Anne Hyde, Duchess of York

by J. R. Henslowe

[102]. Besant, “Survey of London”; Wheatley, “London, Past and Present”; Walford, “Old and New London.”

The house in the Strand then passed to Edward, second Marquess of Worcester, the loyal Cavalier who held his strong castle of Raglan so stoutly for the King, and who is, as well, remembered for his “Century of Inventions” and his numerous scientific experiments. He died in 1667, and his son Henry being created Duke of Beaufort in 1682 gave that name to the block of houses now occupying the site. During the Commonwealth, the house had been used for committees and was furnished by the Parliament for the Scottish Commissioners. At one time Cromwell himself had lived there,[^[103]] but in May 1657 a Bill was passed to settle it on Margaret, Lady Worcester. The Somersets having regained possession of their house, Lord Worcester, twelve days after the Restoration, offered it rent free to Edward Hyde, who, however, agreed to a lease at five hundred pounds a year, looking on it merely as a temporary house, intending to build for himself; an intention to be fulfilled before much time was past.

[103]. Sir Henry Craik, “Life of Edward, Lord Clarendon.”

Here for the present, at any rate, the Chancellor, who had accompanied his master on his triumphant return, took up his abode.

The pageant of the Restoration was possessing fully the mind and temper of the people. The streets were daily thronged with eager, excited, jubilant crowds, demonstrating their noisy welcome to the long expatriated King. London was delirious for the time being with the revulsion, and those who had endured years of exile and poverty were not the least happy. Among these might be numbered the Hydes. The Chancellor might certainly be considered to deserve a season of rest and prosperity after so many strenuous years of service, and as soon as the King was at Whitehall, firmly established in the house of his fathers, Hyde had leisure to turn to his own affairs, and forthwith sent off for his daughter Anne. It has been said that the Princess Mary’s suspicions had been already aroused with regard to her brother James and her maid of honour, and that she had therefore dismissed the latter from her service, but if so it does not seem that she imparted such suspicions to any one at that time, for certainly Hyde himself was then completely ignorant of them. He was, as we have seen, a man of strong and tenacious family affections, and for his elder girl he had a deep and enduring love. “She being his eldest child he had more acquaintance with her than with any of his children.”[^[104]] Besides, another question with regard to her was beginning to occupy his mind. Now that public affairs were settling down peaceably in England, he bethought him of finding an honourable establishment for his Nan, and it seems he had “an overture from a noble family.”

[104]. “Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon: Continuation,” by himself.

Since the quickly extinguished love affairs at The Hague in 1654-1655 nothing of the kind is recorded, and the Chancellor was fully alive to the advisability of a suitable marriage for this his elder daughter, who was now twenty-three, a mature age according to the ideas of the time. Back, therefore, to England and to the new home in London, came Anne Hyde, a stranger to her native land since her childhood, to be received by her parents with exceeding joy.

It was, no doubt, to many of the long exiled Cavaliers a summer of hope, destined, in many cases, to be unfulfilled. They looked forward eagerly to the knitting together of ravelled skeins, to the renewal of old ties, of old friendships; to the building up of home in the dear familiar places so long laid waste and desolate.

So Edward Hyde and Frances his wife looked forward fondly to welcoming their Nan, and cherished happy visions of a blithe bridal, of a new relationship, new ties; of children’s children at their knees in God’s good time.

They were keeping open house like their neighbours with lavish hospitality, and perhaps Mistress Anne, in spite of the possession of her momentous secret, and the anxiety inextricable from it, was not averse to the intercourse now opened with the choicest spirits of that English society which was re-forming itself around her.