The Dukes (23 page)

The most telling indication of the goodness and character of Nell Gwynn is that no writer seems to have been able to bring himself to refer to her as anything but "Nell" or "Nelly". She is not called Miss or Mrs Gwynn or Eleanor Gwynn; to do so would be to distort her personality. It is nearly 300 years since she died, but the warmth and affection which this disarming jovial prostitute inspired is strong yet.

Besides the Duke of St Albans, some hundreds of people alive now can trace their ancestry back to Nell, through the 1st Duke. In 11901 there were 311 descendants, and there must now be considerably more. Sixty-seven of them were titled 'Honourable'; they included Beauclerks, Loders, Cavendishes, Capells, the Earl of Essex, the Countess of Warwick, the Duchess of Sutherland, the Countess of Westmorland, and so on. One woman, Ivy Gordon-Lennox, who in 1915 became the Duchess of Portland, was descended three times from Charles II, once through Nell Gwynn, once through Barbara Villiers, and once through Louise de Kerouaille." The present Duke of Buccleuch also traces his ancestry to Nell through the 10th Duke of St Albans.As for her son, the 1st Duke, who had counted among his tutors Thomas Otway, the author of
Venice Preserved
and
The Soldier's Fortune,
he developed into a fine and popular young man and a gallant soldier. He was a favourite with the Dowager Queen Catherine, Charles's widow, who gave him an allowance of £2000 a year. When he was still a boy he was betrothed to Lady Diana Vere, the daughter and sole heiress of the 20th and last Earl of Oxford. She was the last of the Veres, a family founded in England by Aubrey de Vere, who had come over with the Conqueror in 1066 and been ennobled as Earl of Oxford. He lived in a manor house marked by the area of London now called "Earl's Court", where he grew vines. His family is also recalled in De Vere Gardens, Kensington, and naturally in the surname of his descendant the Duke of St Albans, which is de Vere Beauclerk.

King Charles clearly made a habit of choosing wealthy females from grand families where there was no male heir to carry on the name, rescued that name from oblivion, and took in return the estate for one of his bastard sons. He went seriously wrong in St Albans' case. The de Veres were penniless, their fortune squandered; Diana brought practically nothing with her into the marriage. Perhaps it was Nell's easy-going nature which prevented her insisting that her boy should be provided with a rich bride. Anyway, the St Albans' descendants have always been relatively poor in consequence. The marriage took place in 1694.

When the Duke was thirty-four years old he was, according to Macky, "very like King Charles" (there was, at least, no doubt about
his
paternity), and that he had a "black complexion", by which he meant swarthy. He was, in addition, "well-bred, doth not love business, is well affected to the constitution of his country".
¹⁴
After that, we lose sight of him. Despite his having been a notable soldier, his career was not very public, or full of achievement. He seems to have preferred a quiet life with his wife Diana, who was a celebrated

beauty and bore him eight sons. He died in 1726, aged fifty-six.

* * *

While Nelly was giving birth to the future Duke of St Albans at her house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, the King's sister, Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, was sailing towards Dover to persuade her adoring brother to link England with France in an alliance, the result of which was the Treaty of Dover of 22nd May 1670. The King went out on the waters to meet her. Among her suite of 237 persons was a pretty little Maid of Honour called Louise Renee de Penencoet de Kerouaille. The King noticed her, and a different kind of alliance suggested itself to his heart. Louise was from a poor but noble Breton family. She was small, dark, refined, and thoroughly desirable. She deeply resented her place as Maid of Honour to an Englishwoman, believing that she was destined to take her rank among the most noble in France and England. More than anything, she wanted wealth - vast quantities of it. Politicians noticed the attraction which the King manifested, and determined that it should be made serviceable; meanwhile, Louise returned to France. Weeks later, Henrietta was dead, suddenly and unexpectedly. The King was utterly heartbroken. The French King, Louis XIV, at once despatched Louise back to England, for consolation perhaps, and Charles sent a royal yacht to meet her at Calais. Within a very short time she was established at Court, and her influence assured. The French intended to use her as a lever to prise compliance from Charles and make English policy subservient to French designs. The French had noticed (who had not?) that King Charles II would subordinate almost any consideration to the satisfaction of his pleasure, and had wisely determined that they could put this dalliance to use. Louise was sent to England as a spy, a courtesan who would conduct international negotiations between the sheets. It took her a little time to adapt to the role, but with encouragement from Louis XIV and the French Ambassador, she not only succeeded, but surpassed expectations.

