A Gambling Man: Charles II's Restoration Game (26 page)

Back in London, it was rumoured, untruly, that Charles had made Frances his mistress.
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Certainly Barbara was suspicious, and anxious not to lose her hold on him. In early July, raised voices echoed across the Whitehall courtyard. Barbara vowed she would never receive Frances in her apartment again; Charles that he would not set foot in them unless she was there. Barbara turned on her heel and left for Richmond to take shelter with her uncle. Charles shrugged, but he still pursued her upriver on the pretence of going hunting. During these quarrels Catherine seemed to shine, and could even administer a sardonic put-down. In early July, when Barbara commented on how long the queen sat patiently while her dresser got her ready, Catherine replied, ‘I have so much reason to use patience that I can very well bear with it.’
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A fortnight later, seeing her in Hyde Park, Pepys noticed how pretty she looked in her short crimson petticoat and white laced waistcoat, ‘and her hair dressed
a la negligence
’.
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Charles was riding hand in hand with her and ostentatiously ignoring Barbara, who looked on unsmiling in her yellow plumed hat. No courtiers now rushed to help her down from her horse, and she had to rely on her servants. Afterwards, said Pepys, in Catherine’s presence chamber at Whitehall, ‘all the ladies walked, talking and fiddling with their hats and feathers and changing and trying one anothers’. With a twinge of disloyalty he decided that Frances Stuart, ‘with her hat cocked and a red plume, with her sweet eye, little Roman nose, and excellent
Taille
, is now the greatest beauty I ever saw I think in my life, and if ever woman can, doth exceed my Lady Castlemayne; at least, in this dresse’.

There were new amusements at court, including the Lottery, which Charles allowed Sir Arthur Slingsby to set up for one day in the Banqueting House, with four hundred prizes, including a coach, but mostly of furniture.
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The town swung into summer pleasures. People walked out to see the birds in St James’s Park, or to play at Pall Mall on the great sandy court. They strolled further, gathering in Hyde Park to watch the quality ride around the ring in their smart carriages with coats of arms on the door, hoping to see the beauty of the hour – in this case Frances Stuart. They took trips to the countryside, carrying picnics to the quiet village of Islington, driving out to the coaching inns of Knightsbridge, or hiring boats to take them upriver, where they could wander through the orchards and meadows of Chelsea. Back in town, men took their wives to smart taverns, like the Bear at the Bridge Foot across the river, where French food was served. In the evenings they drifted to the pleasure grounds at Fox Hall and Spring Gardens or the new Mulberry Gardens. Despite rebellions in the north, for many it was a season of moonlight and song.

Nothing entertained this leisured, gossipy world so much as the continuing affairs of the court’s leading ladies. By late July 1663 Charles was reconciled with Barbara, while Frances stuck to the advice of her mother and Henrietta Maria, and resisted his advances. She was safe: Charles was known to be a kindly man who would never force himself on her. This summer Lely painted her appropriately in a glorious pose against a stormy countryside, holding a bow that hinted at her as a chaste Diana. (She loved having her portrait painted and being admired: the following summer Pepys spotted her after a sitting, ‘in a most lovely form, with her hair all about her eares, having her picture taking there. There was the King and twenty more, I think, standing by all the while.’
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) The frustrated Buckingham camp, who had banked on her becoming Charles’s mistress, staged a weekend in August where the Duchess of Richmond invited a party to the country, including Charles and Frances. The ruse was so obvious that two uninvited guests swiftly appeared, first the heavily pregnant Barbara and then the queen. This time Catherine came without her chief attendant, Barbara’s ally the Countess of Suffolk, declaring that ‘she would not always have a governess at her heels, especially in places where the King was’.
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Given the court’s extravagance, it was not surprising that when the accounts were done, even Charles was horrified. In his speech to parliament, requesting more funds, on 27 July, he promised that he was about to embark on economies. The money they granted him, he admitted, ‘will do me very little good, if I do not improve it by very good husbandry of my own, and by retrenching those very expenses which in many respects may be thought necessary enough. But you shall see, I will much rather impose upon myself than my subjects.’
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Following this, the Exchequer asked to see the domestic accounts. The household had been using the thirty-year-old establishment books, following the number of servants, and the meals given to courtiers in his father’s reign. The estimated budget had been vastly overspent and drastic cuts had to be made. Charles cut the traditional round of court ceremonies, apart from the Garter feast, and gave up the grand dining in public. Only the most senior courtiers, about 180 people, retained full ‘diets’, board and lodging at Whitehall. Effectively, this cut the income of many royal servants by two thirds. Below stairs, the stern restructuring reduced the number of servants from over five hundred to around 220. ‘On a sudden’, the Earl of Anglesey told Ormond, ‘above three hundred below stairs, most of which have families, are deprived of a livelihood, the splendour and dignity of the Court is taken away, and general discontent and murmuring occasioned hereby.’
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(Ormond, now in Ireland, was still technically Lord Steward.) The discontent was certainly loud, though assuaged by a hint that the diets for the wider circle were only suspended. In fact they were abolished for ever.

Household costs were no longer the largest item in the peacetime budget, but two years later, the Treasury accounts still showed large outstanding bills and arrears of pay stretching back two years or more. The royal rat catcher was owed £12 and the bowling-green keeper £91, but over £500 was due to the watchmaker while the apothecary bills (perhaps including material for Charles’s laboratory experiments) were ten times as much.
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Still, although payments lagged behind, the economies of 1663 led to a change of tone at court. It became less a source of free meals for hangers-on and more of a social hub, a fashionable meeting place for the political and commercial elite.

