IX. THE PATH OF EXILE
The Fall of Lord Clarendon
Tight-wrapped in his cloak against the icy whips of the black winter'snight, a portly gentleman, well advanced in years, picked his waycarefully down the wet, slippery steps of the jetty by the light ofa lanthorn, whose rays gleamed lividly on crushed brown seaweed andtrailing green sea slime. Leaning heavily upon the arm which a sailorheld out to his assistance, he stepped into the waiting boat that roseand fell on the heaving black waters. A boathook scraped against thestones, and the frail craft was pushed off.
The oars dipped, and the boat slipped away through the darkness,steering a course for the two great poop lanterns that were swingingrhythmically high up against the black background of the night. Theelderly gentleman, huddled now in the stern-sheets, looked behindhim--to look his last upon the England he had loved and served andruled. The lanthorn, shedding its wheel of yellow light upon the jettysteps, was all of it that he could now see.
He sighed, and settled down again to face the poop lights, dancing thereabove the invisible hull of the ship that was to carry Edward Hyde, Earlof Clarendon, lately Lord Chancellor of England, into exile. As a dyingman looks down the foreshortened vista of his active life, so may EdwardHyde--whose career had reached a finality but one degree removed fromthe finality of death--have reviewed in that moment those thirty yearsof sincere endeavour and high achievement since he had been a lawstudent in the Temple when Charles I. was King.
That King he had served faithfully, so faithfully that when thedesperate fortunes of the Royalist party made it necessary to placethe Prince of Wales beyond the reach of Cromwell, it was in Sir EdwardHyde's care that the boy was sent upon his travels. The present was notto be Hyde's first experience of exile. He had known it, and of a bittersort, in those impecunious days when the Second Charles, whose stepshe guided, was a needy, homeless outcast. A man less staunch and loyalmight have thrown over so profitless a service. He had talents thatwould have commanded a price in the Roundhead market. Yet staunchlyadhering to the Stuart fortunes, labouring ceaselessly and shrewdlyin the Stuart interest, employing his great ability and statecraft, heachieved at long length the restoration of the Stuarts to the Throne ofEngland. And for all those loyal, self-denying labours in exile on theStuart behalf, all the reward he had at the time was that James Stuart,Duke of York, debauched his daughter.
Nor did Hyde's labours cease when he had made possible the Restoration;it was Hyde who, when that Restoration was accomplished, took in handand carried out the difficult task of welding together the old andthe new conditions of political affairs. And it was Hyde who was thescapegoat when things did not run the course that Englishmen desired.As the head of the administration he was held responsible even for thoseacts which he had strongly but vainly reprobated in Council. It was Hydewho was blamed when Charles sold Dunkirk to the French, and spent themoney in harlotry; it was Hyde who was blamed because the Queen waschildless.
The reason for this last lay in the fact that the wrong done to Hyde'sdaughter Anne had now been righted by marriage with the Duke of York.Now the Duke of York was the heir-apparent, and the people, ever readyto attach most credit to that which is most incredible and fantastic,believed that to ensure the succession of his own grandchildren Hyde haddeliberately provided Charles with a barren wife.
When the Dutch, sailing up the Thames, had burnt the ships of war atChatham, and Londoners heard the thunder of enemy guns, Hyde was openlydenounced as a traitor by a people stricken with terror and seeking avictim in the blind, unreasoning way of public feeling. They broke hiswindows, ravaged his garden, and erected a gibbet before the gates ofhis superb mansion on the north side of Piccadilly.
Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, and Lord Chancellor of England,commanded the love of his intimates, but did not possess those qualitiesof cheap glitter that make for popularity with the masses. Nor did hecourt popularity elsewhere. Because he was austere in his morals,grave and sober in his conduct, he was hated by those who made up thedebauched court of his prince. Because he was deeply religious in hisprinciples, the Puritans mistrusted him for a bigot. Because he wasautocratic in his policy he was detested by the Commons, the day ofautocracy being done.
