'As if preposterously they would confess
A forced hypocrisy in wickedness.'
Walpole compares the age of Charles II. to that of Aristophanes—'which called its own grossness polite.' How bitterly he decries the stale poems of the time as 'a heap of senseless ribaldry;' how truly he shows that licentiousness weakens as well as depraves the judgment. 'When Satyrs are brought to court,' he observes, 'no wonder the Graces would not trust themselves there.'
The Cabal is said, however, to have been concocted, not at Wallingford House, but at Ham House, near Kingston-on-Thames.
In this stately old manor-house, the abode of the Tollemache family, the memory of Charles II. and of his court seems to linger still. Ham House was intended for the residence of Henry, Prince of Wales, and was built in 1610. It stands near the river Thames; and is flanked by noble avenues of elm and of chestnut trees, down which one may almost, as it were, hear the king's talk with his courtiers; see Arlington approach with the well-known patch across his nose; or spy out the lovely, childish Miss Stuart and her future husband, the Duke of Richmond, slipping behind into the garden, lest the jealous mortified king should catch a sight of the 'conscious lovers.'
This stately structure was given by Charles II., in 1672, to the Duke and Duchess of Lauderdale: she, the supposed mistress of Cromwell; he, the cruel, hateful Lauderdale of the Cabal. This detestable couple, however, furnished with massive grandeur the apartments of Ham House. They had the ceilings painted by Verrio; the furniture was rich, and even now the bellows and brushes in some of the rooms are of silver filigree. One room is furnished with yellow damask, still rich, though faded; the very seats on which Charles, looking around him, saw Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley (the infamous Shaftesbury), and Lauderdale—and knew not, good easy man, that he was looking on a band of traitors—are still there. Nay, he even sat to Sir Peter Lely for a portrait for this very place—in which, schemes for the ruin of the kingdom were concocted. All, probably, was smooth and pleasing to the monarch as he ranged down the fine gallery, ninety-two feet long; or sat at dinner amid his foes in that hall, surrounded with an open balustrade; or disported himself on the river's green brink. Nay, one may even fancy Nell Gwynn taking a day's pleasure in this then lone and ever sweet locality. We hear her swearing, as she was wont to do, perchance at the dim looking-glasses, her own house in Pall Mall, given her by the king, having been filled up, for the comedian, entirely, ceiling and all, with looking-glass. How bold and pretty she looked in her undress! Even Pepys—no very sound moralist, though a vast hypocrite—tells us: Nelly, 'all unready' was 'very pretty, prettier far than he thought.' But to see how she was 'painted,' would, he thought, 'make a man mad.'
'Madame Ellen,' as after her elevation, as it was termed, she was called, might, since she held long a great sway over Charles's fancy, be suffered to scamper about Ham House—where her merry laugh perhaps scandalised the now Saintly Duchess of Lauderdale,—just to impose on the world; for Nell was regarded as the Protestant champion of the court, in opposition to her French rival, the Duchess of Portsmouth.
Let us suppose that she has been at Ham House, and is gone off to Pall Mall again, where she can see her painted face in every turn. The king has departed, and Killigrew, who, at all events, is loyal, and the true-hearted Duke of Richmond, all are away to London. In yon sanctimonious-looking closet, next to the duchess's bed-chamber, with her psalter and her prayer-book on her desk, which is fixed to her great chair, and that very cane which still hangs there serving as her support when she comes forth from that closet, murmur and wrangle the component parts of that which was never mentioned without fear—the Cabal. The conspirators dare not trust themselves in the gallery: there is tapestry there, and we all know what coverts there are for eaves-droppers and spiders in tapestried walls: then the great Cardinal spiders do so click there, are so like the death-watch, that Villiers, who is inveterately superstitious, will not abide there. The hall, with its enclosing galleries, and the buttery near, are manifestly unsafe. So they heard, nay crouch, mutter, and concoct that fearful treachery which, as far as their country is concerned, has been a thing apart in our annals, in 'my Lady's' closet. Englishmen are turbulent, ambitious, unscrupulous; but the craft of Maitland, Duke of Lauderdale—the subtlety of Ashley, seem hardly conceivable either in a Scot or Southron.
These meetings had their natural consequence. One leaves Lauderdale, Arlington, Ashley, and Clifford, to their fate. But the career of Villiers inspires more interest. He seemed born for better things. Like many men of genius, he was so credulous that the faith he pinned on one Heydon, an astrologer, at this time, perhaps buoyed him up with false hopes. Be it as it may, his plots now tended to open insurrection. In 1666, a proclamation had been issued for his apprehension—he having then absconded. On this occasion he was saved by the act of one whom he had injured grossly—his wife. She managed to outride the serjeant-at-arms, and to warn him of his danger. She had borne his infidelities, after the fashion of the day, as a matter of course: jealousy was then an impertinence—constancy, a chimera; and her husband, whatever his conduct, had ever treated her with kindness of manner; he had that charm, that attribute of his family, in perfection, and it had fascinated Mary Fairfax.
He fled, and played for a year successfully the pranks of his youth. At last, worn out, he talked of giving himself up to justice. 'Mr. Fenn, at the table, says that he hath been taken by the watch two or three times of late, at unseasonable hours, but so disguised they did not know him; and when I come home, by and by, Mr. Lowther tells me that the Duke of Buckingham do dine publickly this day at Wadlow's, at the Sun Tavern; and is mighty merry, and sent word to the Lieutenant of the Tower, that he would come to him as soon as he dined.' So Pepys states.