In the King's Absence

by Josephine Bell

  ‘My brother is very low, cousin,’ she told her, ‘since this recent defeat of his supporters in the west country of England. It is time he became reconciled to his fate, it being only four years since he escaped the death he risked by going back to that unhappy island.’

  ‘We cannot expect him to accept it yet,’ Sophia answered. ‘You are thinking of my father’s fate and my mothers astonishing endurance. Charles has a very different nature.’

  The Princess Mary nodded. She was sitting in a pleasant ground floor room with tall windows looking upon a terrace above a wide lawn in the mansion she now occupied with her ladies, her little son and those few gentlemen of the late Prince’s court who had left The Hague to go with her into exile in Germany until her child was old enough to rule through a Regent. The Princess Sophia was here with her mother because the latter’s son, Charles Louis, now Elector Palatine under the treaty ending the Thirty Years War with the Emperor, had gone to take back a part of his unfortunate father’s lost inheritance.

  ‘Charles of England you mean, do you not? Or your brother, Charles Louis, the new Elector?’

  Sophia laughed. She had a nature as happy as Charlesy Stuart’s could have been in easier circumstances. She liked her cousin in spite of his dissolute behaviour. She was stimulated by his wit as he was by hers. In fact there were times when hints were made in her presence that the young English King admired her deeply. But he never behaved in any way unseemly towards her. She did not know whether to consider this a mark of respect or of indifference.

  The Princess Mary could not find it important either way. To her own ladies she explained this.

  ‘My cousin Sophia has a keen mind and a very pleasing nature,’ she said. ‘But like all that immense family she is wilful and also without any fortune to sustain her wilfulness. With poor Charles a pauper, he must marry a fortune if he can find one. A young wealthy widow who would not be too hopeful of his restoration to his lost throne –’

  They ran through the list of his present mistresses, together with their stories of those who had dropped from the royal favour since he left France. But this was all mere gossip and remained so while Charles paid visits to his sister’s Court and improved his acquaintance with the Princess Sophia.

  Certainly they took pleasure in one another’s company, for each employed a lively sense of ridicule, that did not avoid a considerable coarseness, in describing their misfortunes and adventures.

  ‘Ah, Sophie,’ the King told her one afternoon, as they strolled about the garden of the mansion. ‘You jest like any rough soldier and are not put out when I give you return in kind.’

  ‘Do I offend Your Majesty?’ she asked, very smoothly.

  He caught her round the waist and moved on, holding her close.

  ‘Indeed no,’ he answered. ‘In fact, since you stir up my wits, you leave my passions unmoved.’

  ‘This is a doubtful compliment, sire. What am I to say in return? That I am obliged to Your Majesty for due warning of the total indifference your busy fingers impress upon my person at this exact moment?’

  They both laughed and she pulled away from him. Whereupon he caught her close again and kissed her hard. But this spoiled the pleasant, easy contact between them. The King released her, became formal in manner and speech, so that the Princess dropped him a deep curtsey and her maid of honour, waiting a little way off across the garden, came forward at a little gesture from her mistress and followed towards the distant terrace.

  King Charles stood watching. The Princess was not beautiful, he told himself yet again, but she had a neat figure and a nimble brain. As a companion she could be stimulating and might comfort him. She was not cold. He had not tried to rouse her feelings; such behaviour would be most unmannerly. But he had been aware that his description of his indifference was false and she had been aware of it, too.

  What then remained to divide them, to keep them apart? Surely his aunt, the widowed and ageing Winter Queen? And the poverty of that numerous, disinherited horde?

  As he walked back to his own part of the mansion, Charles put before himself squarely all those arguments he had invented in favour of a marriage with the Princess Sophia and all those he could set against it. Until he left France he had still hoped for a match with the delicious Duchesse de Chatillon or even with La Grande Mademoiselle. Both these were now impossible. So was a third project, the niece of Cardinal Mazarin, a luscious Italian, but denied him by the whole power of France, the Cardinal himself, the Queen Regent Anne and his own mother, ex-queen of England as well.

