It was the famous Abbé Bossuet, himself amongst those present at Madame’s death-bed, who preached her funeral sermon in language which Lytton Strachey, in a critical essay, compared to a stream of molten lava: ‘O nuit désastreuse! O nuit effroyable! où retentit tout à coup, comme un éclat de tonnerre, cette étonnante nouvelle: Madame se meurt! Madame est morte!’ It was Bossuet who had asked her as she was dying, ‘Do you believe in God?’ Madame replied, ‘With all my heart.’ But according to Ralph Montagu, the English envoy, Madame’s last whisper was of her brother: ‘I have loved him better than life itself and now my only regret in dying is to be leaving him.’18
When Charles was brought the desperate news by a courier coming post-haste from France, he collapsed with grief. The rumours of poison hardly helped him to endure the blow. The King did not appear outside his bedroom, where he lay prostrate with grief, for days – the only recorded occasion of a physical collapse in this almost unnaturally self-disciplined monarch, who had hitherto borne the plenitude of crises in his life without giving way to any of them.
It was Lord Rochester who had the last word on Madame. She had died, he said, the most lamented person in both France and England. ‘Since which time dying has been the fashion.’
King Charles II was left to implement the consequences of that treaty which Madame had worked so hard to bring about. It was as though she had died in giving birth to it: the King, the bereaved survivor, now had to raise the infant.
There were in fact two separate treaties. The first treaty, which was kept secret, was signed by the English, including Clifford and Arlington, on 22 May 1670.19 Not only was it secret, but it was also a strange and slippery document, reminding one in its various twists and turns of that legendary wrestler Proteus. King Charles was to support the claims of King Louis to the Spanish monarchical possessions (pursuing his wife’s alleged rights), as and when they should be made; in return, England would receive certain South American territories. But a further clause stipulated that King Louis would not break the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle recently concluded with Spain; that again enabled King Charles to remain, theoretically at least, faithful to the Triple Alliance.
Together the two kings intended to wage a war against the United Provinces, and the military and naval arrangements for such a war were laid down: this might seem clear enough, albeit aggressive. But this clause was linked to another, often regarded as the crucial text in the so-called Secret Treaty. This described the English King as ‘being convinced of the truth of the Catholic religion and resolved to declare it and reconcile himself with the Church of Rome as soon as the welfare of his kingdom will permit’. In order to carry out this declaration (for which no date was given other than the vague phrase, quoted above, concerning the ‘welfare of his kingdom’), Charles II was promised money from the French King, half of it in advance, and troops as well, if necessary. The Anglo-French assault on the Dutch was scheduled to follow rather than precede the undated declaration.
The second treaty was signed by the five members of the Cabal – Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley and Lauderdale – on 21 December 1670. It was in effect a cover-up. For those ministers not in the know, a phoney treaty with France was worked out, including details of future Anglo-French action against the Dutch, down to the troop movements. Charles was to supply fifty ships and six thousand soldiers, Louis thirty ships and the rest of the soldiery. The conduct of the naval war was to be left to the English, who were to receive Walcheren, Cadzand and Sluys at the mouth of the Scheldt as their share of the territory about to be conquered. But the ‘Catholic’ clause of the original Secret Treaty of the summer was veiled from the prying eyes of the unsympathetic ministers. Thus no string was attached to the timing of the Anglo-French initiative.
It must be obvious that the strength of this famous – or notorious – Catholic clause was in consequence much diluted. For better or for worse, the way was left open for a combined operation to be mounted against the Dutch, without the King of England declaring himself a Catholic – as indeed happened. There is another significant point to be made about the Catholic clause, one which is sometimes missed by the more prejudiced critics of King Charles II. It was not suggested in the text of the Secret Treaty that Charles was going to change the religion of England as a whole – merely his own. Under the circumstances, the equivocal nature of this clause, dependent upon the ‘welfare of the kingdom’, hardly needs stressing further.
