For those with long enough memories, the closing years of the reign may have seemed like a return to the 1630s. The king ruled without parliament – he simply ignored the Triennial Act, which had ordained that Lords and Commons must be summoned at least every three years. The realm was at peace with its neighbours – it had to be, for only by avoiding costly foreign entanglements could Charles escape the clutches of the tax-making body. Government policy became more reactionary – the king, who would never have inaugurated an autocratic regime, slipped easily into it because the nation seemed prepared to accept it and he allowed his agents progressively to remove radicals from positions of authority both nationally and locally. Crown and Mitre held sway once more as in the good old days of Charles I and Laud. At the centre of the quiescent nation domestic harmony prevailed in the court. The ageing king, sexual passion mostly spent, enjoyed the company of his women, his favoured male companions and his clutch of illegitimate sons and daughters, while a Tory administration handled administrative details.
Yet the surface calm was an illusion, just as it had been during the eleven years’ tyranny of the king’s father. Profound political problems had not been solved; they had merely been put on hold. This did not bother Charles. Only the practicalities of government concerned him, not political theory. He had won the battle over exclusion and he remained constant in supporting James’ right to succeed him, although that sometimes involved the heartache of ostracising Monmouth, the unruly son for whom he retained a firm affection. If he doubted the Duke of York’s ability to take over the juggling act he had performed for more than two decades he was determined to make no constitutional provision that might make things easier for him. Le déluge might come but it would be après nous and that was really all that mattered to Charles. What he and his ministers did in 1681–2 with the aid of the maîtresse en titre was to thrust the cork firmly into the bottle of Whiggery and dissent, but the liquor was still fermenting.
Charles might have been forgiven a degree of optimism in the summer of 1681, for at Oxford, in March, he had acted speedily, decisively, cleverly and with complete success to confound his enemies. Fresh elections in February had shown the Whigs to be as strong as ever. Partisan ballad-writers and satirists were even more prolific. Though Louise de Keroualle had shifted her political position, her association with the Duke of York and the ‘triple-crowned monster’ of Rome had, by now, become a standard convention in pamphlets and lampoons. The writer of ‘A Satire on Court Ladies’ directed his venom at members of the York-Portsmouth circle, as he conceived it. ‘Oglethorpe’ and ‘Lucy’ were avowed supporters of James, and their wives were bosom companions of Louise. The ‘Beast’, of course, is Rome.
Speak out, then, Muse, and all the vices tell
With which our countries, court and cities swell.
Though Oglethorpe, bold Lucy and the Beast
Are stately pillars of York’s interest,
Yet still we’ll curse the monster who’d enslave
Our free-born souls and make’s own brother’s grave.
Though Portsmouth have strong ruffians she can trust
As well to serve her malice as her lust,
Yet still she’s slavish, prostrate, false and foul,
Destroys our prince’s honour, health and soul.107
But some writers went a great deal further. Not content to attack the evil influences at court, they aimed at Charles himself, accusing him of autocratic tendencies and prophesying that the end of Stuart ambitions was to set up a Catholic tyranny. Stephen College, carpenter by trade but by avocation a public speaker and writer of numerous violent attacks on Romanists, distributed his most popular ballad, ‘The Ra-ree Show or The True Protestant Procession’, in the weeks before parliament reassembled. In his somewhat confused allegory the king appears both as a tyrant determined to impose arbitrary rule and as a feeble, fairground huckster carrying on his back an absolutist ra-ree show (peep-show).
… What’s past is not to come, with a hey, with a hey,
Now safe is David’s bum, with a ho,
Then hey for Oxford, ho,
Strong government Rar-ee show,
With a hey, trany nony nony no.
Rar-ee show is resolved, with a hey, with a hey,
This is worse than dissolved, with a ho,
[i.e., the king will try to go further than just dissolving parliament]
May the mighty weight at’s back
Make’s lecherous loins to crack,
With a hey trany nony nony no.
Methinks he seems to stagger, with a hey, with a hey,
Who but now did so swagger, with a ho,
God’s fish, he’s stuck i’ the mire
And all the fat’s i’ the fire.
With a hey, trany nony nony no.
The versifier calls on Shaftesbury and his friends to ‘pull down the rar-ee show’.
And now you have freed the nation, with a hey, with a hey
Cram in the convocation [the bishops], with a ho
With pensioners all and some [those receiving French subsidies]
Into this chest of Rome,
With a hey trany nony nony no …
Haloo, the hunt’s begun, with a hey, with a hey,
Like father, like son, with a ho …108
The hint that Charles II might be dealt with as his father had been dealt with was, of course, a dangerous one to make and it is not surprising that College was subsequently arrested for plotting the king’s death but, at the time the ballad was written, it seemed, at least to optimists, that a strong curb was about to be placed on Stuart pretensions.
At Oxford the opposition certainly gave no ground. Charles offered a compromise on the succession: James was to take the throne but his political powers would be curbed by the presence of a Protestant regent. The proposition was full of holes, the largest being the character of James, who would not have accepted any limitation to his power. The Whigs dismissed the offer and brought in a third Exclusion Bill. This was crunch time. It would decide whether or not parliament had any role in deciding who should wear the crown and whether there was to be a religious qualification for monarchs in England, as there was in most Catholic countries. There could be no more evasive tactics and now, for the first time, Charles made his position crystal clear to Shaftesbury. And his determination.
Let there be no delusion, I will not yield, nor will I be bullied. Men usually become more timid as they become older. It is the opposite with me, and for what may remain of my life I am determined that nothing will tarnish my reputation. I have law and reason and all right-thinking men on my side. I have the Church, and nothing will ever separate us.109
It would be agreeable to interpret the words as marking some kind of conversion; as showing that the seasoned pragmatist and master opportunist had, at last, found a principle on which he was prepared to take a stand. The firmness of his declaration might suggest that he would face a second exile or challenge parliament to mount a second rebellion rather than betray that principle. In reality, no such sea change had overtaken the king’s character. If he affected a new bravado it was because, for the first time in almost three years, he came to the card table with a fistful of aces.
The first was a change in the public mood. The initial anti-Catholic fervour stirred up by Oates and his crew of informers, slanderers and perjurers had begun to give way to scepticism and alarm. People feared that a witch-hunt against supposed papist plotters might become the precursor to an attack on the monarchy which would lead to a resurgence of civil war. The Earl of Shaftesbury who, like the young lady of Riga, had cheerfully ridden the Popish Plot tiger, now looked as though he might share her fate.
The shedding so much blood upon such doubtful evidence was like to have proved fatal to him who drove all these things on with the greatest fury; I mean the Earl of Shaftesbury himself. And the strange change that appeared over the nation with relation to the Duke [of York], from such an eager prosecution of the exclusion to an indecent courting and magnifying him … showed how little men could build on popular heats, which have their ebbings and flowings, and their hot and cold fits.110
Charles showed that he, too, could master the arts of propaganda. When he delivered his opening speech to parliament, on 21 March, he had it printed and distributed throughout the country. In it he exactly caught the mood of his war-wary subjects with a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger reflection on the ‘undutiful’ behaviour of the last three parliaments and a strong asseveration of his commitment to Protestantism.
The reverse in national sentiment was accompanied by an economic upturn. European peace gave a boost to trade and an embargo on French imports came to an end in 1681. This brought a flood of luxury goods into the country and significantly added to the excise revenue.
