The story of Nell Gwyn (11 page)

' Wilkins's Concilia, iv. 594. ' Dr. Lake's Diary in Camden Miscellany, vol. i. ' Richardsoniana, p. 187. 88

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THE STORY OF NELL GWYN

pocket. The rogue, who saw his sovereign's eye upon him, put his finger to his nose, and made a sign to the King with a wink to say nothing. Charles took the hint, and, watching the Earl, enjoyed his feeling first in one pocket and then in another for his missing box. The King now called the nobleman to him. "You need not give yourself," he said, "any more trouble about it, my Lord, your box is gone ; I am myself an accomplice :—I could not help it, I was made a confidant." ^

Of his graver and deeper remarks Dryden has preserved a specimen. " I remember a saying," writes the poet, " of King Charles II. on Sir Matthew Hale (who was, doubtless, an uncorrupted and upright man), that his servants were sure to be cast on any trial which was heard before him ; not that he thought the Judge was possibly to be bribed, but that his integrity might be too scrupulous ; and that the causes of the Crown were always suspicious when the privileges of subjects were concerned."^ The wisdom of the remark as respects Sir Matthew Hale is confirmed by Roger North. "If one party was a courtier,'' says North, " and well dressed, and the other a sort of puritan, with a black cap and plain clothes, Hale insensibly thought the justice of the cause with the latter." ^ Nor has it passed without the censure of Johnson. " A judge," said the great doctor, " may be partial

' Kichardsoniana, p. 103.

2 Dryden's Prose Works, ed. Malone, iv. 156.

* North, i. 119.

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Otherwise than to the Crown ; we have seen judges partial to the Populace." ^

His easy, gentlemanlike way of expressing disapprobation is exemplified in a saying to which I have already had occasion to refer. " Is that like me?'' he asked Riley the painter, to whom he had sat for his portrait; " then, odds fish ! I am an ugly fellow." 2

When told that the Emperor of Morocco had made him a present of two lions and thirty ostriches, he laughed, and said he "knew nothing more proper to send by way of return than a flock of geese." ^

Of Harrow Church, standing on a hill and visible for many miles round, he is said to have remarked that "it was the only visible church he knew";* and when taken to see a fellow climb up the outside of a church to its very pinnacle and there stand on his head, he offered him, on coming down, a patent to prevent any one doing it but himself.®

"Pray," he said at the theatre, while observing the grim looks of the murderers in Macbeth, "pray what is the reason that we never see a rogue in a play, but, odds fish ! they always clap him on a black periwig, when it is well known one of the

1 Boswell, ed. Croker, ed. 1848, p. 448.

2 Walpole's Anecdotes.

3 Reresby's Mei)ioirs, ed. 1735, p. 132.

* Remarks on Squire [William] Ayre's . . . Life . , . of Mr. Pope, 1745, lamo, p. 12 [it is signed J. H., and attributed to Sir John Hill].

* Horace Walpole, in Gentleman's Magazine for January 1848.

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greatest rogues in England always wears a fair one?" The allusion was, it is asserted, to Gates, but, as I rather suspect, to Shaftesbury. The saying, however, was told by Betterton to Gibber.^

He was troubled with intercessions for people who were obnoxious to him ; and once, when Lord Keeper Guilford was soliciting his favour on behalf of one he did not like, he observed facetiously, " It is very strange that every one of my friends should keep a tame knave.""

One day while the King was being shaved, his impudent barber observed to him that "he thought none of his Majesty's officers had a greater trust than he." " Oy," said the King, " how so, friend ?" " Why," said the barber, " I could cut your Majesty's throat when I would." The King started up and said, " Odds fish! that very thought is treason ; thou shalt shave me no more." ^ The barber of Dionysius, who had made the same remark, was crucified for his garrulity : but honest Rowley was not cruel. His loquacious barber was only dismissed. " Falsehood and cruelty," he said to Burnet, " he looked on as the greatest crimes in the sight of God." *

Of Woolley, afterwards Bishop of Clonfert, he observed wittily, and with great knowledge of character, that he " was a very honest man, but a very great blockhead—that he had given him a

1 Cibher's Apology, ed. 1740, p. iii. a North's Lives, ed. 1826, ii. 247.

* Richardsoniana, p. 106.

