In July the following year Charles Edward acknowledged his natural daughter by Mrs. Walsingham, under the title of Lady Charlotte Stuart, Duchess of Albany, and Mann reports: “She is allowed to be of a good figure, tall, and well made, but that the features of her face resemble too much those of her father to be handsome. She is gay, lively, very affable, and has the behaviour of a well-bred Frenchwoman, without assuming the least distinction among our ladies on account of her new dignity.... The new Duchess has appeared at the Theatres (which were crowded on her account) with all her father’s jewels, which are very fine.... Poor Count Albine,” writes Sir Horace again in December, “decays every day, visibly. His daughter did well to come in time to reap his succession, for which she will not wait long. The faculties of his mind are as weak as his body.”
After the death of Charles Edward the palace became the residence of the British Minister to the Court of Tuscany. Charles Greville, who was in Florence in 1830, writes: “I breakfasted with Lord Normanby, who has got a house extending 200 feet in front, court, garden and stables, for about £280 a year. His house was originally fitted up for the Pretender, and C.R.’s are still to be seen all over the place.”
The Velluti-Zati, Dukes of San Clemente, to whom the palace now belongs, descend from one of those great merchant families of Florence whose members were able to turn their hands and their brains to anything. The first time the name occurs is early in the XIIIth century when Piero di Berto, surnamed Velluti, had a cloth factory in Oltrarno, and dealt largely in wool. His son Buonaccorso fought at Montaperti in 1260, and when he died thirty-six years later was reputed to be one of the richest merchants in Italy. He built a palace and a tower, together with factories and houses for his workpeople, on a podere, or farm, called La Casellina (Via de’ Velluti and Via de’ Vellutini still mark the site). The Corsini, the Ridolfi and the Corbinelli built such fine houses near his, that the street was called the Via Maggiore (afterwards shortened into Via Maggio).
Lippo, Buonaccorso’s son, was the first of twenty-nine Priors of his house, and many of the Velluti filled important posts under the Republic as ambassadors to Lucca, Naples and Tunis, and as governors of various subject towns. One of the most famous of the family, and eminent as a jurist, was Donato, born in 1313. He filled the important post of Gonfalonier of Justice several times, was elected advocate of the poor, went to Bologna as ambassador in 1344, and in the same year was sent to Arezzo to quell a rebellion that had broken out in that city. A few months later, he represented the Commune of Florence in negotiating a peace between Perugia and Siena. Donato Velluti was several times ambassador to various courts of Europe, and wrote a chronicle which deals chiefly with family matters. In reading it one gathers how terrible the plague must have been in those days. Instead of mentioning a year, he perpetually dates events as “before (or after) the great mortality.” He nearly died of it, and records that he owed his life to the devotion of his wife Monna Bice de’ Covoni, “for hardly one in a hundred escaped.” Agnolo degl’Albizzi, husband of his wife’s sister Monna Ginevra, died of the plague of 1348, and Ginevra of the next epidemic in 1363. She had been left with four small boys, whose story, as related by Donato, will give an idea of the greater part of the chronicle. “Giano, son of the said Monna Ginevra, notwithstanding the sound and severe whippings received from her, showed signs of being a good-for-nothing and wicked youth; for his evil conduct his relations put him in prison some time ago, and there he still is. Paolo, the second son, gave hopes of becoming a good youth when in the bank of the Covoni, and did well until he took to running after women and idling about, thus wasting his time. He has now reformed and is doing well, and will become an honest man and a good relation. Filippo, the third son, is of no account, neither good nor bad, and has been made a monk in S. Miniato a Monte, all he was fit for. Antonio, the youngest boy, will be a good man if he continues as he has begun. He is now in Provence.”[88]
Paolo, a descendant of Donato, carried on the good traditions of his house, and began a chronicle in 1555, when he was fifty-five years of age. It gives a curious description of the relations between a merchant and a king of one of the proudest nations in Europe, and so pleasing a picture of honest Paolo himself that one is sadly tempted to translate the whole of it. Of his ancestor Andrea, a son of Donato the jurist, he writes: “He was a most excellent man, expert in his trade and active, and God-fearing. He always attended the first mass in S. Spirito and then went about his business in which he made large profits, as he began to trade after the great mortality of 1448, at which time goods were sold for ready money, so the gains were large. Piero, his son, preserved, but did not augment his patrimony as he might have done had he paid attention to the business. Andrea, eldest son of the said Piero, was tall, well made and of a fine presence, courageous and very hot-tempered when young, cantankerous and quarrelsome; his mother and his sister Maria offered up many prayers for him, and as it pleased God he was seized with a desire to go abroad. He went to