^r LITTLE JENNINGS AND HGHTING DICK TALBOT From the painting hy Mart) Be ate . Sy hind pertriission of Earl S^ienci FRANCES JENNINGS, DUCHESS OF TYRCONNEL. LITTLE JENNINGS AND FIGHTING DICK TALBOT A Life of the Duke and Duchess of TyrconneL "By THILIP W. SERGEANT A BOSTON COLLEGE LIBRARY CKtSTNUT H,LL. MASS. With Seventeen Illustrations, including Two Photogravure Frontispieces VOL. L London: HUTCHINSON & CO. "Paternoster Ro%> :: :: :: 1913 BOSTON COLLEGE LIBRAUY CHESTl^UT HILL, MASS. PREFACE I FEAR that it may seem to readers of this book — to those at least, who persevere to the end — that its title is a misnomer, that it would more aptly have been named " Materials for a Life of Richard Talbot, Duke of Tyrconnel, with some Details about his second Wife." The original plan did not contemplate the unequal division of the space between Richard Talbot and Frances Jennings which has been made in the following pages. But some books insist, as it were, on writing themselves, of developing independently of preconceived schemes. That has been the case with Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot. I have yielded to the claims of the forceful husband to over- shadow his wife, though aware that thereby the symmetry of the work has been impaired. Of Talbot it cannot be said, in the words of the early Enghsh translation of Rochefoucauld's Maxims : " Some Persons are so extreamly whiffling and inconsiderable, that they are as far from any real Faults, as they are from substantial Vertues." Talbot had abundance of real faults as well as some substantial virtues. I have in no way attempted to conceal the faults or to magnify unduly the virtues, but have tried to present the actual man, with the aid chiefly of his own writings and the estimates of his contemporaries. Few characters in English history have suffered more grievously from prejudice, and the only remedy appeared to me to get back to the documents of the period and examine in them the evidence for the charges brought against Talbot. In some places this has involved what may seem over-elaboration of detail ; but apart from the article in the Dictionary of National Biography there has been """^ li '^ ^ (W U o "^ Preface no complete Life of Richard Talbot written hitherto, and therefore the present is in a sense a pioneer work. I hope that at least it may serve as part basis one day for a biography such as is merited by a very striking personality. I am conscious that there is still much more material to be discovered by patient research, for which, alas ! more time and money would be required than are mine. There are in existence in various parts of England and Ireland many unpublished letters written by Richard Talbot — and a few by Frances Jennings — which no doubt would have thrown additional light upon my subject, had I been able to consult them. Unhappily magic carpets are not among the goods which an author can acquire " upon easy terms." The sources of information to which I have gone are recorded in the Notes. I should like to acknowledge here, however, the assistance of the following modern books as guides to some of those sources, which I m.ight otherwise have overlooked : The Travels of the King, by Miss Eva Scott ; Mary of Modena, by Mr. Martin Haile ; Revolutionary Ireland, by the Rev. R. H. Murray ; The Battle of the Boyne, by Mr. D. C. Boulger ; The English Court in Exile, by Mr. and Mrs, Grew ; and Mr, Allan Fea's edition of the Memoirs of Gramont. I have also to record my gratitude to Lady Baillie-Hamilton for her very kind aid and information with regard to the Hamilton family in the Seventeenth Century, not only on points mentioned in my Notes, but on many others, too, which do not there appear. Philip W. Sergeant. December, 1912. Postscript. — The final revision of the proofs of this book had almost been completed when there was issued by the Clarendon Press the Journal of John Stevens, edited by the Rev. R. H. Murray. I need only state that my transcription of the manuscript was made independently, and that I was unaware that Dr. Murray was engaged upon the work. vui CONTENTS PART I FRANCES JENNINGS PART II RICHARD TALBOT CHAP. I. — Early Days II. — A Plot against Cromwell III. — Under a Cloud IV. — Life in Flanders . V. — ^Talbot and his Traducers VI. — ^The Irish Champion 17 35 58 74 93 117 PART III WHITEHALL I. — The Hamiltons .... II. — Mistress Jennings at Court . III. — ^Talbot in the Tower again . IV. — The Diversions of a Maid of Honour V. — Two Marriages .... ix 143 158 174 184 20G Contents CHAP. PAGE VI. — Lady Hamilton ...... 207 VII. — Talbot as Irish Agent ..... 221 VIII. — Intrigues and Disasters .... 244 IX. — Victims of Titus Oaths ..... 258 PART IV TEN YEARS TOGETHER I. — The Marriage of Richard and Frances . 279 II. — The Lifting of the Cloud .... 288 III. — Preparations for the Struggle . . . 300 IV. — Clarendon v. Tyrconnel . . . 316 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Frances Jennings, Duchess of Tyrconnel {Photo- gravure) ....... Frontispiece From the painting by Mary Beak at Althorpe, by kind permission of Lord Spencer. To Face Page Mrs. Jennings (Frances Thornhurst) ... 14 From a photograph of the painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller at Althorpe, by kind permission of Lord Spencer. James, Duke of York, afterwards James II. . . 84 From a photograph, by Emery Walker, of the painting by Sir Peter Lely at St. James's Palace. GoDiTHA Price ........ 158 From an engraving by Bartolozzi, after the painting by Sir Peter Lely. Frances Jennings, Duchess of Tyrconnel . . . 184 From an engraving after a painting by Sir Peter Lely. Sir George (Count) Hamilton ..... 200 From a photograph, by Emery Walker, of the painting in the National Portrait Gallery, London. Sarah Jennings, Duchess of Marlborough . . . 220 From an engraving by Bond, after the painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller in Lord Spencer's collection. James Butler, Duke of Ormonde .... 272 From an engraving by Robinson, after the painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller in Lord Strathmore's collection. Richard Talbot, Duke of Tyrconnel . . . 302 From a photograph of the Indian ink drawing in the National Portrait Gallery, Dublin, after " a painting in the hands of Mr. Sykes, painter in Lincoln's Inn Fields " (by Sir Godfrey Kneller). xi " Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot " PART I FRANCES JENNINGS T T is a curious fact, but by no means uncommon, that the record of the early years of celebrated women should be difficult to trace. Such is the case with Frances Jennings, child-beauty of the Court of Charles II. and one of the chief ornaments of the Court of his brother. For the first part of her story the materials are indeed scanty. They would be scantier still, had not her much junior sister Sarah, following her example in becoming maid of honour to the wife of James, Duke of York, attracted the affections of the young guardsman Jack Churchill and, finding in him a kindred spirit, helped him to rise almost to the summit of their joint ambitions. For, notable characters as were Frances and her second husband, Richard Talbot, in the circle of James II., so little attention was paid by writers after VOL. I. I I Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot the Revolution of 1688 to the truth about adherents of the beaten cause that the origins of Frances at least might have been forgotten but for the promi- nence of her sister at the Courts of King James's successors. The brilliance of Duchess Sarah, however, was such that the memory of the Jennings family- was made to shine by reflected light. What Frances deserved on her own account she obtained to a certain extent on her sister's, and in consequence we find on record a little more than, in the circum- stances, we might have expected. Unfortunately neither the date nor the place of the birth of Frances Jennings is preserved in any document now known to exist. Of the nine children, four sons and five daughters, born to her parents, the birthdays of three and the baptismal days of three more can be traced, and the year of birth of yet another can be approximately fixed. But in the case of Frances and her eldest brother John, we have to rely on deduction or conjecture. John did nothing, beyond succeeding for a brief while to the remains of the family estate, to save himself from obscurity. Frances, although she outlived her fame by more than forty years, certainly merited such honour as is impHed in the survival of a true record of age. As will be seen, rumour at her decease imputed to her an absurdly incorrect length of life. Among the extant marriage licences for the month of December, 1643, is one which runs: "Richard 2 Frances Jennings Jenyns, Esq., of St. Alban's, Herts, Bachelor, 28, and Frances Thornurst, of St. Martin's Fields, Spinster, 18, her father dead ; consent of her mother, the now Lady Lister, wife of Sir Martin Lister, Kt. ; at St. Martin's af[ore]s[ai]d, St. Giles in the Fields, or St. Paul's, Covent Garden." The parties mentioned were the father and mother of the heroine of this work. Richard Jennings, or Jenyns, was the eldest son of one branch of a family whose origin (thanks to the interest aroused in all things connected with Sarah, Duchess of Marl- borough) has been traced back without a break to the beginning of the Fifteenth Century,* when a certain John Jenyn was Mayor of Guildford, Surrey, in 141 3 and 1435. Barnard, a great-grandson of the mayor, was a skinner in the City of London, but with his son Ralph the family began to rise above the level of commerce to the rank of country gentlemen. Ralph's first wife brought him land from her father, Ralph Rowlat, a goldsmith, to whom Henry VHL gave a knighthood and the manors of Sandridge and Holywell, both near St. Albans. By his second wife, Joan, daughter of Henry Brounker, he had four children. One son, John, went to Oxford and the Middle Temple and was afterwards * Mrs. Arthur Colvile, in Duchess Sarah, quotes the authority of Mr. Thomas Perry for the supposed descent of John Jenyn from a Genoese captain of archers who came to England in the Thirteenth Century. She points out another remote Italian strain also : Alicia Spencer, wife of Sir John Jennings, junior, was the great-great-granddaughter of one Anthony Cavalsry. VOL. I. ^ I* Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot knighted by James I. Like his father, Sir John married twice, his second wife — his cousin Ann Brounker — bearing him a son, who was named after himself John and who also received the honour of knighthood. Sir John Jennings the second married Alicia, daughter of Sir Richard Spencer, a Hertford- shire neighbour, and by her had a huge family.* In 1626, the year after his knighthood, he was chosen as High Sheriff of Hertfordshire, and in 1640 the mayor and burgesses of St. Albans elected him as one of their two representatives in the Parliament afterwards known as the Long. Two years later he died, leaving property to the value of about ^4,000 per annum. Richard inherited from his father not only Holy- well and Sandridge, but also the manors of Churchill in Somerset and Fanne in Surrey. He succeeded him too as member for St. Albans, though he was only twenty-two years of age. In the following year he took to wife, as we have seen, Frances, daughter of a deceased Kentish baronet. Sir Gifford Thornhurst, of Agnes Court, Old Romford, by Susanna, daughter of Sir Alexander Temple. The Thornhurst family has * Sarah Jennings appears to have been uncertain as to the number. In a letter in The Private Correspondence of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, Vol. II., p. 112, she writes: "My father had in all two-and-twenty brothers and sisters." In An Account of the Conduct of the Duchess of Marlborough, which she published in 1742, she says, " Our grandfather, Sir John Jenyns, had two-and-twenty children, by which means the estate of the family (which was reputed to be about ^4000 a year) came to be divided into small parcels." 4 Frances Jennings several memorials in Canterbury Cathedral, and Frances was her father's heiress. To Richard Jennings a dowry was welcome, since not only was he one of a host of brothers and sisters, but the Civil War had begun to involve his property, like that of so many other Cavaliers. His marriage improved his position, and his prospects may well have seemed to him bright again when he brought his bride to his home in Whitehall, where, when not at Holywell, the family had been living since Sir John had been elected for St. Albans. But the struggle between King and Parliament brought him to ruin. He had not long been married when he and one of his brothers, Charles, were obliged to raise money by giving a bond for ^20,000 to Sir Martin Lister, second husband of Richard's mother-in-law. Still he was reduced to selling Churchill, which had been purchased by Ralph, son of the skinner, and other property in Somerset.