Dynasty 8: The Maiden: The Maiden (The Morland Dynasty)

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘A little patronage you know, never goes amiss. There I may be able to help. Through Prince Rupert and King James I learned a great deal about the navy, and Berkeley, the First Lord, is a friend of mine. But what are you going to do with Charles? It is time that boy went away from home. How old is he now?’

  ‘Eighteen.’

  ‘Then you must get him a career, or send him to University. I do not think that would be against your father’s wishes; he did as much for the others.’

  ‘I have spoken to him, and he wants to go to University. When he was ill, that time, with the lung fever, he got very interested in plants, you know—’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Annunciata said with a quiet smile.

  ‘Well, it seems a regular interest with him, and he says now that he would like to study botany at University.’

  ‘Oxford?’ Annunciata said with a frown. She was not aware that anyone studied botany at University – or, indeed, studied anything. But three years or so at Oxford were important to a young man in developing his taste and acquainting him with the right people amongst his contemporaries.

  ‘No, Edinburgh,’ Jemmy said. ‘Yes, I was surprised, too, but it seems that Charles has been corresponding with James Sherard, you know, who has the garden at Eltham that everyone talks about; and Sherard advised him to go to Edinburgh as they are much more advanced there, and much more serious minded.’

  ‘That I can believe’ Annunciata nodded. ‘But you know they are all presbyters and dissenters up there, very gloomy, savage people, devoted to their dreadful religions and with horrible manners.’

  ‘Charles really does want to go,’ Jemmy said, concealing a smile. ‘He is quite determined. And you know, great-grandmother, a good upbringing can withstand most influences.’

  ‘I hope you are right,’ she said. ‘But be sure to tell him to keep his religion secret, for I am sure they still hang Catholics north of the border. And tell him he must not on any account apostasize. If he feels at all tempted, he must come home at once, botany or no botany.’

  They had reached the yard and a servant had come forward to take Phoenix’s head.

  ‘I will tell him, great-grandmother,’ Jemmy said solemnly.

  Annunciata dismounted and straightened her dress, and said, ‘Come in, will you, and have some refreshment with me.’

  ‘Thank you, but I must go home. Now I am Master, there is always so much for me to do.’

  ‘What a poor liar you are. You have no more to do now than you had before Christmas. But be off with you. An old woman’s company, I know, holds no charms.’

  Jemmy smiled. ‘May I dine with you tomorrow?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said loftily. Jemmy grinned and saluted, and turned Auster away. Annunciata called after him, ‘George, what of George? We did not mention him. What will you do with George.’

  ‘To be frank, I do not think there is anything one can do with George,’ Jemmy replied. ‘But he is very little trouble. Most of the time I do not even remember he is in the house.’

  ‘That is exactly what I would expect of anyone with such a name,’ Annunciata said with some satisfaction, and turned away towards the house.

  Mary’s baby, born in June 1726, was another boy. The birthing was not so easy this time, and Mary was rather ill afterwards, too ill to care about naming the baby, which was thus left to Jemmy. He named it Henry, after the second child born the year before to King James and Queen Clementina in Rome. He did it mainly to please Annunciata, whom he asked to be Godmother to the child. During Mary’s illness, Marie-Louise took a great interest in the new baby, whom she insisted on pronouncing was named after ‘my brother, the Prince’. Jemmy was worried that Annunciata seemed to encourage Marie-Louise in this sort of talk, and that it would lead her into trouble. Since the Atterbury Plot, Jemmy was fairly sure that the Countess had not been involved in any more Jacobite action or correspondence, but she seemed to be making up for it by being more and more openly Jacobite at home, where there was no longer even any pretence at drinking the health of King George rather than King James. Those in power in London might have decided that the Countess of Chelmsford at the age of eighty-one was no longer a threat to Hanoverian government, but Jemmy was not so sure what their reaction would be if they learned that the Countess’s granddaughter was openly acknowledged as King James’s bastard daughter.

