family of which Tyrconnel was the most illustrious representative had
settled in Ireland, its titular chief had remained in England. From him
in the course of the centuries had sprung a line which yielded to none
in pride of birth. Before the Howards or Percys had been heard of the
English Talbots had become famous. One family alone boasted a more
ancient lineage. This was de Vere, of which at the time we are now
contemplating Aubrey, twentieth Earl of Oxford, was the last of his
race. Since the fifteenth century the earldom of Shrewsbury had been the
chief of the many dignities honourably borne by the head of the
Talbots--a title whose unbroken succession the family boasts down to the
present day. At the Restoration this distinguished house was represented
by the eleventh of the line. He was a colourless aristocrat who, the
year before the return of the Stuarts, had been married in London to his
second wife, Lady Anna Maria Brudenell, daughter of the Earl of
Cardigan, by a Justice of the Peace in the church of St.
Giles-in-the-Fields.
When the Chevalier de Gramont arrived at Whitehall at the beginning of
Charles II.'s reign the Countess of Shrewsbury was among the most
beautiful and fascinating women he found there. If she had not already
out-Castlemained the Castlemaine it was only from want of opportunity,
not of inclination. Her terrible career had, however, begun. "As for
Lady Shrewsbury," declared Gramont, "she is conspicuous. I would take a
wager that if she had a man killed for her every day she would only hold
her head the higher for it. One would suppose that she had plenary
indulgences for her conduct. There are three or four gentlemen who wear
an ell of her hair made into bracelets, and nobody finds any fault."
Judging from the virtuous, no less than the vicious, men on whom she
cast her spells, my Lady Shrewsbury, like King Arthur's sister Morgan le
Fay, must have possessed the secret of enchantment. Not otherwise can
one explain how the Earl of Arran, the noble Duke of Ormond's noble son,
became the first and most ardent of her many lovers. This brave and
upright young man long languished a slave to the passion with which she
had inspired him. Perhaps, so powerful and seductive was her charm, he
might never have been freed but for her own caprice. For the sorceress
soon tired of her victims, and disenchanted them or had them slain as it
pleased her. Few, like her kinsman, Dick Talbot, ever "sacrificed for
another her letters, pictures, and hair" with impunity. But then he was
quite an extraordinary man.
To those who care to peep into the seraglio of the Countess, it may
cause some surprise to discover the "invincible" Jermyn bleeding in it.
Both of these voluptuaries were attracted to each other by the same
motive--the desire to subjugate a notable rival in the art of
enchantment. But the ever-victorious Jermyn never embarked on a more
ill-advised undertaking than that of adding Lady Shrewsbury to his list
of triumphs. At the time of his attempt the slave of her ring, so to
speak, was Thomas Howard, brother to the Earl of Carlisle. Like Arran,
he had a fine character, which under a shy exterior concealed a
sensitive, jealous spirit. In his infatuation for the Countess he
invited her one evening to a _tête-à-tête_ supper at a sort of _café
chantant_ known as Spring Garden, a fashionable place of amusement in
the neighbourhood of Charing Cross. To give a little _éclat_ to his
hospitality, Howard, who was an officer in the Guards, had engaged one
of his soldiers who played pretty well on the bagpipe to entertain them
during the supper. The little festivity was in full swing when Jermyn,
having been previously informed by her ladyship of her engagement for
this particular evening, arrived at Spring Garden as if by chance, and
insinuated himself into her company. Howard politely asked him to join
his guest and himself at supper, and Jermyn not only accepted, but at
once began to monopolise the lady's attention; and the better to impress
her with his superiority to her host, to whom, unlike to himself, the
subtle advantages of a life passed entirely in the air of Courts had
been denied, he had the insolence to gibe at the cooking, the music,
and the Spring Garden generally.
Naturally under such circumstances the cynical wit of Jermyn, which
seemed to delight Lady Shrewsbury, was offensive to Howard, who
possessed none at all. Stung by the veiled insults levelled at him by
this impertinent intruder on his evening's amusement, as well as by the
jealousy of watching the Countess's smiles bestowed on another, he had
the greatest difficulty to refrain from drawing his sword. A quarrel on
her behalf between these two men, one of whom had begun to bore her
while she wished to dupe the other, was perhaps exactly what Lady
Shrewsbury most desired to complete her evening's amusement. Jermyn, no
doubt, would willingly have assisted her, for he owed some of his
victories over the fair sex to his skill in the art of self-defence. But
a chivalrous dread of exposing the fatal woman he loved to scandal
prevented Howard from staining the supper with blood.