However, what clinched Charles’ ability to strike a new, independent pose was the success of his negotiations with Louis. Inspired as much by political considerations as by ideology, the French king was genuinely alarmed by the progress of the Whigs. He needed a government in England that was friendly and dependent. His ambassadors left him in no doubt about the overwhelming anti-French sentiment of the majority of Charles’ subjects. If the Stuarts were removed or involved in a struggle for survival or obliged to fall in with the wishes of an over-powerful parliament this would unnecessarily complicate his own foreign policy. At the same time, he was quite unable to regard the opposition to Charles as simply a group of political malcontents; they were evil men in league with vile heretics and, just as he was engaged in a campaign of extirpation against his own Huguenots, so he felt that he must, in conscience, help a threatened brother monarch to exert the rights of religious absolutism against his own Protestant rabble. The tangible results of all this were an immediate payment of £40,000 and the promise of £115,000 p.a. for the next three years on condition that the English parliament did not meet during that period. Thus, when Charles came to Oxford he knew that, as long as he could avoid war or any other emergencies, his position was secure.
Unaware of the French deal, his enemies were caught completely off guard by the theatrical performance to which Charles treated them on 28 March. The Commons were labouring under some difficulty, having (deliberately?) been allocated somewhat restricted accommodation in the Schools. The king pleasantly agreed to move them into the Sheldonian Theatre on Monday the 28th. Accordingly, they were unhurriedly carrying on their business on Monday morning while awaiting their transfer to a more commodious venue. The Lords, meanwhile, were assembled in Christ Church hall. Thither came the king in a closed chair, his bearers slipping and stumbling in the street’s frost-hardened ruts. Any passer-by, observing him dismount and enter the college, would readily have assumed that the bulky cloak in which he was enveloped was to protect him from the cold, though they might have wondered at the wrapped bundle he carried. As soon as he had taken his place on the throne, he ordered the Commons to be summoned. While Black Rod was about his business. Charles took off his cloak, revealing the state robes underneath. He removed the crown from its wrappings and placed it on his head. As the MPs filed in they were stunned by the sight before them. They were even more taken aback by what was probably the briefest speech ever made by a sovereign to the representatives of his people: ‘All the world may see to what a point we are come. We are not likely to have a good end when the divisions at the beginning are such.’ He declared the parliament dissolved, hurried out and immediately took coach for Windsor, leaving confusion and consternation behind him.
Now Charles was faced with the prospect of MPs returning to their shires and boroughs murmuring agin the government and stirring up discontent. To counteract this he immediately set about drafting another long declaration to be read in all churches a couple of weeks later. The sentiments he instructed clergy to express were blatantly dishonest and the royal promises to which they gave voice were lies. Having explained the king’s disappointment with the ungracious behaviour of recent parliaments, it concluded,
But notwithstanding all this, let not the restless malice of ill men who are labouring to poison our people, some out of fondness for their old beloved Commonwealth principles, and some out of anger at their being disappointed in the particular designs they had for the accomplishment of their own ambition and greatness, persuade any of our good subjects that we intend to lay aside the use of Parliaments. For we do still declare that no irregularities in Parliament shall ever make us out of love with Parliaments; which we look upon as the best method for healing the distempers of the kingdom, and the only means to preserve the monarchy in that due credit and respect which it ought to have both at home and abroad. And for this cause we are resolved, by the blessing of God, to have frequent Parliaments; and both in and out of Parliament to use our utmost endeavours to extirpate Popery and to redress all the grievances of our good subjects, and in all things to govern according to the laws of the kingdom.111
This outrageous exercise of flimflam worked superbly. Over the next few months a torrent of loyal addresses poured in from all corners of the king’s realm. Town corporations, trade guilds, JPs, manorial authorities and even groups of apprentices fell over themselves to assure Charles of their devotion to him and his lawful heirs for ever.
Some biographers see in this evidence of Machiavellian cunning, political foresight and skilful planning of a preconceived programme. They suggest that Charles, who had long concealed his acumen behind a mask of indolence and hedonism, now revealed himself as a master political tactician who shaped events rather than being shaped by them. The truth is rather more complex. As Clarendon had long before observed, Charles certainly did possess intelligence and an acute understanding of men and events but was just too lazy to be proactive. He preferred to use other people’s brains and talents. Just as he expected his women to entertain him in bed and declined to play the ardent, attentive, inventive lover, so he let his ministers govern without providing clear policy directives for them. He kept his own counsel, having long ago discovered that making politicians and diplomats guess what his plans and intentions might be left him with maximum room for manoeuvre. He had instincts rather than principles. He wanted to live as king with as few limitations as possible on his actions but that did not make him a dedicated autocrat. He would never have sacrificed everything for the sake of a high doctrine of kingship, like Charles I, and he would never have worked assiduously to make a potent reality of absolute monarchy, as did Louis XIV.
So, the king who appeared in 1681 with a ra-ree show on his back was not someone who had dramatically discarded the habits and attitudes of a lifetime. Burnet recalled that, in the early weeks of the new year, ‘The king was now very uneasy. He saw he was despised all Europe over as a prince that had neither treasure nor power’ and, for this reason, he opened negotiations with the opposition to find some acceptable compromise.112 It was only when the French negotiations bore fruit that his cunning mind grasped the implications of a unique conjunction of favourable circumstances. He did not defend the succession out of love for his brother, or reverence for his murdered father, or fond memories of his dynastically ambitious mother, or a well-concealed desire for Catholicisation of his realm, or a belief in untrammelled monarchy. If the only price of survival had been giving in to the Whigs he would have paid it. As it was, he was quick-witted enough to see that he could dish the Whigs, get rid of an obnoxious parliament, defend himself and those close to him from further humiliation and be avenged on those who had treated him with barely disguised contempt for so long.
But that alone does not fully explain Charles’ precipitate action on 28 March. There was about the escapade something of a desperate gamble. And it had a historical parallel. Almost forty years before, another dispute had arisen between king and parliament over issues of privilege. On that occasion Charles I had burst into the Commons chamber and tried to arrest five members. His humiliating failure was the prelude to his flight from London and jaw-jaw became war-war. The present king’s father had been driven to that expedient by the Commons’ threat to impeach his queen. Charles II was now motivated by a similar urgent need to protect those close to him from the anger of parliament, and specifically to keep his ‘dearest Fubs’, Louise de Keroualle, out of the Whigs’ clutches.
It was precisely because the king had no programme and shared with no one the ideas that were in his mind that Lady Portsmouth was in real difficulties. Ever since 1678 she had found herself floundering in a sea of uncertainty, and moving awkwardly from political rock to political rock. She had ended up clinging to the exclusionists because she believed that Charles was prepared to do a deal with some of the opposition leaders if suitably face-saving arrangements could be made. But for a second time he had slammed the door in the faces of Shaftesbury and his allies. And this had left Lady Portsmouth discredited and friendless. York, Sunderland and Shaftesbury all felt to some degree betrayed. The last thing she now needed was to be named in a sensational treason trial.