  The new baby flourished, and his older brother, now two, began his lessons with Father Andrews, and Mary recovered her health and strength and seemed delighted with both her children. Her relationship with Jemmy settled down into a distant politeness, although from habit they still did not share a bed, and his estate kept him so busy that he spent very little time in her company. As to his two children, his feelings were ambivalent towards them. He was glad that he had been provided with two legitimate heirs for Morland Place, and was happy to here them pronounced handsome, healthy children, but he felt completely detached from them, as if they were a neighbour’s children and not his own. He generally saw them once a day, when they were brought to him for his blessing, and he would ask Thomas if he had been a good boy, and peer obediently into Henry’s crumpled face to verify that his rash had disappeared, and as soon as they were taken away out of his sight, he forgot them as completely as if they did not exist.

  His fatherly interest was much more involved in Marie-Louise’s progress, and of the little leisure time he had, he spent a great deal, one way and another, at Shawes. His brothers were now all settled. Charles had gone to Edinburgh University, from which he sent regular letters speaking content. Robert continued to ingratiate himself within his profession, and at the end of 1726 he was able, by the favour of his bishop, to add another small benefice to his income, which pleased him so much he began to talk about looking for a wife.

  At the beginning of 1727 Edmund’s regiment was transferred to Hull, which meant that once again he was stationed in barracks, without the chance to make money from his men’s billeting. He began to absent himself a great deal from duty, and when, on finding him always about the house like a discontented ghost, Jemmy asked if he was on leave, Edmund merely shrugged and said no one would miss him. It was clear that he, at least, was going to need further help, and Jemmy began to think of trying to purchase a lieutenancy for him, if only to get him out of the house.

  Tom, on the other hand, evidently needed nothing more from Jemmy. He was made lieutenant in January 1727, and transferred into the Veronica, 75, flagship of the fleet that was to be sent to the Baltic as soon as the ice melted. Tom had done very well in his lieutenant’s examination, passing with the highest marks of his group, and the difference between his career and Edmund’s was sadly marked.

  In June 1727 the Elector, George Lewis, left for his usual summer visit to Hanover, and there died, suddenly and unexpectedly, in July. His son George and Princess Caroline were at Richmond Palace at the time, but though Jacobites all over the country pricked up their ears and held themselves in readiness, nothing happened. Within days George and Caroline were installed safely in London as King and Queen, with the faithful Walpole in close attendance.

  Karellie wrote to his mother that King James had set out at once for Lorraine, in readiness for the expected recall to his throne. After three weeks in Lorraine he was expelled, and travelled to Avignon, where he waited again, hoping for help from France.

  But only the year before the seventy-three-year-old Fleury, former tutor of the young King Louis, had succeeded as first minister, and Fleury favoured peace with England. Maurice, as always lounging innocently around the new King and Queen Caroline, reported that George had written to Fleury demanding that James should be forcibly expelled, backing it up with similar demands of the Pope, who owned Avignon. In October they agreed, and King James was forced to return to Rome, the only place in the world where a home would be provided for him.

  For Maurice, the change of kings meant only an increase of comfort, for now he did not have to divide his time between St James’s and L
eicester House, nor make himself agreeable to two men who were deadly enemies. George II continued and even increased the pension his father had paid Maurice. Although Maurice now had five children to support, he found himself better off than he had ever been, for there were no longer any Jacobite plots to draw the gold out of his breeches’ pockets. For George II’s coronation his friend Handel wrote an anthem, Zadok the Priest, and Maurice wrote a series of fanfares, for which both were amply rewarded; and in the same year Maurice had a new oratorio, Magdalena, performed at the Haymarket, and rewrote and revived on stage an early opera, The Martyrdom of St Apollonia, which took advantage of the upsurge of interest in Italian opera which followed the arrival of Buononcini in England.

  Annunciata had been indifferent to the death of her cousin George Lewis, whom she had always disliked, but she had not considered that he was affording her protection until, shortly after the accession of George II, she found herself heavily fined for hearing the Catholic Mass, and her priest, Father Renard, imprisoned for saying it. Annunciata, like her forefathers, was an Anglo-Catholic, and except in times of severe persecution was left alone; but Aliena had been brought up a Roman Catholic, and Father Renard, though the Mass he spoke was a modified version, was a Roman Catholic priest. For a time the situation looked very unpleasant and even dangerous, until Maurice was able to come to her aid, by persuading Princess Caroline to point out to her husband that George Lewis had protected Annunciata only out of a sense of duty to his mother, and that he had actually always disliked her intensely. Father Renard was released from prison, and life at Shawes returned to normal.

