ANNE HYDE
DUCHESS OF YORK
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[Illustration:
ANNE HYDE
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ANNE HYDE
DUCHESS OF YORK
BY
J. R. HENSLOWE
AUTHOR OF “DUKE’S WINTON—A CHRONICLE OF SEDGMOOR,” ETC.
[Illustration]
LONDON
T. WERNER LAURIE LTD.
8 ESSEX STREET, STRAND
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INTRODUCTION
Among the records, few at best, left by time of her who was destined to
be the mother of two queens regnant of England, there is one which bears
its own pathetic significance.
It is a very small book, only about four inches long by three wide,
bound in stamped leather from which the gilding is half worn away, with
a broken silver clasp, and thick, stiff pages.[1]
Footnote 1:
Additional MSS., 15,900 B. M.
Was this little book a gift from Edward Hyde to the young daughter whom
he dearly loved? Who is to tell us now?
It is a girl’s tiny notebook, a treasure perhaps to her, in which she
writes down occasional memoranda as they occur to her, but as we turn
the leaves it seems to bridge with a familiar touch the centuries which
lie between us and that vanished time. There is a page of figures, a
little poetry (“The Contented Marter”), a list of household matters, “3
bras candlesticks, 4 bras kittles, driping pans,” and so on. An allusion
to a servant—“Betty came to my Mother”—is on another leaf.
One fancies, somehow, that Anne kept this book by her bedside, jealously
clasped, along with her little store of devotional reading. She filled
it full of writing in pencil, quite easy to decipher, save that time has
made it pale and dim.
Some of the sentences are in the French she came to know very perfectly
in later days, and speak of a long dead romance.
“Je n’en vey mourir d’amour, mais ce n’est pas pour un infidèle
comme vous.—ANNE HYDE.”
“Adieu pour jamais, mais n’oubliez pas la plus misérable
personne du monde.—ANNE HYDE.”
Was the “infidèle” meant for Spencer Compton or Harry Jermyn? Do the
plaintive words point to the bitterness of supposed desertion by one
higher than either? When were they written? There is no date to guide
us.
Elsewhere there is a mention of one, her aunt Barbara Aylesbury, greatly
beloved:
“Je l’aime plus que moy-mesne mille fois.—ANNE HYDE.”
But on another page (it must have been much earlier), the girl, as girls
will, sets down gravely the short story of her young life, here
transcribed:
“If I live till the 22 of March 1653, I am 16 yeare old. My dear
Aunt Bab was when she died 24 yeare old and as much as from
Aprell to August.”[2] (This is the Barbara Aylesbury of the
other entry.) “I was borne the 12 day of March old stile in the
yeare of our Lord 1637 at Cranbourne Lodge neer Windsor in
Barkshire and lived in my owne country till I was 12 yeares old
haveing in that time seen the ruin both of Church and State in
the murtheringe of my Kinge. The first of May old stile 1649 I
came out of England being then 12 yeares old 1 month and 15
days. I came to Antwerp 6 of May old stile the August following
I went to Bruxells for 3 or 4 days and returned againe to
Antwerp where I stayed 3 weekes being loged at the court of her
Highness the Princess Royall. I returned to Antwerp in May where
I have been ever since February 8 1653. I am now 15 years old.”
Footnote 2:
Barbara, daughter of Sir Thomas Aylesbury, died in September
1652. (Nicholas Papers.)
So abruptly the record ends. The writer has no more to say, for she is
yet only on the threshold of life.
Turn the page. Over the leaf in another hand, large and straggling,
someone has inscribed a final memorandum. The little book would never be
wanted by its owner any more, but there was room for this.
“On the 3 day of March being fryday the Dutchess dyed at St
James and was buried the wednesday following 1671.”
Between the two dates a little span of years, not a score; and yet how
great a sum of the things which go to fill up life—of hope and love and
splendour, of pain and grief and disappointment.
* * * * *
It is this story that we try now to construct out of the memorials of
her time; the life story of the woman who, without any extraordinary
beauty or charm, so far as we are able to judge, to balance the
comparative obscurity from which she sprang, was fated in an age when
the claims of high birth were jealously guarded to become the wife of a
Prince of the Blood Royal of England.
Even in the seventeenth century, gilded as it was by the slowly dying
radiance of romance, the “glory and the dream” of chivalry, the strange
tale reads like a fable, and yet the life, short as it was, of Anne
Hyde, had results for her age and country which even now can hardly be
measured accurately and dispassionately, like the ever-widening circles
on the surface of a pool into which a pebble has been cast.
