She was a woman of great beauty but most enormously vicious and ravenous; foolish but imperious, very uneasy to the king and always carrying on intrigues with other men, while yet she pretended she was jealous of him. His passion for her and her strange behaviour towards him did so disorder him that often he was not master of himself nor capable of minding business, which, in so critical a time, required great application …63
That was Bishop Burnet’s verdict on Barbara Villiers. We might expect a churchman to take a dim view of a woman of notorious moral laxity but his opinion was so widely shared that we cannot attribute it to mere prudery. The new woman in the king’s life was loathed, feared and envied by many men and women about the court, including those who relied on her patronage. The better read among them compared her to Jane Shore, the mistress of Edward IV, who wielded enormous political influence and was accused of controlling the king by witchcraft. Her critics fondly hoped that Barbara would share Jane’s falsely reputed fate of dying poor and abandoned, her body flung on a dunghill. The two royal paramours were outstanding examples of a type of sexual predator not altogether uncommon, though it was left to the twentieth century to coin the word which most succinctly describes it: ‘vamp’.
By her unrestrained appetite, her physical vigour and the variety of her blandishments she kept the king enslaved for more than a decade and, when her talent to amuse failed to gain her those rewards she desired, she fell back on temper tantrums and palace intrigues. She accumulated a fortune in cash, property and jewels, as well as noble titles for herself and the five children whose paternity Charles acknowledged. As the years passed she presumed more and more upon her position until, as with Lucy Walter, she became an embarrassment which had to be disposed of. It was Barbara, and not the queen, who dominated the distaff side of the royal court and who garishly coloured the public image of the king. And it is Charles’ relationship with this appalling woman which has done much to damage his reputation with historians. It is, therefore, important for us to chart as precisely as we can the rise and fall of this turbulent affair.
The first and unavoidable fact to record is Barbara’s obvious beauty. Fashions change and few of the many portraits of her would probably set the blood of twenty-first-century males racing but in the 1660s she became the icon of feminine perfection, the Mona Lisa, Jersey Lily, Marilyn Monroe or Madonna of her day, to be lusted after by all men and copied by all ladies of the haut monde. Sir Peter Lely, the king’s principal painter, was enraptured by her and gave it as his professional opinion that her ‘sweetness and exquisite beauty are beyond the compass of art’ – though, in saying that, he was saying something that she and her royal lover wanted to hear. Lely made several studies of Barbara between 1662 and 1668 and these became the templates for the Restoration concept of sophisticated womanhood. The face that gazes at us from these depictions has full lips and heavy-lidded, almost sleepy eyes; the sitter’s poses are languid and her silks and pearls lustrous. These images were intended to be blatantly voluptuous without being obviously sexy. It is not at all surprising that Barbara Villiers was a popular pin-up of the day. Engravings after these portraits sold well. Pepys recorded that, in December 1666, he bought three copies as soon as they were available at the print shop, ‘which indeed is, as to the head, I think, a very fine picture and like her’.64
Yet, if we want to see the face with which Charles was enraptured, perhaps we should look at a miniature of c. 1662 by Samuel Cooper. Here, the twenty-two-year-old looks younger. Her hair hangs loose and natural and there is no artificial pose to set the mood of the piece. Yet the frank frontal gaze, the partly closed lids and the suggestion of sardonic humour about the lips reveal the essence of the woman. It emphatically supports our understanding of what Charles sought in the opposite sex. He liked women who were strong, bold, uninhibited. His long-lasting amours were with women who made the running. He was no seducer. In all his human relationships he was rarely proactive. He had little need to be. Just as politicians vied with each other for the privilege of handling state business, so potential mistresses beat a path to his bedchamber. The indolence of which his ministers complained allowed both them and their rivals to exercise a considerable degree of power. It also ensured that, once Charles was secure on his throne, his court would become a cockpit in which men and women fought for mastery and the perks that went with it. Barbara Villiers grasped this simple truth at a very early stage and became one of the principal contenders in the ring.
So great and notorious was her influence that it is easy to see why it was generally assumed that she had been at the king’s side from the very first night of the reign. The hard evidence we have suggests that Charles was slightly more circumspect, at least for the first few weeks. He knew well how important it was to make a good impression – and if he ever forgot it, Hyde was on hand to remind him. The image of the old king was still vivid in people’s memories and they looked to his son to revive a concept of monarchy that had about it an appropriate mystique. Popular songs generated by his return piously assumed that Charles II would fit the mould of semi-divine kingship:
He is God’s anointed sure,
Who still doth guide him,
In all his ways most pure,
Though some deride him.
Then let us give God praise,
That doth defend him,
And sing with heart and voice,
Angels attend him …
‘Though some deride him’ – the line indicates the sombre thread of caution woven into the glowing tapestry of national rejoicing. The stories of goings-on in the exiled court were common currency, deliberately spread and frequently exaggerated by the king’s enemies. Rejoicing was by no means as unbridled and universal as Evelyn suggested.
Samuel Pepys, an avid watcher of the comings and goings of the great and famous, was not aware of Barbara’s presence until 13 July. On that summer’s night he was working late at the King Street house of his boss, Lord Sandwich, lieutenant-admiral of the fleet, when the sounds of revelry next door disturbed him. He and his colleagues were intrigued to know who the merrymakers were in the house belonging to Mr Palmer, so ‘Here at the old door that did go into his lodgings, my lord, I and W Howe did stand listening a great while to the music’. They discovered that the king and his brothers were there ‘with Madame Palmer, a pretty woman that they have a fancy to, to make her husband a cuckold’.65 Pepys was almost certainly behind the times but if this is so it demonstrates the effectiveness of the secrecy surrounding Charles and Barbara’s assignations. The only people who seem to have been in the know at this early stage were members of Barbara’s family who, of course, had the very best of reasons for wishing to further the liaison. Her uncles, Viscount Grandison and Colonel Edward Villiers, and her aunt, the Countess of Suffolk, were the couple’s main confidants.
By the autumn the secret was out and no attempt was being made to keep it. Barbara was, by now, obviously pregnant and although the father of her first daughter (born in February 1661) was almost certainly her husband (the child was christened Anne Palmer), there was sufficient doubt for tongues to be set wagging. It may be that Barbara told the king that the little girl was his in order to increase her hold over him, though it was several years before Charles actually acknowledged her as his own.
He had need of a mistress to distract him for, once again, he was having to cope with problems caused by his own female relatives. His mother and sisters were, of course, eager to come over to England to share the triumph of their House but the seemingly simple business of arranging their travel created family problems. Charles could not invite one without inviting them all. Yet, he was only too well aware that his mother was still highly unpopular with many of the common people and some of their superiors. There was also the little matter of persuading Hyde to receive his enemy with at least an outward show of cordiality. For her part, the queen dowager was not sure that this was the most apt time to make the trip. The exact nature of the reunion was, therefore, a matter for delicate consideration. What Charles did not need was his mother creating fresh difficulties in her habitual, imperious manner. But this is exactly what she did. She had recently succeeded in negotiating a marriage between Minette and Louis XIV’s brother, Philip, Duke of Anjou (soon to be created duc d’Orléans and Chartres), and she wished Mary to come to Paris to share in the rejoicing at her sister’s good fortune. If Charles was impatient to receive the Princess of Orange, he would just have to wait; their mother would not take ‘no’ for an answer:
I earnestly beg and invite you to come as soon as you can … I shall perhaps be able to go into England myself. If that happens, you will be ready for the journey. If I do not go, you can leave from here to join him, and even if he wishes, as I have heard, that you should go at once, my answer will be resolute to send him word that you wished to see me in passing, and to see your sister.66
This put Mary in a quandary. Once again she found herself in the role of a tennis ball in a game being played by her mother and brother. She expressed her frustration to Charles, impatiently demanding that he sort things out:
I received a letter from the queen this last post, wherein she says by the next she will send for me into France. I have let her know your resolution of sending for me directly into England. Therefore, for God’s sake, agree between you what I have to do, which I hope you will not consider an unreasonable desire, since I have made this same to the queen. And pray do not delay it, for I have a great impatience to be gone from hence, and yet, rather than displease either of you, I would suffer the greatest punishment of this world (that is to live all my life here), for I know what it is to displease both of you. God keep me from it again!67
The parenthetical aside, ‘that is to live all my life here’, refers to the struggle that Mary was going through at this particular time and which further complicated arrangements for her journey to England. Her dearest wish was to return permanently to the country of her birth and to put behind her the years of bickering with the republican rulers of the Dutch states. But she also wanted to ensure her son’s future and was trying to extract a promise from the States-General that, if she left young William in their care, they would allow him to inherit all his father’s offices when he came of age. The burgesses at the Hague were understandably reluctant to sign such a blank cheque. Mary looked to her brother to exert his influence on her behalf. He did so but, in Mary’s opinion, very half-heartedly. Thus, as their reunion drew nearer, she had yet another bone to pick with Charles. It was while all these messages were passing to and fro that a thunderbolt was hurled into the midst of family and national life.