Spain with a horse and nine ducats in his pocket, where he did so well that he left 60,000 ducats.... In Spain he acquired many friends, being serviceable to the great, to his equals and to those beneath him; lending and giving, and being very liberal. He was so beloved by the gentlemen and grandees, that no other foreigner had ever been held in such consideration. King Ferdinand, the Catholic, when in Valladolid was wont to rise at an early hour, and sometimes went to mass at the church of S. Francesco next door to Andrea’s house. After hearing mass the King would ride on his small mule into the entrance hall of the house and send for Andrea, who came down with his nightcap on his head, his habit being to go to his study and write for two or three hours, and then he would dress and brush his hair. The King seeing him thus said: ‘Andrea, is it not shameful that you, being a merchant and having to make money, should only get up now?’ So he swore upon his life, and such like modes of speech as they use in Spain, that he had been up for many hours, and would tell the King all he had written and done. Often the King would keep him talking thus in private for an hour or more, and when Andrea went to the palace the King would leave whomsoever he was talking to and come forward to meet him.” After describing various other members of the family Paolo continues: “It now remains to say something of myself; but as it is not fitting that one should speak well or ill of oneself, I leave that to others. I will only mention that I began to work in the Capponi’s shop when a small boy. Then, by my uncle’s desire, I went to Lyons and was in the house of the Panciatichi, and thence to Spain to join my said uncle. He kept me but a short time with him, sending me to see after his business at Valencia, Saragossa and Barcelona, and several times I went to the fairs in Castile. I was three hundred miles away when he died, and as he left all his fortune to the nephews of his sister, I found myself without money, save the little that came to me by law from the said uncle’s patrimony.... I repeat that I remained with little money and the loss of my youth, for I was then thirty-five. So I bethought me that with what I had to expect and any dower I might receive, I could live well, and decided to take unto myself a wife. But it did not turn out as I thought, for my gains were far less than I had calculated and my expenses much greater than I had imagined, in addition to which I had to buy much furniture, as I found but little of what had belonged to my father when I returned from Spain.... I then reasoned with myself that it would be better to do at once willingly what later I might be forced to do by want, and earn something by my own work. Our Lord God opened for me a chance in the bank of Federigo de’ Ricci, not, it is true, with a large salary, but had I it not to-day I should be, I will not say poor, because that I am with so many children, but in dire need. God be thanked for His aid. To go back somewhat, I note that in January, 1547, I took for my legitimate and beloved wife Francesca Guidetti, who has been good, and is dearer to me than I can say. Easy tempered and an amusing companion, she rules our family excellently well; and has always been, and is, most affectionate to me, for these and other good qualities I love her very deeply....” Paolo Velluti died in 1562, and the present Dukes of San Clemente come from his younger brother Raffaello, one of whose descendants took service in the Spanish army, and settled in Sicily. He made a large fortune and married Maria Zati, after having bought the estates of Grottaglia and Galluccio. When the Sicilian family of Zati died out, all their possessions came to Francesco Velluti, who was born at Galluccio in 1699. He was made Duke of San Clemente, Marquess of Sta. Maria a Rifesi, etc., etc. His son returned to the old cradle of his race, and bought from the Guadagni the fine palace in the Via Gino Capponi. The present Duke is his grandson.
PALAZZO SERRISTORI
Via de’ Renai: No. 2.
Of the old Serristori palace but little remains as it was incorporated in the large new building in 1873. It was chiefly interesting because the arch-traitor Malatesta Baglioni, who sold Florence to Charles V. and Clement VII., had his head-quarters there during the siege of 1530.
A certain Ser Ristoro came from Figline in 1384 and became notary to the Signoria, and from him descend the family of Serristori who gave ten Gonfaloniers and twenty-seven Priors to Florence. They were staunch adherents of the Medici until the time of Alessandro, when Francesco and his sons Gugliemo and Niccolò were exiled as rebels. Niccolò joined Filippo Strozzi against Cosimo I., was taken prisoner at Montemurlo and imprisoned for life at Volterra.
The Senator Serristori was Minister for Foreign Affairs under the Grand Duke Ferdinando III. His son Luigi served for a time in the Russian army, and afterwards became Governor of Siena, and of Pisa in 1845, when the last Grand Duke of Tuscany revived in his favour the title of Count Palatine, bestowed on an ancestor of his in 1439 by the Emperor Paleologus. His son Alfredo went to Constantinople and acted as adjutant to Omer Pasha during the Crimean war. In 1858 he filled the same post to General Cialdini and assisted at the campaigns fought for the Unity of Italy. He died unmarried and was succeeded by the son of his sister, who took the name of Serristori.