That she was, was largely her own fault. In her insecurity she had employed one Edward Fitzharris, an Irish Catholic undercover agent, to find out what the Whigs might be hatching against her. It was he who had introduced her to Lord Howard of Escrick. In the malodorous underworld of plots, counter-plots, espionage and character assassination Fitzharris was very much at home and was prepared to make his repellent services available to the highest bidder. Having, at Louise’s behest, insinuated himself into the counsels of the opposition, Fitzharris decided to enhance his value by fabricating evidence against them. He concocted a supposed Whig pamphlet The True Englishman Speaking Plain English in a Letter from a Friend to a Friend, and planned to plant it on Howard. Thus, while the duchess was working for a rapprochement between king and parliament, her agent had decided to undermine the Whigs by ‘revealing’ a plot, not only to exclude James, but also to depose Charles. This would strengthen the king’s hand and he would, doubtless, show his gratitude. Perjury and libel were in fashion; Oates and Co. had demonstrated how profitable this brand of criminality could be and Fitzharris thought that, he, too, could cash in on it. Unfortunately for him, he was betrayed by an accomplice, arrested and thrown into Newgate.
Once there, the prisoner immediately began singing a very different song. Now he offered to put his creative imagination at the disposal of the Whigs. The elaborate conspiracy theory he concocted in his overcrowded, typhus-ridden prison involved James, Danby and Louise, the murder of Godfrey and designs on the life of the king. Fitzharris’ fabrications grew increasingly labyrinthine the more desperate his position became. He could only save himself if he was worth more alive than dead to one side or the other in the political conflict. Shaftesbury and his party had an interest in his survival – at least in the short term. They wanted to proceed by parliamentary impeachment so that they could retain control of his prosecution, for, whatever lies and half-truths Fitzharris spewed out, one thing was clear: he had had dealings with the Duchess of Portsmouth and, perhaps, directly with the king. Skilfully revealed before the bar of parliament, this could be political dynamite. By the same token, Charles wanted the accused to be swiftly tried in the criminal court – tried, sentenced and silenced for ever. He acted quickly. Fitzharris was moved from Newgate to the royal prison of the Tower. Charles instructed the prosecution to take place in King’s Bench. This gave rise to a heated constitutional debate in the Oxford parliament about which court had precedence in treason cases. Balked by the royal party in the Lords, the Commons now passed a resolution ‘that all those who concurred in any sort in trying Fitzharris in any other court were betrayers of the liberties of their country’.113 This was the immediate background to the hurried termination of the 1681 parliament. The king’s wild gamble came off. At one stroke he silenced the grumbling members and sent them all back to their homes. Whether he would have succeeded so completely had the parliament met, as usual, in Westminster is a matter for conjecture.
However, king and mistress were not yet out of the wood. Popular discontent might have lost its parliamentary focus: it had not lost its intensity. Interest now centred on the trial of Fitzharris, or rather on the trials of Oliver Plunket, Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, and Fitzharris, scheduled for 8 and 9 June respectively. Plunket was charged with plotting to bring a French and Irish army into England. It was, of course, nonsense but Charles, who had no animus against the archbishop, needed to establish confidence in the prosecution’s false witnesses because they would also be giving evidence in the actions against Fitzharris and Whig leaders against whom he was now compiling a case. Lord Chief Justice Francis Pemberton presided on both occasions and a certain George Jeffreys made his first appearance as prosecutor in important show trials. They duly did their duty by the king. Fitzharris and Plunket were both executed on 1 July – public testimony to the even-handedness of Stuart corruption.
The delay is explained by the desire of royal agents to make maximum propaganda capital out of the prisoner in the Tower. They were instructed to discredit Shaftesbury and his allies and to accumulate evidence against them. To clear his brother, wife and mistress of the calumnies daily growing in intensity Charles had determined to mount a vigorous campaign against the Whig leadership. Royal agents visited Fitzharris in the Tower and held out the hope of a reprieve in return for a confession implicating certain targeted opponents of the regime. Fitzharris’ new version of events named Howard as the author of the damaging pamphlet and other prominent Whigs as his aiders and abettors. Having obtained the confession, the government leaked it in the hope that the accused would flee and, thereby, demonstrate their guilt. Howard, advised by good friends who stood by him fearlessly, stayed at home and was arrested and taken to the Tower. The charges against him were patently absurd and their source was so unreliable that the courts refused to proceed against him and he was released after a couple of months.
The king did, however, manage to snatch another crumb of comfort from the judicial proceedings of the summer. Stephen College, the writer of ‘The Ra-ree Show’ and other vitriolic anti-court propaganda, was arrested on the day of Plunket’s trial. He, too, was incarcerated in the Tower and cited for seditious words and actions. However, a London jury at the Old Bailey threw out the charge on the basis of insufficient evidence. The government were furious, declaring that Whig influence in the capital meant that the king was hard put to get justice there. They had College sent to Oxford for a new trial, where some of his offences were allegedly committed. There the usual tactics of perjured testimony, packed jury and browbeating were employed to achieve a verdict of guilty on a charge of encompassing the king’s death, but it was clear that College was principally to be made an example of as an author of ballads and tracts against members of the royal circle. Jeffreys, again appearing for the prosecution, feigned indignation that a member of so humble a calling as the accused should presume to concern himself with affairs of state. ‘God be thanked, we have a wise prince,’ he observed, ‘and God be thanked he hath wise counsellors about him and he and they know well enough how to do their own business, and not to need the advice of a joiner.’114 College’s fate was designed as a warning to any scribblers who might be tempted to put on record their disapproval of king, court and government.
It was not very effective. The flood of censure continued to rise, the tone of invective plaints and satires changing noticeably with the passing of the years. Witty squibs and bawdy verses gave place to unsubtle tirades and naked pornography. The nation was divided to an extent that it had not been since the 1640s. Some resented the ‘troublemakers’, a portmanteau word into which were stuffed Whigs, Nonconformists, republicans, supporters of rival claimants to the throne and all critics of the establishment. Others feared a resurgence of Catholicism, resented pro-French influences at court, were genuinely scandalised by the low moral tone set by the monarch’s circle and looked to a Protestant succession which would do away with all religious, political and ethical ambiguities. That statement is, of course, an oversimplification; the polarisation of society was not complete. But, then, nor was it complete at the outbreak of the Civil War. Men and families took sides in 1642 for a variety of reasons and adhered with varying degrees of conviction and emotional commitment to ‘King’ or ‘Parliament’. The fact that Charles II’s reign did not end in another bloody conflict should not deceive us into believing that feelings were not running high. The literary (using that word in its broadest sense) output of Charles’ autumn years and the government’s attempts to stifle it are proof enough of a highly volatile atmosphere. Parliament had refused the council’s request to renew the Licensing Act and the result, according to an, admittedly OTT, tirade by Lord Chief Justice Scroggs, was that the country was awash with inflammatory and seductive canards whose influence was undermining society:
… so fond are men in these days that, when they will deny their children a penny for bread, they will lay it out for a pamphlet. And it did so swarm and the temptations were so great that no man could keep twopence in his pocket because of the news.115
In lighter vein, a court wit made the same point, while, in fact, adding to the genre he affected to despise:
Lampoons are grown tedious
And damnable odious
And now scarce worth the resenting …116
The king’s women were the easiest targets for these attacks but Charles’ mistresses by no means stood alone in the stocks of popular hatred. Lampoons against them both fed and fed off a disquieting fashionable misogyny. The changing role of women in society and their increasing prominence produced a vicious backlash, so that resentment of the court whores was often symptomatic of something deeper in the national psyche:
Of all the plagues with which this world abounds,
Our discords causes, wideners of our wounds,
Sure woman is the lewdest can be guessed.