  In 1729 both Robert and Edmund got married. Robert’s choice fell on the daughter of the rector of a parish north of York, a man who had developed pluralism to a fine art, and was therefore able to supply a very acceptable dowry and the promise of patronage to the man who was willing to wed his rather plain daughter. Rachel Goode was two years older than Robert, and had long resigned herself to spinsterhood, so the fact that Robert had only two small livings troubled her not at all. She pronounced herself delighted with the shabby rectory that Robert was offering her as her home, and was even more delighted when she discovered that her husband spent far more time at Morland Place than at Shelmet Rectory. Robert was also hoping for some kind of interest from the Countess at Shawes, who despite her Jacobite leanings seemed to know everyone. Rachel was more than willing to ingratiate herself with the Countess, but being more clear-sighted and much less conceited than her husband, she soon acknowledged to herself that Robert had less chance of succeeding at Shawes than he had of becoming a cardinal before he was thirty. The Countess openly mocked Robert: a married priest, she said, was an abomination, and that was that. She was, however, oddly kind to Rachel, who could not at all account for it. It was in fact for a wholly inconsequential reason, which Annunciata only admitted to her priest: that Rachel, tall, bony-faced and with coarse gingery hair, reminded Annunciata guiltily of her long-lost daughter Arabella.

  Edmund was married towards the end of 1729 to one Augusta Pratt, the exceedingly pretty and empty-headed daughter of his colonel. Jemmy had bought Edmund a lieutenancy in ‘27, and part of Augusta’s dowry was the offer of a captaincy at an attractively reduced price, which Edmund assured Jemmy he could not afford to miss. It seemed plain to Jemmy that Edmund could not afford to support Augusta on a lieutenant’s income, and that if he did not want Edmund and his wife forever hanging around Morland Place, like Robert and his wife, he had better get him made a captain.

  Meanwhile, Jemmy himself was becoming an important figure in York society, not least because of his involvement with the races. He had for a long time been unhappy with the site of the annual races, Clifton Ings, for being so close to the river the course was often swampy, and sometimes even flooded, and in 1730, when Robert and Rachel were preparing to have their first child born at Morland Place, Jemmy got together with one or two other interested parties to look for a more suitable site. Just outside the city, alongside the great south road, was a large stretch of open land called Micklegate Stray which was common grazing land. Part of the Stray, more or less opposite St Edward’s School, was a bog called The Knavesmire, useless for any purposes other than cutting turves, and it was on this that their choice fell. It proved easy to drain, and was ready for the first race of that year’s race-week.

  Annunciata proposed holding the grand culminating ball at Shawes, which caused some unpleasantness, as several other ladies, including Mary, wanted to have the honour of holding the ball. The fact remained that Shawes had the biggest and best room available for such a social event, and that the long saloon at Morland Place was pitifully inadequate for an entertainment of any size.

  ‘What we need,’ Jemmy said to Annunciata, ‘is a set of public assembly rooms, so that we could avoid this sort of rivalry. The Bourchiers will be bound to say they ought to hold the ball, but the fact is that Shawes is much nearer. If we had proper assembly rooms in York, there would be no question about it.’

  ‘The answer, my dear, is simple,’ Annunciata said. ‘You must build some. The need has long been felt. Now you have the new race-course, you must have some proper rooms to go with it. Speak to them, Jemmy – strike while the iron is hot.’