The next morning, however, Jermyn, who had gone to bed with the
satisfaction of having made Howard appear ridiculous, was awakened by a
challenge. He at once chose his second, one Rawlings, while Dillon, an
intimate friend of Rawlings, served in the same capacity to Howard. The
place of meeting was "at the old Pall Mall at St. James's," and the
battle, such was the determination of the impetuous Howard, was _à
l'outrance_--the seconds, according to the custom of the times, engaging
as well as the principals.
"Mr. Coventry," recorded Pepys in his Diary that day, "did tell us of
the duel between Mr. Jermyn, nephew to my Lord St. Albans, and Colonel
Giles Rawlings, the latter of whom is killed, and the first mortally
wounded, as is thought. They fought against Captain Thomas Howard, my
Lord Carlisle's brother, and another unknown (Dillon), who they say had
armour on that they could not be hurt, so that one of their swords went
up to the hilt against it. They had horses ready and are fled." Thus did
my Lady Shrewsbury rid herself of a lover grown inconvenient, and
without the blood of her victims staining her. For, adds Pepys, "what is
most strange, Howard would not to the last tell Jermyn what the quarrel
was, nor do anybody know."
As it was not to the interest of the "invincible" Jermyn, who received
three wounds and was carried off the field with very little sign of
life, to breathe his suspicions regarding the lesson he had received,
when Lady Shrewsbury's share in this duel finally came to light long
afterwards her reputation was too deeply stained with the blood of
others to make these drops remarkable. Possibly, had she only had
gentlemen to deal with, like Arran and Howard, the Countess might have
managed to evade the infamy with which she came to be regarded. But as
her career proceeded her amours became more wanton, and the men she
attracted lacked both chivalry and decency. Her depravity was already
the subject of the idle gossip of the Court, when Harry Killigrew,
having nothing better to do, had the folly to fall in love with her, and
thereby proved in the sequel how fatal an enemy she could be. His
advances were well received, for, said Hamilton, "as Lady Shrewsbury, by
an extraordinary chance, had no engagement at that time, their _liaison_
was soon established."
Wide as had been her experience of men, it is doubtful if she had ever
had a lover quite so impudent and foolish as young Killigrew. He was the
son of Thomas Killigrew, a man _bien vu_ at Whitehall and well known in
the Restoration times, who had, says Pepys, "a fee out of the wardrobe
for cap and bells and the title of King's Fool or Jester, and might
revile or jeer anybody, the greatest person, without offence, by the
privilege of his place." Indeed, this Master of the Revels of the Court
of Charles II., to give him his official designation, though he was
commonly known as "Tom the Jester," spared no one, and, like the still
more famous Chicot, took liberties even with the King himself. Not that
there was any particular daring in making merry at Charles's expense,
for his Majesty had so little care of his dignity that any one could
take almost any liberty with him. But Tom Killigrew had the courage to
aim his quips at much more dangerous targets; to his sorrow very often,
once being boxed on the ears and another time even stabbed for his
jests. For the palmy days of the Court Fool had long since disappeared,
and the revival of the office was only due to the cynicism of the Merry
Monarch. Tom, however, took his knocks with a good grace, and reaped all
the advantage possible out of his dangerous sinecure.
Many anecdotes of his daring are extant, but the only one that seems to
us worth repeating is the sample he gave, as Court Jester be it
understood, to Louis XIV. It is not recorded whether the Sun King
laughed or bit his lips--the latter, we should judge from what we know
of him--when showing Killigrew a picture of the Crucifixion hanging
between two portraits of himself and the Pope, the Fool remarked: "Ah,
Sire, though I have often heard that our Lord was hung between two
thieves, I never knew till now who they were."
