two terrible phenomena of the Restoration decided to give the world a
crowning proof of their supreme contempt of it. The nation was suddenly
staggered by the news that the chief Minister of the State, though his
wife was still living, had, without any pretence at secrecy, been
married to the Countess of Shrewsbury! As if to emphasise the scandal
the bigamous ceremony was performed according to all the rites of the
Church by the Duke's chaplain, Dr. Sprat, afterwards Bishop of
Rochester. To the pious when such things could be done with impunity it
seemed as if they were living in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah. But the
impious crew that revelled at Whitehall merely laughed, and jestingly
spoke of the lawful Duchess of Buckingham as the "Dowager Duchess." The
sun of the Restoration had reached the meridian.
Strange to say, historians have passed over this foolish and gratuitous
infamy with comparative indifference, as if the period and the
notorious characters of the bigamous couple made further comment
unnecessary. This may be a sufficient explanation for the profane
Sprat's share in the crime, but it was something more than the mere
lawless gratification of lust that forced Villiers and the Shrewsbury
into bigamy. As no reason has ever been given ours can only be a guess.
The agents of Louis XIV. did not often squander his money without a
_quid pro quo_, and perhaps it does not exceed probability to suggest
that before receiving French bribes Buckingham's mistress was called
upon to show some proof of her influence over him? The same year his
Grace went to Paris, ostensibly to represent Charles II. at the funeral
of his sister, the Duchess of Orleans, but in reality to prepare the way
for selling his King and country, as he had already sold himself, to
France. His reception at Versailles was magnificent, and he returned
laden with wealth and dignities. So favourably did he impress the French
Court that Louis remarked "he was almost the only English gentleman he
had ever seen!"
In the following year the virtuous public, which had indignantly
predicted three years before the speedy falling-out of this precious
couple, were still further scandalised to learn, in the words of
Marvell, that "the Duke of Buckingham exceeds all with Lady Shrewsbury,
by whom he believes he had a son, to whom the King stood godfather." We
may further add that this infant, to which the courtesy title of Earl of
Coventry, borne by the eldest son of the Dukes of Buckingham, had been
given, died young and was buried in the family vault at Westminster
Abbey!
And now, in such favour was the Duke at Whitehall, the mock Duchess
returned to Court and brazenly dared to show herself about the country.
Evelyn relates that at Newmarket "he found the jolly blades racing,
dancing, feasting, and revelling, more resembling a luxurious and
abandoned rout than a Christian country. The Duke of Buckingham was in
mighty favour, and had with him that impudent woman, the Countess of
Shrewsbury, and his band of fiddlers." The day of reckoning, however,
came at last. Unfortunately, it did not depend on any sudden belated
awakening of the moral sense in Charles II., or a revival of virtue in a
country prepared to sweep away the indecencies that were outraging it.
Buckingham and Lady Shrewsbury were only brought to book when his
political power was broken. The Restoration went on more deliriously
than ever till it reached the fatal climax in 1688. With the Duke's fall
the enchantment of the Shrewsbury was snapped. Called before the bar of
the House of Lords, with no Duchess of Cleveland or King to stay the arm
of the law now in his behalf, he was ordered to separate altogether from
this woman, and each of them was required "to enter into security to the
King's Majesty in the sum of ten thousand pounds apiece for this
purpose."
It may be doubted whether the scathing indictment he received from his
peers made any impression on him. But his day was over and, though he
tried to recover the license he had so shamefully abused and the
confidence of the nation he had so infamously betrayed, his star
steadily continued to set. His future career was one of baffled hopes
and pleasures, of ever deepening disgrace, humiliation, and even
poverty. He lost everything of the wonderful store of gifts that Fortune
had so bounteously bestowed on him--all, save his brilliant wit, which
in a world of wits acknowledged none superior. But even wit deserted him
at the end, and he died miserably enough. We have already, on an earlier
page, expressed our opinion of this remarkable libertine who occupies
such a prominent place in his times, and in mentioning him now for the
last we can find no more fitting words in which to dismiss him than
Pope's familiar lines. As the _oraison funèbre_ of the great Buckingham
they will be quoted as long as the phenomenal age in which he flourished
is remembered:--
"In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half hung,
The floors of plaster, and the walls of dung,
On once a flock-bed, but repair'd with straw,
With tape-tied curtains, never meant to draw;
The George and Garter dangling from that bed,
Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red,
Great Villiers lies--alas! how chang'd from him,
That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim!
