No More Wandering
‘His majesty said smilingly that he doubted it had been his own fault he had been absent for so long, for he saw nobody that did not protest he had ever wished for his return.’
‘I confess it is a great miracle to see so sudden a change.’
Elizabeth of Bohemia to her son, the elector palatine, April 1660
Monck, with infinite care and secrecy, was in communication with Charles II during March. He would not make the first move himself but waited for the king to contact him. Nothing, from Monck’s side, was put on paper. He relied, instead, on his network of West Country relatives, who could pass easily between himself and Charles. The situation needed very delicate handling, for what if the elections resulted in a parliament that maintained a commitment to republicanism? He may have regarded this as unlikely, given that he had taken great pains to ensure that dissenting groups within the English army were kept well apart and, bereft of leadership, they would be unable to organize themselves effectively. Monck still had committed opponents. Colonel Valentine Walton, married to another of Oliver Cromwell’s sisters and himself a regicide, was, at the age of nearly seventy, still one of the commissioners of the army. He referred to General Monck as ‘General Turd’ and asked the pertinent question: ‘Could any royalist have done more than the General, for he ties the parliament to break and dissolve?’1 But the army’s leaders had played into Monck’s hands and the proud tradition of closeness between officers and their men, such a powerful force in the past, was now neutered.
Not everyone gave in quietly. In early April, John Lambert, Cromwell’s ‘dear Johnny’, once the darling of the army, with his romantic appearance and military prowess, escaped from the Tower of London, where the new regime was holding him under arrest. Although Lambert managed to muster six troops of cavalry at Edgehill, he was a spent force. Perhaps he hoped that revisiting the first battleground of the Civil Wars would inspire a last-ditch rebellion against the Restoration. It was a desperate move, without any clear plan, and it failed miserably when Lambert’s forces refused to fight the men sent against them. Lambert was returned to the Tower; he was forty-one years old. Though not a regicide, his reputation, Quaker associations and commitment to republicanism meant that the Restoration government dealt harshly with him. He was found guilty of high treason and spent the rest of his life as a prisoner.2
Charles II was at Brussels when the pace of change in England became obvious. He and his advisers were watching with growing amazement and delight the situation at home, daring to hope that this time, at last, their exile might be nearly over. But Monck could not hurry things and all must seem to be done properly. It would be parliament, not an army general, that contrived to end the king’s days of wandering. At the end of March, Charles received advice from Monck to move from the Spanish Netherlands to the seaport of Breda in Holland. At about this time, he wrote a heartfelt letter to Monck, realizing that this stolid, rather lugubrious man was close to becoming his saviour:
You cannot but believe that I know too well the power you have to do me good or harm, not to desire that you should be my friend. And I think I have the best ground of confidence that can be that you will be so, in believing you to be a great lover of your country and that you desire to secure the peace and happiness and to advance the honour of it, and knowing very well that my heart is full of no other end, which I am sure you will know yourself as soon as you know me. And whatever you have heard to the contrary, you find to be as false as if you had been told that I have white hair or am crooked.
He went on to mention, not quite in passing, an aspect of their newly discovered close friendship that had also been exercising Monck’s mind – that his sense of obligation to the general was great and that he could ‘enlarge on that particular, if I did think it would be acceptable to you’.3 For while Monck’s initial concern, as a soldier, may have been to prevent the disintegration of Britain, as the winter moved towards spring he began to give thought to the rewards, financial and social, that the restoration of the Stuarts might offer to him and his family.