But perhaps he may best be remembered now as the original founder of the
Drury Lane Theatre and as the first to introduce Italian opera to
England. He had ever had a fondness for the stage, and as a boy, in
order to obtain admittance to the play, used to wait outside the doors
till one of the actors, as was customary, would come out in search of
one of the urchins loitering there to act the devil. From acting he had
taken to writing plays, and during the time he had spent in Venice,
whither he had been sent by the exiled Charles to try to raise money for
him, and from which he was turned out for his immoral life, he wrote
some indifferent comedies. It was under his management that Nell Gwynn
and the Duchess of Cleveland's Goodman first appeared at Drury Lane in
Beaumont and Fletcher's "Rule a Wife and Have a Wife." Coupled with his
fooleries and his profligacy he had much sound sense--a faculty that his
son Harry wholly lacked.
This young man, who owed what prestige he enjoyed to his father,
affected the beau of his period. He had plenty of wild, obscene wit, and
early gained the reputation of being a swashbuckler. Pepys met him and
some of his associates one night at Vauxhall, "as very rogues as any in
the town, who were ready to take hold of every woman that came by them."
They invited Pepys, who was apparently nothing loth, "to supper in an
arbour, but Lord! their talk did make my heart ache! Here," continues
the prurient gossip, whom we must thank for giving us many a sidelight
on Restoration manners, "I first understood the meaning of the company
that lately were called 'Ballers'; Harry telling me how it was by a
meeting of some young blades, when he was among them, and my 'Lady'
Bennet (a notorious procuress) and her ladies and their dancing naked,
and all the roguish things in the world."
That the Countess of Shrewsbury should have admitted this man to her
closest intimacy, without any pretence at concealment, is sufficient to
show the free rein she had come to give to her passions. But though he
had a preference for the lowest haunts of the town, a shadow of
respectability still clung to him. Through the Killigrew interest at
Court--besides the favour his father enjoyed with the King, one of his
aunts, Lady Shannon, had been a mistress of Charles--he had secured the
post of groom of the bedchamber to the Duke of York, with whom he was
somewhat of a favourite. His station in life had consequently brought
him in contact with the cream of Restoration society, but owing to the
insufferable airs and impertinences he allowed himself there were few
whom he had not offended. Once, indeed, much to the general
satisfaction, the Duke of Buckingham gave him a lesson he richly
deserved. For having presumed to take some insolent liberty with this
nobleman at Drury Lane, his Grace, in full view of the approving
audience, "did soundly beat him, and take away his sword, and make a
fool of him, till the fellow prayed him to spare his life." The salutary
effect of this lesson was, however, only temporary, and when Harry
Killigrew had the Countess of Shrewsbury for his mistress the memory of
his public chastisement had quite ceased to have any effect on his
volatile nature. Even the resentment he might naturally have been
supposed to feel towards the Duke of Buckingham had disappeared. He was,
says Hamilton, "a frequent guest at his Grace's table."
The Duke, who had, perhaps, the most brilliant wit of any person of the
period and enjoyed that of others, was, in the cynical indifference with
which he regarded both vice and virtue, amused by Killigrew. If, as was
said of this foolish son of the Court Fool, "he would never leave off
lying as long as his tongue would wag," it was equally true of this
organ that it would never leave off wagging as long as there was a
bottle to be drunk. Buckingham, who not only used him as a pimp but as a
spy and mistrusted him, knowing Killigrew's weakness, delighted to
intoxicate him as the surest means of pumping the truth from him. But
Killigrew, whose self-love was enormously flattered by being the
accepted lover of such a woman as the Countess of Shrewsbury, no sooner
got drunk than his tongue would wag by the hour in praise of her
ladyship's "most secret charms and least visible beauties, concerning
which more than half the Court knew quite as much as he knew himself."
His Grace, into whose ears these glowing descriptions were being
continually dinned, resolved at last to test the truth of them himself,
with the result that Harry Killigrew lost his mistress and my Lady
Shrewsbury gained a new lover. And now the foolish young libertine gave
the crowning proof of his folly. For, being cut dead by Lady Shrewsbury,
"he assailed her with invectives from head to foot. He painted a
frightful picture of her conduct, and turned all her charms which he had
previously extolled into defects."