Around eleven o’clock on the night of 3 September (an ominous date in Charles’ life story, being the anniversary of his defeats at Dunbar and Worcester and also of the death of Oliver Cromwell) a tiny group of people met in a chamber at Worcester House in the Strand, the home of Sir Edward Hyde, now lord chancellor. The householder was not present and had he been he would have put a prompt end to the ceremony about to take place. The Duke of York had come with his chaplain, Dr Joseph Crowther, and his close friend, Thomas, Lord Ossory (Ormonde’s son and heir), to be married to Anne Hyde. Anne was now heavily pregnant and determined to hold her lover to his promise. In view of James’ reputation with the ladies, which was very little different from his brother’s, it is surprising that he should have decided to do the honourable thing. When Pepys later discussed the affair with Lord Sandwich, the earl passed on the rumour that James had intended to cut and run but that the king had obliged him to marry Anne. Sandwich added his opinion that, ‘he that do get a wench with child and marry her afterwards is as if a man should shit in his hat and then clap it on his head’. Pepys commented, ‘I perceive my lord is grown a man very indifferent in all matters of religion and so makes nothing of these things.’68 The diarist found it difficult to accustom himself to the fashionable new cynicism. The rumour was, in fact, wrong. However, because the embarrassing secret was well kept for several weeks, it was inevitable that speculation should have given rise to numerous stories.
The aftermath of the clandestine marriage was highly dramatic. A few days later James went to his brother and shamefacedly confessed that he had married without his king’s permission and sought leave to acknowledge his wife openly. Charles called two of his councillors, Ormonde and the veteran Earl of Southampton, lord treasurer, into conference. There were important constitutional issues to consider, for, if the marriage was declared official, not only would a prince of the blood have married a commoner, thereby taking him out of the European royal marriage market, but Anne’s child would be second in line to the throne. Significantly, these matters weighed less with the king than the immediate problem of the impact of this news on Sir Edward. In the first few months following Charles’ return the restored monarchy was no more than a hugely popular idea. Now it had to be turned into a political and constitutional reality. That meant long hours of tedious paperwork, meetings to reconcile ideologically incompatible enemies and the hammering out of new relationships between Crown, Church and Parliament. Charles had neither the ability nor the inclination for this task. He needed Hyde, who was, in effect, his first minister. He could not allow the chancellor to be disgraced and forced out of office, or into exile. Ormonde and Southampton were, therefore, despatched to break the news to the man who had, malgré lui, become the king’s relation by marriage.
The account of the following interviews Hyde had with his colleagues and the king was written years later by the chancellor. He may have exaggerated his reaction. Certainly, it seems extreme to modern minds. He raved at his daughter’s excesses while being careful to make no complaint against the duke. He advocated that Anne should be immediately carted off to the Tower and incarcerated in the deepest, darkest dungeon, while parliament prepared an Act of Attainder which would result in her execution. There can be no doubt about Hyde’s genuine sense of moral outrage. He had always been a stern critic of the lewd behaviour of the king’s circle and now the defiling ooze of fashionable promiscuity had seeped across his own threshold. But he was also worried about his own position. It was quite clear that his court rivals would gleefully spread the slander that he had deliberately insinuated his daughter into the duke’s bed in order to bolster his own prestige and power. Beyond Whitehall he had many enemies among those who were dissatisfied with the nature of the settlement that he was brokering and they would be happy to see him replaced by a minister more to their own taste. But his concerns were not entirely selfish; he, too, had a sense of the enormity of the political task as yet scarcely begun. Having played no small part in engineering the Restoration, and knowing that national life could still fall back into the anarchic confusion of contending parties, he did not want to see all his work wasted.
This crisis was resolved by the application of that talent which the king had mastered during the many crises of the preceding years: underreaction. Having satisfied himself that, by the laws of Church and State, James and Anne were, indeed, husband and wife, he advised the outraged father that they must all make the best of a bad job; he certainly would not hear of Hyde’s resignation. James – or possibly some friends on his behalf – made a last-ditch, ungallant attempt to wriggle out of his responsibilities, asserting that the lady had lain with several other men and could not prove that the duke was the father of her child. She had, then, tricked him into a promise of marriage, which could not be considered lawful. Charles was not taken in. He told his brother plainly, to his face, that he must ‘drink as he brewed’. As far as Charles was concerned, that was the end of the matter. It could not be so for the chancellor. As he told his son, this marriage ‘must be all their ruin sooner or later’.69 The words were prophetic. The groom had married in haste; the father-in-law would repent at leisure.
Nor did the king’s kindred share his serene resignation. His mother, sisters and other brother were furious at the disgrace they believed James had brought upon them all. If Henrietta Maria had been in two minds about coming to England, the latest news removed all doubt. Not only had her son married beneath him, he had married into the family of that creature, Hyde. Therefore, she ‘sent the king word that she was on the way to England to prevent with her authority so great a stain and dishonour to the Crown’.70 Mary was no less indignant. She made it known in advance of her arrival that she would never yield precedence to a woman who had been one of her own ladies-in-waiting. And Henry, Duke of Gloucester, remarked sneeringly that Anne ‘smelt so strong of her father’s green bag [i.e., his lowly status as a mere lawyer] that he could not get the better of himself whenever he had the misfortune to be in her presence’ in order to show her any civility.71 Suddenly the family reunion which they had all been eagerly awaiting looked like becoming a very fraught occasion.
It was at this moment that tragedy struck. Henry Stuart was spared the indignity of being polite to his sister-in-law. He fell victim to the smallpox that was virulent in London that summer. On 13 September he died, sincerely mourned by all who knew him. But especially so, according to Bishop Burnet, by the king, ‘who was never in his whole life so much troubled as he was on that occasion. Those who would not believe he had much tenderness in his nature imputed this rather to his jealousy of the brother that survived, since he had now lost the only person that could balance him.’72 The two events, occurring almost simultaneously, certainly did nothing to improve relations between the remaining brothers. They were very different. Where Charles was clever but lazy, James was industrious and dull-witted. James was also sincerely religious and high-principled and, as a result, experienced crises of conscience when his passions led him into sin. Charles, who famously asserted that God would not judge him harshly for enjoying a few little pleasures, was a stranger to inner turmoil. Buckingham tersely summed up the characters of the two men in an epigram as perceptive as it is typical of the cutting, irreverent witticisms of the Restoration court. ‘The king’, he said, ‘could see things if he would and the duke would see things if he could.’73
Vengeance was one of the issues on which the royal brothers differed. While the Stuarts were experiencing their little, in camera difficulties, throughout the country at large the surviving regicides were being hunted down, tried and executed. Over several days in mid-October thirteen men who had been involved in the death of Charles I suffered, in public at Charing Cross, the gruesome punishment meted out to traitors. Seasoned royalists, like Evelyn, took grim pleasure in their fate:
This day were executed those murderous traitors at Charing Cross, in sight of the place where they put to death their natural prince and in the presence of the king, his son, whom they also sought to kill, taken in the trap they laid for others … I saw not their execution, but met their quarters, mangled and cut and reeking as they were brought from the gallows in baskets on the hurdle. Oh, miraculous providence of God!74
James also relished this judgement on the murderers of his sainted father. He looked to a reaffirmation of the unrestricted authority of semi-divine kingship. Charles was blinkered neither by doctrinaire political philosophy nor by the grief that can only be assuaged in blood-letting. He wanted to put the past behind him as rapidly as possible and not risk scratching unhealed sores. As Burnet explained, the king knew well the quicksilver nature of the mob, especially in London.
… though the regicides were at that time odious beyond all expression and the trials and executions of the first that suffered were run to by vast crowds, and all people seemed pleased with the sight, yet the odiousness of the crime grew at last to be so much flattened by the frequent executions, and most of those who suffered dying with much firmness and show of piety, justifying all they had done, not without a seeming joy for their suffering on that account, that the king was advised not to proceed farther, at least not to have the scene so near the court as Charing Cross.75
But Charles needed little persuasion. When the rabble erected a gallows within sight of the palace and strung up an effigy of Cromwell, he ordered it to be taken down. The Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, to which he assented in August, had reduced by a half the number of his enemies originally marked by parliament for destruction. When the female members of the family arrived at Whitehall it was to a court in purple mourning and much subdued by recent events. Mary reached the capital on 25 September, having narrowly escaped shipwreck on a sandbank off the Kent coast, and then being triumphantly escorted by the king upriver in a procession of barges.
A month later, Charles set out with mixed feelings to greet his mother. Beneath the formal courtesies he was obliged to pay lay an irritation which he found difficult to suppress and for which he had ample reason. Try as he might, he could not stop her attempts to exercise control. She was still determined to tie England fast to the apron strings of Catholic France. Over the last few months she had worked assiduously to that end. To please her, Charles had given Jermyn the title Earl of St Albans and admitted him to the enlarged royal council. There the queen mother’s agent was one among several voices and his influence was limited. Henrietta Maria was not satisfied with this concession. When the crucial negotiations with the English agents were mooted back in March, she and Mazarin had urged Charles to hold talks in Paris, rather than Breda, so that they could counter Hyde’s influence. Unsuccessful in that, she intrigued directly with the French ambassador in London, Antoine de Bordeaux, instructing him to work with the enemies of Sir Edward. On Charles’ return to England these machinations came to light and the king immediately sent Bordeaux packing.
Relations between the two countries were at their lowest ebb for many years and, ironically, it was the queen mother who was in large measure responsible for that. Mazarin was now eager that she should go to England and work for a complete rapprochement. But the cardinal could no more contain her dynastic and religious ambitions than could her son. She made it clear to all that she was now bound for England to ‘marry one son and unmarry the other’. Henrietta Maria ‘had the art of making herself believe anything she had a mind to’.76 As far as her children were concerned, she saw herself as a marriage broker par excellence and her scheming knew no bounds. At different times she had tried to unite both her daughters with Louis XIV and she now had her own very definite ideas about potential brides for her two remaining sons. For Charles she had revived the Hortense Mancini proposal. As for James, the first imperative was to prise him loose from the Hyde girl.
