[68]. “James II. and his Wives.” Allan Fea.
[69]. “Turenne,” by the author of “Life of Sir Kenelm Digby.”
Soon after Turenne’s summons to attend the Cardinal the treaty which Cromwell concluded with France required the banishment of the Duke of York, and having thus perforce to leave the army, he came to Paris there to rejoin his mother. He was smarting under the treatment he had received, for Turenne was his ideal and moreover had treated him with marked kindness and consideration, giving “him a reception suitable to his birth, and endeavoured by all possible proofs of affection to soften the remembrance of his misfortunes.” This great leader had a high opinion of the Duke, saying of him that he “was the greatest prince and like to be the best general of his time.” We find Clarendon himself writing to Secretary Nicholas in 1653: “The Duke of York is this day gone towards the field, he is a gallant gentleman and hath the best general reputation of any young prince in Christendom and really will come to great matters.”
The Duke had not reached manhood without further plans on his mother’s part to negotiate a suitable alliance. We have seen that the Lorraine match fell through. In the succeeding year, when he was eighteen, Marie d’Orléans, Mademoiselle de Longueville, the daughter of the Duke de Longueville by his first wife, was suggested by Sir John Berkeley. She was ugly and deformed, though called a wise princess, but the greatest heiress in France, after Mademoiselle de Montpensier, and James made no objection.[[70]] Hyde, however, opposed the marriage, on the ground that the heir presumptive ought not to marry before the sovereign, in which axiom the queen-mother for once agreed with him, and Anne of Austria, Queen-regent of France, clinched the matter. The Duke of York, she decided, was too great, as the son of a king, to marry in France without the consent of his nation and brother.[[71]] Mademoiselle de Longueville married Henri, Duc de Nemours, in 1657. Madame de Motteville speaks of her good looks, which Hyde denies, and affirms attachment on James’ part.
[70]. “Life of Henrietta Maria,” I. A. Taylor.
[71]. “Memoirs for History of Anne of Austria,” Madame de Motteville, 1725; “James II. and his Wives,” Allan Fea.
James is reported to have been “very much displeased,” which seems a little unlikely, considering his youth and the unattractive appearance of the proposed bride. But four more years of strenuous life, as we know, were to pass over his head, and then at Peronne, in the train of his sister Mary, James, Duke of York, was fated to meet for the first time Anne Hyde. In his own memoirs, dictated long afterwards, he acknowledges that he learnt to love her at that time. The brilliant girl, for whom Spencer Compton and Harry Jermyn had sighed in vain, was, with her ready wit and hereditary talents, a conspicuous figure in the entourage of the Princess of Orange.[[72]] “Besides her person,” says the record just mentioned, “she had all the qualities proper to inflame a heart less apt to take fire than his.” “A very extraordinary woman” she is even called by Burnet (who, however, is not always to be trusted). But at any rate, clever, fearless, ready of tongue and broadly sympathetic, she stood for much that might be considered typically English at that time.[[73]] As for Anne’s own feelings, no one can wonder at her reciprocation of a passion which a prince like James laid at her feet. Fresh from the fields of his prowess, confessed by the greatest captain of the age to be of conspicuous gallantry, and surrounded with the halo of unmerited misfortune, there is no doubt that he must have seemed a very Paladin to the daughter of the loyal Cavalier to whom fealty to the exiled race was a religion, and for the rest, when one looks at the picture painted in his youth by Lely—the haughty, beautiful face, with its sensitive mouth and luminous eyes—one cannot choose but see, like poor Nan Hyde, in the Duke of York a veritable Prince Charming.
[72]. “Memoirs of the Court of England during Reign of Stuarts.” J. H. Jesse.
[73]. “Queen Anne and her Court.” P. F. Williams Ryan.
His own statement is simply made in few words,[[74]] and apparently if the lovers confessed their attachment to each other at that time no one else guessed their secret then nor for long afterwards.[[75]]