Through woman mankind early ills did taste;
She was the world’s first curse, will be the last.
To show what woman is, Heaven make Charles wise;
Some angel scale the blindness from his eyes.
Restored by miracle, he may believe
And seeing’s follies, learn, though late, to live.
Why art thou poor, O King? Embezzling cunt,
That wide-mouthed, greedy monster, that has done’t
Thus begins ‘An Essay of Scandal’ (1681), one of the more unrestrained examples of the genre. In it the author goes on to lash with his pen several named court ladies in a diatribe which has no party political bias: it snipes at both Whig and Tory leaders. But it is the familiar trio of Barbara, Nell and Louise who are his main targets:
Go visit Portsmouth fasting if thou darest,
(Which thou mayest, at the poor rate thou farest).
She’ll with her noisome breath blast ev’n thy face,
Till thou, thyself, grow uglier than her grace.
Remove that costly dunghill from thy doors …
So much for Louise. The pleasantries directed at Barbara were no less lurid.
But from her den expel old ulcer quite.
She shines i’the dark, light rotten wood at night,
Dreads pepper [used to prevent decay in meat], penance, parliament and light.
Once with thy people’s prayers resolve to join;
She’s all the nation’s nuisance, why not thine?
Nell, somewhat surprisingly, came in for fuller treatment.
Then next turn Nelly out of door,
That hare-brained, wrinkled, stopped-up whore,
Daily struck, stabbed, by half the pricks in town …
’Twas once, indeed, with her as ’twas with ore,
Uncoined, she was no public store,
Only Buckhurst’s private whore.
But when that thou in wanton itch
With royal tarse had stamped her breech,
She grew a common, current bitch …
Kick her for her lewd cajoling
And bid her turn to her old trade of strolling.117
Pious indignation and insult merged into libel in such diatribes. Royal mistresses were routinely accused of bestowing their favours widely. While this was true of Barbara and Hortense, it certainly was not of Nell and Louise. The author of ‘A Satire Upon the Mistresses’ accused Charles of incest with his daughter, the Countess of Sussex. He dubbed the king a second Tarquin after the ancient Roman tyrant who was a byword for lechery and extravagance and was eventually exiled by his own people. He condemned Lady Portsmouth as a ‘monster’ whose example had set rolling a tidal wave which engulfed the whole nation in lust and debauchery. Politics and morality he saw as inextricably mixed, and he identified Catherine Crofts, the guardian of Charles’ daughter, Mary Tudor, and Mary Knight, a famous singer and favourite at court, as both madams and party agents:
Next let us view the cock bawds of the court,
Kate Crofts and Knight contrivers of the sport,
Th’one for Shaftesbury, the other spy for Rome.
When things move thus, who may’nt pronounce our doom?
’Tis pity thus two factions for to see,
Not only linked in ills but lechery.118
The literary piece that carried this politico-sexual obsession to its bizarre illogical conclusion was a satirical heroic play entitled Sodom which told a fantasy story of a king living not a million miles away from Whitehall. Its premiss was simple: since woman was the arch-enemy who had emasculated the king, his court and government, the obvious solution was to banish the entire sex from the nation. The drama tells the story of how this transformation of society was carried out in the kingdom of Sodom, under the governance of its easygoing monarch, Bolloxinian, who, at the beginning of the play, declares his philosophy:
Thus in the zenith of my lust I reign:
I eat to swive and swive to eat again.
The king has a favourite mistress, Pockenello, but confines his sexual activity neither to her nor to her kind. He has several homosexual relationships and comes to prefer the company of young men (perhaps a reference to Charles’ grandfather, James I). He graphically describes the reason for his preference:
By oft fomenting, cunt so big doth swell
That prick works there like clapper in a bell.
All vacuum, no grasping flesh does hide
Or hug, the brawny muscles of its side.
In a parody of Charles’ attitude towards religious toleration, Bolloxinian issues a proclamation:
Let conscience have its force of liberty.
I do proclaim that buggery may be used
Through all the land, so cunt be not abused.
Several openly pornographic scenes follow which bear out the promise of the play’s prologue:
It is the most debauched, heroic piece
That e’er was wrote, what dare compare with this?
Here’s that will fit your fancy with delight.
’Twill tickle every vein and please your sight,
Nay make your prick to have an appetite.
The new fashion takes on quickly, encouraged by the neighbouring monarch, Tarsehole of Gomorrah, and women are left to gain their satisfaction from dildos and animals. All, of course, ends in monumental disaster. An epidemic sweeps the land, the king has no new subjects to replenish the declining population and goes mad, hurling defiance at the gods, while vengeance falls from heaven.
Kiss, rise up and dally,
Frig, swive and rally,
Curse, blaspheme and swear
Those that will witness bear.
For the Bollox singes
Sodom off its hinges.
Bugger, bugger, bugger
All in a hugger-mugger.
Fire doth descend.
’Tis too late to amend.119
Sodom was never performed and was probably never intended to be performed. Even in the licentious 1680s it would have been too ‘hot’, both morally and politically, for any public stage. But it provides for us a very revealing commentary on Restoration society’s evaluation of itself. There was an obsession with sex and at the same time a revulsion from it. It was an age that knew itself to be decadent and realised that it was headed down a political cul-de-sac. It put the blame for many prevailing ills on to women – but also on to the king for being controlled by women. It was saying no more than the run of the mill satires and pamphlets were saying but it said it more pungently and, though it makes repugnant reading, it is, perhaps, only through such a piece of grotesque pornography that we can grasp something of the disgust and despair felt by many in ‘Good King Charles’ golden days’. At the same time we need to remind ourselves that this is a voice from the metropolis, from among those who considered themselves the sophisticated élite. There was another contemporary allegory, popular with a far greater number, that, while recognising the parlous state into which the nation had sunk, yet spoke a message of hope. It was called The Pilgrim’s Progress.
Charles II emerged from the crisis years a changed man – older and, if not wiser, at least more ready to respond to the new opportunity to take charge of his political destiny. He was now in his fifties and, although his lifelong obsession with fitness had preserved his sound constitution, he was more prone to bouts of illness and was physically winding down. Mentally he was as acute as ever. It was in his emotional life that the alteration was most evident. Much of the passion which had found outlet in the eager pursuit of various pleasures was henceforth channelled into new courses. He was no longer the easygoing prince who shunned conflict whenever possible. Like many elderly people, he experienced bouts of bad temper and stubbornness. He and his ministers pursued his enemies with a venomous vigour that would once have seemed quite uncharacteristic and this, in turn, meant that he took a greater personal interest in day-to-day government (but see here).
His relationship with Louise de Keroualle metamorphosed into something much more political. She appeared in the last years of the reign as the grande dame she had always wanted to be. She, too, had emerged toughened from the fire and was ready to become a royal consort in the French mould. All this was not immediately obvious in the summer of 1681. Louise had hastened to distance herself from Fitzharris as soon as he started to implicate her in his plots and Charles had rescued her by discrediting the Irishman and getting him quickly out of the way. But she had several bridges to repair if she was to regain any position of political influence. As he always did when his womenfolk came under attack, Charles stood staunchly by her. Together, they concocted a story that was at best only half true, for the consumption of the Duke of York, the French ambassador, William of Orange, the leading Tory politicians and all those whose co-operation they needed to overwhelm the Whigs and remain independent of parliament. According to their version of events, Louise’s contact with the Whigs had been authorised by the king for the purpose of discovering their plans. Unfortunately, she had been duped by Shaftesbury’s agents into believing that they were prepared to compromise on exclusion. As soon as she had discovered that they intended to impose severe restraints on the monarchy she had abandoned them. It is unlikely that the official story fooled anyone but all those who hoped to profit from the king’s triumph over the opponents of excessive royal power were more than happy to swallow it.
