The kings bed, p.4
The King's Bed, page 4
To begin with, Cardinal Mazarin ensured the Prince was kept well away from the centre of the court. He had his reasons; chief among them was his desire not to alienate the leaders of the New Model Army whom he had correctly identified as the most potent power in England.2 Charles I’s entreaties went unheeded. With the outward display of indifference established, in private the French court was able to show a more welcoming stance towards its young guest.
Life in exile had its compensations. The grand and ancient royal palace of St Germain-en-Laye was the birthplace of Louis XIV, and it would remain the official centre of the French court until the Palace of Versailles was ready many years later. St Germain became a magnet for royalist generals and commanders, including Charles’s cousin, Prince Rupert. Even the Earl of Newcastle, Charles’s old governor, turned up. Life for the cavalier young-bloods could be dull. Duels broke out as they quarrelled over past slights, military blunders and, of course, women.
Charles soon received invitations to dine with Louis XIV. This was the signal for him to be invited into the vortex of aristocratic Parisian society. For a boy who had been on the run just a few weeks before, this was more like it. He became a novel figure in the palaces around the capital. The ladies discussed him and wrote about him. His manners were compared to those of the finest French aristocrats and found wanting. His looks were gone over, compared to his Bourbon ancestors, and found to be more or less acceptable.
His mother went to work to find him a wife. She renewed her attempts to have him betrothed to Anne-Marie Louise d’Orléans, ‘La Grande Mademoiselle’ as she was known. Henrietta Maria believed she had the backing of Mazarin and the French Queen Mother for her plan. Such a match would bring a satisfactory link to the grandest of Bourbon royalty, since Anne-Marie was a cousin of the king and was satisfactorily both rich and Catholic. The Queen saw her wealth as a means of raising an army and restoring her husband to his throne. But there were several impediments, the major one being the Cardinal. Mazarin had no intention of allowing so much money to flow out of France and end up in England. Worst of all, from the French point of view, it might be used to strengthen England as a power at a time when France was already fighting a very expensive war with Spain.
Mademoiselle herself did not encourage the Prince, though she did at least entertain the notion of the marriage. She was a tall, stocky girl who suffered no lack of self-esteem. Hyde was very dismissive, describing the Duchess as ‘Not at all handsome, being a lady of very low stature and that stature in no degree straight.’3 He was incorrect, as Anne-Marie was a large, blue-eyed creature, not at all small or ill- shapen. In her memoirs, the Duchess recorded how she paraded through the extravagant interiors of her world, stopping at each and every gilt-hung mirror to ensure no self-reflection went unacknowledged by the assembled admirers.4 Such self-love did not leave much room for an impecunious heir to a rocky English throne. Besides, she had wanted to marry Louis, her ‘little king’, before moving on to set her sights at the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Charles is not recorded as having pursued Mademoiselle with any great diligence. From what little is known, he refused to speak to Anne-Marie even when he accompanied her to balls. He claimed this was because he could not speak French, though Mademoiselle noticed he could understand her well enough. Apart from Anne-Marie, Charles was also connected with another possible suitor, the Duchesse de Châtillon. This, too, seems to have fizzled out.
Nothing, however, could deter Henrietta Maria from her desire to see her son wed to the haughty Mademoiselle; in truth it was she who wooed Anne-Marie rather than her sullen, sex-starved son. In February 1647, a grand entertainment was held at the Palais Royal. Henrietta Maria pulled out all the stops to get her son into Mademoiselle’s good books. She lent Anne-Marie diamonds to sew on her dress. Anne-Marie wore her favourite colours of black, white and rose, with the English diamonds on her frock. There were more diamonds and pearls in a fascinator, in the centre of which were three feathers, one in each of her favourite colours. Henrietta Maria could not have been more pleased with her strategy of helping the fabulous creature shine in the glittering gathering in front of the two kings of France and England.
