After James came to the throne, his daughter Mary, Princess of Orange, expressed a desire through Monsieur d’Alberville to know the chief motives of his conversion; and in reply he wrote her a full account of the circumstances that led to it. He tells her that he was bred a strict Church of England man, “And I was so zealous that way, that when the Queen my mother designed to bring up my brother, the Duke of Gloucester, a Catholic, I, preserving still the respect due to her, did my part to keep him steady to his first principles; and, as young people often do, I made it a point of honour to stick to what we had been educated in, without examining whether we were right or wrong.”[258]
Anne Hyde, then in the household of the Princess of Orange, was contracted to the Duke of York on November 24th, 1659, and was secretly married to him at Worcester House, on September 3rd, 1660. There is a good story told by Locke, in his “Memoirs of Lord Shaftesbury,” which shows how shrewd that nobleman was: “Soon after the Restoration the Earl of Southampton and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, having dined together at the Chancellor’s, as they were returning home Sir Anthony said to my Lord Southampton, ‘Yonder Mrs. Anne Hyde is certainly married to one of the Brothers.’ The Earl, who was a friend to the Chancellor, treated this as a chimæra, and asked him how so wild a fancy could get into his head. ‘Assure yourself’ (replied he) ‘it is so. A concealed respect (however suppressed) showed itself so plainly in the looks, voice, and manner wherewith her mother carved to her, or offered her of every dish, that it is impossible but it must be so.’ My Lord Southampton, who thought it a groundless conceit then, was not long after convinced, by the Duke of York’s owning her, that Lord Ashley was no bad guesser.”[259]
An infamous conspiracy was formed by Sir Charles Berkeley and others to induce the Duke to deny his marriage by accusing his wife of immoral conduct. Although the Duke in the end acted honourably by her, he did not dismiss the miscreants who lied in the basest manner. There seems reason to believe that a few years afterwards she did carry on an intrigue with Henry Sidney, afterwards Earl of Romney, and Pepys alludes to the rumours respecting this on November 17th, 1665, January 9th, 1665–6, and October 15th, 1666. Peter Cunningham sums up the evidence on the point as follows:—“There cannot, I think, be any doubt of the intrigue of the Duchess of York (Anne Hyde) with Harry Sidney, afterwards Earl of Romney, brother of Algernon Sidney and of Waller’s Sacharissa. See on what testimony it rests. Hamilton more than hints at it; Burnet is very pointed about it in his History; Reresby just mentions and Pepys refers to it in three distinct entries and on three different authorities.”[260]
Pepys tells us that the Duchess sat at her husband’s council, and interfered with business,[261] and the fact that she was the master was generally acknowledged. On one occasion the King called his brother “Tom Otter,” alluding to the henpecked husband in Ben Jonson’s “Epicene, or the Silent Woman.” Tom Killegrew threw the sarcasm back upon the King with telling effect, by saying, “Sir, pray which is the best for a man to be, a Tom Otter to his wife or to his mistress?”[262] it being well known that Charles was the slave of Lady Castlemaine.
The Duchess possessed great abilities, and readily adapted herself to her exalted position. Burnet says of her that she “was a very extraordinary woman. She had great knowledge, and a lively sense of things. She understood what belonged to a princess, and took state upon her rather too much.”
The next personage of importance at court was Mrs. Palmer, afterwards Countess of Castlemaine and Duchess of Cleveland, who figures so largely in the “Diary.” It is greatly to the credit of Lords Clarendon and Southampton that they would have nothing to do with the King’s favourite. Burnet tells us that the former would let nothing pass the Great Seal in which she was named, and the latter would never suffer her name to appear in the Treasury books. The King usually held a court at his mistress’s lodgings before going to church, and his ministers made their applications there, but Clarendon and Southampton were never to be seen in her rooms.
Clarendon opposed her admission to the post of Lady of the Bedchamber to the Queen, and would not allow his wife to visit her; in consequence he made an implacable enemy who did not rest until she had compassed his disgrace.
On July 26th, 1662, Pepys heard that when the mistress’s name was presented by the King to his wife, the Queen pricked it out of the list. On February 23rd, 1662–63, he heard that the King had given to Lady Castlemaine all the Christmas presents made him by the peers; and that at a court ball she was much richer in jewels than the Queen and Duchess both together. Although our Diarist was a devoted admirer of the lady, he is forced to call this “a most abominable thing.”
Lady Castlemaine was a woman of the most abandoned profligacy, and, moreover, of bad manners as well as bad morals. In the Grammont “Memoirs” she is described as “disagreeable from the unpolished state of her manners, her ill-timed pride, her uneven temper and extravagant humours.” Pepys knew her only in the distance, and was infatuated with her beauty; at one time he fills his eyes with her, which much pleases him,[263] and at another he “gluts himself with looking at her.”[264] The sight of her at any public place was quite sufficient to give him pleasure, whatever the entertainment might be, and his admiration was extended to everything which was in any way connected with the King’s mistress.