobility of his character. He told his brother with great kindness that, now the thing was done, they must needs make the best of it; reassured his old minister of his conviction that this was no plot whereby he had sought advancement for his family, and forced him to accept an Earldom and a grant of £20,000 as a mark of his respect—then went at once to visit the unfortunate Anne, already lying in with her first baby, and embraced her as a sister with the greatest tenderness.
Few women could have supported her new position as Duchess of York better than Anne Hyde. She was a tall girl, with a good figure and naturally majestic air; she was also possessed of considerable wit, but the fact that hers was a love-match did not save her from the same troubles as the Queen. James was consistently unfaithful to her; in fact, it seems that he made a habit of endeavouring to seduce his wife’s Maids of Honour.
In Miss Jennings, the beautiful cendre blonde with the generous mouth and lovely features, he caught a tartar, since not only did she repulse his advances but used deliberately to let his love letters drop out of her muff in the most crowded assemblies for all and sundry to pick up and read. Neither was he more successful with the beautiful Lady Chesterfield. Her husband, noticing that the Duke’s hand had disappeared under his lady’s skirts when seated next her one night at cards in the Queen’s chamber, rushed her off to the country before further harm could befall her, despite the fact that the incident occurred in the depths of winter.
With Lady Denham he was more fortunate. She was a relative of the restless and ambitious Earl of Bristol, who endeavoured to arrange for her to become mistress to the King in the hope of being able to use her for political ends. The lady’s attractions proved insufficient to ensnare Charles; she was passed on to James, but his happiness was short-lived. Her husband learnt of the affair and brought it to a premature conclusion by poisoning the poor lady with an infusion in chocolate.
The notorious Lady Southesk then attracted James’ attention and proved an easy conquest, but with his usual hole-in-the-corner methods he would not compromise himself by visiting her house alone, and that excess of caution brought about his undoing. On one occasion he took Richard Talbot to keep him in countenance, and Talbot, lately returned out of Portugal, was not au courani with the latest news at Court. York retired with the lady and Talbot was left to kick his heels in the drawing-room, where, leaning from a window, he saw a coach drive up to the house, and a familiar figure alight. ‘Hullo, Carnegie,’ he cried. ‘Welcome my good fellow, where the devil have you been since we were at Brussels together, and what the deuce has brought you here? Do you also want to see Lady Southesk? If you do, my poor friend, you had better go and seek a mistress elsewhere, for I don’t mind telling you in confidence that the Duke of York is in love with her, and as a matter of fact he is with her in her bedroom at this very moment.’ To Talbot’s surprise, Carnegie went purple in the face with rage, stood silent for a moment, and then—shaking his fist angrily at the house—leapt back into his coach again. When James returned from the lady’s embraces, Talbot told him of this strange encounter. ‘Thou fool,’ stormed James. ‘Dost thou not know that old Southesk is dead, and that Carnegie hath inherited his title?’
Returning to his wife’s Maids of Honour, James then fixed his affections on Miss Arabella Churchill, whose brother was later to become the famous Duke of Marlborough. This affair was of a more lasting nature and by her he had three children—James, Duke of Brunswick, Henry, Duke of Albemarle, and Henrietta, Lady Wal- grave. She was a clever creature, but exceptionally plain; tall, pale-faced, and pimply, with a body that was nothing but skin and bones—but James’ mistresses were always notoriously unattractive, which once caused Charles to remark, with his languid smile, ‘Odd’s fish! I do belie
ve ’tis my brother’s Confessor who chooses his mistresses for him—by way of penance.’
Poor James was by no means a happy young man, since that Confessor played a considerable part in his existence, and his earnest religious faith was at continual war with those instincts which urged him to tiptoe along the corridor where slept the Maids of Honour. He was sincere and candid, but lacking altogether his brother’s humour and quick intelligence. It was Buckingham who said of the two, ‘Charles could see things if he would— James would see things if he could.’ In Council he always urged the exercise of the prerogative to its utmost limits, advice to which Charles was far too wise to listen, and a policy which, coupled with his religious fervour, later cost him his throne. But despite his narrow, bigoted outlook and rather mean, haughty disposition, he did really good work in a conscientious, plodding way for the Navy, during his time as Lord High Admiral.
