Court and Society from Elizabeth to Anne. Edited from the papers at Kimbolton, by the Duke of Manchester

Preface

. THESE chapters on the Court and Society from Elizabeth and Anne are based upon papers, of which nearly ad the originals are at Kimbolton. A few are in the Record Office : one very curious paper is in the Private Cabinet of the Empress Eugenie ; and a very important series are at Simancas. These papers are described in the text. It was at first intended to offer but a slight sketch of Catharine of Aragon — just enough to exhibit the domestic and social position of Ehzabeth when a girl. But the unexpected wealth of historical illustration which the Spanish archives yielded to the explorer sent out by our Government, suggested a more ample portrait of that noble and romantic Queen. It is hoped that the reader Avdl not object to receive a little more than is promised on the title-page. For the account of Queen Catharine and for in formation concerning many of the persons and occur rences alluded to in the work, the Editor is indebted to the historical knowledge and literary skid of Mr. W. Hepworth Dixon, and Dr. Doran ; to whom he begs to tender his thanks for assistance which so greatly increases the interest of these volumes.

Kimbolton : January 1804. CONTENTS OF THE FIKST VOLUME. CHAP. PAGE I. CATHARINE OK ARAGON ...... 1 II. CATHARINE IN SPAIN 7 III. EDUCATION OF CATHARINE 20 IV. PRINCESS OF WALES .39 V. PRINCESS DOWAGER .54 VI. NEW PROPOSALS 70 VII. CATHARINE QUEEN 98 VIII. THE MARRIAGE QUESTIONED 125 IX. THE DIVORCE . . 147 X. KIMBOLTON 174 xi. queen Elizabeth's love affairs .... 203 XII. AT HOME AND ABROAD ...... 219 xiii. Elizabeth's suitors 233 XIV. THE MONTAGU FAMILY ....... 260 XV. STUDENT LIFE OF HENRY MONTAGU .... 284 XVI. PENELOPE RICH 291 XVII. HENRY MONTAGU IN OFFICE 303 XVIII. CHARLES THE FIRST 325 XIX. OLIA'ER CROMWELL ....... 336 XX. LORDS AND THEIR LADIES 342 XXI. SACHARISSA 352 XXII. KIMBOLTON 366 XXIII. FAMILY AFFAIRS DURING THE CIVIL WAR . . . 375 XXIV. RETURN OF THE QUEEN TO WESTMINSTER . . . CHAP. I. COUKT AND SOCIETY FROM ELIZABETH TO ANNE.

Chapter I. Catharine Of Aragon

DONA CATALLNA of tfie golden hair, fifth child of Fernando King of Aragon and of Isabel Queen of Castile ; in turn an Infanta of Spain, a Princess of Wales, a Queen of England, and again a Princess of Wales ; the lady avIio brought red locks into fashion and farthingales into use amongst us ; a part of Avhose sad story has been told by Shakespeare in imperishable \Terse, and by Bacon in no less imperishable prose — left behind her when she died at Kimbolton Castle a good many traces of her fife, fier sufferings, and fier death. The room in which she passed aAvay, a room on the grand floor, looking into the deer park and across the moats tOAvards the Castle hid and the keeper's lodge, still bears her name. The boudoir Avhich she occupied, on the Avails of which she hung her pictures and tapes tries, adjoins it.

A traveding chest in Avhich she kept her clothes and jeAvels, and Avhich has her cypher on the lid, remains at the foot of the grand staircase. A secret passage leading from tfie Wliite draAving-room VOL. I. B CHAP, I. into the chapel is said to have been the means by which she eluded the observation and escaped from the presence of her husband's spies ; a tradition which is in keeping with ad that we know from Sir Edmund Bedingfield's reports of fier reserved and secluded ways of fife wfiile there. Though all the fronts of Kimbolton Castle were renewed by Sir John Vanbrugh, and the White drawing-room was added by that nimble wit and heavy builder to the pde, the wing which Catharine occupied is stdl the same in block as when the Mandevilles raised it in an angle of the cross roads from Bedford to Huntingdon, from St. Neots to Oundle ; the same as when Catharine, tiring of the close gardens and damp ponds of Buckden, chose it for her last home, in preference to either Somersham near St. Ives, or Fotheringay Castle on the Nene.