* This did not save him, * Sir Winston Churchill, father of the first Duke of Marlborough, writing to Blue Mantle at the Herald's Office on June 22nd, 1686, concerning his pedigree, says : " My eldest son is the present Ld. Churchill, who has marryd Sarah, one of the daughters and co-heires of Richard Jennings of St. Albans, the unfortunate looser of the mannor of Churchill^ which is now to be sold, but my son, being disappointed of having it given to him, as Sir John Churchill allways did promise him, refuses to buy it." According to Sir Winston, Churchill was originally the property of his family ; but Edward I. seized on the lordship because one of the family had been active in the Barons' War. In the reign of Henry VIH. the Jenningses became possessed of it. Richard Jennings sold it to Sir John Churchillj Master of the Rolls. The manor, complains Sir Winston, had come to his own son, " had it not been so unfortunately alienated by her [Sarah's] said father." {Historical Manuscripts Commission Reports^ Bath MSS., Vol. n.) 5 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot however, for on December 31st, 1650, there was an order in council to compel him to leave Whitehall, where he was sheltering himself from arrest for debt ; and it was so peremptory in tone that we cannot doubt that it was carried out. In spite of his vicissitudes Richard Jennings rapidly became the father of a large number of children. The registers of St. Margaret's, Westminster, record the baptism of his eldest daughter Susanna on February 25th, 1645, when he had been married about fifteen months. The baptismal entries relating to the next three children, John, Frances and Barbara, have yet to be discovered ; but we have evidence that Barbara was born in either 165 1 or early 1652.* The births of John and Frances have therefore to be placed between the years 1646 and 1650. It seems probable, from what we hear of Frances about the time when she went to be maid of honour to the Duchess of York, that she was her brother's junior rather than his senior, so that we may conjecture him to have been born about 1647 and her about 1649. Were the place of Barbara's birth known, we should also know something of what happened to the Jennings family, parents and children, between the time of their expulsion from Whitehall and their * According to her marriage license she was about twenty-two on April izth^ 1673 ; according to her epitaph at St. Albans she was in her twenty-seventh year when she died on March 22nd, 1678. See Appendix A. 6 Frances Jennings return to the St. Albans neighbourhood.* As it is, we cannot show them to have been in the latter place before 1653. In that year a Httle Richard was baptized at the Abbey on July 5 th. He died eleven months later, and the same name was given to another boy, baptized on October 12th, 1654. The second Richard was cut off even younger, being only ten months at his death. In the spring of the same year, 1655, the burial of the eldest girl of the family, Susanna, is recorded. The same name, taken no doubt from the maternal grandmother Susanna Temple, was bestowed on another daughter, born on July nth, 1656; but within six months she was in her grave. On October i6th of this year occurred the birth of the youngest son, Ralph (or Ralfe, as he appears in the St. Albans register), who happily escaped the fate of his three immediate predecessors and survived beyond infancy. This completes the list of the children of Richard and Frances Jennings before the Restoration.f On June 5 th, a week after that event, was born Sarah, last and best known, and alone with Frances the younger destined to a long span of Hfe. * On May 6th, 1650, a Richard Jennings was granted a pass by the existing Government to go to Holland {Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1650). Is it possible that this was our Richard Jennings, and that, seven months before his expulsion from Whitehall, he was looking for a refuge for his family on the Continent in event of serious trouble ? ■j- See Appendix A. Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot Richard Jennings, had he not been the father of two such daughters, would have made no mark upon the history of his time. All that is known concern- ing him after his return to Hertfordshire is that he was again one of the representatives of St. Albans in the Convention Parliament which invited King Charles back to England. In view of his alleged military services and pecuniary losses in the Rovalist cause, we should have expected to find Charles knighting Richard Jennings, as Charles's father and grandfather knighted those of Richard Jennings. But no such honour was bestowed on him. The intro- duction of his daughter to the household of the Duchess of York appears to have been the only favour which he obtained. Either the King was ungrateful, or else Jennings's impoverished condition was thought to be due to other causes besides his loyalty alone. He remained in poor circumstances until the day of his death, which occurred on May 8th, 1668. Three weeks later his effects were ad- ministered by his chief creditor, Anthony Mildmay, his widow having renounced probate. It was, no doubt, her memories of straitened days of childhood in the Hertfordshire home which caused Sarah Jennings later in life to speak of having " raised her family out of the dirt." Sarah had, however, some reason for gratitude to her mother, if the con- temporary story be true which made Mrs. Jennings aid her youngest daughter to marriage with the man 8 Frances Jennings of her heart ; and moreover by her will she left Sarah everything on her death.* It may be imagined that the younger Frances's change of faith after her first marriage had something to do with her mother's unfriendliness to her, as evinced by her passing her over in favour of Sarah. But it was scarcely a recommendation of character to be the favourite of Mrs. Jennings, whose name in the scandalous history of her period is very bad. Some discount must be made, no doubt, for the virulent hatred of the enemies of the Duke of Marlborough, which extended itself to all connected with him — including his mother-in-law. Mrs. Jennings's chief traducer is Mary de la Riviere Manley, author of The New Atalantis and The Adventures of Rivella, whose savage treatment of Marlborough we may suppose to have been partly inspired by her association with the Duchess of Cleveland. While living with her patron at Arlington Street, Piccadilly, Mrs. Manley must often have been regaled with abuse of the gallant who " lived to refuse his mis- tress half-a-crown,"t And Rivella, although she * Mrs. Jennings's will, dated February i2th, 1692, and proved January nth, 1694, bequeathed all her manors, estate, personalty, etc., to Sarah for her sole and separate use, so that " my dear son-in-law, John, Earl of Marlborough, though I love him from my heart, shall not intermeddle therein, but be wholly debarred " (Steinman, Althorp Memoirs, biography of Mrs. Jennings). She directed that she should be buried in St. Albans Abbey Church, as near as possible to her " four first children " — i. e., apparently, Susanna, John, Barbara and Ralph, omitting those who died in early infancy. ■(• See My Lady Castlemaine, pp. 189-90, 274 §. 9 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot subsequently quarrelled with Hilaria, was too fond of evil-speaking to spare the latter's enemies on that account. Some of Mrs. Manley's accusations against Mrs. Jennings cannot be reproduced here, since in making them this pioneer among feminine realists in England gives full play to her coarseness. While calling her procuress, she elaborates the charge far beyond the limits of decency, and suggests that she would have been eminent at the court of the Emperor Tiberius. Nor is Mrs. Jennings represented by her as one-sided in her moral delinquency. She was " all that was scandalous, impious and detestable." Among other failings, " she was a very careless speaker, not to say false, and at every word us'd to reiterate and wish that she might rot and perish alive, when the matter in question was never so untrue ; which accordingly happened," adds Mrs. Manley, giving an extraordinary and unpleasant account of the death which befell her. The most odd of the charges against Mrs. Jennings is to the effect that she was a dealer in magic. In the last volume of The New Atalantis she appears as Damareta, and it is related how she became a " witch or sorceress." Her teacher was " a person named Timias, whose father left him a large inheritance and a little ambition ; averse to the marriage-state and yet a votary to Venus." Timias is the celebrated Sir Kenelm Digby, son of one of the Gunpowder plotters, whose interest in " chymistry " and the 10 Frances Jennings studies then considered to be allied with it is well known. According to Mrs. Manley, Mrs. Jennings, when newly married, was a neighbour to Sir Kenelm Digby, and " her youth and gaiety put her among the number of those who had the good fortune to please Timias.''^ She was very angry with a certain young lady who had robbed her of a lover, and surrendered herself to the reputed magician in return for his aid in accomplishing the lady's ruin. After this Damareta retained the affections of Timias until his death — the Empress Irene {i. e. Sarah Jennings) being his supposed daughter — and was taught his art by him. Whatever be the basis of this preposterous tale, in which the insinuation about the paternity of the Duchess of Marlborough can easily be disproved, it is a fact that Mrs. Jennings somehow or other obtained the reputation of being a witch, as the Tories of Queen Anne's reign delighted to remember. In a squib attributed to Swift and entitled The Story of the St. Albans Ghost or the Apparition oj Mother Haggy* published in 17 12, Mrs. Jennings figures as • In his edition of Swift, Sir Walter Scott quotes in a footnote to this some lines of the period : No wonder storms more dreadful are by far Than all the losses of a twelve years' war ; No wonder prelates do the church betray, Old statesmen vote and act a different way ; No wonder magic arts surround the throne. Old Mother Jennings in her Grace is known ; Old England's genius rouse, her charms dispel. Burn but the witch, and all things will do well. II Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot Mother Haggy. The Story is a fatuous piece of poHtical pamphleteering, but one passage from it is perhaps worth quotation, as an example of the way in which it was held permissible to speak of the deceased Mrs. Jennings : " Mother Haggy was married to a plain homespun yeoman of St. Alban's, and lived in good repute for some years ; the place of her birth is disputed by some of the most celebrated moderns, though they have a tradition in the country that she was never born at all, and which is most probable. At the birth of her daughter Haggite [Sarah] something happened very remarkable, and which gave occasion to the neighbourhood to mistrust she held a corre- spondence with old Nick, as was confirmed afterwards, beyond the possibility of disproof. The neighbours were got together a-merry-making, as they term it, in the country, when the old woman's high-crowned hat, that had been thrown upon the bed's tester during the heat of the engagement, leaped with a wonderful agility into the cradle, and being catched at by the nurse, was metamorphosed into a coronet, which, according to her description, was not much unlike that of a German prince ; but it soon broke into a thousand pieces. ' Such,' cries old Mother Haggy, ' will be the fortune of my daughter and such her fall. ' " Mrs. Manley also credits Mrs. Jennings with insight into the future, making her present at the birth of 12 Frances Jennings John Churchill, " having a friendship with his mother," and foretell his rise to greatness.* We cannot hope to extract from these ferocious libels upon her mother any information with regard to the early training which the younger Frances Jennings received at her hands. From the description of her in the Memoirs of Gramont we gather that at least her natural gifts were well developed when she left St. Albans. Mrs. Manley, it may be noted, speaking of Sarah's first arrival at Court many years later, says that her mother " gave her in charge to make all things subservient to Interest, discreetly telling her that Virtue was no more than a Name, and Chastity less, since it was much to be doubted whether there ever was such a Thing." Mrs. Jennings accompanied her youngest daughter to St. James's Palace. She did not so accompany Frances. Against neither of them does there seem the slightest justifica- tion for accusations of looseness of morals ; though such were made against them by contemporary enemies, as might have been expected, and have been unhappily repeated in more modern days, when we might have hoped for moi'e decent regard of the truth.f When, therefore, Frances came to London at the age of about fifteen, to be maid of honour to the * New Atalantis, I., 28, IV., 50. In the first passage Churchill is " The Count " ; in the second " (the now great) Stauratius." •j- See below, pp. 189-90, 524 ; and cp. Macaulay's insinuations against Sarah. 13 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot Duchess of York, it was without the very dubious advantage of her mother's protection — though it must be admitted that in 1676 Mrs. Jennings displayed a concern for Sarah's moral welfare which other mothers, of personally infamous character, have likewise been known to show with regard to their daughters. But Frances was fortunate in one respect. Coming " directly from the country to the Court," as Gramont says, and perhaps having seen no more of the great events which had recently happened than Monk's arrival at St. Albans with his army in January, 1660, she passed under the care of the Duchess of York. The latter, despite the calumnies against her, had some regard for the character of her attendants, and was " reforming " her household at the time when she introduced Frances into it. The little Jennings came to Court under better auspices than the little Stewart, for instance, although the latter was brought by her own mother. Anne Hyde had a stronger will than Catherine of Braganza, and if both did their best to shield their pretty maids of honour the Duchess was decidedly more successful than the Queen. We must not detract, however, from the credit of Frances Jennings herself, who was able so early in life to hold her own with a crowd of admirers which began with the King and his brother and ended with Dick Talbot. 