| |
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| Lucent genialibus altis
Aurea fulcra toris, epulaeque ante ora paratae
Regifico luxu.--Virg. Aen. vi.
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| Many are the tales and anecdotes to which the life and death of King Charles gave rise, but among them, perhaps, few are more singular than the subjoined prophecy,
referred to by Howell in a letter to Sir Edward Spencer, dated - :-- Surely the witch of Endor is no fable; the burning Joan of Arc at Rouen, and the Marchioness d'Ancre, of late years, in Paris, are no fables: the execution of Nostradamus for a kind of witch, some fourscore years since, who, among other things, foretold that the
Senate of London will kill their King.
|
| Mr. Timbs, in his Romance of London,
relates a strange story of the ill-fated bust of Charles I. carved by Bernini, on the authority of a pamphlet on the character of Charles I., by Zachary Grey, LL.D.:-- Vandyke having drawn the king in three different faces--a profile, three -quarters, and a full face--the picture was sent to Rome for Bernini to make a bust from it. He was unaccountably dilatory in the work; and upon this being complained of, he said that he had set about it several times, but there was something so unfortunate in the features of the face that he was shocked every time he examined it, and forced to leave off the work; and if there was any stress to be laid on physiognomy, he was sure the person whom the picture represented was destined to a violent end. The bust was at last finished, and sent to England. As soon as the ship that brought it arrived in the river, the king, who was very impatient to see the bust, ordered it to be carried immediately to Chelsea . It was conveyed thither, and placed upon a table in the garden, whither the king went with a train of nobility to inspect the bust. As they were viewing it, a hawk flew over their heads with a partridge in its claws which he had wounded to death. Some of the partridge's blood fell upon the neck of the bust, where it remained without being wiped off. This bust was placed over the door of the king's closet at Whitehall , and continued there until the palace was destroyed by fire.
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| It is generally stated that Charles I. showed himself a most liberal patron of the arts. That this |
p.352 | may have been true to some extent, cannot be doubted; but it may be desirable here to record the fact that in the State Paper Office there is, or was some years ago, a long bill sent in by [extra_illustrations.3.352.1] , for work done, and docketed by the king's own hand. The picture of his Majesty dressed for the chase, for which Vandyke charged , is assessed by the King at instead, and in many other instances there is even a greater reduction made. Other pictures the King marked with a cross, which is explained by a note at the back by Endymion Porter, to the effect that as they were to be paid for by the Queen, his Majesty had left them for his wife to reduce at her own pleasure.
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| It may be added that, in spite of having done so much work for royalty, Vandyke died poor, and that his daughter was allowed a small pensionwhich, by the way, was most irregularly paid-on account of sums owing to her father's estate by Charles I. We are accustomed to rank Charles II. with bad paymasters, but it is to be feared that his father obtained his reputation as an art patron at much too cheap a rate.
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| It is also stated that King Charles I. possessed numerous portraits, drawn by Holbein, of several personages of the Court of Henry VIII., from the highest down to Mrs. Jack or Jackson, the nurse of King Edward VI. These drawings, it is said, the King exchanged for a single picture; but how they came back into the possession of the Crown is not clear. Mr. J. T. Smith, in his Book for a Rainy Day,
says that they were discovered at Kensington Palace, and taken from their frames and bound in volumes. It would be interesting to know whether they are still in existence.
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| A vignette of the Bible used by King Charles I. upon the scaffold, and presented by him to Dr. Juxon, the Bishop of London, who attended him in his last moments, will be found in Smith's Historical and Literary Curiosities.
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| The shirt, stained on the wrist with some drops of blood, in which Charles I. was beheaded, also his watch, which he gave at the place of execution to Mr. John Ashburnham, his white silk drawers, and the sheet that was thrown over his body, were long preserved in the vestry of Ashburnham Church, in Sussex, having been, as the Beauties of England and Wales
informs us, bequeathed, in 1743 , by Bertram Ashburnham, Esq., to the clerk of the parish and his successors for ever, to be exhibited as curiosities.
These relics of the martyr king,
we may add, have somehow found their way back into the hands of the Ashburnham family, and are now very carefully preserved at Ashburnham Place, the seat of the earls of that name. This mansionwas built, by John Ashburnham, who was page of the bed-chamber
to both Charles I. and Charles II., and who died in . He attended his sovereign to the last, till he fell on the scaffold, and thus obtained possession of the articles worn by the king on that mournful occasion. Horsfield tells us that the superstitious of the last, and even of the present age, have occasionally resorted to these relics for the cure of the king's evil.