Louise’s closest allies were the ‘Chits’. This was the contemptuous term (implying ‘mere children’) applied to a group of younger courtier politicians to whom the king turned during the exclusion crisis. Foremost among them were Laurence Hyde and Sidney Godolphin. The former was the second son of the Earl of Clarendon, who had died in 1674. He and his brother, Henry, had remained politically active after their father’s disgrace but it was a long time before they enjoyed the king’s confidence. During the exclusion crisis they staunchly supported their brother-in-law, the Duke of York. Godolphin had followed a conventional diplomatic career and had been involved in the clandestine negotiations between Charles and Louis XIV. With Sunderland, he and Laurence Hyde had become the king’s leading councillors in 1679. It was largely thanks to Hyde’s efforts that Louise and James were, not without difficulty, reconciled during the winter of 1681–2. Louise reciprocated by advancing his career and, at the end of 1682, Hyde received signal proof of his family’s reinstatement when Charles bestowed upon him the earldom of Rochester, vacant since 1680 and formerly in the possession of his great friends, the Wilmots. It only remained for the king to forgive and restore Sunderland for the old administration of the duchess and her allies to be once more in command. Louise brought this about by the summer of 1682.
Effecting reconciliations was not easy. Charles had been deeply wounded by the events of the last few years and just as he was determined to be revenged on the Whig leadership, so he found it difficult to forgive and forget those like Sunderland who, he believed, had betrayed him. As for his brother, that uncompromising Catholic had become such an embarrassment that he was in no hurry to welcome him back to court. Louise had to tiptoe very gently around these delicate human relationships. However, with the patience, subtlety and gentle cajolery that only a woman could employ, it was Louise who brought into being the Tory ‘cabinet’ which constituted the government for the remainder of the reign. By the autumn of 1682 Ormonde, that seasoned politician, could assess the situation at Whitehall thus:
Hyde is the best and honestest minister amongst us, though he is fain to comply with the Lady beyond what may be approved of … she is at this instant as powerful as ever, insomuch that there is no contending with her … nor do I think it would be for the service of the Crown that honest men should make themselves useless to it by a vain and unreasonable opposition, since she cannot be removed. The next best is to make use of her credit to keep things as well as may be.120
Louise’s supremacy was very public. She now presided over diplomatic receptions, a responsibility which had once been the queen’s. When a Moroccan delegation arrived for discussions about Tangier, Catherine sat enthroned beside her husband for the formal audience but when, days later, a banquet ‘of sweetmeats, music, etc’ was given for the ambassador and his exotic suite Louise presided in her impressive dining chamber at Whitehall. Evelyn was intrigued to observe the behaviour of the Moors and seems to have been surprised to discover that these representatives of a different culture could behave with complete decorum:
They drank a little milk and water but not a drop of wine. Also they drank of a sorbet and chocolate, did not look about nor stare on the ladies, or express the least of surprise, but with a courtly negligence in pace, countenance and whole behaviour, answering only to such questions as were asked, with a great deal of wit and gallantry …
Evelyn had rather sharper comment to make about the representatives of the host nation. The ambassador and his retinue were
placed about a long table, a lady between two Moors … and most of these were the king’s natural children, viz: the Lady Lichfield, Sussex, Duchess of Portsmouth, Nelly, etc., concubines and cattle of that sort, as splendid as jewels and excess of bravery [i.e. ostentatious finery] could make them.121
On this occasion the king turned up just as his colourful guests were leaving. He was obviously more than content to leave the presidency of such high-profile events to Louise. She was now deputising for him quite often, sometimes staying at the political centre of events while king and court retired to the country. Charles now spent as much time as possible away from the capital, much of it at Windsor, which was more secure, and Winchester where Christopher Wren was building him a new 160-room palace.
In the spring of 1682 Louise felt secure enough to pay a visit to France. Relations between the two royal courts were at an all-time high and she was promised a magnificent reception in Paris. She had several personal reasons for making the trip – family business, financial investments, inspection of her son’s estate at Aubigny – but, above all, this was to be the apotheosis of ambition. She who had left her native land a dozen years before as a humble attendant to the duchesse d’Orléans was returning as an almost royal personage. Her journey was a triumphant progress. She and her impressive train sailed from Greenwich in an elaborately fitted out yacht and once ashore at Calais she was conveyed to the capital in a fleet of coaches bearing Charles’ own insignia. Louis and his court received her and entertained her sumptuously and in return she threw balls and banquets as only she knew how. To show that celebrity had not completely turned her head, the duchess drove to Brittany to visit ‘dear old mum and dad’ and, while there, to redeem the pawned family estate. A final round of lavish partying in Paris and Versailles and she was ready to cross the Channel once more, weighed down with splendid gifts from the Sun King and his orbiting satellites. The king did not venture away from Windsor to meet her; that courtesy was reserved for family members and visiting royalty, but he did write a welcoming letter in which he affirmed, ‘I should do myself wrong if I told you that I love you better than all the world besides, for … ’tis impossible to express the true passion and kindness I have for my dearest, dearest Fubs.’122
Catherine, too, was assured of her husband’s affection, as she reported to her brother:
I think he deserves something from you for the great protection he has shown me, and he continues to defend and protect me with so remarkable a show of goodwill that I find myself engaged by new obligations not to fail him in anything which I perceive to be due. And I am happy … I have everything that can give me complete satisfaction in this life, nor do I now wish to think I have reason to complain.123
Charles had, indeed, been assiduous in shielding his wife from her share of the calumnies showered upon his close circle in recent years. As had often been remarked with disapproval, he seemed more concerned to stand up for his womenfolk than for his ministers or, indeed, his realm. The last spectacular royal display of the reign was given in honour of Catherine’s birthday and no expense was spared to ensure its success.
… there was such a fireworks upon the Thames before Whitehall, with pageants of castles, forts and other devices of girandolas, serpents [species of fireworks], the king’s and queen’s arms and mottoes all represented in fire, as had not been seen in any age remembered here. That which was most remarkable was the several fires and skirmishes [brilliant displays] in the very water and now and then appearing above it, giving reports like muskets and cannon, with grenades and innumerable other devices. It is said this sole triumph cost 1,500 pounds, which was concluded with a ball, where all the ladies and gallants danced in the great hall. The court had not been so brave and rich in apparel since his majesty’s restoration.124
As she looked out on the exploding shells mirrored in the glassy river and listened to the music and the cheering crowds, Catherine can scarcely have avoided being reminded of her splendid arrival by water at Whitehall almost a quarter of a century before. She will also have been looking forward to leaving this place, with its many unhappy memories, and Somerset House for her new home at Winchester. The court had spent all September in the palace which was still abuilding in Hampshire and the plan was to make it the permanent royal residence, an English Versailles. Catherine was very much taken up with the plans for the new building and with the excitement of agreeing the décor and ordering new furniture. Here, at last, she would share a home with Charles.
