by Jean Plaidy
‘It is not unnecessary, I know. Charles . . . they will do anything to separate us. I know full well it is not merely their hatred of me which makes them determined to ruin me. What do they care for me! Who am I? A poor woman of no importance . . . unloved . . . unwanted . . .’
‘I’ll not have you say that. Have I not cared for you?’
She shook her head sadly. ‘You have been kind to me. Are you not kind to all? Your dogs enjoy your kindness . . . The animals in your parks benefit from it. And . . . so do I. Nay! They do not hate me. I am unworthy of hate . . . unworthy of love. They hate your brother. They are his sworn enemies. They are determined he shall not rule. They are determined on a Protestant heir. Oh, this is nothing so simple as their hatred for one poor woman . . . It is a policy . . . a policy of state. But, for the sake of that policy, I shall be condemned to a life of misery. Charles, they will trample on my life as Buckingham trampled on Shrewsbury’s. Charles, save me . . . save me from my enemies.’
He lifted her in his arms and, sitting down, held her on his knee, while he wiped the tears from her face.
‘Come, Catherine,’ he murmured, as though she were a child. ‘Have done with weeping. You have no cause to weep. Od’s Fish! You have no cause whatsoever.’
‘You are gentle with me, But you listen to them.’
‘Listen to their roguery? I will not!’
‘Then Charles, you will not let them turn me away?’
‘I’ll not allow it.’
‘My lord Buckingham makes many plots, and this is no less likely to be carried out than others.’
‘Nay! You listen to gossip. You and I will not allow them to separate us. If they come to me with their tales, I shall dismiss them from the Court. And, moreover, we’ll foil them! They say we cannot have children. We’ll show them otherwise.’
He kissed her and she clung to him passionately.
He soothed her; he was adept at soothing hysterical women.
*
Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale laid their plans before the King.
‘Your Majesty, the Queen cannot bear children, and we fear that the country is growing restive because of this.’
‘The Queen is a young woman yet,’ murmured Charles.
‘There has been more than one miscarriage.’
‘’Tis true.’
‘If Her Majesty would be happy in a nunnery . . .’
‘She has told me that she would never be happy in a nunnery.’
Buckingham murmured in a low and wheedling voice: ‘If Your Majesty gave me permission, I would steal the Queen away and send her to a plantation, where she would be well and carefully looked after but never heard of more. The people could be told that she had left Your Majesty of her own free will, and you could divorce her for desertion.’
Charles looked into the cunning, handsome face before him, and said quietly and with that determination which he rarely used: ‘Have done and hold your tongue! If you imagine that I shall allow an innocent woman to suffer through no fault of her own, you are mistaken.’
Lauderdale began: ‘But Your Majesty would wish to take a new wife. Your Majesty could choose any beautiful princess.’
‘I am well satisfied with the ladies of my Court.’
‘But the heir . . .’
‘My wife is young yet; and hear me this: If she should fail to get children, that is no fault of hers. She is a good and virtuous Princess, and if you wish to keep my good graces you will no more mention this matter to me.’
The three statesmen were aghast.
They were determined that Catholic James should never have the throne. If he ever came to it, their ambitions would be at an end; moreover they foresaw a return to the tyranny of Bloody Mary.
Lauderdale then ventured: ‘The Duke of Monmouth is a brave and handsome gentleman. Your Majesty is justly proud of such a son.’
‘You speak truth there,’ said Charles.
‘Your Majesty must wish,’ said Ashley, ‘that he were your legitimate son. What joy for England – if you had married his mother!’
‘If you had known his mother you might not have thought so. I doubt whether the people of England would have accepted her as their Queen.’
‘She is dead,’ said Buckingham. ‘God rest her soul. And she gave Your Majesty a handsome boy.’
‘I am grateful to Lucy for that.’
‘If he were but your legitimate son, what a happy thing for England!’
Charles laughed lightly. He turned to Buckingham; he knew him to be a dangerous adventurer but, because he was the most amusing man at his Court, he could not resist his company.
‘Have done with making trouble with my brother,’ said Charles. ‘Try cultivating his friendship instead of arousing his enmity.’
‘Your Majesty, I live in terror of the Duke, your brother,’ said Buckingham. ‘He threatens my very life!’
‘I beg of you, no play-acting,’ said the King, and he began to laugh. ‘I confess that to see you riding in your coach protected by your seven musquetoons for fear my brother will take your life . . . is the funniest thing I have witnessed for a long time.’
‘I am grateful to have brought a little sunshine into Your Majesty’s life.’
‘George! Have done with your plotting and scheming. Let matters lie as they are. The Queen and I may yet get an heir. If not . . .’
‘The Duke of Monmouth is a worthy heir, Your Majesty.’
‘A bastard heir for England?’
‘We could discover that Your Majesty married his mother. Leave it to me, Sire. I will find a box in which are the marriage lines . . . She begged you, she implored you . . . for the sake of her virtue . . . and Your Majesty, being the man you always are with the ladies, could not find it in your heart to refuse her!’
The King laughed aloud but his eyes were shrewd. He knew they were speaking only half in jest.