Once again, she had, eventually, to admit defeat over both these objectives, but not until several unpleasant weeks had passed. Charles had already begun negotiations about his marriage, negotiations which remained firmly under wraps, and were very specifically kept hidden from his mother. As for James, his first legitimate son was born a few days before the queen mother’s arrival and the duke, hoping for a blessing, hovered round her quarters in Whitehall. This was an almost Arctic zone. Henrietta Maria declined to acknowledge Anne or see her grandson. She would not receive Hyde and he staunchly refused to beg an audience. Finally, she threatened to return immediately to France if her wishes were not respected. It took all Charles’ charm, laced with firmness, and a message from Mazarin to soften the queen mother’s attitude. Jermyn was sent to act as intermediary between the two reluctant grandparents and was able to secure a grudging meeting. Meanwhile the cardinal stressed the importance of cordial relations between the two countries and hinted to Henrietta Maria that if she wished to be welcomed back to her nephew’s court she must put an end to the friction in her own family. And to ensure his mother’s compliance, Charles turned the financial screw. The queen dowager was entitled to the income from various properties in England which had not, of course, been paid since the outbreak of the Civil War. The king now told her what she would have to do to get the money released.
But once again it was grief that wrapped its cloak around the family and, at least partially, drew them together. The change of air had not agreed with Princess Mary and she seldom ventured out of her rooms at Whitehall. No one was unduly worried about her but, as she and her family prepared for the first Christmas they had all spent together for twenty years, she was obliged to take to her bed with a fever. Her doctors reluctantly agreed on the dread diagnosis of smallpox. On Christmas Eve she died.
Charles came to her bedside several times during her last days, although he had sent his mother and Henrietta to St James’s Palace away from the contagion. Theirs had been a turbulent relationship. Perhaps, in essence it had been too close – the highs too high, the lows too low. Mary was a strong-minded woman with more than her share of Bourbon arrogance. She had identified herself unreservedly with her brother’s cause. They had spent idyllic days together – sightseeing, dancing, being feted by German princes. And they had argued – violently, bitterly, because Mary had resented Charles’ presumption in standing guard over her morals. Joy and anger were alike the children of devotion. But was that commitment rather one-sided? No contemporary record describes the king as being devastated by his sister’s death. He should have been. Without her support, financial and emotional, it is difficult to see how he could have survived the years of exile. But now he had no need of her and her passing would not leave a gaping hole in his life. Yet, perhaps, we judge him too harshly if we represent him as being governed by purely selfish considerations. He did keep Mary’s picture on the wall of his bedchamber ever afterwards and he did take an interest, albeit a very patronising interest, in her son’s wellbeing. Samuel Pepys was very preoccupied with alterations to his house in the closing weeks of 1660. In the midst of his domestic arrangements he recorded, baldly, ‘This day the Princess Royal died at Whitehall.’77 Despite the lack of evidence we must charitably assume that the event made more impact on the king.
Mary’s funeral took place at Westminster Abbey on 29 December, James taking on the role of chief mourner. Three days later, his son was christened with the name of Charles and was given the title Duke of Cambridge. The king and his mother were among the godparents and Henrietta Maria put a brave face upon her defeat. We have a typically frank description of the queen dowager and her daughter from Pepys, who had been received by the royal visitors a few weeks before: ‘The queen a very little, plain old woman, and nothing more in her presence in any respect nor garb than an ordinary woman … The Princess Henrietta is very pretty but much below my expectation, and her dressing of herself with her hair frizzed short up to her ears, did make her seem so much the less to me.’78 The sixteen-year-old princess was the most popular member of the family. She had a natural grace and was able to adapt herself to any kind of company. Her youth and her talent for saying the right thing at the right time endeared her to all she met. When parliament voted her a wedding gift of £10,000 it was a political gesture but none the less enthusiastic for that, and when the Speaker read out her thank-you letter to the Commons, in which she apologised for her poor command of the English language but declared that her heart was wholly English, the members warmed to her. However they might have felt about other members of the family, they accepted this young lady as a charming ambassador.
A week later the princess’s servants were packing in preparation for her to accompany her mother back to France. Both ladies were thankful to be leaving and putting behind them a stay which had been tense and immeasurably sad. But their trials were not at an end. First of all, the ship taking them across the Channel ran into vile weather and was forced to put back into Portsmouth. Then, while Lord Sandwich and his crew were waiting there for the winter storms to abate, the princess fell ill. Coming as it did after the tragedies which had befallen her siblings, it was natural that her mother and her attendants should fear the worst. However, this time the malady proved to be not smallpox but measles. After a couple of weeks Henrietta was able to resume her journey and to prepare herself for what would turn out to be yet another disastrous Stuart marriage.
Henrietta may have protested her English heart to parliament and the charm of her personality may have persuaded people to believe her but the truth was very different. She was a thoroughly French princess, relieved and delighted to be returning to the only home she had ever known. She was a Bourbon, a Catholic and her mother’s daughter (though unable to match Henrietta Maria’s proselytising zeal). She enjoyed the luxury and diversions provided by the court of Louis XIV and was intoxicated by the prospect of becoming the king’s sister-in-law. As the result of one elaborate ceremony she would be transformed from a mere pensioner of the Crown into the second lady of France, fawned upon by courtiers, and a major player in the game of courtly love. Louis, who had once derided his brother’s wish to be married to ‘the bones of the Holy Innocents’ (a reference to Henrietta’s thinness and piety), had been won over by her charms and found increasing pleasure in her shrewdness, intelligence and wit. Once over her illness, to Minette the future looked golden, indeed.
The only veil obscuring her gleaming fate was the character of her espoused. Philippe, duc d’Orléans, conventionally known as ‘Monsieur’, was, in Burnet’s words, ‘a poor-spirited and voluptuous prince; monstrous in his vices and effeminate in his luxury in more senses than one. He had not one good or great quality, but courage; so that he became both odious and contemptible.’79 What the bishop could not bring himself to write down without mincing words was that Philippe was bisexual. It may be that his more outrageous behaviour did not develop until later years and only revealed itself, in 1661, in an eccentric love of cross-dressing, but as time passed his behaviour became more scandalous. Not only that, but when Henrietta, not surprisingly, sought the more pleasurable company of other men Orléans became passionately jealous, having his wife watched and, when possible, removed from the court. He openly claimed that his love for Minette had come to an end about two weeks after their wedding. As his affection for ‘Madame’ (Henrietta’s official title) waned, that of his brother waxed. The inevitable rumours soon began to circulate. They were, almost certainly, without foundation. Minette was not Louis’ mistress; she was something more important – his confidante, and therefore valuable to the scheming king in his relations with her brother.
Louis XIV, now twenty-two, was, like Charles, a vigorous womaniser but his attitude to the opposite sex was markedly different from that of his cousin. In later years he advised his son, ‘the time allotted to a liaison should never prejudice our affairs, since our first object should always be the preservation of our glory and authority, which can only be achieved by steady toil … and – more difficult to practise – in giving our heart we must remain absolute master of our mind, separating the endearments of the lover from the resolution of the sovereign’.80 In his early years, at least, Louis followed his own dictum. He was passionately attached to his maîtresse en titre, Louise de la Vallière, formerly one of Minette’s maids of honour, but he kept a rigid barrier between the bedroom and the council chamber. This ability to compartmentalise his life was one of the many crucial differences between him and Charles, differences that shaped their relationship and, therefore, much of the history of Europe in the second half of the seventeenth century.
Louis had been well trained by Mazarin and, on the cardinal’s death in 1661, surprised his advisers by informing them that, in future, he would personally oversee the internal and external affairs of his country. He had grandiose objectives and was clear in his mind about how to pursue them. His simplistic Catholicism had its own internal logic which assumed that kings ruled by divine right, that rebellion was sin, that preservation of true religion was part of the sovereign’s responsibility and that Protestantism was diabolical heresy. His fertile brain could conceive and hold in suspension a variety of schemes, ready to be applied as occasion served. The lessons of the Frondes had been well learned and Mazarin handed on to his master a centralised government served by a bureaucracy that was efficient by the standards of the day and a nobility who had been brought to heel. The French king was rich and knew how to deploy his wealth to impress observers with the grandeur of the monarchy – conspicuous display rather than conspicuous consumption.
Charles lacked both his cousin’s advantages and the strength of character to make the most of the advantages he did have. France’s civil war had left the monarchy strengthened. In Britain internal strife had had no such resolution. Issues such as the balance of authority between king and parliament and between institutionalised Church and private conscience had still not been resolved. The Commons controlled most of the revenue and exerted the right to scrutinise the king’s ministers. If Charles were to preserve as much freedom of action as possible he was obliged to be duplicitous, to scrape up money wherever he could, and to do deals with groups and individuals. All this made it difficult to devise and carry through strategies. But, in any case, Charles’ mind did not work like that. His policy making lacked the rigidity provided by religion and political philosophy. He had no training in the art of kingship. He was reactive rather than proactive. He spent money for pleasure rather than for effect. He allowed emotion to cloud his judgement. And the very fluidity of his court and council meant that mistresses, favourites and attendants exercised political influence alongside ministers and parliamentarians.
