CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Exclusion Crisis
‘At my return [to London] I found men’s minds more disturbed that ever I remember them to have been’
Algernon Sidney, September 1679
THE ATTEMPT BY Parliament to change the succession to the English Crown during the years 1679–81 is known as the Exclusion Crisis, though some historians have questioned the accuracy of this description.1 The attempt to exclude the duke of York as Charles II’s rightful heir and replace him with James, duke of Monmouth was only one aspect of a much wider crisis of confidence in the Restoration settlement, which encompassed many of the underlying issues that had led to civil war in 1642. Profoundly different beliefs on how government should be conducted, the relationship between the king and Parliament, and the management of religious differences had lain simmering not far below the surface in the first two decades of Charles II’s reign. His approach to managing these tensions was largely a sleight of hand – something that he was good at – using ministers to shield him from popular discontent and Louis XIV to prop up his finances, since Parliament would never vote him the monies he needed. The one thing that would not go away, that grew ever more problematic as the years went by, was his lack of a legitimate heir of his own body. There was no precedent for a bastard ascending the throne, no matter how personable and loved by his father. Henry VIII had changed the course of English history in his desperate search for a legitimate male heir. Charles II had seven surviving sons by five different mistresses. Was it time to rethink the entire concept of monarchical succession?
The duke of Monmouth was the king’s first child and eldest son by the long-dead Lucy Walter. He had much of her looks and many of her weaknesses. Monmouth was now thirty years old, handsome, experienced as a soldier, married, albeit unhappily, to a rich heiress and, most significantly, a Protestant. He also had the ability of courting popularity at a time of political upheaval, when those who either did not know or did not care about his largely dissipated youth, expensive lifestyle and frequently poor judgement could be easily swayed by his public image. He would be whatever they wanted him to be. Before the fall of Danby (deserted by Louise de Kéroualle, who had grown weary of his implacable opposition to a French alliance) in 1678, Monmouth seems not to have considered himself as a political player at all. But others, most notably the earl of Shaftesbury, once a king’s man but now the leader of the opposition, were keen to profit from the political vacuum Danby left behind. They wished to encourage in Monmouth the idea that his destiny might be taking a different turn. The young man already knew that his uncle, the duke of York, Charles II’s legal heir, had intervened to have his situation spelled out in his latest military commission, when Monmouth was described as the king’s ‘natural son’. It was an early warning shot in what would become an increasingly vicious battle, as the complex family ties of the Stuarts began to unravel.
The duke of York’s conversion to Catholicism was tacitly acknowledged when he was compelled to resign the post of lord high admiral in 1673 because he would not take the Test Act. Publicly, he continued to prevaricate until 1676, despite having married a Catholic second wife. His was a personal journey a long time in the making. Like all his siblings except Henriette Anne, who was raised in the Catholic court of Louis XIV, James had been brought up as a Protestant. He was certainly not close to his mother, Henrietta Maria, but he was well aware of her devotion to the Catholic religion. While in exile, he came to respect the Catholics he knew, and he had served as a soldier of fortune with two Catholic powers, France and Spain, but at the time of the Restoration he was still outwardly conforming to the Church of England. By the late 1660s, both James and his first wife, Anne Hyde, were privately worshipping as Catholics. Charles II, aware of the political fallout that would ensue if his heir and sister-in-law made public their conversion, urged complete silence on the subject. James, though as unfaithful a husband as his brother, was greatly distressed by Anne’s painful death in 1671 from breast cancer, her condition apparently exacerbated by an eighth pregnancy. He had been with her in the final hours of her life and felt the disapproval of her brothers and domestic servants. The experience left its mark on him and deepened his faith. James would never be swayed in his commitment to Catholicism from this time. He had found a certainty that would underpin him for the rest of his life. Yet James’s very rigidity presented the king with a seemingly intractable problem. Public opinion, as the Popish Plot so clearly demonstrated, was dangerously volatile, and popery was an emotive term. It could readily be exploited by government opponents. Opinions were hardening and the emergence of different political groupings, representing the more conservative Court and the increasingly radical Country interests, would soon transform English politics by the creation of two distinct parties, the Whigs and the Tories.