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| With reference to the supposed efficacy of the touch of royalty in curing diseases, we may state that, under the Stuarts, there might be seen in the gazettes occasional advertisements announcing when and where a gracious king would next cure his subjects of scrofula by a touch of his royal finger. As may readily be supposed, the Palace at was the place most frequently chosen for the touching
or the healing.
Here is of the notices issued by command of Charles I.:-- Whitehall , May 16, 1644 .--His Sacred Majesty having declared it to be his Royal will and purpose to continue the healing of his people for the Evil during the month of May, and then to give over till Michaelmas next, I am commanded to give notice thereof, that the people may not come up to town in the interim, and lose their labour.
|
| Charles II. is said to have touched
people for the king's evil--about a day for his whole reign. The practice was continued by James II., for Evelyn, in his Diary,
under date of , writes, I saw his Majesty touch for the evil.
The word touching
gives us a most inadequate idea of the deliberate solemnity of this ceremonial in the days of the Stuarts. Imagine the king seated in a chair of state upon his throne, under a rich, canopy, in a spacious hall of the palace. Each surgeon led his patients in turn to the foot of the throne, where they knelt, and while a chaplain in full canonicals intoned the words, He put His hands upon them and healed them,
the king stroked their faces with both hands at once. When all had been thus touched,
they came up to the throne again in the same order, and the king hung about the neck of each, by a blue ribbon, a golden coin, while the chaplain chanted, This is the true Light who came into the world.
And the whole concluded with the reading of the epistle for the day and prayers for the sick.
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| The following description of the process of touching
for the king's evil we take from Oudert's MS. Diary:-- A young gentlewoman, Elizabeth Stephens, of the age of sixteen , came to the Presence Chamber in 1640 , to be touched for the Evil, with which she was so afflicted that, by her own and her mother's testimony, she had not seen with her left eye for above a month. After prayers read by Dr. Sanderson, she knelt down to be touched, with the rest, by the King. His Majesty then touched her in the usual manner, and put a ribbon with a piece of money hanging to it about her neck. Which done, his Majesty turned to the Duke of Richmond, the Earl of Southampton, and the Earl of Lindsey, to discourse with them. And the young gentlewoman said of her own accord, openly, Now, God be praised, I can see of this sore eye, and afterwards declared that she did see more and more by it, and could by degrees endure the light of the candle.
The Bourbon kings of France were supposed to possess a like power of healing, in virtue of their descent from St. Louis. On the day after their coronation at Rheims they went in procession to the Abbey of St. Remy, in that city, in the garden of which convent they touched all those afflicted with the evil that were brought to them, making the sign of the cross with their fingers on the forehead of the sick person, saying, Le Roi vous touche; Dieu vous guerison.
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| The form of prayer for the healing, we may add, is still to be seen in old Prayer-books, bound up with the rest of the occasional services. It was not dropped out till the reign of George I.
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| A capital story is told about Archy,
the king's fool, and Archbishop Laud, in connection with the Court of . It is thus told in The Book of Table Talk,
published by Charles Knight:-- When news arrived from Scotland of the bad reception which the king's proclamation respecting the Book of Common Prayer had met with there, Archibald, the king's fool, happening to meet the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was going to the council-table, said to his grace, Wha's feule now? doth not your grace hear the news from Striveling about the Liturgy? But the poor jester soon learned that Laud was not a person whom even his jester's coat and privileged folly permitted him to tamper with. The primate immediately laid his complaint before the Council. How far it was attended to, the following order of Council, issued the very day on which the offence was committed, will show:-- At Whitehall , the 11th of March, 1637 . It is this day ordered by his Majesty, with the advice of the Board, that Archibald Armstrong, the King's Fool, for certain scandalous words of a high nature spoken by him against the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury his Grace, and proved to be uttered by him by two witnesses, shall have his coat pulled over his head and be discharged of the King's service and banished the Court; for which the Lord Chamberlain of the King's household is prayed and required to give order to be executed. And immediately the same was put into execution.
Thus was poor Archy degraded and dismissed from his Majesty's service. What was this,
asks Leigh Hunt, but to say that the fool was fool no longer? Write me down an ass, says Dogberry, in the comedy. Write down that Archy is no fool, says King Charles in Council. He has called the Archbishop one ; and therefore we are all agreed, his Grace included, that the man has proved himself to be no longer entitled to the appellation.
