At the same time Felipe IV was reigning in very grand Spain, and Louis XIV in very rich France, The French ‘Sun’ King’s first cousin Charles II was living a bit of a double life in England after the Restoration. He had a lot of parliamentary trouble – though he, infinitely more tactful and resourceful than his poor father – knew how to deal with troublesome Whigs.

With our present monarch more than eighty years old, going strongly as ever but still over eighty, the tiresome thought has to be faced that the English might shortly have the spectacle of a Scottish Calvinist Prime Minister in Downing Street, and Charles III in Buckingham Palace. It was this thought that inspired me to muse on Charles II’s double life. One of these was spent merely holding on to his throne by the nails of his little fingers – his father had lost his head trying to do the same – not helped in any way by Spain, France, Holland and especially Scotland.

The other life was his ‘ladies’. Married for an unconscionable time to a sadly barren Portuguese princess (Katharine of Braganza), Charles spent his leisure hours with ladies who might have been duchesses, orange sellers or would-be actresses. The important thing was their fair sex.

King Charles II does not from the records appear ever to have practised any form of birth control. No diary by any of his mistresses reveals anything in this line. He fathered a lot of children, and obviously obtained a great deal of happiness from them. Only once did he steadfastly refuse to recognise paternity, dishonestly claimed by one of the royal ladies.

Charles fathered at least twelve bastards; each was recognised. One of the Wits of the period, the Duke of Buckingham, observed that a ‘King is supposed to be the father of his people, and Charles II was certainly the father of many of them’. The dozen children we know about came from his carnal relations with seven women, who were Lucy Walter, Elizabeth Killigrew, Catharine Pegge, Barbara Villiers (who produced five of the twelve), Nell Gwynn (two), Moll Davis and the haughty Louise de Kéroüalle. There were probably many more, but Charles was never a rich king and paternity for a Sovereign was (and is), a serious business. That said, once he had recognised a child of his loins Charles honoured paternal obligations dutifully and with affection.

The Stuarts, for all their many faults, made good fathers. An example of this was the excellent relation that existed between the two Charles, father and son. This gives even more credence to the good character of Charles II, because his revenge for the cold murder of his father by Parliament and Cromwell could have been quite horrible. In fact Charles II, once restored after years of exile, behaved with remarkable restraint. Cromwell, already dead, was hung up in chains; certain signers of the Death Warrant were executed, but by no means all. Other kings – Henrys VII and VIII, and Ivan of Russia come to mind – would have enjoyed a bloodbath stretching to all four points of the compass.

But back to the third quarter of the seventeenth century: During the recent ‘reforms’ forced on the House of Lords, one of the points made with vulgar regularity was that so many real peerages derived from the loves of Charles II. Andrew Marvell marvellously reports:
‘The misses take place, each advanced to be duchess/With pomp great as queens in their coach and six horses/Their bastards made dukes, earls, viscounts and lords/With all the title that honour affords . . .’

As we hardly have a House of Lords now, that debating Chamber having been destroyed by Mr Blair for reasons best known to himself (or his wife), it might be worth remembering what happened to most of the King’s progeny. Six sons received nine dukedoms. Monmouth and Buccleuch for Lucy Walter’s son; Southampton, Northumberland and Grafton (and Cleveland on her death) for Barbara Villiers’ three lads; St. Albans for Nell Gwynn’s surviving son. Richmond & Lennox (joined together) for the grand Louise’s only child. Charles’s most famous bastard, Monmouth married Anne, Duchess of Buccleuch in her own right, which led to their being made Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch jointly. After Monmouth’s fall, disgrace and execution (during the reign of Charles’ successor and younger brother, James II, Duchess Anne was permitted to retain her own Scottish Buccleuch title. The daughters were not neglected. Most were married off to some lord or other, and then rose rapidly in the nobility. Mary Tudor, daughter of Moll Davis the actress and seamstress was given the rank and precedence of a Duke’s daughter. Two of the sons made political marriages – with the daughters of two of those persistent difficult politicians who made life so miserable for Charles. Henry Duke of Grafton married Arlington’s daughter, and Charles Earl of Plymouth married Danby’s daughter. Do you see what I mean about the recent attacks on the House of Lords? Most of the titles exist today, though as ‘hereditaries’ their owners are no longer allowed any part of the governance of Great Britain.

Not one of the illegitimate children reached the exceptional calibre of their father, unless one counts Monmouth, who was a bundle of trouble and quite fearless. Few of them had the beauty, courage, wit and patience of their various mothers, none of whom, it should be said, seemed to suffer excessive jealousy with the rest of the royal harem. In this respect, there is a marked difference between the mistresses of the two cousins, Charles and Louis. In France, the dagger, poison, ‘accidents’ and ‘false arrests’ was the order of the day among Louis’ bedmates, of whom there were at least as many as in England. In fact, the children of Charles II were brought up by their mamas with one hard and fast rule, to please their royal father – never mention Scotland.

By Dean Swift for Hace Muchos Días

This entry was posted
on Monday, October 27th, 2008 at 10:26 am and is filed under Historia.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.