14 BOSTON COLLEGE LIBRARY CHESTNUT HILL. MASS. ^mi^ From the pointing hy Sir God/rev Kneller at Althorpe, hii kimi permission of Earl Spencer. MRS. JENNINGS (FRANCES THORNHURST). PART II RICHARD TALBOT CHAPTER I EARLY DAYS T3 ICHARD TALBOT, the man whom Lord Macaulay chose to make, with his brother-in- law John Churchill, one of the two blackest villains in the story of the last Stuart kings, was the youngest son of a very large Irish family. His father Sir William was a member of one of the houses of the Pale. Here the Talbots established themselves as early as the reign of Henry H., who in 1174 i^^*^^ to his follower Richard de Talbot a grant of Malahide, near Dublin. According to Macaulay the Talbots were " an old Irish family which had been long settled in Leinster, which had there sunk into degeneracy, which had adopted the manners of the Celts, which had, like the Celts, adhered to the old religion, and which had taken part with the Celts in the rebellion of 1641." The family's long settlement in Leinster and its adherence to Roman Catholicism are not to be denied. Its share in the 1641 rebellion VOL, L 17 2 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot may be left on one side for the present. With regard to the other two charges, it is to be wished that the historian had been more expHcit. He cannot mean by degeneracy intermarriage with the native Irish, for of this there is no evidence. Sir Wilham's wife was AHson, one of the Nettervilles of the Pale.* His father Robert Talbot married Catherine Lutterell, also from the Pale. Further back in the pedigree we find Thomas Talbot, of Malahide Castle, son of Sir Richard Talbot and Maud Plunkett, taking to wife Elizabeth Buckley. Norman blood ran very strongly in the veins of the Irish Talbots, and it is not until we come to one of Sir William's daughters that we have proof of an alliance with one of the " O's and Mac's," Eleanor Talbot marrying Sir Henry O'Neil. Macaulay himself, it may be noted, states — upon the authority of the Sheridan Manuscript at Windsor — that Tyrconnel " sometimes, in his rants, talked with Norman haughtiness of the Celtic barbarians." But perhaps by "degeneracy" is intended much the same as " adoption of the manners of the Celt." As exhibited by Wilham Talbot, these manners do not seem to have attracted unfavourable comment from his contemporaries, or we should undoubtedly have had it handed down to us by the countless enemies * In a list of nobles and gentlemen of the Pale who, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, had complained of the " cess " as contrary to law and justice and refused to subscribe, we find side by side the names of William Talbot and John Newtervile {sic), who on February yth, 1578, were fmed ;£ioo and 0^ respectively. {H.M.C. Reports^ Egmont MSS., Vol. I.) 18 Early Days of his son Richard. His career was honourable, if chequered. Carte, biographer of the Duke of Ormonde who was so often at variance with the son, describes the father as " a lawyer and a man of good parts, who by his prudence and management had acquired a large estate." Talbot achieved rapid success in his profession and became Recorder of Dublin. His religion, however, brought him into trouble by preventing him from taking the oath of supremacy which was asked of him in the first year of James L, and he was removed from his post as a recusant. Turning his attention to politics, in 1613 he was elected for County Kildare in the Irish House of Commons. Again he was doomed to suffer for his religious views. He took a prominent part in the protests of the Opposition when James's first and only Irish Parliament met at Dublin Castle in May ; and when the leading Roman Catholics resolved to com- plain to the King of the way in which their voice was stifled by the corrupt practices and oppression of their enemies they chose Talbot as one of the deputa- tion to proceed to London. The Privy Council gave him a very unfriendly reception, tendered for his acceptance the English oath of supremacy, and invited his opinion on the doctrines of the Jesuit writer Suarez about the lawfulness of killing or deposing a heretic king. The legal abilities which those who had sent him over to England had hoped would be of such advantage to their cause could not preserve VOL. I. 19 2* Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot him from the consequences of his rehgious scruples. He would not declare the deposition of a heretic king unlawful, though repudiating murder. He was accord- ingly committed to the Tower until it should be decided how to punish him. In a communication which Talbot made to a fellow-prisoner, he did not mention his religion as the cause of his persecution.* Yet clearly it was what chiefly influenced his case. He appeared before the Star Chamber and was prosecuted by Francis Bacon, then Attorney-General. Still refusing the oath and declaring that matters of faith were for the Church to decide, he vainly acknowledged James as lawful and undoubted King, to whom he would bear true faith and allegiance during his own life. On November 13th the Star Chamber, after listening to the Attorney- General's vigorous denunciation of Talbot's attitude, delivered its verdict and adjudged that he should pay the monstrous fine of ten thousand pounds. In the meantime he returned to the Tower, to " attend on His Majesty's pleasure." Happily for Wilham Talbot, the injustice with * Talbot told John Cotton that " he thought the cause of his trouble was because he was sent with others out of Ireland upon complaint of matters of that country, whereunto he said he was hardly drawn, and against his will." {H.M.C. Reports, Ancaster MSS.) In the funeral oration on the Duke of Tyrconnel in 1692, Messire A. Anselm says of William Talbot : " His intrepid wisdom made him so formidable to the ministers that their cruel policy con- demned him to prison for several years, for the sole reason, they said, that it would never be possible to subdue Ireland while she had such a defender." V^ery probably it was the tradition in the family that William Talbot suffered rather as an Irish patriot than as a Roman Catholic. 20 Early Days which he was treated was not carried to an extremity. After more than a year in the Tower, he was per- mitted to return home in 1614, and it does not appear that payment of the fine was exacted. With- out changing his faith, moreover, he obtained pardon for his offences, whatever they were. It has been suggested that the price of his forgiveness was that he should no longer act against the Government, and it is true that we do not hear of his doing so after his release. In February, 1622, he was honoured with a baronetcy, and subsequently he received gifts of land in Ireland, so that on his death on March i6th, 1633, he left a considerable estate to his heirs. Sir William and his wife had in all sixteen children, eight sons and eight daughters.* The daughters do not figure prominently in history, although the eldest, Mary, by her marriage with Sir John Dongan, or Dungan, became the mother of some well-known personages at the Courts of Charles II. and James II. Of the sons we shall, in the course of this book, meet five others besides Richard. The eldest, Robert, who at the age of twenty-six, succeeded his father as second baronet, is described by Lord Chancellor Clarendon as " much the best ; that is, the rest were much worse men " — not high praise, perhaps it may be said, except as coming from the pen of one who admits that he was looked upon as an enemy of the whole family. However, Carte, little more inclined * For the complete list of the family, see Appendix B. 2X Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot than Clarendon to extol one of the Talbots, allows him to have been " a gentleman of very good sense, strict honour, and great bravery." Of John, who was probably the second son, we shall hear but little; of Garrett and James less still. But Peter, whom Clarendon calls the second of the brothers,* played no small part in intrigues both before and after the Restoration, while Gilbert and Thomas, the black sheep of the family, both made themselves conspicuous for a time during the long exile of Charles II. Richard, if the commonly accepted date of his birth in 1630 be correct, was not more than three years old when his father died. In the family home at Carton or Cartown, Kildare, now the property of his brother Robert, his early years were passed ; and here presumably he was, at the age of eleven, when the Irish insurrection under Owen O'Neil broke out. Through his tender years he took no immediate part in this rising against the English Government. But his family, like so many others belonging to the Pale, was soon drawn into it. As early as 161 1 Lord Carew, sent by James I. to Ireland on a special mission of inspection, had the wisdom to foresee a drawing together, through community of faith, of the old English settlers and the native Irish, and prophesied that they would rebel " under the veil of religion and liberty." Thirty years later his forecast * The second of those known to himself, Clarendon must mean. 22 Early Days proved true. The Roman Catholic invaders from Ulster, on entering the Pale in December, 1641, called on the inhabitants to join those who had the same interests as themselves and suffered the same injustices. The plea prevailed, and the Anglo-Norman Papists, including Sir Robert Talbot, ranged themselves on the side of the insurgents. But it must be stated that all intention of rebelling against the King was from the first repudiated. The very Ulstermen claimed to be supporters of the royal prerogative, on which the " malignants " in the English Parliament had en- croached, and the nobles and gentry of the Pale looked upon themselves, not the officials at Dublin Castle, as the loyalists. In spite of Charles's hostile proclamation of January ist, 1642, the celebrated Confederation began its career with a protest that it was making war on behalf of religion and the King. Sir Robert Talbot quickly came to the front among the Confederates, as an eloquent advocate of their cause rather than as a fighting man. Indeed, in the warfare against the Marquis of Ormonde, either before or after he was made Lord Lieutenant, Sir Robert appears to have taken no part.* But he was prominent in council. He was one of the Irish • Carte says : " Sir Robert .... having been driven by the lords justices' treatment unwilUngly into the rebellion, and retaining always a true affection to his country, and good inclinations to the King's service, had constantly laboured to dispose his countrymen to peace, and persuade them to sub- mission to His Majesty's authority. He was very active in promoting this end, whenever an opportunity offered." {History of the Duke of Ormond, IV., 67.) 23 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot representatives selected to present their grievances at the conference at Trim in March, 1643. He was, with Ormonde's brother-in-law Viscount Muskerry, one of the ten who signed the articles with Ormonde for the "Cessation" on September 15th, securing a year's truce. Next month he and Muskerry were also members of the commission of seven sent over to the King at Oxford. The Confederates' demands, includ- ing relief from the penal laws against Roman Catholics and freedom of the Irish Parliament from English interference, were more than Charles dared grant, had he wished to do so. The question of terms being referred to Ormonde, now Lord Lieutenant, Talbot was one of the twelve negotiators appointed by the Irish to meet him. But the struggle was becoming at once more bitter and more complicated. The early barbarities of the Ulstermen against the settlers (in which the inhabit- ants of the Pale were in no way implicated) led to brutal reprisals, and to an order by the English Parlia- ment that no quarter should be given to any Irish taken in arms. The dissensions in England, however, made for the advantage of those who had been pro- claimed rebels across St. George's Channel. The Irish had already been soliciting aid from foreign nations, and the arrival of the Papal nuncio Giovanni Battista Rinuccini, armed with vast powers from Rome, rendered the chances of reconciliation with the dominant party in England much poorer. But the 24 Early Days King could not afford to be exacting. In his desperate plight at home he was anxious to gain Irish support, and Ormonde was commanded to con- clude peace on the best terms which he could get. The result was the treaty of 1646, one of the signatories to which was Sir Robert Talbot. This treaty did not end the warfare, except as between the Lord Lieutenant and the leaders of the Pale. The fighting between the Irish and the troops of the English Parliament continued, while on the Con- federate side the Papal nuncio and the clerical party in general denounced the peace with Ormonde. In vain the Lord Lieutenant endeavoured to gain over Owen O'Neil. Rinuccini's influence was too strong. Ormonde, after having been welcomed at Kilkenny, the Confederate headquarters, was driven back to Dublin, while Rinuccini deposed and for a time imprisoned the old Supreme Council. So hopeless did Ormonde's position become that he surrendered Dubhn to the forces of the Enghsh ParHament and at the end of July, 1647, retired from Ireland for fourteen months. It