The greatest beauty at the court of Charles II. was Frances Stuart, who was most assiduously followed by the King. She was the exact opposite of Lady Castlemaine, being as much a lady as her rival was ill-mannered, and as foolish as the other was clever. Her portrait is admirably painted in the Grammont “Memoirs,” thus:—“She was childish in her behaviour and laughed at everything, and her taste for frivolous amusements, though unaffected, was only allowable in a girl about twelve or thirteen years old. A child however she was in every other respect, except playing with a doll: blind man’s buff was her most favourite amusement: she was building castles of cards, while the deepest play was going on in her apartments, where you saw her surrounded by eager courtiers, who handed her the cards, or young architects, who endeavoured to imitate her.”
Her relations with the King were of a very risky character, and scandal made very free with her good fame. Pepys took it for granted after hearing the common report that she was the King’s mistress;[265] yet Evelyn told him on April 26th, 1667, that up to the time of her leaving the court to be married there was not a more virtuous woman in the world. A passage in the “Diary” (Nov. 6th, 1663) exhibits very strongly the low state of morality at court. Lord Sandwich told Pepys “how he and Sir H. Bennet, the Duke of Buckingham and his Duchess, was of a committee with somebody else for the getting of Mrs. Stewart for the King, but that she proves a cunning slut, and is advised at Somerset House by the Queen mother, and by her mother, and so all the plot is spoiled and the whole committee broke.” By the early part of the year 1667 Mrs. Stewart’s position had become quite untenable, and to escape from the King’s importunities she accepted the proposal of marriage made to her by the Duke of Richmond. The King threw all the obstacles he could in the way of the marriage, and when the lovers escaped and were united he exhibited the greatest chagrin. Pepys relates a story[266] that Charles one Sunday night took a pair of oars and rowed secretly to Somerset House in order to get sight of the Duchess, who was then living there. The garden door not being open, he is said to have clambered over the wall, “which is a horrid shame!”
The Duke was afterwards appointed ambassador to Denmark, and died at Elsinore, December 21st, 1672. After the death of her husband the Duchess lived at court and attached herself to the person of the Queen. In the latter years of her life she remained in seclusion dividing her time between cards and cats. She died in 1702, and by her last will left several favourite cats to different female friends with legacies for their support.
“But thousands died without or this or that,
Die and endow a college or a cat.”[267]
Among the lesser lights of the court was Elizabeth, Countess of Chesterfield, who figures so prominently in the Grammont “Memoirs.” The scandal there related did not escape the open ears of Pepys, who on the 3rd of November, 1662, first hears that the Duke of York is smitten with the lady; that the Duchess has complained to the King, and that the Countess has gone into the country. The Earl is not mentioned here, but on January 19th, 1662–3, the Diarist obtained fuller particulars, and learnt that Lord Chesterfield had long been jealous of the Duke. Pepys calls the Countess “a most good virtuous woman,” and evidently considers the husband’s conduct in carrying off his wife to his seat in Derbyshire as caused by a fit of ungrounded jealousy. The day after Lord Chesterfield had seen his wife talking with the Duke of York, he went to tell the latter how much he felt wronged, but the Duke answered with calmness, and pretended not to understand the reason of complaint. The story of the bas verds that forms so prominent a feature in the Grammont account is not alluded to by the Diarist, but these brilliant coloured stockings introduced by the Countess, seem to have become fashionable subsequently, for on the 15th of February, 1668–9, Pepys bought a pair of green silk stockings, garters, and shoe-strings, and two pairs of jessimy gloves to present to his valentine.
The career of pretty Margaret Brook, who married Sir John Denham on the 25th of May, 1665, was a short one. On the 10th of June, 1666, Pepys hears that she has become the Duke of York’s new mistress, and that she declares she will be owned publicly. On November 12th of the same year he hears of her serious illness, an illness that terminated in death.
At this time rumours of poisoning were easily put into circulation, and some supposed that Lady Denham was murdered by her husband. Others whispered that the Duchess of York had poisoned her with powder of diamonds, but when her body was opened after death, as she had desired it should be, no sign of poison was found.[268]
One of the most brilliant of the maids of honour, and, to her credit be it said, one of the few virtuous ladies at court, was Frances Jennings, the eldest sister of Sarah, afterwards Duchess of Marlborough. The Duke made advances to her, which she repulsed coolly. He could not believe in his defeat, and plied her with love-letters. It was not etiquette for her to return them to him, so she affected unconsciousness, and carelessly drawing out her handkerchief allowed these royal effusions to fall upon the floor for anyone who chose to pick up. The King now laid siege to the beauty, but was equally unsuccessful as his brother had been. In the Grammont “Memoirs” there is a full account of the lady’s freaks, and Pepys managed to hear of one of them:—“[Mrs. Jennings], one of the Duchess’s maids, the other day dressed herself like an orange wench, and went up and down, and cried oranges; till falling down, or by some accident, her fine shoes were discerned, and she put to a great deal of shame.”[269] This is but a bald account of the adventure so graphically described by Hamilton, who makes the object of Miss Jennings’s disguise to be a visit to the famous German doctor and astrologer in Tower Street. Rochester assumed this character and the name of Alexander Bendo at the same time, issuing a bill in which he detailed his cures, and announced his powers of prophecy. This was on the occasion of one of the wild young Lord’s escapes from court, but we are not told its date. Hamilton is silent on this point, but Pepys’s corroboration of one part of the adventure helps to date the other.