PUBLIC CHARACTERS.
“So violent did I find parties in London, that I was assured by
several that the Duke of Marlborough was a coward, and Mr. Pope a
fool.”--VOLTAIRE.
In dealing with the public characters at the time of the Restoration,
the two men who were mainly instrumental in bringing that event
about--Monk and Montagu--must needs be given a prominent place.
George Monk, Duke of Albemarle, was a singularly unheroic character.
He was slow and heavy, but had a sufficient supply of good sense, and,
in spite of many faults, he had the rare good fortune to be generally
loved.[275] He was so popular that ballads were continually being made
in his praise. Pepys said there were so many of them that in after
times his fame would sound like that of Guy of Warwick.[276]
Aubrey tells us that Monk learned his trade of soldiering in the
Low Countries, whence he fled after having slain a man. Although he
frequently went to sea in command of the fleet, he always remained a
soldier, and the seamen laughed behind his back when instead of crying
“Tack about,” he would say “Wheel to the right or left.” Pepys tells
a story of him to the same effect: “It was pretty to hear the Duke of
Albemarle himself to wish that they would come on our ground, meaning
the French, for that he would pay them, so as to make them glad to
go back to France again; _which was like a general, but not like an
admiral_.”[277]
Monk was fond of low company; both he and his vulgar wife were quite
unfit for high--I cannot say refined--society, for there was but
little refinement at court. Ann Clarges had been kind to Monk when
he was a prisoner in the Tower, and he married her out of gratitude.
She had been previously married to Thomas Ratford, of whose death no
notice was given at the time of the marriage, so that the legitimacy
of Christopher, afterwards second Duke of Albemarle, was seriously
questioned. Aubrey relates a story which cannot well be true, but which
proves the general feeling of doubt respecting the point. He says that
Thomas Clarges came on shipboard to tell Monk that his sister had had
a child. Monk cried out, “What is it?” and on hearing the answer, “A
boy,” he said, “Why, then, she is my wife.” Pepys was told a tale by
Mr. Cooling which corroborates the opinion expressed on the company
kept by the Duke. “Once the Duke of Albemarle, in his drink, taking
notice as of a wonder that Nan Hide should ever come to be Duchess of
York. ‘Nay,’ says Troutbeck, ‘ne’er wonder at that; for if you will
give me another bottle of wine, I will tell you as great, if not a
greater miracle.’ And what was that, but that our dirty Bess (meaning
his Duchess) should come to be Duchess of Albemarle?”[278]
Sir Edward Montagu, Earl of Sandwich, was in every respect the opposite
of Monk. He was a courtier and a gentleman, but he did not manage to
gain the popularity of his great contemporary, nor to retain such as
he did at one time possess. As Pepys’s great patron his name naturally
occupies a very prominent position in the “Diary,” and as such he has
already been frequently alluded to in these pages. He appears to have
been a very agreeable man, but so easy and careless in business matters
that he was continually in want of money. In 1662 Pepys found that he
was above _£_7,000 in debt, and his enemies soon after gave out that
his debts amounted to _£_100,000. At any rate, his finances were so
often in an unsatisfactory state that Pepys had a special dislike to
lending his money in that quarter. Three years afterwards he had grown
very unpopular, and “it was purposed by some hot-heads in the House
of Commons, at the same time when they voted a present to the Duke of
York, to have voted _£_10,000 to the Prince, and _half-a-crown_ to my
Lord of Sandwich; but nothing came of it.”[279] It was, therefore,
well for him when he obtained an honourable exile by being appointed
ambassador to the court of Spain, as there he was held in high esteem.
His enemies, however, were not satisfied, and they continued to attack
him during his absence. Whatever his faults, and they were probably
many, Lord Sandwich was by far the most able naval commander of his
time, so that the nation had a heavy loss when he was killed in the
naval action against the Dutch at Solebay, in May, 1672.
Prince Rupert, as the cousin of the King, naturally held a prominent
position in the State, but he did not gain much credit from the
undertakings he was thrust into. His fame as a brilliant, though rash,
soldier, was gained during the troubles of his uncle’s reign, and not
from anything he did after the Restoration. He was out of place on
board ship, although he is said to have displayed immense bravery and
much skill in the sea-fight against the Dutch, from August 11th to
13th, 1673. His interest in science and mechanical art appears to have
been real, and to him we owe the invention or introduction into England
of mezzotinto engraving, and the introduction of
... “that glassy bubble
That finds philosophers such trouble,
Whose least part cracked, the whole does fly,
And wits are cracked to find out why.”