  He complained that evening to Lord Rochester, who had been sent to entertain his master by an anxious and irritated Lord Clarendon.

  ‘You find us out of spirits, Henry,’ the King told his friend, putting on a very regal air. ‘What with unresponsive maidens and their suspicious mothers and defeated soldiers with wounded eyes or torn bodies, like hounds finding a superior wolf in the covert.’

  ‘The lady I take to be the Princess Sophia,’ Rochester answered calmly. ‘There I hesitate to give comfort to Your Majesty, taking into account the life history of that most tragical family. Moreover their persisting poverty.’

  ‘My heart is indeed not seriously damaged in that cause,’ Charles said, unbending a little. ‘The want of any fortune is a most crying fault in that direction.’

  ‘As for the other, have we not agreed that any rebellion likely of success will take much careful planning and so far nothing useful has been started? There are groups and so-called clubs or associations formed, but there are no leaders, save a few hotheads like the unlucky Penruddock. They indeed have no possible chance of success.’

  Charles sprang from his chair with an impatient gesture and took several turns about the room.

  ‘You tell me nought I do not know well already, Henry. Meanwhile that poor Thomas Ogilvy rots slowly in his ruined shoulder, mewed up in Amsterdam, attended by his devoted brother, regretting their exile and haunted by Thurloe’s spies, the chief of whom, I hear from Rotterdam, is one of their own family.’

  ‘George Leslie, sire. The Colonel Francis Ogilvy has much to tell of a family feud, that should be trifling but seems to spread as time goes by like green scum on a pond.’

  Charles stopped his pacing.

  ‘Rotterdam, did’st say?’

  ‘Aye, Your Majesty.’

  Rochester spoke gravely, for he understood the King’s sudden interest. Lucy Walter with Charles’s little son and her second child, a daughter, born to one of her later lovers, lived chiefly at this time in Rotterdam, passing at frequent intervals from one protector to the next.

  ‘That old crone, Mother Schik, young Alan Ogilvy called her, does she still attend the young whore? Have we news from that quarter?’

  ‘The little Duke is in good health, sire. On the word of one, Master Thomas Howard.’

  ‘We may trust his word? Thurloe is everywhere. There is a rumour that Willis, so far taken to be a reliable informant, may be in Thurloe’s pay.’

  Rochester sighed. All the rumours found their way to the King however hard his Court and his Councillors tried to keep them from him. They did not allow enough for his intelligence, nor for his easy power over his women, through whom rumour chiefly circulated. So now he twisted his friend back and forth, until at last he understood from him that Mistress Walter was likely to travel to England, to give her knowledge of her first lover’s affairs to Master Thurloe’s office, on purpose to soil his character and reputation still further. For this she would receive a considerable sum of money and, she hoped, an establishment and an income that would allow her to settle respectably in her native land of Wales.

  ‘So that is the slut’s purpose!’ Charles exclaimed at last. ‘And when will this grand plan come about? Who will escort the lady? Our somewhat clumsy Tom Howard, or that nimble serpent, George Leslie?’ He paused and then went on, ‘I would my young page, Alan, were less studious. Or less gifted in his chosen calling. He would make a more proper escort
for the mother of my eldest son in her visit to the usurper of my country.’

  Rochester made no direct answer to this. But he said earnestly, ‘It would be most undesirable, sire, that the Duke should go to England with his mother.’

  Charles stared. The idea alone of this seemed to astound him. But later, when he had dismissed Rochester with orders to find Tom Howard, he sent for the Chancellor, put the whole situation, as he now understood it, before him, and kept him discussing the probable outcome until Howard was brought in, escorted by Colonel Ogilvy.

  ‘The colonel commands the security of Your Majesty’s Court,’ Lord Clarendon explained, as he begged leave to retire. Not for the first time he regretted engaging Rochester to rouse the King’s interest in current affairs. Matters were taking far too active a turn.

  But the colonel received the information calmly. His son had made the whole matter plain to him when the boy had been assisted by Master Howard at Dordrecht to avoid that family ill-wisher and mischief-maker.