That wing is of fioar antiquity. Tfie inner and outer moats, it is true, fiave been filled up ; the gates have been " rebudt by the architect of Blenheim and Castle Howard ; the castle has been squared, and faced, and trimmed ; yet behind the facings and finishings a good deal of strong Plan tagenet and of very fine Tudor work may stdl be traced. For although the writer of the ' Relapse ' and the ' Provoked Wife ' did a good deal to injure the pictorial aspects of the Castle, he left the frame of it intact, much as it had come down from Mandevide, Bohun, and Stafford, into the hands of Wingfield and Montagu. No fancy is required to animate once more the silent rooms. The corridor along which Bastien and Antonio helped their royal mistress into chapel, the gadery in which she sat to hear Atequa chant masses and complines, stdl, after a lapse of three hun dred years, whisper to the imagination of her presence.

From a AvindoAv of her boudoir you may see the gates at which Lady Widoughby, splashed and fainting, knocked on the winter night, and through which her tears and eloquence forced a Avay to the bedside of her dying THE QUEEN'S PICTURES. 3 CHAP. I. friend. There is the chamber into Avhich the Spanish ambassador, Eustachio Chappius, the Capucius of Shakespeare, was introduced by Bedingfield in time to see the aunt of an emperor expire. On the Avails hang portraits of the time, which are said to have belonged to her ; portraits which may have been brought by her from Buckden, and left with her tra velling trunk by Rich and the royal officers, when they carried away her plate, worth 5,000 marks, as trifles unworthy of their care. These pictures are on panel; some of them by Holbein ; those which are known being her nearest friends or associates.

One is of her mother, Isabel the Catholic. Two are of her nephew Charles V. One is of the Archduke Phdip, husband of her unhappy sister, Crazy Jane. There are portraits of Sir John Cheeke, William first Lord Paget, and Thomas Crom wed, Earl of Essex. One of the known pictures is the Count of Nassau. One of the females is believed to be a portrait of herself. Pictures of Catharine are extremely rare ; but the small painting at Kimbolton Castle agrees with the contemporary notices of her eyes, her hair, and face. This codection of Queen Catharine's kinsmen and associates has been at Kimbolton time out of mind ; and until recently hung in the queen's boudoir. There hangs, too, about the Castle a further and final hint of her having been there in the flesh : — the reported haunting of her ghost.

Kimbolton may be considered a secluded spot. Even after the corn counties have been opened up by train, and telegraph, and mail, the Castle is eight mdes from a post town, nine mdes from a radway line, no less than thirty miles from Peterborough, the city hi which Catharine was buried, now the nearest station at which an express from London to York finds it worth while to stop. The Castle, with the hamlet at its gates, was budt by the ancient race of the Mandevilles in a broad hodoAV, at the crossing of two great roads, B CHAP. I, under the grey shadow of Stonely Priory ; a convent founded by the Bigrames, of whom, and of whose doings in the early time, a few stones, a mound of earth, a green road, a clump of trees, and the name of a field and spinney, alone remain. Kimbolton rose in the heart of a saintly district, near St. Neots, St. Ives, and SAvinstead Abbey, on the edge of the monastic regions of the fen.

The soil is hard, the river sluggish, the under wood dense, the population thin. Ride, across country, and you knock up your horse ; walk through a ploughed field, and, in tfie joke of the country-side, you Avid carry your parish on your boots. NeAv comers into such a place are rare. The son succeeds to his father's farm, rides after the pack which his father fodowed, sends his corn to be ground at the old mid, votes on the same side at a shire election, sits in the same pew at church in which his father and grandfather had al ways sat. A patriarchal order, so to speak, preserves men's minds from change and waste. In such a spot, among such a people, a poetical legend like that of Queen Catharine's ghost holds a veiy long lease of ife. The poor have their own poetry. The tale of her arrival at Kimbolton Castle, of her secluded habits Avhile fiAing there, of the departure of her funeral cortege for Peterborough, has not yet faded from the peasant mind.

