[256]. Lansdown MSS.; also State Tracts, 1660 to 1689.
So much for the letter of remonstrance to his son-in-law. Through all the stately, measured, elaborate phraseology and studied deference the writer’s deep anxiety may be traced quite distinctly, but in the words addressed to Anne herself, sorrow, affection, warning, reproof speak, as is natural, with undisguised warmth. The father is yearning over the child who is passing beyond his ken, and from the place of his lonely exile he gathers up his utmost powers, to lead, if it may be, the wandering lamb home to the fold.
“You have much reason,” so run the words, “to believe that I have no mind to trouble you or displease you, especially in an argument that is so unpleasant and grievous to myself; but as no distance of place that is between us, in respect of our Residence or the greater distance in Respect of the high condition you are in, can make me less your Father or absolve me from performing those obligations which that Relation requires from me, So when I receive any Credible Advertisement of what reflects upon you, in point of Honour, Conscience or Discretion, I ought not to omit the informing You of it, or administering such advice to You as to my understanding seems reasonable, and which I must still hope will have some Credit with You, I will confess to You that what You wrote to me many Months since, upon those Reproaches which I told you were generally reported concerning your defection in Religion, gave me so much satisfaction that I believed them to proceed from that ill Spirit of the Times that delights in Slanders and Calumny, but I must tell you, the same report increases of late very much, and I myself saw a Letter the last week from Paris, from a person who said the English Embassador assured him the day before, that the Dutchess was become a Roman Catholick, and which makes great Impression upon me, I am assured that many good men in England who have great Affection for You and Me, and who have thought nothing more impossible than that there should be such a change in You, are at present under much affliction with the observation of a great change in your course of Life and that constant Exercise of the Devotion which was so notorious and do apprehend from your frequent Discourses that you have not the same Reverence and Devotion which You use to have for the Church of England, the Church in which You were Baptized, and the Church the best constituted and the most free from Errors of any Christian Church this day in the world, and that some persons by their insinuations have prevailed with You to have a better Opinion of that which is most opposite to it, the Church of Rome, than the integrity thereof deserves. It is not yet in my power to believe that your Wit and Understanding (with God’s blessing upon both) can suffer you to be shaken further than with Melancholick reflections upon the Iniquity and wickedness of the Age we live in, which discredits all Religion, and which with equal license breaks into the Professors of all, and prevails upon the Members of all Churches, and whose Manners will have no benefit from the Faith of any Church. I presume You do not intangle Yourself in the particular Controversies between the Romanists and us, or think Yourself a competent Judge of all difficulties which occur therein; and therefore it must be some fallacious Argument of Antiquity and Universality confidently urged by men who know less than many of those you are acquainted with, and ought less to be believed by you, that can raise any Doubts or Scruples in you, and if You will with equal temper hear those who are well able to inform You in all such particulars it is not possible for you to suck in that Poyson which can only corrupt and prevail over you by stopping Your own Ears and shutting Your own Eyes. There are but two persons in the World who have greater authority with You than I can pretend to, and am sure they both suffer more in the Rumour, and would suffer much more if there were ground for it, than I can do, and truly I am as likely to be deceived myself or to deceive you as a man who endeavours to pervert You in Your Religion; And therefore I beseech You to let me have so much Credit with You as to perswade You to Communicate any Doubts or Scruples which occur to you before You suffer them to make too deep an Impression upon You. The common Argument that there is no Salvation out of the Church and that the Church of Rome is the only true Church is both irrational and untrue; there are many Churches in which Salvation may be attained as well as in any one of them, and were many even in the Apostles time otherwise they would not have directed their epistles to so many Severall Churches in which there were different Opinions received and very different Doctrines taught. There is indeed but one Faith in which we can be saved; the stedfast belief of the Birth, Passion and Resurrection of our Saviour; and every Church that receives and embraces that Faith is in a state of Salvation, if the Apostles Preach true Doctrine, the reception and retention of many errors do’s not destroy the Essence of a Church, if it did, the Church of Rome would be in as ill, if not in a worse Condition than most other Christian Churches, because its Errors are of a greater Magnitude and more destructive to Religion. Let not the Canting Discourse of the Universality and Extent of that Church which has as little of Truth as the rest, prevail over You, they who will imitate the greatest part of the World, must turn Heathens, for it is generally believed that above half the World is possessed by them, and that the Mahometans possess more than half the remainder; There is as little question that of the rest which is inhabited by Christians, one part of four is not of the