Plans for the consummation of the King's desire were well laid by the French Ambassador. The Ambassador would take Louise to stay at Euston Hall, the home of Lady Arlington, and future seat of the Dukes of Grafton. The King would no doubt avail himself of the opportunity to visit. He did, and there he spent his first night with his charming new mistress. Evelyn was also at Euston Hall, and professed to be shocked by the goings-on, which lasted a full fortnight. He can hardly bring himself to set down on paper that "she was for the most part in her undress all day, and that there was fondness and toying with that young wanton".
⁴⁵
All the guests in the house knew that Louise had pleasured the King, for it was joyfully announced to the gathering the following morning. Nine months later, on 29th July 1672, Louise gave birth to a son, who was to be the ancestor of the line of Dukes of Richmond. It is a delicious irony in this profligate age that the 1st Duke of Richmond, illegitimate son of Charles II, was conceived at Euston Hall, home of the 1st Duke of Grafton, another illegitimate son of Charles II by a different mistress. Disarmingly gentle, but sly and intriguing, Louise became the most successful of all the King's mistresses. She obtained honours for herself far more quickly than any of her predecessors. In 1673 she was created Duchess of Portsmouth, for which dignity she had to become a naturalised Englishwoman, and in 1675 her son was created Duke of Richmond, when he was only three years old - the youngest person ever to be so honoured in the history of the country. "Alone among Charles's mistresses, she had a conception of
la haute politique
: she alone in that ignoble Court could command the respect and co­operation of statesmen and ambassadors. She met the vulgar furies of the Duchess of Cleveland and the banter of Nell Gwynn with quiet disdain; she held her own with a certain dignity against the anger of the Commons, the hatred of the people, the attacks of politicians, and the waywardness of Charles, and for many years she was virtually Queen of England."
⁴⁶

The way in which she secured the title for her son is indicative of her determined ambition. The Duchess of Cleveland wanted her son to be created Duke of Grafton; Louise wanted hers to be Duke of Richmond. But Barbara made a fuss about precedence; she said that her son should have his title before the son of a French Maid of Honour, and should take his place at the head of the King's bastards. The King, who hated arguments, and felt besieged by the two women, determined that the patents of creation should be dated the same day, so that Grafton and Richmond would be equal. Louise was far too clever for that. With the connivance of Danby (later Duke of Leeds) with whom she is supposed to have had an affair, Louise presented her patents to the Lord Treasurer at midnight, just as he was stepping into his coach to go to Bath, and had them signed. When Barbara turned up with her lawyers in the morning she was told that the Lord Treasurer was out of town. Louise had achieved her aim of precedence, and her son was already the Duke of Richmond.
^47
 
[4]

Nell Gwynn commented, "Even Barbara's brats were not made dukes until they were twelve or thirteen, but this French spy's son is ennobled when little more than an infant in arms."
⁴⁸

Louise was profoundly unpopular with the aristocracy and with the people. The aristocracy could not stomach a foreigner being given the highest honour in the English peerage merely because she was good in bed. The Marchioness of Worcester slighted her at Tunbridge Wells, when Louise demanded that her rank entitled her to preced­ence, with the remark that the English did not respect a duchy gained through prostitution. (This is not exactly true; the English respect a duchy gained by any means.) Aristocracy and people united to deplore her airs; she was a mistress in the grand manner, and she succeeded in irritating the profound English distrust of pretension and pomposity.

