The Stuarts in 100 Facts

by Andrea Zuvich

  The next big change in English architecture began during the reign of Charles I, and this is often referred to as the English Palladian style. Andrea Palladio was a Venetian architect whose innovative designs were met with much admiration by fellow architects. One of these admirers was Inigo Jones, who designed the Queen’s House in Greenwich and the Banqueting House in Whitehall. Kinross House in Scotland was built in 1685–6 and designed by Sir William Bruce in a neoclassical Palladian style. Bruce had previously been commissioned by King Charles II in the 1670s to rebuild the sixteenth-century Palace of Holyroodhouse near Edinburgh.

  Jacobean architecture is known for a variety of features, including interestingly shaped gables and balustraded parapets. Ham House is a spectacular Stuart-era house in the leafy village of Ham, in Greater London. It was built in 1610 and went through some alterations in the 1630s, but is a remarkably very well-preserved example of Stuart architecture. This house was leased to William Murray, Charles I’s friend who once was his whipping boy. This stately home is often used in films, including the 2000 television version of Lorna Doone and 2009’s The Young Victoria.

  Baroque architecture was generally more flamboyant than the styles previously mentioned. This style utilised decorative cornicing among other things, to present an impressive aesthetic. Perhaps the most astounding of all English Baroque buildings is Blenheim Palace, which was built for John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, in honour of his great military achievement at the Battle of Blenheim of 1704. Sarah Churchill, his wife, was so demanding that she caused the architect John Vanbrugh to quit! Vanbrugh’s assistant Hawksmoor ended up completing the job alone. Chatsworth House in Derbyshire is another example of English Baroque architecture. The Baroque style was added to the existing Tudor building in 1696 under architect William Talman and for William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Devonshire.

  Castle Howard in North Yorkshire belongs to that small but elite group of massive English Baroque architecture. Most famously used as the house in both television and film adaptations of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited and the 1995 BBC mini-series The Buccaneers, this family home possesses a stunning dome and an elegant façade. Unfortunately, Castle Howard was badly damaged in a fire in 1940. The building was commissioned in 1699 by Charles Howard, 3rd Earl of Carlisle, and designed by Sir John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor.

  In Northumberland, England, Sir John Vanbrugh designed Seaton Delaval Hall, again in the English Baroque style, in 1718. Hawksmoor’s c. 1700 design for Easton Neston in Northamptonshire was another fine example of English Baroque architecture. Boughton House, also in Northamptonshire, has several features from the 1690s. English Baroque didn’t last long, but there are plenty of examples to enjoy throughout the country.

  60. LOUIS XIV OF FRANCE BANKROLLED CHARLES II OF ENGLAND

  After nearly a decade on the throne, with greedy mistresses and the costliness of the second Anglo-Dutch war, King Charles II had a serious cash flow problem; like his father before him, he did not take kindly to having his purse restricted by Parliament. So when King Louis XIV of France offered a deal to him, he took it, although it was a very risky deal. Charles II of England and Louis XIV of France were first cousins, as Charles’s mother and Louis’s father were siblings. Family ties did not necessarily mean peace between their two countries, but wily Charles had a knack for diplomacy.

  In return for the large amount of money (£200,000 per year and 6,000 troops) Louis was giving him, Charles would declare himself a Catholic and bring the Three Kingdoms under his power back to the Roman Catholic Church. Then, probably most importantly for Louis, Charles would have his military join together with that of France to crush the Dutch Republic once and for all. Never mind the fact that Charles was already in a Triple Alliance with the Dutch Republic and Sweden. It didn’t matter that Charles’s nephew, William of Orange, was not yet twenty years old and already prepared to die for his nation; Louis and Charles would keep him there in the semblance of a ruler. The idea was that they would rule through him. As history would eventually prove, both Charles and Louis completely underestimated the young Dutchman.