  So Jemmy got together with the same men and published a broadsheet, proposing the matter and pointing out the advantages. There was an immediate and enthusiastic response, and subscriptions began pouring in. For choice of architect, Jemmy naturally applied to Annunciata, who said that since dear Van was dead, the commission must go to her friend Burlington. He had designed the new building for the Girls Charity School of St James, of which Annunciata was a trustee, having taken over the interest from her former brother-in-law Clovis. Lord Burlington had been mightily impressed by the Palladian style which he had seen in Italy on his grand tour, and he had published Palladio’s books in England and built himself a villa at Chiswick in the style. The design he drew up for the assembly rooms in York was based on Palladio’s Egyptian Hall, and was distinguished by no fewer than forty-eight Corinthian columns supporting the frieze. The clearing of the site began at once, and it was hoped to have the building ready in two years.

  In 1731 French troops occupied Lorraine under the command of those two old friends, the Marechal Duc de Berwick, and the Marechal Comte de Chelmsford, both aged sixty, the two tallest men in the French army. It was Berwick, the Bastard son of the late King James II of England, who wrote a few days later to inform the Countess Dowager at Shawes that her son had been killed in a minor skirmish at Commercy.

  Annunciata had survived a great many things in the course of her long life, including trial for treason, long exile, and outliving seven of her ten children, but Karellie’s death hit her hard, and she took to her bed in a state of shock and grief which Jemmy feared might kill her. He and Marie-Louise kept constant attendance on her, nursing her, talking to her, encouraging her to respond, but for many days she would only stare in misery at the wall, her hand clasped in Father Renard’s as if she expected to be snatched away at any moment. But on the day two letters with royal seals came, she began to revive. Jemmy read the letters to her, and saw the response in her dark eyes. One was from the King of France, young Louis XV, who wrote to commiserate over the death of the Comte, and to praise his long and loyal service to France. The other was from King James in Rome, who expressed his grief over the loss of one who was a dear friend as well as a loyal servant. He spoke of Karellie’s courage and love in leaving his homeland to follow King James II into exile, of the unswerving devotion he had shewn to the royal family ever since, and the many valuable services he had performed for them. He added that he was putting his whole household into mourning for the Earl, and would be holding a memorial service for him, at which he himself would speak the oration.

  Annunciata’s eye filled with tears as she listened – the first tears she had been able to shed since she heard of Karellie’s death. She nodded and said, ‘It is no more than he deserved.
Father Renard—’

  ‘Yes,’ said the priest, ‘I understand. You wish me to hold a memorial service here, at Shawes?’

  ‘More than that,’ Annunciata said. ‘I want you to bury him.’ She turned her head towards Jemmy, speaking with difficulty. ‘Jemmy, I want you to get him back. I want him brought home.’

  It proved a task of immense difficulty, and it needed not only all the influence of Maurice, who had now succeeded to the title, and Berwick himself, but of Lord Newcastle and Sir Robert Walpole as well. It was fortunate that Walpole had succeeded in negotiating a state of peace with the wily old French first minister Fleury, for had the two countries been in a state of hostility, the task might well have been hopeless. But Maurice and Queen Caroline worked upon King George, Newcastle upon Walpole, and Walpole and Berwick upon Fleury, and at last things were arranged. Karellie’s body was shipped to England in an immense lead-lined casket, brought round to Hull by sea, and from Hull to Shawes on a specially-converted wagon drawn by eight black horses, supplied by Jemmy from the Morland stud.

  The negotiations caused an outright breech between Lady Mary and Lady Dudley. As soon as he was convinced that Annunciata really meant what she said, Jemmy had realized that Newcastle’s help would be needed, and he had gone straight home to tackle Mary about it. He had begun by telling her that he wished to put his household into mourning for the Earl, but before Mary could speak, Lady Dudley, who was sitting with her as usual, sewing, broke in, in outraged tones.

  ‘Mourning? Deep mourning? Nonsense! The relationship is nothing, nothing at all. If Shawes is to go into mourning, that is entirely their concern, but that Morland Place should shew such deep respect for – for—’

  ‘For my great-uncle, madam,’ Jemmy reminded her, keeping his temper with difficulty. ‘The late Earl was my grandfather’s brother.’

  ‘Half-brother, as I understand it,’ Lady Dudley corrected him indignantly. ‘For such a connection, a slight mourning would be quite sufficient. But in the present case, even a slight mourning would be an insult to the King. A man who actively supported the Pretender, who was convicted of high treason, who took French nationality …’