Yet might he have weathered the general hostility had Charles been halfas loyal to him as he had ever been loyal to Charles. For a time, it istrue, the King stood his friend, and might so have continued to theend had not the women become mixed up in the business. As Evelyn, thediarist, puts it, this great man's fall was the work of "the buffoonesand ladys of pleasure."
It really is a very tangled story--this inner history of the fall ofClarendon, with which the school-books are not concerned. In a sense, itis also the story of the King's marriage and of Catherine of Braganza,his unfortunate little ugly Queen, who must have suffered as much asany woman wedded to a sultan in any country where the seraglio is not anatural and proper institution.
If Clarendon could not be said to have brought about the marriage, atleast he had given it his suffrages when proposed by Portugal, which wasanxious to establish an alliance with England as some protection againstthe predatory designs of Spain. He had been influenced by the dowryoffered--five hundred thousand pounds in money, Tangier, which wouldgive England a commanding position on the Mediterranean, and the Islandof Bombay. Without yet foreseeing that the possession of Bombay, and thefreedom to trade in the East Indies--which Portugal had hitherto keptjealously to herself--were to enable England to build up her greatIndian Empire, yet the commercial advantages alone were obvious enoughto make the match desirable.
Catherine of Braganza sailed for England, and on the lath of May, 1662,Charles, attended by a splendid following, went to meet his bride atPortsmouth. He was himself a very personable man, tall--he stood a fullsix feet high--lean and elegantly vigorous. The ugliness of his drawn,harsh-featured face was mitigated by the glory of full, low-lidded,dark eyes, and his smile could be irresistibly captivating. He wasas graceful in manner as in person, felicitous of speech, and of anindolent good temper that found expression in a charming urbanity.
Good temper and urbanity alike suffered rudely when he beheld the wifethey brought him. Catherine, who was in her twenty-fifth year, was ofan absurdly low stature, so long in the body and short in the legs that,dressed as she was in an outlandish, full-skirted farthingale, she hadthe appearance of being on her knees when she stood before him. Hercomplexion was sallow, and though her eyes, like his own, were fine,they were not fine enough to redeem the dull plainness of her face. Herblack hair was grotesquely dressed, with a long fore-top and two greatribbon bows standing out, one on each side of her head, like a pair ofminiature wings.
It is little wonder that the Merry Monarch, the fastidious voluptuary,with his nice discernment in women, should have checked in his longstride, and halted a moment in consternation.
"Lord!" was his wry comment to Etheredge, who was beside him. "They'vebrought me a bat, not a woman."
But if she lacked beauty, she was well dowered, and Charles was indesperate need of money.
"I suppose," he told Clarendon anon, "I must swallow this black draughtto get the jam that goes with it."
The Chancellor's grave eyes considered him almost sternly what time hecoldly recited the advantages of this marriage. If he did not presume torebuke the ribaldry of his master, neither would he condescend to smileat it. He was too honest ever to be a sycophant.
Catherine was immediately attended--in the words of Grammont--by sixfrights who called themselves maids-of-honour, and a governess who wasa monster. With this retinue she repaired to Hampton Court, wherethe honeymoon was spent, and where for a brief season the poorwoman--entirely enamoured of the graceful, long-legged rake she hadmarried--lived in a fool's paradise.
Disillusion was to follow soon enough. She might be, by he grace ofher dowry, Queen of England, but she was soon to discover that to KingCharles she was no more than a wife de jure. With wives de facto Charleswould people his seraglio as fancy moved
him; and the present wife defacto, the mistress of his heart, the first lady of his harem, was thatbeautiful termagant, Barbara Villiers, wife of the accommodating RogerPalmer, Earl of Castle-maine.
There was no lack--there never is in such cases--of those who out ofconcern and love for the happily deluded wife lifted the veil for her,and made her aware of the facts of his Majesty's association with myLady Castle-maine--an association dating back to the time when he wasstill a homeless wanderer. The knowledge would appear to have troubledthe poor soul profoundly; but the climax of her distress was reachedwhen, on her coming to Whitehall, she found at the head of the list ofladies-in-waiting assigned to her the name of my Lady Castlemaine. Theforlorn little woman's pride rose up before this outrage. She struck outthat offending name, and gave orders that the favourite was not to beadmitted to her presence.