  Louis sent his sister-in-law and Charles’s youngest sister, Minette, over to take care of the treaty negotiations. The Treaty was signed in 1670, and only a handful of people knew about the secret clause. If word had got out of King Charles’s commitment to bringing Catholicism back to England, there would no doubt have been a violent and terrible reaction of the blood-on-the-streets kind. The anti-Catholic hysteria, which came as a result of the fabricated Oates/Tonge Popish Plot later in the decade, proved just how explosive the Catholic issue was. Charles attempted to bring about a more religiously tolerant nation by introducing the second Declaration of Indulgence in 1672, but this proved unpopular. This hostility towards Catholics led to the Test Act of 1673, in which all government officials had to denounce transubstantiation – something Catholics would not be able to do, and so was used to exclude Catholics from office. Charles’s brother, James, Duke of York, was a Catholic and so resigned his position in order to avoid having to take the oath.

  Charles had always had a sort of soft spot for Catholics, which was evident at certain times in his reign. After all, his mother Henrietta Maria had been a devout Catholic, and his brother James was as well. On Charles’s deathbed in 1685, he converted to Catholicism, thus keeping his word to Louis but also perhaps finally being true to his true beliefs.

  61. THE STUART PERIOD HAD SOME TRULY HEAVY-HANDED LAWS

  For those who like law and order, the Stuart period had some strong measures to prevent and punish criminal behaviour. Depending on the crime, punishment was expected to include one or a mix of the following: time in the pillory (a pillory was similar to the stocks and used to inflict public humiliation on the offender), flogging/whipping, a stint in prison, transportation to the New World colonies or the death penalty. Debt could land you in a debtor’s prison, such as the Marshalsea in Southwark or the Fleet. Thieves were usually hanged. Murder could land you in Newgate Prison and then executed. Prisons at this time were largely dreadful, pestilence-riddled places.

  Traitors were subjected to the full force of the law. Usually following some kind of torture, the criminal would then be drawn on a sled to the place of execution, where he’d be hanged until he passed out. Then he would be awakened for the horrifically painful ordeal of having his entrails burnt in front of him, his genitals and then his head cut off. Traitors’ heads would be mounted on poles or spikes in grim warning to others of the fate that would befall them too should they embark on a treacherous path.

  Wealthy heiresses were often targeted for abduction and forced marriage and so the law frowned upon anyone who attempted such a thing. Major party-boy John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, had his eye on the young and very wealthy heiress Elizabeth Malet. He was on the right track to marrying her legitimately, but he decided to abduct her anyway in 1665. He messed up and things didn’t go according to plan. Soon enough he found himself in serious trouble, and was thrown into the Tower of London. He eventually did get to marry Elizabeth, but not before sending grovelling apologies to King Charles II for his bad behaviour. He got off lightly. Some would have fared much worse.

  There were some harsh punishments for seditious libel. William Prynne was an outspoken critic of Archbishop William Laud and of women performing, as in masques. He was pilloried, his ears cut off, and his cheeks branded with a hot iron. This kind of mutilation was common for his crime. Fast-forward to October 1648, when the House of Commons heard a possible case for reparations for Prynne and the two other men who had been pilloried with him for their seditious writings, Burton and Foxley.

  Not all heavy-handed laws involved punishing criminals or political and religious dissenters. In 1695/6, ‘an Act for granting to His Majesty severall Rates or Duties upon Houses for making good the Deficiency of the clipped Money’ was passed. Among the various clauses of this law included the infamous Window Tax – popularly referred to as ‘Dayl
ight Robbery’ by many a London tour guide. In order to avoid paying high taxes, many people opted to brick up their windows, and if you look closely at architecture throughout London, you’ll still be able to see this.

  62. MARY, PRINCESS ROYAL, HAD A MOTHER-IN-LAW FROM HELL

  Her name was Amalia van Solms-Braunfels. She was the formidable mother of young Mary’s husband, William II of Orange, and the wife of Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange. Mary Stuart, Princess Royal of England, was very young (twelve) when she moved away from her parents, siblings, and country to the Dutch Republic. Her one ally would be her new husband, William. But this would change a few years later when William, aged twenty-four, contracted smallpox and died. Nineteen-year-old Mary was heavily pregnant at the time of her husband’s death, and she gave birth to a son only a week later. Mary had done well by giving birth to the heir to the House of Orange-Nassau, and she chose to name the boy Charles, after her father and eldest brother.

