A Royal Love Match Page 5

  ‘He saved my life,’ Clive often said to himself, ‘and one day I must express my gratitude to him appropriately.’

  On the death of Oliver Cromwell, and some twenty months later, the proclamation of Charles as the King of England, Clive’s heart leapt.

  He thought that now at last would be his chance to travel to England and pay homage to his King.

  There was naturally great excitement in Scotland as soon as Oliver Cromwell was dead and the Scots thought that things would change dramatically to their advantage.

  News would come from England regularly, but it was always out of date by the time it reached the people on the other side of the border.

  Yet every word of it was of significance to Clive.

  He read everything that he could find about King Charles and when he would be likely to return to his own country.

  But there was some time to wait.

  Finally, several days after the event, Clive learnt that King Charles had been rowed ashore at Dover in the Admiral of the Fleet’s barge.

  It was at about three o’clock in the afternoon of the 25th of May 1660.

  He was followed by a good number of his friends and supporters in a smaller boat which included one of his dogs escorted by a footman.

  Clive had smiled when he read that once he was on dry land Charles knelt down and thanked God for his safe arrival.

  Clive did not miss any of the reports of the thunder of guns and cannons at Dover and that they had continued firing all the way on the King’s progress to Tower Hill in London.

  Just as bonfires sprang up from hill to hill and from town to town.

  ‘If only I was with him,’ Clive muttered to himself a thousand times.

  He learnt that at Rochester the King had greeted the Army on horseback.

  And it was on horseback that His Majesty saluted the Morris dancers who were gambolling on the heath.

  And it was on horseback that King Charles finally processed through the Borough of Southwark.

  Then led by the Army he crossed London Bridge.

  To Clive every word he read about the reception of the King and the cheering crowds was almost as exciting as if it was happening to himself.

  He was alone in his comfortable sitting room in his Castle, but his heart was with the twenty thousand people, who were laughing, shouting and crying because their King Charles had returned to claim his birthright.

  Clive read that the streets of London were literally flowing with wine and it was seven o’clock in the evening before the King surrounded by his happy excited people reached the Palace of Whitehall.

  ‘Why could I not be there?’ Clive asked himself, but he knew that it would be a mistake for him to go South too soon – in case the Cromwellian supporters in Scotland became vengeful and dangerous.

  By this time he had put his estate into good order and was certain that it could not be seized or threatened while he was away.

  Clive had no intention of riding the long distance to London or of driving by coach or carriage.

  And it was only a few months later that he decided to attend the Palace of Whitehall, as he was determined to see King Charles who he had known well when they were boys together.

  If possible he would serve his Majesty in the same way he had attempted to serve him by fighting against his enemies.

  Now at last he could afford to travel to the South in a degree of comfort.

  So he hired a ship to take him to the Thames.

  He travelled with his valet and several others of his extensive staff, including his secretary and butler, to make certain he was comfortable.

  Clive could not help but think that he was making up for his very long and dangerous journey home from the Battle of Worcester and the many disreputable miserable places he had been forced to sleep in night after night.

  When he did arrive at the Palace of Whitehall, the King was delighted to see him again after so long, and the two of them had so much to relate to each other of all their vicissitudes in the years since they had last met.

  King Charles, Clive found, was extremely short of money, as indeed he had been for most of his life.

  This was not surprising considering he had so much to restore on his return including his thoroughbred horses, stables, falconers and cormorant keepers.

  These, of course, were required for his amusement, but most importantly he was obliged to restore the entire paraphernalia of the Royal Household.

  Everything had fallen into desuetude during the last twenty years and the King now began to fully realise that the Restoration was indeed a heroic challenge.

  His father, King Charles I, had assembled a great art collection, all of which had been tragically sold after his death by the Officials of the Commonwealth.

  King Charles was determined that this should be replaced. He had already acquired some paintings while he was in the Netherlands and he was very excited at the task of starting a new Royal collection.

  As soon as he arrived, the Marquis of Morelanton – Clive could now safely and openly use his title – was as enthusiastic as the King was.

  The Dutch Government had presented King Charles with a fine collection of twenty-seven Master paintings that included a famous Titian.

  The two men looked at the Titian almost with awe – nothing quite so marvellous could have been owned by anyone during the long miserable years of the Cromwellian rule.

  The Royal Apartments also needed a great deal of redecoration and refurbishment.

  One thousand pounds had already been spent on furniture, but the King’s bedroom needed a great deal more spent on it before it was restored to the splendour of the past.

  Clive had teased him when they were boys, because Charles had always loved watches and clocks.

  There were seven clocks in His Majesty’s bedroom and his attendants were continually complaining about the noise they made.

  But the question arose daily of how everything was to be paid for.

  A few months after his return to England, the King had grumbled ruefully of his position.

  He complained to those who questioned him about his expenditure,

  “I must tell you that I am not richer. In fact I have not as much money in my purse as when I came to you.”