But she reckoned without Charles. For all his urbane, good-tempered,debonair ways, there was an ugly cynical streak in his nature,manifested now in the manner in which he dealt with this situation.Himself he led his boldly handsome favourite by the hand into his wife'spresence, before the whole Court assembled, and himself presented herto Catherine, what time that Court, dissolute and profligate as it was,looked on in amazement at so outrageous a slight to the dignity of aqueen.
What followed may well have exceeded all expectations. Catherinestiffened as if the blow dealt her had been physical. Gradually herface paled until it was grey and drawn; tears of outraged pride andmortification flooded her eyes. And then, as if something snapped withinher brain under this stress of bitter emotion, blood gushed from hernostrils, and she sank back in a swoon into the arms of her Portugueseladies.
Confusion followed, and under cover of it Charles and his light oflove withdrew, realizing that if he lingered not all his easy skill inhandling delicate situations could avail him to save his royal dignity.
Naturally the experiment was not to be repeated. But since it was hiswish that the Countess of Castlemaine should be established as one ofthe Queen's ladies--or, rather, since it was her ladyship's wish, andsince Charles was as wax in her ladyship's hands--it became necessary tohave the Queen instructed in what was, in her husband's view, fitting.For this task he selected Clarendon. But the Chancellor, who had so longand loyally played Mentor to Charles's Telemachus, sought now to guidehim in matters moral as he had hitherto guided him in matters political.
Clarendon declined the office of mediator, and even expostulated withCharles upon the unseemliness of the course upon which his Majesty wasbent.
"Surely, sire, it is for her Majesty to say who shall and who shall notbe the ladies of her bedchamber. And I nothing marvel at her decision inthis instance."
"Yet I tell you, my lord, that it is a decision that shall be revoked."
"By whom, sire?" the Chancellor asked him gravely.
"By her Majesty, of course."
"Under coercion, of which you ask me to be the instrument," saidClarendon, in the tutorly manner he had used with the King from thelatter's boyhood. "Yourself, sire, at a time when your own wishes didnot warp your judgment, have condemned the very thing that now youare urging. Yourself, sire, hotly blamed your cousin, King Louis, forthrusting Mademoiselle de Valliere upon his queen. You will not haveforgotten the things you said then of King Louis."
Charles remembered those unflattering criticisms which he was nowinvited to apply to his own case. He bit his lip, admitting himself incheck.
But anon--no doubt in obedience to the overbearing suasion of my LadyCastlemaine--he returned to the attack, and sent the Chancellor hisorders in a letter demanding unquestioning obedience.
"Use your best endeavours," wrote Charles, "to facilitate what I am suremy honour is so much concerned in. And whosoever I find to be my LadyCastlemaine's enemy in this matter, I do promise upon my word to be hisenemy so long as I live."
My Lord Clarendon had few illusions on the score of mankind. He knewhis world from froth to dregs--having studied it under a variety ofconditions. Yet that letter from his King was a bitter draught. All thatCharles possessed and was he owed to Clarendon. Yet in such a contestas this, Charles did not hesitate to pen that bitter, threatening line:"Whosoever I find to be my Lady Castlemaine's enemy in this matter, I dopromise upon my word to be his enemy so long as I live."
All that Clarendon had done in the past was to count for nothing unlesshe also did the unworthy thing that Charles now demanded. All thathe had accomplished in the service of his King was to be swept intooblivion by the breath of a spiteful wanton.
Clarendon swallowed the draught and sought the Queen, upon that odiousembassy with whose ends he was so entirely out of sympathy. He usedarguments whose hollowness was not more obvious to the Queen than tohimself.
That industrious and entertaining chronicler of trifles, Mr. Pepys,tells us, scandalized, in his diary that on the following day the talkof the Court was all upon a midnight scene between the royal couple inthe privacy of their own apartments, so stormy that the sounds of itwere plainly to be heard in the neighbouring chambers.