communion of the Church of Rome, and God knows that in that very Communion there is as great discord in Opinion, and in matters of as great moment, as is between the other Churches. I hear you do in publick discourses dislike some things in the Church of England, as the marriage of the Clergy, which is a point that no Roman Catholic will pretend to be of the Essence of Religion, and is in use in many places which are of the Communion of the Church of Rome, as in Bohemia, in those parts of the Greek Church which submit to the Roman; And all men know, that in the late Council of Trent, the Sacrament of both kinds, and liberty of the clergy to marry, was very passionately press’d both by the Emperor and King of France for their Dominions, and it was afterwards granted to Germany, though under such conditions as made it ineffectual; which however shows that it was not, nor ever can be look’d upon as matter of Religion. Christianity was many hundred years old, before such a restraint was ever heard of in the Church; and when it was endeavoured, it met with great opposition, and was never submitted to. And as the positive Inhibition seems absolutely unlawful so the Inconveniences which result from thence will upon a just disquisition be found superior to those which attend the liberty which Christian Religion permits. Those Arguments which are not strong enough to draw persons from the Roman Communion into that of the Church of England, when Custom and Education, and a long stupid resignation of all their faculties to their Teachers, usually shuts out all reason to the contrary, may yet be abundant to retain those who have been baptized, and Bred and Instructed in the Grounds and Principles of that Religion which are in truth not only founded upon the clear Authority of the Scriptures, but upon the consent of Antiquity and the practice of the Primitive Church, and men who look into Antiquity know well by what Corruption and Violence and with what constant and Continual Opposition, those Opinions which are contrary to ours, crept into the World, and how unwarrantably the Authority of the Bishop of Rome, which alone supports all the rest, came to prevail, who hath no more pretence of Authority and Power in England, than the Bishop of Paris and Toledo can as reasonably lay claim to, and is so far from being matter of Catholick Religion, that the Pope hath so much and no more to do in France or Spain or any other Catholick Dominion, than the Crown and Laws and Constitution of several Kingdoms gave him leave, which makes him so little (if at all) considered in France, and so much in Spain; And therefore the English Catholicks which attribute so much to him make themselves very unwarrantable of another Religion than the Catholick Church professeth and without doubt they who desert the Church of England, of which they are Members, and become thereby disobedient to the Ecclesiastical and Civil Laws of their Country and therein renounce their Subjection to the State as well as to the Church (which are grievous sins) had need to have a better excuse than the meeting with some doubts which they could not answer, and less than a manifest evidence that their Salvation is desperate in that Communion cannot serve their turn; and they who imagine they have such an evidence, ought rather to suspect that their Understanding hath forsaken them, and that they are become mad, than that the Church which is replenished with all Learning and Piety requisite, can betray them to Perdition. I beseech you to consider (which I hope will overrule those ordinary Doubts and Objections which may be infus’d into you) that if you change your Religion, you renounce all Obedience and Affection to your Father, who loves you so tenderly that such an odious Mutation would break his heart, you condemn your Father and your Mother (whose incomparable Virtue, Piety and Devotion hath plac’d her in Heaven) for having impiously Educated you; and you declare the Church and State, to both which you owe Reverence and Subjection, to be in your Judgment Antichristian; you bring irreparable dishonour, scandal and prejudice to the Duke your Husband to whom you ought to pay all imaginable Duty, and whom I presume is much more precious to you than your own life, and all possible ruine to your Children of whose company and conversation you must look to be depriv’d, for God forbid that after such an Apostacie, you should have any power in the Education of your Children. You have many Enemies, whom you herein would abundantly gratifie, and some Friends, whom you will thereby (at least as far as in you lies) perfectly destroy; and afflict many others who have deserved well of you. I know you are not inclined to any part of this mischief, and therefore offer those Considerations, as all those particulars would be the infallible Consequence of such a Conclusion. It is to me the saddest Circumstance of my Banishment that I may not be admitted in such a season as this, to confer with you, when I am confident I could satisfie you in all your Doubts, and make it appear to you that there are many Absurdities in the Roman Religion inconsistent with your Judgment and Understanding, and many Impieties inconsistent with your Conscience; so that before you can submit to the Obligations of Faith, you must divest yourself of your Natural Reason and Common Sense, and captivate the distastes of your own conscience to the Impositions of an Authority which hath not any pretence to oblige or advise you. If you will not with freedom communicate the Doubts which occur to you, to those near you of whose Learning and Piety you have had much experience, let me Conjure you to impart them to me, and to expect my answer before you suffer them to prevail over you. God bless you and yours.”[[257]]
[257]. Lansdown MS.
