Part 20

_Ennui_, however, was not an emotion that even a Duchess of Portsmouth, sated with power, could long experience at such a Court as Whitehall. Shortly after her Vendôme fright came the Rye House Plot. This plot within a plot had for its object the guaranteeing of the Protestant Succession. It was really the backwash of the Popish Plot, and was the last vain effort of Shaftesbury to regain power by compelling Charles to summon a Parliament, in which he and his party intended by a _coup d'état_ to humble or, if necessary, to banish the dynasty. By some fatality a group of fanatical Protestants were at the same time independently conspiring to bring about Shaftesbury's end by murdering both Charles and the Duke of York. One of their number proved a traitor. Charles was warned and the assassins captured. The Court, which was perfectly aware of the political aspirations of Shaftesbury and his party, unscrupulously but adroitly seized the opportunity to implicate the principal members of the Protestant or Whig party in the Assassination Plot of which they were wholly ignorant. Never was a triumph more remorseless and complete. With Shaftesbury fled and the others beheaded, the Catholics more than got their revenge for what they had suffered at the time of the Popish Plot. There was no longer any question but that the Duke of York would succeed his brother and France continue to direct the policy of England. Louis XIV. promptly seized Luxemburg. The Grand Siècle was now at its zenith.

The French king, however, was not destined to drink deep of the wine of success; the cup he had so craftily fashioned was to be dashed from his lips by William of Orange, and his fair vineyard utterly devastated by the Duke of Marlborough. But who now would have thought, while under a cloudless sky Louis pressed the juice from his grapes, that at fifty-five Charles II.'s race was run? Or that in three short years "France's Poland" would have for ever freed herself from the Sun King? Certainly not the Duchess of Portsmouth, when one Sunday night in February, 1685, Death entered the Grand Gallery at Whitehall, and in a twinkling confounded all the deep and cunning intrigues of the subtlest brains in Europe.

Everybody remembers the justly celebrated passage in which Macaulay has described the voluptuous scene Whitehall presented on that fatal night. What a picture in the Gallery of History it is, this English tableau of the literary Delaroche! What wealth of colour and detail! Fancy that great gallery of Whitehall, "an admirable relic of the magnificence of the Tudors, crowded with revellers and gamblers," in which Charles sat "chatting and toying" with the Duchesses of Cleveland, Mazarin, and Portsmouth, and listening to the clink of "gold heaped in mountains" at the basset-table while the Mazarin's "French page, a handsome boy, whose vocal performances were the delight of Whitehall, warbled some amorous verses." Then picture the consternation of all those revellers and gamblers in that splendid corridor when the King, suddenly stricken with apoplexy, tumbles into the arms of a courtier standing near! For lack of a lancet they opened his vein with a penknife; a hot warming-pan is placed on his head. "A loathesome volatile salt, extracted from human skulls, was forced into his mouth. He recovered his senses; but was evidently in a situation of extreme danger." For a week he lingers, begging the people who crowd his death-room pardon for the unconscionable time he takes in dying; polite, witty, good-natured to the end, and not forgetting to recommend his mistresses to the care of his successor!

No king that we can recall has ever died in such pomp of flippancy as Charles II. Louis XV. dismissing du Barry and making his _amende honorable_ to God; the Regent d'Orléans dropping dead in the arms of the Duchesse de Falaris; and Louis XIV. solemnly setting out for the Plutonian kingdom with all the etiquette of Versailles, are historic death-scenes that strike the imagination. But to us they all seem to pale beside the studied, godless levity of Charles's. It was characteristic of the era which died with him, for in reality the death-bed of Charles II. was likewise that of the Restoration.

And how fared the Duchess of Portsmouth in this catastrophe? "I found her," wrote Barillon to Louis, "in great grief. But instead of bemoaning her own sad and altered position she took me into a little room and said, 'Monsieur l'Ambassadeur, I am now going to tell you a secret, although its public revelation would cost me my head. The King of England is at the bottom of his heart a Catholic, and there he is, surrounded with Protestant Bishops! There is nobody to tell him of his state or speak to him of God. I cannot decently enter his room. Besides, the Queen is now there constantly.'" (Poor little Catherine, who went into convulsions and sent to beg his pardon, at which Charles exclaimed, "Alas, poor lady! She beg my pardon! I beg hers with all my heart.") "The Duke of York is too busy with his own affairs to trouble himself about the King's conscience. Go and tell him that I have conjured you to warn him that the end is near, and that it is his duty to save without loss of time his brother's soul."