FeAV of these hedgers and ploughmen have seen a theatre or read a play ; they knoAV nothing about Shakespeare or his draina ; yet the spirit of that tender and solemn scene in ' Henry the Eighth,' may be said to lie upon their hearts in the wintry evenings when they whisper to each other hoAv the unhappy lady glides in tfie dusk of twilight through the rooms of Kimbolton, pauses on the stairs, or kneels in the chapel, a beautiful and mournful figure, in flowing Avhite, and wearing a regal crown. No light of science, no hiss of sarcasm, will disturb in their simple minds that foofisfi saitfi. They have alqueen Catharine's ghost. 5 CHAP. I Avays heard of it ; some of them haA'e seen it. You laugh in their faces, yet they still believe. You cannot teach them the meaning of such words as ifiusions of the sense.

And here, perhaps, if anywhere on earth, an ancient superstition may be said to have been justi fied in tfie eyes of men by its oavii beauty and by human art. To the memory of a great and tragic grief Shakespeare has given a habitation and a name, which, in the loftier spheres of emotion, will not be suffered to pass away. A tfiousand years hence men's eyes will swim, as they do now, when the dying Catha rine whispers to her attending servants — Cause the musicians play me that sad note I named my knell, whilst I sit meditating On that celestial harmony I go to ! A tfiousand years hence, though Bastien and Atequa, Isabel de Vergas and Lady Wdloughby, may be for gotten, Griffiths and Patience, and the six angelic visitants in Avhite robes, witfi garland of bay and wand of palm, wid stdl exist, tfie immortal beings of the mind.

Why, then, should Ave Avish to scare away the popular belief, While we delight to preserve the poetical legend ? Each has its use and service. Shoidd the Avorld become too wise for even such tender super stitions as appeal to us by their harmlessness and beauty, may the legend of Queen Catharine be the last that is put to flight ! So far as concerns ad popular ideas of her, Catha rine is a creature of the mist. Shakespeare and Bacon, the highest judges and firmest painters of cha racter, have, it is true, described her, if oidy lightly and by the way, as a woman of flesh and blood ; the flesh rather stubborn, the blood somewhat hot ; as a lady who could curse her enemies and caress her friends ; a princess fud of natural graces, Airtues, and infirmities. Had the portraits by Shakespeare and Bacon been painted in fud, they Avould have been all that we could hope or CHAP. I. wish.

But they are only fragments of the whole : and the work of all minor hands is nothing, or worse than nothing. In these inferior pencillings, the woman is concealed beneath the ved of a nun. In place of a girl full of sun and fife, eager to love and to be loved, enamoured of state and pomp, who liked a good dinner, a new gown, above all a young husband; one who had her quarrels, her debts, her feminine fibs, and her little deceptions, even with those Avho were most near and dear to her ; a creature to be kissed and petted, to be adored and chidden and id-used — ad of Avhich Catharine was in the flesh — we find a cold, grim Lady Abbess, a creature too pious for the world in which her lot was cast, too pure for the husband who had been given to her. Such a conception is vague in outline and false in spirit.

Catharine was every inch a woman before she became every inch a queen. The great archives of Simancas have, within the past year, supplied us with the means of figuring tfie queen as sfie lived in the flesh, with all her beauties and ad her faults about her, like her farthingale and mantida. In that great codection of state secrets, for the opening of Avhich the world stands indebted to the good sense of Marshal O'Donnell, Avhen first minister of her Majesty Isabel the Second, Catharine has draAvn her own character in its fights and shadows, has written her own strange story with the frankness of a woman who be lieved she Avas talking in secret with her nearest kin. From this mine of facts, heretofore unwrought, a sketch of Catharine's fife, iioav offered to the reader, will be chiefly drawn. BIRTH OF CATHARINE. 7 CHAP. II.

Chapter II. Catharine In Spain

INTO the half-Moorish city of Alcala de Henares, a short ride from Madrid, came plunging loud and fast, in the first days of December 1485, a motley and brilliant court ; the King of Aragon, the Queen of Castde ; Don Juan their grave weak son, the heir apparent to a dozen crowns ; Dona Isabel, the young Infanta ; Dona Juana, a child, to be afterwards famous in story as Crazy Jane ; the great Cardinal Mendoza, with a train of bishops and priests ; Dominican monks, the com panions of Torquemada, the Queen's Confessor, and her first Grand Inquisitor of Spain ; a cloud of bronzed and eager warriors, Zaharas and Cabras, men renowned in the battles of the Cross ; all hurrying tOAvards Toledo, where they meant to spend Christmas-day in dances, street processions, cards, and bull-fights ; resting and breathing on their way to a fierce hug of hate under the wads of Lqja and Malaga.