Owing to the Coronation and the King’s marriage, the festivities which had begun with the Restoration stretched well into the third year of Charles’ actual reign. Balls, masques, and parties of pleasure on the river were the established order of the day, and every kind of frolic was entered into with the greatest zest.
Buckingham, who was more fitted for the post of Court Jester than a great lord, led the revels. His hospitality was royal, his dress magnificent, and he moved so gracefully that it was impossible not to follow him with the eye as he walked down the crowded galleries. Something of his mercurial nature and ever-changing tastes are shown in the following verse:
‘Everything by starts and nothing long,
But, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was Chemist, Fiddler, Statesman, and Buffoon,
Then all for Women, Painting, Rhyming, Drinking,
Besides a thousand freaks that died in thinking.’
So perfect a mimic was he that Charles almost died of laughing to see him pass in mock state through the Royal Apartments, with pursed lips and puckered brows, seemingly overwhelmed with the cares of office, a pair of bellows hanging before him to imitate the Purse, and preceded by Colonel Titus, bearing a shovel in place of the Mace—so naturally did he take off the air of Clarendon, the serious-minded Minister.
On another occasion the whole Court rocked with mirth when Lady Muskerry, who was known to be in an interesting condition, appeared in a farthingale, and the cushion falling from under her skirts while dancing Buckingham seized upon it with loud shouts, whipped off his coat, wrapped it about the pillow, and ran wildly up and down the room—mimicking the cries of a new-born babe and shouting, ‘A nurse—a nurse for the young Muskerry,’ among the Maids of Honour.
Tom Killigrew was actual holder of the title ‘Master of the Revels’, and it was he who, to the surprise of the beholders, appeared one night at a Court Ball fully booted and spurred as though about to set out immediately on a journey. ‘And where are you going at this hour, pray?’ asked the King. ‘To Hell—may it please your Majesty,’ replied Killigrew promptly. ‘Odd’s fish! what for?’ exclaimed the astonished Charles. ‘Why, to fetch Oliver Cromwell back, to get the country out of the mess it’s in,’ cried the audacious jester. The pause must have been quite appalling while the Court watched the face of the King, but Charles loved a jest, and Killigrew, who had begun life as page to Charles I, was permitted much familiarity. The King smiled, the lofty chamber was soon echoing with uproarious laughter, and another night of gaiety at Whitehall had opened with a swing.
Killigrew also held the post of Groom of the Bedchamber, and in May, 1662, succeeded in getting his wife appointed to what sounds an enchanting office, ‘Keeper of the Sweet Coffer’ to the Queen. The appointment, however, appears to have been somewhat offset by another in the following month, namely, ‘First Lady of the Privy’.
More serious work than either Jester or Groom occupied most of Killigrew’s time, since he was responsible for the management of ‘The King’s Company of Actors’ performing at Drury Lane. The theatres had reopened immediately upon the Restoration and a second troupe ‘The Duke’s Company’ were soon established under William D’Avernant in Lincoln’s Inn, both being freely patronized by Court and City.
Instead of young boys, who always took the female parts before the Civil War, actresses were employed for the first time, and many of these good-looking, high- spirited young women soon found their way to Court, adding their laughter and highly seasoned wit to that of the titled ladies, who were hardly less restrained.
Among them was Moll Davis, who in a play entitled The Mad Shepherdess sang a little ditty entitled My
lodging is on the Cold Ground with such affecting pathos that she very soon changed it for one in a far better place. In fact, she got a ring worth £600, a house in Suffolk Street, and a child by the King christened Mary Tudor, who at the tender age of fourteen married the Earl of Derwentwater.
Charles was a great lover of the theatre and, quite apart from his thoughtful care for such likely lasses as Moll, he was a generous patron to the leading actors of the day—Hart, Betterton, Harris, Mohun, and the rest. He was also a true friend to the dramatists who flourished in his time.
John Dryden, who is now perhaps the best remembered, was appointed Poet Laureate and Royal Historiographer. Among his best plays are The Indian Emperor, Marriage a la Mode, and The Conquest oj Granada, but almost more fame attaches to his name from his political satire The Hind and the Panther.