was little more than a week after Ormonde's departure that the youngest of the Talbot brothers is first heard of in the Confederate ranks. Aged now about seventeen, Richard was serving as a cornet of horse in the army of Thomas Preston, who disputed with Owen O'Neil the command of the Irish, and like him had been placed by Rinuccini on the new 25 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot Supreme Council. Carte says that Sir Robert Talbot's " prudence, credit and influence first brought his youngest brother into the world, where the favour and eminent worth of their sister's son, Sir Walter Dungan, contributed to advance him." Mary Talbot, eldest daughter of Sir William Talbot, as has been said, had married Sir John Dongan, and several of their sons served in the Confederate army with their father. The most prominent of these was Walter Dongan, the first-born, in whose troop Richard Talbot — his junior, though his uncle — was " standard- bearer." According to Carte, Walter Dongan came to Ormonde in 1645 with letters from King Charles recommending the extraordinary services of himself and his father and was given a commission to raise men and join Preston, who was better inclined than O'Neil to the King's side, and whose rather hesitating loyalty was hereafter to be rewarded by Charles II. with the title of Viscount Tara. After the treaty of 1646 and its rejection by the Irish clericals, Dongan sent to Ormonde to ask what he should do and was commanded to remain with Preston's army in hopes of bringing it over to the King. Accordingly Dongan and his young uncle were with Preston at the beginning of August, 1647, when Colonel Michael Jones, the Irish Protestant, marched against him at the head of a Parliamentary force. On the 8th of the month the battle known by the name of Dungan Hill took place, the Confederates 26 Early Days being utterly routed, with a loss of live or six thousand men. As was usual in this ghastly struggle, little mercy was shown after victory, and perhaps it was only owing to his youth that Richard Talbot's life was spared, though he was taken prisoner. Whether he was released or exchanged or, as frequently afterwards, managed to make his escape, does not appear. At any rate, he was able before long to rejoin the army and to fight once more against the Parliamentarians. Ormonde, on his return to Ireland in the autumn of 1648, found the split in the Confederate party much more pronounced than when he left, and he was heartily welcomed to Kilkenny by the General Assembly. Already O'Neil had been proclaimed a traitor by his former friends for treating with Jones for peace. The families of the Pale, true to their professions of loyalty to the King, would have no dealings with the Parliament. In spite of all Rinuccini's efforts, the Confederates concluded another treaty with the Lord Lieutenant on January 17th, 1649, the terms being almost the same as those of the treaty of 1646. The murder of Charles I. only helped to cement the alliance; and Rinuccini, unable to procure the money he required from Rome and having completely lost his influence over the more solid of the Irish leaders, gave up the struggle and left Ireland, while Ormonde proclaimed Charles II. king. 27 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot The Parliamentarians replied vigorously. Denounc- ing Ormonde's allies once more as rebels and repudiating all treaties with them, they patched up a kind of truce with O'Neil and even supplied hi§ forces with gunpowder and provisions. Moreover, Cromwell himself landed at Dubhn with the title of Lord Lieutenant on August 15th, and took the field at once. The first place which he attacked was Drogheda, where Ormonde had put Sir Arthur Aston in command and where Richard Talbot was among the garrison. The siege began on September 3rd, but Cromwell's big guns were not in position until the loth. As soon as the bombardment began, however, all was over. The besieged were hopelessly out- numbered, and their gallant resistance could not survive the assault next day. A massacre followed, the extent of which is disputed, although it is admitted by the victors to have gone on for two days, and to have included many non-combatants. Cromwell, on his own confession, ordered no quarter to be given to any found in arms, and the escape of Richard Talbot was almost miraculous. Seriously wounded and thought to be dead, he owed his preservation, amid the general butchery, to the compassion of Commissary-General John Reynolds. But for his luck in falling into the hands of a merciful man, his chance of life would indeed have been small, since, apart from the general refusal of quarter, the " old Enghsh " were if possible even 28 Early Days more obnoxious to the Parliamentarians than were the native Irish. In the dress of a woman — the disguise must have been good for this tall young Irishman to pass as such — Richard Talbot made his way into safety. The Irish and Royalist cause was lost, although the struggle still continued for a while and Talbot's kinsmen still played various parts in it. Ormonde had been making unceasing efforts to gain over Owen O'Neil to his side. Charles II., to assist him in the attempt, sent over from Saint-Germain a letter to O'Neil, entrusting it to Father Thomas, one of the two Talbot brothers who had chosen the church for their career. Ormonde despatched Thomas Talbot to O'Neil, and at last in October a treaty was made. But it was too late. O'Neil was very ill and died only a fortnight after he had agreed to act as Ormonde's representative in Ulster. Town after town fell into the hands of the Parliamentarians. Ormonde was unable to save even Kilkenny, and Cromwell was so satisfied with the progress of affairs that at the end of May, 1650, he put the command into the hands of Ireton and quitted Ireland. The new general carried on the work vigorously. At Tecroghan in Meath he found Sir Robert Talbot in charge of the castle. The siege was entrusted to Reynolds, Richard's preserver. Sir Robert held out over a month and only capitulated on June 25th on condition that he and the garrison 29 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot should go free. Dissensions among the Irish led to talk of treachery, but Ormonde refused to believe it against an honourable man, and doubtless he was justified in his confidence.* The Irish extremists had grown proportionately stronger as the Royalists went on from defeat to defeat, and unhappily they hesitated at little that would damage those who were nominally fighting the same enemies as themselves. Ormonde himself soon suffered at their hands. He quarrelled with the Roman Catholic bishops, who now after O'Neil's death had the strongest hold over the native Irish, and they excommunicated all who followed him. Charles's miserable submission to the Scots' demands and consequent denunciation of the Irish as rebels completed the breach. Very naturally the Irish Roman Catholics, for their own safety, demanded a Lord Lieutenant of their faith. Ormonde was forced to yield, though he managed to persuade the Irish to accept Lord Clanricarde with the title of his " deputy." Having obtained this con- cession, he sailed from Dublin for the French coast on December nth, not to revisit Ireland for nearly twelve years. The Irish prolonged the hopeless contest for another two years after Ormonde's retirement, but * It may be noted that when Athlone Castle fell a year later, Talbot's enemies revived their accusations against him. But Lord Muskerry, writing to Ormonde on August 25th, 1651, though speaking of "the treacherous surrender of the castle of Athlone," declined to hold Sir Robert guilty. {H.M.C. Reports, Ormonde MSS., Vol. I., New Series.) 30 Early Days they could scarcely any longer be said to have been upholding the King's cause. There were Royalists among them still in the field, such as Sir Robert Talbot and the Dongans. Of the latter Carte says that Walter, with his brother William and his father Sir John, took Ormonde's advice " to make themselves as considerable as possible among the Irish and keep an interest among them until his own return to Ireland." " They were all valiant, active, and faith- ful," he continues. " Sir Walter was wounded and taken prisoner in the service ; but after being released and appointed commissary-general of the horse, he held out against the usurper, till enforced with the rest of his party to transport himself according to articles to Spain, where he gave signal testimonies of his duty, affection, and loyalty to His Majesty's service." Considerable (it may seem excessive) space has been given here to the Irish Rebellion and to the part played therein by the kinsmen and connections of Richard Talbot. But it is impossible to understand the future attitude of Tyrconnel towards the politics of his day without seeing what were the influences which worked upon him in boyhood and youth and moulded his opinions. We have found him brought up among a class of men with high aristocratic traditions, who tried to solve the terribly difficult problem how to remain loyal at once to the religion of their ancestors, to the land of their birth, and to 31 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot the King of whose right to the throne they had no doubt. The Talbots, hke so many others of the Pale, were staunch to their church, but possessed too much independence of mind to accept the extreme papal claims. Rinuccini met with no acquiescence from Sir • Robert when he endeavoured to make him bow with the Celtic Irish to the unlimited authority with which he had been entrusted by Rome. In 1687 Tyrconnel may seem, if we accept a certain document as good evidence, to have abandoned the principles for which the Roman Catholics of the Pale strove. But it will be shown that this document does not merit the importance which has been attached to it. With regard to their patriotism, the Talbots never ceased to uphold what they considered to be the rights of Ireland. That they, with their pride of another race, should not have been able to satisfy the Celts as to their whole-heartedness is not surprising if we consider how long the wall of exclusion had stood round the Pale, how slowly the "• old Enghsh," as they were so often called, admitted an admixture of native blood into their families. The descendants of the former invaders, nevertheless, clung to the land of their birth with a devotion which has been paralleled by that of later invaders of Ireland. They had no wish to return whence they came. Nor have the Protestant Ulstermen of to-day, it seems. But the inhabitants of the Pale had the additional reason for desiring to remain where they were, in that 32 Early Days James II. was not the first to dream that Ireland might be a safe asylum for Roman Catholics when circumstances should render it impossible for them to live elsewhere in the Three Kingdoms. The Talbots and others had remained Roman Catholics partly because they were born Irish. They wished to remain Irish because they were born Roman Catholics. Naturally their faith and their love of country hung together. The struggle was to combine the two with their loyalty to their King when that King persecuted their faith and misgoverned their country. But they had an ingrained attachment to the Crown, which their conquered Celtic neighbours could not be expected to share. Such a sentiment is impossible to analyse. It may be either laughed at, pitied, or admired. In any case, it must be accepted as a fact. Sir William Talbot's sons, it might be thought, could look back with little gratitude on the memory of James I. Adherence to Charles I. brought nothing but disaster to Sir Robert. Charles II. at Dunfermhne in August, 1650, at the dictation of the Scots, classed all implicated in the rising as " bloody Irish rebels, who treacherously shed the blood of so many of his faithful and loyal subjects." No exception was made in favour of the Pale. But the Talbots could make a distinction between the King and his acts, and hold unwavering to their allegiance in the midst of their sufferings. Branded as rebels, they upheld the royal prerogative. Of them Tyrconnel had the best reason VOL. I. 33 3 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot for thankfulness to the master whom in particular he served. It might have been expected, therefore — since the study of political history encourages cynicism — that he would have proved ungrateful. He did not. But the cynics may be satisfied, for his lot in consequence has been to be branded with ignominy. In vindicating Tyrconnel's character from unjust charges it is not necessary to deny that there were some serious stains on his record. To one of these, which is far more grave in modern estimation than it was in that of his contemporaries, we are now coming. 