When the new parliament met on 25 April it immediately restored the House of Lords. The Upper House was to be composed of Civil War parliamentarians and also peers who had come of age during the Civil Wars, most of whom were strongly royalist. Less than a week later, on 1 May, both houses voted to restore the Stuart monarchy, based on the assurances to the army and to the people of England contained in the document known as the Declaration of Breda, Charles’s terms for his restoration, which had been sent to England at the beginning of April 1660. Hyde, Nicholas and Ormonde helped him draw up this masterpiece of evasion, which essentially left all the key questions of government, religion and property ownership to be decided by parliament. Charles had promised ‘free and general pardon . . . a liberty to tender consciences, and that no man shall be disquieted or called in question for differences of opinion in matters of religion, which do not disturb the peace of the kingdom’. He was equally bland about the vexed question of property, noting because of ‘the distractions of so many years and so many and great revolutions, many grants and purchases of estates have been made to and by many officers, soldiers and others, who are now possessed of the same.’ The determination of title was left to be decided by parliament ‘who can best provide for the just satisfaction of all men who are concerned’. As for the soldiers, he promised ‘full satisfaction of all arrears due to the officers and soldiers of the army under the command of General Monck.’4 After years of bloodshed and political and religious division, the army went down quietly, as Monck had intended. Nor had the Presbyterians, still committed to the limitation of royal powers, done well in the elections, thus removing the threat they might otherwise have continued to pose. Charles II was returned to the throne on the basis of vague promises made in a brief document that barely runs to a couple of pages. To his amazement, he realized that he could be restored without significant restrictions on his authority, so long as he made the right noises. As Elizabeth of Bohemia wrote wonderingly to her son, ‘They present no conditions to the king, but he comes in freely as his father’s right heir.’5
Royalists, well-wishers and the merely curious now flocked to The Hague to partake of the general atmosphere of rejoicing in the Princess Royal’s court. The Dutch republicans who had forbidden Princess Mary to entertain her brothers on Dutch soil found a hitherto entirely unexpected enthusiasm for the king and his family. Charles was gracious and charming to everyone, including the Spanish, who were rather miffed that he would be returning to his throne from a staunchly Protestant country, the Scots, an English parliamentary deputation and even Thomas Fairfax, with whom he spent a considerable time in conversation. For the royalists who had shared his exile, the majority of whom had given up everything to keep the Stuart cause alive, the restoration of their king promised an end to years of suffering and uncertainty. One of the most illustrious of these was Charles’s old governor, William Cavendish, marquess of Newcastle, who had continued to write plays and practise his equestrian skills in Brussels, with the support of his feisty second wife, Margaret. Newcastle soon gave Charles further written advice on kingship, pointing out the mistakes his father had made. It was sound counsel but Charles seems to have resented it, since, much to Newcastle’s disappointment, he was not given a position in the Restoration government. So the Restoration would prove not to be the return to the promised land for all those who came home after years of absence.
The English commissioners sent by parliament to the king in Holland found him with his brothers, all bearing the marks of the long years living hand to mouth. They were provided with new clothes for their journey to England, so as to make the right impression of royal magnificence when they stood before the crowds again. James went home in a suit trimmed with yellow, while Henry’s outfit sported red ribbons. On the afternoon of 23 May 1660, Charles, with James and Henry at his side and his sister, aunt and little nephew following, went aboard the Royal Charles, the flagship of the English navy, at anchor in Scheveningen harbour. After they had dined together, Mary left with her son and aunt and the fleet weighed anchor.
Charles entered London to cheering crowds on his thirtieth birthday, 29 May 1660. A combination of favourable winds and tides had brought him comfortably from Holland. The first person to embrace him when he landed at Dover was General Monck, the man who, more than anyone, had been responsible for setting in motion the train of events that had ensured the sudden end of his wandering lifestyle. Perhaps Monck had not set out with the secret intent of being a kingmaker but that was what he had become. Charles made him duke of Albemarle as a reward, as well as giving him a handsome pension and grants of land. Monck continued to serve, both in the army and the navy, but his role in politics was of less importance. From 1661 onwards he had increasing periods of illness and the intolerant attitude of Charles II’s parliaments was disturbing for a man who preferred moderation. Personally, he had done well out of the Restoration. There were many others clamouring for position in what was viewed as a new dawn where all kinds of freedoms, especially for the ruling class, would now be possible. This was to prove a delusion in religious matters and the mores of the time did not suffer a sudden sea change. The English republic’s reputation for being straightlaced and boring is by no means accurate. The letters of Philip, second earl of Chesterfield and son of Princess Mary’s favourite, Lady Stanhope, make it clear that London was still the place to be and be seen in the latter part of the 1650s. During those years he began a relationship with a beautiful teenager called Barbara Villiers, a member of a notorious family. They exchanged passionate letters, even after her marriage to Roger Palmer in 1659.6 Yet Chesterfield would lose her to a much more powerful rival than a mere husband – the king himself. It is unclear how or where they first met but her position as royal mistress was certainly established within a few weeks of Charles II moving into Whitehall Palace.
