The Dukes (19 page)
The Duke of Somerset is the first of the Seymours for many
generations to take an active interest in the ruined castle of Berry
Pomeroy, near Totnes, the only surviving house of four built by
Lord Protector Somerset after 1547. Described by its historian
Harry Gordon Slade as "an impossibly large and hideously inconvenient house", it is probably no wonder that it was already neglected
and well on the way to ruin by 1688. Nonetheless, it remains in the
ownership of the Duke of Somerset, who was considerably pleased
to have it recognised by the Department of the Environment, which
administers it, as the most important monument in the West of
England. Similarly, the Duke was present at the 450th anniversary
of the Yeomen of the Guard in Armoury Hall, representing the
blood and spirit of the man who founded them and gave them their
uniform, the Lord Protector 1st Duke, his direct ancestor. There is
every sign that the dukedom of Somerset may once more emerge, if
not into the limelight, at least into acknowledged visibility.
The Duke has a job, representing Sotheby's in Wiltshire, as well as a wife, whom he married in 1978, before he came to the title. The Duchess of Somerset,
nee
Judith-Rose Hull, is the daughter of the deputy chairman of Shroders, John Folliott Charles Hull. They have a son and heir, Lord Seymour, born in 1982. (As the eldest son of a duke, by the way, this little boy has precedence over all earls, viscounts and barons in the country).references
1.
Hist. MSS Comm.,
12th Rep., App. ix, p.
47.
2.
Melvyn Tucker,
Thomas Howard,
p.
39.
3.
D.N.B.
4.
Tucker,
op. cit.,
40.
5.
Collins
Peerage,
1,63; Tucker,
op. cit.,
47.
6.
D.N.B.
7.
Camden
Remains,
1605,
p.
217,
quoted in Tucker,
op. cit.,
46m
8.
J. H. Round,
Studies in the Peerage,
p.
109.
9.
D.N.B.
10.
Complete Peerage,
IX, 617 (d).
11.
Letters and Papers Henry VIII,
Vol. XX, Part 1, p.
846.
12.
Complete Peerage,
ex: Nott,
Works of Henry Howard,
App.
xxvii.
13.
Letters and Papers Henry VIII,
Vol. XIV, Part 1, p.
160.
14.
D.N.B.
15.
D.N.B.
16.
Collins, I,
70.
17.
Lit. Rem. of Edward VI,
11,390.
18.
Elizabeth Jenkins,
Elizabeth the Great,
p. 141.
19.
Neville Williams,
Thomas Howard Fourth Duke of Norfolk,
PP- 139. 14520.
Williams,
op. cit.,
193.
21.
Jenkins,
op. cit.,
182.
22.
Ibid.,
200.
23.
Williams,
242.
24.
Collins, I, 1
15.
25.
Complete Peerage,
IX,
626
(c).
26.
Reresby
Memoirs
(1735), p. 41.
27.
See D.N.B.
28.
Wraxall,
Historical Memoirs,
p.
576.
29.
Hist. MSS. Comm., Portland MSS,
III,
508.
30.
Hist. MSS. Comm.,
VII,
429.
31.
Walpole, Yale edition, XVII,
338.
32.
Hist. M S. Comm., Carlisle MSS.
p.
916.
33.
Walpole, XXIII,
194.
34.
Wraxall,
Posthumous Memoirs,
I, 31
.
35.
W. M. Thackeray,
The Four Georges,
pp.
131
-2.
36.
History Today,
May
1974.
37.
Wraxall,
Posthumous Memoirs,
I,
35.
Old and New London,
IV, 186.
38.
Journal
of Elizabeth, Lady Holland, II, 9-10.
39.
Wraxall,
Hist. Mem.,
35-6.
40.
A Duke of Norfolk Notebook,
p. 68.
41.
ibid.,
38.
42.
ibid.,
124.
43.
Frances, Countess of Warwick,
Afterthoughts.
44.
Williams,
op. cit.,
48.
45.
TheTimes,
27thMay 1929, 31stMay 1929.
46.
The News Chronicle,
23rd May 1953.
47.
Creevy,
Papers,
II, 162.
48.
The News Chronicle,
23rd May 1953.
49.
Augustus Hare,
In My Solitary Life,
p. 35.
50.
Sunday Mirror,
6th September 1970.
51.
The Observer,
2nd February 1975.
52.
D.N.B.
53.
Hist. MSS. Comm.,
6th Report, p. 368.
54.
Collins, I, 184.
55.
Macaulay,
History of England,
II, 271.
56.
D.N.B.
57.
Walpole, XX, 18.
58.
ibid.,
XVIII, 522-3.
59.
Cockbura
Memorials,
in
Journal
of Lady Elizabeth Holland, II,
22.
60.
Creevey,
Papers,
II, 64.
61.
Complete Peerage,
XII, Part 1, p. 86 (g).
