Monk was fond of low company; both he and his vulgar wife were quite unfit for high—I cannot say refined—society, for there was but little refinement at court. Ann Clarges had been kind to Monk when he was a prisoner in the Tower, and he married her out of gratitude. She had been previously married to Thomas Ratford, of whose death no notice was given at the time of the marriage, so that the legitimacy of Christopher, afterwards second Duke of Albemarle, was seriously questioned. Aubrey relates a story which cannot well be true, but which proves the general feeling of doubt respecting the point. He says that Thomas Clarges came on shipboard to tell Monk that his sister had had a child. Monk cried out, “What is it?” and on hearing the answer, “A boy,” he said, “Why, then, she is my wife.” Pepys was told a tale by Mr. Cooling which corroborates the opinion expressed on the company kept by the Duke. “Once the Duke of Albemarle, in his drink, taking notice as of a wonder that Nan Hide should ever come to be Duchess of York. ‘Nay,’ says Troutbeck, ‘ne’er wonder at that; for if you will give me another bottle of wine, I will tell you as great, if not a greater miracle.’ And what was that, but that our dirty Bess (meaning his Duchess) should come to be Duchess of Albemarle?”[278]
Sir Edward Montagu, Earl of Sandwich, was in every respect the opposite of Monk. He was a courtier and a gentleman, but he did not manage to gain the popularity of his great contemporary, nor to retain such as he did at one time possess. As Pepys’s great patron his name naturally occupies a very prominent position in the “Diary,” and as such he has already been frequently alluded to in these pages. He appears to have been a very agreeable man, but so easy and careless in business matters that he was continually in want of money. In 1662 Pepys found that he was above £7,000 in debt, and his enemies soon after gave out that his debts amounted to £100,000. At any rate, his finances were so often in an unsatisfactory state that Pepys had a special dislike to lending his money in that quarter. Three years afterwards he had grown very unpopular, and “it was purposed by some hot-heads in the House of Commons, at the same time when they voted a present to the Duke of York, to have voted £10,000 to the Prince, and half-a-crown to my Lord of Sandwich; but nothing came of it.”[279] It was, therefore, well for him when he obtained an honourable exile by being appointed ambassador to the court of Spain, as there he was held in high esteem. His enemies, however, were not satisfied, and they continued to attack him during his absence. Whatever his faults, and they were probably many, Lord Sandwich was by far the most able naval commander of his time, so that the nation had a heavy loss when he was killed in the naval action against the Dutch at Solebay, in May, 1672.
Prince Rupert, as the cousin of the King, naturally held a prominent position in the State, but he did not gain much credit from the undertakings he was thrust into. His fame as a brilliant, though rash, soldier, was gained during the troubles of his uncle’s reign, and not from anything he did after the Restoration. He was out of place on board ship, although he is said to have displayed immense bravery and much skill in the sea-fight against the Dutch, from August 11th to 13th, 1673. His interest in science and mechanical art appears to have been real, and to him we owe the invention or introduction into England of mezzotinto engraving, and the introduction of
... “that glassy bubble
That finds philosophers such trouble,
Whose least part cracked, the whole does fly,
And wits are cracked to find out why.”
The Prince’s courage was so patent to all that his friends were rather surprised to find that when he was very ill and like to die, “he had no more mind to it than another man;” so they came to the rather lame conclusion that “courage is not what men take it to be—a contempt of death.”[280]