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. PARENTAGE 1
II. YOUTH 18
III. JAMES STUART 73
IV. THE MARRIAGE 109
V. THE DUCHESS 159
VI. THE FALL OF CLARENDON 211
VII. THE TURNING-POINT 239
VIII. THE END 276
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ANNE HYDE _Frontispiece_
ELIZABETH, QUEEN OF BOHEMIA 26
JAMES DUKE OF YORK 102
HENRY DUKE OF GLOUCESTER 136
HENRIETTA MARIA, “MOTHER 144
QUEEN”
JOHN EVELYN 156
PRINCE RUPERT 168
ELIZABETH COUNTESS OF 178
CHESTERFIELD
FRANCES JENNINGS, DUCHESS OF 192
TYRCONNEL
EDWARD EARL OF CLARENDON 234
HENRIETTA DUCHESS OF ORLEANS 286
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ANNE HYDE, DUCHESS
OF YORK
CHAPTER I
PARENTAGE
THERE is, after all, something to be said for the birth of Anne Hyde.
Edward Hyde, the famous Chancellor and historian of the Great Rebellion,
though the first peer of his name, could still, quite honestly, boast of
long and honourable descent.
The Hydes of Norbury, in the county of Cheshire, celebrated by Camden in
his “Britannia,” had handed down that possession from father to son
since the far-back days before the Norman Conquest, but the first of the
race with whom we need concern ourselves is the grandfather of the
future Chancellor.[3]
Footnote 3:
“Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon, from his Birth to the Restoration
of the Royal Family,” written by himself. (1759.)
Evelyn’s “Correspondence.” To Mr Sprat, Chaplain to the Duke of
Buckingham, afterwards Bishop of Rochester.
Laurence, the seventh son of Robert Hyde of Norbury, could claim,
naturally, but a small provision from the paternal resources, but his
mother seems to have looked carefully to his education, as the best
chance for his future, and he was placed as a clerk in one of the
auditors’ offices of the Exchequer.
Thence he was employed in the affairs of Sir Thomas Thynne, who under
Protector Somerset in a short time raised a great estate, and was the
first of his name to possess Longleat.
Laurence Hyde, however, held the post little more than a year—and gained
nothing by it—but soon afterwards he married Anne, widow of Matthew
Colthurst of Claverton, near Bath, who brought him a fair fortune, and
by this marriage he had four sons and four daughters, the sons being
Robert, Laurence, Henry and Nicholas. He bought, at the time of his
marriage, the manor of West Hatch in the county of Wilts, but at his
death he left the greater part of his estate to his widow.
Of the four sons above mentioned, the second, named also Laurence,
became eventually “a lawyer of great name and practice,” being attorney
to Queen Anne of Denmark, and obtaining knighthood in due course. His
next brother, by name Henry, was at the time of his father’s death
already entered at the Middle Temple, being a good scholar and a Master
of Arts of Oxford. He was supposed (probably by his brothers and
sisters) to be his mother’s favourite, and perhaps it was because he was
the “spoilt child,” that he stoutly announced that “he had no mind to
the law” but wished to enlarge his mind by travel. Having with some
difficulty, as may be conjectured, extracted his mother’s unwilling
consent, he went joyfully off on the Grand Tour, going through Germany
from Spa to Italy. There he visited Florence, Siena and Rome, which, by
the way, was then inhibited to the subjects of Elizabeth, and he somehow
managed to obtain the protection of Cardinal Allen, probably a very
necessary precaution. However, in due time Henry Hyde came safely back
from what was then, and for long afterwards, considered a perilous
undertaking, and was of course on his return persuaded forthwith to
marry.
The wife who was chosen was Mary, one of the daughters and heirs of
Edward Longford of Trowbridge, and Henry Hyde appears from this time to
have settled down peaceably in his native county. He served as burgess
for some neighbouring boroughs in many parliaments, and moreover, like
his father before him, had a numerous family of four sons and five
daughters.
Of his sons, the third, Edward, lived to be the Lord Chancellor.
Edward Hyde was born at his father’s house of Dinton, Wilts, on 18th
February 1609, and as a child was taught by a schoolmaster to whom his
father presented the living.
After the fashion of those days, which peopled both the universities
with mere children, the boy was sent at the age of thirteen to Magdalen
Hall, Oxford, and thereafter entered at the Middle Temple by his uncle,
Nicholas Hyde, afterwards Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench.[4]
Footnote 4:
“Autobiography of Sir John Bramston.”
