A Royal Love Match Read online

  The Coronation demanded an unceasing changing of clothes for the King and most of it was made of Cloth of Gold.

  The King’s golden sandals with high heels made him tower over the Bishops and Nobles around him and the ceremony required that he should wear a series of mantles of crimson velvet trimmed with ermine.

  Even his trousers, his breeches and stockings were made of crimson satin, and rich golden tissue embellished the chairs of State.

  There was a horse whose saddle was embroidered with pearls and gold and a large oriental ruby was provided by a jeweller named Gomeldon.

  A further twelve thousand stones were needed for the stirrups and bosses and these, however, were only lent for the occasion.

  In addition scarlet cloth was used in abundance in St. Edward’s Chapel and on the benches in Westminster Hall and Westminster Abbey.

  Everything possible contributed to the impression of magnificence.

  But it all, down to the silk towel held by the Bishop before the Coronation Communion, had to be paid for.

  It was fantastic, at the same time really impressive and exciting, which was exactly the effect that the King desired.

  Visitors from abroad were impressed to find that England was by no means the broken down country they had imagined it to be after the excesses of Cromwell.

  No one could have failed to be seriously moved by the solemn and ancient Service in Westminster Abbey.

  All the congregation held their breath as the Crown was finally placed on the King’s head by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

  Then a great shout rang out which seemed to echo and re-echo in the high roof.

  Immediately after every member of the English and Scottish Nobility swore fealty to their Sovereign and then they ascended the Throne and touched the King’s Crown, promising to support him with all their power and loyalty.

  It was all the more moving in that they had waited for this moment for so long.

  There were tears in Alissia’s eyes and more than one aristocrat taking part was busy with his handkerchief.

  To everyone’s relief the weather was dry and sunny throughout the ceremonies.

  These were rounded off by a mammoth feast held in Westminster Hall.

  The Earl Marshall, the Lord High Steward and the Lord High Constable appeared riding richly caparisoned horses to attend the first Court of their new Monarch.

  Even the humble clerks of the kitchen, who brought up the vast procession of servers, wore black figured satin gowns and velvet caps.

  To Alissia’s delight the King’s Official Champion, Sir Edward Dymoke, was riding a white charger.

  He made a grand entry preceded by trumpeters and throwing down his gauntlet he made the traditional and ancient challenge,

  “If any person of what degree soever, high or low, shall deny or gainsay our Sovereign Lord King Charles the Second – here is his Champion, who saith that he lieth and is a false traitor.”

  This was all very exciting to those who were able to see it happening.

  Thanks to the Countess’s plea to the King, she with her husband and the two girls were given excellent seats in Westminster Hall.

  Alissia had always been very interested in history and she could not help remembering that it was in the very same Hall some twelve years earlier that the King’s father, Charles I, had been on trial for his life.

  At long last King Charles II washed his hands in water ceremonially brought to him by the redoubtable Earl of Pembroke and a host of attendants and then having done so, he departed from Westminster Hall, as he had arrived, by a beautifully decorated barge on the River Thames.

  This was indeed a most fitting conclusion to such a stirring parade of pomp and power.

  It was all widely reported as not being in any way inferior in absolute magnificence to that of any Sovereign in Europe.

  King Charles and the Duke of York later presented their Coronation robes not to a museum for posterity but to a theatre – they were to be used a few years later in a play by Sir William Davenant and later still in a performance of Henry V by Orrery.

  When exhausted after such a long day, Alissia crept into her bed, she thought that it was a day she would never forget.

  It seemed extraordinary that the years of fear were over.

  And yet looking back she could see all too clearly the fear that had flickered in her father’s eyes when the dreaded Cromwellians came to search their house in the country.

  She often thought of the young man who had come into her nursery with his hand covered in blood and was so cleverly hidden by Nanny in her bed.

  Every time she thought about him, she remembered how he had said goodbye to her and the way he had kissed her.

  He had stayed with them for nearly a week until Nanny had said his arm was completely healed, and then her father had found out that the victorious Cromwellian Army had left Worcester for London taking their prisoners with them.

  “Where will you hide yourself?” Bruce had asked Clive.

  “I am going home,” he had replied.

  “To Scotland?”

  Clive had nodded.

  “There are only two possibilities left open to me,” he answered. “Either I follow King Charles who I hope and pray will find his way back to France or I go North and stay in Scotland where I belong.”

  “Then of course my advice to you,” said Bruce, “is to go to Scotland. Your father will need you.”

  “That is exactly what I think,” replied Clive. “My elder brother, if he is still alive, is fighting with the Scots. My father will be alone in the Castle and will, I think, need me.”

  “I am sure he will,” Bruce agreed. “Therefore you must be incredibly astute in making your way back without being caught.”

  He gave him money as Clive had only a little left in his pocket.

  He also gave him rough clothes, which made him unnoticeable, to look like an ordinary young man from an ordinary family moving about the country.