34 CHAPTER II A PLOT AGAINST CROMWELL A T the age of nineteen Richard Talbot had already -^ ^ taken his share in two of the greatest disasters, one a pitched battle, the other the storming of a stronghold, which befell the enemies of the English Parliamentary party in Ireland. Following the fortunes of Walter Dongan, he had been once made prisoner and once left for dead. With nothing more than his life he had succeeded in escaping from his native land, having before him no better prospects than those of a soldier of fortune. A period of obscurity follows his departure from Ireland. The next news heard of him is that in March, 1653, he is in Madrid holding the rank of captain and in the company of his nephew. Walter Dongan, we have seen, continued the struggle in Ireland until the treaty of 1652 compelled him to leave. He then entered the Spanish military service, like so many of his exiled fellow-countrymen. Richard, before they met again, VOL. L 35 3* Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot seems to have been in the company of his brother Peter. Indeed they may have left Ireland together. Peter Talbot, had he not been a natural intriguer, little troubled with scruples, might have come down to history as a martyr ; for he was destined to die as Archbishop of Dublin, a prisoner in the Castle for pretended complicity in the " Popish plot," and suflFering from an agonizing disease. He was about ten years older than his brother Richard, and had been sent to a Jesuit college in Portugal at the age of fifteen. From Portugal he went to Rome, from Rome to Antwerp to lecture on moral theology, and from Antwerp back to Portugal. When he returned to Ireland he was already an accomplished and subtle man. With the other Jesuits, he did not bow to the claims of the nuncio Rinuccini, but endeavoured to keep the peace with the Viceroy — though, it is clear, never at any time succeeding in inspiring Ormonde with confidence in him. After the ruin of the royalist cause he appeared in Madrid, and we find from a still-surviving letter of his in Latin that he and a brother, whom we may suppose to be Richard, had reason to thank one of the Irish bishops then residing there for good offices done to them.* * Peter Talbot to the Bishop of Clonmacnoise, Antwerp, July 3rd, 1654, quoted in Cardinal Moran's Sficilegium Ossoriense, II., p. 133. On his mission to London the Jesuit was no doubt protected by his diplomatic quality ; but, proceeding from England to Ireland on a political scheme of his own imagining, he tells the bishop that he " underwent the same danger as others." By the Act of July, 1650, rewards had been offered for the discovery of priests or Jesuits as for highwaymen. 36 A Plot against Cromwell Peter Talbot left Madrid for London on a mission from the King of Spain to his Ambassador in England, while Richard, who had perhaps already joined the Spanish ranks, remained behind. Spain, glad as she was to welcome the Irish exiles into her army to aid her in the struggle with France, was in no position to keep her promises to the new recruits. Soldiers of fortune expect some- thing besides the mere opportunity of fighting. Now the Irish regiments under the Spanish flag got as much fighting as they could want, but little or no pay or food. The breach of faith quickly aroused discontent among the Irish. And there was another reason which increased the discontent of those of them who were loyal adherents of the Stuarts. In 1652 the young Duke of York had obtained permission to serve as a volunteer in the French army under the Vicomte de Turenne. When the exiles saw him an officer in the opposing ranks they were disgusted with their own position, and some of them were not slow to translate their desires into action. Foremost was Thomas, Viscount Dillon of Costello, colonel of an Irish regiment in the Spanish forces under the Prince of Conde. He set the example, which, was rapidly followed by numbers of his compatriots, of going over with his men to the French side, and soon the Duke of York had a fine body of auxiliaries to place at the disposal of his hosts. It does not appear that Richard Talbot was one of 37 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot those who early deserted the Spanish for the French army. Walter Dongan remained in the ranks of Spain, and his uncle may have done so too. Events came to pass which not only tempered any enthusiasm that royalist exiles might feel for France, but even converted the French government into the chief obstacle, on the continent of Europe, to the restora- tion of the Stuarts. The all-powerful Mazarin's policy of friendship with Cromwell involved a French refusal of asylum to Charles II. In July, 1654, ^^^ unfortunate King was obliged to seek for a new shelter. His pension from France was no longer to be paid to him direct, and in any case was precarious henceforward in view of the desire to please Cromwell. To hasten his departure Mazarin paid up the arrears — for payment was always much behind the time — on condition of secrecy ; and with a sum totally inadequate to meet the needs of himself and his immediate followers on their travels, Charles wandered about in search of a spot secure from the reach of the Protector's enmity. Debarred, through the fear of England, from French, Spanish and Dutch territory, and despised by the Vatican as a heretic, he had only the German Empire left to him ; and even Ferdinand was in no wise prepared to do more than tolerate his presence in his dominions as a private individual, promise a grant (at some future date) for his personal maintenance, and allow col- lections to be made from the princes of the Empire. 38 A Plot against Cromwell On such charity as he could beg from various sources Charles was compelled to subsist and to keep up his semblance of a household. In the winter following his removal from France, after a season spent at Spa with his widowed sister Mary of Orange, Princess Royal of England, he took up his abode at Cologne, the city which offered him the kindest welcome and provided him with at least the bare necessities of life gratis, though its Bishop-Elector persisted in rudely ignoring him. Cologne now became the centre of the royalist plots about which so much information is preserved in the collections of documents known by the names of the Clarendon, Thurloe and Nicholas Papers. Innumerably more schemes were planned than ever saw the light of day ; but, roughly, they were all of two kinds. There was the plot for a rising against the Commonwealth in various parts of the three kingdoms, combined with or preparatory to a landing of the King. And there was the plot to assassinate Cromwell. Often the two were carried on side by side ; for, to the Royalist, at least, there was no point in removing Cromwell unless it were to make way for the restoration of King Charles. The co-operation of such people as the " Levellers," for instance, who hated Cromwell not as a regicide but as a tyrant, was not rejected, but difficulties always arose when the non-monarchical conspirators began to suggest terms. The thorough loyalists would consent 39 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot to no imposition of limitations upon the King. It was this obstacle which doomed to failure the strenuous efforts of Peter Talbot, who was convinced that Charles could best be restored by the joint aid of Spain and the Levellers. When Edward Sexby, the most influential man among the latter, made his escape to Antwerp from the hands of Cromwell in May, 1655, he and Peter Talbot at once set to work to find a basis of agreement. But the Jesuit never succeeded in convincing his fellow-exiles that an alliance with the Levellers might be secured which would not compromise the authority of the King. The necessary condition for the success of plots of either kind was secrecy — particularly, of course, for the success of an assassination plot. And this condition was never secured, owing to the network of spies which Cromwell was able to spread about his enemies in every quarter, at home and abroad. Never was the truth of the maxim " Fore-warned is fore-armed " better appreciated by anyone than by the Protector, and thanks to his command of money he bought for himself the warnings which the poverty-stricken Royalists in vain tried to keep from his ears. Like other men of iron, he well knew the power of gold. His intelligence in preventing dangers to his government and himself often appears superhuman, yet can always be traced to the adroit use of cash placed in the right hands. Many engagers in conspiracy against him were brought to 40 A Plot against Cromwell realise this bitterly, and Richard Talbot very nearly found himself among the company of those who paid with their lives for a failure which their intended victim had purchased with money — escaping by a miracle which seems as remarkable as Cromwell's own constant escapes from the death which threatened him. According to Clarendon's Continuation, young Talbot was brought by Daniel O'Neil* to Flanders — it should be to Cologne — " as one who was willing to assassinate Cromwell." Since his presence in Madrid with Sir Walter Dongan in March, 1653, until his appearance now, Talbot is lost to sight in the records of the royalist exiles. That he did in 1655 take part in a plot to end the Protector's life we have abundant evidence apart from what Clarendon says. As to his introduction for that purpose by his countryman O'Neil we have no confirmation, and the deduction which has been made from the Chancellor's statement that he went to England with the King's sanction of the assassination scheme is unwarranted in itself and unsupported by surviving documents of the period. There is evidence, on the contrary, that Charles lent no countenance to such schemes. " Manie are for assassinating the Protector," Thurloe * Colonel Daniel O'Neil (nephew of the celebrated Owen O'Neil, though a Protestant) was one of Charles's leading supporters in exile, a gentleman of his bedchamber, and a busy promoter of plots for risings against the Common- wealth. He was one of the seventeen Royalists expressly excluded from France with the King and the two Royal Dukes by Cromwell's treaty with Mazarin in November, 1655. O'Neil was afterwards the third husband of Catherine, Lady Stanhope, mother of the second Lord Chesterfield. 41 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot was informed by his spy Manning in May, 1655, " but Ch[arles] St[ewart] is not forward in having it don." And from the letters of Sir Edward Nicholas to Thomas Ross, the royalist agent, in February, 1656, it is clear that Charles's Secretary of State made a point of keeping him in ignorance of a similar plot which Richard Hopton wished to get up that year. The ardent servants of the King had no scruples of conscience against the idea themselves. Nicholas, a man with a most honourable record, could talk of Hopton's suggestion as " so glorious a work " and " so charitable a deed." Other very prominent Royalists were at least familiar with the idea, as is proved by the frequent mention of it in letters received by them, and did not feel called upon to repudiate it. But the King himself, as indeed we might expect from the general humanity and unvindictiveness of his character, is nowhere shown to have given his approval to attempts on Cromwell's life. His enemies endeavoured to implicate him by means of a forged Royal Proclamation of May 3rd, 1654, but there is no trace of this document beyond an alleged copy supplied by a spy of Thurloe ; and to the spy the temptation to make " revelations " was as irresistible as it is to the modern sensational journalist. The King of course knew that there were conspiracies against the life of the usurper, just as the latter knew of schemes against the life of the King. To admit this, however, is very different from saying 42 A Plot against Cromwell that either directly plotted the other's death. But it must be remembered that, after the battle of Worcester, Cromwell at least had set the price of a thousand pounds on Charles's head and threatened with death any who should venture to conceal him in his flight. The King was privy, no doubt, to part of the plot with which we are now dealing. James Halsall, the chief agent in it, was commissioned to raise money from royalist supporters in England, some of which was to be spent on the purchase of horses in view of a Scottish insurrection against Cromwell at the begin- ning of 1656. And Richard Talbot, like his brother Peter, is credited with hopes of setting on foot a similar insurrection in Ireland, though it cannot be said for certain that he actually entertained the idea at the time of his visit to England in the summer of 1655. Anyhow, it is clear enough that Cromwell's assassination was but a portion, if the most urgent portion, of a wider plan to upset the government established in London.* The year of the enterprise in which Richard Talbot took his share was a very busy one with the royalist conspirators. 1654 had been full of disappointment • The English government recognised this. A paragraph, apparently official, in a news-letter of December nth, 1655, says : " Wee are yett in the examina- tion of the late designe of Halsall and others, and have in custody and in our power five of those who were particularly designed to assassinate my Lord Protector, and other [sc. schemes] there are which depended on this, but this to bee done in the first place, as that which was so necessary, as all would miscarry without itt." {Clarke Papers, III., 61.) 