Gallant and gay, in Clieveden's proud alcove,
The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love;
Or, just as gay, at council, in a ring
Of mimic'd statesmen, and their merry king.
No wit, to flatter, left of all his store!
No fool to laugh at, which he valued more.
There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends,
And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends."
As for Lady Shrewsbury, she was not only compelled to separate from her
lover and provide a surety of ten thousand pounds to that effect, but
obliged to leave the country. There were thousands of honest people who
would, no doubt, have liked to see her burnt or hanged, as would
probably have been her fate had she been a woman of the people. But Lady
Shrewsbury was a peeress and the widow of a Talbot, and criminal rank in
those days was banished not executed. She had not committed the
aristocratic crime of high treason, for which alone rank could suffer
death. There was, however, a very irksome durance to which offenders of
her sex and station were subjected, and in banishing her to Dunkirk
Charles obliged her to retire to a convent. How long she remained there,
or what intrigues finally freed her from what to such a woman must have
been a rigorous imprisonment, history does not relate. As far as the
public were concerned she had ceased to exist.
[Illustration: THE DUKE OF SHREWSBURY.]
Lady Shrewsbury was, however, very much alive, and having spun her web
round the younger son of a Somerset baronet, she married him, and under
the name of Mrs. Bridges played a secret and dangerous game in the
coming years. For her passions having burnt themselves out, from their
ashes sprang a fresh lust--the lust of political intrigue. Its victim
was her eldest son, the new Earl of Shrewsbury. A boy when his father
was slain, he had resented the ignominy of having to live with his
mother under Buckingham's roof; and though the spirit which urged him to
appeal to the House of Lords that he and his brother might be removed
from the care of such a mother was nipped in the bud, nevertheless it
was sufficient to make both children distasteful to Buckingham. They
were sent to their maternal grandfather, Lord Cardigan, to whom the
young Earl owed his education. At the time his mother married Bridges he
was one of the most promising young peers in England. A worthier
representative of the proud line from which he sprung it had, perhaps,
never had. Gifted with great personal beauty (his mother's legacy) and a
shy, gentle manner, he at once attracted all who met him. The
seriousness of his character corresponded with the high hopes he raised.
Born in a profligate and indulgent age, he had, like most young men of
spirit, yearned to taste all the pleasures of the senses. With the blood
of such a mother in his veins, to resist desire was impossible. He
tasted the cup of vice. It intoxicated him, and in that moment of
delirious pleasure it seemed to him, as to many another youth before and
since, that to be the slave of lust was a fate more enviable than that
of the conqueror of the world. The reputation of being a "king of
hearts," a title satirically applied to him at this period, he never
quite lost. But this young Talbot was not one of your commonplace
striplings who sway like reeds before the wind. He had a thoughtful,
intelligent mind and a great ambition. Already, by "a very critical and
anxious inquiry into matters of controversy," assisted by the celebrated
Tillotson, the young nobleman, a Roman Catholic by birth, heredity, and
education, had publicly professed his adherence to the Anglican faith. A
youth who could of his own initiative reason himself into taking such a
step was not to be long entangled by vice. The world was to be won, and
he meant to win it; he would be the greatest of all the Talbots, the
champion of liberty, the hope of Protestant England. It was a noble
ambition, and the times were favourable.
But from the very start two influences stronger than he pulled him back
at every step he took. One of these was his temperament. The conduct of
his mother, the death of his father, and that of a dearly loved only
brother--who within five days of his twenty-first birthday was killed in
a duel by one of the Duchess of Cleveland's bastards--had combined to
deepen the morbid tendencies of a naturally hyper-sensitive nature. To
the influence of these terrible family tragedies was added that of a
perpetual and vain struggle to subdue the lust he had inherited. He
lived, as it were, under the shadow of some fatal curse which seemed to
predestine all his actions to failure. Knowing full well the value of
self-confidence, he doubted himself constantly, and, like a man from the
brink of a precipice, was ever recoiling from great crises which he had
enthusiastically helped to create. With all the _wish_ in the world, he
had not the _will_ to be brave. And life demanded bravery, spirit,
initiative from him at every turn.