It was the signature of the first treaty which mattered most to Charles II. He had acquired at long last the French support which he conceived as being paramount to his purposes. It is true that by this treaty he also secured a financial subsidy. But it is important to note that the sum involved was by no means exorbitant: modern scholarship has disposed of the notion that vast sums of French gold were laid out. Louis’ official subsidy was intended to be three million livres Tournois a year: in fact, Charles received from France, throughout his reign, a total of nine million nine hundred and fifty thousand livres, amounting to £746,000 (then). Eight million of this came from the Secret Treaty. Money values of times gone by are notoriously difficult to translate into our own terms.fn2 It is more helpful to quote the recent estimate of Dr C. D. Chandaman that this was the equivalent of less than one year of the King’s ordinary income.20 Thus the financial value of the French subsidy is placed in perspective: in the eyes of Charles II, its psychological value was what counted.
This ‘very near alliance’ of France and England, signed by the ministers of the Cabal, was not made public. As for details of the Secret Treaty of Dover, these were not in fact generally known until 1830, when the historian Lingard printed the text. At the time knowledge was restricted to a magic circle. The joyful ambassadress Madame knew everything, of course. Thomas Clifford was also fully involved, and as late as the 1930s the Clifford papers revealed hitherto unknown details of the transactions leading up to the treaty. Of the Cabal, Buckingham, who, although pro-French in foreign policy, was in religious terms pro-Puritan, did not know. Nor did Lauderdale. Arlington knew.21 He disapproved, but, as a professional servant of a royal master and a man ambitious to rise, he bowed to the treaty. Ashley (created Earl of Shaftesbury two years later) did not know at the time, and despite rumours to the contrary, it is unlikely that he ever did. Outside the Cabal, Osborne, just conceivably, knew.22 But the Secret Treaty was in essence the King’s measure, carried out by his sister and most intimate servants to service his private, if nationalistic, policy.
For this treaty Charles II has been harshly judged. He has been condemned for two reasons: first, for the acceptance of French money. Yet this was an age when foreign subsidy was by no means the shocking fact which might be supposed from the disgusted reactions of some of the King’s Whig critics. Richard Cromwell asked for a £50,000 subsidy from Cardinal Mazarin immediately after the death of his father. Poverty-stricken rulers were not alone in their blithe attempts to get the wealthy to support them. Later we shall find not only the Dutch gold of William III, but also the French gold of Louis XIV, finding its way to certain English Whig MPs – opponents of the government. They saw nothing wrong in allowing themselves to be ‘subsidized’ in their opposition by a foreign power. The passionate statement of Sir John Dalrymple is often quoted. Writing in 1771 of his feelings when he discovered from the French despatches that Lord Russell was intriguing with the French Court and Algernon Sidney receiving money from it he declared, ‘I felt very near the same shock as if I had seen a son turn his back in the day of battle.’23 Thus the eighteenth century flinched from the seventeenth.
Where the French subsidy was concerned, Charles II was in the position of the apocryphal judge, who took bribes – but only when the judgement desired coincided with the judgement he had intended to make in the first place.
It was certainly not a particularly scrupulous attitude. Yet in terms of Charles II’s vivid wish to maintain maritime supremacy and extinguish Holland, it was a perfectly intelligible one.
One should bear in mind that seven-eighths of the first French payment went directly towards the Navy. As Dr Johnson, as ever a mine of common-sense, exclaimed, ‘If licentious in practice, Charles never failed to reverence the good. Even if he did take money from France, what of that? Never did he betray those over whom he ruled, nor would he ever suffer the French fleet to betray ours.’ Dr Johnson might have added that in the seventeenth century, as in the age that followed it, rulers were expected to be not so much scrupulous (except by their opponents) as successful.
