She was impatient to escape, and eager besides for the marriage of her sole remaining daughter, the disastrous results of which it was impossible for her to foresee. She was also anxious, on account of her health, to visit the baths of Bourbon which then enjoyed a great reputation.

The King accompanied his mother and sister to Portsmouth, where they embarked, but the Duke of York remained in London. He was still ill and depressed. He had passed through a period of acute pain and anxiety; he had really felt deeply the death of the sister who had always been to him, at least, staunchly affectionate, at a time when he needed affection, and now he “being indisposed was at Whitehall with the Dutchess.”

At the time of the Restoration Hyde had refused a peerage, but now, for obvious reasons, he signified his acceptance of one, and on the 6th November he had taken his seat as Baron Hyde of Hindon in Wilts (near Hatch, where Laurence Hyde, his ancestor, had lived). Moreover the King made him a grant of twenty thousand pounds out of the amount (fifty thousand pounds) which Parliament had sent the latter at The Hague, at which time the Duke of York, by the way, had received ten thousand pounds and Gloucester five thousand pounds. Later, that is in April 1661, Hyde received his final honours, being created Earl of Clarendon and Viscount Cornbury.

A closing epilogue to the drama of the marriage comes from the pen of Lord Craven. Writing to the Queen of Bohemia on 11th January 1661 he says: “I have this morning been to wait upon the duchess; she lies here and the King very kind to her: she takes upon her as if she been duchess this seven years. She is very civil to me.”[[144]] And on 23rd February: “The greatest news we have here is that upon Monday last, the duke and duchess were called before the Council and were to declare when and where they were married and their answer was that they were married the 3rd of September last, in a chamber at Worcester House, Mr Crowther married them; nobody but my Lord of Ossory and her maid Nell by; but that they had been contracted long. That is all that I can hear of the business.”[[145]]

[144]. “Lives of Princesses of England.” M. A. Everett-Green.

[145]. “Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia.” M. A. Green, revised by S. C. Lomas.

CHAPTER V
THE DUCHESS

It is hard to survey quite dispassionately, or even thoroughly to understand, the attitude of Anne Hyde on safely attaining her new dignity, the dizzy height to which she had climbed by such a thorny path. She seems, unhappily, to have had enemies from the first, but whether they were due to her father’s steadily increasing unpopularity, to her own behaviour, or to envy of her success, easily comprehensible, it is difficult to determine. Probably each of these conditions had something to do with it.

As regards her conduct, James himself says of her: “Her want of birth was made up by endowments, and her carriage afterwards became her acquired dignity.”[[146]] Pepys, who, as has been already remarked, never lost an opportunity of a fleer at her, says, as early as 13th April 1661, of “Edward Pickering his discourse most about the pride of the Duchess of York.” This may or may not be true, for Pepys was nothing if not prejudiced, and the man who could, with his eyes open, write with foolish admiration of “my dear Lady Castlemaine,” cannot be considered an authority to be altogether respected. It is however certain, from other sources, that from the first, Duchess Anne was known unfavourably for her arrogance. Even Lord Craven, as we have seen, had noticed it, and he had no reason to be specially biassed. On this point also the French ambassador, the Comte de Cominges, remarks with some covert amusement: “She upholds with as much courage, cleverness and energy the dignity to which she has been called, as if she were of the blood of the kings or of Gusman at the least, or Mendoza.”[[147]]