This forethought of the Duchess of Portsmouth, who was religious _au fond_ like all Bretons, for the salvation of Charles's soul disarms criticism. To scold her for not conforming to our twentieth-century code of morals is preposterous in its presumption. And as we are quite unable to satisfy ourselves as to the exact standard of the morals of her own day, we had better not bother about her morals at all.

An hour after Charles's death King James paid her a visit of condolence. James's object, no doubt, was to keep well with Louis through her. But his reign was short and stormy, and the Duchess of Portsmouth was too clever not to foresee the disaster of 1688. After settling her affairs in England she returned to France. But her interests obliged her to be ever in close relations with the former country, which in the wars waged between the two for nearly twenty-five years exposed her to many humiliating suspicions. On one occasion Louis threatened to exile her; on another William of Orange refused to allow her to land in England. Her worthless son ran away from her and compromised her politically. Her wealth took to itself wings and flew away. In the fire that destroyed the Palace of Whitehall she lost all her precious furniture. For years she was pursued by creditors and haunted by bailiffs. But Louis was grateful for her past services and protected her from the law as far as he could. He gave her a pension to make up for the loss of her English one, and this the Regent doubled. She who had had countless thousands a year was reduced to a paltry eight hundred. But she still had her titles, and till old age overtook her she frequently made use of her _right_ to sit on a _tabouret_ at Versailles, and as Duchess of Portsmouth and ex-mistress of Charles II. swelled the ranks of the Jacobites at St. Germain, much to the disgust of Queen Mary. The last years of her life were passed at Aubigny in a strange mixture of miserliness and religious devotion, completely forgotten by the world in which she had played so great a part.

Fifty years after the death of Charles she died in the full possession of her faculties at the age of eighty-five, having seen all she had toiled for undone, the House of Stuart driven from England and even from its refuge in France. She had outlived Louis and all his splendour and all her contemporaries. It was time for this relic of a crumbling despotism to depart. The mills of God had begun to grind. Another fifty years and the Revolution was to sweep the _ancien régime_ away for ever.

Index

A

Arlington, Earl of, 114, 285

" Countess of, 285, 286

Arran, Earl of, 195

Aubigny, Duchesse d' (Duchess of Portsmouth), 287, 295, 299

Austria, Anne of, 20, 226, 227, 228, 234, 248

B

Banier, Baron, 52

Barillon, 303-305, 307-309, 314, 318

Barkeley, Sir Charles, 72

Beaufort, Duc de, 273, 274, 313

Bellefonds, Maréchal de, 278

Berni, Marquis de, 168-170

Berwick, Duke of, 136, 160, 166, 173, 174, 190

Berwick, Duchess of, _see_ La Belle Nanette

Blague, Miss, 149, 151, 153, 154

Blantyre, Lord, 135

Boileau, 233

Bossuet, 260, 263, 264, 269

Bouillon, Duchesse de, 20, 57

Braganza, Catherine of, 66, 68, 69, 84, 115, 128, 131, 149, 283, 318

Bridges, Mrs. (Countess of Shrewsbury), 214

Brisacier, Marquis de, 150, 153, 154

Brounker, 178, 179

Buckingham, Duke of, 75, 89, 112, 116, 120, 154, 202, 203, 205-214, 283, 297

Buckingham, Duchess of, 205

Burnet, Bishop, 176, 283

Butler (author of "Hudibras"), 89

C

Cardigan, Earl of, 194, 215

Castlemaine, Earl of, 63, 66, 67, 100

Castlemaine, Lady, _see_ Cleveland, Duchess of

Charles II., 20, 40, 41, 45, 64, 68, 74, 80-82, 110, 115, 125-129, 166, 211, 224, 228, 268, 278-280, 305, 314, 317