‘Nothing could have been seen better or more magnificently arrayed than I was that day,’ recalled Mademoiselle modestly. ‘I did not fail to find many people who assured me that my fine figure, my good looks, my pale complexion, and the splendour of my fair hair became me better than all the riches that shone upon my person.’5
The dancing took place on a large stage, brilliantly lighted by crystal chandeliers, with the spectators seated around the amphitheatre. In the centre of the stage was a throne, covered with cloth of gold, but the little King refused to mount it, out of courtesy to the Prince of Wales. Charles being equally polite, the throne remained empty until Mademoiselle ascended it without scruple. She felt – and was assured that she looked – born to a throne, and thoroughly enjoyed her position, having both the King and the Prince of Wales seated at her feet. If Charles had hoped his humble attitude would go down well with his cousin and placate his mother, he was mistaken. Temporary possession of the throne only served to increase Mademoiselle’s self-esteem. She wrote:
While I was there, and the Prince of Wales was at my feet, my heart, as much as my eyes, regarded him de haut-en-bas; I had then taken into my head to marry the Emperor, of which there was much probability if the Court had only acted in good faith . . . The thought of the Empire so entirely occupied my mind that I only regarded the Prince of Wales as an object of pity.6
Fortunately, respite was on its way. The Duke of Buckingham – Charles’s close childhood companion – arrived at St Germain in late 1646, together with his brother. The young aristocrats were en route back to England on the last leg of their grand tour. Buckingham and his brother were exceptionally rich. Buckingham was an irreverent and mischievous boy who poked fun at authority figures, including the Prince’s father. If, as Hyde discerned, Christabella had exercised a bad influence over the Prince, Buckingham was ten times worse. The disapproving Bishop Gilbert Burnet wrote that Buckingham corrupted Charles.7 It is likely that he was already on his own path to perdition; if not exactly seeing the world through Buckingham’s eyes, then at least searching for amusing antidotes to the starchy, self-important world of Louis XIV, who was as yet far too young to embark on his own ambitious sexual career.
The Prince spent his time partying. He sold his silver to pay his debts and failed to pay his servants. His father’s situation meanwhile was much worse, and was rapidly deteriorating. Following a period of negotiation with the Scots, who found him as inflexible as the English, the Scots sold Charles to the English Parliament in a deal that included reparation for their part in the war. Before the King could return south and take up a settlement with the more amenable members of Parliament, the army kidnapped him and brought him to Hampton Court Palace, where he was placed under house arrest. There the King remained until he heard rumours of a plot to assassinate him. Believing this to be a strong possibility, he escaped by night and headed for the south coast. He put himself in the care of Colonel Hammond, the governor of the Isle of Wight, a Parliamentarian soldier whom Charles believed was sympathetic to his cause. Unfortunately for the King, Hammond saw his first duty as being to Parliament and locked him up in Carisbrooke Castle. From here, Charles plotted a new civil war. At the end of 1647 he made a secret pact with the Scots for Presbyterianism to be imposed in England in return for the supply of an invading army that would free him and restore him to the throne.
By the spring of 1648, the Scots were making their own overtures to the Prince of Wales to come to Scotland and take command of an invading army. To the hyperactive Prince, this was irresistible. For him, as for the King and the Queen, it was an exercise in the art of the possible – what today is known as realpolitik. The Anglican (and Catholic) House of Stuart would throw in its lot with the Presbyterian Scots. To the Queen, who had been politicking so hard for so long, it was also a welcome release from wheedling for money and military aid from her French relatives. The Prince left St Germain and headed to Calais, then to Holland, accompanied by many of the military men who had passed their idle months as guests of the French by quarrelling and duelling.
In England, a royalist uprising began in the spring of 1648 but came to very little. Royalists launched small-scale operations around the country but the hoped-for swell of widespread approval did not materialise and Parliamentary forces easily crushed the small bands who took up arms. Thanks to this, any invading Scottish army would be faced with the undivided attention of the New Model Army. But it was the royalists’ only hope.
