King Charles II (26 page)

‘They, who will not believe anything to be reasonably designed, except it be successfully executed, had need of a less difficult game to play than mine is.’

T
he King who arrived back at the court of France at the end of October 1651 was so emaciated, and even dirty, that people generally failed to recognize him. In Rouen he had at first been taken for a vagrant. Then Dr Earle, his old tutor, who happened to be in the town, hurried to his hotel. Looking at Charles blankly, he asked to be conducted before the King. From his mother’s favourite, Lord Jermyn, Charles received the first clean shirt to come his way since the garment given to him at Moseley by Father Huddleston.

After the first rapturous welcome, Charles was described as both ‘sad and sombre’.
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The cheerfulness which he assumed, against his inclinations, only lasted a few days. After that people noticed that he often fell very silent. There was indeed very little to comfort him at the French Court, to say nothing of his troubled thoughts wending backwards to those he had left behind in England. He could not even describe their courage in full for fear of endangering them further; it was not until after the Restoration that the full amazing story was told. Above all, he could not help them. As a result, the English government were slow to be convinced of the truth of his whereabouts – as late as 29 October the King was rumoured lost at sea. By November the official Commonwealth line, to explain away the
unfortunate truth of his escape, was expressed in a sneering poster: this showed the King as ‘a Fool on Horseback, riding backwards, turning his face every way in fears’, weighed down by a full pouch of the Pope’s money round his waist.

So much for the facts, which still impress us with their gallantry. Charles himself wrote gloomily to Jane Lane a year later (she had escaped to become lady-in-waiting to Charles’ sister, the Princess of Orange). He deplored his inability to express his gratitude in some practical form, despite her need: ‘I believe it troubles me more that I cannot do it yet, than it does you.’
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France herself was in the throes of the second civil war of the ‘princely’ Fronde, which had broken out in September. Basically, it was a struggle for power between Cardinal Mazarin and the superior nobility, led once again by the Prince de Condé. One such inconclusive struggle had already occupied most of 1650, following the earlier disturbance of the ‘Parliamentary’ Fronde. As a result, the French royal family was in a state of alarm and tension, which spread to all its dependents, including Queen Henrietta Maria. That in turn affected Charles. His mother’s mood was grim. Since Charles had no alternative but to live off her charity, and she lived off the charity of the Cardinal de Retz, she made a note of exactly what his meals cost her: ‘The very first night’s supper which the King ate with the Queen began the account….’
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The result was that, when Charles did eventually get a grant of sorts, he found that he owed much of it to his mother.

There was always the Grande Mademoiselle. Time had not treated her kindly – physically, at any rate – and Charles had grown up into a handsome, if penniless and homeless, man. This was no longer the uncouth boy who had been edged towards her by his mother, as Viola had been compelled to duel with Sir Andrew Aguecheek by Sir Toby Belch. His conversation was more beguiling too. Mademoiselle shuddered deliciously at Charles’ tales of the uncouth life in Scotland, and how bored he had been by it all. Imagine an existence where to play the fiddle was a crime! And ‘there was not a woman to be seen’. Under the circumstances, she was inclined to overlook his unfashionably cropped hair and ‘a great deal of beard’.
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Mazarin continued to handle the situation adroitly, lest this wealthy French prize fall into the hands of the suppliant English. Whenever Mademoiselle grew too warm towards her cousin the English King, Mazarin was every ready to dangle the infinitely more magnificent prospect of her cousin the French king. Louis
XIV
had reached his thirteenth birthday – his majority – on 5 September 1651: he was thus in theory marriageable. But it was to be the war of the Fronde, not her romance with Charles, which proved the personal nemesis of Mademoiselle.