It is the second salvo fired against Charles II which has been most properly responsible for the smoke of treachery surrounding his name. This is the charge that he intended to subvert England to a Roman Catholicism it had rejected, becoming, in the words of Lord Macaulay, the ‘Slave of France’ if not its ‘Dupe’. It has been postulated in the previous chapter that King Charles II was not, by 1670, the convinced Catholic of some imaginings; definitely not the proselyte who would engage himself to such a cause for sheer religious ardour. Supposing, then, this charge to be unjust, it must immediately be granted that a certain mystery surrounds the religious clause of the treaty. What then was its purpose, and indeed its motivation?
One possibility would be that the religious clause – the ‘design about R.’– was inserted to please Madame. There is nothing in the King’s correspondence to contradict such a view: indeed, there is evidence of Madame’s growing preoccupation with religion, her own, her brother’s and that of her native country. Madame may well have believed that she inclined Charles towards its insertion, just as she inclined him towards a French alliance. … In both cases however it is doubtful whether Charles would have allowed himself to go with her tide, had it not suited him in the first place. It is necessary to seek a less charming and more cynical explanation.
The religious clause set the seal, in the King’s view, on that security which he expected to enjoy from the support of Louis XIV. It was not so much a question of Charles II’s religious proclivities as those of Louis XIV: the English King, in signing such a clause, which committed him to a personal declaration with no time schedule whatsoever, expected to bind the French King to him further. In politics, it cannot be denied that the end very often does justify the means. By 1670 Charles II had decided to make this truth – regrettable or otherwise – the principle of his actions both at home and abroad. One may nevertheless agree with Cicero that certain political actions are objectively bad. It is still difficult to apply that judgement to Charles II at this juncture in his career. The maintenance of the Navy, the expansion of empire, the ‘making that Kingdom great’ – these had been the classic preoccupations of those English idols (in their different ways), Queen Elizabeth I and Oliver Cromwell. By means of a French alliance, Charles II intended to pursue these policies, without being tumbled from his throne, as had Charles I.
1 She died without presenting Monsieur with that male heir he so much desired. But Madame did leave two daughters; from Anne-Marie, who married a Duke of Savoy, the present (Catholic) Wittelsbach claimant to the English throne descends. The claim is based on the fact that the descendants of Henriette-Anne, daughter of Charles I, should have precedence over the present royal family, the descendants of Elizabeth of Bohemia, daughter of James I. But this of course ignores the fact that a Catholic is disqualified by Act of Parliament from occupying the throne of Great Britain.
2 Besides which, the rapid rate of modern inflation often makes the comparison out of date a few years after it is made.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Virtues and Imperfections
‘A Prince of many virtues, and many great imperfections’
John Evelyn on Charles II
The summer of 1670 – when Charles II reached his fortieth birthday – represented a turning-point. To a far greater extent than such anniversaries generally do, it marked his emergence not only as a fully fledged governor of his own kingdom but also as a mature man set in his ways. The years of youthful exile, while they had developed in him abnormal courage and resilience, had also artificially held him back as a ruler. Such development had to take place in his thirties, and was further retarded by the presence of Clarendon until 1667. After the great manager’s departure, King Charles was left to discover certain facts about himself, his views and intentions for the first time. By the summer of 1670 these facts were fully known to him.
On 29 May 1660 the crowds cheering the restored monarch had been greeted by an evidently wary, if affable, man. By 29 March 1670 the reserve had become so deep as to be impenetrable. The affability was virtually impenetrable too. A man of political strength, cunning and purpose, he was prepared to show himself at all times gracious to his people. The hope of Henrietta Maria that the son would not repeat the clumsy, shy discourtesies of the father had borne fruit. As a monarch, Charles II was renowned for his friendliness, the ease of access which he offered to his subjects, to include not only the poorest amongst them but also a traditionally less welcome category for kings – his critics.