  When they were alone the King confided in Clive,

  “It is quite obvious to me that that the only solution to my problem is to marry a Queen who will bring me a large dowry!”

  Clive made a grimace.

  “I have always hated the whole idea of an arranged marriage, Sire, but I suppose as King you will have to put up with it.”

  “It is certainly not my idea by choice,” replied the King. “But things are growing serious and I will have to do something drastic to meet the endless bills that pour in day after day.”

  The continual lack of money in the Royal coffers was an issue that was regularly deplored not only by the King – it was talked about by almost every member of the Court.

  “We will have to find him a bride,” one of the most influential of his Courtiers divulged to Clive. “And the first question is what her dowry will be, even before we look to see if she is pretty enough to attract his Majesty!”

  Finally Clive was informed that the odds were on the well-endowed Portuguese Infanta, but it was somewhat embarrassing that the King’s financial difficulties made the dowry the most important subject to be discussed by the representatives of both countries.

  At the same time the King’s many extravagances and financial mismanagement were criticised outside the Palace.

  The sums of money the King was originally voted by Parliament, which at the time had seemed completely adequate, proved very difficult to collect from a reluctant Treasury.

  The King and Clive, because they had known each other for so long, talked frankly when they were alone and could not be overheard.

  Clive often told the King that if he had the money himself, he would help him down to his last penny.

&nb
sp; But he had to be extremely careful not to fall into debt as that would mean having to dismiss a great number of the people who worked on his Scottish estate.

  “What it really comes down to,” the King declared finally, “is that you and I, Clive, need to marry into money. Whatever the woman looks like, if she shines like a guinea, we will be forced to be content with her!”

  He sighed before he added,

  “I suppose we have to make sacrifices and perhaps the hardest part of all will be to give up a woman we really wish to be with – ”

  Clive knew without him saying any more what he was thinking.

  When he was married, it would not be easy for him to enjoy the company and favours of Barbara Castlemaine.

  Clive had met the lady in question just as soon as he had arrived at the Palace of Whitehall.

  She was extremely pretty and gave the appearance of always laughing.

  A first cousin of the Duke of Buckingham, she had married a Catholic Royalist called Roger Palmer and had succeeded poor Lucy Walter who had died in Paris before the King left for England.

  There was no doubt, Clive mused, that Barbara was not only attractive but had definitely captivated the King’s heart.

  He was at his very best when he was with her and he spent as much time in her company as he could.

  She certainly had a special hold over him which no one else had ever contrived to achieve – no one could coax him into a good humour better than Barbara.

  She had been married when she was eighteen and her husband was a sensitive and somewhat gloomy man, and this was not really surprising in view of the outrageous behaviour of his wife.

  Yet the King reimbursed him by making him the Earl of Castlemaine in the autumn of 1661.

  When Clive first arrived at the Palace of Whitehall, he learnt that Barbara had been accorded her own special Apartments there. Her accommodation included nurseries, which would soon prove very necessary.

  *

  The difficult question of the King’s marriage was finally settled.

  It was to be with the Portuguese Infanta, Catharine of Braganza.

  “You must come with me to my wedding,” King Charles implored Clive.

  The two men set off together to Portsmouth with a large contingent of the Royal Household.

  The Portuguese Ambassador had laid stress on the Queen’s dowry and the English were almost mesmerised by the enormous fortune she offered on her marriage.

  Dangled before the eyes of the English people, it was fantastic – two million crowns or about three hundred and eighty thousand pounds in those days.

  Also the King gained Tangier on the Mediterranean coast of Africa and Bombay on the West coast of India – he had to be shown where the latter was on the map in his study.

  What was more important at the time was that the dowry was to be paid in sugar, Brazillian wood and cash.

  Lord Clarendon, who had accompanied Charles in exile in France and was now Lord Chancellor, swore to the Portuguese Ambassador that the principal inducement to the Royal marriage was the piety, virtue and comeliness of the Infanta.

  Then he gave the game away by asking for Tangier to be handed over quickly to reassure the English!

  The courtship had been carried out on the King’s behalf in Portugal by the English Ambassador, Sir Richard Fanshawe.

  Charles himself wrote flowery letters to the young lady and also to her father and mother.

  He even made an effort to write them in Spanish, although he had to ask Lord Clarendon to check his letters over and again for mistakes.

  The King and Clarendon were eventually able to inform the English Parliament that the negotiations were complete.

  Charles then signed his letters to Catharine,

  “The very faithful husband of Your Majesty whose hand he kisses.”

  Catharine had actually been designated, ‘Queen of England’, while she was still in Lisbon and a considerable time elapsed before she made the long journey to her new home.

  She was escorted in a war ship named The Royal Charles.

  When she finally arrived in Portsmouth, one of her first actions was to ask for a cup of tea – this was a surprise as the British national beverage was ale, which was what the Queen was offered instead.