In his early youth there came to Edward Hyde an experience which seems
to us to embody a brief and sad romance. He married in 1629 the daughter
of Sir George Ayliffe of Gretenham in his own county of Wilts, but
before six months were past, the poor young bride was smitten by
smallpox, that scourge of the seventeenth century, and died. He says of
himself that “he bore her Loss with so great Passion and Confusion of
spirit that it shook all the frame of his Resolutions.”
However, in 1632, when he was but twenty-four, the young widower
repaired his loss by a second marriage with Frances, daughter of Sir
Thomas Aylesbury, a union which proved to be a very happy one. With
reference to this marriage Sir Bernard Burke, in his “Romance of the
Aristocracy,” gives a curious tradition respecting the descent of
Frances Aylesbury.
Some time early in the seventeenth century, a barefooted and destitute
girl arrived one day at a roadside tavern in the village of Chelsea, and
being kindly welcomed there, told the landlord that she was tramping to
London, hoping to take service there. As it happened, the situation of
“pot-girl” was then vacant at the Blue Dragon, and “Anne” forthwith
stepped into the place. A rich brewer was in the habit of coming every
day for his evening draught, and being attracted by the girl’s manner
and appearance, married her within three months. Before long he died,
leaving “Anne” a wealthy widow, to whom came many suitors. From among
these she chose Sir Thomas Aylesbury, Master of Requests and the Mint,
who moreover possessed lands in Buckinghamshire.
After many years there arose a dispute as to the property of the late
brewery, and Lady Aylesbury was recommended to employ a young barrister,
by name Edward Hyde, who was destined thereafter to become her
son-in-law.
From this tale was drawn the obvious conclusion that the two queens of
England, Mary and Anne, were great-granddaughters of a beggar maid.
Fortunately Burke merely gives the romantic story for what it is worth,
and suggests that very probably it was coined after the Restoration by
some one of Hyde’s numerous enemies, who were envious of his steady
ascent to rank and distinction, and found a theory of obscure
connections very comforting to their own souls.
In February 1634 we find young Hyde appointed one of the managers of a
masque presented before the King by the Inns of Court, as a protest
against Prynne’s furious attack on the drama.
Thither came King Charles, stately and gracious, forgetting perhaps for
a brief moment the heavy clouds now gathering low on his horizon to
cover the sky as with a pall: with dreaming, melancholy eyes intent for
a little space on the scene which the masquers unfolded before him;
where, a little before, Ben Jonson had brought many beautiful and dainty
fancies to such rare perfection—but on this occasion it was “The Triumph
of Peace,” by James Shirley.
Here, on that winter evening, in that great and splendid hall, shone all
the glitter and pageantry and poetic thought so soon to be for long
years eclipsed, leaving a pathetic memory to be cherished through many
weary seasons of strife and disaster by those who had seen it.[5]
Footnote 5:
_Dictionary of National Biography_, E. Hyde, 1609-1674.
Whether young Hyde at this time attracted the King’s special attention
or not, we have no record, but his progress was a steady one.
As to what manner of man he was, we have his own words. In the curious
sententious method of introspection and self-analysis employed by the
thinkers of that age, Hyde speaks of himself as “in his nature inclined
to Pride and Passion, and to a humour between Wrangling and Disputing
very troublesome”[6]; but he certainly possessed the art of attracting
the friendship of some of the finest spirits of that stormy age, which,
like all periods of stress, produced many such to shine like lamps in
their time. There were the poets Carew and Cotton, the elder Godolphin,
Evelyn, who extols Hyde’s “great and signal merits,” and greatest and
noblest of all, Lucius Carey, Lord Falkland.
Footnote 6:
“Life of the Earl of Clarendon,” by himself.
If, as has been said, a man is known by his friends, then it may surely
be counted to Edward Hyde for righteousness that he had eyes to discern
the shining of that “steadfast star” too early extinguished. There is
nothing more inspiring in English literature than the words in which he
chronicles the going out of that light, the death of his hero on the red
field which gave that pure spirit the peace it craved so earnestly.
“Thus,” says the historian, “fell that incomparable young man in the
four and thirtieth year of his age, having so much despatched the
business of life that the oldest rarely attain to that immense
knowledge, and the youngest enters not into the world with more
innocence, and whosoever leads such a life need not care upon how short
warning it be taken from him.”[7]
Footnote 7:
“History of the Rebellion.” Clarendon.