The other influence fatal to his career was his mother. He could never
rid himself from the fear in which he stood of her. To the Countess of
Shrewsbury, become now as fierce and vindictive in political intrigue as
she had formerly been in her amours, such a son was an asset of the
highest value. Married to her second husband, middle-aged, and buried in
a remote part of the country, the once notorious Messalina had long
ceased to be remembered. But there lived not in England in that day of
plots and counterplots a more inveterate conspirator. In the obscurity
of her retired life she was steeped to the throat in intrigue. Long
before the Revolution she was a spy and pensioner of the French King,
and with the fall of the Stuarts, under whom she had fared so safely,
she became, as was natural, a rabid Jacobite. The young Earl, her son,
long separated from her, was developing on quite opposite lines. In the
endeavour to realise his ideals, the year before the Revolution he
showed his disapproval of King James's policy by resigning all his Court
appointments, and in 1688, in behalf of the cause of freedom he had
publicly professed, joined the party that deprived the stubborn, stupid
Stuart of his throne. It was natural, as Miss Strickland says, that this
young man "might be considered (when all his advantages were computed)
the mightiest power among the aristocracy of Great Britain." William of
Orange, like all great statesmen, was quick to recognise talent; he
readily offered high office to this young Earl of Shrewsbury who had
helped to make him King of England, and on whom such high popular hopes
were built. It may be said that a young career never bloomed under a
more vivifying sun.
But now his mother, who lived remote from him and had never come into
his life but to bring doom with her, like the terrible, mysterious queen
in Maeterlinck's _Mort de Tintagiles_, reappeared. What was the exact
secret of her hold, what fears she worked on, what hopes she appealed
to, cannot be said; but her effect was like the effect of blackmail. The
young Earl with the ardent ambition and the noble ideals yielded--with
what anguish the indecision of his whole future career indicates--to the
inexplicable influence of his mother. One of the first steps in that
life of brilliant promise was one of treachery. The would-be saviour of
England secretly trafficked with the Court of St. Germain. Nor was he
allowed to stand forth as an open champion of the Stuarts whom he could
not love; he was made to remain at Whitehall as William of Orange's
chief and most confidential Minister in order that his mother and the
Jacobites might know all that was going on there. That such a man as
Shrewsbury could continue to play this double game long was impossible.
His pleas to be allowed to resign the seals of office were pitiable,
and his behaviour, when his treachery was finally denounced and King
William nobly and secretly gave him the chance to clear himself by a lie
which he professed to believe, was painful. The King's attitude on this
occasion gave him a fresh chance; he took it but to betray it and his
own better nature. At last his conscience could endure the strain no
longer; he left office and the country after a veritable martyrdom of
ten years. "Had I a son," he said, "I would sooner bind him a cobbler
than a courtier, and a hangman than a statesman."
After the death of his mother, who, if not wilfully, at least
heartlessly, contributed quite as much as his own temperament to the
ruin of his career, he returned to England in Queen Anne's reign. But
now, though his country, still believing in him, "called" him and he
tried to respond, it was too late. He flung all his influence on the
side of liberty and Protestantism, but his statecraft was demoralised by
his past experiences, and his opportunity, which seldom comes to a man
more than once, had been bungled in the previous reign. Like his mother,
he too was born out of his fitting age. In the more congenial atmosphere
of our day he would have won something more worthy of his great talents
than his dukedom and garter. To his lofty ambition such prizes were of
small account beside what his soul lost in grandeur.
Of all tragedies those of one's ideals are the saddest. The lives of
statesmen who have failed are always interesting, and as English history
is full of such the book that may some day record them will be worth
both reading and writing. In such a work, of a surety, the career of the
first and only Duke of Shrewsbury, who set out not to win fame and
fortune, but to do what he believed right, and miserably failed, will be
not the least dramatic. Like Tyrconnel, he was more sinned against than
sinning; to be forgotten by posterity as they are is not so dreadful as
to have the faint memory of them revived by the fleeting mention of some
"Wanton Shrewsbury" or other. To us the marring of her son seems the
greatest of this Messalina's crimes.