Louis understood his cousin’s situation and also his weaknesses and he exploited them to the full in all his relations with Charles and those close to him – men and women. One thing Louis did not understand was British Protestantism, or, at least, anti-Catholicism. A century which had witnessed persecution, Rome-inspired plots, proliferating sermons, extensive personal Bible reading, civil war and national unity in the face of aggression from continental neighbours had introduced new elements into the social DNA of the British peoples. They were by no means all Puritans but moral earnestness and an acceptance of behavioural patterns which had their origins in Holy Writ were the norm throughout most levels of society. Specifically, the freemen of these islands were not disposed to submit to the ‘tyranny’ of pope and priest. British travellers on the continent were amused and appalled by the uncritical way peasants and even the better-educated classes accepted the absurd superstitions promoted by the clergy.
The leaders of French society were no less dismissive and scornful of the religious life of the heretic islands. Louis and his bishops genuinely believed that a nation containing less than 2 per cent of Catholics could be brought back within the Roman fold by government fiat. In his own country he backed the repression of the Huguenot minority and, in 1684, would revoke the Edict of Nantes which had guaranteed them freedom of conscience. He assumed that the Reformation veneer could be as easily stripped off the carcass of British religion. If Henrietta Maria, after twenty years of residence in England, had failed to understand what made her husband’s subjects ‘tick’, it is scarcely surprising that her nephew should draw the wrong conclusions. Both of them were deceived by the culture of the English royal court, where Catholicism, libertinism and cynicism were fashionable precisely because they set the élite apart from the pious ‘cant’ and boring moral restraints of the common herd. Two antipathetical cultures existed side by side and the dominant one in modish society had more in common with that beyond the Channel than with what was accepted throughout the land outside the walls of Whitehall Palace.
The way of life of the social élite was increasingly resented in the provinces, and certainly not only by Puritanical propagandists. John Dryden, the poet and playwright who was frequently condemned for the vulgarity and licence of his work, eventually reached the conclusion,
But sure a banished court with lewdness fraught
The seeds of open vice returning brought.
And the writer of the following sarcastic diatribe against the corrupting influence of the fashion leaders was a fervent Stuart supporter who suffered prison and loss of employment for his adherence to James II:
A fine gentleman is a fine whoring, sweaty, smutty, atheistical man. These qualifications, it seems, complete the idea of honour. They are the top improvements of fortune and the distinguishing glories of birth and breeding!… The restraints of conscience and the pedantry of virtue are unbecoming a cavalier. Future securities and reaching beyond life are vulgar provisions … Here you have a man of breeding and figure that burlesques the Bible, swears and talks smut to ladies, speaks ill of his friend behind his back … fine only in the insignificancy of life, the abuse of religion and the scandals of conversation. These worshipful things … appear at the head of the fashion.81
In 1661, it was not only Henrietta who was making plans to enter the temple of Hymen. Marriage, or rather, the perks that accompanied marriage, was a topic now very much on Charles’ mind. The time had come for him to take a wife and to produce a legitimate heir to the throne. As he looked around the royal courts of Europe, the prospect was very fair indeed. Gone were the days of barren wooing, when no reigning sovereign was prepared to offer his daughter to a pretend king. Now Charles found himself in a buyers’ market. In the delicate continental power balance an alliance with England, which had recently shown itself to possess a formidable navy and a useful army, had distinct advantages. The governments of the leading nations were all eager to cement their friendship with the rehabilitated monarchy. On the cynical assumption that even Edward Hyde had his price, the new French ambassador was empowered to offer him a £10,000 pension to use his influence in the Gallican interest. Though there was nothing out of the ordinary about such an arrangement, the minister made much of his shocked refusal of the bribe. Other diplomats were not so crass but they, too, were instructed to court the men closest to the king, and to line their pockets as necessary. Burnet was convinced that Charles’ heart was set on a Catholic bride. Doubtless, he still thought that German women were ‘foggy’ and that a Protestant upbringing was unlikely to produce the sort of fun-loving consort that he could live with. Romance or sex did not figure prominently in his calculations; he had Barbara to meet his needs in that department. But he did want a wife whose company he could enjoy and who would grace his court. However, there was one consideration that outweighed all others – money.
The choice lay between France, whose behaviour over recent years still rankled with Charles, Spain, his recent ally, and Portugal, the smallest and weakest of the European superpowers. This last had established a phenomenal, worldwide trading empire in the sixteenth century, seen its prosperity leached away between 1580 and 1640 as a result of the union of the crowns of Spain and Portugal, taken advantage of Spain’s conflict with France to assert independence under the House of Braganza and, now that its neighbours had settled their differences, was feeling very vulnerable. Portugal desperately needed a prestigious ally and was prepared to pay for one – handsomely. The horse trading that went on between the English government and the representatives of the neighbouring powers during the early months of 1661 was fast and furious but Portuguese gold won the day. Charles was offered the hand of the Infanta Catherine, together with a dowry of £330,000, the biggest sum ever brought into England by a foreign bride, plus the fortified trading posts of Bombay and Tangier and valuable commercial concessions throughout the Portuguese empire. In return he pledged 10,000 troops to aid his ally in the war with Spain.
The match was furthered enthusiastically by Louis. Failing a French bride, a Portuguese one was the next best thing because she would encourage Charles’ adherence to the anti-Spanish camp. In terms of direct family connection he already had Minette and he was determined to make the best possible use of her as an ambassador. The regular correspondence between the English king and his sister was a principal line of communication between the two monarchs. It also had the advantage of bypassing, not only the normal diplomatic channels, but also Henrietta Maria and her network. Both Charles and Louis considered her a liability.
On 22 April the citizens of London and visitors to the capital, all of whom had for so long been deprived of spectacular ceremonial, turned out for their king’s coronation procession. They were not disappointed. Charles and his master of ceremonies were determined to grasp the opportunity to demonstrate the superiority of monarchical government and to stir up loyalist fervour. Charles came downriver to the Tower and from there made the traditional triumph through the crowded, decorated streets of the City. (He was the last sovereign to do so.) Samuel Pepys, of course, had a good vantage point and recorded the brave show of soldiers, finely caparisoned horses, gorgeously attired nobles and bishops, London livery companies and bands of musicians. He declared himself quite overwhelmed by the lavish display: ‘So glorious was the show with gold and silver that we were not able to look at it, our eyes at last being so much overcome.’82 The following day Charles was crowned in the abbey church, using the Crown Jewels, made at a cost of £31,000 to replace those broken up during the Commonwealth. As part of the celebrations he had already made several new peers, including Sir Edward Hyde, who now became Earl of Clarendon. No one now could despise the king’s brother-in-law as a commoner.
The next time Charles ennobled one of his servants he deliberately did so in a clandestine way so that Hyde would not know of it in time to raise objections. While the court was at Newmarket for the autumn race meeting he ordered a patent to be drawn up for Roger Palmer to be made Earl of Castlemaine in the Irish peerage. This meant that the document did not have to pass under the Great Seal, held by Lord Clarendon. The terms of the grant made provision for the title to pass only to Palmer’s heirs ‘gotton on Barbara Palmer, his now wife’. This made it humiliatingly clear to the recipient that the grant was a reward for Barbara’s services, rather than his own. The ‘honour’ outraged Palmer, who rarely used his new title. His wife revelled in it because it provided her with the rank that fitted her to be the king’s regular companion and it also prepared the ground for Barbara to join the entourage of the new queen, the conventional way of providing a place at court for royal mistresses. The king’s marriage contract had been signed in June and arrangements were in hand to bring Catherine of Braganza over in the spring of 1662.
The timing of Barbara’s promotion is significant. She had just discovered herself to be pregnant again and this time it was clear who was the father of her child. The assignations in King Street and at other rendezvous arranged by her relatives and friends had become frequent and there was no longer any attempt to conceal them. Mrs Palmer was often seen in public with the king and observers were left in no doubt about his feelings for her. But the liaison was not popular with many people. She met with jealousy and contempt among several of the ladies and gentlemen of the court, while Clarendon and Southampton blocked her path to those perks she craved. The chancellor treated Barbara as a non-person and later records reveal that he was ‘an implacable enemy to the power and interest she had with the king and had used all the endeavours he could to destroy it’.83 He forbade his wife to call upon her and refused even to mention her name; he could only bring himself to refer to her as ‘the lady’. The treasurer would not allow any of the funds at his disposal to pass into her hands, even when she presented him with a royal warrant. A position of stalemate existed. Charles made promises to his mistress but his officers of state would not put them into execution. Since the king refused to interfere with day-to-day administration or pick a quarrel with the men he relied on to see his regime securely established, the ambitious Mrs Palmer had to endure the frustration of her ambition. The acquiring of a title, especially since it involved going behind Clarendon’s back, was thus a major coup for her.
However, winning a battle was very far from winning the war. As Barbara looked apprehensively into 1662, she knew that the situation was going to change in ways which could not be accurately forecast. Charles’ new wife would soon be arriving and there was no telling what kind of a relationship they might establish. He had actually promised the chancellor that once he was a happily married man he would have no need of other women. If Charles actually developed a deep attachment to his new wife or if Queen Catherine and Clarendon formed a strong alliance there would be no room in the court for Barbara. Nor was it only the Hyde camp that she feared. The following summer would see considerable changes in the royal household. Henrietta Maria would be returning to take up permanent residence in England. She would be bringing with her the king’s eldest son, James Crofts, who, by all accounts, was growing into an impressive youth. As Charles became the centre of a royal family, surrounded by his own kindred and children, legitimate and illegitimate, he might very well lose interest in a mistress who had served her purpose. Barbara was insecure as long as she had only her lover’s assurances of eternal fidelity to rely on, for, like all who were close to Charles, she knew exactly how much faith to repose in his word. If she were not to become just another paid-off mistress she would have to tie herself to the royal ménage with knots that could not be easily unfastened and she only had a few months in which to do it.
