[134]. “Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon: Continuation,” by himself. “Said to be helped on by enemies of Hyde, to bring disgrace upon him.”
So matters stood when suddenly a complete reversal, in one direction, occurred.
Whether Berkeley was touched by his master’s misery, which to say the least of it seems unlikely, or, which is more probable, he foresaw that his own ends were unlikely to be served as he expected by the slander he had coined, he made at this time a full confession, and a powerful auxiliary also came forward in the person of the King, always henceforth a kind and steady friend to his sister-in-law.
On escaping from the sea of intrigue which had almost fatally engulfed her, Anne did at least display great generosity and a lofty capacity for forgiving injuries, for she pardoned Berkeley the vile slanders with which he had loaded her name, and even suffered him to kiss her hand in token of amnesty, when with brazen effrontery he presented himself before her. Perhaps the revulsion was too great at the time to admit of anything but relief; perhaps she thought she could afford to be magnanimous, seeing that her enemy had found himself unable to drag her from her pride of place.
James, on his part, at once and joyfully acknowledged the marriage in defiance of his family, and sent an affectionate message to his wife, “bidding her to keep up her spirits for Providence had cleared her aspersed fame, and above all to have a care of his boy and that he should come and see them both very shortly.” It is evident that he had only been waiting for the chance, for Lady Ormonde, who with her husband was always a stanch friend to the Hydes, and had been steadily convinced of Anne’s innocence, said of the Duke that she “perceived in him a kind of tenderness that persuaded her he did not believe anything amiss.”
He had now to withstand anew his mother’s resentment, for when they first met, after his reconciliation with Anne, the Queen refused to speak to her son. She, however, adroitly turned the circumstances of the King’s acknowledgment of the match into a means of gaining his consent to his younger sister’s marriage, for she represented to him that he must consent to the Princess Henrietta becoming Duchess of Orleans, for “she could not suffer her to live at his Court to be insulted by Hyde’s daughter.” The fact of the case was that in England the Duchess of York would take precedence of the Princess. Whether this consideration weighed with Charles or not, he made then no opposition to the marriage of his favourite and “dearest sister” with the cousin for whom he entertained, with good reason, the strongest dislike and contempt.
On 26th November Lord Craven was writing to the Queen of Bohemia of Anne: “She is owned in her family to be Duchess of York, but not at Whitehall as yet, but it is very sure that the Duke has made her his wife. Your Majesty knows it is what I have feared long although you were not of that opinion. The Princess [Mary] is much discontented at it, as she has reason.”
He wrote again on the 28th: “I cannot tell what will become of your godson’s business: the child is not yet christened, but it is confidently reported that it shall be within a few days, and owned. The Princess is very much troubled about it; the queen is politic and says little of it. There is no question to be made but that they are married. They say my lord Chancellor shall be made a duke.”[[135]]
[135]. “James II. and his Wives,” Allan Fea; “Life of Henrietta Maria,” J. A. Taylor.
The Duke of York was godson of his aunt Elizabeth, it must be noted here.