Edward Hyde’s link with the great Villiers family procured for him
powerful interest, and prompted him to vindicate the detested memory of
the first Duke of Buckingham. This Villiers connection was due partly to
Hyde’s first marriage, as there seems to have been a relationship with
the Ayliffes of Gretenham, and partly to his father-in-law, Sir Thomas
Aylesbury. He, being a distinguished mathematician, had been secretary
first to the Earl of Nottingham, Lord High Admiral of England, and then
to the latter’s successor, Buckingham. To the influence of the powerful
favourite he owed his posts of Master of Requests and of the Mint.
Anthony Wood says that Sir Thomas sat for a short time in Parliament in
the former capacity, and as a matter of form at Oxford in 1643 after the
beginning of the Rebellion.
His Cavalier sympathies procured for him the sentence of banishment from
England, and he died at Breda at the age of eighty-one. His son, who at
the instance of Charles I. had translated Davila’s “History of the Civil
Wars in France,” was for a time tutor to the second Duke of Buckingham
and his young brother Lord Francis Villiers, who in his turn merits one
word at least. Nothing in the history of the great strife has been
chronicled more heroic nor more pathetic than the fate of that boy—for
he was no more—at Kingston-on-Thames. A true Villiers, “prodigal of his
person,” he fiercely rejected quarter, and with his back against a tree
fought valiantly till he went down under the swords of the Roundheads,
“nine wounds in his beautiful face and body.”[8] Yet it was better
so—better to die in the flush of chivalrous, unstained youth, than to
live out such a life as his brother’s, a life blackened by degrading
vice, gasped out alone, in the “worst inn’s worst room,” as Pope
declared (though this has been denied), the last male of his race.
Footnote 8:
Brian Fairfax.
To return to the Aylesbury tutor of the Villiers brothers; he lived
abroad in exile for a time, and having been obliged to return to England
in 1650, he again left the country, and died six years later in Jamaica,
being then secretary to Major-General Sedgwick.
Another of Edward Hyde’s friends was Sir Edmund Verney, “of great
courage and generally beloved,”[9] that gallant standard-bearer who was
destined to fall at Edgehill at the beginning of the war, but who as
long as he lived, with Hyde and Falkland, might be considered to
represent the moderate or constitutional loyalists. Having in 1634 been
appointed keeper of writs and rolls of Common Pleas, we find Hyde later
emerging into the arena of public life. In 1640 he organised the royal
party in the Commons, and on the eve of the outbreak drew up the state
papers for the Royalist press.[10] With Colepepper, afterwards famous as
a general, and his friend Falkland, Hyde joined the King at York. At
this time he was member for Wotton Basset in his own county of Wilts,
having been also called to serve for Shaftesbury, which however he
declined. At the dissolution of the Short Parliament in 1640 he was
again, in the constitution of the Long Parliament, returned for his own
constituency. At some time he also seems to have represented Saltash. At
any rate, from the date above referred to, he gave up his practice at
the Bar, and devoted himself to “public business.”
Footnote 9:
“Life of the Earl of Clarendon,” by himself.
Footnote 10:
“Short History of the English People.” Green.
We have it under his hand that as late as 1639 the “three kingdoms” were
“flourishing in entire Peace and universal Plenty,” yet we cannot but
think that any one so far-seeing and sagacious as Edward Hyde must have
detected the first low mutterings of the gathering storm by that time.
His personal enmity to Cromwell began early, and at the beginning of the
Long Parliament he was attacked by the bitter Puritan Fiennes for his
steady attachment to the Church.[11] It was then that he was first sent
for by the King, who wished to thank him personally for his defence both
of himself and of the Church, and from this date begins his close
association with Charles. With Prince Rupert, loyal nephew and gallant
soldier as he showed himself to be, Hyde was never on good terms,
neither were his two colleagues,[12] and the trio before mentioned,
whether for good or evil, steadily opposed the sometimes headlong
counsels of the brilliant Prince Palatine.
Footnote 11:
“Life of the Earl of Clarendon,” by himself.
Footnote 12:
“A Royal Cavalier: The Romance of Rupert, Prince Palatine,” by Mrs
Steuart Erskine.