Her main objective was a formal position in the household. This would give her her own quarters in the palace and easy access to the king. Equally importantly, it would put her in the best place to win favours (money and jewels, lucrative offices, property, positions of influence) for herself and her friends. As a key source of patronage, Lady Castlemaine would be able to bind to herself ministers, diplomats and courtiers in a symbiotic relationship. Only then would she be strong enough to defy the hated Clarendon. She extracted from the king a promise to appoint her as lady of the bedchamber to the queen. She also built up her own body of supporters.
The early months of 1662 saw the steady emergence of an anti-Clarendon alliance with which Barbara was closely associated. Its chief members were Lord Bristol, Sir Henry Bennet, Charles Berkeley and Lord St Albans, all members of the old Louvre party and all in close contact with the queen mother and the French court. Henry Jermyn, Earl of St Albans had, according to the rumour which still persisted, for many years been a secret lover of Henrietta Maria and the father of a daughter who had been quietly removed to the care of nuns. The story probably indicates no more than the very close relationship existing between Jermyn and the king’s mother. Berkeley, regarded by Pepys as ‘a most vicious person’, was a born intriguer and confessed to the king that he had been behind the plot to blacken Anne Hyde’s name the previous year. George Digby continued to pursue a highly individualistic approach to politics. He had strenuously opposed the Portuguese match and blamed Clarendon for bringing it about. Bennet, a flamboyant, genial, self-advertising man who ostentatiously wore a black patch across his nose to draw attention to a ‘wound’ he had received fighting for the king in the Civil War, returned cautiously some months after the Restoration, anxious about Edward Hyde’s hostility. He soon worked his way back into royal favour and began to accumulate valuable offices. Early in 1662 he petitioned for the lucrative post of postmaster-general and persuaded Lady Castlemaine to speak for him. Clarendon blocked the appointment and secured the position for another applicant.
Thus, there built up in court and council a nascent warfare between the ‘old guard’ of Clarendon, Ormonde, Nicholas and Southampton and a younger ‘smart set’, which was, in part, a continuation of the earlier Louvre party. The latter had little political clout as long as the king left the conduct of affairs in the hands of his old and trusted ministers. Pepys noted, in July 1661, Charles’ attitude towards his chancellor: ‘though he loves him not in the way of a companion, as he do these young gallants that can answer him in his pleasures, yet he cannot be without him for his policy and service’.84 But, in the second half of 1662, the political balance shifted dramatically. There were very clear reasons for this: Clarendon’s unpopularity grew and some of his policies failed. Charles rapidly fell out with his new queen. In a head-to-head confrontation with Catherine, Lady Castlemaine emerged victorious. And Henrietta Maria took up residence in Somerset House, as determined as ever to involve herself in state affairs.
In late April 1662 Catherine of Braganza left her family, her father’s court, all the friends of her youth and her native land and set out to fulfil her pre-ordained destiny as the queen of a distant, foggy, heretic country. She came full of apprehensions but proud and determined. She knew little of the man with whom she was going to live or of the customs of his people. Both would come as a shock to her but she had been trained to maintain her dignity and to insist on her rights. Since there could be no turning back, she knew that it was important for her to demand all the privileges due to her position and respect for her religion. The Portuguese princess arrived in Portsmouth on 13 May and immediately took to her bed with a feverish cold. Charles was eager to meet the woman to whom he had tied himself but was detained several days by business in London and did not greet his bride until the 20th. What he discovered must have been rather daunting. He noted instantly that Catherine was not wearing any of the English clothes he had provided for her (although it seems that it was the Duke of York who had persuaded her to don a traditional Portuguese farthingale). She was small and slender, sallow of complexion and with slightly protuberant teeth. ‘Her face,’ Charles reported to Clarendon with evident relief, ‘was not so exact as to be called a beauty, though her eyes were excellent good, and there was nothing in her face that in the least degree can disgust one.’85 Her luxuriant black hair was Catherine’s crowning glory, though it was some time before she could be persuaded not to have it dressed in the complex Portuguese style. Communication was difficult because the infanta spoke neither English nor French (though she had begun to learn her husband’s language). However, nothing could obscure her spirit. She came to her new land defiantly virtuous and defiantly Catholic. Throughout her twenty-three years she had seldom ventured outside her father’s palace and had been protected from contamination by the real world. A portrait executed by Catherine’s royal painter, Dirck Stoop, at this time is in sharp contrast to the voluptuous images created to depict Charles’ court ladies. It presents a prim young woman in sumptuous but sober dress, unadorned by jewellery, her pose that of a bygone generation, her eyes engaging ours in frank innocence, her lips compressed in dignified aloofness. As one courtier observed, there was nothing about her that might incline the king to ‘forget his inclination to the Countess of Castlemaine’.
When Samuel Pepys made the queen’s acquaintance he rapidly concluded that she was even more bigoted than the queen mother. She was committed wholeheartedly to the strict morality of her upbringing, which exceeded that of many English Puritans. For example, she was repelled by the thought that a chaste woman might enter the bed in which a man had previously slept. She was determined to keep herself from any defiling influences and she had a troop of monks and matriarchs to stiffen her in her resolve. The first problem bride and groom had to face was the wedding. Charles wanted to be married according to the Anglican rite but Catherine would not countenance anything other than the sacrament of matrimony performed by a Roman priest. They compromised. A secret, Catholic ceremony took place in the queen’s chamber and was followed by a service conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Even this arrangement Catherine found hard to endure: ‘the queen was bigoted to such a degree that she would not say the words of matrimony, nor bear the sight of the archbishop’.86
Then followed the wedding night. It was an anticlimax. Charles reported to Clarendon:
It was happy for the honour of the nation that I was not put to the consummation of the marriage last night, for I was so sleepy by having slept but two hours in my journey as I was afraid that matters would have gone very sleepily.87
But why was the bridegroom ‘not put to the consummation of the marriage’? Writing to Minette a few days later, he laid the blame squarely on Catherine, and for the most obvious of reasons: she had come to her nuptial bed at the wrong time of the month, something that had, apparently, interfered with Henrietta’s own wedding night: ‘though I am not so furious as Monsieur was, but am content to let those pass over before I go to bed to my wife, yet I hope I shall entertain her at least better the first night than he did you’.88 The reason Charles gave for his failure to perform may have been perfectly true. Equally, it may have been an excuse to cover his own disinclination to make love to the demure and inexperienced Catherine. One gets the impression from the account he gave Clarendon of a man that ‘doth protest too much’:
she has as much agreeableness in her looks altogether as ever I saw and, if I have any skill in physiognomy, which I think I have, she must be as good a woman as ever was born. Her conversation, as much as I can perceive, is very good, for she has wit enough and a most agreeable voice. You would much wonder to see how well we are acquainted already. In a word, I think myself very happy but am confident our two humours will agree very well together.89
On the same day Charles wrote to his new mother-in-law in even more euphoric vein:
… enjoying in this springtime the company of my dearest wife, I am the happiest man in the world and the most enamoured, seeing close at hand the loveliness of her person and her virtues, not only those your Majesty mentioned in your letter – simplicity, gentleness and prudence – but many others also … And I wish to say of my wife that I cannot sufficiently either look at her or talk to her. May the good God preserve her to me and grant your Majesty long years of life in which to be a comfort to us both.90
Two of Charles’ dominant traits are evident in these letters. The first is his genuine affection for and understanding of the opposite sex. He went out of his way to make himself pleasant to the nervous virgin who was faced with giving herself to a man she did not know. The second was his inclination always to tell people what they wanted to hear. The Braganza government in Lisbon was desperate for the recognition and material support that the English alliance provided. Clarendon was equally anxious that the union should be a success; that it would help the king to settle down to respectable married life (such as his father had exemplified) and forsake favourites, pimps and mistresses. So, whatever his misgivings, Charles indicated to all the interested parties that all was well.
All was very far from well. Charles had made mutually contradictory promises to people who were determined to hold him to them. He now had two women in his life, both of whom were strong-minded and determined to have the leading place in his affections. Catherine had heard about the king’s mistress and was utterly opposed to receiving her at court. Barbara, isolated in King Street, was a bundle of anxieties. The birth of her child was imminent and she was impatient for the ordeal to be over – and successful. For several weeks her condition had prevented her exercising her potent sexual witchcraft over the king. She needed to recover quickly from the birth and to be able to present Charles with a healthy baby who would give her an extra hold over him. Meanwhile, her husband lost no opportunity to express his righteous wrath, and her lover, upon whom all her hopes depended, was away courting his new wife. In fashionable circles all eyes were fixed upon the principal players and the cogs of the gossip machine were whirring in salacious anticipation: ‘there are great endeavours to make you-know-who a lady of the bedchamber,’ wrote one royal watcher, ‘but it is hoped by many they will not take effect. A little time will show us a great deal – I will say no more for fear of burning my fingers.’91 It was common knowledge that Charles had promised to be faithful to his queen and common suspicion that he would be unable to keep his word. The sensation-mongers were not to be disappointed.
The court moved to Hampton Court at the end of May and Charles flirted assiduously with his wife. He helped her to learn English and they were seen to laugh much over her mistakes. Husband and wife dined together, rode together and spent happy nights together. Catherine was allowed the ministrations of her priests and her ladies and found her new environment agreeable. She was, it seems, completely won over by the attentiveness of her husband and perfectly ready to love him – as was her duty and her inclination. For his part, Charles was eager to soften his wife up for the confrontation that must soon take place. Some two and a half weeks after their arrival a confidential messenger came to the king with the news that Barbara had been delivered of a boy whom she had immediately named after his father. Charles stole away from Hampton Court for a flying visit to mother and child.