[Illustration: "MADAME."
(HENRIETTA, DUCHESS OF ORLEANS.)
_From a miniature reproduced by courtesy of Dr. G. C. Williamson._]
"MADAME"--HENRIETTA, DUCHESS OF ORLEANS
THE FRENCH COURT--THE EVIL GENIUS OF THE RESTORATION
As she was French in all but her birth, the favourite sister of Charles
II. can only be said to belong to the Court of the Restoration by
courtesy. Nevertheless, on the occasion of her two short visits to
England during her brother's reign the impression she created was so
lasting, so sympathetic, that posterity, like her own generation, has
agreed that of all the women who graced Whitehall the most fascinating
was Madame.
She was born in the thick of the Civil War at Exeter, whither her mother
had fled, and from which soon after her birth the _Reine Malheureuse_
was also obliged to flee, leaving her child to the care of the faithful
Lady Dalkeith. On the capitulation of Exeter the royal infant fell into
the hands of the Parliament, to which the charge of such a prisoner was
extremely embarrassing. It was, however, relieved from its dilemma by
Lady Dalkeith, who was a woman of courage and resource. For Cromwell,
very rightly looking upon every adherent of the Stuarts as a possible
conspirator, decided to dismiss her and confine the tiny princess at St.
James's, under his own supervision, whereupon Lady Dalkeith promptly
fled the country with her charge.
The story of their flight to Dover on foot, clad in the rags of
peasants--a disguise to which the little girl had such an objection that
she angrily announced to all they met, "that she was not a peasant boy,
but the Princess Henrietta of England"--when related at the French Court
no doubt excited a suitable thrill. But Parliament was not ridiculous
enough to pursue such fugitives, and they crossed to Calais in the
ordinary French packet. Such was Madame's _début_ on the theatre of
life. She was two years old at the time. Fifteen years later she again
appeared before the public as a star, so to speak,--a _rôle_ in which
she scored a brilliant popular success. Like most such intervals, these
intervening years were obscure, hard, discouraging.
For Queen Henrietta Maria, widowed, exiled, and impoverished to the
condition of shabby gentility, was not a cheerful mother to live with.
She was always weeping, praying, and plotting, and her _enfant de
bénédiction_ had a cheerless childhood. Rooms had been assigned to the
Queen of England at the Louvre, and the sum of forty thousand livres had
been voted her by the Parliament of Paris. But it was soon _mangé_ by
her son and his beggared followers, and there was often real misery in
that little Court at the Louvre.
The famous Cardinal de Retz, who during the Fronde was a sort of king in
Paris, describes with his mocking pity the state in which he discovered
the English royalties when one day in mid-winter affairs obliged him to
call on Henrietta Maria.
"You see," said the _Reine Malheureuse_, whom he found at the bedside of
her daughter, who as a child was thought to be consumptive, "I am
keeping Henrietta company; I dare not let the poor child rise to-day as
we have no fire."
"The truth was," adds de Retz ironically, "that no tradespeople would
trust her for anything. Posterity will hardly believe that a princess of
England, granddaughter of Henry the Great, had wanted a faggot in the
month of January to get out of bed in the Louvre, and in the eyes of the
French Court! We read in history with horror of baseness less monstrous
than this, and the little concern I have met with about it in most
people's minds has obliged me to make a thousand times this reflection:
_That examples of times past move men beyond comparison more than those
of their own times_. _We accustom ourselves to what we see, and I doubt
whether Caligula's horse being made a consul would have surprised us so
much as we imagine._"
Owing to the cynical de Retz, it no doubt consoled Henrietta Maria to be
assured that "a princess of England would not keep her bed the next day
for want of a faggot."
But his generosity seems to us to have been prompted from a far less
noble impulse than that of the chivalrous Duke of Ormond. For this
Bayard of the British peerage sold his order of the Garter for the
benefit of his Queen, and was "compelled to put himself in prison, with
other gentlemen, at a pistole a week for his diet."
These days of adversity, however, came to an end, and after the Fronde
was subdued Henrietta Maria enjoyed all the privileges of her royal
birth. Not that she availed herself of them; on the contrary, grief had
taken most of the joy out of life for her, and though she lived in the
closest intimacy with her sister-in-law, Anne of Austria, the Regent,
and in the midst of a brilliant Court, she was scarcely ever seen out of
her own apartments. But grief did not kill Henrietta Maria's ambition.