Pretty, witty Nelly also enjoyed these rural excursions and almost invariably accompanied the king when he was away from the capital. It was while visiting Winchester to survey the building works in 1681 or 1682 that the celebrated altercation occurred between Dr Thomas Ken and the king’s agent who had come down to arrange accommodation for the royal entourage. Doubtless she would have been amused by the virtuous clergyman’s refusal to allow ‘a woman of ill repute’ to be lodged in the prebendal house. Had it happened to her, Louise would have been reduced to angry tears and the stalwart Ken could have said goodbye to further preferment. Nell was subsequently provided with her own house at Winchester, to add to the ones she already owned at Newmarket and Windsor.
The social division among the mistresses was strictly maintained. Nell Gwynn never had quarters within any of the royal residences but the king always provided her with a pleasant house nearby. This meant that he had a haven whenever he wished to escape from the court. His visits to Nell and the simple pleasures she offered him (most of the money he gave her she spent on his entertainment) were a means of ‘earthing’ the king into the lives of ordinary people. And when she attended court functions he delighted in her irreverence towards the fine aristocrats and ladies of his entourage. No one could get away with pomposity when Nell was around.
One of the last images we have of Charles and Nell typifies their relationship. The winter of 1684 was very severe. In December, the Thames above London Bridge froze to a depth of several feet. This provided citizens with the opportunity for a frost fair. John Evelyn walked across from Westminster Stairs to the landing stage at Lambeth to dine with Archbishop Socroft and noted in passing ‘whole streets of booths in which they roasted meat and had divers shops of wares, quite cross as in a town but coaches and carts and horses passed over.’ As the bitter weather continued into February the river ‘became a camp, ten thousands of people coaches, carts and all manner of sports continuing and increasing’. The hard winter was basically a disaster: ‘miserable were the wants of poor people. Deer universally perished in most of the parks throughout England and very much cattle.’125 Shopkeepers, entrepreneurs and hucksters, however, grabbed the rare opportunity to attract custom, and pleasure seekers enjoyed the diversions offered by the ice. The king ordered a royal pavilion to be built on the frozen river and it was Nell who presided with him over the novel entertainments which they planned for courtiers and citizens.
Barbara Villiers, now in her forties, seems to have returned to London some time in 1684 and established herself in Arlington Street, off Piccadilly. Once again she had taken up with one of the more colourful and disreputable celebrities of the day. Cardell Goodman was a handsome reprobate who had managed to cram into thirty-odd years being expelled from home by his clergyman father, getting sent down from Cambridge for defacing a picture of the chancellor (the Duke of Monmouth), being dismissed for negligence from his position as page of the backstairs to the king, dissipating a substantial inheritance and dabbling in highway robbery before he discovered his true vocation as a lead actor with the King’s Company. Such a good-looking and devil-may-care adventurer naturally appealed to the ladies, who fell over themselves to attract the man whose nickname was ‘Scum’. The challenge was one Barbara could not resist. She had to show the ladies of the stage and the town that she could still outrun the field. She scooped Goodman up and the two lived the kind of tumultuous life to which Lady Cleveland had long become accustomed.
Charles welcomed her back to court from time to time and two incidents reveal that she maintained something of her old influence and insolence. When her lover was indicted for felony she extracted a pardon from Charles. Shortly after this, Catherine attended a performance at Drury Lane in which Goodman was starring. As was the custom, actors and audience waited until the royal party had taken their seats. The curtain duly rose and Goodman stepped forward to scan the boxes. ‘Is my duchess come?’ he demanded. Seeing that Barbara was not yet present, he swore roundly and declared, ‘The play does not start until my lady is come.’ Fortunately the duchess’s arrival at that moment saved everyone from further embarrassment. We can only imagine the satisfaction this gave her as she made her formal obeisance to the queen.
By 1682 the king’s ‘top’ women had settled into a pattern of life designed to provide him with maximum comfort and diversion. There was nothing inevitable about the choice of female companions who eventually became his intimates. Mistresses came and went but carnal liaisons became fewer and, after the domestic disruption caused by the whirlwind appearance of Hortense Mancini, membership of the top table was settled. Catherine, Louise and Nell between them met all the king’s needs. Supplemented from time to time by the likes of Barbara and Hortense, these ladies were his friends, his best friends.
The king’s taste for the country life had strengthened with the passing of the years but he now had political reasons for distancing himself from the capital. London was Whig territory (as, indeed, was Newmarket, which Charles also began to shun now) and the last years of the reign were spent in open warfare with the Whigs. A politically adroit commentator observed in the spring of 1681, ‘’Tis now come to a civil war, not with the sword but law.’126 Charles was not content to pursue the small fry like Fitzharris; he, Louise and the Chits were bent on nothing less than the complete destruction of the opposition. Since they could not use parliament for their purposes and dared not use force, they had to rely on the lesser courts. If those were to achieve the required results the government had to ensure that they were peopled with pliant judges and juries. The legal proceedings of 1681–3 had nothing to do with justice and everything to do with politics. Both sides resorted to false testimony, packed juries, planted evidence and manipulation of court procedures, and victory went to the party that was most successful in these tactics.
Round one went to the Whigs. Lord Shaftesbury was arrested in July 1681 and kept in the Tower for four and a half months while the government tried to collect or manufacture evidence to support a charge of high treason. In November a grand jury was summoned to decide whether the prisoner had a case to answer. The chief justice and the attorney-general did their best but the jury had been packed by Whig sheriffs and they determined that there was insufficient evidence to place before a trial jury. While the king and his ministers fumed, London went wild: ‘the bells rang, bonfires were made and such public rejoicing in the city that never such an insolent defiance of authority was seen’.127 Jubilant party leaders caused a celebratory medal to be struck.
Charles felt betrayed and his temper was not improved when he discovered that, on Shaftesbury’s being freed on bail, Monmouth was one of those who put up the necessary bond. The king might well have called to mind the scenes that had taken place in the City when the famous five had escaped his father’s clutches. But 1681 was not 1642. The Crown had its supporters and success in the ‘civil war with the law’ was largely a question of martialling those supporters. This involved chicanery and the shameless application of royal power. The first major step taken by the government was interference with the elections to the City’s common council the following summer, which resulted in the appointment of Tory sheriffs. That cleared the way for fresh proceedings against Shaftesbury. The earl immediately went into hiding and, before the end of the year, by now a very sick man, he fled to Holland. Within weeks he was dead.
But his movement had not expired with him. Clandestine plans had been a-hatching for months, involving potential risings in various localities and even assassination attempts on the king and his brother. Just how much danger the government was really in is problematic. The opposition was divided between Whig monarchists (who supported Monmouth), republicans, Protestant extremists and a broad spectrum of radicals. They would never have found a positive programme behind which they could unite but they could be a powerful negative force and if any of their extreme measures had been carried into effect the result might well have been political chaos.