You conceive the poor little woman, smarting under the insult ofCharles's proposal by the mouth of Clarendon, assailing her royalhusband, and fiercely upbraiding him with his lack not merely ofaffection but even of the respect that was her absolute due. AndCharles, his purpose set, urged to it by the handsome termagant whom hedared not refuse, stirred out of his indolent good-nature, turningupon her, storming back, and finally threatening her with the greaterdisgrace of seeing herself pack ed home to Portugal, unless she wouldsubmit to the lesser disgrace he thrust upon her here.
Whether by these or by other arguments he made his will prevail, prevailit did. Catherine of Braganza swallowed her pride and submitted. And avery complete submission it was. Lady Castlemaine was not only installedas a Lady of the Bedchamber, but very soon we find the Queen treatingher with a friendliness that provoked comment and amazement.
The favourite's triumph was complete, and marked by an increasinginsolence, most marked in her demeanour towards the Chancellor, ofwhose views on the subject, as expressed to the King, she was aware.Consequently she hated him with all the spiteful bitterness that isinseparable from the nature of such women. And she hated him the morebecause, wrapped in his cold contempt, he moved in utter unconcern ofher hostility. In this hatred she certainly did not lack for allies,members of that licentious court whose hostility towards the austereChancellor was begotten of his own scorn of them. Among them they workedto pull him down.
The attempt to undermine his influence with the King proving vain--forCharles was as well aware of its inspiration as of the Chancellor'svalue to him--that crew of rakes went laboriously and insidiously towork upon the public mind, which is to say the public ignorance--mostfruitful soil for scandal against the great. Who shall say how far mylady and the Court were responsible for the lampoon affixed one day tomy Lord Clarendon's gatepost:
Three sights to be seen: Dunkirk, Tangier, and a barren queen.
Her ladyship might well have considered the unpopularity of theChancellor as the crown of her triumph, had this triumph been as stableas she could have wished. But, Charles being what he was, it followsthat her ladyship had frequent, if transient, anxious jealousies tomar the perfection of her existence, to remind her how insecure is thetenure of positions such as hers, ever at the mercy of the very capriceto existence.
And then, at long length, there came a day of horrid dread for her, aday when she found herself bereft of her influence with her royal lover,when pleadings and railings failed alike to sway him. In part she owedit to an indiscretion of her own, but in far greater measure to a childof sixteen, of a golden-headed, fresh, youthful loveliness, and a naturethat still found pleasure in dolls and kindred childish things, yet ofa quick and lively wit, and a clear, intelligent mind, untroubled eitherby the assiduity of the royal attentions or the fact that she was becomethe toast of the day.
This was Miss Frances Stewart, the daughter of Lord
Blantyre, newly cometo Court as a Lady-in-Waiting to her Majesty. How profound an impressionher beauty made upon the admittedly impressionable old Pepys you maystudy in his diary. He had a glimpse of her one day riding in the Parkwith the King, and a troop of ladies, among whom my Lady Castlemaine,looking, as he tells us, "mighty out of humour." There was a moment whenMiss Stewart came very near to becoming Queen of England, and althoughshe never reached that eminence, yet her effigy not only found its wayinto the coinage, but abides there to this day (more perdurable thanthat of any actual queen) in the figure of Britannia, for which she wasthe model.
Charles wooed her openly. It was never his way to study appearancesin these matters. He was so assiduous that it became customary inthat winter of 1666 for those seeking the King at Whitehall toinquire whether he were above or below--"below" meaning Miss Stewart'sapartments on the ground-floor of the palace, in which apartments hisMajesty was a constant visitor. And since where the King goes the Courtfollows, and where the King smiles there the Court fawns, it resultedthat this child now found herself queening it over a court that flockedto her apartments. Gallants and ladies came there to flirt and togossip, to gamble and to pay homage.