William Wycherley, who had passed his youth in Paris and spent much time among the fashionable literary society of the Hotel Rambouillet, was another. He wrote Love in a Wood, The Country Wife, and The Plain Dealer. Through the latter, in addition to much applause, he gained a wife, since he met the lady, then the widow of the Earl of Drogheda, in a bookshop at Epsom, purchasing a copy of his own play. He succeeded Harry Jermyn in Castlemaine’s affections, but Charles bore him no malice, and valued him so highly that when he fell seriously ill, the King visited him in his Bow Street lodgings and perhaps saved his life by a gift of five hundred guineas which enabled him to make a prolonged convalescence at Montpellier.
Johnny Crowne, a Nova Scotian who came to England early in the reign, was of a lesser talent; a prim but amiable man whom some thought a dull fellow, yet his Sir Court- ley Nice was still acted a century after his death, and seventeen of his plays were produced in his lifetime.
Shadwell’s plays also numbered seventeen, and among them was Sullen Lovers. There was also poor Nat Lee, who drank so heavily when he grew older that his mind became affected, and he had to be removed to Bedlam.
Then there were the titled dramatists. Sir George Etheridge, the handsome young exquisite, who like Wycherley had been educated in France, produced three slender but delicious comedies after the manner of Moliere—The Comical Revenge, She Would if She Could, and The Man of Mode.
Sir Charles Sedley, whose first and best known play was The Mulberry Garden, so called after that part of the grounds near Buckingham Palace where James I had planted mulberry trees in the hope of introducing the silkworm to English commerce. It was on the first night of one of Sedley’s plays that the roof of the theatre fell in, upon which Sir Fleetwood Sheppard told the author that ‘there was so much fire in the piece that it blew up the poet, the audience and the whole building’. ‘No,’ replied Sedley, quickly, ‘on the contrary, the play is so heavy that it has demolished the theatre and buried the author among his own rubbish.’ Sedley’s claim to fame, however, rests more upon his lyrics than his plays, and, rake- hell and drunkard as he was, he must have had a higher side to produce such enchanting things as this—To Celia.
‘Not Celia, that I juster am
Or better than the rest;
For I would change each hour with them
Were not my heart at rest.
But I am tied to very thee
But every thought I have:
Thy face I only care to see,
Thy heart I only crave.
All that in women is adored
In thy de
ar self I find—
For the whole sex can but afford
The handsome and the kind.
Why then should I seek further store
And still make love anew ;
When change itself can give no more.
Tis easy to be true.’
To mention Etheridge and Sedley is to think immediately of Buckhurst, for in the scandalous annals of the period the three formed an inseparable partnership reminiscent of the Musketeers of fiction, with Rochester as an unprincipled edition of D’Artagnan.
Charles Sackville, Lord Buckhurst and later Earl of Dorset, was a young man of exceptional good looks and quite a charming poet. In character he was of a generous, kindly disposition which none of the other three could claim, and if he could not rival them in the quality of his art, he was certainly art’s most splendid patron.
To him Wycherley owed the success of his Plain Dealer, and it was he who introduced Samuel Butler’s to Whitehall. To him also we owe the beauty of Prior’s verse, since later in life he came upon the poet as a poor boy reading a tattered copy of Horace in a tavern called ‘The Rummers’ near Whitehall, and, taking him away, he provided for his future. During the whole of his life he was ‘the patron of men of genius, and the dupe of women, and bountiful beyond measure to both’, so that it was said of him that ‘He furnished Knole with silver, and peopled it with poets and courtesans’.
Unfortunately, Buckhurst suffered from the curious disability of being nearly tongue-tied until mildly drunk. He therefore found it necessary to be in an almost perpetual state of intoxication, and this led him into an unusual number of scrapes. In one instance he set out with four other gay young sparks to accompany a Mr. Vernon on the first stage out of London. On their return they heard at Waltham Cross that there were highwaymen upon the road, and meeting with an unfortunate tanner, they set upon and killed him, in the belief that he was a member of the band. They were promptly arrested and the coroner found it to be ‘plain murder’; but luckily the King was ever a good friend in need and, possessing a particular fondness for the young man, he gave instructions that the charge be reduced to ‘manslaughter’—or, as Pepys tells us, ‘they had all been hanged on the Monday’.
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