Archy, it appears, had on a previous occasion, when called upon to say grace before meat, incurred the displeasure of Archbishop Laud, by saying, Great laud to the king, and little Laud to the devil.
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| In a pamphlet printed in , entitled Archy's Dream: sometime Jester to His Majestie, but exiled the Court by Canterburie's malice, with a relation for whom an odde chair stood void in hell,
the following reason is given for Archy's banishment from Court:--A certain nobleman asking him what he would do with his handsome daughters, he replied that he knew very well what to do with
, but he had sons whom he knew not what to do with; he would gladly make scholars of them, but that he feared the archbishop would cut off their ears.
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| In the Strafford Letters
will be found, as Mr. Jesse reminds us in his work on- London,
several interesting notices of Archbishop Laud passing between his palace at and the royal palace at . For example, in of his letters to the earl, alluding to his health as not so good as it was formerly, he expresses a regret that in consequence of his elevation to the see of Canterbury he has now simply to glide across the river in his barge, when on his way either to the Court or the Star Chamber; whereas, when Bishop of London, there were five miles of rough road between Fulham Palace and Whitehall , the jolting over which in his coach he describes as having been very beneficial to his health.
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| On his restoration, , King Charles II. was brought back hither in military fashion
through London, by way of the Strand, all the streetes and windows even to Whitehall being replenished with innumerable people of all conditions.
It must have been indeed a gay sight to have seen the king returning to the palace of his ancestors, and the demonstrations of joy on the occasion are described as having been extravagant in the extreme. Space will not permit us to enter into the details of the enthusiastic reception on the part of the Londoners, or of the hours' ride through the stress to ; all |
p.354 | this will be found described with picturesque minuteness in the pages of Sir Edward Walker's Manner of the Most Happy Return in England of our most gracious Sovereign Lord, King Charles the Second ,
and also at page of Whitelock's Memorials.
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| On the , the King and Queen came by water from , and landed at Whitehall Bridge,
as the [extra_illustrations.3.354.1] were often called. On this occasion Pepys draws our attention to the presence of the celebrated Lady Castlemaine, and also of her husband. But that which pleased me most was that my Lady Castlemaine stood over against us on a piece of Whitehall . But methought it was strange to see her lord and her upon the same place, walking up and down and taking no
The Holbein Gateway, Whitehall. (From A Drawing By G. Vertue.)
notice of each other; only at first entry he put off his hat, and she made him a very civil salute; but afterwards they took no notice one of another; but both of them now and then would take their child, which the nurse held in her arms, and dandle it.
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| Pepys tells us distinctly that the removal of Lord Clarendon from place and power was certainly designed in my Lady Castlemaine's chamber,
and he adds that he saw several of the gallants of Whitehall
staying to see the Lord Chancellor pass by, and talking to her in her birdcage.
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| The loose life led by the Court of Charles II. at Whitehall-or, indeed, wherever it may have been quartered--is a matter of historic notoriety. A good insight into these royal escapades is given by |
p.355 p.356 | quaint old Pepys, who, writing in his Diary
under date , says: I did hear that the Queene is much grieved of late at the King's neglecting her, he not having supped with her once this quarter of a year, and almost every night with Lady Castlemaine, who hath been with him this St. George's Feast at Windsor.
It is said by several retailers of Court gossip that the king spent in Lady Castlemaine's apartments the whole of the week previous to the arrival of his wife, Catherine of Braganza.
note resp="ECB" id="extra_illustrations.3.356.1" |
| Here, probably, and not, as usually supposed, at the house of Sir Samuel Morland, at , Charles II. spent his hours in dalliance with Barbara Palmer, afterwards Countess of Castlemaine and Duchess of Cleveland, of whom we shall have more to say anon, when we reach the neighbourhood of . Her apartments, or lodgings, according to the privatelyprinted Memoir
of the lady by Mr. G. S. Steinman, were on that part of which bordered on the Holbein Gateway, on the south side of a detached pile of buildings leading to the Cock-pit, not far from the top of .
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| Pepys, in his Diary,
notes the fact that on more than Sunday he observed how the Duke and Mrs. Palmer
(the subsequent Duchess) did talk to one another very wantonly
in the chapel, during service-time, through the hangings that part the king's closet and the closet where the ladies sit.
