Oxford, who had seen within her grey walls the dwindling Court of the martyred king, who had vindicated her loyalty so stoutly, who had suffered with such constancy, received now the recognition of her fealty. None could express gratitude with more consummate grace than Charles II., nor clothe appropriate sentiments with more fitting words, and if the hearers were forced to the conviction that they were words and nothing more, still they left their own impress behind them.
The King and Queen, the Duke and Duchess of York, and most of the train were on horseback, and the cavalcade as it swept up the High Street, past University, and Queen’s and St Mary’s Church made a very goodly show by means of colour and movement, waving plumes and fluttering ribbons, glitter of jewels and sheen of satin and velvet. Just so had the Cavaliers who had rallied to the royal standard twenty years back adorned the same streets with life and colour. For them, too, the bells had pealed out and the citizens stood to watch, and they were gone—and some of them forgotten.[[174]]
[174]. News Letter, 28th September: “Entering the town, the Recorder made a speech, and the Mayor gave a present. The City militia guarded them to the North gate, the gownsmen to Christ Church, and the scholars of Christ Church made them a guard in the great quadrangle to their lodgings, where Dr Fell the Dean and the Canons received them with a short speech. On the 24th the University went in procession to Christ Church to know when they would visit the University, and the 28th was fixed upon. On the 25th the King and Duke went to Cornbury to see Woodstock Park and the places near, returning to Oxford to dinner. On the Sunday they all attended service at Christ Church, when Dean Fell preached a seasonable and excellent sermon” (“Calendar of Domestic State Papers”).
In 1665 there seems to have been another combined excursion westward.
The ambassador Van Gogh, writing to the States General from Chelsea, on 24th July records:
“The King and Duke of York go on Thursday from Hampton Court for three or four days and then to Salisbury, whither the Queen and Duchess are already gone.”[[175]]
[175]. “Calendar of Domestic State Papers.”
Somewhere about this time an idea seems to have got about that the Duke of York was completely ruled by his wife, submissive to her will in all things.
An opinion to this effect was openly expressed by the King, whose tongue was never too scrupulous, and who nicknamed his brother “Tom Otter” after the henpecked husband in Ben Jonson’s “Epicene, or Silent Woman,” and elsewhere we are told that James “seemed in awe of his wife.”[[176]] If so, this state of things did not long continue, and in any case it is altogether foreign to the character of the Duke of York, as we know it. He was at no time a person to be easily overawed, whether by his wife or another. That she influenced him up to a certain point is very probable, but there were distinct limits to that. Even the amount of influence which Anne exercised in the early days of their marriage was destined to decrease before long, and that for a reason which must now be given. The grounds for this reason cannot be satisfactorily examined nor the evidence sifted, for that is no longer possible. There are, as almost always occurs, conflicting and contrary accounts; that is in the nature of things.
[176]. “Charles II. and his Court,” A. G. A. Brett; “History of My Own Time,” Burnet, ed. 1766.