Between 1679 and 1681 there were three attempts to introduce bills into Parliament that would exclude the Catholic duke of York from the succession. Charles II decided that it would be better if his brother were removed from the scene altogether while he attempted to control the situation, sending the duke and duchess to Brussels. James was unhappy at this new exile but could only wait on events. At home, Danby was forced from office and impeached; Louise de Kéroualle had decided some months previously that he was no longer of any use to her. Determined to stay at the heart of politics, she had already found a new ally in Robert Spencer, earl of Sunderland. Working with the earl of Essex, who had been so dubious about courting Louise’s support for his role in Ireland, and with the marquis of Halifax, Sunderland hoped to be able to steady the ship of state and secure the legitimate order of the succession, in defiance of Shaftesbury, who, as president of the Privy Council, had come out for exclusion in April 1679. A serious rebellion in Scotland during the early summer was put down by Monmouth, whose standing rose as a result, alarming Louise’s allies in government. The solution to the multiple problems that now beset the chronically underfunded king was hotly debated in council and the decision to recommend the dissolution of Parliament split Charles II’s warring advisers. It must also have brought some relief to a worried Louise, who had been criticized in Parliament and her removal demanded.
The duke of York was not the only one watching anxiously from abroad. An alternative to the growing popularity of Monmouth was to balance his presence in England with that of William of Orange, an idea that Sunderland considered for a while, realizing that Louise’s attitude towards William, given her influence with Charles II, might be key to the success of this project. Henry Sidney, younger brother of that Algernon Sidney who had once sought Lucy Walter’s favours, was the British envoy to The Hague. He was to get William to write to Louise,
and make some application to her, for that she will be of great use to us, particularly against the duke of Monmouth; and I am to let him know how instrumental she hath been in changing the council and in several other things. In short, I am to tell him that she is one Lord Sunderland does make use of and that he must do so too if he intends to do any good with the king. She hath more power over him than can be imagined. Nobody can excuse what she hath done, but I hope well from her in the future.2 (My italics.)
This last elliptical reference may be to the suspicion that Louise had always, in reality, acted in the interests of France. Whether her influence was as great as Sunderland believed is another matter. The idea that she could keep abreast of such fast-changing political developments and constantly be discussing and analysing them with the king, when nobody had a clear picture of what was happening or the most advantageous course to take, seems far-fetched. But the mere fact that Louise was considered to have such influence counted for a great deal in the eyes of the self-serving men who jockeyed for position in these febrile years. The calculations of all of them were soon, however, to be thrown up in the air. At the end of August 1679, Charles fell seriously ill, causing great alarm on both sides of the North Sea. Had a decisive moment for his kingdoms come so soon?
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THE KING RECOVERED quickly but his nervous capital did not. Algernon Sidney, recently elected as member of Parliament for Amersham in Buckinghamshire, captured the prevailing sense of unease perfectly in a letter to his friend, Henry Savile: ‘there is no extremity of disorder to be imagined, which we might not have fallen into if the king had died, or which may not yet reasonably be feared if he should relapse.’3 It is not clear exactly what form the king’s illness had taken – some historians have suggested that he suffered a stroke – but whatever it was, by the time his brother, hastily summoned back from Brussels by Sunderland, had arrived, he was already on the mend. The king seemed relieved by the duke of York’s return but decided that the situation was still too unpredictable for him to remain in London, so he was sent instead to Scotland, somewhat to the chagrin of the duke of Lauderdale, who did not relish James’s interference in his quasi-despotic government of the northern kingdom. Monmouth, meanwhile, had been exiled to the Netherlands, where William of Orange could keep an eye on him. The Prince and Princess of Orange were extremely sensitive about protecting Mary’s position in the English succession and were far from welcoming. Monmouth quickly made up his mind to defy his father’s orders and returned unbidden to London in late November 1679, giving heart to the increasingly vocal opposition, now led by Shaftesbury.
In the midst of all this uncertainty, Louise had much to ponder. Her relations with the Yorks had not always been smooth in the 1670s, especially when Mary of Modena snubbed her in favour of one of Louise’s rivals, Mary’s cousin, Hortense Mancini.4 But she had been working behind the scenes during and after the king’s illness, apparently against Monmouth and in support of the duke of York. But he could not count on her support for any length of time and she herself seems increasingly to have been out of her depth, not knowing which way to turn. In the summer of 1680, as the Exclusion Crisis rumbled on, Louise executed a remarkable volte-face which appeared to destroy any hopes of a reconciliation with the king’s brother.
What had brought about this change of heart? There are several possibilities, but the main factors seem to have been fear and a political gamble that went wrong. Her alliance with Sunderland was one of convenience, and his female relatives, especially his wife, detested her. They smelled blood when, at the beginning of January 1680, there appeared in circulation a document with the alarming title, Articles of High Treason, and other high crimes and misdemeanors, against the Lady Duchess of Portsmouth. The authorship of these twenty-two charges levelled at Louise remains unknown.5 They may have been drafted by more than one person, and the involvement of Shaftesbury, or at least his encouragement, is likely, but unproven. It is a document of considerable interest, not just for what it reveals of the furious hatred felt for Louise de Kéroualle by the king’s opponents but for their underlying disgust and utter lack of respect for Charles II himself.