62.
Moneypenny,
Life of Disraeli,
I, 231
.
63.
Leaves from the Notebooks
of Lady Dorothy Nevill, p. 14.
64.
Lady Holland to Her Son,
p. 201.
65.
House of Lords, Accounts and Papers,
1864, Vol. XXIII.
66.
Letters and Memoirs of 12th Duke of Somerset,
ed. Lady
Guendolen Ramsden, p. 292.
67.
Letters of Lord St Maur and Lord Edward St Maur,
p. 36.
68.
Complete Peerage.
69.
Letters of Lord St Maur etc.,
26th August 1857.
70.
ibid.,
12th October 1862.
71.
ibid.,
14th August 1857.
72.
ibid.,
31st October 1862.
73.
ibid.,
11 th November .1860.
74.
ibid.,
30th November 1867.
75.
Augustus Hare,
op. cit.,
p. 283.
76.
The Times,
19th February, 26th March 1925.
Duke of Buccleuch; Duke of Grafton; Duke of Richmond;
Duke of St Albans
"Bright sons of sublime prostitution,
You are made of the mire of the street,
Where your grandmothers walked in pollution
Till a coronet shone at their feet...
Graces by grace of such mothers
As brightened the bed of King Charles."
Swinburne,
A Word for the Country
King Charles II was one of the most popular monarchs ever to sit
on the English throne. He was also quite blatantly and publicly one
of the most sensual. It is by no means certain how many mistresses
he had, but a quick count shows at least fifteen. By these various
women, the King produced an illegitimate offspring of some fourteen children, many of whom he elevated to the peerage. No
monarch created more dukedoms than Charles, and six of them were
conferred on his own bastard sons. Of these, no less than four still
exist.
The Duke of Buccleuch is descended from the hapless Duke of
Monmouth, Charles's son by Lucy Walter; the Duke of Grafton from
a son the King fathered with Barbara Villiers; the Duke of Richmond
was the son of the French mistress, Louise de Kerouaille; and the
Duke of St Albans was Nell Gwynn's son. Buckingham is reputed to
have said that the King was "father of his people", and to have then
added,
sotto voce,
"of a good many of them". Charles was not alone in his licentiousness, though he set the
tone for the whole country. Freedom of sexual experience was the
order of the day. Relieved to be rid of the Civil War, and frankly
glad to be alive, the people congratulated themselves in an orgy of
self-indulgence. It was a bold, lusty, ribald, amusing, drink-sodden,
smelly, dangerous time, when people lived life to the hilt, fought
duels, took mistresses, and urinated in the gutter. Pepys admitted to
having never taken a bath in his life, and he was not exceptional.
Sanitation did not matter in the hedonistic, epicurean London of
1660.
It was against this background that the King was seen to be
sporting with one woman after another. The people preferred the
royal mistresses to be English and honest, rather than foreign and
haughty, hence they took Nell Gwynn to their hearts while they treated
Louise de Kerouaille with scorn. But they did not object to the
principle of the King having mistresses, nor did they mind the swift
succession of bastards whom he acknowledged as his own. Only a
Puritan like the diarist John Evelyn professed to be shocked to
witness the King sitting and "toying with his concubines", but what
Evelyn did not notice and what made the people tolerate the King's
amours was his kindness towards them, his constancy in affection.
1
Of the three women watched by Evelyn, one was a current mistress,
and the other two had been rival mistresses twenty years before. But
the King was loyal to them all. He visited them all regularly, long
after the initial passions had worn off, gave them titles, money,
houses, and doted upon his numerous illegitimate children. He was
no selfish sensualist, but a man capable of enduring love as well as
sudden passion. His reputed last words on his death-bed were "Don't
let poor Nelly starve", a remark which speaks volumes for his sentimental nature. The people discerned these qualities, and forgave
him. They also knew that he was deeply loyal to his wife, Queen
Catherine of Braganza, who could give him no children. He would
never allow her place to be usurped nor respect towards her to be
withheld. He was a model husband as well as an ardent adulterer;
such paradoxes were possible in the seventeenth century, while in a
more hypocritical age they would be unimaginable. Parliament was
not happy with the amounts of money lavished on the royal mistresses
when the Exchequer was down to its last halfpenny, but that the King
should have mistresses there was no question.
During his years of exile Charles gained his first experience in the
pursuit of love. He was only eighteen when he met Lucy Walter, the
mother of the 1st Duke of Buccleuch, but she was not by any means
the first woman to share his bed. Charles was probably a father at
the age of sixteen, when he was in Jersey, but no proof is readily
available; certainly, he was no virgin when he met Lucy. Lucy, too,
was an experienced girl, a Welsh beauty of about eighteen, whom
Evelyn described as "brown, beautiful, bold, but insipid".