About a great table in her splendid salon, a company of rustling,iridescent fops in satin and heavy periwigs, and of ladies with curledhead-dresses and bare shoulders, played at basset one night in January.Conversation rippled, breaking here and there into laughter, white,jewelled hands reached out for cards, or for a share of the heaps ofgold that swept this way and that with the varying fortunes of the game.
My Lady Castlemaine, seated between Etheredge and Rochester, playedin silence, with lips tight-set and brooding eyes. She had lost, it istrue, some L1500 that night; yet, a prodigal gamester, and one who cameeasily by money, she had been known to lose ten times that sum and yetpreserve her smile. The source of her ill-humour was not the game. Sheplayed recklessly, her attention wandering; those handsome, broodingeyes of hers were intent upon watching what went on at the other end ofthe long room. There, at a smaller table, sat Miss Stewart, half a dozengallants hovering near her, engaged upon a game of cards of a vastlydifferent sort. Miss Stewart did not gamble. The only purpose she couldfind for cards was to build castles; and here she was building one withthe assistance of her gallants, and under the superintendence of hisGrace of Buckingham, who was as skilled in this as in other equallyunstable forms of architecture.
Apart, over by the fire, in a great chair of gilt leather, lounged theKing, languidly observing this smaller party, a faint, indolent smile onhis swarthy, saturnine countenance. Absently, with one hand he strokeda little spaniel that was curled in his lap. A black boy in a gorgeous,plumed turban and a long, crimson surcoat arabesqued in gold--there werethree or four such attendants about the room--proffered him a cup ofposset on a golden salver.
The King rose, thrust aside the little blackamoor, and with his spanielunder his arm, sauntered across to Miss Stewart's table. Soon he foundhimself alone with her--the others having removed themselves on hisapproach, as jackals fall back before the coming of the lion. The lastto go, and with signs of obvious reluctance, was his Grace of Richmond,a delicately-built, uncomely, but very glittering gentleman.
Charles faced her across the table, the tall house of cards standingbetween them.
Miss invited his Majesty's admiration for my Lord of Buckingham'sarchitecture. Pouf! His Majesty blew, and the edifice rustled down to amere heap of cards again.
"Symbol of kingly power," said Miss, pertly. "You demolish better thanyou build, sire."
"Oddsfish! If you challenge me, it were easy to prove you wrong," quothhe.
"Pray do. The cards are here."
"Cards! Pooh! Card castles are well enough for Buckingham. But such isnot the castle I'll build you if you command me."
"I command the King's Majesty? Mon Dieu! But it would be treasonsurely."
"Not greater treason than to have enslaved me." His fine eyes were oddlyardent. "Shall I build you this castle, child?"
Miss looked at him, and looked away. Her eyelids fluttereddistractingly. She fetched a sigh.
"The castle that your Majesty would build for any but your Queen mustprove a prison."
She rose, and, looking across the room, she met the handsome, scowlingeyes of the neglected favourite. "My Lady Castlemaine looks as if shefeared that fortune were not favouring her." She was so artless thatCharles could not be sure there was a double meaning to her speech."Shall we go see how she is faring?" she added, with a disregard foretiquette, whose artlessness he also doubted.
He yielded, of course. That was his way with beauty, especially withbeauty not yet reduced into possession. But the characteristic urbanitywith which he sauntered beside her across the room was no more than amask upon his chagrin. It was always thus that pretty Frances Stewartused him. She always knew how to elude him and, always with that cursedair of artlessness, uttered seemingly simple sentences that clung to hismind to tantalize him.
"The castle your Majesty would build for any but your Queen must provea prison." What had she meant by that? Must he take her to queen beforeshe would allow him to build a castle for her?
It was an insistent, haunting thought, wracking his mind. He knew therewas a party hostile to the Duke of York and Clarendon, which, fearingthe succession of the former, and, so, of the grandchildren of thelatter, as a result of Catherine of Braganza's childlessness, stronglyfavoured the King's divorce.