There was however one aspect of his public face in which his subjects might feel that ease had gone altogether too far. It was after the fall of Clarendon that the Court of King Charles II began to enjoy that reputation for debauchery which has surrounded it in the popular imagination ever since. Gone was the attractive picture of a temperate king painted by Sir Richard Fanshawe in 1660 – or at any rate swallowed up in a series of vignettes of Court life depicted in far more lurid colours. Clarendon had been an imposing figurehead, who might not be revered but whose name was certainly never synonymous with debauchery. Buckingham offered a very different image.
A duel in which the husband of his mistress, Anna Maria Countess of Shrewsbury, was mortally wounded caused scandal, and a temporary fall from grace for Buckingham himself. The King, although he subsequently pardoned those involved, showed himself extremely stern on the subject of duelling, which he wished to stamp out. But, autre temps autre mœurs, the gesture which provoked the most genuine horror, even among the charitable, was Buckingham’s decision to have his illegitimate son by Lady Shrewsbury christened in Westminster Abbey. A duel was a duel, an unhappy feature of the times, but such a baptism offended against the established order of society.
Sir Charles Sedley and Charles Sackville, Lord Buckhurst (later Earl of Dorset), two culpable rakes in Pepys’ view, were involved in an inglorious drunken orgy at a Fleet Street tavern which brought them before the magistrates. The mutilation of Sir John Coventry was another highly discreditable incident. When Sir John Berkenhead tried to avert the imposition of a tax on the playhouses on the grounds that they had been of much service to the King, Sir John Coventry enquired cheekily whether he meant the men or women players …? After which the troopers of the Duke of Monmouth waylaid Coventry and all but cut off the wretched man’s nose.
Of the Cabal, not only Buckingham gave offence. The Duke of Lauderdale was in private life a gross figure and his wife Bess a legendary amorist who even claimed to have dangled Cromwell’s scalp at her belt. The story was certainly not true – there are always ladies to claim the favours of great men – but Bess, holding her court at Ham House, made characteristically bold play with it. As against that, it should in fairness be pointed out that Clifford’s Devonshire-based life was a pattern of domesticity; Arlington’s private life was impeccable, as might be expected from such a ‘Castilian’ figure; Shaftesbury’s interests lay in political controversy rather than in private indulgence, and an open verdict has been returned by his biographer on the various theatrical references to his ‘lechery’.1
Can it then be argued that this reputation for debauchery in ‘Good King Charles’ Golden Days’ has been much exaggerated? That a few vicious shooting stars have distracted attention from a host of lesser lights, who shone, in so far as they shone at all, with virtue? This view would of course discount not only the legends which have followed the reign – ever a necessary process – but the manifest criticisms and exclamations on the su
bject of the King’s contemporaries. The clue is to concentrate not so much on the question of debauchery but on the true keynote of the King’s Court after 1667: and that was laxity.
Much of the colourful aura which surrounds the Restoration Court in the popular imagination is derived from the behaviour of ‘the Wits’, rather than of the more powerful ministers. This little group, which flourished for about fifteen years after 1665, included John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, Henry Jermyn, Lord Buckhurst, John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, Henry Killigrew, Sir Charles Sedley, and the playwrights Wycherley and Etherege, as well as Buckingham (who straddled both circles). The first point to be made about the Wits, with regard to Charles II, was that they were in the main much younger than the King. Their characters had not been honed like his by fighting in the Civil War: they had grown up in the post-war years, when the atmosphere was very different. (Buckingham, as usual, was the exception.) Rochester, for example, was seventeen years younger than Charles, born only a few years before his father shared the King’s escape from Worcester; Mulgrave was younger still.
Rochester’s portrait shows a young man of almost insolent sensuality, wide lips curling with devilment, but with ‘something of the Angel yet undefac’d in him’, as was said of Etherege’s cynical rake based on Rochester, Dorimant, in The Man of Mode. To his own gaping generation Rochester was ‘so idle a rogue’– Pepys was in a tizzy at the idea of Charles making him his constant companion2 – a virtual alcoholic as well as a brilliant and therefore hurtful satirist. To ours he has become the poet who, for all his obscenity, understands the sad side of passion.