  When he bade farewell to Nanny in the nursery, he said,

  “If you ever need help in the future, I hope you will find someone as kind as you have been to me. I know that I owe my life to you, and there are no words I can find to express my gratitude.”

  “Now you take real good care of yourself,” Nanny replied briskly. “You’re so right to go back to your father. It’s Scotland where you belongs and if you will take my advice you’ll stay there till King Charles, who you’ve been brave enough to crown at Scone, is on his rightful Throne in London.”

  “That’s exactly where I hope he will be, Nanny.”

  In the drive outside waiting for him was the horse Bruce had given him.

  Then Clive walked down the stairs and Alissia went with him.

  She held his hand all the way down the stairs.

  When they reached the front door, he bent down, and picking Alissia up, kissed her on both cheeks.

  “You are a very brave and lovely young girl,” he sighed. “I do so hope when you are a little older we will meet again.”

  Alissia put her arms around his neck and hugged him.

  “I am so glad that Nanny was so clever and saved you by putting Mama’s cap on your head.”

  “And you gave me your hair, Alissia. As I think it has brought me luck, I am taking it away with me in my pocket as a very special keepsake of a very special young lady.”

  Alissia giggled.

  “I like to think of you doing that.”

  “I will put it away in a safe place and if I am ever in trouble again, I will expect you to come and save me.”

  “I would love to,” answered Alissia coyly.

  He kissed her on the cheek again.

  Then he swung himself onto his horse.

  “One day,” he called to Bruce, “I will give you an even finer horse to replace this one. But you may have to wait until King Charles is back on his rightful Throne.”

  He lowered his voice as he said the last words and Bruce instinctively looked o
ver his shoulder as if he was afraid someone might hear them.

  Then he smiled and responded cheerfully,

  “Good luck and give my love to Scotland!”

  “I will certainly do so,” Clive promised.

  Then forgetting that he was not in his uniform, he saluted before he rode off.

  Alissia thought of him often and could still feel his kiss on her cheek.

  She hoped that she would see him when they came to London.

  But she was not sure whether he had accompanied King Charles abroad or stayed in his own country where he belonged.

  *

  She and her Papa and Nanny had arrived in London only a few days before the Coronation took place.

  There was not time for her to get to know the other people living in the Palace of Whitehall.

  She only passed them in the corridors or saw them when they were hurrying down the stairs to dine with the King or to attend some other Royal function.

  Now as she closed her eyes, she felt sleep coming over her almost like a soft cloud.

  Yet she was thinking again that perhaps tomorrow she might see Clive again.

  The next day, now that the Coronation was over, her Papa was not as busy as he had been since their arrival.

  Alissia persuaded him to take her down to the river to see the barges arriving.

  There always seemed to be a number of beautifully dressed women and smart men in the barges which drew up outside the great Palace of Whitehall.

  She had heard that King Charles enjoyed playing the game of tennis – it was a game she had read about and heard about, but had never seen it played.

  Earlier Royals had very much enjoyed tennis and King Henry VIII had excelled at it – and it was also a part of the Stuart family tradition.

  Charles I had played it well and so had his nephew Rupert and in exile, Alissia had been informed, the Duke of Gloucester had become an expert – and it was jokingly rumoured that he contemplated earning a living at the game in the future if times were hard!

  Bruce had learnt from his wife that King Charles played early in the morning, six o’clock being his favourite time.

  “Even if I have to get up very early,” said Alissia one day, “I would love to see him play. And it is a game I would like to play myself one day.”

  “Nonsense!” her stepmother had scolded her. “It is a game for men and certainly not for young ladies like you and Nancy.”

  She spoke repressively as she usually did to Alissia, but she remained determined to see the King play tennis, just as she wanted to have the opportunity of swimming, as he regularly did, in the Thames.

  Apparently he really loved swimming which he had enjoyed when he was in France and later in Holland and as soon as she and her father arrived in London they were told that the King always went swimming early in the morning.

  “He will often rise at five o’clock,” their informant said, “and go boating and sometimes swims just outside the Palace. At other times he swims with his brother James at Battersea, Putney or Nine Elms.”

  What Alissia discovered also about the King, which appealed to her more than anything else, was his passion for dogs.

  A great sadness of leaving home was that her father thought that it would be a mistake for her to bring a dog to London – at least until they were certain that he would be acceptable wherever they were staying.

  Alissia knew that he was actually thinking of her stepmother, who had made it very clear she disliked dogs and disapproved of Alissia having her favourite spaniel in her bedroom.

  In fact the Countess became very unpleasant about it before she left for London.

  Jimbo therefore had to be hidden in Nanny’s room if there was any likelihood of her stepmother coming up the stairs.

  Fortunately she did not often go anywhere near the nursery where Alissia had remained even though she was grown-up.

  “I do love the nursery,” she had always claimed. “I have all the things there that belong to me and I have no wish to move.”