He said abruptly: ‘Have done! Have done! The Queen stays married to me. I’ll not have the poor lady, who is the most virtuous in the land, plagued by you. As for Monmouth, I love the boy. I am proud of the boy. But he is a bastard and I’d see him hanged at Tyburn before I’d make him heir to my throne.’
The members of the Cabal retired, temporarily defeated. And the matter of the divorce was dropped, for another more serious one arose. This concerned the secret treaty of Dover in which the King, unknown to his people and the majority of his ministers, agreed to become a Catholic and lead the country to do the same; for such services to Catholic France he would become the pensioner of that country. The matter had given Charles much grave thought. He was in dire need of money; he was verging on bankruptcy. There were two ways of raising money; one was by taxing his subjects, as Cromwell had done to such extent that they could bear little more; and the other was by making promises to the King of France – which might never be kept – and allowing France to wipe out England’s deficit.
These matters occupied his mind continually and, when the sister whom he loved so tenderly came to England as the emissary of the King of France, when he realized how deeply she desired his signature to the treaty and all that his signature would mean to her, and how such a signature could make her unhappy life in France supportable through the love of Louis, he agreed – and the very few of his counsellors who were in the secret were of his opinion – that the best way out of England’s troubles was the signing of the treaty.
There were fetes and balls in honour of the King’s sister, and Catherine was moved to see how tender was the love between Charles and Henriette of Orléans.
How sad he was when he bade farewell to his sister; and how much sadder he would have been, could he have known that he would never see her face again, for only a few weeks after her return to France Henriette died suddenly. During the King’s grief at the loss of this beloved sister it was Catherine who brought him most comfort. She would sit with him, while he talked of Henriette, and of those rare occasions in her childhood when he had been able to enjoy her
company.
He wept, and Catherine wept with him; and she believed that in his unhappiness she meant more to him than any woman of his Court.
She thought then: This is a foretaste of the future.
When he is old, when he no longer feels the need to go hunting every pretty thing that flits across the scene – like a boy with a butterfly net – then he and I shall be together in close unity; and those will be the happiest days of my life, and perhaps of his.
*
Buckingham had not forgotten his threat to punish Barbara for not supporting him in the matter of the Queen’s divorce. His spies had informed him that Barbara had whispered to the Queen of his plots against her, even telling her that he had suggested kidnapping her and taking her to a plantation – an idea too fantastic to have been meant in true earnest. And, because she had been warned, the Queen had been able to pour out her tears and pleadings to the King who, softened by these, had determined to turn his thoughts from the idea of divorce.
It was infuriating. For Charles was certainly tired of his Queen; he had never been in love with her; she was a plain little woman and by no means a clever one. Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale had several fascinating and beautiful creatures with whom to tempt the King; but they had been defeated by the Queen’s tears which were the result of Barbara’s perfidy.
Barbara should be shown that she could not work against her kinsman in this way; it should be borne home to her that her position at Court was far from secure.
When Charles’s sister had visited him for the last time she had brought in her train a charming little Breton girl, named Louise de Kéroualle, who had taken Charles’s fancy immediately; and, after the death of Henriette, Louis had sent the girl to Charles’s Court, ostensibly to comfort him, but more likely to act as spy for France.
She was a very beautiful young girl, and it was clear that the King was ready to fall more deeply in love with her than was his custom.
This meant that Barbara would have a new and very serious rival; and the fact that the King had showered great honours on Barbara was an indication that he was expecting her to retire from Court. She had been created Baroness of Nonesuch Park, Countess of Surrey, and Duchess of Cleveland; he had given her £30,000 and a grant of plate from the jewel house and, as she was already receiving an annual income of £4,700 from the post office, she was being amply and very generously paid off; but Barbara, while accepting these gifts and honours, omitted to remove herself from the Court and continued to pretend that she occupied the place of maîtresse en titre.
The King was uneasy. He saw trouble ahead between the newcomer – who, some said, had not yet become his mistress – and Barbara, now known by the grand title of Duchess of Cleveland.
Barbara continued to flaunt her jewels and her person at Court functions; she was often seen at the playhouse wearing her jewels, worth more than £40,000, so that all other ladies, including the Queen and the Duchess of York, seemed far less splendid than she.
She gave up none of her lovers and had even taken a new one – one of the handsomest men about the Court. Barbara’s lovers were always handsome.
The latest was John, son of a Sir Winston Churchill, gentleman, of Devonshire. John Churchill had been a page to the Duke of York and had later received a commission as ensign in the Foot Guards. The Duke of York had shown him great favour, which might have been due to the fact that the Duke had cast a covetous eye on John’s sister, Arabella.
Barbara had seen the young man and had immediately desired him as her lover. Barbara handsomely paid those whose services she used in this way; she lavished rich presents upon her young men, and made the way to advancement easier for them. If they could please the Duchess of Cleveland, it was said, their fortunes might be made; and John Churchill was soon on the way to making his.
Buckingham watched the affair, and considered that, if he could arrange for the King to catch them flagrante delicto, he would by such a device supply the King with a good excuse for ridding himself of a woman who was growing irksome to His Majesty; he would, moreover, be doing the King a good turn while letting Barbara see that she was foolish to work against her cousin.