  Amalia, however, conscious of the tradition of the family, denied Mary this and the boy was named Willem Hendrik, (William Henry). An already-devastated Mary was understandably aggrieved by this and refused to attend her son’s christening. Her only ally was her aunt Elizabeth of Bohemia. Amalia took the reins and young William was given a thorough, strict education and upbringing. His mother, upon the news of her brother’s restoration to the throne of England, joyously left the Dutch Republic to join in the festivities. While in London she, like her husband a decade before her, contracted smallpox and died, aged only twenty-nine. Her ten-year-old son was left an orphan and made a Child of State. Domineering Amalia continued to play a strong role in his life until her death in 1675.

  63. A SOVEREIGN’S CHOICE OF SPOUSE COULD MAKE OR BREAK THEM

  When Mary Queen of Scots married Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, many were left shaking their heads in disbelief. He excelled in all things superficial. Save for the birth of their only child and heir, James, the marriage was an unmitigated disaster. Darnley was an abusive drunkard whose general depravity led to his contracting syphilis. In 1567, the twenty-one-year-old was murdered and a huge explosion at his lodgings was meant to cover it up. Mary and Henry’s son, James, grew up to be an awkward fellow. In 1589, he married Anne of Denmark, who was a frivolous spendthrift of a woman and a Catholic. Ultimately, she had little negative effect.

  Charles I, when still Prince of Wales, had made a daring journey to Spain to woo the Spanish Infanta but that proved a disaster. Instead, he ended up marrying Henri IV of France’s daughter, Henrietta Maria. Henrietta Maria was a hugely unpopular choice, for not only was she French, but she was a devout Catholic, and she didn’t know her place (which, at that time, meant not to meddle in politics). Despite the initial frostiness of their relationship, Henrietta Maria eventually became a devoted wife to Charles. During the civil war, she was separated from her husband, who was beheaded in 1649. Twenty years later, Henrietta Maria died in 1669 from what is believed to have been an accidental overdose of the opiates she had been taking as painkillers.

  Catherine of Braganza, Infanta of Portugal, was the doe-eyed, long-suffering consort of Charles II. The worst part about her was that she was, again, a Catholic. The good things were that she was young, presumably fecund, and extremely wealthy. For a king perpetually running low on funds, she seemed a perfect candidate. As a result of Portugal’s mighty colonial conquest and trading routs, Catherine’s dowry was impressive: Bombay in India, the North African port of Tangiers, several hundred thousand pounds in money, and more. Her personal charms were not sufficient to keep Charles faithful, and she proved unable to give him an heir, but when it came down to the crunch and he had pressure to divorce her, he refused.

  When Anne Hyde died from breast cancer in 1671, James, Duke of York spent little time as a widower. Most people had frowned on his marriage to Anne because she was a commoner, and common sense would have told him to look for a protestant princess. He soon began looking for his next duchess, but unfortunately for him, he once again chose a wholly unsuitable bride. Mary of Modena was an Italian princess, and a devout Catholic – so devout, in fact, that she had been planning on entering a nunnery. James was a Catholic himself, and for him to have chosen a Catholic bride was an antagonistic move on his part, especially as the country was increasingly Protestant. It would have been in his best interest to marry an English Protestant of high birth, and his marriage to Mary of Modena certainly did him no favours.

  64. INSATIABLE ROYAL MISTRESS BARBARA PALMER COURTED TROUBLE

  Barbara Palmer, née Villiers, Lady Castlemaine, was the most notorious of all of Charles II’s mistresses; she had a volatile temper, meddled in politics, and was sexually voracious. Married to John Palmer, she became Charles’s mistress in the course of his exile during the time of the English Republic. Barbara was considered extremely beautiful, and her many portraits suggest as much. One would imagine that being mistress to a highly sexed monarch would be enough to satiate a lady, but that was not the case with Barbara Palmer. She was a volatile vixen and in one particularly violent episode, she threatened to bash her baby’s skull against the floor if Charles did not do what she wanted. John Evelyn referred to her as the ‘curse of the nation’; Samuel Pepys, however, was so taken by her substantial physical charms that he didn’t seem to mind her behaviour. Barbara infamously posed for Peter Lely as the Virgin Mary, with one of her illegitimate sons as the Baby Jesus. Barbara had a knack for courting trouble her whole life long.