A whisper passed about that the Queen was id. She was expecting to be id, though not so soon, and on the 5th day of the month a httle girl — whose birth at Alcala de Henares was a surprise, whose fife was a chain of marvels, and whose death at Kimbolton was untimely — came like a Avinter flower into the world. They called her Catalina. Mendoza, keeper of the Queen's conscience, gave a feast to her ladies of honour in the baby's name ; and feasts being rare in the land of melons and white bread, this banquet given by the cardinal is mentioned in ad the chronicles of Spain. In due time it was noted that CHAP. II. the baby herself had more than a common child's fond ness for meats and drinks. Like her mother, she was a devout Catholic, but she could not and would not fast. When she arrived in London, a city of jolly dishes and plenteous feeding, one of tfie secret griefs, winch she confided to fier parents, not once or tAvice, but many times, Avas that the English people would not supply her with enough to eat.

Sprinkled and swathed, the tiny Infanta of Spain Avas carried along with the troops from Alcala de Henares and the parched and gusty plain of Madrid, as the tides of Avar rolled south or east ; the fife and tabour in her ears, the stench and dust of battle in fier nostrds, from her earliest days. Witfiout a strain of speech, she may be said to have been born in a camp, to have been reared amidst storm and siege ; a baby hustled about among priests and soldiers; among men who, before she could lisp a sentence or count her beads, had begun to gamble aAvay her innocent life. Sfie was the sport of events. When she was less than two years old, ambassadors Avere in her mother's closet, engaged in huckstering for her hand. What gifts would she bring to her husband ? If land, Iioav much ? if doblas, how many ?

These were the questions whispered over her cradle. When she was tAvo years and four months old, her parents, Fernando and Isabel, in their joint names, sent a commission, dated April 30, 1488, to Roderigo Gonsalvo de Puebla, their ambassador in London, to propose her for the Prince of Wales. The bridegroom they had in vieAV, Prince Arthur, Avas an English gentleman, one year and six months old. It is not very clear from which of the two kings came the first hint for an alliance. Fernando, King of Aragon, and Henry, King of England, had much in common ; something in their persons, more in their minds, most of ad in their policies. Both were men of small size, lean visage, and icy broAV ; of manner SPANISH POLITICS. 9 CHAP, II. grave and harsh, of an expression crafty and insatiable ; to Avhich defects of nature the Spaniard added a lisp in his voice, a squint in his eye.

Each feared, and had cause to fear, the growth of France ; the provinces of Avhich kingdom, with the sole exception of Bretagne, had been welded together under a common leader ; making a power in Europe which the king, then Charles VTIL, a youthful and ambitious sovereign, prone to war as to a pastime, ruled by a daring woman, and spurred by the national instinct of expansion, might have the Avdl and fortune to enlarge. But Spain had a deeper interest in the French than England. Those claims on the crown which Henry V. had won by the fight of Azincour had passed into the land of dreams ; for though Henry VII. styled himself King of France and kept troops in Calais, no man in his senses, even among the wild young bloods Avho were ahvays ready for a fray, now talked of recovering by arms that ancient prize.

The sea1 of which they Avere lords rolled stormily between them and their noble foes. Nature had parted these two nations by her own strong lines : — not so France and Spain, Avfiich crossed swords in Lombardy, on tfie Rliine, and in the Pyrenees. The youth of England would have met the French in gaiety of heart, as they rushed into the fists or rode after the hounds ; the Castdians marched against them with a grave and solid decorum, figliting, not out of lustiness of fife, but in the spirit of a camp of misers, counting each groat of the cost against every acre of the gain. To tAvo smad counties lying on the French slope of the Pyrenees, caded Roussidon and Cer dagne, knoAvn to us now by a poor red Avine Avhich they export, Fernando had some claim. The fact is, these counties had been paAvned to France, and Fer nando had a hope of getting them back into his hands Avithout paying the 300,000 crowns Avhich France had lent.