The Prince’s courage was so patent to all that his friends were rather
surprised to find that when he was very ill and like to die, “he had
no more mind to it than another man;” so they came to the rather lame
conclusion that “courage is not what men take it to be--a contempt of
death.”[280]
[Illustration: EDWARD HYDE, EARL OF CLARENDON.]
The next great public character was Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, who
for the few years before his fall was the greatest man in the kingdom.
Public opinion has been much divided as to his merits. In spite of
many very evident faults, he certainly exhibited on several occasions
a high-minded spirit. He would not consent to do any business with
the King’s mistresses, and Burnet says that he “kept a register of
all the King’s promises, and of his own, and did all that lay in his
power afterwards to get them performed.” His disposition was rather
ungracious, and he made many enemies, who attacked him with success
when the King was tired of him. Clarendon was very dictatorial with
Charles, and sent him such missives as this, “I pray be at Worcester
House on Sunday as soon as may be.” On one occasion he fixed eight
o’clock in the morning, for Lord Broghill to have an audience with
the King, who did not think the arrangement quite fair, and wrote,
“You give appointments in a morning to others sooner than you take
them yourself, but if my Lord Broghill will come at nine, he shall be
welcome.”
On the institution of the Royal Society, Lord Clarendon was appointed
visitor for life, but after his death the position was to be held
by several high officers, by reason of their offices. Sprat, in his
“History of the Royal Society,” specially thanks the Lord Chancellor,
Attorney-General, and Solicitor-General, for their assistance in the
preparation of the charter; a proof, says Sprat, of the falsehood of
the reproach that law is an enemy to learning and civil arts.
One day in July, 1664, Lord Sandwich told Pepys that Lord Clarendon
was very displeased with him for being forward in the cutting down of
trees in Clarendon Park; so the Diarist sought an interview with the
Lord Chancellor in order that he might soothe the great man, and he was
successful in his endeavour.[281]
Clarendon Park, near Salisbury, was crown-land mortgaged by Charles
I. for _£_20,000, and granted by Charles II. to the Duke of Albemarle
subject to this mortgage, and with the right to the timber reserved
to the Crown. Lord Clarendon bought the place of Albemarle, and his
complaint against the Commissioners of the Navy was, that while they
had all the royal forests at command, they chose to spoil the beauty
of his property. He further affirmed that he had no intention to
contest the King’s right, nor to defraud the Crown of timber; but
complained that at the very time the Commissioners sent down a person
to mark standing timber for felling, there was a large quantity of wood
belonging to the Crown lying on the estate unappropriated, which had
been “felled divers years” before.[282]
Two of Pepys’s patrons--Sir George Downing and Sir William
Coventry--are frequently mentioned in the “Diary;” the first almost
always with some expression of dislike, and the other invariably in
terms of respect. He sometimes describes his whilom master as “a
stingy fellow,”[283] and laughs at his ridiculous pieces of thrift,
“and niggardly manner of entertaining his poor neighbours.”[284]
At another time he calls him “a perfidious rogue” for betraying
former friends;[285] still, he could appreciate Downing’s business
capabilities, and when setting down the fact that the Commissioners of
the Treasury had chosen Sir G. Downing for their secretary, he added,
“I think, in my conscience, they have done a great thing in it, for
he is active and a man of business, and values himself upon having of
things do well under his hand; so that I am mightily pleased in their
choice.”[286] At this time Pepys had forgotten the constant causes
of annoyance which Downing had given him, and he could afford to be
magnanimous in acknowledging his enemy’s good qualities. I have already
remarked that Sir William Coventry stands out prominently as the only
person who is noticed in the “Diary” in terms of unqualified praise.
Other men of the time did not equally admire him, so that it is not
easy to come to a just estimation of his character.
Poor Pepys was placed in an awkward predicament on one occasion when he
was on a visit to Hampton Court, owing to the enmity between Coventry
and Lord Sandwich. He was pleased when the latter asked him to come
privately to his lodgings, but adds, “Lord! to see in what difficulty
I stand, that I dare not walk with Sir W. Coventry for fear my Lord or
Sir G. Carteret should see me; nor with either of them, for fear Sir W.