* Burnet, ed, 1823, ii. 169.

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living in Suffolk, swarming with Nonconformists— that he had gone from house to house and brought them all to Church—that he had made him a Bishop for his diligence ; but what he could have said to the Nonconformists he could not imagine, except he believed that his nonsense suited their nonsense." ^

On one occasion, when unable or unwilling to sleep, he was so much pleased with a passage in a sermon by South, that he laughed outright, and turning to Laurence Hyde, Lord Rochester, "Odds fish ! Lory," said he, "your chaplain must be a Bishop, therefore put me in mind of him next vacancy." ^ Of Barrow, he said that " he was an unfair preacher,"^ because, as it has been explained, he exhausted every subject and left no room for others to come after him ;—but the King's allusion was made somewhat slyly to the length as well as excellence of Barrow's sermons.*

He said often he "was not priest-ridden : he would not venture a war nor travel again for any party."* Such is Burnet's story, curiously confirmed as it is by Sir Richard Bulstrode's conversation with the King on his former exile and the then condition of the country. " I," said the King, most prophetically indeed, " am weary of travelling —I am resolved to go abroad no more ; but when

^ Burnet, ed. 1823, i. 449.

^ Biographia Briianttica, art. " South."

" Life m Biographia Britannica.

* Biugiaphia Britannica, Axi. "Barrow."

* Burnet, ed. 1823, i. 356.

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I am dead and gone, I know not what my brother will do. I am much afraid that when he comes to the Crown he will be obliged to travel again." ^

He observed, in allusion to the amours of the Duke of York and the plain looks of his mistresses, that he "believed his brother had his favourites given him by his priests for penance." ^

After taking two or three turns one morning in St. James's Park, the King, attended only by the Duke of Leeds and Lord Cromarty, walked up Constitution Hill into Hyde Park. When he was crossing the road, where Apsley House now is, the Duke of York, who had been hunting that morning on Hounslow Heath, was seen returning in his coach, escorted by a party of the Guards, who, as soon as they perceived the King, suddenly halted, and stopped the coach. The Duke being acquainted with the occasion of the halt, immediately got out, and after saluting the King, said he was greatly surprised to find his Majesty in that place, with so small an attendance, and that he thought his Majesty exposed himself to some danger. " No kind of danger, James," was the reply : "for I am sure no man in England will take away my life to make you King." The old Lord Cromarty often mentioned this anecdote to his friends.^

" It is better to be envied than pitied," was his observation to Lord Chancellor Clarendon.*

1 Sir Richard Bulstrode's Memoirs, p. 424.

2 Burnet, ed. 1823, i. 288.

3 King's Ajiecdotes of his Own Times, p. 61. * Clarendon's Own Life, ed. 1827, i. 412.

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•* He that takes one stone from the Church takes two from the Crown," was another of his sayings preserved by Pepys.^

He said to Lauderdale, to "let Presbytery go, for it was not a religion for gentlemen." ^

That " God would not damn a man for a little irregular pleasure," he observed in one of his free discourses with Burnet on points of religion.'*

If his short characters of men were in common at all like the one that has been preserved to us of Godolphin, we have lost a good deal by the lack of reporters. Of Godolphin, when only a page at Court, he said, that " he was never in the way, and never out of the way" ;* and this was a character, says Lord Dartmouth, which Godolphin maintained to his life's end.

When told by Will Legge that the pardoning of Lord Russell would, among other things, lay an eternal obligation upon a very great and numerous family, he replied, with reason on his side, "All that is true ; iDut it is as true, that if I do not take his life he will soon have mine."^

Eager for the marriage of the Princess Mary to the Prince of Orange, on being reminded of his promise to the Duke of York (to whom the match was unwelcome), that he would not dispose of the daughter without the father's consent, he replied it was true he had given his brother such a promise,

1 Pepys, March 29, 1669.

a Burnet, ed. 1823, i. 184. » Ibid., ed. 1823, ii. 23.