It was a singular irony that my Lady Castlemaine should be largelyresponsible for the existence of that party. In her hatred forClarendon, and her blind search for weapons that would slay theChancellor, she had, if not actually invented, at least helped to givecurrency to the silly slander that Clarendon had deliberately chosen forCharles a barren queen, so as to ensure the ultimate succession of hisown daughter's children. But she had never thought to see that slanderrecoil upon her as it now did; she had never thought that a party wouldcome to rise up in consequence that would urge divorce upon the King atthe very moment when he was consumed by passion for the unattainable,artlessly artful Frances Stewart.
It was Buckingham, greatly daring, who slyly made himself that party'smouthpiece. The suggestion startled Charles, voicing, as perhaps itdid, the temptation by which he was secretly assailed. He looked atBuckingham, frowning.
"I verily believe you are the wickedest dog in England."
The impudent gallant made a leg. "For a subject, sire, I believe I am."
Charles--with whom the amusing word seems ever to have been morecompelling than the serious--laughed his soft, mellow laugh. Then hesighed, and the frown of thought returned.
"It would be a wicked thing to make a poor lady miserable only becauseshe is my wife, and has no children by me, which is no fault of hers."
He was a thoroughly bad husband, but his indolent good-nature shrankfrom purchasing his desires at the price of so much ignominy to theQueen. Before that could come to pass it would be necessary to give thescrew of temptation another turn or two. And it was Miss Stewart herselfwho--in all innocence--supplied what was required in that direction.Driven to bay by the importunities of Charles, she announced at lastthat it was her intention to retire from Court, so as to preserveherself from the temptations by which she was beset, and to determinethe uneasiness which, through no fault of her own, her presence wasoccasioning the Queen; and she announced further, that, so desperate hadshe been rendered that she would marry any gentleman of fifteen hundredpounds a year who would have her in honour.
You behold Charles reduced to a state of panic. He sought to bribeher with offers of any settlements she chose to name, or any title shecoveted, offering her these things at the nation's expense as freelyand lightly as the jewels he had tossed into her lap, or the collarof pearls worth sixteen hundred pounds he had put about her neck. Theoffers were ineffectual, and Charles, driven almost to distractionby such invulnerable virtue, might now have yielded to the insidiouswhispers of divorce and re-marriage had not my Lady
Castlemaine taken ahand in the game.
Her ladyship, dwelling already, as a consequence of that royalinfatuation for Miss Stewart, in the cold, rarefied atmosphere of aneglect that amounted almost to disgrace, may have considered withbitterness how her attempt to exploit her hatred of the Chancellor hadrecoiled upon herself.
In the blackest hour of her despair, when hope seemed almost dead, shemade a discovery--or, rather, the King's page, the ineffable Chiffinch,Lord Keeper of the Back Stairs and Grand-Eunuch of the Royal Seraglio,who was her ladyship's friend, made it and communicated it to herThere had been one ardent respondent in the Duke of Richmond to thatproclamation of Miss Stewart's that she would marry any gentleman offifteen hundred pounds a year. Long enamoured of her, his Grace saw herehis opportunity, and he seized it. Consequently he was now in constantattendance upon her, but very secretly, since he feared the King'sdispleasure.
My Lady Castlemaine, having discovered this, and being well served inthe matter by Chiffinch, spied her opportunity. It came one cold nighttowards the end of February of that year 1667. Charles, going below at alate hour to visit Miss Stewart, when he judged that she would bealone, was informed by her maid that Miss was not receiving, a headachecompelling her to keep her room.
His Majesty returned above in a very ill-humour, to find himselfconfronted in his own apartments by my Lady Castlemaine. Chiffinch hadintroduced her by the back-stairs entrance. Charles stiffened at sightof her.
"I hope I may be allowed to pay my homage," says she, on a note ofirony, "although the angelic Stewart has forbid you to see me at my ownhouse. I come to condole with you upon the affliction and grief intowhich the new-fashioned chastity of the inhuman Stewart has reduced yourMajesty."
"You are pleased to be amused, ma'am," says Charles frostily.