Faced with this situation, Charles was in something of a dilemma. He had no compunction about using the machinery of informers, spies, suborned juries and partisan judges to purge the nation of all who sought to undermine royal power but he dreaded the thought of catching Monmouth in the net and having to make an appalling example of his son. Apart from his own emotional involvement, the public response to an act of filicide had also to be considered. He had already experienced a popular backlash from one alarming event involving Monmouth. The duke had been driving along Pall Mall with his friend Thomas Thynne in the latter’s carriage. The conveyance came to a halt to allow Monmouth to alight and then continued on its way. Further down the road three horsemen stopped the carriage and one of them fired a blunderbuss in at the window, mortally wounding poor Thynne. It was a personal vendetta and the culprits were duly caught, tried and executed. However, the suspicion inevitably arose that this was a bungled attempt by the Duke of York’s faction to get rid of the ‘Protestant heir’. When the assassins were apprehended, Charles personally examined them in council, and after their condemnation he ordered that they should be put to death on the site of the murder so that they could publicly disavow any plot against Monmouth.
There was an air of desperation about the wayward duke and his friends. Time was not on their side. The king was ageing and would have no legitimate children. James was known to be obdurate in matters of religion. They had tried to displace him by peaceful, constitutional means. They had failed and now the opportunity to try again had been removed. There was no parliament, and heaven alone knew when and if there would ever be another. So they gathered their strength by holding meetings throughout the country and Monmouth went on his charismatic way drumming up popular support. For the first time the king was genuinely worried about his own safety. The monarch who prided himself on his accessibility to his people, who had walked daily in St James’s Park for many years, suddenly became security conscious. He gratefully accepted the gift of some Swiss Guards from Louis XIV. He had several of the palace entrances bricked up. He spent more of his time away from Whitehall, preferring the strongly fortified Windsor Castle or, latterly, his new home at Winchester.
The government’s response to Whig activity was a draconion use of prorogative power. They removed local JPs and replaced them with yes-men. Charles sacked eleven High Court judges in order to appoint in their places men who ‘knew their duty’. Most notorious of these promotions was that of George Jeffreys, who became lord chief justice in 1683. But royal manipulation was not only applied to the judicial system. The government launched an all-out attack on local government. Wherever a case could be made against a town corporation for some indiscretion or alleged violation of its own constitution its charter was called in and a new one granted which incorporated more stringent royal control. It was in June 1683 that Charles got to taste the cherry on the cake. A judgment was given in King’s Bench against the common council of London for certain technical misdemeanours. The mayor and aldermen were obliged to surrender the charter granted to them by William the Conqueror. At last the city that had defied Charles I and made the great revolution possible had been brought to heel. All this was combined with a more rigorous application of the laws against dissenters. It only remained for there to be some high-profile show trials for Whigs and radicals to be completely outmanoeuvred and undermined. The revelation of the supposed Rye House Plot provided the excuse for such trials.
Titus Oates and his cronies had made scapegoating and witch-hunts the height of fashion. Their lies and libels were eagerly circulated because there were always some political groups who could benefit from them. The Popish Plot had played into the hands of the Whigs. The conspiracy laid before the council by Josiah Keeling, ‘a man of anabaptist sympathies and a decaying business’,128 in June 1683 was exactly what the Tory ministers were looking for. Keeling claimed that a plan to assassinate the royal brothers on their way back from Newmarket in March had failed only because Charles and James had set out earlier than expected. Within days the alleged ringleaders, including Lord Russell, Lord Essex and Sir Algernon Sidney, three of the most upright men in public life, found themselves in the Tower. There Essex, despairing of receiving justice, cut his throat. By chance (presumably) the king and his brother were at the Tower themselves, visiting the ordnance office, at that very time. One of the warders ran down to the wharf as they were embarking and broke the tragic news to them. Charles seemed genuinely distressed, though the suicide served to strengthen the case against Russell, which was heard on the same day.
Evelyn believed that Charles had no desire to exact the ultimate penalty from Essex, although ‘he was altogether inexorable as to my Lord Russell and some of the rest’. The king was, indeed, determined to take some prominent scalps, partly from motives of revenge and partly to scare off Monmouth from any further involvement in anti-government plots. In this he showed himself quite impervious to public opinion,
few believing that they had any evil intention against his majesty or the church and some that they were cunningly drawn in by their enemies for not approving some late councils and management of affairs in relation to France, to popery, to the prosecution of the dissenters, etc.129
When Russell, whom Burnet called ‘that great and good man’, was brought to execution in Lincoln’s Inn Fields a large crowd turned out to watch. Many wept. Some dipped handkerchiefs in his blood. Sidney was kept waiting till November for his ordeal. His trial was a travesty, even by seventeenth-century standards. George Jeffreys presided and the main prosecution witness was Lord Howard of Escrick, ‘that monster of a man’ (Evelyn), now making a reappearance in the courtroom. Howard was arrested as soon as the Rye House Plot was reported because of his prominent position in the Whig high command. It was not difficult for government agents to turn him. In order to save his own skin he fell over himself to give evidence against both Russell and Sidney. What made his crime so heinous in the eyes of many contemporaries was the fact that when he had been in trouble with the government in February 1682 it had been Sidney who had laboured hard for his release. Now it was solely on the strength of Howard’s evidence that his saviour went to the block.
With the passing of Sidney it was almost as though a chapter had closed in Charles’ life or, to use another metaphor, as though a wheel had come full circle. Sidney was the man who had, indirectly, brought Charles and Lucy Walter together by introducing her to the fashionable society of the Hague all those years ago. Now he was being deprived of life for his indirect connection with Lucy’s son. Was it for this as well as his lifelong, unrepentant commitment to republicanism that the king required his extinction?
Or was it the king who was the driving force behind all this frenetic activity? He had always been more inclined to leniency than vindictiveness and it was his custom to allow trusted ministers to get on with the implementation of policy while he ignored it or interfered with it or changed it as and when he was moved to do so. Was it his minions who were, in fact, setting the pace in the closing years of the reign? In York, Sunderland, Rochester, Godolphin and Lady Portsmouth Charles had a formidable team and they worked together with a united political will – certainly as far as destroying the Whigs was concerned. James, after all he had suffered at their hands, was particularly set upon revenge. Whatever others might think of Sidney, he crowed at the ‘rebel’s’ downfall. His execution, the duke wrote, ‘besides the doing justice on so ill a man, will give the lie to the Whigs, who reported he was not to suffer’.130
York was, inevitably, interested in removing the threat of Monmouth or, at least, keeping his nephew on a very tight leash. There is much about the fanatical pursuance of party advantage in the last years of the reign that appears to have the stamp of the duke’s character upon it. However, nobody understood him better than Charles and he knew full well that his blinkered brother could not be allowed too much control. In particular the siblings did not see eye to eye over Monmouth. The king swung between moods of extreme anger at his son’s antics and generous forgiveness. Monmouth was arrested in 1682 and subsequently returned to favour. When another warrant was issued against him the following year he went into hiding but eventually surrendered himself to his father’s mercy. Charles promised a pardon if Monmouth would make a clean breast to him in private of all he knew about the recent plots. He agreed, but refused point-blank to offer any abject apology to his uncle. At the same time James was demanding a written confession from the miscreant that would effectively undermine his reputation with the radicals. Charles was caught in the middle. With difficulty he persuaded Monmouth to provide the desired letter but, the following day, his son came to him in great agitation asking for the document back. It was a difficult interview. Charles, between anger and tears insisted, ‘If you do not yield in this you will ruin me.’ The meeting ended with Charles returning the letter but also banishing Monmouth from the court. It was the typical action of a man who tried to please everybody.