So far he had made but little Avay. As a short CHAP. II. cut to his end, he had sought to make a bargain with Madame de Bourbon, mother of the King of France, offering her his eldest daughter, the Infanta Isabel, for her son. Madame had declined this honour ; having her eye on Anne of Bretagne, a lady who would have a French province for a portion, and was therefore the most tempting morsel for a king of France. Fading to act with Madame, Fernando began to act against her. In playing this game for Roussillon, his children were his stakes. Isabel, refused by Charles, was given in marriage to Don Alonzo, Prince of Portugal, his nearest neighbour on the west ; and secret negotiations were commenced in London, Naples, Brussels, and Vienna for planting all the rest. France was to be netted in a web of Spanish queens.

Isabel was nine years older than her sister Juana, eleven years older than Maria, fourteen years older than Catalina : but even a baby in the cradle might have a place and use in Fer nando's house. Her future could be sold. If the king can be said to have loved his chddren at ad, it was oidy as the picador prizes his lance, as the gamester values his stake ; they were his wreapons of defence when driven to bay, his counters to be played, and, if need were, to be sacrificed to the success of his game. When he had planted one chdd on the Tagus, he began to scheme how to send a second to the Scheldt, and a third to the Thames ; also hoAv he should fetch a wife from the Danube for his son Don Juan. Either he must find adies on every frontier of France, or give up fiis dream of getting Roussdlon back without paying the loan.

Whether these nurselings, Avhen they greAV up, would like the fate he was making for them, was their own affair, poor things. They Avere his own : it was not for them to say yea or nay. Don Juan, if he grew to be a man, and happened to dislike his Austrian wife, might console himself after the fashion of his race and of many other kings. Bright eyes abound like HENRY THE SEVENTH. 11 CHAP. II. pomegranates in the south of Spain. The girls must take their chance of misery, as in this world women have all to do. Two of his daughters, not by the queen, had already become nuns : — Fernando may have thought that a bad husband was better for a child of his than a convent cell. To a king like Henry "VTL, new to fiis crown, perplexed by his foreign affairs, distrusted by his own peers, the advantages offered by De Puebla of a close alliance with a powerful and prosperous house, were great.

The very title by which Henry held his crown was revolutionary and insecure : won in the field, and subject to the changes and risks of war. What the sword had gained for him the sword might take away from him. If he had the croAvn, he could shoAv in his own person no strict right to it. His descent from John of Gaunt was a bastard descent ; his mother, not himself, Avas the chief of his house ; his family Avas not the eldest branch of the House of Lancaster ; the House of Lancaster was not the eldest branch of the royal race. At every step of the enquiry into his right the law forsook him. True, he could quote a parliamentary act of settlement ; but then the act only proved that he had won the battle of Bosworth Field. Any other conqueror could have quoted that paper title. Could he make men forget the rights of blood?

No one knew better than Henry VH. that more than half the world, despite his wisdom, valour and success, despised him as a usurper, and would have made merry at his fall. Fernando, too, knew this, and counted on it for his gain. But there was no great risk ; the title which his daughter Catalina, should she go to London, would have to share, stood clear from doubt. Arthur, the Prince of Wales, being the son of Henry VII. by his young Queen Elizabeth of York, heiress of Edward IV., Avould inherit his mother's rights at the same time as his father's power ; uniting in his own person the CHAP. II. strength and fortune of the two great factions of Lan caster and York. To his claims, however, there were some romantic doubts. King Edward TV. had had tAvo sons by Elizabeth Woodville — Edward Prince of Wales, and Richard Duke of York.

Were these sons dead ? For many years the public fiad been told that these young princes had been murdered in the ToAver of London, by command of their uncle Glou cester, much as Shakespeare has put the legend in his play ; but the fact of their death Avas doubted by many, and it bad never been proved in a court of laAV and record. Were they truly dead ] The king in his heart could not feel sure ; Avhile EdAvard's surviving sister, Margaret, Duchess of Bourgoyne, affirmed tfiat tfie younger of the two boys, Richard Duke of York, had been preserved by those Avho were set to kid him, that he had been carried to her court, and that be Avas still alive. In fier train there Avas a youth of Richard's age, of singular likeness to King EdAvard, whom she and the world about her treated as Edward's son.