  ‘Did the lady come to hear of this?’ Charles asked Howard.

  ‘Not from me, Your Majesty. She imagined I had already left the house when she allowed Master Ogilvy to hide himself upon Master Leslie’s arrival.’

  The King’s face grew stiff with disgust at the recital of these unsavoury and vulgar antics. He remained silent for a few minutes and then said to Colonel Ogilvy, ‘We would have this matter dealt with discreetly, Colonel, and without delay. First, as to the lady. If she embroil herself with our enemies she must be their responsibility. She shall receive in future no sort of allowance or support from us. Howard, here, shall assist her to cross the Low Countries until she make her decision and it may be Thurloe’s man will be instructed to take her to his master. Time will show whom, she elects to serve. Next, as to our son. We will not claim him until this uncertain business is settled, but by God he is ours, acknowledged, claimed, entitled Duke of Monmouth. He will be raised as we desire and see fit. Therefore his whereabouts must be known at all times and his welfare attended to and his education in due course.’

  ‘Your Majesty’s orders shall be most strictly obeyed,’ Colonel Ogilvy said with a very low and formal bow.

  Charles’s voice trembled a little as he went on.

  ‘We will not suffer damage to our good name and reputation,’ he protested. ‘Do we not endure hardship enough in our public conditions, without being humiliated, insulted, grossly injured –’

  He glanced about the room, meeting blank faces and fugitive eyes. His self-pity was earning him no sympathy, that was plain. And why should it? A pox on them all, he swore to himself. Modest discretion was the chief quality a royal mistress should display upon every occasion. More particularly when her reign was over, and Lucy’s had been these many years.

  He turned again to Colonel Ogilvy.

  ‘Your son, Alan, sir,’ he said, in a firmer voice, ‘hath served us well and with a discretion beyond his years. We would not disturb his present studies nor injure him with the usurper’s brother-in-law, the Oxford scholar, Wilkins. But we might wish to employ him again in the matter of our son, should the boy’s mother seek to favour herself in England at our expense. We would have you inform him of our will in this respect, to hold himself in readiness.’

  ‘It shall be done, sire,’ the colonel promised.

  When he left the King he sought out Tom Howard, who had been making his report to the Chancellor upon affairs in the Low Countries. Howard had one distressing piece of news that he repeated to the colonel.

  ‘The man Silas is in Amsterdam again,’ he said. ‘He took ship back to Devon when the Ogilvys had found means to live and Captain Thomas’s life was no longer in danger, though he mends deuced slowly. He landed at Salcombe and found to his great distress that the small settlement of those self-styled Diggers was dispersed, two of the elders who gave his party shelter had been hanged, their boats taken from them, several of the young men conscripted into the ruling major-general’s forces. He tried to find those to whom he felt himself indebted, but his former friends warned him to give up any such quest, for fear of bringing them not help but final disaster. Silas has come back to the continent, raging and swearing revenge and promising to enlist the King in his plans to assassinate the tyrant’

  ‘He must not grieve His Majesty further,’ Colonel Ogilvy said. ‘He has been troubled too much of late and feels his helplessness most bitterly.’

  But Silas had already succeeded in his design to report to Charles himself. His story impressed Lord Clarendon as useful in taking the King’s mind from his private, affairs, so he arranged the necessary interview.

  His main object was successful, though Charles had no very clear idea of what this strange community had been, nor why it had wandered so far from its origins in Surrey. He understood well enough, however, that a harmless, poverty-stricken group of innocent, ignorant, unskilled folk of religious intention had simply tried to help other unfortunates and had been cruelly attacked for it. When Silas had been praised for his endeavours, thanked and sparingly rewarded, the King withdrew into a small room alone and there gave rein to his grief, frustration and anger in bitter tears.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Master Hugh Phillips, pacing the business office of his comfortable house near Aldersgate in the City of London, was holding a consultation with various of his commercial friends. They were all cloth makers or cloth merchants and most of them had done very well out of the Civil Wars, in which they had served the Parliament cause from political conviction as well as from legitimate self-interest.