"I will not," she returned him, "make use of reproaches which woulddisgrace myself; still less will I endeavour to excuse frailties inmyself which nothing can justify, since your constancy for me deprivesme of all defence." Her ladyship, you see, had a considerable gift ofsarcasm.
"In that case, may I ask you why you have come?"
"To open your eyes. Because I cannot bear that you should be made thejest of your own Court."
"Madam!"
"Ah! You didn't know, of course, that you are being laughed at forthe gross manner in which you are being imposed upon by the Stewart'saffectations, any more than you know that whilst you are deniedadmittance to her apartments, under the presence of some indisposition,the Duke of Richmond is with her now."
"That is false," he was beginning, very indignantly.
"I do not desire you to take my word for it. If you will follow me,you will no longer be the dupe of a false prude, who makes you act soridiculous a part."
She took him, still half-resisting, by the hand, and in silence led him,despite his reluctance, back by the way he had so lately come. Outsideher rival's door she left him, but she paused at the end of the galleryto make sure that he had entered.
Within he found himself confronted by several of Miss Stewart'schambermaids, who respectfully barred his way, one of them informing himscarcely above a whisper that her mistress had been very ill since hisMajesty left, but that, being gone to bed, she was, God be thanked, in avery fine sleep.
"That I must see," said the King. And, since one of the women placedherself before the door of the inner room, his Majesty unceremoniouslytook her by the shoulders and put her aside.
He thrust open the door, and stepped without further ceremony into thewell-lighted bedroom. Miss Stewart occupied the handsome, canopied bed.But far from being as he had been told, in "a very fine sleep," she wassitting up; and far from presenting an ailing appearance, she lookedradiantly well and very lovely in her diaphanous sleeping toilet, withgolden ringlets in distracting disarray Nor was she alone. By her pillowsat one who, if at first to be presumed her physician, proved uponscrutiny to be the Duke of Richmond.
The King's swarthy face turned a variety of colours, his languid eyeslost all trace of languor. Those who knew his nature might have expectedthat he would now deliver himself with that sneering sarcasm, thatindolent cynicism, which he used upon occasion. But he was too deeplystirred for acting. His self-control deserted him entirely. Exactly whathe said has not been preserved for us. All that we are told is that hesignified his resentment in such terms as he had never before used; andthat his Grace, almost petrified by the King's most royal rage, utterednever a word in answer. The windows of the room overlooked the Thames.The King's eyes strayed towards them. Richmond was slight of build,Charles vigorous and athletic. His Grace took the door betimes lest thewindow should occur to his Majesty, and so he left the lady alone withthe outraged monarch.
Thereafter Charles did not have it all quite his own way. Miss Stewartfaced him in an indignation nothing less than his own, and she was veryfar from attempting any such justification of herself, or her conduct,as he may have expected.
"Will your Majesty be more precise as to the grounds of your complaint?"she invited him challengingly.
That checked his wildness. It brought him up with a round turn. His jawfell, and he stared at her, lost now for words. Of this she took thefullest advantage.
"If I am not allowed to receive visits from a man of the Duke ofRichmond's rank, who comes with honourable intentions, then I am a slavein a free country. I know of no engagement that should prevent me fromdisposing of my hand as I think fit. But if this is not permitted me inyour Majesty's dominions, I do not believe there is any power on earthcan prevent me going back to France, and throwing myself into a convent,there to enjoy the peace denied me at this Court."
With that she melted into tears, and his discomfiture was complete. Onhis knees he begged her forgiveness for the injury he had done her. ButMiss was not in a forgiving humour.
"If your Majesty would graciously consent to leave me now in peace,"said she, "you would avoid offending by a longer visit those whoaccompanied or conducted you to my apartments."
She had drawn a bow at a venture but shrewdly, and the shaft went home.Charles rose, red in the face. Swearing he would never speak to heragain, he stalked out.