This youth was a dangerous pretender to the crown. Tavo other men, one barred in tfie Tower, one starv ing in exile, fiad also claims upon tfie Englisfi crown whicfi Fernando, as a prudent father, was bound to note : in the Tower, the young Edward Plantagenet Earl of Wanvick, heir to George Duke of Clarence ; in exile, Edmund de la Pole Earl of Suffolk, a son of Elizabeth, sister of Ecbvard TV. ; neither of them formidable so long as the chief pretender lived and tfie Yorkist faction clung to the Duke of York ; yet strong enough for mischief, should events either crush that youth or dis credit him with the Yorkist peers. A cautious sire, ere sending his child to London, might like to have those tAvo men put out of the way of doing harm ; but until the day for sending her should be near at hand, he could drop them from the calculations of his game, and in the meanwhde play to win, as fortune shoidd RICHARD DUKE OF YORK. 13 CHAP. II. resolve, on either Prince Arthur or the Duke of York.

A reader who knows the tale of Perkin Warbeck only as it is told by Bacon, and by the moderns who derive from him, can hardly dAved on his claims to the throne of Edward IV. without a smile. That story is an expanded jest. The illustrious writer, laughing over the easy faith of king and mob, caught up this tale in his most mocking mood, quizzing alike the frauds of the court and the excess of popular belief, so that in the end a reader's mind retains no image of Warbeck's claim more serious than it does of Malvofio's love for Olivia or Sancho's pretensions to the crown of Barataria. A man must forget that delicious fun, that umivaded banter, fixing his eyes steadily on facts, ere he can hope to judge Avith fairness of the situation vrith which Fer nando, in the affair of Catalina, had then to deal.

To Henry and to the allies of Henry, the White Rose of York Avas far from being the pleasant jest which it appears on Bacon's page. Margaret moved all Christian princes on behalf of the youth whom she called her brother's son ; and whether they were right or Avrong, the princes of Europe believed her Avord. Maxi mdian King of the Romans pledged his honour to restore the youthful heir. The Archduke Philip received him as a king. When he repaired to Edinburgh, the King of Scotland bestoAved on him his cousin the Lady Catharine Gordon as a wife. The King of France, though loth to injure Henry, then his ally, believed the pretender to be EdAvard's son. Even the Pope Avas satisfied of tfie justice of his claim. Nor is it easy to reject the evidence which satisfied so many competent judges of men avIio saw and spoke witfi the young Duke of York.

Everyone adowed that he resembled Edward in face and form ; that he could describe the king's person and imitate his Avays Avith singular felicity. Unable to deny tfiese facts, fiis enemies fiad recourse CHAP. II. to fables, saying that the young man's father, a con verted Jew, had been much about King Edward's court, and that Edward, out of love for the Jew, or perhaps for the Jew's wife, had been sponsor to the boy, and had given him the name of Peter. Bacon, laughing over the pranks of this jovial king, who loved to roam in the city and make love to Cheapside madams, hints that the boy may have had in his veins some royal blood. This story of the Jew — this hint of a frad Jewess — will not sustain enquiry. The Jewish father was never found by those who wished to find him ; no proof that such a man had lived in London or elsewhere, and had a son to whom Edward had been sponsor, has ever been produced.

Why should a godson of Edward have been caded Peter ? That is obviously false. In truth, the story of a Jewish father comes from a misunder standing on Bacon's side of an obscure passage in Speed. Bernard Andre, Speed's authority, says that Warbeck was brought up in a JeAv's family ; not that Warbeck was a Jew's son or a king's godson. Andre, poet laureate and Prince Arthur's tutor, a partisan of Henry and the historian of his reign, a man to put the strong side of the king's position outward, dis tinctly says it was the JeAV himself, Avho took the name of Edward, to whom the king stood sponsor wfien fie Avent to cfiurcfi. Andre noAvhere states that Warbeck was this Jew Edward's child ; only that he was clerk or pupil (servulus) in his house. This makes a difference. If one of the princes, spared by the murderers, had escaped from the ToAver, as Avas alleged, such a trader as this JeAV EdAvard, bound to the dead king by personal ties, would have been the very man to stand his friend ; to hide him in his house as clerk or pupil until he could be carried abroad ; and to convey him, when it could be safely done, to the court of his illustrious aunt.