Baby Mary’s first month of life turns out to be more than usually eventful for her kin, and for one cousin especially. As a gesture of goodwill towards her grandfather the King, her uncle Orange has sent her cousin Monmouth away from The Hague. The Duke has travelled as far as Amsterdam, where he has been meeting with other Rye House exiles, gathering sufficient men, money and arms to make an attempt on his late father’s Crown.
On 11th June, when Mary is nine days old, he lands at Lyme. As his little cousin sleeps in the arms of her wet-nurse, he marches to the Market Place, where he has a proclamation read, declaring himself Head and Captain-General of the Protestant Forces of the Kingdom, and claiming that, as the late King’s son born in lawful wedlock, he has a legitimate and legal right to the Crown. The so-called King James is a usurper, who started the Great Fire of London and, more recently, murdered his own brother.
Lady Churchill’s father-in-law is the Member of Parliament for Lyme, so it falls to him and his son, her husband, to inform the King. Within a day, Sarah’s John is marching out of London at the head of eight troops of horse guards and dragoons and five companies of foot, leaving his Lady to fret at home at St Albans, and Anne at the Cockpit to pray for his success and safety. Lord Feversham may be Commander-in-Chief over him, but nobody doubts who is truly in charge: what Lord Churchill lacks in birth, he more than makes up for in his native ability. He is like his wife in that respect.
For a couple of weeks, as Mary suckles and sleeps and soils her swaddling, the Lords Feversham and Churchill follow the Duke of Monmouth about the West Country, shadowing him as he gathers a ragtag army of hard-up clothiers, unemployed miners and disenchanted militiamen. On 27th June, the day when Anne is called into the nursery to witness what is reckoned her daughter’s first smile – a grimace which the baby’s governess Mrs Berkeley dismisses as wind – the two armies meet at Norton St Philip. The next day, Anne hears the news of an indecisive battle, alarms herself with thoughts of another Civil War to come. Her private devotions double in the strength of their feeling, and treble in their length. When her confinement ends, and she goes to the Chapel to be churched and to see the baby christened, she asks that prayers be said for the King’s army, for their excellent brave commanders.
Either Anne’s prayers are heard, or they were superfluous, because Monmouth’s troops – sceptical of their chances of victory perhaps, or despairing of the good dinner for which they joined – have already begun to desert him. There is no Civil War, just one brief, muddy rout at Sedgemoor, and the rising is over. Mrs Berkeley writes to Sarah to tell her the glad news; Anne writes to tell her that although she has no further news to add, Sarah must be so just to her as to believe that neither of her other friends who write can be half as glad of anything good that happens to her as she is, that although maybe they can express themselves better, nobody’s heart she is sure is more sincere than hers.