The attack on Louise was visceral. It began with the assertion that she was the cause of Charles II’s illness because she was diseased sexually: ‘the said duchess hath, and still doth cohabit and keep company with the king, having had foul, nauseous and contagious distempers, which, once possessing her blood, can never admit of a perfect cure, to the manifest danger and hazard of the king’s person, in whose person is bound up the weal and happiness of the Protestant religion, our lives, liberties and properties . . .’ Thus was Louise’s misfortune in contracting a venereal disease from Charles II turned into a lurid accusation that she had, in fact, infected him. The writers knew how to grab attention and, if what followed was less prurient, it was equally serious. The duchess of Portsmouth’s pernicious influence was ubiquitous. ‘She hath laboured,’ the articles went on, ‘to alter and subvert the government of church and state . . . and to introduce popery in the three kingdoms.’ Not only was she a French spy, who ‘advised and still does nourish, foment and maintain that fatal and destructive corresponding alliance between England and France, being sent over and pensioned by the French king to the same end and purpose’, but she had meddled and advised ‘in matters of the highest importance in peace and government . . . placed and displaced great ministers in church and state as she judged might be most serviceable in promoting the French and popish interest.’ Still greater indignation can be sensed in the hammer blows aimed at Louise’s greed: ‘she hath been an unspeakable charge and burden, having had given her, for many years past, prodigious sums of money in other people’s names . . . as well as out of the public treasury . . . and such is her ascendancy over the king that, in her own apartments, she prevailed with the king there to sign and seal warrants for grants of vast sums of money.’ She had, for example, procured £100,000 for Danby, ‘now impeached and in the Tower.’
Nor was it just money that Louise coveted. She had the throne itself in her sights, when she encouraged ‘her creatures and friends’ to put it about ‘that she was married to his majesty and that her son . . . is his majesty’s legitimate son.’ Finishing with a flourish of disdain and barely repressed grief for the damage done to the nation by this foreign Jezebel, the articles against Louise concluded, ‘that she hath had the highest honours and rewards conferred on her and her’s, to the high dishonour of God, the encouragement of wickedness and vice (which by such examples is overspread the nation and for which God’s anger is kindled and enflamed against us) . . . to the eternal reproach of his majesty’s reign and government.’ The language of the articles against Louise, with their echoes of Bunyan and the Independents of the Civil Wars, conveys not just contempt for a putrid French whore but for the impotent king she dominated.
Louise had considered leaving England for France as the crisis deepened but, though frightened, she stayed, perhaps concerned about leaving her son and the king at this difficult time. The countess of Sunderland, irritated by her lord’s accommodation with this creature, wrote that Louise, ‘does daily grow so odious that being in any of her affairs were enough to ruin one.’6 Yet no action was taken as a result of the publication of the articles against Louise. Parliament was prorogued at the time. If it had been in session, the articles would probably have formed the basis of a direct onslaught on the duchess of Portsmouth. Barrillon was worried that she might be formally arraigned for treason and brought before the Court of King’s Bench, her case to be considered by Parliament when it sat again. Sunderland looked to his own survival, distancing himself from Louise without formally abandoning her. After a very nervous few months, during which further legal action seemed possible, Louise appeared to be bowing to the inevitable. If she wanted a quiet life and the respectability she had always craved, she would need to distance herself unequivocally from the duke of York. By the late summer of 1680, she had become an exclusionist.
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‘NEWS, NEWS,’ BRAYED a newsletter in early November 1680, ‘the duchess of Portsmouth is turned to the Protestant religion and, is, ’tis said, one of Shaftesbury’s converts and very kind to the duke of Monmouth.’7 Parliament had met again on 21 October amid a whirlwind of such speculation. The French ambassador, Barrillon, promised Louis XIV that he would try to keep abreast of what was happening and protect his interests, striving always to ensure that ‘England does not pass under a form of government which is very close to that of a republic.’8 This comment is revealing, for it was not merely the succession, but the entire fabric of Restoration government and society that was under threat, and Barrillon, despite being an outsider, clearly recognized this. Whether Louise de Kéroualle fully understood the wider implications of the threat from the king’s opponents is open to question. She had always viewed herself as a power broker, but she was closer to being a ‘fixer’, someone who facilitated meetings and discussions, flitting prettily between the anxious politicians, whose own aims were often couched in the language of the moral high ground, but whose day-to-day concerns were as much about personal ambition as the future health of the nation.