Later, however, he considered. If he felt bitterly aggrieved, he mustalso have realized that he had no just grounds for this, and that in hisconduct in Miss Stewart's room he had been entirely ridiculous. She wasrightly resolved against being lightly worn by any man. If anything, thereflection must have fanned his passion. It was impossible, he thought,that she should love that knock-kneed fellow, Richmond, who had nograces either of body or of mind, and if she suffered the man's suit,it must be, as she had all but said, so that she might be delivered fromthe persecution to which his Majesty had submitted her. The thought ofher marrying Richmond, or, indeed, anybody, was unbearable to Charles,and it may have stifled his last scruple in the matter of the divorce.
His first measure next morning was to banish Richmond from the Court.But Richmond had not stayed for the order to quit. The King's messengerfound him gone already.
Then Charles took counsel in the matter with the Chancellor.Clarendon's habitual gravity was increased to sternness. He spoke to theKing--taking the fullest advantage of the tutelary position in which forthe last twenty-five years he had stood to him--much as he had spokenwhen Charles had proposed to make Barbara Palmer a Lady of the Queen'sBedchamber, saving that he was now even more uncompromising. The Kingwas not pleased with him. But just as he had had his way, despite theChancellor, in that other matter, so he would have his way despite himnow. This time, however, the Chancellor took no risks. He feared toomuch the consequences for Charles, and he determined to spare no effortto avoid a scandal, and to save the already deeply-injured Queen. So hewent secretly to work to outwit the King. He made himself the protectorof those lovers, the Duke of Richmond and Miss Stewart, with the resultthat one dark night, a week or two later, the lady stole away fromthe Palace of Whitehall, and made her way to the Bear Tavern, at theBridge-foot, Westminster, where Richmond awaited
her with a coach. Andso, by the secret favour of the Lord Chancellor, they stole away to Kentand matrimony.
That was checkmate indeed to Charles who swore all manner of things inhis mortification. But it was not until some six weeks later that helearnt by whose agency the thing had been accomplished. He learnt it,not a doubt, from my Lady Castlemaine.
The estrangement between her ladyship and the King, which dated back tothe time of his desperate courtship of Miss Stewart, was at lastmade up; and once again we see her ladyship triumphant, and firmlyestablished in the amorous King's affections. She had cause tobe grateful to the Chancellor for this. But her vindictive natureremembered only the earlier injury still unavenged. Here at last was herchance to pay off that score. Clarendon, beset by enemies on every hand,yet trusting in the King whom he had served so well, stood his groundunintimidated and unmoved--an oak that had weathered mightier stormsthan this. He did not dream that he was in the power of an evil woman.And that woman used her power. When all else failed, she told the Kingof Clarendon's part in the flight of Miss Stewart, and lest the Kingshould be disposed to pardon the Chancellor out of consideration for hismotives, represented him as a self-seeker, and charged him with havingacted thus so as to make sure of keeping his daughter's children by theDuke of York in the succession.
That was the end. Charles withdrew his protection, threw Clarendon tothe wolves. He sent the Duke of Albemarle to him with a command that heshould surrender his seals of office. The proud old man refused to yieldhis seals to any but the King himself. He may have hoped that the memoryof all that lay between them would rise up once more when they were faceto face. So he came in person to Whitehall to make surrender. He walkeddeliberately, firmly, and with head erect, through the hostile throng ofcourtiers--"especially the buffoones and ladys of pleasure," as Evelynsays.
Of his departure thence, his disgrace now consummated, Pepys has left usa vivid picture:
"When he went from the King on Monday morning my Lady Castlemaine wasin bed (though about twelve o'clock), and ran out in her smock into heraviary looking into Whitehall Gardens; and thither her woman brought herher nightgown; and she stood, blessing herself at the old man's goingaway; and several of the gallants of Whitehall--of which there were manystaying to see the Chancellor's return--did talk to her in her birdcage;among others Blandford, telling her she was the bird of passage."
Clarendon lingered, melancholy and disillusioned, at his fine house inPiccadilly until, impeached by Parliament, he remembered Strafford'sfate, and set out to tread once more and for the remainder of his daysthe path of exile.
Time avenged him. Two of his granddaughters--Mary and Anne--reignedsuccessively as queens in England.