43 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot for them. Early in that year the first scheme con- cocted by the committee in England known as the Sealed Knot was a complete fiasco. Another attempt was delayed first by the discovery of Henshaw's assas- sination plot against the Protector and then by the detection of plans of the Levellers and other republican malcontents. A general uprising of Royahsts was nevertheless arranged for January and postponed until February 13th (old style), 1655 ; but divided counsels and dilatory tactics caused the day to pass without a stir, and so the government had time to get on its guard and prevent immediate action. Undeterred by these failures, the English monarchists fixed March 8/1 8th as the day for another attempt, and in spite of the miscarriage of plans elsewhere the West Country actually broke out into insurrection, though three days after the appointed date — with fatal results to many. An anonymous letter from England, dated February 19th (old style), preserved among the Clarendon Papers, says that " any wise man might have foreseen the ruin of this business, from the buy- ing of arms and ammunition in London and the communication of the design to a large number of persons, many mean in parts and condition, and many mad and drunk." The failure of the Spring Rising of 1655, although it led to much recrimination among the Royalists, did not check even temporarily the hatching of schemes against the Protector and his government. But the 44 A Plot against Cromwell severities inflicted on the King's friends for their recent attempt led to the increase of assassination plots rather than of plots for further insurrections. Cromwell acted with great vigour after the executions in the West of England, beginning with those of Colonels Penruddock and Grove, with eight others, at Exeter on May i6th. The end of May and the whole of June saw constant arrests of leaders of the beaten party in London. By an order of July 6th all adherents of either Charles II. or his father were banished from the capital. In August the entire country was parcelled out into districts, each under the control of a Major-General with extraordinary authority to maintain the peace. These " Bashaws," as they were nicknamed, had powers of life and death over the Protector's enemies, Cromwell's treaty with France on November 3rd, 1655 (which stipulated, among other things, for the exclusion of Charles, his two brothers, and seventeen of his chief supporters from French territory), was followed by edicts disarming the Royalists and imposing a ten per cent, tax on their estates. The disarmament order in particular aroused among the Cavaliers bitter fears of a general massacre. But already yet another desperate plan to remove the tyrant out of the way had been set on foot and had failed. When this conspiracy took its rise is not certain. As early as February 6/i6th one of Thurloe's spies at Cologne, Sir John Henderson, informed him 45 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot that he was assured by Massonet, a treacherous secretary of Charles II., of designs against the Protector's person, though he could not learn particulars. On May i5/25th a certain Richard Hannam, under examination in London, gave particulars of a plot which is certainly not that in which Talbot was involved. In the same month the Duke of York wrote to his brother from Paris, mentioning a plan which had been proposed to him by " fower Roman Catholiks that have bound themselves in a sollemn oath to kill Cromwell and then to raise all the Catholiks in the citty and the army." But this, again, is not the plot of Talbot and his companions, for the details do not agree. Well posted as was Cromwell as to designs against himself, he was quite unable to prevent royalist agents, even when credited with such designs, from making their way into England from abroad. They came in, indeed, with surprising facility, and, if they did not accomplish anything, at least they avoided capture. The spies on the Continent attributed this ease of entry to the connivance of a secretly pro- royalist official at Dover. But Cromwell's tyranny had made many careless in his interests who were yet in no way inclined to the King. Nothing shows this more plainly than the whole story of the conspiracy in which Talbot was involved. The beginning of this plot, or at least of the attempt to put it into execution, may be seen in the 46 A Plot against Cromwell departure from Cologne in early July, 1655, of a certain James Halsall or Halsey, described by Manning to Thurloe as " a little black man," " about 35 years of age, round face, in short hair or a periwig, and a round man ; " and, again, as " one of our chiefest agents." Halsall, whom we find a member of Charles's house- hold at Cologne in 1655, had been prominently engaged in the arrangements for the Northern section of the Spring Rising and was among the lucky ones who escaped over sea after a period of hiding in London. He now started on another and still more dangerous errand, yet so full of confidence that he borrowed a pistol from Lord Gerard, one of Charles's household, saying he would pay a hundred pounds for it unless the Protector were killed in three months' time. In the journey to England he was preceded by Colonel John Stephens, who had also taken part in the Spring Rising and had escaped, and by Richard Rose, servant to Lord Rochester. He was followed by " one Captain Talbot, a tall young man and an Irish," as Manning describes him in a letter to Thurloe, and by Robert Dongan. The last-named — who frequently appears in letters of the period as " Robin " Dongan, which, as in the case of " Dick " Talbot, argues that he was familiarly known among the royalist exiles — was one of the younger members of the family of Sir John Dongan and Mary Talbot. He had been page to the Marquis of Ormonde and more recently had accompanied as 47 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot second-in-command that romantic cavalier Edward Wogan on the desperate enterprise into Scotland which ended in his death in January, 1654. We know little of Robert Dongan beyond what is men- tioned in the following pages, save that he is the " Duncan " of the Memoirs of Gramont. On the whole he appears to have been a rather unpleasant character. All five conspirators made their way safely into England by way of Dover. Proof of the danger which they ran was quick in coming, however, Stephens and Talbot being arrested on suspicion after their arrival in London.* Stephens was soon at liberty again, and about the middle of September left England for Dunkirk, where he fell seriously ill. Nothing incriminating can have been found upon him or Talbot, for the latter also obtained his release; though it would appear that he was not, as is usually stated, set free at the same time as Stephens. When we consider what efforts the spies at Cologne had made to secure their arrest and the precise informa- tion which they had supplied about them, it is difficult to understand how either of them got off without at least a long term of imprisonment ; unless it was that, in order to discover Halsall, his colleagues were released to act as unconscious decoys. * Perhaps the earliest allusion to their arrest is to be found in an intelligence- letter to Thurloe dated Cologne, July 28th (new style), 1655. Speaking of a journey of Lord Gerard to France, the spy writes : " If you sent somebody to observe his actions you would do well ; for hearing Talbot, Stephens, &c., to be taken, he intends to attempt the murther of the Protector." (Thurloe State Papers, III., 659.) 48 A Plot against Cromwell After his fortunate escape from punishment, Talbot went to Halsall, who had remained successfully hidden in lodgings in London, attended by a confidential servant, William Masten — in whom he trusted, as he says himself, " to the letting him know all his business " — and urged him to take some action at once. But Halsall hung back ; and he was supported from headquarters at Cologne in his contention the present was a bad time for any attempt. Rose having dropped out of the plot and departed from England Hke Stephens, Halsall was left alone in it with the two young Irishmen, both eager for something to be done. From Talbot's letter to Ormonde after he had reached Brussels, and also from what he told George Lane, it seems that he made great efforts to persuade Halsall, meeting his argument that funds were lacking with an offer to pawn for ;^6oo a lady's jewel worth ^1,500. Halsall still put him off — notwithstanding his bet with Lord Gerard and much to Talbot's disgust — and so completed the ruin of the plot. Cromwell's agents had apparently been watching for their opportunity to strike, while the conspirators had been quite unaware that they were threatened by any special danger. On November i6th Halsall was outside the door of his London lodgings, in the company of a young man named Prescott, when he was made prisoner. His clothing was searched, and inside the lining of his hat were found compromising papers, including his cipher, with the names of a VOL. I. 49 4 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot number of prominent Royalists, and other evidences of his intrigues in England. Next day Talbot and Dongan were also seized. It might have been expected that all three would now pay the penalty for their failure with their lives. The surprising fact is that none of them suffered death. Two traitors had contributed to the capture of the conspirators. One was William Masten, whose share in the betrayal included no doubt the revelation of the lodgings of his master and his friends. Halsall guessed who had played him false, but as a captive in Cromwell's hands had no means at the moment of putting the Royalists on their guard ; so that the man was able to go on posing for a time as still loyal and anxious to carry out the assassination scheme,* while arranging with the Protector's government to entrap, if possible, other friends of his master. He was hand- somely rewarded for his services. " He may well be full of gold," writes Halsall later, " for I am almost confident he had ^2,000, if not more, for his service." Early in 1657, after having kept out of danger so long, Masten fell into Spanish hands, but seems to have avoided punishment by declaring that he was a Roman Catholic. The other traitor was not so lucky. He was Henry Manning, one of the most contemptible of spies in * Writing to Edward Halsall to inform him of the disaster which had over- taken his brother, Masten said : " I have a nopertimity once in the weeck that I may with ese kil the roge, therefore let me know what I shall do therin." The " roge " is, of course, Cromwell. 50 A Plot against Cromwell Cromwell's pay. Son and brother of royalist officers who had lost their lives in the Civil War and himself formerly in the King's army, Manning, being short of money — owing to his father's debts, according to his own account — allowed himself to be engaged by Colonel William Hawley to act as Thurloe's intelli- gencer at the Court of the exiled King. Soon after Charles's arrival in Cologne Manning had come with an introduction to Dr. Earle, one of the royal chaplains ; and, being a man of good appearance and manners — " a proper young gentleman," says Claren- don — plausible and seemingly candid, he soon made his way into Court society at Cologne. He was further aided by that rarity at the Court, a well-filled purse, for his employers appear to have paid him ;^I20 a month. With the assistance of his ready money he made for himself friends, especially among the more gay and indiscreet of the cavaliers, and from what he learnt through them and others he was able, from March, 1655, onward, to send to Thurloe in London important news of royalist visits to England. He was responsible, in part at least, for the betrayal of the names of many of those implicated in the Spring Rising, and now again he betrayed Halsall, Talbot and Dongan. It was not his fault, as can be seen from his numerous letters to Thurloe, that those concerned in this assassination plot were not all seized at the beginning. But while Manning was contriving their ruin, someone else was doing the same for him. VOL. I. 51 4* Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot Eighteen days after Talbot and Dongan were taken in London, Manning was arrested in Cologne. Accord- ing to a letter written to Sir Edward Nicholas by a Colonel Whitley, royalist agent at Calais, the dis- covery of Manning's guilt was fathered in England upon Don Alonso de Cardenas, Spanish Ambassador to the Protector. Don Alonso had been " extreamly slighted by Cromwell " ; and, having been recalled from England when a definite breach was provoked by the Protector, after his arrival in Brussels on November 21st he told the Earl of Norwich all he knew as to the way in which Cromwell got his information about royalist movements and schemes. In consequence of what he said, some letters to Manning were watched for and intercepted at Antwerp, and on December 5th the spy himself was arrested in his lodgings at Cologne, at the very moment when he was writing a letter to Thurloe. Abundant evidence was found in Manning's papers to prove him guilty, and his own admissions confirmed it, although he protested — what we know from the Thurloe papers to be untrue — that he had only sent trivial and misleading intelligence to England so as to get money to live upon, while his real desire was to serve the King. He underwent a searching examina- tion by Lord Culpepper, the Marquis of Ormonde and Secretary Nicholas, and was apparently condemned to death by them. The last of his letters preserved in the Nicholas Papers, dated December 14th, 1655, 52 A Plot against Cromwell speaks of " sad rumoures of a suddein end intended me, nay, too morow morning," and begs Nicholas to intercede with the King on his behalf. He no longer makes any defence of his " horrid " and " too heynous " crime, but beseeches to be allowed to end his days in some cloister or dungeon. His prayers were without avail. Very soon after this letter was written, if not on the following morning, he was " pistolled " in a wood near Cologne by two of the King's household, Sir James Hamilton and Major Nicholas Armorer. An intercepted letter from a Cromwellian correspon- dent, dated Leyden, December 24th, states in a postscript that " a Dane just come from Cologne says that on passing through a wood two hours short of Cologne they found a young Englishman dead, who was said to be Manning." Although previous to his sentence Manning had been confined in the city prison, Maximilian Henry, Bishop-Elector of Cologne, strongly objected to the execution taking place in his territory, and the wretched man had therefore been conveyed to the wood, which was in the duchy of Juliers, the territory of the friendly Philip William, Count Palatine of Neuburg. It cannot be said that Manning's fate was un- deserved, whatever opinion may be held of the legality of his execution on foreign soil. If ever capital punishment be justifiable it was so in his case. He had brought the Cavalier victims to the scaffold at Exeter and elsewhere in May and did his best to put 53 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot other hves in jeopardy between July and November. In one of his " Statements " under examination at Cologne he contended that he did not know of any- one being arrested in England on his information, and that he only wrote about some whose names had already been suggested to him by his employers. He also tried to make out that it was only after Hawley had mentioned his suspicions that the brothers Halsall had come over to England to murder Cromwell that he had replied that one of the brothers was there as an agent of the King. With regard to Richard Talbot, all that is to be found in the records of Manning's examinations is the sentence : " In one letter I was desired to write if I knew anything of one Coll. Talbot's being employed hence, to which I could make no other answer than that I knew nothing more than he was one of my Lord Ormond's officers in the king of Spain's service." As has been said, however, Manning's own letters prove the falsity of his protestations that he had sent but trivial and misleading information to England.