The arrival of the majority of Louis
XIV
also meant that both sides in this expensive and attritious French Civil War, Mazarin and Condé, could claim to act on his behalf. Charles
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too was drawn into the struggle, although not precisely in the manner in which he would have desired. Unlike his younger brother, the Duke of York, there could be no question of the English King joining the army of the great Marshal Turenne and going into the field against Condé. Handsome, energetic James, tired of kicking his heels near his mother, applied for some active post. The courtiers were nervous whether his participation would further prejudice the position of the Stuarts – by identifying them in advance with one side or the other, when their one pathetic aim was to be on the winning side. In the end James was granted permission, on condition that it was a purely personal gesture.

James departed from Paris to serve in the French Army, having had to borrow money to buy his equipment, and embarked on what was probably the happiest adventure of his life – several years of active military service. He was a natural soldier, easy, practical and talented. One can understand how at this point Hyde regarded James as a more hopeful character than his elder brother, condemned to stay behind in Paris for an infinitely less agreeable life of poverty and negotiation. Charles’ situation in the spring of 1652 was ‘the most painful that can be imagined’ – at least, that was how it would be described in James’ memoirs.
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The sufferings of mother and son at the Louvre were acute. They were not even receiving the French money on which they so much depended, and they had no-one else to approach. Meanwhile the ordinary people of
Paris surrounding them, who sympathized with the Condé faction rather than with that of the Cardinal, were openly indignant that the Duke of York was serving with the King’s army under Turenne.

At the behest of the Duke of Lorraine, Charles undertook an unenviable task. This was to negotiate with the King of France. The Spanish had attempted to employ the changeable Duke against Turenne. Charles managed to bring the Duke of Lorraine to the French Court at Melun. There he secured the withdrawal of the Duke from the Spanish interest. But, having performed this service and returned to Paris, Charles found himself in the power of Condé, who had taken triumphant charge of the capital. Here, Charles’ intervention made him extremely unpopular. Condé forthwith ordered Charles away and out of the city to Saint-Germain, and, having no funds whatever, he could not refuse. In this way Charles formed part of the French royal cortège, seated on a hill outside Paris, which witnessed the reduction of the city by Turenne on behalf of the young King Louis. Inside Paris poor Mademoiselle had seen her opportunity at last for achieving the
gloire
for which she had surely been born: dressed in a soldier’s costume, heroic, splendidly cheerful, she whirled amongst Condé’s troops, their Amazon and their inspiration. But none of this prevented Turenne from taking back the capital. Although it was Mademoiselle’s personal intervention, as she proudly related, which saved Condé’s life, her disgrace with the orthodox French Court was total. Louis
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, a quiet boy rapidly turning into a man with a long memory, never forgave her.

By the autumn of 1652 the French Court was once more installed in Paris.

And now – at long last – would the French royal family redeem their promises and assist their poor English cousins? Regrettably, the answer was, as before, tangled in the webs of international diplomacy. Sir Edward Nicholas made a gloomy prognostication of the French King’s intentions, ‘notwithstanding all his fair words and kingly promises to our gallant Master’. Nicholas was to be proved right.
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It was a sad truth that the status of Charles
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amidst the crowned heads and other leaders of Europe was declining all the time. The summer of 1652 had seen the outbreak of a war between the England of the Commonwealth and the Dutch. Naturally Charles tried to prise some advantage out of this, beginning with the suggestion that he might come on a personal mission to the United Provinces. But the Dutch, for all their problems with the Commonwealth, had reason to regard the Stuart connection warily.

One of the cruel blows of fate which had befallen the Stuart family shortly after the Scottish catastrophe of Dunbar was the death of Mary’s husband William
II
. He died in November 1650, at the age of twenty-four. Six days later Mary gave birth to a son, another William, the heir to the House of Orange (and also of course within the Stuart succession). The guardianship of this baby produced an instant quarrel between the various interested parties in the United Provinces. As has been noted, the inheritance of the House of Orange was a complicated matter. The role of Stadtholder was not in theory hereditary, and thus evaporated on the death of William
II
. Yet the baby William inherited certain other specific rights and possessions, including a firm hold on the government of the province of Zeeland: this automatically made his guardianship of consequence in the politics of his country. The fact that these hereditary possessions of Orange were encumbered with debt did not rob them of their potential for the future.