The main court story, through all the travails of the year, was still the rivalry of Charles’s women. But he was good at manoeuvring his way through rivalries. In natural philosophy he forwarded the cause of Boyle while remaining close to Hobbes; in politics he kept the loyalty of Clarendon yet slipped Bennet into power; in his household he brought radical changes while soothing the old courtiers’ feelings. When it came to the three principal women in his life – Catherine, Barbara Castlemaine and Frances Stuart – he sometimes looked harassed by the rows but balanced his relationships adroitly. He seemed able to shut off compartments of feeling to banish internal conflict, either psychological or moral. With regard to Catherine, he was careful always to distinguish her position as queen, ensuring that she was waited on with due ceremony – even if she was forced to have Lady Castlemaine among her women. He made sure that her rooms were fine and despite the cuts he now ordered a new canopy for her bedchamber, made from thirty-two yards of the inevitable crimson damask, with new bolsters and hangings, chairs and stools. His cash books were dotted with small payments for little presents, like satin and silk ‘Sweet bags’ or a white taffeta pillow.
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But his main preoccupation remained the need for an heir. The Tunbridge magic had failed, so now they looked to a different spa. In August 1663, while reports were flooding in of rebels in the north, and the Exchequer was struggling with his household accounts, Charles set out with Catherine on a trip to Bath.

This was supposed to be a modest private tour, without courtiers or officers, yet it turned into a minor royal progress to Bath, Bristol and Oxford. On the towns along their route the mayors and aldermen made speeches and handed over gifts – a purse of gold in Reading, and another in Newbury. John Aubrey squired them round the old hill fort of Silbury and the standing stones at Avebury, which were beginning to attract the attention of antiquarians keen to find an ancient glory in England’s past. Lord Seymour entertained them at Marlborough, Sir James Thynne at Longleat and the Herberts at Badminton, although the old manor house was too small to ask the whole royal party to stay, a humiliation that Herbert found hard to live down. But despite this warm hospitality, the journey across the Cotswolds, with its steep scarp slopes, deep wooded valleys and rutted roads, was misery for the queen. The weather was dreadful and they travelled on, with ‘storms of wind and rain so great…that her Majesty will hardly hazard herself again for a dinner in this mountainous country’.
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In Bath both Charles and Catherine went to the baths, a highly ritualised yet intimate routine. It was the custom to go early in the morning, having undressed to your underclothes in your lodgings, the men in ‘underpants’ under their shirt, the girls and women in shifts. The bathers were carried, discreetly, in a sedan or enclosed chair but at the steps to the baths the men, including the king, stripped off their shirts and plunged into the water. Afterwards they lay on linen sheets in a warmed bed and drank mulled wine ‘to regain their strength’.
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Spectators in fashionable clothes lean over the parapet to watch men and women floating and plunging in the elegantly designed King’s and Queen’s Baths.

Bath was still filled with meetings about political matters, formal and unofficial, and was merely a brief respite between journeys. On their way back in September Charles was due to visit Clarendon’s country seat at Cornbury, but a few days before, he abruptly declared he would like to visit Oxford and see the university – of which Clarendon was an able and committed Chancellor. The colleges were empty in the vacation and there was no time to make grand plans, but the dons received Charles and Catherine in St Giles’ meadow with rounds of speeches, before they entered the city by torchlight. Oxford, always a royalist stronghold, was profiting from the Restoration. This year Christopher Wren, who had just watched his first building rise, the chapel at Pembroke College, Cambridge, commissioned by his uncle Bishop Matthew Wren, was working on the ambitious plans for the theatre in Oxford. This had been approved by Charles in April and would be paid for by Gilbert Sheldon. It was called the Sheldonian in his honour, ‘built for ye Oxonian Acts and for Playes also’.
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The Sheldonian Theatre, David Loggan,
Oxonia Illustrata
, 1675

Oxford was golden and serene, but emotional pressures still dogged the court. Frances had travelled with Charles and Catherine among the maids of honour, while Barbara had stayed in London awaiting her confinement. Her baby was born on 20 September, a son named Henry (promoting rumours that the real father was Henry Jermyn, whom Charles had banished from court for a flirtation with her the previous year). Two days after the birth Barbara was on her way to Oxford. Two days later still, after Charles had inspected new buildings in Christ Church meadow, he spent the night at her lodgings. She was there, in the background, when he touched the crowd for the King’s Evil and went to Convocation, liberally bestowing degrees of Masters of Arts on favoured members of the court not known for their brains, including Berkeley and Monmouth.

There was still no royal pregnancy. Catherine returned to Tunbridge Wells and while she was there Charles supped with Barbara, their quarrels forgotten. Yet in October, when Catherine fell seriously ill, Charles was suddenly consumed with worry. He stayed by her bedside every day, treating her with great tenderness. Catherine’s condition worsened rapidly, not helped by the doctors’ attentions, the bleeding, the blistering, the piling of dead pigeons at her feet. In mid-October, Bennet told Ormond that the doctors offered little hope and she was expected to die within days: ‘tomorrow is a very critical day with her: God’s will be done. The king coming to see her this morning, she told him she willingly left all the world but him; which hath very much afflicted his majesty, and all the court with him.’
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At the start of November she received the extreme unction. Angrily, Charles threw out the Portuguese doctors and the attendants who had made her stay up two nights without sleep, one night to write her will and the other to say farewell to her servants. He was seen on his knees, weeping by her bed. However, he still spent the nights with Barbara and also found time for ‘his usual talk with Mlle. Stewart, of whom he is excessively fond’.
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