Coventry should.”[287]
When Clarendon fell, in 1667, it was thought likely that Coventry would
succeed him as virtual prime minister. His quarrel, however, with the
Duke of Buckingham put him out of favour with the King and out of
office; so that, although he survived until 1686, he never again took a
prominent part in political affairs.
Arthur Annesley, afterwards Earl of Anglesey, is called by Pepys “a
grave, serious man,”[288] and “a very notable man,”[289] but he does
not appear to have been a very friendly one. Although he was under
obligations to Sir Edward Montagu’s family, he took the opportunity,
when the thanks of Parliament were voted to Montagu, to quash the
motion which was made to give him a reward.[290] He was made Treasurer
of the Navy in 1667, in succession to Sir George Carteret, and in the
following year when he answered the Duke of York’s letter, he bid the
Duke call for Pepys’s books,[291] in hopes that the Clerk of the Acts
might get a reprimand. A peace seems afterwards to have subsisted
between the two, for in 1672 Lord Anglesey signed himself in a letter
to Pepys, “Your affectionate friend and servant.”
Sir Thomas Osborne, subsequently Viscount Dunblane, Earl of Danby,
Marquis of Carmarthen, and Duke of Leeds, was appointed joint Treasurer
of the Navy, with Sir Thomas Littleton, to succeed Lord Anglesey. This
appointment was greatly disliked by the Duke of York and the officers
of the navy, who looked upon the two men as spies set to watch them.
Pepys calls Osborne a creature of the Duke of Buckingham’s,[292] and
at another time says he is a beggar “having _£_11 or,_£_12,00 a year,
but owes about _£_10,000.”[293] It is clear that the Diarist did not
foresee the great figure Osborne was about to make in the world; a rise
somewhat due to his own parts, and much to the favour of the King. When
Charles made him Lord High Treasurer, he told him that he ought to take
care of himself, for he had but two friends in England. This startled
Osborne, until his majesty explained himself by saying that he (the
King) was one, and the other was the Treasurer’s merits.[294]
Joseph Williamson, who rose from a college tutorship to the office
of Secretary of State, has a few words of praise given to him in the
“Diary.” He was the son of a clergyman, and in early life is said to
have acted as secretary to a member of parliament. He graduated at
Oxford as a member of Queen’s College, and in December, 1661, was
appointed Keeper of the State Paper Office. About the same time he
was Latin Secretary to the King, an office the reversion of which
had been promised to John Evelyn. In 1666 Williamson undertook the
superintendence of the “London Gazette,” and in 1672 obtained the
post of Clerk to the Privy Council, on the resignation of Sir Richard
Browne, when he was knighted. The King had many years before promised
to give the place to Evelyn, but in consideration of the renewal of the
lease of Sayes Court, the latter parted with it to Williamson. Honours
now came thick upon the new-made knight. He was Plenipotentiary at the
Congress of Cologne in 1673 and 1674, and on his return to England
was made Principal Secretary of State, a position which he held for
four years. He was President of the Royal Society in 1678, and married
Catherine Stuart, daughter of George, Lord Aubigny, and widow of Henry
O’Brien, Lord Ibracken, eldest son of the Earl of Thomond, in 1682. He
died in 1701, and was buried in the Duke of Richmond and Lennox’s vault
in Henry VII.’s Chapel, by right of his wife’s connection with the Duke
of Lennox.