Chesterfield, Earl of, 62, 63, 66

Chiffinch, 46, 76

Churchill, Arabella, 166

" John, _see_ Marlborough, Duke of

Clarendon, Earl of, 66, 68, 93, 129

Cleveland, Duchess of, 59-105, 109, 117, 127, 179, 284, 301

Cleveland, Goodman, 99

Colbert, 24, 29, 271

" de Croissy, 295, 296

Colonna, Constable, 21, 32, 34, 35

" Madame la Connétable, 21, 32, 34, 35, 37

Cooper, Ashley, _see_ Shaftesbury, Earl of

Cornbury, Lord, 129

Courcelles, Marquise de, 29-31, 39

Courtin, 42, 43, 45, 168-170, 298, 300, 302

Cromwell, 172, 222

D

Dalkieth, Lady, 221

Danby, 315

Dangeau, Marquis de, 161

Davis, Moll, 76

Deleau, Mrs., 102

de Retz, Cardinal, 223

Digby, Francis, 120

Dillon, Viscountess, 185

Dryden, 120, 283

E

Effiat, 267, 268, 270

Elboeuf, Mesdemoiselles d', 290

Evelyn, 182, 212, 271, 293

F

Falmouth, Lord, 141

Feilding, Handsome, 100-103

Fontenelle, 147

Forneron, 40, 44, 57, 286, 302, 305, 313

G

Gloucester, Duke of, 231

Goodman, 76

Grafton, Duke of, 301

Gramont, Chevalier and Comte de, 96, 121-123, 144, 152, 195, 257

Gramont, Comtesse de, 137-162, 174, 257

Gramont, Maréchal de, 144, 161, 241, 260

Grand Prieur, _see_ Vendôme, Philippe de

Grignan, Madame de, 36

Guiche, Comte de, 148, 161, 241-254

Guise, Duchesse de, 290

Gwynn, Nell, 96, 200, 292, 299, 306

H

Hall, Jacob, 75

Hamilton, Count Anthony, 95, 111, 114, 115, 117, 118, 141, 149, 157-160, 167, 180, 199, 257

Hamilton, George, 120, 122, 181

" James, 72

" La Belle, _see_ Gramont, Comtesse de

Hamilton, Lady, _see_ Tyrconnel, Duchess of

Hamilton, Sir George, 138

Hart, 75

Henrietta Maria, 106, 108, 222, 226, 231, 249, 269

Howard, Thomas, 196

Hyde, Ann, _see_ York, Duchess of

J

James II., 65, 139, 164-166, 171, 172, 183, 184, 186, 188-190, 290, 306, 319

Jameson, Mrs., 133, 147, 185, 304

Jennings (Lovely), Frances, _see_ Tyrconnel, Duchess of

Jennings, Mrs., 164

Jennings, Sarah, _see_ Marlborough, Duchess of

Jermyn, 80, 81, 95, 109, 140, 176, 180, 181, 196-198

K

Kéroual, Henriette de, 275, 301

" Louise de, _see_ Portsmouth, Duchess of

Kéroual or Querouaille, Monsieur, 272

Kéroual, Sebastien de, 275

Killigrew, Harry, 199, 201-207

" Thomas, 199, 200

L

La Belle Hamilton, _see_ Gramont, Comtesse de

La Belle Nanette, 136, 160

La Belle Stuart, _see_ Richmond, Duchess of

La Fayette, Madame de, 260, 261, 263, 264

La Grande Mademoiselle, 226, 238, 259, 290

La Palatine, 267, 268

Lauzun, Duc de, 34, 188

Lee, Nat, 132

Lenclos, Ninon de, 49

Lenoncourt, Sidonie de, _see_ Courcelles, Marquise de

Lionne, 168-170

Longueville, Duchesse de, 32

Lorraine, Chevalier de, 35, 36, 238, 249, 255, 258, 266, 267, 268, 270, 278

Louis XIV., 20, 34, 37, 42, 94, 108, 145, 156, 157, 174, 182, 209, 226, 227, 239, 240, 253, 255, 257, 265, 269, 276 _et seq._