She longed to see a crown on her daughter's head. So the young princess,
who shared her mother's rigid seclusion, was carefully educated with the
secret object of making a suitable consort for her cousin, the young
King.
In looking back on these dreary years of girlhood Henrietta could
remember but a single joy they had contained. It was a joy, however, so
great that its memory coloured this entire period. This was the real
affection that her brother Charles, alone of mortals, during an all too
fleeting visit to Paris, evinced for her. The emotional child, whose
affections were being choked by the austerity of her mother's life, paid
back her brother's kindness to her with compound interest. He began by
treating her as a plaything with which he liked to toy in an idle moment
and ended by making her his friend and confidante. To her he was like a
hero of romance. No one in that graceless, dashing crowd of exiled
Cavaliers, whom necessity had turned into adventurers, followed his
fortunes with such an eager sympathy. No one in those long years of
baffled hopes and fruitless efforts was more firmly convinced that he
would come to his own again. When his star had completely vanished in
the dazzling sunlight of Cromwell, when even the astute Mazarin believed
that the throne of England was for ever lost to the Stuarts, the
insignificant Henrietta in her dreary room at the Louvre never
despaired. It is perhaps only a girl who could, under such
circumstances, have maintained such an unshaken faith. Charles never
forgot it. Cynical and insincere with all, he remained to the last ever
frank and true to his sister. She wished no greater reward.
Owing to the simplicity of her life no one in the brilliant French Court
remarked the almost imperceptible development of those spiritual charms
that were to turn an obscure princess into a fascinating queen of
hearts. As a child she was not at all pretty, and all her physical
defects were heightened by perpetual colds, and toothaches, and sore
eyes. The complete lack of taste with which her mother dressed her, and
a certain blue-stocking air that her intellectual cramming gave her
were, moreover, little calculated to excite admiration. It was, on the
face of it, absurd to imagine that Louis, palpitating with youth and
health and pride and the joy of life, would dream of choosing such a
princess for his queen. Pride alone would have prevented him from
placing on the throne beside him one whom he considered as a poor
relation living on his charity. Besides, his boy's head at the time was
full of Mazarin's nieces; he was kissing Hortense, flirting with Olympe,
and plighting undying troth with Marie.
Henrietta Maria, however, had learnt nothing from her prolonged lessons
in defeat; she was one of those women who resist, not from obstinacy,
but from habit. Having set her heart on seeing her daughter Queen of
France she intrigued accordingly. The most important accomplice in the
making of the match was Anne of Austria, the King's mother. The
relations between the sisters-in-law were of the most cordial
description, and Anne, like an anxious mother terrified lest her
favourite son should make a _mésalliance_--an event that in Louis' case
seemed quite likely--decided that the sooner he was married the better.
Of course she had a list of marriageable princesses to choose from, but
as in her anxiety there was no time to be lost her choice was confined
to one of two on the spot. These were "La Grande Mademoiselle" and the
Princess Henrietta, both of whom were her nieces; but as no love was
lost between Anne and the former, the princess of England who had
lacked a faggot to warm herself by suddenly found herself arrived
within measurable distance of the throne of France.
To facilitate matters Anne gave a dance in honour of Henrietta, who was
then eleven and very precocious, if equally unattractive, for her age.
The young King, who by all the rules of etiquette, which he observed so
faithfully in after life, should have offered his hand to his cousin,
accorded this honour, to his mother's dismay, to the Duchesse de
Mercoeur, the eldest of the beautiful nieces of Mazarin. Anne, who
though now no longer Regent, nevertheless deluded herself with the
thought that her influence over her son was still paramount, was covered
with mortification and lost her head. She went up to her son and ordered
him to dance with his cousin. But the expression on Louis' face warned
the observant Henrietta Maria that another humiliation was imminent for
her, and she tried to avert it with a tact that was hardly to be
expected of her by at once intervening between the mother and son,
declaring that her daughter had hurt her foot and could not dance.
"Well, then," cried the exasperated Anne, "if Henrietta does not dance
neither shall Louis."