Her presence here was indeed a standing insult to Charles's poor queen, Catharine of Braganza, to whom her ladyship must have caused many a heartfelt pang as a wife.
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| But if such was the case with Lady Castlemaine, it would seem, however, that the maids of honour and the other ladies of the Court of were left very much to their own devices under the Stuart , and were not subject to any very strict control. What mad freaks the mayds of honour at the Court do have!
writes Pepys in his Diary.
That Mrs. Jennings, one of the Duchess's maids, the other day dressed herself up like an orange-wench, and went up and down and cried oranges, till, falling down by some accident, her fine shoes were discovered, and she put to a great dealt of shame: to that such as these tricks and worse among them, thereby few will venture upon them for wives.
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| To the lax and immoral Court the Queen seems to have shown herself a marked exception. To Whitehall ,
writes Pepys in his Diary
in , where Mr. Pearce showed me the Queene's bed-chamber and her closet, where she had nothing but some pretty pious pictures, and books of devotion; and her holy water at her head as she sleeps; with a clock at her bedside, wherein burns a lamp that tells her the hour of the night at any time.
Poor lonely Catherine of Braganza! it was probably at a very late hour of the night, or rather a very early hour of the morning, that the hands of her clock pointed to when Charles entered that room, after supping with Lady Castlemaine
and other rivals of the Queen in his royal affections. No wonder that Charles did not find it compatible with his gallantries that his wife should be living at , and, therefore, that he should have quietly disposed of her in lodgings at , as we have seen in a previous chapter.
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| King Charles II., and his religious instructors, too, have been the theme of numerous of these has reference to Dr. South, who once, preaching before the king and his profligate Court at , perceived in the middle of his sermon that sleep had taken possession of all his hearers. The doctor stopped, and changing his tone of voice, called times to Lord Lauderdale, who, starting up, My lord,
said South, with great composure, I am sorry to interrupt your repose, but I must beg you will not snore so loud, lest you awaken his Majesty.
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| In the year the Russian, Moroccan, and East Indian ambassadors all happened to be in London at the same time, and Evelyn, in his Diary,
gives us an amusing account of an evening which he spent in the company of those from Africa at the rooms of the Duchess of Portsmouth, in .
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| It was at , as Pepys tells us in his Diary,
that he found his friend Mr. Coventry chatting over a map of America with Sir William Penn.
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| In , as he tells us in his Diary,
John Evelyn came to lodge at Whitehall , in the Lord Privy Seal's lodgings.
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| Here James Walters, Duke of Monmouth, the natural son of Charles II., was allowed to assume the airs, and indeed all but the name, of royalty, and would stand with his hat on his head, as Macaulay remarks, when the Howards and the Seymours stood uncovered.
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| It was at the Court atWhitehall that Sidney, Lord Godolphin, the veteran statesman and courtier, was brought up as a page.
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| Having been the residence of so many of our English sovereigns in succession, the walls of have witnessed many curious and interesting scenes, some also over which perhaps it would be well if a veil could be drawn. Foremost among such scenes may be reckoned the death of |
p.357 | Charles II., the details of which, gathered from Evelyn, and Burnet, and some other sources, have been worked up by Macaulay into a most effective picture, which has also employed the pencil of at least modern painter of eminence.
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| The palace,
writes Macaulay, |
| had seldom presented a gayer or more scandalous appearance than on the evening of Sunday, the 1st of February, 1685. Some grave persons, who had gone thither, after the fashion of that age, to pay their duty to their sovereign, and who had expected that on such a day his Court would wear a decent aspect, were struck with astonishment and horror. The great gallery of Whitehall, an admirable relic of the magnificence of the Tudors, was crowded with revellers and gamblers. The king sat there chatting and toying with three women, whose charms were the boast and whose vices were the disgrace of three nations. Barbara Palmer, Duchess of Cleveland, was there, no longer young, but still retaining some traces of that superb and voluptuous loveliness which twenty years before overcame the hearts of all men. There, too, was the Duchess of Portsmouth, whose soft and infantine features were lighted up with the vivacity of France. Hortensia Mancini, Duchess of Mazarin, and niece of the great Cardinal, completed the group.
