Another of her father’s friends and advisers, destined to be in close contact with him in later years, was Gilbert Sheldon, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury.[[18]] Belonging as he did to the school of Laud and Andrewes, his views on certain points differed widely from those of Morley, yet both were alike in their unswerving loyalty to the King. Both, too, enjoyed the friendship of Falkland as of Hyde, who indeed made Sheldon one of the trustees of his papers during his exile. Like the bulk of his fellows, the latter suffered imprisonment, being ejected from his College of All Souls, for his “malignancy.” After the Restoration he was high in the King’s favour, nevertheless he did not hesitate to refuse to admit Charles to Holy Communion, on the score of the latter’s evil life.
[18]. Dictionary of National Biography.
In the house at Breda, sedulously cared for by her parents, Anne, the elder, and by her father at least the best beloved daughter, reached her seventeenth year. She was a clever, thoughtful girl, unusually well read for the period and circumstances of her life, a devout churchwoman under the guidance of Morley and her father, looking out on the life unfolding before her with a mind which then at least showed singular powers of balance and perception.
It may be stated in parenthesis, that the other daughter of the house was Frances, who subsequently married Sir Thomas Keighley of Hartingfordbury in Herts, but nothing beyond the bare fact is recorded of her, after childhood, though Evelyn mentions her as a guest at his house in 1673. The year 1654 was destined to bring about a change in the life of Anne which was to prove more momentous than anyone could foresee.
In the household of Mary, Princess of Orange, there was a maid of honour, one Mistress Kate Killigrew. An outbreak of smallpox at Spa drove the Court to take refuge at Aix-la-Chapelle, but Mistress Killigrew had already been smitten with the disease and died.
Without loss of time the Stuart princess nominated Chancellor Hyde’s young daughter to the vacant post. In this she was backed by her brother Charles, for whom she had hired a house in Aix, keeping also a table for him.
The proposed honour was, however, by no means so welcome as might be supposed.
For one thing, the queen-mother, always a woman of impulse and violent prejudice, had in no degree abated her dislike to Hyde, and everyone was aware of the fact. O’Neill, it seems, declaring that the Princess herself had so much kindness for the Chancellor’s daughter that she long resolved to have her upon the first vacancy, suggested to his friend to ask for the post for Anne, a proceeding to which Hyde strongly objected, no doubt smarting under the knowledge of Henrietta’s attitude towards him. He had, he said, “but one daughter, who was all the company and comfort her mother had in her melancholic retirement,”[[19]] and therefore he was resolved not to separate them, nor to dispose his daughter to a “Court life,” “which he did in truth perfectly detest.”[[20]]
[19]. It is possible that the younger daughter, then an infant, might have been left in England under the charge of friends there.
[20]. “Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon,” by himself. 1827.