In the prolonged squabble over the guardianship the Princess of Orange, Mary Stuart, and the Dowager Princess, Amalia von Solms, allowed themselves to be fatally divided by their own jealousies and rivalries. Wiser heads might have realized that it was imperative for the House of Orange to present a united front, if it was to preserve any kind of power in the United Provinces in the future, against the rising independence of the Estates. In the end Mary, the Dowager Princess Amalia and the Elector of Brandenburg (husband of Princess Louise Henrietta of Orange) were appointed co-guardians; but not before the Dowager Princess had carefully denigrated Mary by suggesting that she herself, not Mary, stood for the nationalist aspirations
of the Dutch. It was a damaging charge to make at this juncture against a member of the vulnerable Stuart family.

In the summer of 1652, therefore, it is understandable that the Dutch were in no hurry to accept Charles’ offer of assistance against the Commonwealth. What assistance, after all, could he provide? His few ships were away in the West Indies, under Prince Rupert, privateering with a view to filling his coffers if he could. He had neither money nor troops. None of Charles’ increasingly desperate suggestions met with favour. Could he perhaps join the Dutch Navy, and help them to victory or ‘perish in the attempt’?
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Could he head a squadron of ships on their behalf? But it was made clear that his presence amidst the Dutch would be an embarrassment and there was no money to raise a squadron. The King of England was in the position of an extra chess-piece, superfluous to the requirements of the game; he could not even get onto the board.

Furthermore, Charles himself held no brief for the Dutch Calvinists. And it was a fact that the obvious spiritual links between the Dutch and the Commonwealth, like those between the Commonwealth and the Covenanters, would always work to his disadvantage, even without this personal disinclination. As it was, stories that he was approaching the Pope for aid did not help the Dutch to regard him with any greater favour.

Hyde, Acting Secretary of State since 1651, expressed an aspect of this unpalatable truth: he was not wise enough to judge which would be best for them, ‘that the Dutch should beat the English or the English the Dutch’.
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To look ahead, this natural accord of new Dutch leaders and new English ones reached its most cruel expression – for the Stuarts – when terms were finally discussed between the two countries at the beginning of 1654. The consequent peace was damaging enough from Charles’ point of view. But one of the conditions was the ‘seclusion’ of the House of Orange from the government. This condition was originally imposed by Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England since the previous December. But the Dutch, wishing to take very opportunity to humiliate the House of Orange, as one of their number told the French Ambassador, joined gladly in the scheme.
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As a result, Mary Princess of
Orange, who had seemed back in the late forties the member of the Stuart family most likely to protect all the rest, was transformed into yet another distressed and protesting royal personage.

Of course, there remained Scotland. The price of Worcester – total defeat at the hands of the English – had been immediate occupation of the country. Legalization of this occupation followed, then union of the two countries, imposed from England. The situation was naturally inimical to many of the Scots, foremost amongst them the Highlanders, whose geographical situation enabled them to breathe defiance with virtual impunity if they so wished. There was however a considerable gap between Highland defiance and a royal triumph based on Highland action (as the past had already sufficiently demonstrated). A rising in the Highlands in the summer of 1652 proved once more abortive. The King wrote in disgust of the lethargy of the Highlanders, who, having promised to invade England, merely captured Inverness and then preferred to sleep in their own beds.

The real question about all these Scottish ventures was whether the leadership was to be local or imposed by the King from a distance; and, if the latter, a further question arose as to how local loyalties were to be stimulated, local feuds stifled. The appointment of John Middleton to the Highland command was along the right lines. Middleton had held command at Worcester and been imprisoned thereafter. He escaped from prison, wearing his wife’s clothes, and rejoined the King. Middleton was an attractive character and a good commander. It was not his fault if the Highlanders failed to rise in abundant numbers.