One of Hyde’s first actions after his election was to secure the
suppression of the Earl Marshal’s Court, while soon after his dispute
with Fiennes, the King wished to appoint him Solicitor-General, though
Hyde declined the post. The triumvirate, Colepepper, Falkland and Hyde
himself, steadfast, upright and loyal, constantly met to consult on the
King’s affairs, in the hope—a vain one as it proved—of stemming the
incoming tide of misfortune. At the beginning of 1643, Hyde was sworn of
the Privy Council, and made Chancellor of the Exchequer, but in common
with many other of the King’s most faithful and wisest servants, we find
him deploring the Queen’s unbounded influence over her husband, who,
since Buckingham’s untimely and tragic death from the dagger of Felton,
had had no supreme adviser. Before Henrietta left for Holland on her
expedition to procure supplies with the jewels she pledged there, she
exacted from the King two utterly preposterous promises: first, to
receive no one who had ever “disserved him” into favour, and secondly,
not to make peace without her consent. After the fatal loss of Falkland
at Newbury fight in this year, the King was anxious to make Hyde
Secretary of State, but the latter declined this office also, and it was
conferred on Digby.[13] But early in the succeeding year the Chancellor
received a proof of his master’s absolute confidence, as he was
entrusted with the care of the Prince of Wales.
Footnote 13:
“Life of the Earl of Clarendon,” by himself.
On the 4th March 1644, though neither master nor servant was to know it,
Edward Hyde parted from King Charles for the last time on earth, and set
out for the west of England with the boy whose life for the next sixteen
years was to be one of weary and ceaseless wandering.
From Pendennis in Cornwall they went to Scilly and on to Jersey. Here
Hyde himself stayed for two years with Sir George Carteret, remaining
after the Prince left the island for Paris in 1646, both Capel and
Hopton having gone before him.
The Queen’s mischievous jealousy of Hyde, which had begun early, had not
abated, and she still wrote to the harassed and almost despairing King
letters calculated to prejudice him still further against the former.
Charles, in this case, does not seem to have been really influenced by
them, for he wrote to the Chancellor that he wished him to join his son
as soon as he left France, and even Henrietta herself must have been
seized with some compunction, for she sent for Hyde in 1648. As soon as
he received the summons the latter went to Caen, then to Rouen, and
hearing the Prince was to go to Holland he went to Dieppe to wait, glad
probably of an excuse to avoid the unwelcome interview with the Queen.
Thence he joined Lord Cottington in a frigate going to Dunkirk, but they
were taken by pirates, who, however, did no worse than convey them to
Ostend, whence the Chancellor was able to join the Prince of Wales at
the Hague.
It was at this time that Hyde came into contact with one of the greatest
and noblest of his king’s servants, but one who was yet the object of
bitter jealousy at the hands of many of his own party, no less than at
those of his enemies.
Montrose was then in Holland, after the disaster of Philiphaugh, hoping,
plotting, working, with the restless, passionate, indomitable energy
which had achieved so much in the past, yet which was destined to fail
so utterly in the future. At a village near The Hague the two met, the
grave lawyer and the hot soldier, to confer on the state of Scotland and
the prospects therein of the master whom they both served with
whole-hearted and ungrudging devotion.
There they parted, and Montrose came back to his distracted country to
raise anew the standard, to fight his last fight, to be betrayed by the
basest of traitors, to die a dishonoured death, as his enemies called
it, which was to earn for him, nevertheless, imperishable fame; and Hyde
was to toil on steadfastly for long strenuous years, destined to bring
him fame and place and wealth, and to bring him likewise fresh exile and
bitter disillusion in his age.
After Hyde’s mission as ambassador to Spain with his friend Lord
Cottington was accomplished, he was at last able to send for his wife
and children to join him in the Low Countries, but before he met them at
Antwerp he made a journey to Paris to see the widowed queen, for by this
time the tragedy at Whitehall had been consummated, and Hyde’s young
charge was king _de jure_ if not _de facto_. Henrietta seems to have
been still possessed with the idea that the Chancellor’s influence with
her son was adverse to her interests, but she received him civilly on
this occasion.
After the disastrous defeat of Worcester in 1651, and his own romantic
escape, Charles II. bethought him of Hyde, and sent for him to Paris,
keeping him chiefly with him in Flanders on their return there, until
his own departure for Germany.[14]
Footnote 14:
They were together for three years at this time. (“Life of the Earl of
Clarendon,” by himself.)
During this time, Mary, Princess Royal of England, and Dowager of
Orange, showed herself a firm friend to her father’s old servant, and
evinced great kindness to his family, providing them with a house rent
free at Breda some time during the autumn of 1653, Breda being then in
Spanish territory, and not under the States General.[15]
Footnote 15:
“Lives of Princesses of England.” M. A. Everett-Green.
Here, then, he lived, surrounded by those dearest to him, as far as one
can judge a fairly contented life for the next few years. If, as we are
told, his three principles were “a passionate attachment to the religion
and polity of the Church of England, a determination to maintain what he
considered the true ideal of the English constitution, and a desire for
personal advancement,” this last attribute—ambition—could have had
little to feed on during those years at Breda.
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