It was not difficult to discover when the two would be together. Barbara had never made any great secret of her love affairs; and one afternoon, when Buckingham knew that Barbara was entertaining the handsome soldier in her apartments, he begged the King to accompany him thither.
The King agreed to go, and together they made their way to Barbara’s apartment. When Buckingham saw the consternation of her women, he guessed that he had come at the right moment. Mrs Sarah made excuses to delay them, saying that she would go to warn her mistress of their arrival, but the Duke pushed her aside and, throwing open the door of Barbara’s bedchamber, could not repress a triumphant laugh.
Barbara was in bed, pulling the clothes about her; John Churchill, hearing the commotion without, had managed to scramble into a few of his more essential garments.
Taking one look at the Duke, and seeing the King behind him, the young lover could think of only one thing: escape.
He forthwith ran to the window and leaped out of it. The Duke of Buckingham burst into uproarious laughter; Barbara picked up an ebony-handled brush which lay on a table beside the bed and threw it at her cousin, while the King, striding to the window, called out after the departing figure of Churchill: ‘Have no fear, Master Churchill. I hold nothing against you. I know you do it for your bread!’
Barbara, furious at the insulting suggestion that she now found it necessary to pay her lovers, and mad with rage against the Duke, found herself for once without words to express her anger and indignation.
Nor did the King give her time to recover her calm. He strode out of the room. Only Buckingham turned to give a brief imitation of John Churchill, surprised and leaping to safety.
Barbara’s rage was boundless and for some hours her servants dared not approach her.
She turned and pummelled her pillows, while Mrs Sarah wondered which of those men she would have preferred to attack: the Duke for his perfidy in exposing her thus; John Churchill for running away; or the King for his cool and careless indifference to what lovers she might take.
It was clear that the King had ceased to regard her as his mistress; and very shortly afterwards her name failed to appear on the list of Ladies of the Queen’s Bedchamber. Furthermore, when her daughter. Barbara was born, and the girl was seen to bear a strong resemblance to John Churchill, the King flatly refused to acknowledge her as his.
Barbara’s day was over.
SEVEN
IT WAS SIXTEEN YEARS since Catherine had come to England, and in those years, during which she had lived through many fears, a little happiness and much heartbreak, she had never ceased to love her husband and to hope that one day he would turn, from those brilliant women who so enchanted him, to the plain little wife who adored him.
She had little hope now of bearing a child; and she knew that there were many of her husband’s most important ministers who sought to ruin her. If they could have brought some charge against her, how readily would they have done so! But it seemed that, in the profligate Court, there was one virtuous woman, and she was the Queen. There was one matter which they held against her, and this was her religion. There was a growing feeling in the country against Papists and, whenever there was any trouble in this connexion, there was always someone to remind the company that the Queen was a Papist.
Since the Duke of York had announced his conversion to the Catholic Faith there had been a strong and growing faction working against him, and these men never ceased to urge the King to rid himself of the Queen.
The chief of these was Ashley, who had now become Lord Shaftesbury. His principal enemy was the Duke of York, and his enmity towards him had increased since the Duke’s marriage, on the death of Anne Hyde, to the Catholic Princess of Modena. The one aim of Shaftesbury’s party was to prevent the Duke’s becoming King and, since the Queen was barren,
they could only hope to do this either through divorce or, as the only other alternative, by the acknowledgement of Monmouth as the heir to the throne.
They were certain that, but for the King’s soft-heartedness, they could achieve this, and they had never ceased, over the last ten years, to work for it.
Catherine must therefore live in continual dread that one day they would succeed in their plans.
She was no longer plagued by Barbara, for Barbara was out of favour. It was true that the King had never dismissed her from the Court. It was beyond his nature to do that. Some said that he feared Barbara’s threat to print his letters, but what harm would such an act do to him? All knew of his infatuation for her; all knew that she had behaved abominably to him and had not even pretended to be faithful. No, Catherine often thought, it is his sheer kindness of heart and his desire to live easily and comfortably without troublesome quarrels which have made him give no direct rebuff to Barbara, just as they compel him to keep me as his wife. To rid himself of either of us would make trouble. Therefore he says: Let Barbara stay at Court; let Catherine remain my wife. What matters it? I have many charming companions with whom to beguile my hours.
So that woman, Louise de Kéroualle, who had taken Barbara’s place, was the Queen of England in all but name. It was she – now Duchess of Portsmouth – who lived as the Queen in Whitehall while Catherine retired to the Dower Palace of Somerset House.
She made excuses for him. He was half French; his mistress wholly so; and in France the King’s mistress had invariably ruled in place of the King’s wife.
It was true that his neglect of her, and the fact that – now that he no longer hoped that she would give him a child – he rarely visited her, meant that the hopes of her enemies were high; and they continued most energetically to plot for a divorce.
Barbara had gone to France, where she had indulged in a love affair with Ralph Montague, the King’s ambassador. But now it seemed he had offended her and she was writing frequently to the King complaining of her ex-lover’s conduct of English affairs.