The widow’s eldest son by her first husband, Donald O’Brien, was lost
in the wreck of the “Gloucester” in 1682, and he is mentioned in a
letter of Pepys to Hewer, written from Edinburgh on May 8th of that
year. The will of the father contains the following very remarkable
paragraph:--“I conjure my son Donatus O’Brien, to honour and obey his
King in whatever he commands that is not contradictory to the Holy
Scripture and Protestant religion, in which I conjure him (upon pain of
my curse) not only to continue himself, but to advise his brothers and
sisters to do the same; and that he never marry a Papist; and that he
take great care if ever God bless him with children (which I trust he
will many) to breed them strictly in the Protestant religion. I advise
him to cherish the English on his estate, and drive out the Irish, and
especially those of them who go under the name of gentlemen.”[295]
Before passing on to make a final note on some of the celebrated
sailors alluded to in the “Diary,” a place must be found for one
of the most eccentric women that ever lived--Margaret, Duchess of
Newcastle. Pepys writes, “the whole story of this lady is romance, and
all she does is romantic.”[296] Every one who came in contact with her
fooled her to the top of her bent. Evelyn likened her to Zenobia, the
mother of the Gracchi, Vittoria Colonna, besides a long line of other
celebrities, and when she “took the dust” in the park she was followed
and crowded upon by coaches all the way she went, so that nobody could
come near her.[297]
Her husband’s play, “The Humourous Lovers,” was, Pepys says, “the most
silly thing that ever came upon a stage,”[298] and also “the most
ridiculous thing that ever was wrote,”[299] yet she and the Duke were
“mightily pleased with it, and she at the end made her respects to the
players from her box, and did give them thanks.”
On the 30th of May, 1667, the Duchess made a visit to one of the
meetings of the Royal Society, when various fine experiments were shown
for her entertainment. She was loud in her expressions of admiration
as she was led out of the room by several noblemen who were among the
company present. There had been great debate among the philosophers as
to the advisability of inviting the lady, for many believed that the
town would be full of ballads on the event. Her footmen were habited
in velvet coats, and she herself appeared in antique dress, so that
there is no cause for wonder that people came to see her as if she
were the Queen of Sheba. Mrs. Evelyn drew a very lively picture of the
Duchess in a letter to Dr. Bohun: “I acknowledge, though I remember
her some years since, and have not been a stranger to her fame, I was
surprised to find so much extravagancy and vanity in any person not
confined within four walls.... Her mien surpasses the imagination of
poets or the descriptions of romance heroine’s greatness; her gracious
bows, seasonable nods, courteous stretching out of her hands, twinkling
of her eyes, and various gestures of approbation, show what may be
expected from her discourse, which is airy, empty, whimsical, and
rambling as her books, aiming at science difficulties, high notions,
terminating commonly in nonsense, oaths, and obscenity.” Pepys’s
summing up of the Duchess’s character is shorter, but accords well with
Mrs. Evelyn’s opinion--he says she was “a mad, conceited, ridiculous
woman.”[300]
In a book written by a man so intimately connected with the navy as
Pepys was, it is not surprising that mention should occur pretty
frequently of sailors and soldiers who commanded at sea.
In the great victory over the Dutch in 1665, the Earl of Falmouth, Lord
Muskerry, and Richard Boyle, second son of the Earl of Burlington,
were all killed by one shot, as they were standing on board the “Royal
Charles,” close by the Duke of York, into whose face their blood
spurted. The Earl appears very frequently in the “Diary” as Sir Charles
Berkeley, Lord Berkeley, Lord Fitzharding, and Earl of Falmouth, and
he was to have been created a Marquis had he lived. Charles II. shed a
flood of tears when he heard of his friend’s death, but Pepys tells us
that none but the King wished him alive again.[301]
Lord Clarendon put in a few bitter words the most thorough condemnation
of the man. He said, “few had observed in him any virtue or quality
which they did not wish their best friends without.” The various
allusions to Lord Falmouth in the “Diary” quite bear out this
character, and yet because he was Sir William Coventry’s friend we are
told of “his generosity, good nature, desire of public good, and low
thoughts of his own wisdom; his employing his interest in the king to
do good offices to all people, without any other fault than the freedom
he do learn in France of thinking himself obliged to serve his king in
his pleasures.”[302]
A much greater national loss which took place in this engagement was
the death of the famous admiral Sir John Lawson. This chief among the
“tarpaulins” was well known to Pepys, as he was the vice-admiral under
Sir Edward Montagu at the time when Charles II. was brought over by
the fleet. He is described as the same plain man as ever after all his
successes,[303] yet an enemy called him a false man, and the greatest
hypocrite in the world.[304] When Lawson died, Pepys could not but
acknowledge that the nation had a loss, although he was not sorry,
because the late admiral had never been a friend to him.[305] In the
great engagement against the Dutch of the 3rd of June, 1665, Opdam’s
ship blew up, and a shot from it, or rather a piece of iron, wounded
Lawson on the knee, from which he never recovered. The national loss is
expressed in one of the “Poems on State Affairs.”[306]
“Destiny allowed
Him his revenge, to make his death more proud.