* * Doubtless he mixed up fact and fiction in an extraordinary manner. To quote only one letter, on November 17th — the very date of Talbot's and Dongan's arrest — Manning had vs^ritten to Thurloe : " This I dare assure you, the main is to murder the Protector, and to seize such sea-ports in the nation as they find most feazible. Ormond and Hyde are the engines who drive on this design, to preserve themselves in play here. . . . They are confident of having something executed very suddenly ; and Charles Stuart daily tells us in private, ' Have patience a little, and you will not fail of action, both in Eng- land and Scotland, or else adieu Ormond and Hyde ! ' " {Thurloe State Papers, IV., 169.) His method was to convey a certain amount of valuable intelligence, embellished by inventions of his own designed to magnify his own value — and increase his salary. 54 A Plot against Cromwell In one, which had been intercepted, he accused Ormonde, Hyde and Culpepper, who " rule the roaste," of " endeavouring the Protector's murther (the actors, most of them, I have often named), which is yet generally thought would be of much advantage to any action." Now the " actors " whom he had often named were, as we know, precisely the men who had fallen into Cromwell's hands. On their arrest Halsall, Talbot and Dongan were taken to Whitehall, so that they might be examined by Cromwell himself. Halsall, as the chief of the conspiracy, was brought up first, on November 25th. His captured papers were very important, but thev did not prove anything as to the assassination plot, and Halsall steadfastly asserted that his business in England was the collection of money on behalf of the King. This was true, if not the whole truth, for Halsall was entrusted with that task apart from his share in the other plot. He admitted that the money was partly to be devoted to equipping an insurrection in Scotland in a month or two, though he would not reveal the names of those implicated except in cases where he knew that they were out of reach. Unable to get anything to the purpose from Halsall, Cromwell had Richard Talbot brought before him. He began the interview (according to the account furnished by Peter to a friend, Harding, in Cologne) with an attempt to win him over, offering " great 55 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot preferments," claiming that he himself was related to the Talbots of the Shrewsbury branch, and promising secrecy as to any confession which might be made. This having no effect, he asked suddenly why Talbot should think of killing him, seeing that he had never prejudiced him in his life. The other might have alluded to Drogheda, but did not. He contented himself with denying any knowledge of a plot. Cromwell produced the captured cipher, but, though it had the names of Dongan, Wogan, and others, Talbot's was not there. Cromwell pretended that Halsall, nevertheless, had betrayed it to him. If so, retorted Talbot, let Halsall be brought face to face with him. Cromwell told Thurloe to fetch him, but then, realising that this would lead to nothing, revoked the order and descended to threats of the rack. He would spin it out of Talbot's bones, he menaced. " Spin me to a thread if you please," was the answer, " I have nothing to confess, and can only invent lies " — whereon the bafHed captor abandoned his efforts and commanded the prisoner to be taken away. After he had been removed from Cromwell's presence, Richard Talbot was visited in his cell by both Lambert and Thurloe, the latter of whom (according to Peter Talbot) made him great offers of money, to which he replied that he only desired back his own ;^240, of which the soldiers had robbed him, doubtless '' mistaking them for papers." Twenty 56 A Plot against Cromwell pounds was all that he was given by Thurloe, but of this he was able to make good use. He learnt that it was intended to take him from Whitehall to the Tower the next morning, and therefore thought it time to escape, as he wrote to Ormonde from Brussels on January 3rd. " That night," says Peter in the letter to Harding, " he bestowed much wine upon Cromwell's soldiers, who waited on him and served him like a Prince, slipped down to the Thames by a cord, where he had a boat prepared, and in that little thing was ten days at sea ; landed at last at Callis [Calais], still nayled and shut up between some boards of the boate." So ended Richard Talbot's second and last bout with Cromwell, decidedly more remarkable than the first. At Drogheda they had not met face to face, Talbot had been merely one of the many hundreds ruthlessly denied quarter by the conqueror ; and he had escaped the sword merely because he was thought already dead. At Whitehall, Talbot, completely at the Protector's mercy, had defied his threats of torture and rescued himself from his jailers by bribing and intoxicating them. After Drogheda he had fled in the dress of a woman ; from Whitehall he smuggled himself away boxed up in the bottom of a river-boat and so sailed across the Channel. No one else could boast that he had cheated Cromwell thus. 57 CHAPTER III UNDER A CLOUD A FTER his adventurous and uncomfortable voyage across the Enghsh Channel and arrival at Calais, Talbot made his way towards the royalist headquarters. On December 27th he reached Brussels and on January 3rd he was at Antwerp. Before leaving Brussels he wrote a letter to Lord Ormonde, in which he gave certain details about his examination by Cromwell and his flight from Whitehall. With regard to the failure of the plot he expressed himself confident that if Halsall should have the good luck to escape he would confess that it was not through him that " the business " was not attempted. As for Dongan and the rest that were prisoners — Prescott had been arrested for supposed complicity, and there was also a fifth, a friend of Halsall named Charles Davison, whom Masten had hastened to denounce to the authorities in London — there was no danger, if they themselves did not by their confessions destroy 58 Under a Cloud one another. For when he came away, he added, Cromwell " had no other ground to proceed upon than bare suspitions, and consequently, for the safety of theyr lives, it's necessary that nothing be said of it." Richard Talbot arrived in Antwerp in the company of his brothers Peter and Gilbert. There they met George Lane, Clerk of the Council to the King, who wrote to Ormonde enclosing Richard's Brussels letter and speaking of the satisfaction of Gilbert with Ormonde's friendship to his family. Gilbert, as will be seen, had reason to be particularly anxious for this friendship. At Antwerp the brothers remained until they should be able to see Ormonde, to whom Peter wrote insistently on January 7th that he should come before a million crowns which had just arrived there should be distributed. While waiting, Richard received a letter signed " Donna Francisca," informing him that Robert Dongan had escaped. Donna Francisca was probably Lady Isabella Thynne, an ardent intriguer among the English Royalists,* who had by some means managed to rescue Dongan from his prison about the end of December or beginning of January. But Dongan himself had not yet succeeded in leaving England, and in the meanwhile * Manning had written from Cologne in the April of the previous year men- tioning " the ladies Thin and Shanon " as having their parts in a royalist plot, " to carry letters and goe up and down on errands." {Thurloe State Papers, III.) 59 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot his uncle Richard was unaware that a storm was hanging over his own head. In the second week of January Ormonde arrived in Antwerp and found two of the three brothers very intent on their plans. Peter, as usual, was busy with a scheme to combine the Levellers in England with Spain on the Continent in restoring Charles to his throne. He was negotiating with Fuensaldanha, commander of the Spanish forces in the Netherlands, of whose " promises " he wrote to Charles enthusi- astically, while at the same time he urged on the King how much his restoration would be facilitated by his conversion to Catholicism — " the only way to Heaven for persons of your Majestie's understanding." Ormonde was not impressed by Peter's diplomacy. On January nth, after having had an interview with the Spanish commander at Brussels and discovering him to be by no means as eager as was represented, he wrote to Nicholas in Cologne : " You will finde that ether the Father is a most exquisite forger or the Counte [Fuensaldanha] a great desembler ; but I am led to beleeve the former, out of the unhappy experience I have had of the Irish cleargy, and for other reasons." Ormonde was not so severe on all the brothers as Hyde, who wrote to him on January 7th that " they are all in the pack of knavery," and on the 14th that " hardly anything can be more evident than that they are all naught ; " but he probably would have agreed with Hyde's remark in 60 Under a Cloud the second letter that " the Jesuit should be sent to a remote convent and kept close from farther activity." Gilbert's scheme was of a very different kind, and our belief in his own account of it must depend on what view we take of his character. Hyde speaks well of him neither in his letters nor in the Continuation, where he says that he, " being a half- witted fellow, did not meddle with any thing or angered [sic] any body, but found a way to get good clothes and to play, and was looked upon as a man of courage, having fought a duel or two with stout men." Hyde is here talking of Gilbert Talbot a few years later. It is peculiar that he should write of him not meddling with anything, seeing that he must have known, if only through Ormonde, that in 1655-6 he was most distinctly " meddling." Gilbert, who held the rank of colonel since the days of the Confederation in Ireland, was at the time, like the majority of his fellow exiles, very ill provided with money to live upon and he conceived the idea, which Manning had pretended was his also, of getting some from the English Government. Among the Clarendon Papers is a letter, mostly in cipher, from Thurloe under the name of Johnson to " Mons. Burford " at Antwerp, in which he says that he will send some money soon, but that it is very dangerous. He desires " Burford," if possible, to get hold of Sexby's papers and send them to England 61 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot — Sexby being then in Brussels. A second letter a fortnight later says that Burford's mother and sisters are still at Carton, and that the writer hopes that they will not be transplanted.* What was expected from Burford (i.e., valuable information) wholly fails, which discourages them (the English government), so that the writer cannot send money or any other commodities if the trade be no better. " Upon such slight terms men will part with nothing, but if they find gain coming will spare for nothing." Burford is Gilbert Talbot, and from the fact that the letters appear among the Clarendon Papers it may be presumed that they were intercepted. Gilbert was obliged, therefore, to exculpate himself. On December 20th he went to see Ormonde, and on the following day he wrote to him asseverating that in getting into correspondence with Thurloe and Crom- well his intention was perfectly loyal. " I wish that I may at this instant sincke into Hell fire," he says, " if it was not purely my intention to serve His Majesty when this was first mentioned, and to deceive Cromwell." It was too late for him now to think of any base thought, after serving His Majesty for twelve years, " with the loss of my blood often and my friends." He did not desire to ask the King for money, but to obtain it from the enemy for His Majesty's service. * As a matter of fact they were transplanted to Connaught next year, their names appearing in the lists preserved among the Ormonde manuscripts. 