While Charles flirted with his three sultanas, Hortensia's French page, a handsome boy, whose vocal performances were the delight of Whitehall, and were rewarded by numerous presents of rich clothes, ponies, and guineas, warbled some amatory verses. A party of twenty courtiers were seated at cards round a large table, on which gold was heaped in mountains. In the midst of this scene the king complained that he felt unwell; he was carried off to his chamber in a swoon, but recovered a little on being bled, or blooded, as the phrase then went. He was laid on his bed, where, during a short time, the Duchess of Portsmouth hung over him with the familiarity of a wife. But the alarm had been given. The Queen and the Duchess of York were hastening to the room. The favourite concubine was forced to retire to her own apartments. Those apartments had been thrice pulled down and thrice rebuilt by her lover, to gratify her caprice. The very furniture of the chimney was massy silver. Several fine paintings, which properly belonged to the Queen, had been transferred to the dwelling of the mistress. The sideboards were piled with richly-wrought plate. In the niches stood cabinets, the masterpieces of Japanese art. On the hangings, fresh from the looms of Paris, were depicted, in tints which no English tapestry could rival, birds of gorgeous plumage, landscapes, hunting-matches, the lordly terrace of Saint Germains, the statues and fountains of Versailles. In the midst of this splendour, purchased by guilt and shame, the unhappy woman gave herself up to an agony of grief which, to do her justice, was not wholly selfish.
And now the gates of Whitehall, which ordinarily stood open to all comers, were closed; but persons whose faces were known were still permitted to enter. The ante-chambers and galleries were soon filled to overflowing, and even the sick room was crowded with peers, privy councillors, and foreign ministers; all the medical men of note in London were summoned. The Queen was for a time assiduous in her attendance. The Duke of York scarcely left his brother's bedside. The primate and four other bishops were then in London; they remained in London all day, and took it by turns to sit up at night in the king's room.
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| The services of the bishops, however, were not required. Macaulay remarks of the Duchess of Portsmouth that a life of frivolity and vice had not extinguished in her all sentiments of religion, or all that kindness which is the glory of her sex.
It was by her suggestion that a Roman Catholic priest, Father Huddleston, the same who had aided Charles in his escape after the battle of Worcester, was sent for, to offer the consolations of religion. The courtiers were all ordered to withdraw, except Duras, Lord Feversham, and Granville, Earl of Bath, both of whom were Protestants, and faithful friends. The rest shall be told in Macaulay's words:-- |
| Even the physicians withdrew. The back door was then opened, and Father Huddleston entered. A cloak had been thrown over his sacred vestments, and his shaven crown was concealed by a flowing wig. Sir, said the Duke [of York], this good man once saved your life. He now comes to save your soul. Charles faintly answered, He is welcome. Huddleston went through his part better than had been expected. He knelt by the bed, listened to the confession, pronounced the absolution, and administered extreme unction. He asked if the king wished to receive the Lord's Supper. Surely, said Charles, if I am not unworthy. The host was brought in. Charles feebly strove to rise and kneel before it. The priest bade him lie still, and assured him that God would accept the humiliation of his soul, and would not require the humiliation of his body. The king found so much difficulty in swallowing that it was necessary to open the door and procure a glass of water. This rite ended, the monk held up a crucifix before the penitent, charged him to fix his last thoughts on the sufferings of the Redeemer, and withdrew. The whole ceremony had occupied about three quarters of an hour, and during that time the courtiers who filled the outer room had communicated their suspicions to each other by whispers and significant glances. The door was at length thrown open, and the crowd again filled the chamber of death.
It was now late in the evening. The king seemed much relieved by what had passed. His natural children were brought to his bedside, the Dukes of Grafton, Southampton, and Northumberland, sons of the Duchess of Cleveland; the Duke of St. Albans, son of Eleanor Gwynn; and the Duke of Richmond, son of the Duchess of Portsmouth. Charles blessed them all, but spoke with peculiar tenderness to Richmond. One face which should have been there was wanting. The eldest and beloved child was an exile and a wanderer; his name was not once mentioned by his father.
During the night Charles earnestly recommended the Duchess of Portsmouth and her boy to the care of James. And do not, he goodnaturedly added, let poor Nelly starve. The Queen sent excuses for her absence by Halifax. She said that she was too much disordered to resume her post by the couch, and implored pardon for any offence she might unwittingly have given. She ask my pardon, poor woman! cried Charles; I ask hers, with all my heart.