* Lord Dartmouth in Burnet, ed. 1823, ii. 240. » Lord Dartmouth's note in Burnet, ed. 1823, ii. 370.

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"but, odds fish! he must consent."^ After the marriage the King entered their room as soon as they were in bed, and drawing the curtains, cried out to the Prince—it is the chaplain who tells the story, an archdeacon and prebendary of Exeter, whose words I would fain quote in full—"Now, Nephew. Hey! St. George for England !"2

When Bancroft, dean of St. Paul's, was brought to Whitehall by Will Chiffinch, that Charles might tell him in person of his appointment to the archbishopric of Canterbury, the dean urged his unfitness for that office, and requested his Majesty to bestow it on some more worthy person. The King replied, that, " whether he would accept the Primacy or not, his Deanery was already given to Dr. Stillingfleet."^

When Sir John Warner turned Papist and retired to a convent, his uncle, Dr. Warner, who was one of the King's physicians, upon apprehension that Sir John might convert his property to popish uses, pressed his Majesty to order the Attorney-General to proceed at law for securing his estate to himself, as next male heir. " Sir John at present," said the King, " is one of God Almighty's fools, but it will not be long before he returns to his estate, and enjoys it himself."*

One of his last sayings related to his new Palace at Winchester. Impatient to have the works

1 Lord Dartmouth's note in Burnet, ed. 1823, i. 118.

* Dr. Lake's Diary in Camden Miscellany, vol. i. a Ibid.

* Secret History of Whitehall.

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finished, he remarked that "a year was a great time in his life."^

When on his deathbed, the Queen sent him a message that she was too unwell to resume her post by the couch, and implored pardon for any offence which she might unwittingly have given* " She ask my pardon, poor woman ! " cried Charles. " I ask hers with all my heart."

In his last moments he apologised to those who had stood round him all night for the trouble he had caused. " He had b'^en," he said, " a most unconscionable time dying ; but he hoped that they would excuse it."^ A like feeling ruffled the last moments of the polite Earl of Chesterfield, whose only expressed anxiety related to his friend Day-rolles being in the room without a chair to sit down upon—" Give Dayrolles a chair."

If he was ready at a reply, there were others about him who were not less happy. When he called Lord Chancellor Shaftesbury, in Ashley's own hearing, " the greatest rogue in England," the reply was—"Of a subject, sir, perhaps I am."3 Not less witty was the sarcastic answer of the Lord Dorset, to whom I have already introduced the reader as a lover of Nell Gwyn. The Earl had come to Court on Queen Elizabeth's birthday, long kept as a holiday in London and elsewhere, and still, I believe, observed by the benchers of Gray's

1 North, ed. 1826, ii. 105. ' Macaulay, i. 439.

' Preserved by the witty Lord Chesterfield. Works, ed. Lord Mahon, ii. 334.

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Inn. The King, forgetting the day, asked "what the bells rang for?" The answer given, the King asked further, " how it came to pass that her birthday was still kept, while those of his father and grandfather were no more thought of than William the Conqueror's ? " " Because," said the frank peer to the frank King, " she being a woman chose men for her counsellors, and men when they reign usually choose women.'" Of the same stamp was the more than half-heard aside of the Duke of Buckingham, to an appeal to the monarch " as the father of his people." " Of a good many of them," whispered the author of the Rehearsal.

I have referred in a former chapter to the King's partiality for his dogs, one species of which is still celebrated among \ht.fa7icy as King Charles's breed. On the occasion of an entry into Salisbury, an honest Cavalier pressed forward to see him, and came so near the coach that his Majesty cautioned the poor man not to cling too close to the door lest one of the little black spaniels in the coach should chance to bite him. The loyalist still persisting in being near, a spaniel seized him by the finger, and the sufferer cried with a loud voice, " God bless your Majesty, but G—d d—n your dogs 1"^ This story has been preserved to us by the mercurial Duke of Wharton as an illustration of the indulgence which the King accorded to his subjects on all occasions,—as an instance of the popular, easy, an^

* Richardso7iiana.