  But times were changing. The end of heavy fighting had altered their markets. The growth of intense rivalry with the Dutch in all forms of trade abroad as well as a continuance of piracy with France and Spain made export hazardous, while the home market faded. With the Court abolished, the former wealthy aristocracy fled or in hiding, the gentry in their present poverty living and working to maintain their own lands, the demand for high-grade cloth in the modem designs was negligible.

  All this was disturbing to Master Phillips and his friends, though he was determined to find a way in the newly organized State to preserve a modest prosperity for himself and his family. But there was an added anxiety in his life and one that he understood as to the cause, but could see no way to overcome.

  His allegiance, his integrity, his devotion, to the Cause was, it seemed, once more in doubt. For some weeks now he had been aware of surveillance, not only of his trade, his warehouse, its contents, his workers at their looms, but as well of himself and his family, and particularly of his sad sister-in-law, Sarah Ogilvy, who should have been looking after her aged father, but had refused to stay any longer in Oxford in her neglected parental house.

  It had become clear to Hugh Phillips that the elaborate but deadly security exercised by the Secretary of State had reached out to himself again and the news of it had come to his associates, for they had now accused him, demanding explanations.

  ‘I have told you how I am placed with this sometime, but now malignant friend, George Leslie,’ he said, for he had indeed discussed this unfortunate connection of his wife’s family more than once in the past. He had proved then that George had lied. ‘I cannot prove outright that he is Thurloe’s spy, but I am made almost sure of it by this fresh action of his in the matter of Charles Stuart’s early whore.’

  ‘She that he had in the Low Countries as a mere boy and that bore him a son?’ asked one of the older merchants, looking very shocked.

  ‘The same. I am told this fellow Leslie hath brought her to England to lay claim to some moneys she swears the dissolute ex-monarch or some one of her later loves owes to her. But it is a ploy of Thurloe’s to cast further aspersion on the tarnished portrait we have here of Charles Stuart and his so-called Court in exile.’

  The faces round him, Hugh Phillips noticed, were less sympathetic than he hoped and expected so he fell silent, worried and disappointed by what he saw. One of the more intelligent and well i
nformed of the cloth designers said in a puzzled voice, ‘I do not altogether understand, friend Hugh, how you come to hear news so far outside your real interests. The question of George Leslie, now. We all know he is the eldest son of Sir Francis Leslie, that wholly admirable scholar, by his first wife, your respected lady’s aunt. But Mistress Cynthia has seen and heard little of him since your marriage to her destroyed his own hopes in that direction. So how comes it you are able to conclude so much about the fellow’s activities?’

  ‘Aye,’ put in another. ‘How come all these suspicions of Thurloe and spying and that notorious doxy with her Stuart bastard?’

  Master Phillips’s hesitation did nothing to damp the wild flaring of their several imaginations. On the contrary, when he said, with evident unwillingness, ‘There is another connection of the Ogilvy family, an offshoot of the sister’s branch, that mother of George Leslie, whose half-brother became Colonel Francis Ogilvy –’

  ‘Whose son is that young Alan Ogilvy we hear of and sometimes have seen –’

  ‘And is acquainted with old Mistress Leslie, widow of the late alderman, Angus Leslie –’

  The voices assailed him from every side, to drive him up and down his office, holding back the implications, driving off the barbed questions, but understanding quite clearly that Alan, that seemingly reasonable, unprejudiced lad, might be a worse, more cleverly disguised enemy than even George Leslie himself.

  ‘This young man comes from neutral soil,’ he insisted at last, to put a stop to the flood of questions and return to matters of business. ‘His soldier father has never served in this country, never appeared in any battle of the Civil War. Colonel Ogilvy has never lived here –’

  ‘His wife is titled and her father, Lord Aldborough, is a suspected recusant and a known royalist’

  ‘Young Alan studies in Oxford and is much thought of by the Warden of Wadham, the Lord Protector’s kinsman.’

  ‘And yet is to be seen right often in London at the Ogilvy house which Mistress Leslie cares for.’