Royal Marriage Secrets

by John Ashdown-Hill

  In witness whereof, I sett my hand at Whitehall, the sixth day of January, 1678. Charles R.54

  For the avoiding of any dispute which may happen in time to come concerning the possession of the Crowne, I do heere declare in the presence of Almighty God, that I never gave nor made any contract of marriage, nor was married to any woman whatsoever, but to my present wife Queene Caterine now liveing.

  Whitehall the 3 day of March 1678/79. Charles R.55

  The king’s hope that the question would cease to be discussed in the future was to prove utterly vain, despite his very explicit public denials. In point of fact Charles had already made it clear much earlier, that his son by Lucy was a bastard, for shortly after the Restoration he seems to have dallied briefly with the idea of legitimising him.56

  It is not surprising, therefore, to find that some popular ballards of the 1670s and 1680s castigated the Duke for not accepting his illegitimate status, and for failing to offer his father the filial obedience that was his due:

  Advice to the Duke of Monmouth.57

  Awake, vain man! ’tis time th’ Abuse to see;

  Awake, and guard thy heedless Loyalty

  From all the Snares are laid for it and thee.

  No longer let that busie juggling Crew

  (Who to their own mis-deeds entitle you,)

  Abuse your ear: Consider, Sir, the State

  Of our unhappy Isle, disturb’d of late

  With causeless jealousies, ungrounded Fear,

  Obstinate Faction and seditious Care;

  Gone quite distracted for Religion’s sake;

  And nothing: their hot brains can cooler make

  (So great’s the deprivation of their sense,)

  But the excluding of their lawful Prince:

  A Prince, in whose each Act is clearly shown

  That Heaven design’d him to adorn a Throne;

  Which (tho’ He scorns by Treason to pursue,)

  He ne’er will quit, if it become His due.

  Then lay betimes your mad Ambition down,

  Nor let the dazzling lustre of a Crown

  Bewitch your Thoughts; but think what mighty care

  Attend the Crowns that Lawful Princes wear;

  But when ill Title’s added to the weight,

  How insupportable’s the Load of State!

  Believe those working Brains your Name abuse;

  You only for their Property do use:

  And when they’r strong enough to stand alone,

  You, as an useless Thing, away’l be thrown.

  Think you, how dear you have already paid

  For the fine Projects your false Friends had laid.

  When by the Rabble’s fruitless zeal you lost

  Your Royal Father’s love, your growing Fortune crost:

  Say, was your Bargain, think ye, worth the cost?

  Remember what relation, Sir, you bear

  To Royal Charles; Subject and Son you are,

  Two names that strict Obedience does require;

  What Frenzy then does your rash Thoughts inspire,

  Thus by Disloyal Deeds to add more cares

  To them of the bright Burden that he wears?

  Why, with such eager speed hunt you a Crown

  You’re so unfit to wear, were it your own?

  With bows, and leers, and little Arts, you try

  A rude unthinking Tumult’s Love to buy:

  And he who stoops to do so mean a thing,

  Shows, He by Heaven was ne’re design’d for King.

  Would you be great, do things are great and brave,

  And scorn to be the Mobile’s dull Slave:58

  Tell the base Great Ones, and the shouting throng,

  You scorn a Crown worn in another’s wrong.

  Prove your high Birth by Deeds noble and good,

  But strive not to Legitimate your Blood.

  Chiefly because of the king’s explicit denials, historians have generally been inclined to dismiss the story of Lucy Walter’s marriage to Charles II as a fabrication. However, in this context we should not, perhaps, overlook the fact of the later official denials by George [IV] of his marriage to Maria Smythe (Fitzherbert) – which were, in fact, blatant lies motivated by self-interest – or the denials on the part of George V of any relationship with the daughter of Admiral Sir Michael Culme-Seymour – which, in spite of the legal rulings of 1911, seem open to certain questions (see below).

  The alleged marriage of Charles [II] to Lucy Walter has been widely seen as part of a propaganda ploy to establish the legitimacy of the Duke of Monmouth’s claim to the throne in the 1670s and 1680s. There is absolutely no doubt that attempts were made to use accounts of the marriage for that purpose and at that time. However, it also seems clear that the story of Lucy’s marriage to the king was not invented in the 1670s, or with the specific aim of supporting her son’s candidature for the throne. As we have seen, rumours of a marriage had apparently been current much earlier, in the 1650s.

  The fact that Lucy herself apparently claimed during her lifetime to be married to Charles, while it does not, in itself, authenticate the alleged marriage, does tend to refute the notion that the story was simply political propaganda invented by the Duke of Monmouth and his supporters. Indeed, it is probable that some of Monmouth’s adherents really believed in the marriage. Even Monmouth himself may genuinely have credited the story – or at least have been in doubt about the truth.

  At the same time, however, superficially it seems clear, both from circumstantial evidence and from the direct statements of King Charles II himself, that in reality this particular secret royal marriage was never anything more than a fantasy. Charles II greatly loved his son Monmouth, and did everything in his power to promote the young man’s career. In the light of this it seems incredible that the king would have deliberately bastardised his son if the latter had, in reality, been a legitimate heir to the throne.