Whether Roger Palmer was present at this affecting reunion is not recorded but he certainly knew of it and he was not slow to react. For a man who had been made the laughing stock of the town it was the last straw to have his wife and her lover meeting together in his house to gloat over the result of their illicit union. For respectability’s sake the child would bear Palmer’s name – a paper-thin subterfuge which deceived no one. But it did give the outraged cuckold an opportunity for revenge. He had recently been converted to Catholicism. It was therefore his right – indeed his duty – to have his child baptised into the true faith. Doing so would be an intolerable embarrassment to the king. The country had accepted his marriage to a Catholic princess but there was no question but that any heir must be brought up as a Protestant. If the king was prepared to allow his illegitimate offspring to become papists that would be sending out a very dangerous signal. Roger grabbed the boy and rushed him to a priest, who obligingly administered the sacrament.
What followed has all the tumultuous angst and overacted drama of a popular soap opera. A distraught Barbara sent word upriver to the king. He hurried back accompanied by Lady Suffolk, his mistress’s aunt, and Aubrey de Vere, Earl of Oxford (perhaps the only one of Charles’ confidants who could be quickly found). Together with the baby and his mother they formed an impromptu christening party which hastened to St Margaret’s, Westminster for an undignified Anglican ceremony. The king returned to Hampton Court, knowing that news of the sensational event would soon be following him. He was being forced into action and could no longer indulge the luxury of waiting for a favourable opportunity to speak to the queen. The list of Catherine’s household officers had not yet been completed. Charles now had it drawn up and presented to his wife for her approval. The first name on it was Lady Castlemaine’s. Angrily, Catherine struck it out. This first display of temper by his bride took Charles by surprise. It also obliged him to react.
Over the next few weeks the king’s attitude hardened to the point that he behaved towards the queen and those who took her part with severity and even uncharacteristic cruelty. He had boxed himself into a corner and he had done so publicly. He could not yield without losing face and authority. The more he was accused by people he loved and respected – and probably by his own conscience – of being unkind and unreasonable, the more steadfastly he stuck to his guns. There were, of course, plenty of people around the court ready to encourage him to be firm, notably those who were in frequent contact with the queen mother. They urged him to take a leaf from the book of his maternal grandfather, Henry IV, who had regarded it as a point of honour that his close friends, male and female, should be welcomed by his wife. The exact course of events over the weeks of high summer is impossible to reconstruct but it is clear that Charles tried, by turns, every tactic he could employ. Unfortunately he was never at his best with men or women of principle. He adopted the cynic’s assumption that everyone has his price and when he encountered a person who could not be cajoled, bribed or bullied his only alternatives were to give way or resort to force. He assured Catherine that his affair with Barbara was at an end. He told her that he had the right to decide who should and who should not be admitted to the royal household. He bargained with her: if she would accept Lady Castlemaine he would never interfere in her choice of companions thereafter. When all else failed, he gave way to threats; unless the queen complied with his wishes he would cease to visit her and he would send all her Portuguese attendants packing. Eventually he carried out that latter threat, leaving his wife stranded and comfortless in an environment where most of the people she encountered day by day were cold towards her because they were afraid to displease the king by appearing to succour her.
The dramatic high point of this confrontation occurred when Charles tried to introduce Barbara to the queen. He brought his mistress into his wife’s crowded audience chamber. Catherine rose from her seat to acknowledge the king’s presence and smiled at his companion. Only when Charles announced Lady Castlemaine’s name did she realise who this attractive, well-dressed woman was. She fell back on to her chair. She burst into tears. Her nose began to bleed. Then she fainted away. Attendants carried her into an adjoining room to revive her and all eyes were on the king. Would he follow to minister to his wife in her distress, leaving Barbara to retire in confusion, or would he escort his mistress away with as much dignity as he could muster? It was a fulcrum moment. On Charles’ very public decision depended the tone he would set for his court and the reputation he would have outside it. Typically, he took the easier option. Barbara’s power was stronger than the new queen’s and, as the king led her from the room, past bowing courtiers, Lady Castlemaine may well have experienced a frisson of triumph. She had won.
But Queen Catherine had still not offered her surrender. In fact, she continued her defiance and demanded to be allowed to return to Portugal if she could not have control of her own household. Such a snub would reverberate along the wires of international diplomacy and could, of course, not be even considered. The high-spirited woman must be made to submit. Charles turned to Clarendon, his Mr Fix-it, to carry out this distasteful task. He already knew the chancellor’s opinion on the matter, for Clarendon had quite unequivocally told him that the French custom of parading royal mistresses before the court and loading them with honours was quite unacceptable in England. Since their return from abroad, Hyde had been unable to modify his attitude towards Charles. Throughout the long years of exile he had become accustomed to speaking his mind, more like a royal tutor than a politician. Now that his young charge was a mature king, in full possession of his throne, he continued to speak to him in pedagogic vein. Charles was beginning to find it tiresome.
This played into the hands of the chancellor’s enemies. When the crisis at Hampton Court was simmering nicely Sir Henry Bennet presented a personal memorandum to the king in which he observed that ‘the dissatisfaction towards the present government (though, God knows, very undeservedly) is become so universal that any small accident may put us into new troubles’.92 The ‘present government’, of course, meant Clarendon, and Bennet was doing little more than stating the obvious when he wrote of widespread discontent. Considering the long agenda of issues left over from the political and constitutional crises of the last thirty years it could hardly be otherwise. The chancellor was caught between a king whose inclination was towards toleration, reconciliation and inclusivity and a royalist parliament eager for revenge on all those who had troubled Church and State.
Against Charles’ wishes, Lords and Commons, having apparently learned nothing from the disastrous efforts of William Laud to fasten all British Christians into a liturgical straitjacket, had carried an iniquitous Act of Uniformity. As a result, over 1,800 Puritan, Presbyterian and Independent clergy were deprived of their livings on 24 August 1662, which, ominously enough, was St Bartholomew’s Day. Thus, the vengeful bishops and their allies, by seeking to impose unity, sundered English Protestants into Anglican and Nonconformist communions. This was not what either Charles or thousands of his subjects had thought was meant by the ‘liberty to tender consciences’ guaranteed by the Declaration of Breda. If the hard-liners got their own way over religion they failed over issues of restitution and the punishment of rebels. As we have seen, very few men suffered execution for their part in the death of the old king and the government decided that it was quite impracticable to compensate royalists for every confiscation of property that had, allegedly, taken place since 1642. One other bone of contention that stuck in the throats of loyal Britons of every persuasion was Dunkirk. Charles and his ministers had decided that the upkeep of the port was not worth the expense entailed so they sold it back to the French. It was a sensible political decision and it added much needed gold to the Treasury but, inevitably, it was not very popular.
The role of scapegoat was built into the office of king’s chief minister and Clarendon’s enemies believed that they could persuade Charles to jettison the man as a means of deflecting blame from himself for the policies. The schemers and their allies among the young smart set at court kept up a constant sniping of ridicule against the chancellor, lampooning him as an old-fashioned, censorious, killjoy Malvolio figure. Lady Castlemaine had her own reasons for being a member of this group. Yet not even her access to the king enabled them to prise the old servant from his position of trust, as Clarendon told his friend Ormonde:
I cannot tell you that I find, whatever other people discourse, my credit at all diminished with the king. He takes pains sometimes to persuade me the contrary … That which breaks my heart is that the same affections continue still, the same laziness and unconcernedness in business, and a proportionable abatement of reputation.93
Nothing more endangered that relationship with the king of which Clarendon boasted than the problems created by the mutual hostility of queen and mistress. Not even Minette’s wryly expressed disapproval of his proceedings deflected Charles from his determination to have his own way with regard to Barbara’s presence at court. Charles had given his sister a, doubtless carefully edited, version of events at Hampton Court. Henrietta read between the lines and replied, on 22 July, in mocking tones:
Alas! How can one possibly say such things? I, who know your innocence, marvel at it. But, jesting apart, I pray you tell me how the queen takes this. It is said here that she is grieved beyond measure, and, to speak frankly, I think it is with reason.94
Henrietta knew, by now, what it was to have a husband who behaved badly and she recognised the signs in her dear brother. Charles, however, was too firmly set upon his course to change it. Thus, Clarendon was sent to bring Catherine to heel.
The chancellor did not consent meekly to running this distasteful errand. He demanded and received from Charles an explanation for his conduct. The king was disarmingly frank – up to a point. He said that he enjoyed Lady Castlemaine’s company and had no intention of being deprived of it. If he gave way to the queen the first time they had a disagreement he would become a laughing stock. That much Clarendon had no difficulty believing. What followed he may well have taken with a pinch of salt. Charles promised that, if Catherine would oblige him on this one point, he would be a model husband, living chastely with her and making no unreasonable demands. Lady Castlemaine, for her part, would be a devoted and faithful servant of the queen. Clarendon knew his master too well to take this at face value. He knew that Charles Stuart could never content himself with the close companionship of one woman and that he was fascinated by the variety of womankind. He knew that loyalty – to man or woman – meant little to him. However, the chancellor did his duty. He went to the queen and repeated her husband’s lies. But Catherine held firm. After several tearful interviews Clarendon informed the king that he had failed in his mission and asked to be relieved of it. Charles accepted with a bad grace, sending after him a long note, warning him to keep his mouth shut about the affair and to restrain anyone else who might be inclined to gossip:
I forgot when you were here last to desire you to give Broderick [Sir Alan Broderick, a client of Clarendon’s and an ardent royalist parliamentarian] good counsel not to meddle any more with what concerns my Lady Castlemaine and to let him have a care how he is the author of any scandalous reports. For if I find him guilty of any such thing I will make him repent it to the last moment of his life.