The morning light began to peep through the windows of Whitehall, and Charles desired the attendants to pull aside the curtains, that he might have one more look at the day. He remarked that it was time to wind up a clock which stood near his bed. These little circumstances were long remembered, because they proved beyond dispute that while he declared himself a Roman Catholic he was in full possession of his faculties. He apologised to those who had stood round him all night for the trouble which he had caused. He had been, he said, a most unconscionable time dying, but he hoped they would excuse it. This was the last glimpse of that exquisite urbanity so often found potent to charm away the resentment of a justly incensed nation. Soon after dawn the speech of the dying man failed. Before ten his senses were gone. Great numbers had repaired to the churches at the hour of morning service. When the prayer for the king was read, loud groans and sobs showed how deeply his people felt for him. At noon on Friday, the 6th of February, he passed away without a struggle.
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| Since the time of Oedipus no royal line has equalled that of the Stuarts in its calamities. The James of Scotland, adorned with the graces of poetry and chivalry, a wise legislator, a sagacious and resolute king, perished in his year. His son, the James, was killed, in his thirtieth year, at the siege of Roxburgh Castle, by the bursting of a cannon. The James, after the battle of Sauchieburn, in which his rebellious subjects were countenanced and aided by his own son, was stabbed, in his year, beneath a humble roof, by a pretended priest. That son, the chivalrous madman of Flodden, compassed his own death and that of the flower of his kingdom, while only years of age, by a foolish knight-errantry. At an age years younger, his only son, James V., died of a broken heart. Over the suffering and follies--if we may not say crimes-and over the mournful and unwarrantable doom of the beauteous Mary, the world will never cease to debate. Her grandson expiated at , by a bloody death, the errors chiefly induced by his self--will and his pernicious education. The Charles, the Merry Monarch,
had a fate as sad as any of his ancestors; for though he died in his bed, his life was that of a heartless voluptuary, who had found in his years of seeming prosperity neither truth in man nor fidelity in woman. His brother, the bigot James, lost kingdoms, and disinherited the dynasty, for his blind adherence to a faith that failed to regulate his life. The Old Pretender was a cipher, and the Young Pretender, after a youthful flash of promise, passed a useless life, and ended it as a drunken dotard. The last of the race, Henry, Cardinal York, died in , a spiritless old man, and a pensioner of that House of Hanover against which his father and brother had waged war with no advantage to themselves, and with the forfeiture of life and lands, of liberty and country, to many of the noblest and most chivalrous inhabitants of our island.
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| Happy had it been for Charles II. if he had demeaned himself as well in his prosperous as in his adverse fortune. The recorded facts are highly honourable to him and the companions of his exile; while Cromwell, as the Queen of Bohemia said, was like the beast in the Revelations, that all kings and nations worshipped. Charles's horses, and some of them were favourites, were sold at Brussels, because he could not pay for their keep; and during the years that he resided at Cologne he never kept a coach. So straitened were the exiles for money that even the postage of letters between Sir Richard Browne and Hyde was no easy burthen; and there was a mutiny in the ambassador's kitchen, because the maid might not be trusted with the government, and the buying the meat, in which she was thought too lavish.
Hyde writes that he had not been master of a crown for many months; that he was cold for want of clothes and fire; and for all the meat which he had eaten for months he was in debt to a poor woman who was no longer able to trust. Our necessities,
he says, would be more insupportable, if we did not see the king reduced to greater distress than you can believe or imagine.
Of Charles, in prosperity, a few days before his death, Evelyn draws a fearful picture. Writing on the day when James was proclaimed, he says, I can never forget the inexpressible luxury and profaneness, gaming, and all dissoluteness and, as it were, total forgetfulness of God (it being Sunday evening), which this day se'nnight I was witness of; the King sitting and toying with his concubines, Portsmouth, Cleaveland, and Mazarine, &c.; a French boy singing lovesongs in that glorious gallery; whilst about twenty of the great courtiers and other dissolute persons were at basset round a large table, a bank of at least £ 2,000 in gold before them, upon which two gentlemen who were with me made reflections with astonishment. Six days after, all was in the dust!