  In fact this very point mystified Monmouth’s supporters in the 1680s. At that time a claim was circulating regarding the existence of a Black Box which allegedly contained documentary proof of a marriage between Charles II and Lucy Walter. One of Monmouth’s adherents, Robert Fergusson, a Presbyterian from Scotland, who would later draft the duke’s disastrous proclamation of his kingship, wrote a pamphlet about this Black Box. It was Fergusson’s contention that the story of the box was nothing more than a myth: a myth, moreover, which was designed to discredit the duke’s claims. As Fergusson put it to his unnamed correspondent:

  Your Lordship, whose conversation hath given you great advantages of knowing the reports of the World in relation to the Kings Marriage with the Duke of Monmonths Mother, can easily recollect that there was never so much as a suggestion given out, till of late, of any such thing as a Black Box … For they who judg’d it conducible to their present Interest to have the D. of M’s. Title to the Crown not only discredited but exposed, thought it necessary, instead of nakedly enquiring whether he be the Kings Legitimate or only Natural Son; to bring; on the Stage a circumstance no way annex d with it, supposing that this being found a Fable, the Marriage itself of the K. with the said Ds. Mother, would have undergone the same Censure.59

  In the same pamphlet, however, Fergusson went on to express his astonishment at Charles II’s conduct in relation to Monmouth in the following terms:

  A more unaccountable thing yet than all the former is, to see the King so far concern himself in having the Succession declared and determined. For it is not usual to find a Prince appear in favour of a Brother, when so many are in the Belief, that he hath a Legitimate Son of his own. Many Kings have endeavoured the advancement of their Bastard Children, to the exclusion of their nearest Relations of the right Blood; Only Charles the 2d will be the first on the File of History, that when nothing but his bare Word was needful to the settling his Dominions on his Son as Legitimately born. He alone, and in the face of strong suspitions to the contrary would insinuate him to be only his Natural Son.60

>   The dispute regarding the alleged marriage of Charles II and Lucy Walter did not end with the death of the key players in the drama. Arguments continued long after Monmouth’s attempt to establish himself as ‘King James II’ had failed, and long after his head had been brutally hacked from his body. Finally, therefore, we should briefly consider a much later story about the discovery of a record of Charles [II]’s marriage to Lucy Walter amongst the family papers of their descendants, the Dukes of Buccleuch. It was the fifth Duke who was said to have found the paper.61 After some reflection, it is reported that he decided to burn it, because ‘that might cause a lot of trouble’.62 While some writers have accepted that a document of some kind was found and destroyed, it is, of course, very difficult at this stage to verify the point beyond question. And even if a document was found, its subsequent destruction has unfortunately ensured that there is now not the remotest possibility of assessing its authenticity.

  However, it is extremely difficult to believe that whatever was found could have constituted clear and irrefutable proof of a marriage: for how would a copy of the marriage record of Charles and Lucy have entered the Buccleuch family archives, and at what date? The Duke of Monmouth saw his mother for the last time in 1658, when he was about 9 years old. It is highly unlikely that, if Lucy held a document proving her marriage to Charles, she would have surrendered this to her young son just at the point when Charles was about to remove the boy from her custody. Conversely, if such a paper had remained amongst Lucy’s documents until the time of her death in Paris, then how would it have reached her son or his descendants? Moreover, it seems incredible that, if Monmouth himself had ever possessed such a document, he would not have produced it, either during his father’s reign, or at that fatal moment of his attempted coup in 1685, when he landed at Lyme [Regis] in Dorset and allowed himself to be proclaimed and crowned ‘King James II’.

  We shall leave the last word on the question of Lucy Walter’s marriage, to the poet Dryden. While clearly admiring the Duke of Monmouth, Dryden nevertheless considered him illegitimate and categorised Lucy Walter not as Charles’ true wife, but merely as a royal ‘slave’ or ‘concubine’:

  Absalom and Achitophel (extract)

  In pious times, ere priestcraft did begin,

  Before polygamy was made a sin;

  When man on many multiplied his kind,

  Ere one to one was cursedly confined;

  When nature prompted, and no law denied,

  Promiscuous use of concubine and bride;

  Then Israel’s monarch63 after heaven’s own heart,

  His vigorous warmth did variously impart

  To wives and slaves; and, wide as his command,

  Scattered his Maker’s image through the land.

  Michal,64 of royal blood, the crown did wear,

  A soil ungrateful to the tiller’s care:

  Not so the rest; for several mothers bore

  To godlike David several sons before.

  But since like slaves his bed they did ascend,

  No true succession could their seed attend.

  Of all the numerous progeny was none

  So beautiful, so brave, as Absalon;65

  Whether inspired by some diviner lust,

  His father got him with a greater gust;

  Or that his conscious destiny made way,

  By manly beauty, to imperial sway.

  John Dryden, 1681

  14

  DR AND MRS THOMSON

  * * *

  Until recently in Scotland, there was a form of common law marriage called ‘marriage by cohabitation with habit and repute’.

  The theory behind this law was that if a man and woman cohabited as husband and wife in Scotland for sufficient time and were generally held and reputed to be husband and wife and were free to marry each other, they would be presumed to have consented to marry each other and if this presumption was not overturned, they would be considered to be legally married.