2
The two
adolescents spent the summer of 1648 together and were so obviously
awash with passion that many supposed them to have been secretly
married. Lucy once claimed to be Charles's wife, and he often
addressed her as such. Gossip about Lucy's marriage to Charles crops
up again and again throughout his reign, and persists to this day. If
it were true, it would have huge repercussions for the monarchical
succession in England, and for Lucy's descendant, the present Duke
of Buccleuch. For it would mean that the Duke had a better right to
sit on the throne than does Queen Elizabeth II.
On 9th April 1649, in Rotterdam, Lucy gave birth to a boy, whom
they called James, after his great-grandfather, James I. Scurrilous
gossips said that Lucy was so promiscuous, she could not have been
sure that the boy was fathered by Charles, and that he bore a far
closer resemblance to Robert Sidney, who had also bedded Lucy at
about the same time; the child had the same mole on his upper lip
that Sidney had, they said. The possibility that the Buccleuch line is
founded in part not only on an illegitimate birth, but on the
wrong
illegitimate birth, is alluring, to say the least. However, it does not
stand up to scrutiny. There is no real evidence that Lucy was all that
promiscuous, and Sidney, who was ugly (not handsome, as traditional
versions have it), had no mole. Charles himself was in no doubt. He
acknowledged the boy as his natural son, and held for him a
tremendous affection all his life.
3
The little boy spent his infancy with his mother in Paris, then came
to London in 1656, when mother and son were swiftly clapped in
the Tower by Cromwell. Vainly did Lucy proclaim that her boy was
the son of "King Charles". She was expelled from England, and died
in Paris at the age of twenty-eight, probably from syphilis." It was
then that the boy was placed in the charge of Lord Crofts, and was
henceforth known as "James Crofts".
When he came to England again in 1662, and was presented at
Court, his father now restored as King Charles II, the thirteen-year-
old "James Crofts" caused a sensation by his ravishing good looks.
Grammont described him as a dazzling, astonishing beauty. All contemporary accounts agree. He had his mother's sensuous seductiveness and his father's sweetness of nature.
6
His popularity was further
increased by the sterility of the King's marriage, beside which he presented a radiant contrast. Rumours again multiplied that the King
would ultimately recognise him as his lawful son, and heir to the
throne of England, as there seemed little chance of his producing an
heir with his queen. The notorious Barbara Villiers, the King's new
mistress (and mother of another of the dukes we shall deal with in
this chapter), is even said to have slept with the boy. She was
certainly a nymphomaniac, and the scandalous tale is not improbable.
6
At all events, it was decided that the boy should be betrothed
and married as soon as possible, and a wife was found for him in the
twelve-year-old heir to the mighty house of Buccleuch, Anna, Countess of Buccleuch in her own right. She was rich, she was noble, she
was pretty, and she was sole heiress since the death of her father and
sister. The Scotts of Buccleuch were an ancient and respected family
of Scottish chieftains well established before this marriage was contemplated. But they had only an earldom; the dukedom of Buccleuch
was created in celebration of the marriage.
Legally, it was doubtful whether Anna should have succeeded to
the earldom, which had been created in 1619 with remainder to
heirs male; it ought to have become extinct with the death of the
2nd Earl, Anna's father, and she would have been simply Lady
Anna Scott. But everyone has assumed that the succession must have
been amended by patent or charter at a later date to allow remainder
to heirs general. No such patent has ever been found; there is no
record or trace of it.
7
However, the little girl in question was accepted and known,
whether rightly or wrongly, as the Countess of Buccleuch. Any son
by James Crofts would eventually succeed as Earl of Buccleuch. But
the King was not satisfied. Intoxicated with the success, beauty, the
very existence of his son, he determined that he should bring Anna
new titles, in return for all the estate which she was bringing to the
marriage. She had vast estates in seven counties, plus four domaines
and an income of £10,000 a year. Accordingly, the boy assumed the
surname "Scott" in anticipation of his entering that family and continuing it (the Scotts of Buccleuch would otherwise have come to an
end with the death of Anna in 173.1). He was made a Knight of the
Garter. Then, on 14th February 1663, he was created Baron Scott
of Tyndale, Earl of Doncaster, and Duke of Monmouth, with
precedence over all other dukes not of royal blood. Henceforth, he
was to be fourth man in the realm, after the King, the Duke of
York, and Prince Rupert. A few weeks later, on 20th April he was
married to the little Countess of Buccleuch, and the same day they
were created Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, and Earl and Countess of Dalkeith. It is as the Duke of Monmouth that he is generally
known to history. The King wrote to his sister: "This is Jameses
marriage day, and I am goeing to sup with them, where we intend
to dance and see them a bed together, but the ceremony shall stop
there, for they are both too young to lye all night together."
8
The King described his son in the marriage contract as
"Filio
nostro naturali et illegitimo"
Honours were heaped upon him in
dizzy sequence. It was a happy time. Pepys noted that the King continued to dote upon his son.