King Charles II (52 page)

More immediately William was given the due precedence of his blood royal, out-ranking, for example, his cousin Prince Rupert (also the son of a Stuart princess) in an age when such things were marked. For Charles, whatever cozening noises he made towards his nephew’s Dutch hopes, continued to view him as a Stuart dependent who was conveniently placed in the enemy’s camp.

A portrait of William as a boy, by Adriaen Hanneman, together with a portrait of his dead mother Mary, hung in the King’s bedchamber at Whitehall: unconsciously Charles may still have thought of him as that child. The King’s attitude to the young man was both patronizing and critical. The French Ambassador reported that King Charles found Prince William too passionate a Hollander, too much a Protestant.
²⁷
The King’s surprise that this should be so, in view of William’s upbringing (did he expect a Catholic-oriented Frenchman?), betrays a certain naïveté. Given their respective tastes and characters, it was perhaps not to be expected that Charles
II
and the future William
III
would fall into each other’s arms. Nevertheless, the stance adopted by the uncle towards his nephew did nothing to increase the prospect. As it was, Charles, who expected both to help William by the alliance and be helped by him, was disappointed.

The Dutch involvement was popular with the English Parliament because it aimed at France. Nor did all Charles’ ministers disapprove of it as Clifford did: Arlington, for example, the Spanish sympathizer, with a Dutch heiress for a wife –‘
Espagnol par lui-même et Hollandais par sa femme
’, as Ruvigny termed him – loved the concept. ‘God be thanked it is done,’ he exclaimed.
²⁸
Determined to fan some financial warmth out of the Members of Parliament with his new bellows, the King spoke eloquently in February 1668 of his renewed need for money: ‘I lie under
great debts contracted in the last war; but now the posture of our neighbours abroad, and the consequence of the new alliance will oblige me, for our security, to set out a considerable fleet to sea this summer.’ Fortifications had to be repaired and ‘besides, I must build more great ships’.
²⁹

The King’s financial situation at the time is best summed up by the later witticism, ‘desperate but not serious’. A committee was set up for retrenchment; pensions were cut, or stopped, without being cancelled, by the simple expedient of not paying them. Ambassadorial expenses were severely checked and plate, often regarded as a perquisite of office, was demanded back after use. When Lord Sandwich asked for £5,000 for his mission to Spain, he was asked to be more specific about his needs.
³⁰

Nor did the influence of Buckingham introduce any kind of order into the chaos. Buckingham, as has been observed, devoted his elastic energies to the demolition of the York party, in the process of which he chose to bring about the fall of Sir William Coventry. It was comparatively easy to lay the blame for the naval failures at the Admiralty’s door. In October 1668 Pepys described Buckingham as ‘all in all’ and determined to ‘ruin Coventry if he can’.
³¹
Despite the fact that Coventry had joined in the hue and cry against Clarendon, he was attacked in his turn, and attacked successfully. A brief spell of imprisonment in the Tower in the spring of 1669 followed an imbroglio with Buckingham over a satirical play; later Coventry retired altogether from politics.

Far more serious was Buckingham’s freakish vengeance on the Duke of Ormonde, which resulted in the fall of that genuinely great man. Buckingham had the frivolous energy of a born intriguer, which from small beginnings will often secure calamitously great results. Ormonde’s removal from the Lord Lieutenancy was brought about in February 1669. Probably there were some instances during his period of office which justified impeachment, or at least did not bear close inspection. Ormonde would have been unique in his period to have headed an administration in Ireland without stain. Yet in another way Ormonde
was
unique: in his appreciation of the native quality of Ireland. He had, for example, influenced the foundation of
the Irish College of Physicians, and prohibited the import of Scottish linen in revenge for the iniquitous Bill (Buckingham’s delight) prohibiting the import of Irish cattle into England. Ormonde’s removal, followed by the appointment of the ineffective Lord Robartes, demonstrated once again how adversely the feuding of English internal politics seemed to affect Ireland’s internal destiny.