  Later on Queen Catharine did a great deal to make the drinking of tea popular and in the years ahead it was to become an English habit.

  Although she was on English soil, the country was still worrying over the actual delivery of the dowry and the garrison at Tangier.

  But long before her arrival in England a far more difficult problem had arisen which the King and Clive had discussed when they were alone.

  Until the Royal wedding actually took place, the Queen could not assume the married state.

  But the question was – what sort of wedding?

  Queen Catharine was a Roman Catholic like most of the Royal Princesses of Europe and her religion had already caused dissatisfaction among many Englishmen.

  Many of them had disapproved of the Portuguese match from the outset and there were whispers and protests against the Mass, friars, confessions and other aspects of the Catholic Church.

  The King’s marriage was altogether distasteful to Protestant Englishmen.

  The Portuguese Ambassador, however, had assured King Charles that his bride would not be at all difficult on the subject and that she was most willing to do anything which would make him happy and his people content.

  From the prestigious Office of the Privy Council Lord Clarendon had written some notes to King Charles on the subject.

  He told His Majesty that he must have a Catholic wedding ceremony in secret to be followed by a Protestant ceremony in public for the sake of the legitimacy of any children from the marriage.

  Queen Catharine, Clarendon assured the King, was prepared to submit to this plan.

  The King wrote in reply,

  “I hope she has consulted the Jesuits.”

  “She will do what is necessary for herself and her children,” Lord Clarendon responded rather pompously.

  In the end it was all comfortably arranged.

  A brief and secret Catholic ceremony was held first in the bedroom assigned to Queen Catharine in the official residence of the Governor-General of Portsmouth. Then a Protestant marriage took place in the Great Chamber of the same building.

  His Chapel, it was discovered, was too small for the number of people who had to be accommodated.

  The King and his Queen sat on two specially built thrones behind a rail to keep away the spectators.

  The Queen wore a rose-coloured gown covered in lovers-knots and blue ribbons and after the ceremony was over these were cut off according to a Portuguese tradition and everyone was given a piece. And the lace of her veil was covered with patriotic emblems of her new country including Tudor roses.

  The King presented the Governor’s Chapel with an altar cloth embroidered with a view of Lisbon.

  They returned poste haste to London the next day where Her Majesty was welcomed with all the pomp due to a Royal Consort.

  The procession which carried her from Whitehall to Hampton Court, where the honeymoon was to be spent was the most magnificent ever seen on the Thames.

  But already at Hampton Court Barbara Castlemaine the Royal mistress, exercised her power over the King.

  As a somewhat petty gesture she refused to light a torch outside her Apartment door as a welcome for the new Queen.

  Because of his marriage to the Infanta she managed to make the King feel guilty and therefore he spent more time with Barbara than he should have done.

  Later Clive, who was present at all the ceremonies and celebrations, was one of the few people who realised that things did not go as easily as the King had hoped.

  The Queen’s health did not permit their marriage to be consummated that night and King Charles jokingly said afterwards to his sister that perhaps it was just as well that the long sea journey had upset her.

&nbs
p; He himself had suffered from a terrible journey to Portsmouth and in fact as he said to Clive when they were alone,

  “Matters could not have gone more stupidly.”

  It seemed to be a family misfortune because exactly the same had happened on his sister’s wedding night.

  It was perhaps Clive who worried more over the Queen than his friend the King.

  He had discovered that she had been brought up in a Convent in a most restrictive fashion and now that she was twenty-three years old, he was told privately that she was more like an English woman of forty would have been.

  Also he was told in a whisper that when the Queen was informed of her intended marriage, she made one of her rare sorties from the Royal Palace in Lisbon to go on a pilgrimage to some Saint’s shrine.

  She had taken with her a suite of over a hundred retainers – they included numerous confessors, besides a Jewish perfumer and a barber.

  Clive repeated all this to the King who laughed and joked,

  “She will soon get used to our strange English ways and habits!”

  Clive could only hope that he was right.

  There was one interest she at least shared with the King that no one had expected.

  She was most skilful at archery and having enjoyed a great deal more practice, she was rather better at it than her husband.

  The first crisis in Queen Catharine’s married life was something she had not expected and it naturally upset her.

  When they arrived in London, Barbara Castlemaine was waiting for her.

  She had already been informed what had happened at Portsmouth and she was determined to show her power over the King and sacrifice none of it to any other woman.

  Barbara was far too clever to meet the King with a gloomy face or to reproach him with her sensuous lips.

  She was very sure of her great beauty and she was always referred to as ‘the lovely Countess’.

  The sight of her smocks and pretty linen petticoats drying in the Royal Privy garden strongly affected the great diarist, Samuel Pepys, and he was to remember the thrill they gave him for the rest of his life.

  Maybe it was her indefatigable buoyancy of spirit that made Barbara so special.