It is a long, stilted, tedious letter, read under present-day conditions, and the methods used by the writer in argument hardly commend themselves, but, especially towards the end, the anxiety of the father’s heart is made quite evident. The great lawyer marshals all the force of controversy at his command in the vain hope of influencing his daughter and reversing the decision so dreaded by him. He appeals to her heart, no less than to her head.[[258]] Husband, children, friends—he places before her the possible loss of all, the harm that may accrue to them; he leaves, as far as may be, nothing unsaid, nothing untried. It is curious and significant that one sentence reveals the fact that Clarendon was aware of his daughter’s unpopularity in certain quarters. “You have many enemies,” he says, as he points to the triumph which her change of faith would afford them as one reason, if an unworthy one, against it. The pathetic significance of this last letter is driven home all the more forcibly for this reason—that she to whom these weighty words were addressed, doubtless with many prayers that they might prevail, was destined never to read them. Death stepped in, and for ever sealed the page.
[258]. “It is well known that when Kings and Princesses of the Blood make an alliance with a subject, their arms are not put into the Royal Escutcheon, nor did ever the late Duchess of York call the Lord Chancellor father, nor did ever the late King James call the Earls of Clarendon and Rochester brothers, nor the Princesses Mary and Anne term them as uncles. Indeed the late Chancellor, when he wrote letters of advice to the late Duchess in relation to her changing her religion made use of the style of Daughter, which indeed he ought not to have done” (“Aylesbury Memoirs.” Roxburghe Club).
“At Queen Anne’s accession, the second Lord Clarendon, her uncle, came to see her, and simply said, ‘I wish to see my niece’—which meant that her brother was now King, and she but a usurper. He had also rebuked her for her flight to Nottingham at the time of her father’s reverses. On her part Anne would not receive her uncle without the oath of allegiance, and this he refused” (“Queen Anne and her Court.” P. F. Williams Ryan.)
As already mentioned, the fact of the Duchess of York’s conversion was not known for some time later, though suspicion was soon busy on the subject, and the Court, in high excitement, buzzed with the matter.
It was probably a trial to any one so outspoken and downright as Duchess Anne to conceal a fact of which she was certainly not ashamed, but the commands of the King conveyed to her through his brother, were peremptory and stringent, and she consented to hold her tongue for the present. As things turned out there was soon no reason for silence, except in so far as her change might have affected others. So the royal convert practised her new faith in silence. The chaplains shook their heads as Sunday after Sunday the Duchess turned away from “God’s Board.” Morley was no longer at her right hand, and the others spoke only aside to each other—not to her. Anne was never very approachable, and she had long learned the value of her position in checking inconvenient inquiries. Sweet-faced Margaret Blagge grieved silently, but she was very young, and dared not speak, even if the exigencies of her post would have allowed it.
The Duke of York, after his exercise of authority and the message he had transmitted from the King, said nothing. The time for confidence between those two was long past, and though he secretly sympathised with his wife in the step she had taken—his own subsequent action is warrant sufficient for that—estrangement had become a habit, and the party wall dividing husband and wife needed a stronger force still to throw it down. Perhaps a word or two may have passed between the new convert and Queen Catherine. It is more than likely, indeed, but the latter, timid and shrinking, was not constituted to uphold any one, and besides, she was far too much in awe of the King, too pathetically anxious to please him, to be capable of running counter to any commands he might choose to enforce. She could, and probably did, give approbation, sympathy, for what they were worth, but of these Anne stood in no need, then nor at any other time. Her position was one of “lonely splendour,” and she had long learnt to stand alone and carve out her own path. No doubt the lesson had been a bitter one, but she had learnt it once for all. During this year, moreover—1670—the Duke was seriously ill,[[259]] and this fact may have aided in the estrangement from his wife, or at any rate in the withholding of complete confidence from him.