If Buckingham, and for that matter Osborne, had pursued some constructive policy of their own, their destructive efforts in other directions might not have proved so catastrophic. As it was, they were more obsessed with building up and maintaining their own power base without in fact offering the King, within Parliament, a particularly solid structure.
³²
It was true that there were numerous Court officials. Also, Buckingham could muster his own body of MPs, the Duke of York (once reconciled to his brother) and his friends, another body. Counting those MPs who had demonstrated a willingness to support the Crown on various occasions, there was in theory a substantial conglomerate at the King’s disposal.

Reality was very different. Between the pro-Dutch sympathies of Arlington, for example, and the pro-French leanings of Buckingham there was an obvious and unbridgeable gulf. Other pettier divisions existed. In the late 1660s nothing like a homogeneous Court party was in fact at the command of Charles
II
. His groans to Madame over his constant financial troubles amply illustrate one side of this, as do his reiterated pleas to Parliament itself on the subject of money. Charles expressed it to Parliament, called again in October 1669 after an eighteen months’ gap for this precise purpose, thus: ‘I desire that you will now take my debts effectually into your consideration.’ The House of Commons remained more interested in its internal disputes, arguments over the relative powers of the House of Lords. In February of the following year the King was reduced to begging that their squabbles should cease, while asking for money ‘with greater instance’.
³³

This irksome impotence was the background not only to the King’s crucial initiative in foreign policy in the direction of
France, but also to the efforts of Lauderdale to bring about a proper union between England and Scotland. In 1667 Lauderdale had acquired at last the position he coveted, as Lord High Commissioner for Scotland. His protégé Lord Rothes was further installed as Chancellor. Lauderdale played some part in the fall of Clarendon, and subsequently developed that influence over Charles which had begun as far back as 1648, when Lauderdale turned out to be the one Scot Charles really liked. He paid his first visit to Edinburgh in his splendid new vice-regal role in October 1669. Neither Lauderdale himself nor his termagant red-haired wife, the former Bess Countess of Dysart, allowed any tinge of austerity to touch their conception of their Scottish court. Bribery, nepotism, corruption,
louche
– and lavish spending: these would be amongst the charges whispered and shouted against the Lauderdales. For all that, Lauderdale was no Buckingham in his lack of a proper policy to pursue.

The coarseness of the man, the extravagance of his entourage (he was said to cost the King £18,000 a year in Scotland), should not blind one to the fact that Lauderdale was intent on offering something positive to his sovereign in the shape of a Scottish policy. To him the country he referred to as ‘poor old Scotland’ could nevertheless be turned into ‘a citadel for his Majesty’s service’.
³⁴
To be frank, it was about the one proposition for Scotland’s future which was likely to sound musically in Charles’ ears. If Scotland could genuinely be transformed into a monarchical citadel, how much more fortunate might Charles
II
prove than Charles
I
, for whom Scotland had been a quagmire rather than a bastion?

It was Lauderdale’s conviction that Scotland’s internal government – and problems – should be her own, while the strong central administration which he expected to set up would ensure her a place in the British monarchical scheme of things. To draw a line between Lauderdale’s instinct for self-aggrandizement in all this, and his genuine desire to discover some solution for a strong Scotland, is probably impossible: like many men of force, Lauderdale was inclined to equate his own best interests with his country’s. Yet in the sense that Lauderdale did intend to right the many grievances of the Scots – suffering as second-class
citizens – by an Act of Union, he did display both understanding and patriotism. He showed an unfortunate impatience towards his Presbyterian opponents, characteristic of one side of him; yet even in the opinion of Robert Law, a Covenanting minister, he was ‘a man very national’.
³⁵

To many Lauderdale was quite simply ‘the Hector of State,/The rascal we hate’ as in the rude rhyme of the Earl of Aboyne. Yet he reacted with genuine indignation to the Navigation Acts, whose careless neglect of the very existence of Scottish trade caused the country much unplanned suffering. Ever since the reign of James
VI
and
I
, indeed, the Scots had been penalized over their trading, whether with the colonies or the Dutch. The fact that this sprang more from lordly English indifference to Scottish interests than deliberate victimization still did not endear the process to the Scots. Lauderdale demanded that Scottish trade conditions should revert to the situation as it was before the punitive Navigation Acts. He considered it intolerable, for example, that the Scots should have to pay duties on English imports.