' Duke of Wharton's Works.

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endearing arts which ensure to a monarch the love and good-will of his people. But his best saying was his last,—"Let not poor Nelly starve!" and this, the parting request of the Merry Monarch, reminds us that it is time once more to return—to Nelly.

CHAPTER VI.

Birth of the Duke of St. Albans—Arrival of Mademoiselle deQu^rouaille—Death of the Duchessof Orleans—Nelly's house in Pall Mall—Countess of Castlemaine created Duchess of Cleveland—Sir John Birkenhead, Sir John Coventry, and the Actresses at the two Houses—Insolence of Dramatists and Actors —Evelyn overhears a conversation between Nelly and the King—The Protestant and Popish Mistresses—Story of the Service of Plate—Printed Dialogues illustrative of the rivalry of Nelly and the Duchess of Portsmouth—Madame S^vign^'s account of it—Story of the Smock—Nelly in mourning for the Cham of Tartary—Story of the two Fowls—Portsmouth's opinion of Nelly—Concert at Nell's house—The Queen and La Belle Stewart at a Fair disguised as Country Girls—Births, Marriages, and Creations—Nelly's disappointment—Her witty remark to the King—Her son created Karl of Burford, and betrothed to the daughter and heiress of Vere, Earl of Oxford.

On the 8th of May 1670, while the Court was on its way to Dover to receive and entertain the Duchess of Orleans, Nell Gwyn was delivered of a son in her apartments in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The father was King Charles II., and the son was called Charles Beauclerk. The boy grew in strength

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and beauty, and became a favourite with his father. Where the child was christened, or by whom he was brought up, I have failed in discovering. There is reason to believe that Sir Fleetwood Sheppard, the friend of the witty Earl of Dorset, was his tutor, and that the poet Otway was in some way connected with his education.* To Sheppard one of the best of the minor poems of Prior is addressed.

In the suite of followers attending the beautiful Duchess of Orleans to Dover came Louise Renee de Penencourt de Qudrouaille, a girl of nineteen, of a noble but impoverished family in Brittany. She was one of the maids-of-honour to the Duchess, and famous for her beauty, though of a childish, simple, and somewhat baby face.^ Charles, whose heart was formed of tinder, grew at once enamoured of his sister's pretty maid-of-honour. But Louise was not to be caught without conditions affecting the interests of England. While the Court stayed at Dover was signed that celebrated treaty by which England was secretly made subservient to a foreign Power, and her king the pensioner of Louis XIV, When this was done Clarendon was living in exile, and the virtuous Southampton, and the all-powerful Albemarle, were in their graves.

* Then for that cub her son and heir. Let him remain in Otway's care.

Satire on Nelly. Hart. MS. -y^ic), fol. 135. [The satire is ttnv\\.\e.A An Essay 0/Scandal, 1681.]

■■' Such is Evelyn's description, confirmed by the various portraits of her preserved at Hampton Court Palace, at Goodwood, the seat of the Dulce of Richmond, etc.

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I cannot conceal my opinion that Nokes was not making the French so ridiculous at Dover (the reader will remember the incident related in a former chapter), as the French were making the English infamous, at the same time and in the same place, by this same treaty.

The Duchess remained for a fortnight in London, and Waller sung her leave-taking in some of his courtly and felicitous couplets. It was indeed a last farewell. In another month the royal lady by whom the treaty was completed was no more. She died at St. Cloud on the 30th of June, in her twenty-sixth year, poisoned, it is supposed, by a dose of sublimate given in a glass of succory-water.*

Louise de Querouaille abiding in England, became the mistress of the King, Duchess of Portsmouth, and—the rival of Nell Gwyn. Her only child by the King was recognised by the royal name of Lennox, created Duke of Richmond, and was the lineal ancestor of the present Goodwood family of that noble name and title.

On the return of the Court to London, Nelly