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The king had, of course, many concerns other than Barbara’s voluptuous charms. There was the important question of what to do with his two brothers. The existence of two immediate heirs to the throne was a luxury the English monarchy had not known since the reign of Henry V in the early fifteenth century, though James IV of Scotland had two younger brothers when he stole his father’s throne in 1488. Luxury, however, came at a price. Both James and Henry needed to be given an annual income, a household and, if at all possible, a role in government. The latter might need to evolve over time though Charles seems to have decided from the outset that he would not copy the example of France, where Philippe of Orléans, younger brother of Louis XIV, was seldom included in discussion of affairs of state. The duke of York was swiftly made lord high admiral and took his responsibilities in the post seriously. Henry, as duke of Gloucester, seemed destined to play a significant role in the House of Lords until a suitable position could be found for him. After taking his seat on 31 May, just two days after his arrival in London, Henry made various speeches that were well received. The king loved both his brothers but had a particular soft spot for Henry, whose firmness of character and stubborn survival in adversity, allied with a naturally cheerful nature and considerable charm, won him many admirers.
The young man who is said to have thrown up his hat and cried ‘God Bless General Monck’ on his return to England did not, alas, live to make the contribution to public life that was confidently expected of him. At the beginning of September 1660, Henry contracted smallpox. His health as a youngster had been good and his resilient character gave hope of recovery from what was undoubtedly a very serious disease, though not one that was an automatic death sentence. Henry’s condition was thought initially to be relatively mild and his recovery was expected. Yet he succumbed on 13 September, to the great shock of his family. From her mother’s home at Colombes near Paris, Princess Henriette Anne, who had been so disturbed by the quarrel between Henry and their mother, wrote a month later to Charles II, explaining that it was hard for her to put into words her feelings: ‘So cruel a misfortune has occurred that until this hour I could not make up my mind to speak of it to you, not finding fit terms in which to do so. The sorrow which it has caused you is so just that one can but take one’s part in it, and I have the honour to share it equally with you.’7
Henriette’s rather stiff words concealed a genuine sorrow. Henry’s loss devastated the king and the political establishment regretted the passing of a young man (Henry was only just twenty-one) who had shown such promise. Clarendon described him as ‘a prince of extraordinary hopes, both from the comeliness and gracefulness of his person and the vivacity and vigour of his wit and understanding.’8 Independent of outlook, intelligent and with an evident sense of duty, Henry’s early death was a great loss to the Restoration court. Although his funeral was private, the order of service, preserved in the College of Arms, shows that he was buried with all the ceremony appropriate for a Stuart prince. His brother, James, duke of York, was the chief mourner and three dukes, Buckingham, Albemarle and Richmond, as well as fourteen earls followed him to his last resting place. He was buried in the same vault as Mary Queen of Scots in Henry VII’s chapel in Westminster Abbey where, all too soon, he would be joined by his sister, Mary.
If there was much joy in 1660 among the Stuarts at Charles II’s restoration after such a long period of exile, it was tempered by these two tragic deaths. Princess Mary, who had so loved her youngest brother, learned of his death while travelling from the Dutch republic to England in September 1660. She is said to have passed a very rough voyage impervious to her normal seasickness, alone with her grief, until, after several attempts to land, she came ashore at Margate in Kent, returning at last to the country she had not seen for nearly twenty years.
The change in family fortunes had considerably altered her position in the Netherlands and she now felt she could re-open discussions on her son’s future from a position of strength. Suddenly, she and Prince William were personages to be courted and treated with respect, at least by some of the Dutch provinces. The city of Amsterdam organized a pageant depicting the triumphs and tragedies of the Stuarts, complete with an insensitive depiction of her father’s execution, but despite this lack of tact, Mary was more optimistic than she had been in years. She felt sufficiently confident to petition the Dutch States-General to reinstate her son in his father’s title of captain-general of the Dutch army. There was support for her request in a number of the provinces but Holland itself, as ever, was reluctant. The prevarication infuriated Mary, who was not the most patient of persons. Much to her displeasure, Charles II was not prepared to force the point by taking a belligerent stand against Holland so early in his reign. Frustrated and distressed, the princess resolved to press her case in person with the king. She could not, however, arrive in England without his permission.