And now I am entered on this matter I think it very necessary to give you a little good counsel in it, lest you may think that by making a further stir in the business you may divert me from my resolution, which all the world shall never do.
And I wish I may be unhappy in this world and the world to come if I fail in the least degree of what I have resolved, which is of making my Lady Castlemaine of my wife’s bedchamber, and whosoever I find use any endeavour to hinder this resolution of mine (except it be only to myself) I will be his enemy to the last moment of my life.
You know how true a friend I have been to you. If you will oblige me eternally, make this business as easy as you can, of what opinion soever you are. For I am resolved to go through with this matter, let what will come of it, which again I solemnly swear before Almighty God.
Therefore, if you desire to have the continuance of my friendship, meddle no more with this business, except it be to bear down all false, scandalous reports and to facilitate what I am sure my honour is so much concerned in.
And whosoever I find to be my Lady Castlemaine’s enemy in this matter, I do promise upon my word to be his enemy as long as I live …95
What are we to make of this vehement determination in a king who, from force of habit, usually went for the easiest, less emotionally demanding option? It has become customary to explain it in terms of the hold Barbara Villiers had secured over his affections and we certainly cannot discount her sheer force of personality. Lady Castlemaine was totally focused on extracting all she could from her relationship with the king and made sure that she kept him on the hook. But Charles was not infatuated with his latest mistress. This relationship was no repetition of the grand passion he had experienced with Lucy. The fact that she remained vivid in his memory is evidenced by the great affection Charles had for their son, who was now brought to court. Certainly there was no question of the king being faithful to Barbara; his eyes were already wandering elsewhere. Nor did she grant him exclusive right to her favours. The Earl of Halifax, an incisive judge of character and a courtier who observed Charles closely over many years, concluded that he was incapable of ‘true love’:
his inclinations to love were the effects of health and a good constitution, with as little mixture of the seraphic part as ever man had … He had … a good stomach to his mistresses [rather] than any great passion for them … His patience for their frailties showed him no exact[ing] lover. It is a heresy according to a true lover’s creed ever to forgive an infidelity or the appearance of it … In his latter times he had no love, but insensible engagements that made it harder than most might apprehend to untie them. The politics might have their part – a secret, a commission, a confidence in critical things – [which could raise] … difficulties in dismissing them. There may be no love all the while, perhaps the contrary. He was said to be as little constant as they were thought to be.
Halifax reflected that, since the mistresses were, ‘in all respects craving creatures’ and since the king was not in love with them, it was only his appetite for pleasure that addicted him to incessant female company.
The definition of pleasure is what pleaseth and if that which grave men call a corrupted fancy shall administer any remedies for putting off mourning for the loss of youth, who shall blame it?96
Charles had become accustomed to being surrounded by beautiful and vivacious women. Their ‘effeminate conversation’ flattered his ego and encouraged him to hold on to a self-concept of youthful virility. Perhaps in the summer of 1662 he felt the need to put down a marker indicating that mere marriage was not going to put an end to his bachelor lifestyle (he would certainly not be alone among men of all times in finding the transition from single to wedded life difficult).
The king claimed in his letter to Clarendon that his honour was ‘much concerned’ in fulfilling his promise to Lady Castlemaine. It is obvious that he always felt an obligation to women who rendered him services, whether sexual or otherwise. His letters to Jane Lane and the sums of money he somehow found for Lucy Walter when he was hideously strapped for cash himself indicate this, and during his years of wandering he frequently lamented his inability to reward adequately those who made his exile bearable. Once he had been restored to his kingdom he became ludicrously lavish in showering gifts on those closest to him. The flip side of this genuine generosity was the cynicism which replaced love. ‘He had,’ according to Burnet, ‘a very ill opinion of both men and women, and did not think that there was either sincerity or chastity in the world out of principle … He thought that nobody did serve him out of love, and so he was quits with the world and loved others as little as he thought they loved him.’97 He believed that even many who had sacrificed so much for him while he was on his travels had been gambling on future prosperity and much of his new life consisted, as Halifax described, in being ‘galled with importunities, pursued from one room to another with asking faces’.98 Difficult, therefore, not to conclude that everyone had his/her price. And there was also the knowledge that judicious princely open-handedness was a political virtue. He had seen how Mazarin and Louis XIV distributed favours as a means of buying loyalty. Charles may have believed that he was honour bound to meet his commitment to Barbara. He had even told Clarendon that he felt responsible for ruining her reputation. However, we are dealing here with the king, in the words of the second Earl of Rochester, ‘whose promise none relied on’. For Charles, vows and principles were infinite variables.
So we must seek other motives behind Charles’ bulldog insistence on having Barbara Villiers as a fixture in his court. One is the need to assert his authority. In the two years that he had been on the throne he had experienced growing opposition to his wishes on a number of issues. For the first time he knew what his father had had to endure from a recalcitrant parliament. Like Charles I and Louis XIV, ‘he thought government was a much safer and easier thing where the authority was believed infallible and the faith and submission of the people was implicit’.99 But a very different mood prevailed in the country after two decades of tumult and constitutional change. Even the Cavalier Parliament which swept away much of the legislation enacted since 1641 was careful to preserve those statutes which enhanced its own privileges and restricted the royal prerogative. It reinforced parliament’s right to meet at least every three years, and not at the sovereign’s pleasure. It declined to vote the king all the money he claimed he needed and even if he had not been so profligate with the supply he had received it is doubtful whether he could have made ends meet. The old prerogative courts were gone for good and all and the standing army was disbanded. As we have seen, Charles failed to have religious toleration built into the Restoration settlement, though he went on for many months trying to assert the right of the Crown to ameliorate the effects of the Act of Uniformity on Catholics and Nonconformists.
It was not just the legislature with which Charles found himself in conflict. Throughout the length and breadth of the three kingdoms a new malaise now affected thinking people; authority of every kind was questioned to a degree that it had never been before the Civil Wars. And criticism was raining down in a blitzkrieg of print. Since 1640 there had been a tenfold increase in the number of books and pamphlets coming from the presses. Charles was furious to find his policies, his court, his lifestyle being ridiculed and condemned. His ministers secured the passing of a Licensing Act imposing swingeing penalties on those convicted of ‘endangering the peace of these kingdoms and raising a dissatisfaction to his most excellent majesty’. This was a victory, but only a minor one, because it failed to silence the underground presses and it also removed the power of censorship from the Crown to parliament. Facing all these challenges and having to give way on many of them, it is hardly surprising that Charles should have decided that in his own household, at least, he would be master.
And there he faced a conflict that was nowhere near as politically significant as differences of churchmanship or constitutional theory but which affronted him on a daily basis. It was a conflict of styles. The king and his circle of intimates set the tone of the court. Its liberal, easygoing, fun-loving character was best summed up in a word coined for it: ‘sauntering’. The Duke of Buckingham, describing the character of the king, explained, ‘A bewitching kind of pleasure called sauntering and talking without any constraint was the true sultana queen [i.e. favourite concubine] he exulted in.’100 The words suggest to our ears almost the opposite of what it involved for Charles and his companions. The king took daily exercise in St James’s Park or wherever the court was stationed but these perambulations were anything but leisurely. Halifax recalled that Charles walked very briskly, in order to shake off importunate suitors. Yet it was on these outings or in the privacy of his apartments after his post-dinner nap that sauntering occurred. The king’s intimates gathered in an atmosphere of free and easy camaraderie to sit at the gaming tables, have the latest ballads sung to them and discuss anything that took their fancy.
The fare might include bawdy stories and delicious gossip. Courtiers and their servants, knowing how the king enjoyed scandal, scoured the backstreets and coffee houses for juicy tit-bits. The young Earl of Rochester posted one of his men dressed as a sentry and ‘kept him all the winter long every night at the doors of such ladies as he believed in intrigues … this man saw who walked about and visited at forbidden hours’.101
Like a cur who’s taught to fetch he goes
From place to place to bring back what he knows;
Tells who’s i’ the park, what coaches turned about,
Who were the sparks, and whom they followed out.102
The king’s chamber was the finishing school of the Restoration wits – Dorset, Rochester, Buckingham, Sir Charles Sedley – who tried to outdo one another in clever verses, witty satires or gutter vulgarity. Sauntering admitted of no inhibitions and certainly no allowances for the tender ears of ladies.
No ways to vice does this our age produce,
But women, with less shame than men, do use.
They’ll play, they’ll drink, talk filth’ly and profane.
With more extravagance than any man.103
The king revelled in the company of clever and irreverent conversationalists, and those eager to continue in his favour strove mightily to keep him amused. Often this involved buffoonery targeted against the more sober members of the court. Buckingham was a clever mimic of Clarendon, and Charles roared with laughter when the duke cavorted pompously round the room preceded by confederates carrying a pair of bellows and a fire shovel, in burlesque of the chancellor who was often to be seen in a little procession with the mace and the Great Seal in its pouch borne solemnly before him. Nothing was sacred to these bright young things. They would ape popular preachers and thunder out eye-rolling sermons replete with double entendres, while their delighted friends giggled their inebriated ‘amens’. But the king’s laughter was not always unforced. Chatter really was ‘without any constraint’ and Charles, having decreed the motto fay ce que voudras, sometimes had to listen while he, himself, was satirised. Being able to take a joke helped to keep the free-thinking coterie together but it did little for the dignity of the Crown.