Her extravagance was gargantuan. She depleted the privy purse of more money even than Barbara Villiers. In December 1674 an annuity of £10,000 was settled on her, in addition to which she received
ad hoc
gifts from the King of staggering liberality. Her income varied, but in 1681 it amounted to £136,668.
⁴⁹
Barbara had been expensive in a vulgar way, with her coach-and-eight, but Louise had a refinement of taste which could be satisfied only by the most expensive and
recherche
items from Paris. She never lost sight of her aim to be rich, and to hold her head up high with the French aristocracy, in whose company she had been of low rank. Evelyn relates, "I was casually shown the Duchess of Portsmouth's splendid apartment at Whitehall. It is luxuriously furnished, and has ten times the richness and glory of the Queen's - such massy pieces of plate; whole tables and stands of incredible value."
⁵⁰
Evelyn also said that the whole apartment was two or three times pulled down and rebuilt to satisfy her prodigal tastes. She was ostentatious, throwing money from her window in the hope that gossip might reach France and teach her compatriots how rich she had become to be able to indulge such extravagance.
⁵¹
The House of Commons was not at all happy. While he was paying out vast sums to gratify the vanity of Louise, he was also supporting Barbara, Nell, Moll Davis, and others, including indirectly lovers of Barbara. Louise exceeded all reason. She would receive visitors while an unnecessary number of maids were combing out her beautiful hair in a room hung with Gobelin tapestries.
⁵²

When her sister returned to France, having married the Earl of Pembroke, Louise chartered (and the King paid for) several ships to transport her across the Channel. There were chests filled with silver and silk; a hundred pounds in weight of pins and needles; five pounds in weight of iris-root scent; seventeen dozen gloves, pearls, ear-rings, diamonds, and money.
⁵³

On the face of it, the lady had achieved much in a very short time. She was an English duchess, countess and baroness, her infant son was an English duke, her sister was married to an English earl. She had money and influence. But she was not satisfied. In her heart she valued these English honours as trifles compared to the
real
honour of a French title. France was the most civilised land in the world, her king the most powerful, her Court and literature the most brilliant. Next to all this, the English were barbarians. She pestered Charles to persuade Louis XIV to give her a French duchy. At first the French King was reluctant. He gave Louise the duchy of Aubigny (which Charles's ancestors, the Stuarts, had previously held since 1422), on the curious condition that the estate should revert on her death to any one of Charles's natural sons whom he should appoint to succeed her. It was assumed that Charles would choose as successor her own son, Richmond, and that he and his descendants could then enjoy the estate without Louis XIV having to give him a separate French title, which was not desirable. The French Court, after all, was more select. So, Louise found herself possessor of a ducal estate in France, but without the title of
duchesse.
This was not what she wanted at all.

She pestered and pestered for years, until Louis XIV relented, and made her Duchesse d'Aubigny in January 1684." The next year, her son the Duke of Richmond was naturalised a Frenchman, so that he could succeed her to the estate and title. To this day, the Duke of Richmond is also Due d'Aubigny in France, one of only two British Dukes to hold a French dukedom as well.

Her son, the 1st Duke of Richmond, suffered from the same lavish distribution of honours as had destroyed the character of his half-brother the Duke of Monmouth. Most probably it was the snobbishness of Louise which insisted that her son should be created Duke of Richmond in the peerage of England at the age of three, Duke of Lennox in the peerage of Scotland four weeks later, that he should be granted a perpetual charge on every ton of coal exported from the Tyne, when he was only four years old, and that he should be installed as a Knight of the Garter at the age of nine. She further secured for him a position as High Steward of York, the second city of the realm, when he was eleven, and the appointment as Master of the Horse when he was not yet ten. There was even talk of his being made heir to the throne.
⁵⁸
In short, he had little chance of growing into a responsible adult.