  This form of common law marriage has now been abolished by the Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006 which came into force on 4 May 2006.1

  * * *

  Monmouth’s failure to prove himself legitimate or make good his attempt to seize the Crown left his uncle James, Duke of York [James II], on the throne. But James’ Catholicism, coupled with his political insensitivity, combined to bring about his removal in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. From this point a split occurred in the royal family between the reigning (but in terms of blood-right, usurping) Protestant heirs, and the rightful (in terms of bloodline) but exiled Catholic heirs. It is the history of the exiled Catholic Stuarts that we shall follow first, because that presents us with our next example of a disputed royal marriage. Later we shall pick up the Protestant line of descent – which also has stories of disputed royal marriages.

  Superficially, based on the summary of Scottish marriage law given at the head of this chapter, the alleged marriage of ‘Charles III’ and Clementina, Countess of Albestroff, actually seems to be potentially one of the clearest disputed royal marriage cases which we have to consider. Nevertheless, this ‘marriage’ continues to be largely ignored and overlooked by historians, who still persist in describing Clementina as Charles’ mistress. The key, of course, as we sought to establish at the beginning of this book, is to look at the marriage law in force at the time when the disputed marriage is alleged to have been contracted. And in this particular case it is not the marriage laws of England, or of the United Kingdom, which concern us, but the marriage laws of Scotland, because Clementina was certainly Scottish, Charles was of Scottish ancestry and (at the time of their meeting) a Scottish (as well as English) prince, and the couple probably met and began their relationship in Scotland.

  The principal characters in this story are possibly not so well-known in Britain as some of the other royalty we have been studying, because of the revolution of 1688, and the consequent exile of the male line of the royal house of Stuart. In 1701 an important piece of legislation was enacted which fundamentally affected the order of succession to the throne in England, Scotland and Ireland. This was the Act of Settlement, which debarred from the throne all members of the royal family who were Catholic, or who married a Catholic. It was as a result of this act that ‘James III’, ‘Charles III’ and ‘Henry IX’ – who should have succeeded their father and grandfather, King James II – were excluded from the throne and forced to live in exile. In some ways the act was unfairly enforced, for although ‘Charles [III]’, or ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’, at one stage of his life renounced his Catholic faith and converted to Anglicanism, he did not thereby find himself reinstated in the order of succession. The name Bonnie Prince Charlie is probably familiar to many people, and may be the appellation by which the would-be Stuart king ‘Charles III’ is best remembered.

  Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Silvester Severino Maria Stuart, known to his father as ‘Carluccio’, was born at the Palazzo Muti in Rome on 31 December 1720. His father was James Francis Edward Stuart, who was recognised in several European countries as ‘James III and VIII’, rightful King of England and Scotland. Charles’ mother was Maria Clementina Sobieska, a Polish princess and the granddaughter of the late King John III of Poland.

  Charles’ father, ‘James III’, had been born on 10 June 1688 at St James’s Palace, the son of the reigning king, James II, by his second wife, Mary of Modena. The royal couple’s Catholicism was unpopular in late seventeenth-century Britain, and there had been a widespread hope that eventually James II would be succeeded by one of his two surviving Protestant daughters, Mary and Anne, the children of his first wife, Anne Hyde. Under these circumstances, the birth of Prince James had been perceived as a threat that James’ Catholicism would be perpetuated indefinitely. As a result, attempts were made to suggest that the newly born Prince was a changeling, substituted for the real royal baby (who had been stillborn) by means of a warming pan inserted in the queen’s bed. Within months of his birth Queen Mary, anxious about
her son’s safety, had taken him to France, leaving James II to try to defend his throne – unsuccessfully as things turned out.

  When James II was deposed in favour of his daughter and son-in-law/nephew, Mary II and William III, he joined the queen and the young prince in France, and it was there that the future ‘James III’ was brought up. When James II died in 1701, France, Spain, the Papal States and Modena recognised the 13-year-old prince as rightful King of England and Scotland, with the titles of ‘James III and VIII’.

  The accession in Britian of his half-sister, Queen Anne, might have appeared at first to offer some hope that eventually the young James might regain his thrones. Anne had no surviving children, and English Tories might perhaps have been willing to consider recognising the claims of ‘James III’ had he, in turn, been willing to renounce Catholicism. However, James absolutely refused to abandon his faith, and when Queen Anne died this led to the establishment in England of the Protestant Hanoverian dynasty.

  The new king, George I, was very eager to prevent the continuation of the exiled Catholic Stuart line, and when ‘James III’ was betrothed to the wealthy heiress, Princess Maria Clementina Sobieska of Poland, the Hanoverian sovereign tried hard to prevent their marriage. At his instigation the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI arrested Maria Clementina and imprisoned her in Innsbruck Castle. However, the intrepid princess escaped and fled to Bologna, where she was married by proxy to ‘James III’ (who was then in Spain). The royal couple were finally married in person on 3 September 1719, and their first son, Charles, was born just over a year later. Subsequently the couple also had a second son, Henry, later created Duke of York by his father, in the Jacobite peerage.