|
| , when Charles II. dwelt there, was the focus of political intrigue as well as of gaiety. Half the jobbing and half the flirting of the metropolis,
writes Macaulay, |
| went on under his roof. Whoever could make himself agreeable to the prince, or could secure the good offices of the mistress, might hope to rise in the world without rendering any service to the Government, without being even known by sight to any minister of state. This courtier got a frigate, and that a company; a third, the pardon of a rich offender; a fourth, a lease of Crown land on easy terms. If the king notified his pleasure that a briefless lawyer should be made a judge, or that a libertine baronet should be made a peer, the gravest counsellors, after a little murmuring, submitted. Interest, therefore, drew a constant press of suitors to the gates of the palace, and those gates always stood wide. The king kept open house every day, and all day long, for the good society of London, the extreme Whigs only excepted. Hardly any gentleman had any difficulty in making his way to the royal presence. The levee was exactly what the word imports. Some men of quality came every morning to stand round their master, to chat with him while his wig was combed and his cravat tied, and to accompany him in his early walk through the Park. All persons who had been properly introduced might, without any special invitation, go to see him dine, sup, dance, and play at hazard, and might have the pleasure of hearing him tell stories, which indeed he told remarkably well, about his flight from Worcester, and about the misery which he had endured when he was a State prisoner in the hands of the canting meddling preachers of Scotland. Bystanders whom his Majesty recognised often came in for a courteous word. This proved a far more successful kingcraft than any that his father or grandfather had practised. It was not easy for the most austere republican of the school of Marvell to resist the fascination of so much good humour and affability; and many a veteran Cavalier in whose heart the remembrance of unrequited sacrifices and services had been festering during twenty years, was compensated in one moment for wounds and sequestrations by his sovereign's kind nod, and God bless you, my old friend!
Whitehall naturally became the chief staple of news. Whenever there was a rumour that anything important had happened or was about to happen, peple hastened thither to obtain intelligence from the fountain-head. The galleries presented the appearance of a modern club-room at an anxious time. They were full of people inquiring whether the Dutch mail was in; what tidings the express from France had brought; whether John Sobiesky had beaten the Turks; whether the Doge of Genoa was really at Paris. These were matters about which it was safe to talk aloud. But there were subjects concerning which information was asked and given in whispers. Had Halifax got the better of Rochester? Was there to be a Parliament? Was the Duke of York really going to Scotland? Had Monmouth really been summoned from the Hague? Men tried to read the countenance of every minister as he went through the throng to and from there royal closet. All sorts of auguries were drawn from the tone in which his Majesty spoke to the Lord President, or from the laugh with which his Majesty honoured a jest of the Lord Privy Seal; and in a few hours the hopes and fears inspired by such slight indications had spread to all the coffee-houses from St. James's to the Tower .
|
| Notwithstanding the thirst for news and love of Court gossip, the Stuart kings appear to have lived here very much in public; so much so, indeed, that, it we may trust Macaulay, the newswriters
of the reign of Charles II. would occasionally obtain admission into the gallery at Palace, in order to tell their country friends how the king and duke looked, and what games the courtiers played at.
|
| The sources from which Macaulay drew his |
p.360 | information about the state of the Court are too numerous to recapitulate. Among them are the Despatches of Barillon, Van Citters, Ronquillo, and Adda; the Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo; the Works of Roger North, the Diaries of Pepys and Evelyn, and the Memoirs of Grammont.
|
| The royal family of Stuart would seem to have been as unfortunate in their domestic servants as in their fate; for Northouck tells us that twice within a few years, in the reign of William and Mary, the Palace of suffered serious damage by fire; firstly in , when a large part of it was destroyed through the negligence of a maid-servant, who, about eight o'clock at night,
says the very circumstantial Northouck, to save
The King Street Gateway, Whitehall.
the labour of cutting a candle from a pound, burnt it off, and threw the rest carelessly by before the flame was out. It burnt violently till four next morning, and destroyed the Duchess of Portsmouth's lodgings, with all the stone gallery and buildings behind and down to the Thames.
years later, we learn from the same authority, by the carelessness of a laundress,
all the body of the Palace, with the new gallery, council-chamber, and several adjoining apartments, shared the same fate. It was with the greatest difficulty that the Banqueting Hall was saved. The king,
adds Northouck, sent message after message from Kensington, for its preservation;
though it is hard to see how even royal messengers
could |
p.361 | have been of as much use as a few rude fireengines.
|
| Another event connected with , in the reigns of the Stuarts, should be mentioned herenamely, that within its walls the devotion of the Sacred Heart,
devised by Sister Marguerite Mary Alacoqu at Paray-le-Monial, in France, was publicly preached and taught in England, by Father Colombiere, the confessor of the Duchess of York-- Mary of Modena, afterwards queen of James II. |
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Footnotes:
[extra_illustrations.3.352.1] Vandyke [extra_illustrations.3.354.1] Stairs [] 22 Portraits of Court Beauties of Charles II. (Named on Portraits) |