  Nancy was established in one of the best rooms on the first floor, while Alissia remained on a floor higher up.

  Her first sight of the King as soon as she arrived at Whitehall was of him striding along with a train of spaniels scampering and barking beside him.

  She was to learn later that playing with his spaniels was the King’s habitual method of whiling away the many hours of Government business that he found tedious and increasingly dreary.

  The Royal pets, however, were not popular with the Courtiers and they believed, as the Countess did, that they were better outside than in, but the King’s passion for his spaniels was known by everyone at Whitehall.

  Alissia found herself becoming more and more an admirer of the King before she actually met him.

  Now she felt sure that the King would want to see her father and she made him promise that if the King sent for him, she could accompany him into the Royal presence.

  “It may not be possible,” he asserted, “but I will do my best. I well know how much you admire him, as I do. Equally he is the King and a very great number of people demand his attention.”

  “If he gives his attention to those lovely spaniels I saw him with,” said Alissia, “I am sure he will have time for me as well. And of course, Papa, he must thank you for helping to bring him back to his Throne just as he rewarded all those people at the Coronation.”

  She hesitated for a moment before she added,

  “I thought you, Papa, should have the Order of the Garter.”

  “Thank you so much, darling, but I do not deserve it,” her father replied. “In fact, if I am truthful, I ought to have served in the Scottish Army as my brother did.”

  “Then you might have been killed and you know, Papa, I love you very very much and I cannot imagine my life without you.”

  Her father was touched and put his arm round her and as he kissed her gently, she knew he was thinking of her mother and how much he had loved his first wife.

  It was impossible for anyone, Alissia believed, to take her mother’s place.

  Either in her father’s heart or in hers.

  CHAPTER THREE

  When he looked back, Clive, now the Marquis of Morelanton, reckoned it had been an incredible miracle, that after the terrible defeat at the Battle of Worcester, he had been able to escape back to Scotland.

  The Cromwellians were all on the look out for stray Scotsmen making their way home.

  As Bruce had given him an especially good mount, he managed to sneak out of the Worcester area without any undue trouble.

  But as soon as the horse had carried him quickly out of the area of immediate danger, he decided he would be safer and less noticeable on foot.

  He therefore sold the horse off cheaply to a small country dealer, who asked him no awkward questions on obtaining a bargain.

  He deliberately avoided the West side of England down which the Scots had marched on their way South.

  He slept under a hedge at night if it was not raining or in the very cheapest inns where a stray traveller meant money and was welcomed with open arms.

  It took him very nearly three months to complete the journey.

  Finally he reached home to find that his brother had been killed by the Cromwellians and his father was dying of old age and depression.

  This left him with a great deal to do.

  Firstly he had to pull the estate into good order, as it had run down somewhat while he had been away.

  He began by introducing several new ideas that he had thought for some time were necessary as his father had disliked anything that was different from how it had been in his father’s and grandfather’s time.

  It was in fact a pleasure that Clive had not expected to be able to give orders to his large staff and have them instantly carried out.

  He learnt with overwhelming sadness how many of his clansmen had been either killed or imprisoned after the Battle of Worcester.

  Naturally he was deli
ghted to learn that eventually King Charles had reached France in safety.

  Since he had been crowned King at Scone on his return to Scotland eight months previously, Clive, being a Scot, naturally thought of him as King, even though he was in exile.

  Every day Clive had feared he would hear that King Charles had been captured or killed.

  And because he had always been a great admirer of Charles, he felt certain that one day he would surely come into his own.

  In the meantime the Cromwellians had lost face by letting him escape and so they vented their rage on those who had supported him and were now in their power.

  While King Charles had certainly escaped against enormous odds – in fact it was considered a miracle that he had reached Paris in safety – England lay in the iron grip of Goliath.

  This was Cromwell’s nickname among the people.

  On the very same day of the King’s embarkation to France, the Earl of Derby was executed and had he been captured, Charles would undoubtedly have shared the same fate.

  In the years that followed Clive learnt all he could of how his King was surviving in exile.

  He was not in the least surprised when he was told that his resourcefulness, intelligence and sheer courage had made him a hero in Paris.

  Clive, however, did not spend all his time worrying about his King.

  Scotland was still in the grasp of the Cromwellians and there was great danger for any Scot if he so much as mentioned Charles’s name.

  Clive therefore set himself to work extremely hard on his own estate.

  Because he was exceedingly handsome and as tall as Charles himself, it was not at all surprising that he was relentlessly pursued by young women.

  Those who were married, when they looked at him, had an inviting expression in their eyes and actually for the next two or three years he indulged himself with several of them whenever he had the chance.

  A regular flow of visitors would come to stay at his ancestral Castle and amongst them were attractive married women who were only too pleased to fall into his arms.

  He also spent a great deal of time riding and often wondered when he would be able to replace Bruce’s horse he had lent him for his escape with another thoroughbred as good if not better.