Buckingham was not the person to be trifled with, still less Lady
Shrewsbury, who had no more hesitation in removing an enemy from her
path than Messalina. But as Killigrew's compromising indiscretions had
after all only served to provide her with a fresh lover more to her
taste, "he was privately warned of the inconvenience to which his
declamations might subject him, but as he despised the advice, and
persisted, he soon had reason to repent of it." His punishment was,
however, deferred by an event and its consequence, that for some sixteen
months engrossed the attention of his Grace and my Lady to the exclusion
of all other considerations.
[Illustration: GEORGE VILLIERS, SECOND DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM
_After Verelst._]
It is said that there comes a time when even the worm will turn, and
that time had come to the colourless Earl of Shrewsbury--to his cost.
For his wife, having ignored him as long as he was complaisant, promptly
put her foot on him, so to speak, and crushed him the moment he dared to
protest. This unfortunate man, who had silently endured being made a
cuckold by infatuated chivalrous Arrans and Howards, and even by an
impudent Killigrew, drew the line at a Duke of Buckingham. He
accordingly challenged this latest lover of his wanton wife, and "his
Grace," says Hamilton, "as a reparation for his honour, having killed
him upon the spot, remained a peaceable possessor of this famous Helen."
This duel, or murder, for it was nothing less, in which the Earl and one
of his seconds lost their lives, while the other was dangerously
wounded, was particularly infamous from the active part Lady Shrewsbury
herself took in it. For, like some "foul traitress lady" of the _Morte
d'Arthur_, having accompanied her lover to the field of battle clad as a
page, she held his horse during the combat, and when he was
victorious embraced him all covered as he was with her husband's
blood.
Unbridled as were the times even Whitehall could not stomach so
shameless and outrageous a crime. Catherine of Braganza, on her own
initiative, but powerfully supported by an indignant public, endeavoured
to bring the Messalina and her paramour to justice. But the Duke of
Buckingham was still more powerful at this time than the law, at which
both he and Lady Shrewsbury snapped their fingers. As if to flaunt his
defiance of all authority in the face of the angry nation, shortly after
the death of Lord Shrewsbury--who did not, as Hamilton says, die on the
spot, but lingered two months--his Grace actually installed his mistress
in his own house. To the poor Duchess of Buckingham, who was as saintly
as her husband was impious, this was the last straw. "It is impossible
for both of us to live under the same roof," she protested, when the
Shrewsbury arrived. "So I thought," retorted the Duke, "and therefore I
have ordered your carriage to be got ready to carry you back to your
father's."
The public, staggered by the contempt with which this brazen couple
treated their laws and opinions, were reduced to the usual futile
expedient with which virtue when baffled by vice seeks to console
itself. Aware of the fickle characters of these two arch-evildoers,
which presupposed their speedy falling-out, the righteously indignant
public, agreeing with the Psalmist that the way of the wicked shall be
turned upside down, prophetically awaited this _dénouement_.
Nevertheless, even this satisfaction was denied the virtuous, for "never
before had my Lady Shrewsbury's constancy been of such long duration;
nor had his Grace ever been so solicitous a lover."
When the noise of their murderous outrage had somewhat subsided the Duke
was able to assist his mistress to perpetrate her long-deferred revenge
on foolish Harry Killigrew. As the Messalina wished to be present in
person when the punishment was inflicted, the ingenuity required to
arrange matters to suit her made this fresh crime particularly
cold-blooded. The victim, who had no suspicion, after a silence of
sixteen months, of the attempt to be made on him, was to a certain
extent safe owing to the very irregularities of his life, which made it
difficult to know where and when to despatch him conveniently. The
bravoes, however, who were employed to watch his movements were at last
able to inform the Countess that one night at a certain hour, after
having performed some trifling duty to the Duke of York, he would leave
St. James's Palace for a house in Turnham Green. Her ladyship took her
measures accordingly. Killigrew, who had fallen asleep in his coach, was
suddenly, somewhere on the road, "awoke by the thrust of a sword which
pierced his neck and came out at the shoulder. Before he could cry out
he was flung from the vehicle and stabbed in three other places by the
valets of the Countess, while"--to continue this extract from a despatch
of the French Ambassador to the Minister for Foreign Affairs at
Versailles--"the lady herself looked on from her own coach and six, and
cried out to the assassins, 'Kill the villain!' Nor did she drive off
till he was thought dead."