The activities of the king’s inner circle were by no means confined to trivia, for Charles’ lively and enquiring mind could embrace many topics. Politics might be discussed, or the building of new ships for the navy, or philosophy. Thomas Hobbes was readmitted to favour soon after the king’s return. Then there were the several branches of science which intrigued Charles. In July 1662, while he was in the midst of his domestic crisis, Charles presented a charter to the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge. Its remit was as wide as its name suggested and Charles took a close interest in its work. He also carried out his own experiments. Pepys had a somewhat gruesome story from one of his court contacts concerning a foetus that was dropped by a lady who miscarried in the middle of a ball:
the king had it in his closet a week after and did dissect it and, making great sport of it, said that in his opinion it must have been a month and three hours old …104
It is not difficult to imagine how the straitlaced Catherine of Braganza and her sombre guardians reacted to a style of court life that was shockingly amoral and quite alien to anything they had ever experienced.
Nor is it hard to conjecture Charles’ reaction to their frowning disapproval and their criticisms, whether stated or implied. There were few things he loathed more heartily than bigotry and pious cant. Religious zeal of whatever hue offended him because he could never understand people who had a deep commitment to principle. He carried uncomfortable memories of his brief sojourn among the Presbyterian Scots and one of the few occasions when he had displayed angry and determined resistance had been over his mother’s attempts to convert the Duke of Gloucester. Now he was faced with the endeavours of a crew of unsmiling foreign Catholics to alter the character of his household. Their very appearance threw down a gauntlet. Exuberance and ostentation were the marks of English court dress. Charles may have inaugurated the fashion for full-bottomed, lice-harbouring wigs because his hair was thinning, but he was certainly determined to distinguish himself and his followers from the earnest, close-cropped rulers of the Protectorate. Much the same motivation lay behind the new mode for flamboyant clothes. Ribbons, bows, fine lace, ballooning silks and, above all, colour were now de rigueur. And that was just for the men! Court ladies spent fortunes on floral brocades, elaborate coiffures and bejewelled, immodestly low-cut dresses. What a visual contrast was struck by his wife’s attendants. Her priests and monks shambled around Hampton Court in sombre browns and blacks, averting their eyes from the wanton, shameless braggadocio of the king’s companions. Her ladies stubbornly espoused the quiet dignity of their native costume coupled with the outrageous farthingales which, as Charles joked, made royal transport difficult due to the problems of finding carriages large enough to accommodate the unwieldy garments.
These outward shows symbolised something deeper. Charles felt that his very way of life was being questioned and he would not stand for it. For years he had shrugged off the complaints of Hyde and Ormonde but they were men he respected; they were useful to him and he knew they had his best interests at heart. The same could not be said of his new queen’s entourage. They were simply interfering, rosary-touting, narrow-minded fanatics and he was glad of the excuse to pack them off back to Portugal. His insistence on placing Lady Castlemaine close to the queen may well have been in order to introduce a little levity into her majesty’s chambers. What, I believe, we can say is that Barbara was not promoted primarily because she was a voluptuous termagant whom the king could not refuse or because he felt honour bound to keep his word; she was a Trojan horse insinuated into the ladies’ side of the court to introduce an element of debonair gaiety. Without some such move the royal household could well have become a place of rival camps divided by an iron curtain. As well as being intolerably uncomfortable for its denizens, this would have invited derision from observers, especially foreign diplomats, and would have provided ammunition for enemies of the regime who were always looking for things to ridicule.
The war of attrition was successful. Catherine capitulated, Barbara was installed in rooms at Hampton Court conveniently close to the king’s and he rapidly forgot any vow he had made about forswearing her bed. Following the christening incident the Castlemaines had had a furious row which ended in Barbara storming out of the King Street house, taking with her every stick of furniture and every last knife and fork. The marriage was over and when George and Edward Villiers signed a bond in the sum of £10,000 for all Barbara’s debts the separation was complete. It was probably the smooth-tongued Bennet who made the queen see the futility of continued opposition to her husband’s will. She could either accommodate herself to the ways of the Stuart court or place herself in perpetual purdah. Once her priests were no longer on hand to stiffen her resolve and to encourage her to see herself as a religious martyr, Catherine accepted the lesser of two evils. She now seems to have gone overboard in her effusive show of friendship towards Lady Castlemaine.
Charles’ immediate reaction to this change of heart was to display, not gratitude, but an indifference bordering on contempt. He liked women of spirit and habitually gave way to mistresses who boldly asserted their claims. But where there was no strong sexual interest he found feminine opposition annoying. He had displayed anger towards his mother and his elder sister when they challenged his wishes. He had cruelly turned his back on Lucy once passion had died. Now he went through a phase of being emotionally cold towards his wife. Barbara and their tiny son filled his thoughts and he felt a stronger obligation towards them. Courtiers, diplomats and hangers-on were not slow to read the runes. They clustered round Barbara as the leading woman of the court. These intimate relationships were, however, kept from the general populace. When, on 23 August, Charles brought his wife downriver to Whitehall it was, according to an enraptured John Evelyn, amidst scenes of unparalleled splendour.
I this day was spectator of the most magnificent triumph that certainly ever floated on the Thames considering the innumerable number of boats and vessels, dressed and adorned with all imaginable pomp, but above all the thrones, arches, pageants and other representations, stately barges of the lord mayor and companies with various inventions, music and peals of ordnance both from the vessels and shore going to meet and conduct the new queen … far exceeding, in my opinion, all the Venetian bucentaurs [the bucentaur was the doge’s gilded barge] etc on the Ascension [Day] when they go to espouse the Adriatic. His majesty and the queen came in an antique-shaped open vessel, covered with a state or canopy of gold made in the form of a cupola supported with high Corinthian pillars, wreathed with flowers, festoons and garlands …105
Another and, perhaps, a more au courant witness described Catherine’s state entrance to the capital as more like a Roman triumph in which she played the role of a captive princess.
Another of the king’s women made a quieter but politically more important arrival at about the same time. On 20 July Charles and James set out across the Channel in vile weather to escort their mother to England. Henrietta Maria was eager to take up her position in her son’s kingdom, an influential position which she regarded as similar to that exercised by Anne of Austria. Although Louis’ mother’s regency had officially ended when he assumed complete power in 1661, the woman who, with Mazarin, had defeated the Fronde and saved the monarchy continued to enjoy a prominent position and considerable respect. Despite being an extremely bad sailor, Henrietta Maria left Calais at the earliest possible moment and, on 28 July, she was ensconced, temporarily, at Richmond Palace. She was able to take up residence in her new home, Somerset House in the Strand, in time for her son’s return to Whitehall.
On 8 September, Charles wrote to Minette with considerable diplomatic artistry about their mother’s wellbeing:
The queen has told you, I hope, that she is not displeased with her being here. I am sure that I have done all that lies within my power to let her see the duty and kindness I have for her. The truth is, never children had so good a mother as we have, and you and I shall never have any dispute but only who loves her best, and in that I will never yield to you …106
Why the extravagant protestation if not to counter some grumbles by Henrietta Maria about the warmth of her reception? It was inevitable that the queen mother should be dissatisfied with her situation. She could not disabuse herself of the conviction that she was her son’s natural guide but, whatever his personal feelings for her, he could only regard her as a political embarrassment. Charles I’s widow was widely unpopular. To the Stuarts’ enemies, she was the representative of a hated regime, while many royalists shared Clarendon’s conviction that the queen mother had been responsible for much of her husband’s misfortune. Charles was also anxious about how his mother would conduct herself. He knew how difficult it would be for her to keep a low profile.
He was right to be concerned. Henrietta Maria now became a focal point for the pro-French party and one means of close contact between the courts in London and Paris. She wasted no time in establishing herself in fashionable society and winning friends among its leaders. She devoted much time and thought to redecorating and furnishing her rooms at Somerset House, striving eagerly to recreate something of the splendour and high taste of the long-lost, happy days when she and her husband had set the fashion in London. Courtiers and upwardly mobile aspirants hastened to pay court and John Evelyn glowed with pleasure when ‘her majesty the queen mother, with the Earl of St Albans and many great ladies and persons, was pleased to honour my poor villa with her presence and to accept of a collation, being exceedingly pleased and staying till very late in the evening’.107 Three weeks later it was Samuel Pepys’ turn to have the thrill of being admitted to the dowager queen’s intimate circle:
Mr Pierce, the chirurgeon … took me into Somerset House and there carried me into the queen mother’s presence chamber, where she was with our own queen sitting on her left hand (whom I did never see before), and, though she be not very charming, yet she hath a good, modest and innocent look, which is pleasing. Here I also saw Madam Castlemaine and, which pleased me most, Mr Crofts, the king’s bastard, a most pretty spark of about fifteen years old, who, I do perceive, do hang much upon my Lady Castlemaine and is always with her …108
Barbara Villiers and Henrietta Maria – a formidable alliance and one that now took on a very political character. Samuel Pepys closed his diary for the year 1662 in a mood of melancholy reflection:
[The king is] following his pleasures more than with good advice he would do – at least, to be seen to all the world to do so. His dalliance with my Lady Castlemaine being public every day, to his great reproach, and his favouring of none at court so much as those that are the confidants of his pleasure, as Sir H. Bennet and Sir Charles Berkeley, which, good God, put it into his heart to mend before he makes himself too much despised by his people for it!109
It was a prayer destined to go unanswered.