To Lauderdale the Union offered the Scots the opportunity to flourish equally with England. In his rough and wily way (the two adjectives were compatible where Lauderdale was concerned) he was a patriot. By offering brilliantly to Charles a ‘citadel’ where his prerogative would be respected and enforced, he hoped to overcome those coldly negative feelings which the King had long entertained, in so far as he entertained any feelings at all, towards Scotland. In return, the King would ameliorate the conditions of Scottish trade.

By October 1669 Lauderdale had worked on Charles sufficiently to win him to the idea of a Union. The King recommended the idea to his Parliament. Unfortunately, by exaggerating the nature of the support the King would find there he also laid up further political troubles along the way. There was a question of a body of 24,000 men: the King believed in its existence, taking Rothes’ word for it, and the opposition fulminated at the idea. Yet all along this force was more of a phantom army than a power base.

The Union of 1670 failed however not so much on this
aspect as through English xenophobia. Another Union had failed in the same way, that finely conceived Union proposed by King James
I
in 1606 (which, if accepted, might have altered the entire internal history of the two countries). King James had spoken of ‘a perpetual marriage’, suggesting eloquently that two nations ‘under one roof or rather in one Bed’ ought to have economic integration. But the House of Commons merely expressed disgust at granting parity to the carpet-bagging Scots. The Parliament of Charles
II
had similar doubts. Nor were the Scots for their part accommodating, after sixty years of maltreatment, including the Cromwellian occupation. They claimed – without success – equal representation in the united Parliament.

In the House of Commons Andrew Marvell symbolized the angry English reaction to these proposals: when Lauderdale was given the Garter, Marvell declared he actually deserved a halter. The King himself was not prepared to transform cautious approval of the Union into anything much warmer. In November 1670, he told the commissioners appointed to look into the whole matter that they must meet later: union was not at present feasible. Thus the Union of 1670 joined the ranks of Anglo-Scottish unions – and Anglo-Scottish opportunities – lost. King James’ two nations in one bed would continue to toss and turn restlessly, without the perpetual marriage of his dreams, for another thirty-seven years.

1
A more modern parallel may be drawn between the Catholicism of King Charles
II
and that of the first Catholic President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. He made it clear that he drew a distinction between his role as President and as a private member of the Catholic Church; as the former, for example, he was not subject to the authority of the Papacy.

2
This deliberately sets aside two contemporary references to a pregnancy in early 1666, one from Pepys, who heard that the Queen had miscarried, and one in the Hatton Correspondence. But Clarendon, who mentioned the 1666 miscarriage in the
Continuation
of his
History
, stressed the King’s belief that it had ‘been a false conception’.
¹⁸
The King made no reference to this pregnancy or miscarriage in his correspondence with his sister, where such matters were always much to the fore. His testimony – the testimony of the husband – that the 1668 pregnancy was the first, clinches the matter.

3
The author is grateful to Sir John Dewhurst, President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, for his consideration of the medical evidence concerning the pregnancies of Catharine of Braganza, which supports this view. The sweeping theory of C. MacLaurin in
Mere Mortals
(New York, 1925) that the Queen’s major illness of November 1663 was pelvic peritonitis, which left her sterile after an inflammation of the Fallopian tubes, takes no account of these later conceptions and is not otherwise supported by evidence.

4
His correct title: he succeeded his father, William
II
of Orange. He subsequently became William
III
of
England
. To avoid confusion, in this narrative he will henceforward be known as William of Orange.