England under Charles II. from the Restoration to the Treaty of Nimeguen, 1660-1678: English History from Contemporary Writers
Taylor, W. F.
1889
Dissoluteness of the court.
Ibid, p. 455. | |
.-At this time the court fell into much extravagance in masquerading ; both king and queen, and all the court went about masked, and came into houses unknown and danced there with a great deal of wild frolic. In this all people were so disguised that without being on the secret none could distinguish them. They were carried about in hackney chairs. Once the queen's chairmen, not knowing who she was, went from her: so she was alone and | |
88 | was much disturbed, and came to Whitehall in a hackney coach: some say it was in a cart. The duke of Buckingham proposed to the king that he would give him leave to steal her away, and send her to a plantation where she should be well and carefully looked to, but never heard of any more; so it should be given out she had deserted; and upon that it would fall in with some principles to carry an act for a divorce, grounded upon the pretext of a wilful desertion. Sir Robert Murray told me, that the king himself rejected this with horror. He said it was a wicked thing to make a poor lady miserable, only because she was his wife and had no children by him, which was no fault of hers. The hints of this broke out: for the duke of Buckingham could conceal nothing. And upon that the earl of Manchester, then Lord Chamberlain, told the queen, it was neither decent nor safe for her to go about in such a manner as she had done of late: so she gave it over. But at last all these schemes settled in a proposition, into which the king went; which was to deal with the queen's confessor that he might persuade her to leave the world and to turn religious; upon which the parliament would have been easily prevailed on to pass a divorce. It was believed that upon this the duchess of York sent an express to Rome with the notice of her conversion ; and that orders were sent from Rome to all about the queen to persuade her against such a proposition, if any should suggest it to her. She herself had no mind to be a nun, and the duchess was afraid of seeing another queen : and the |
89 | mistress, created at that time duchess of Cleveland, knew that she must be the first sacrifice to a beloved queen ; an she reconciled herself upon this to the duchess of York. |