The only evidence of Charles’ attitude towards his brother’s ability as the future monarch comes from the reminiscence of a courtier-diplomat to whom the king unburdened himself during a stroll in the park some time in 1683. Charles, apparently, confided,
… when I am dead and gone, I know not what my brother will do. I am much afraid that, when he comes to the crown, he will be obliged to travel again. And yet I will take care to leave my kingdoms to him in peace, wishing he may long keep them so. But this hath all of my fears, little of my hopes and less of my reason, and I am very much afraid that when my brother comes to the crown, he will be obliged again to leave his native soil.131
Charles did not allow York to set the tone of the government. One check upon the duke’s influence was the Earl of Halifax. He had been a member of Shaftesbury’s cabinet but parted company with him over exclusion. This did not mean that he was a supporter of the Duke of York, quite the opposite; as a firm Protestant, the thought of James gaining the throne was anathema to him. Halifax put his faith in Monmouth and it was largely due to the earl’s efforts that the reconciliations of 1682 and 1683 were possible. James and Louise made continuous efforts to have Halifax removed from the council but all to no avail. Charles not only enjoyed the company of the witty and philosophical earl, he saw him as a useful moderate who could counterbalance the extremism of the Chits. In October 1682 he was appointed to the prestigious office of lord privy seal and, two years later, his position was strengthened when two of his nominees were appointed to the treasury commission and Rochester was eased out of power, first by being given the honorific title of lord president of the council, then by being made lord-lieutenant of Ireland. In the closing months of the reign Halifax was bold enough to broadcast in manuscript form his treatise on government, entitled The Character of a Trimmer, in which he urged the recall of parliament, the abandonment of blind allegiance to France and the jettisoning of the Duke of York.
If neither York nor Rochester had his hand firmly on the tiller, perhaps Lady Portsmouth did. It was said that no major business could be conducted without her and that when she was absent as a result of illness little government business got done. She certainly had a great deal of influence when it came to winning favours for friends and clients. In league with Rochester and Sunderland she was able to devise high Tory policies and communicate reactionary ideas to Charles in private. She was instrumental in having James restored to the command of the navy in defiance of the Test Act. This required an element of subterfuge. The duke could not be formally reinstated so Charles took control back into his own hands and appointed James to act as his deputy. But she was unable to maintain Rochester’s power in the council or to undermine Halifax or to ensure the permanent exile of Monmouth.
In the spring of 1683 she made a serious blunder which could, at a stroke, have robbed her of that position she had so carefully built up. One of the worst rakes in France, Philippe de Vendôme, a cousin of the king and a nephew of Hortense Mancini, came on a visit to the English court. He was an arrogant young man who considered himself irresistible to women and had a track record which gave this boast some substance. He decided to direct his invincible charm at Lady Portsmouth. It may be that Charles was no longer providing adequately for Louise’s sexual needs or that she was flattered by the attentions of someone from the gay world of Paris. Whatever the reason, she succumbed. When the whispers of gossip reached Charles his usual insouciance deserted him. Gone were the days when ceaseless flirtations, scandalous affairs and adulterous liaisons were the common coin of daily life for Charles, his friends and his mistresses. No longer could he shrug off with sophisticated nonchalance this betrayal by his dearest Fubs. Instead he reacted with the outraged fury of a cuckolded husband. He issued orders for Vendôme’s immediate return to France and when that brash young man declined to remove himself, he was brought before the king, who told him to his face that if he was not aboard ship within forty-eight hours he would be placed under arrest and forcibly ejected from the country.
Louise was profoundly shaken, fearful and tearful. However influential she might be and however many political allies she might have, her position rested entirely on the king’s favour. If ever she lost that, not a soul would come to her defence and the baying crowd outside the palace gates would pursue her all the way to the ship that would carry her into ignominious exile. She need not have worried. The king forgave her, accepting without question that she was more sinned against than sinning. The court watched to see if the maîtresse en titre’s influence had been severely dented. What they observed was Charles being more demonstrative than ever of his love for Louise, publicly embracing and fondling her as though he had been a moonstruck adolescent unable to keep his hands off the object of his desire. The king was infinitely relieved to have Fubs to himself again. He wanted domestic stability. He was too settled into a comfortable routine to allow a little infidelity to disturb the even tenor of his days. Louise’s position as principal conduit between the king’s private life and his government continued.
In the autumn of 1684, Louise fell seriously ill. It was reported that she thought herself to be dying and that, as a worried Charles sat at her bedside, she had made him promise never to abandon James. It is difficult to see why such a pledge should have been exacted. Charles’ resolve over the succession had been made clear over and over again and the duke’s peacock demeanour about the court was such that one wag commented that while parliament had decided that the duke should not reign after the king’s death, the king had resolved that he should reign during his life. If there is any truth in the story it suggests that everything may not have been quite so cut and dried as it appeared to outsiders. A courtier confidently asserted that after the duchess’s recovery, ‘she is greater and more absolute than ever and, under her, the duke, my Lord Sunderland and Rochester direct and dispose of all things’.132 Yet only a couple of months later, as the king lay dying, she had her bags packed, ready for a hurried departure to the haven of the French ambassador’s house. This does not suggest that she had a perfect understanding with the heir to the throne.
It seems, then, that no one at Whitehall was all-powerful. There was no foursquare political edifice. Whatever temporary structures Charles’ ministers and mistress threw up were built on the shifting sands of his secretive and changeable character.
At the turning of the year Charles was in pain from a leg that was either ulcerated or afflicted with gout. He attended Nell’s by now traditional Christmas party but did not dance. Nor was he able to take his usual brisk daily exercise. He was reported to be ‘pensive’ and spent much of his time shut up in his laboratory. Declining health must have made him reflect deeply on his own fate and that of his realm. The story of his being accepted into the Roman Church at the eleventh hour is well known. There is also the possibility that, in the last weeks, his devious mind was still entertaining alternative thoughts about the succession. The royal brothers were perceived to be on less than amiable terms, perhaps because James could not conceal his eagerness to grasp the sceptre. Burnet tells a veiled story that he had from one of the king’s ministers of Monmouth being brought clandestinely to the king by Louise’s agency and going away again ‘very pleased with his journey’. Sunderland, Godolphin and Louise were said to have persuaded Charles to send his brother to Scotland with the intention that, once parted, ‘they would never meet again’. All this was and remains speculation. When Charles was suddenly bedridden on 2 February 1685 no new arrangements had been made which would in any way have disturbed the transfer of the Crown to the rightful successor by the normal laws of inheritance.
Death demands the observance of proprieties. Into the crowded bedchamber came ministers, clergy, doctors and close attendants. The king’s sons – all except Monmouth – came to him for a final blessing. James, of course, was there, taking charge, making sure that everything went according to plan. Catherine came and remained long by her husband’s side, until exhaustion and grief obliged her to withdraw. She felt dreadful at being unable to stay longer and sent her apologies. ‘She begs my forgiveness?’ Charles muttered. ‘Rather should I seek hers.’ The ladies of pleasure were kept well away but they were not far from the dying man’s thoughts. He commended Barbara, Louise and Nell to his successor’s care. Evelyn huffily remarked, ‘I do not hear he said anything of the church or his people, now falling under the government of a prince suspected for his religion.’ The diarist was not being unjust. Charles Stuart had no real concern for his country or his subjects. The circle of his affection had a small diameter but well within it – in fact at its very centre – there was a special place for all those women who had meant so much to him throughout a life that had seen many twists and turns of fortune. They had made him what he was – for good or ill – and without understanding that we do not understand him.