At The Hague, Charles was warmly welcomed by his sister Mary, who was married to William, Prince of Orange, and by his younger brother James, Duke of York. James had been held captive by Parliament in St James’s Palace, but was sprung in an audacious move by an Irish officer, Colonel Bampfield, who disguised him as a washerwoman and spirited him to Holland. Seeing how often royalty and the aristocracy dressed as women in the seventeenth century, one could be forgiven for thinking it was not the theatre but the cavaliers who gave rise to the pantomime dame.
Then came an unexpected stroke of good fortune. A great portion of the Parliamentary fleet mutinied and sailed to the Netherlands, arriving at the port of Helvoetsluys, south of The Hague. The possession of a fleet filled the young Prince with fresh hope. He seized the moment and set sail to rally support in the towns along England’s eastern seaboard. There was even a plan to use the fleet to rescue his father from the Isle of Wight. Of all the options open to Charles, this was possibly the best, but he chose not to take it. Instead, he attempted to establish a bridgehead at Yarmouth, where the locals declined to join him and opted only to provide him with supplies. The fleet then took to the sea with the intention of harrying Parliamentary shipping and supply routes. In the event, the fleet accomplished little and a small royalist uprising on land fizzled out or was soon extinguished by superior Parliamentary forces. Better news came in August with word that a Scottish army led by the Duke of Hamilton was heading into England. As the moment surely arrived for the Prince to reclaim his position as heir to the battered English crown, he met a girl and became infatuated.
Lucy Walter was the daughter of a Welsh nobleman and was about the same age as the Prince, possibly born in the same year, 1630.8 In the summer of 1648 they became lovers in The Hague. Lucy was one of at least seventeen lovers taken by Charles during his exile. Among the others was Lady Eleanor Byron, wife of the first Lord Byron and ancestor of the famous poet.9 Lucy, however, meant much more than any of the others, no matter how exalted, rich or beautiful. Much has been written about Lucy and her character, most of it bad. Whatever her true nature, she became a fixture in the young Prince’s life for at least two years, and was to continue to have significance for many years after.
Lucy’s parents were William Walter and his wife Elizabeth, the daughter of John Prothero and the niece of the 1st Earl of Carbery. The Walters, who were royalists, lived at Roche Castle near Haverfordwest in Pembrokeshire. In 1644 Parliamentary forces destroyed their home. Some time before this, Lucy’s father and mother had separated and Lucy moved between the two parents, staying at various times in Wales, the West Country and London. It has been suggested that Lucy accompanied her father to The Hague when he travelled to join forces with the Prince’s court-in-exile.
Eighteen-year-old Lucy was, according to all who met her, physically and in character everything Anne-Marie, La Grande Mademoiselle, was not. She had beautiful dark looks and was full of fun. According to one version of her story, once she reached The Hague she became the mistress of a number of rich men. This account originated from James, Duke of York, who claimed that Algernon Sidney, the acclaimed Parliamentarian cavalry officer and political theorist, paid fifty gold pieces for Lucy to become his mistress. Apparently Sidney had to join his regiment in a hurry and so was unable to seal his bargain, which was taken up by his elder brother Robert, another cavalier officer and later Earl of Leicester.