A fatal bullet from his side did range,
And battered Lawson; oh, too dear exchange!
He led our fleet that day too short a space,
But lost his knee: since died, in glorious race:
Lawson, whose valour beyond Fate did go,
And still fights Opdam in the lake below.”
In October, 1666, there was a rumour that Sir Jeremy Smith had killed
Sir Robert Holmes in a duel, and Pepys was not sorry to hear it,
although he soon found that report did not tell true.[307] Holmes was
very unpopular, and Andrew Marvell called him the “cursed beginner of
the two Dutch wars;” describing him as “first an Irish livery boy, then
a highwayman, now Bashaw of the Isle of Wight,” who had “got in bonds
and by rapine _£_100,000.”[308]
Sir Jeremy Smith was befriended by the Duke of Albemarle, when Holmes
delivered articles of accusation against him to the King and Cabinet,
and he suffered no ill from the vengeance of his enemy, for in 1669 he
was appointed a Commissioner of the Navy in place of Sir William Penn.
Pepys was able to find an epithet for him, and although he liked him
fairly well, he called him “an impertinent fellow.”[309]
This slight notice of some of the sailors of the Restoration period
may well be closed by a relation of the remarkable action of certain
seamen at the funeral of Sir Christopher Mings. Mings, like Lawson,
was of poor extraction, and, like him, grew up a worthy captain. He
was wounded in the face and leg in an engagement with the Dutch, and
shortly afterwards died of his wounds. Pepys and Sir William Coventry
attended the funeral, and on their going away, “about a dozen able,
lusty, proper men came to the coach side with tears in their eyes, and
one of them that spoke for the rest begun and said to Sir W. Coventry,
‘We are here a dozen of us that have long known and loved and served
our dead commander, Sir Christopher Mings, and have now done the last
office of laying him in the ground. We would be glad we had any other
to offer after him, and revenge of him. All we have is our lives; if
you will please to get His Royal Highness to give us a fireship among
us all, here is a dozen of us, out of all which choose you one to be
commander, and the rest of us, whoever he is, will serve him; and if
possible do that that shall show our memory of our dead commander and
our revenge.’” When this speech was finished Coventry was much moved,
and Pepys could scarcely refrain from tears.[310] What became of these
worthy men we are not told.
FOOTNOTES:
[275] “The blockhead Albemarle hath strange luck to be loved, though
he be, and every man must know it, the heaviest man in the world, but
stout and honest to his country.”--“Diary,” Oct. 23, 1667.
[276] “Diary,” March 6, 1667.
[277] April 4, 1667.
[278] “Diary,” Nov. 4, 1666.
[279] “Diary,” Nov. 6, 1665.
[280] “Diary,” Jan. 15, 1664–65.
[281] “Diary,” July 14, 1664.
[282] Lister’s “Life of Clarendon,” vol. iii. p. 340.
[283] “Diary,” June 28, 1660.
[284] Feb. 27, 1666–67.
[285] March 12, 1661–62.
[286] May 27, 1667.
[287] “Diary,” Jan. 28, 1665–66.
[288] Dec. 3, 1664.
[289] July 9, 1667.
[290] June 19, 1660.
[291] Sept. 16, 1668.
[292] “Diary,” Oct. 29, 1668.
[293] Feb. 14, 1668–69.
[294] Sir John Williamson’s “Letters” (Camden Society), vol. i. p. 64.
[295] See that monument of learning and research, Chester’s
“Westminster Abbey Registers,” 1875, p. 194 (note).
[296] “Diary,” April 11, 1667.
[297] May 1, 1667.
[298] March 30.
[299] April 11, 1667.
[300] “Diary,” March 18, 1668.
[301] “Diary,” June 9, 1665.
[302] August 30, 1668.
[303] “Diary,” Jan. 12, 1662–63.
[304] Nov. 9, 1663.
[305] June 25, 1665.
[306] Vol. i. p. 24.
[307] “Diary,” Oct. 31, 1666.
[308] “Seasonable Argument,” 1677.
[309] “Diary,” May 10, 1669.
[310] “Diary,” June 13, 1666.
[Illustration: Decoration]
[Illustration: Decoration]