The darkness, however, favoured him, and it was his unfortunate servant,
who was slain in defending his master, that in the hurry and excitement
of the fray the Countess took for Killigrew. When she learnt that he had
escaped, though badly wounded, and was thinking of demanding redress,
far from being alarmed at the consequences to herself, she sent him word
that he had better be satisfied with the punishment he had got, for the
second time she tried to murder him she should not fail! Killigrew,
growing wise by experience, like the majority of us, took the hint, and
lived so circumspectly afterwards that little more was ever heard of
him. It is rumoured that he succeeded his father as Court Fool in the
reign of William and Mary, and was three times married, once to a peer's
daughter and twice to servant-girls! But he never crossed Lady
Shrewsbury's path again, and the Duke of Buckingham having explained the
affair to the satisfaction of the easy-going King, the matter was hushed
up.
Some time elapsed after these adventures before her ladyship again came
prominently before a public to whose opinion she was so indifferent. Not
so his Grace. There was scarcely ever a day of his life that he was not
feverishly employed in providing the world with news associated with
his name. When not getting himself thrown into the Tower for offending
the King, he was caballing for power at my Lady Castlemaine's, or
denouncing an unpopular Clarendon in the House of Lords; when not
championing the people and Protestantism, in neither of which he
believed, against despotism and Popery, both of which he despised, this
prince of profligates was squandering his enormous wealth on his
enormous vices. Quiet he never was. But so still was Lady Shrewsbury
during the year or two in which her passions slumbered that but for the
web of enchantment in which, to the world's marvel, she was known to
hold the fickle, restless Duke, it might have been fancied she was
engaged, like a tigress after a feast, in cleansing herself of gore. It
may, however, be taken for granted that though withdrawn from view for a
time it was neither from shame nor weariness nor, least of all,
repentance.
Now and then from her seclusion at Buckingham's splendid palace of
Clieveden on the Thames, afterwards so celebrated by Pope as "the bower
of wanton Shrewsbury and love," there came strange rumours. It was
whispered that as the Duke had pulled the strings of intrigue at my Lady
Castlemaine's, so Louis XIV.'s agents were pulling his Grace at
Clieveden by means of his mistress. The series of events which had been
slowly working for the realisation of Buckingham's ambition, and the
manoeuvring of which he, even when most volatile, never neglected, had
at last culminated in his political triumph. The Cabal ministry had
juggled themselves into power, and of that corrupt crew his Grace was
easily the leader. Not only the Protestant and virtuous section of
England, but the ambitious French King, to both of which factors
Buckingham owed his success, looked to him as a chief and a confederate
respectively. This brilliant libertine was capable, had he wished, of
proving himself a patriot, perhaps of changing the whole course of
English history. He had something almost like genius and a great
opportunity. But he who had never been true to any principle in his
life, or to any person for twenty-four hours together, save Lady
Shrewsbury, had neither the desire nor the will to choose between his
country and his country's enemies. With diabolical cynicism, which in
Buckingham sometimes resembled a sort of subtle insanity, he determined
to be true to both by despising both. It was, perhaps, the difficulty of
playing this double game that was its chief attraction for him. But
while it was easy to hoodwink Protestant England, whose idol he was, it
was not so easy to dupe Louis XIV., whose tool he was. That astute
monarch, informed of the influence Lady Shrewsbury had over the
unprincipled minister, had tied the great Villiers fast by bribing his
mistress. It is true that Buckingham eventually snapped his bonds, but
when that happened he was no longer worth the French King's
consideration. The day that the French Ambassador paid the Shrewsbury
her first ten thousand livres he had the satisfaction of writing to his
master that she had sworn, "Buckingham should comply with the King in
all things." Of course, only the vaguest suspicion of this corruption
was felt by the public, but the mere fact that while the Duke openly
expressed in Parliament contrition for his past evil ways he still kept
Lady Shrewsbury under his roof, was sufficient not only to cause his
reformation to be doubted, but to remind England that its Messalina was
not yet among the damned.