Barrillon, basing his analysis on information he claimed to have received from Ralph Montagu, whose mission to Paris had ended in disgrace and who was now back in England as a member of Parliament, thought he understood Louise’s tactics. She had been reconciled to Monmouth, and she and Sunderland had reached an agreement with the duke and Shaftesbury. It gave these two gentlemen the assurance that Charles II would meet Parliament’s demands. These covered a range of measures attacking corruption at all levels of government, and greater religious toleration for Protestant Nonconformists, as well as the continued dispute over the succession; in return, Parliament would offer a commitment to provide regular and sufficient financial support for the Crown. There would, of course, be a promise of high office for Shaftesbury and a provision that Charles could name his successor. Given anti-Catholic feeling and the duke of York’s unpopularity, that successor was evidently going to be someone else, though the precise identity was left open. Monmouth would naturally expect it to be him, but William of Orange might have other ideas.
That Charles II should have been willing to go along with such fundamental changes to the authority of the Crown seems more unlikely in retrospect than it was to contemporaries. The threat of rebellion and even of civil war was in the air, and feelings were exacerbated by a flurry of political propaganda. But it begs certain questions for which there are no clear answers. One of these is the motivation of Louise herself. Was she genuinely convinced of the viability of this plan, perhaps hoping, as had been suggested in the Articles of High Treason, to keep open a door for her own son to succeed his father? Was her support of Shaftesbury merely born of an instinct for self-preservation? They were hardly natural allies. Could she simply not resist intrigue for its own sake? Or was she merely a tool of a king who, although beleaguered, still held important cards and was willing to use her as a stalking horse until she got taken in by his opponents and went too far? Whatever the truth – and perhaps even Louise did not know the answer – when the House of Lords rejected the Exclusion Bill on 15 November, despite its having passed in the Commons, Charles was mightily relieved. He could now show his own disapproval, even if it meant embarrassing his mistress. Louise was still in limbo with regards to her political influence as 1681 dawned. Barrillon reported that she believed she and Sunderland could still persuade Charles to abandon his brother, and James remained highly agitated at the prospect, as well as bitter against Louise. Charles, however, held firm and in 1681 he made a bold move that brought the Exclusion Crisis and its associated furore to an end.
It was an option always open to him and, indeed, he had used it before in his dealings with Parliament. Concerned by the threat of popular unrest, the king determined that the session that was to begin in March 1681 would take place in the traditional royalist stronghold of Oxford, away from the anti-monarchical sentiment of London. Though it had not been unusual for Parliament to meet in various English locations in the Middle Ages, and even later, the Oxford Parliament of 1681 would be the last time the legislature met outside London. It would also be the last of Charles II’s reign. When it brought in a third Exclusion Bill, he dissolved it after a week. By that time, he was secure in the knowledge that he had obtained a new financial subsidy from France and had no immediate need for revenue from his own legislature. He was also determined to uphold the rightful succession in the person of his brother and to deal with his Whig opponents, left in disarray by their failure to bring about change, through a concerted effort of propaganda and the crushing of dissent. He began four years of personal rule that, at least in part, reflected his admiration for the absolutist system favoured by his cousin, Louis XIV. He had not merely survived, but was to emerge with a kind of triumph, as ‘incontestably the strongest seventeenth century monarch.’9 Perhaps, but the Rye House Plot of 1683 showed that there remained opponents among his own aristocracy who were willing to have him and the duke of York assassinated. The implication of Monmouth in this conspiracy distressed his father greatly and sealed the fate of the elderly Algernon Sidney. The man rumoured to have offered money for Lucy Walter’s favours thirty-five years earlier was executed on Tower Hill, and the Good Old Cause of republicanism in England, for which he had been such an eloquent and committed apologist, died with him.
Louise was still very much at the king’s side in these years, despite having succumbed briefly to the charms of a lover six years her junior, the disreputable Frenchman, Philippe de Vendôme. Charles was jealous, but blamed Vendôme more than Louise. Louis XIV, aware that this distant cousin (Vendôme was an illegitimate grandson of Henry IV) had the potential to cause trouble for the duchess of Portsmouth, ordered him back to France. She was reconciled with the duke of York and dabbled in politics as much as ever. Her stock rose even higher when she made a triumphant visit to France in the spring of 1682. Two years later, she was again very unwell but rallied in time for the Christmas season of 1684. It was reported that ‘since her grace’s recovery she is greater and more absolute than ever.’
The duchess of Portsmouth’s position seemed unassailable then. Yet throughout the 1670s she had good cause to be uneasy. She had other rivals than Nell Gwyn. The most glamorous of these was another woman who had come to Charles II’s court from France, but her background was very different from that of the quiet convent girl from Brittany.