This all makes for a good story of bad behaviour, but its factual basis is slight.10 It was out of character for Sidney, who was studious and not at all of a wild disposition. The sum of fifty guineas, moreover, was well outside his spending power, for although he was the son of an earl, his father believed in keeping his sons on a tight financial rein.11 There remains the possibility that Lucy arrived on the Continent due to her aunt, with whom she lived for a time in London and who was married to a Dutch merchant. And if there was any connection with the Sidney family, it was Robert whom she met up with and who fathered her child.12
A much more credible account of how she met up with the Prince is that she travelled to France in the entourage of her relative John Barlow in 1648, when he joined the growing military force collecting around the exiled Stuart court at St Germain.13 This theory is supported by the fact that rather than go by her maiden name, Walter, she adopted that of her relative and was widely known as Mrs Barlow, possibly to make her less vulnerable while travelling alone.*
Everyone who met Lucy agreed on one thing: she was beautiful. Charles’s brother James, writing later with the intent of defaming Lucy, admitted she was lovely, with little wit but a great deal of the cunning ‘her profession usually have’, his words indicating that he regarded her as a whore.14 John Evelyn described her as ‘a brown, beautiful, bold but insipid creature’ (insipid here meaning she had no education).15 Clarendon said she was ‘of no good fame, but handsome’.16 In a portrait attributed to Peter Lely, Lucy stares at the viewer through almond-shaped brown eyes, with a half smile on her red lips, the lower of which is especially full. Her dark hair is fashionably piled up in ringlets and curls.17 In an unusual head and shoulders portrait now in the Pembrokeshire County Council collection, also attributed to Lely, she is even better looking. Lucy was a young beauty who could capture any prince. Delirious days of lovemaking followed. The young Prince’s enjoyment was enhanced by having at his command a fleet and a plan to restore his father to the throne. Then everything fell apart; through superior tactics and strength, Cromwell crushed Hamilton’s army.
What followed was worse. The King was taken to London and put on trial for treason against his people. On 30 January 1649, he was beheaded outside his grandfather’s stately Banqueting House in Whitehall. Whether or not the affair between the Prince and his young lover continued throughout this time is unknown. A few days after the execution of the King, a messenger arrived at the royal palace at The Hague with the news. The Prince learned from his father’s former chaplain that his father was dead and he was now king. He fled from the room in tears. Was Lucy there to comfort him? We don’t know.
On 5 February 1649, Charles was declared King in Edinburgh. Nine weeks later, on 9 April, Lucy gave birth to a baby boy at Rotterdam. Charles immediately declared the child his own and he was christened James Scott, in recognition of Charles’s grandfather and his Scottish ancestry. He was now in the odd position of having a son but, since the child was illegitimate, no heir – and no throne. His life was out of kilter. Lucy Walter and the new King of England faced their joint exile with a young child. Charles would later confer the title of Duke of Monmouth upon his son, whom he would continue to love dearly despite the trouble the boy would create throughout his eventful life.
Charles had to work out what his next political move might be. Scottish emissaries arrived to offer their support. In Scotland, the outrage caused by an English Parliament executing the King of the Scots without doing his subjects the courtesy of enquiring what they thought of the matter, led to the agreement that Charles was now their king. But this brought the old problem of religion: how far would Charles go in supporting the Scottish Covenanters’ goal of cementing Presbyterianism as the religion of Scotland and of England?18 In the event, during discussions at The Hague, it proved that the answer was, not far enough. The two parties did not even agree to differ; Covenanters of every ilk stoutly expected everyone – even their king – simply to agree with them. Charles proved to be a chip off the old block and dissembled as well as his father ever did. He possibly had little option, though his lack of sincerity did not go unnoticed. But relations were not completely broken off. Among Charles’s circle, it was recognised that it was important not to forget Ireland. To rally the royalist forces under the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland the Duke of Ormond, Charles himself should sail for Ireland.
While preparations were made, Charles returned to Paris, bringing his child and Lucy. In Parisian courtly circles, Lucy became known as Charles’s wife, giving rise to persistent rumours that the couple had secretly married in Holland. The fact that Lucy still used the name Mrs Barlow somehow helped stoke the rumours, and they would haunt Charles throughout his life. In later years the rumours were fanned when the legend of the black box was created. According to a host of third-hand accounts, Lucy is supposed to have secreted a copy of the marriage certificate and other documents in such a box. Like the Philosopher’s Stone, it was to remain an unsolved mystery. No true witnesses, nor any other concrete evidence of the wedding, were ever produced.
In Paris, Charles renewed his acquaintance with La Grande Mademoiselle, for his mother was again promoting the match. Charles did little to support it but he did make one telling statement, which bore significance regarding his relationship with Lucy Walter. Without direct reference to Lucy, he said that whatever relationship he had as a bachelor would stop once he was married.19 This was a clear intimation that Charles did not consider himself married to Lucy, whatever current or later gossip suggested.