Mary’s situation was complicated by the fact that her mother was also putting pressure on her to visit France on her way to England, a detour that the princess did not altogether welcome. More than anything, she wanted to get away from the United Provinces and Henrietta Maria’s request could, she believed, only delay her departure. Appealing to her brother for guidance, she wrote:
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 as an unreasonable desire, since I have made the same to the queen; and pray do not delay it, for I have 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.9
Finally it was decided that Mary could travel directly to England. These were the king’s wishes and, besides, Henrietta Maria had already decided that there were matters in England that needed her urgent presence.
Mary and James went to meet the queen mother and Henriette Anne when they landed at Dover at the end of October 1660. Apart from this occasion, Mary spent much of her time at Whitehall, observing mourning for Henry and giving occasional receptions. Sometimes she rode out on horseback or took a boat on the river Thames, but her public outings were rare. Instead, she devoted her attention to trying to recover at least some of the dowry that had been promised in her marriage treaty, none of which had been paid. When her husband died in 1650, Mary was, theoretically, owed half of the money, but since her father had failed to honour his obligations, and the English republic was never going to step in to help a Stuart princess, Mary had been left with nothing. Charles II was unable to provide such a large sum without due consideration and a commission was set up to examine the princess’s request. Then, as now, it was easier to postpone uncomfortable decisions by establishing an official inquiry. Parliament voted the Princess Royal a payment of £10,000 at the beginning of November, which Mary acknowledged in a letter of thanks to the new Speaker of the House of Commons, the colourfully named Sir Harbottle Grimston. As parliament had already agreed to restore her mother’s jointure in its entirety Mary must have hoped that she, a Protestant princess, would receive the same consideration as her Catholic mother. While the heavily royalist parliament might have been generous to Charles I’s widow, their sentiments were not shared by most of the population. There was no great joy at the queen’s return. ‘I think her coming,’ noted Samuel Pepys, ‘doth please very few.’
Financial considerations aside, Mary had not felt well since arriving in London. She claimed that the city’s pollution, the smoke of thousands of fires, troubled her chest. As Christmas approached, it became apparent that her condition was much more serious than had at first been supposed. The doctors could not decide whether she was suffering from measles or smallpox but they were determined not to be accused of failing to bleed her sufficiently, a charge which had been levelled at the royal physicians in respect of Henry’s treatment. The disease was finally identified as smallpox and though the appearance of the rash gave the patient some temporary relief, the attentions of the doctors, led by Henrietta Maria’s own French medical adviser, speeded the queen’s eldest daughter out of this life. Zealous bleeding weakened the Princess Royal beyond recovery. She did not seem to be in great pain, nor were her mental faculties impaired, but it was obvious she was dying. Her family, of course, could not come near her for fear of picking up the infection. The queen mother and Princess Henriette Anne were moved from Whitehall to St James’s Palace to escape the threat. The queen’s maternal concern for her daughter manifested itself in an ardent desire for Mary to convert to Catholicism as she faced death. The princess did not oblige. So she passed her last hours with Katherine Stanhope, and Katherine’s son, Philip, in attendance. They watched her sinking as she dictated her will to her secretary, Nicolas Oudaert, striving, to the last, to do the best for her son. She had come to England hoping to improve his future security and now she would leave him an orphan. In her will she stipulated that her mother and Charles II should ‘take upon them the care of the Prince of Orange, my son, as the best parents and friends I can commend him unto, and from whom he is, with most reason, to expect all good help, both at home and abroad, praying to God to bless and make him a happy instrument to his glory and to his country’s good . . . I entreat his majesty most especially to be a protector and tutor to him . . .’10
There was no mention of her hated mother-in-law, Amalia van Solms. Mary, in these final moments, did not want to face the fact that political expediency, as well as practicality, would most likely see her son’s upbringing placed in the hands of this woman who had detested her since childhood. The rest of the princess’s will was concerned with bequests to her servants, the disposition of her jewels and payment of her debts. Her earthly affairs settled, Mary, who had shown great resolution as she faced death, was bled again. It was too much for her weakened body and those about her noticed that her eyes were becoming dim. She died quietly later that day, on Christmas Eve.