  Charles II’s strong libido was not enough to satisfy Barbara, and she took several other lovers to her bed – including her cousin, John Churchill (who later became the 1st Duke of Marlborough). Charles even caught the two in Barbara’s bedchamber. As an older woman, she married a much-younger rake, Robert Fielding, who spent a lot of her money. To make matters worse, it transpired that Fielding was already married, thus making their union bigamous! Barbara died in 1709, at the age of sixty-three.

  65. STUART-ERA MUSIC COULD BE POLITICAL, BUT WAS ALWAYS BEAUTIFUL

  Orlando Gibbons, William Byrd, and Henry Lawes were three of the most popular early Stuart composers. Music throughout the Stuart era could be political, often based on propaganda, but this never detracted from the beauty of the pieces themselves. The early part of the seventeenth century retained some musical features typical of the Late Renaissance, including polyphony and a cappella. Some composers straddled the Renaissance and the Baroque, including Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi.

  Thomas Tomkins’s These Distracted Times is quite possibly the most perfect music to convey the extremely tumultuous period of the English Civil Wars. There is an inherent sadness to the music that encompasses suffering and loss. Tompkins composed music to go with the lines from II Samuel, 18:33 (KJV): ‘When David heard that Absalom was slain he went up into his chamber over the gate and wept, my son, my son, O Absalom my son, would God I had died for thee!’ When one considers how many sons were killed during the civil war, this piece is even more moving.

  A military victory was a cause for some music. One year after the Duke of Monmouth was executed, following the disastrous Monmouth’s Rebellion in 1685, King James II commissioned the Italian Baroque composer Giovanni Battista Vitali to compose an oratorio. This piece was entitled L’ambitione debellata ovvero La Caduta di Monmouth, or Ambition eradicated or The Fall of Monmouth. During the Glorious Revolution, the popular tune of Lilliburlero became a propaganda piece for the Williamites.

  Music didn’t only express political beliefs and victories, of course, but the very personal human emotions of lust, sorrow, joy and love. John Dowland’s ‘Come again, sweet love doth now invite’ is quite an erotic song. We mustn’t forget that most of the stately music written for kings and queens often went unheard by most people. For your average Stuart, music was enjoyed in local taverns and public areas where folksongs were sung. Some of these songs were quite bawdy (‘Pox on you for a fop’) and often told tales (‘The Countryman’s Joy’) or gave advice (‘Good Advice To Ba
chelors, How To Court & Obtain A Young Lass’).

  Sometimes a composer’s music could be happier than the composer himself. Jeremiah Clarke, for instance, was an English Baroque composer who had one of the most tragic lives of his contemporaries. Clarke’s most celebrated piece is ‘March for the Prince of Denmark’ (written for Queen Anne’s husband, George, Prince of Denmark), often referred to as ‘Trumpet Voluntary’, and is often used in happy occasions – namely for weddings. Clarke sadly never married, and it is believed by some historians that he committed suicide stemmed from an unrequited love for a lady. He shot himself in the head in a churchyard and died on 1 December 1707.

  66. ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND WERE NOT OFFICIALLY UNITED UNTIL 1707

  Scotland and England have not had the best of histories. For hundreds of years, the two countries were enemies. Before that, the Romans thought fit to put up a wall – Hadrian’s Wall – to divide England from Scotland. The union between England and Scotland has been a source of considerable controversy ever since it began in the Stuart era. It is a highly contentious issue even now and the source of many a heated debate. When the Scottish King James VI became King of England in 1603, it wasn’t until the Acts of Union in 1707, under his great-granddaughter Queen Anne, that the union became official. Indeed, the Acts were possibly the most important event of Anne’s reign, ‘That the Two Kingdoms of Scotland and England shall upon the first day of May next ensuing the date hereof and forever after be United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain’.