Louvois, 29

M

Macaulay, Lord, 173, 174

Madame, 221-270

Maine, Duchesse de, 160

Malicorne, 251

Mancini, Hieronima, 18

" Hortense, _see_ Mazarin, Duchesse de

Mancini, Laure, _see_ Mercoeur, Duchesse de

Mancini, Marie, _see_ Colonna, Madame la Connétable

Mancini, Olympe, _see_ Soissons, Comtesse de

Mancini, Philip, _see_ Nevers, Duc de

Manicamp, 251

Marie Louise, Queen of Spain, 270

Marie Thérèse, Queen of France, 234, 235

Marlborough, Duchess of, 164, 184, 191

Marlborough, Duke of, 78-80, 191

Mazarin, Cardinal, 18-23, 49, 58

" Duc de, 22-28, 32, 42, 44, 53, 58

Mazarin, Duchesse de, 17-58, 300

Meilleraye, Duc de la, 57

Mercoeur, Duchesse de, 19, 227, 313

Modena, Mary of, 39, 183, 291, 320

Molière, 234, 270

Monaco, Prince of, 44

" Princess of, 148, 241

Monmouth, Duke of, 72, 307, 308, 309

Monsieur, 228, 237-240, 248, 255, 257, 258, 259

Montague, 98, 261

Montalais, Mademoiselle de, 243, 244, 248

Morel, Simon, 265, 266

Morgan, Lady, 190

Morin, 51

Muskerry, Lady, 149, 151-153

" Lord, 150, 153

N

Nevers, Duc de, 19, 27, 28, 53

Newcastle, Duchess of, 153

Norfolk, Duke of, 141

O

Oates, Titus, 51, 306

Orange, William of, 56, 186, 218, 219, 307, 309, 319

Orleans, Duchess of, _see_ Madame

" Duke of, _see_ Monsieur

" Gaston d', 237, 238, 290

Ormond, Duke of, 89, 93, 94, 138, 224

P

Palmer, Mrs., _see_ Cleveland, Duchess of

Palmer, Roger, _see_ Castlemaine, Earl of

Pepys, 65, 66, 67, 70, 72, 75, 83, 85,86, 107, 111, 121, 132, 135, 198, 201

Pope, 77, 135, 213

Portsmouth, Duchess of, 271-320

Price, Miss, 150, 151, 154, 165, 175-179

R

Racine, 233

Rawlings, Giles, 197, 198

Richelieu, Marquis de, 53

" Marquise de, 53, 313

Richmond, Duchess of, 81, 82, 105-136

Richmond, Duke of, 125-132, 140

Richmond, Duke of (son of Duchess of Portsmouth), 301

Rochester, Earl of, 177, 268

Rohan, Chevalier de, 32

Rotier, Philippe, 123, 124

Russell, Lord John, 141-143

" William, 142

Ruvigny, 41, 132, 296

S

St. Albans, Duke of, 292

St. Evremond, 47-58, 141, 146, 283

St. Réal, Abbé de, 38, 43, 44

Saint-Simon, 58, 146, 239, 240, 265, 311, 313, 314

Sault, Comte de, 275

Savoy, Duchess of, 39

" Duke of, 37, 38

" Prince Eugene of, 52, 254

Sévigné, Madame de, 53, 269, 299

Shaftesbury, Earl of, 306, 307, 309, 316

Shannon, Lady, 202

Sheldon, Archbishop, 115

Shrewsbury, Countess of, 174, 193-220

Shrewsbury, Duke of, 215-220

" Earl of, 204, 205

Sister Benedicta, 99

Soissons, Chevalier de, 52

" Comtesse de, 20, 21, 52, 252, 253, 254, 270

Spratt, Dr., 210

Stuart, Ann, _see_ La Belle Nanette

" of Blantyre, 106

" Frances Theresa, _see_ Richmond, Duchess of

Stuart, Sophia, 135

Sunderland, Earl of, 308, 309

Sussex, Countess of, 45, 66, 98

T

Talbot, Peter, 171

" Richard, _see_ Tyrconnel, Duke of

Toulongeon, Comte de, 144, 155

Tréville, 261, 262

Tyrconnel, Duchess of, 163-192

" Duke of, 170-176, 180, 183-190, 195

V

Vallière, Mademoiselle de la, 240, 245, 246

Vallot, 258, 259

Vardes, Marquis de, 247-254

Vendôme, Duc de, 19, 313

Vendôme, Philippe de, 312-315

Villars, Mrs., 102

Villiers, Barbara, _see_ Cleveland, Duchess of

Vossius, 46

W

Wadsworth, Mary, 101, 102

Wall, Mrs., 308

Walpole, 153, 191, 192

Wycherley, 77, 78

Y

York, Duchess of, 164, 166, 176, 179, 290

York, Duke of, _see_ James II.

The Gresham Press,

UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED,

WOKING AND LONDON.

* * * * *

Transcriber's Notes:

Simple typographical errors were corrected.

Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

Irregular page numbering made consistent.

Page 147: unbalanced quotation mark repaired with balanced single quotation marks.

Removed illustrations' references to the pages they should face.