Mary left behind her huge debts, the result of a combination of factors. Her concern with appearances and her royal status meant that she often lived beyond her means. Added to a predilection for overspending, she had borrowed heavily to help keep her brothers afloat during their exile. Charles II asked Oudaert to make an inventory ‘of my late gracious mistress’s affairs’. It made grim reading. Mary was in debt in the United Provinces to the tune of half a million guilders. Dismayed by the state of her daughter’s finances, Henrietta Maria returned the ‘great necklace of old pearls’ that Mary had bequeathed her.
Oudaert soon discovered that Lady Chesterfield, as Katherine Stanhope was now known, had appropriated much of Mary’s furniture and all manner of other possessions, from silver plate to gloves and stockings, while her chaplain, Browne, was holding on to all her chapel items, ‘yet did offer to restore them if otherwise ordered’.11 Such behaviour seems very crass but was commonplace, even expected, at the time. Lady Chesterfield, who was made of stronger stuff than Browne, refused to return anything until Mary’s bequest of £400 was paid to her.
The royal funeral Mary was given would have contented this proud princess who had not lived to see her thirtieth birthday. The chief mourner was her brother, James, duke of York, and many of England’s leading men, including Hyde and Ormonde, as well as her dashing cousin, Prince Rupert, accompanied Mary to her grave.12 She was buried, at her request, ‘next [to] the duke of Gloucester, my late dear brother’. Elizabeth of Bohemia was distraught when she heard the news. ‘I am so sad I fear I write nonsense,’ she told her eldest son. In the space of three months, Henrietta Maria had lost two of her children. She had, however, gained a daughter-in-law, much to her displeasure. It was her determination to prevent such an outcome that had brought her to England in the first place.
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The lady who caused trouble at this difficult time for the Stuart family was none other than Edward Hyde’s daughter, Anne. A maid of honour to Princess Mary, Anne was no great beauty but she had a striking figure and was vivacious, witty and intelligent. These were sufficient attractions for the duke of York to start an affair with her. By the time that James returned with his brothers to England, Anne was pregnant. James’s initial reaction was more honourable than his subsequent course of conduct. He begged Charles for permission to marry Anne Hyde, despite the glaring gap in their social status. The king agreed, only to find that his mother and sister Mary were appalled. So, incidentally, was Hyde himself. Now lord chancellor, one of the greatest offices in the land, he realized that his daughter’s behaviour compromised his position. Disowning Anne, Hyde suggested that his daughter be sent to the Tower of London and even executed. This extreme reaction and the criticism that James received caused the duke to change his mind. He did not like being called stupid by his own mother, even if he was used to her dismissive attitude towards him, and the reaction of some of his aristocratic friends was equally troubling. He would not marry Anne after all. Henrietta Maria, who seldom discussed family scandals with her sister, Christine, now wrote claiming that James was not the father of the child and that Anne had tried to end her pregnancy. On 28 October 1660, she told Christine that she was leaving the next day for England, ‘to try and marry my son, the king, and unmarry the other’.13
Charles II was as yet without a wife, though negotiations were underway with several potential brides. He had recently lost one brother and now the other was proving a liability. But he was not willing for his brother to repudiate Anne Hyde publicly and he insisted, to the consternation of those old enemies, his mother and his chancellor, that the marriage should go ahead. It has been suggested that Charles took a secret delight in the discomfiture of others. If so, he must have been rubbing his hands with glee in this case.14 There was no way he would agree to ‘unmarry’ his brother. In fact, Anne and James were married in early September 1660, by James’s chaplain, with just one of Anne’s attendants and Ormonde’s son as witnesses. The new duchess of York gave birth to a son only a month later. Charles could now justify his insistence on the grounds that it had further strengthened the succession. Henrietta Maria was eventually reconciled to her second son’s marriage and showed her acceptance of Anne by dining formally with her at the start of 1661. This acceptance of the inevitable may well have been leavened by the plans she was making for an early departure from England. James might have let the family down, but sixteen-year-old Henriette Anne’s prospects were brilliant indeed. The queen mother was not at all sorry to leave England at this time. She was taking her youngest child back to France, to be married to Louis XIV’s brother, Philippe. It was a match that could scarcely have been dreamt of, for all Henrietta Maria’s steadfast optimism, before the restoration of the princess’s brother. The youngest child of Charles I would make the greatest marriage of all.