62 Under a Cloud Gilbert apparently thought that he had satisfied Ormonde, or he would not have given George Lane reason to write as he did in the letter quoted above. But Ormonde took the precaution to have an order sent from Cologne to the postmaster at Antwerp to hold letters addressed to " Burford." On this Gilbert sent a letter of remonstrance. " I was much ashamed when [the postmaster] staggerd and lookt at me soe earnest," he said. God was his judge if he was not as real to the King as any in the world. He suggested that Ormonde should devise a good letter to the person (obviously Thurloe), so that he might send some money, which he would be glad to have. But he was willing to desist from the business, of which he was weary, seeing that he was suspected on account of it. On Ormonde's arrival at Antwerp, matters must have been smoothed over a little, for when he left again on January 17th for Cologne he was escorted as far as Breda by Gilbert and Richard Talbot and a Father Patrick McGinn, a friend of Peter — strange company for his Lordship. The brothers Talbot returned to Antwerp, where fresh troubles were soon to come upon them. As soon as he could get away from England Dongan had crossed the Channel. On January 30th he reached Dunkirk, where Stephens had been lying ill and destitute since his departure from London in September. Stephens had received a visit from the 63 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot treacherous Masten, whom apparently no one yet suspected except his master — now a close prisoner in the Tower, where he was destined to remain till Cromwell's death and the return to power of the Long Parliament. Dongan and Stephens at their meeting must have discussed the reasons of their failure and agreed that Dick Talbot's early escape from prison was suspicious. Moreover, while he was still in England after evading custody, Dongan had heard certain rumours. He sat down and wrote to Ormonde a note announcing his safe arrival, in the course of which he said : " I make noe questione you have herd of them reports that were of Dicke Talbot, but I could not gett any ground for them. But every body must answer for himself as I hope all them that knows annything of that buisness will answer for mee, for I can answer for nobody but my selfe." Not content with this, Dongan wrote again : " I am very much out of countenance to lett your Lordshipe understand a thing which my duty com- mands mee to, which is more to me than all the frends in the world. The thing I mean is that there was strange reports of my oncol concerneing his betraying of Halsy and myselfe for this bisines. I could find noe ground at al but reports, which I thought it my duty to let your Lordshipe understand, and as for my part I will neither accuse him nor justefy him because I cannot doe it by profes either ways, which 64 Under a Cloud if I could I would not trubel your Lordshipe with giving you this relation, but would take a cours with him myself. My Lady Issabela [Thynne] bids mee tell you that shee thought him innicent now since Manning was put to death ; but tim[e] will bring out all." .... Having delivered himself of these ungenerous insinuations against his kinsman Dongan set out on his way to Cologne, followed by a letter to Ormonde from Stephens, who ventured on the opinion that Dongan's " relation would in no way vindicate his uncle." Yet Stephens on the day he wrote had learnt, from a message smuggled out of the Tower of London by a fellow prisoner of Halsall, the certainty that Masten was a rogue and had betrayed his master and the others engaged in the assassination scheme. Dongan's readiness to spread the rumour which he had heard among English Royalists before he left, that Dick Talbot was the traitor, is partly explained by the fact that he himself was under suspicion of having wrecked the plot by indiscretion. He may or may not have known that as early as December 9th Stephens had written to Ormonde, after having received a visit from Masten, to the effect that the three conspirators had been taken, " betrayed by the too lavish discourse of Dongan." He must at least have learnt of the report from Stephens at Dunkirk; and on his arrival in Brussels he found it was wide- voL. I. 65 5 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot spread. " I here," he wrote indignantly to Ormonde, " Mr. O'Neil reports and tels everybody that I tould everybody my bisnes into England before I went, which is the greatest untruth that ever was." That Dongan should be angry at the accusation of talking too freely, and thereby causing the failure of the conspiracy, was natural ; but that he, and also Stephens at first, should be willing to impute to Dick Talbot such baseness as to betray his friends for Cromwell's gold is astonishing. The Royalists in England only knew that Talbot had made a most extraordinary escape from the Protector's clutches, so that it is less curious that they, who were not personally acquainted with him, should suggest an explanation of his good luck that reflected on his honour. In the case of Dongan it seems to have been mere selfish concern about himself which induced him to help in blackening his uncle's name. Dongan arrived in Antwerp at the beginning of February and at once communicated to Peter Talbot there what was being said about his brother. On the same day Peter wrote to Ormonde — everyone appears to have written to Ormonde, who of those that, in Manning's words, ruled the roast had doubt- less the most sympathetic nature — as follows : " Robin Dongan . . . tells me of a strange report of Dick amongst some people in London. Hee thinks 66 Under a Cloud it hath noe ground and sayes it is now [?] to Halsey's man or some other. Tyme will discover the truth. In the interim I will neyther flatter my inclination with judging him innocent nor bee rash in condemn- ing him ; but truly I will bee wary of all persons which lye under a cloud and such a base aspersion as this is. Whosoever betrays his King will betraye his brother. I am apt to believe that Gilbert's businesse hath given some occasion to this blemish of his brother, who came this night to mee from Brussels and is mad, swears and damns himselfe, wondring how people can as much as admit any such thoughts against him. Truly I thinke Gilb. would have more credit with his correspondent than hee hath if Dick were a knave." Dick Talbot's " swearing and damning himself " here is an early example of his indulgence in a habit for which he became sadly notorious as he grew older. But he might well be annoyed now. Peter's attitude toward him, as expressed in this letter, is hardly brotherly. However, in another communication to Ormonde, Peter appears convinced that the reports were untrue, for he says : " Dick hath received the Blessed Sacrament in confirmation of his innocency. Truly, all circumstances and obligations both of honour and conscience considered, it is not only improbable but morally impossible that he should not only betray his King, but, in His Majesty, all his VOL, I. 67 5* Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot own kindred, friends, and country, for a little sum which he must never enjoy or show, unless he be resolved to be deemed of all the most perfidious and infamous rogue." Had he written in this strain at first. Father Talbot would have shown himself a better friend to his young brother. But, like Dongan, he seems to have been more concerned that his own name should stand well than to clear Dick's. As for the accused, he took up a manly and straightforward attitude at once. He knew of the charge against him before his nephew arrived in Antwerp ; for as early as February 1st he sent off to Ormonde a vindication of himself, the most important part of which runs as follows : — "■ I always thought that the testimonyes all those of our family gave of thyr fidelity to the Kings servis and in particular to Y"" Ex"y and the many hazard that myself hath lately run in order thearunto ought merrit a better opinion of mee then I find thear is held of mee by some of the King's ministers thear, to bee Cromwells onely intelligence hear ; if the loss of as much blood as I have lost in his servis, the quitteing of my fortune hear the last summer to go into England to venter the lives of my friends and my owne, my imprissonment thear for six months (which is a thing publikely knowne to the Kings best friends thear, that it stood me in 400 St[erling]) and lastely my leyfe lost (if I had not made my escape) bee not motives 68 Under a Cloud sufficient to justify mee. My Lord, I am a gentleman, and if I wear soe wicked as to be soe voyd of all fidellity to my lawful! Prince as to turne rogue for intrest, yet I am not of soe despicable a sperrit as to doe an act so much below a Gentleman .... If I had stayed in England thear mought bee som more ground for that scandallous reporte .... I cannot imadgin how this should com to pass, but I hope my innocensy will apear, when som of those that accuse mee wilbe blak enow. I beleeve Robin Dongans coming hether now will confirme them in it and that his escape was permitted as being of relation to me, for it was that that raysed the first reporte in England of it. I should never have knowne that I was suspected but that the Chancelor thear writ to a certaine gentleman at Dunkerk [Stephens] to send into England to know the certainty from Halsy, but I am of opinion that Halsy is to honest a man to tax mee, if it bee not that he hath heard that I said that the attempt (at least) had beene made upon the Protectors person, but that hee, eyther through cowardis or some other private end, had obstructed it, and that I sayd to those that I was sure would tell him of it, and that I will justify .... Though I bee held now to have a correspondency with Cromwell I hope before many dayes pass that my actions will declare the contrary. All the favor that I beg of your LoP is that you will not prejudicate mee, and soe that his Ma^'® and Y*" Ex^y bee satisfied (as you may be very justly) those 69 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot others that harbour that opinion of mee may make further enquiry of it and if they find any evident proofes for it all the favor I desire from them is that they will prosecute mee ..." Ormonde's reply is not in existence, but that it was not unsatisfactory may be gathered in a second com- munication from Talbot, dated Antwerp, February 1 2th: — " My Lord, " I expected with much impatience Y^ Ex<=y*5 letter, which came to my hands soe very late yesterday that I had not time by the last poast to returne you my humble thanks for the ho[nou]r you did mee, and to say further, if it wear possible to bind mee more faythfully to his Ma*^*" servis or more firme to y^ in- terests, soe oblidgeing a letter would infallibly doe it, but that being as impossible as my being the person I was represented thear to bee I doe promis myselfe that his Matie and y^ selfe will (at least) suspend y"" ill opinions of mee untill you have some more con- vincing evidence of my guilt, and that once made aparent I shall very patiently submit myselfe to the punishment (in the publick view of the world) that the infamy and wickedness of my creyme doth requyer ; and on the other syed, Y' Ex'^y, I am con- fident, will allow that my petition is not unreasonable, if I beg that noe inconsidereble persons or little envoyes in -England words be taken for it if they 70 Under a Cloud give not som other proofes then thyr owne base surmises. . . . " Though little, my Lord, I have seene of the world, I have observed that wharever thear was any undertakeing by any person never soe desserving and never soe really ment without other end then the publick good, and that it prooved unsuccessful, wear it never soe cleare that nothing was lost for want of care or contrivance, yet it must necessary follow that hee is blameable, becaus it succeeded not according to expectation, God forbid I should pleade the former and present endeavors of all those of our own familyes (in serveing his Matie) for my owne justification. I will only say one word, that in my opinion is con- vinceing enow, that if intrest were soe prevalent with mee as to make mee quit all honestye it is not by giveing intelligence from hence that I could make my greatest benefit. I could before I came out of England by slipeing but a very few words gaine myself a fortune, and my friends likewise during our lives, and nobody know neyther who hurt him. But I prays God for it, I am not of soe covetous a disposition as to prefer mony before my contience, my loyalty and my hon""- I have lived hitherto without beeing a trouble or discredit to my friends, and I hope will continue it. I shall not trouble Y"" Ex. furthur in this matter. I know not what I may suffer at present in y^ opinion, but I hope tyme will give mee opertunity to make the contrary evidently apear. The 71 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot dayly hazard of my life shall justify mee whear (I fear) my accusers dare not show thyr faces, and since you have always been the Patron of us all I humbly crave y^ assistance in my vindication in this particular that soe neerely concerns the reputation of, " My Lord, " Y' Excyes most faythfull and obedient servant, "R. Talbot." The arrival of further information from England, including letters from poor Halsall, half starved and threatened with all manner of tortures in the Tower, made it plain at last that, besides Manning, the chief agent in the failure of the plot was William Masten, and the reputation of the Talbot brothers was cleared. Even Gilbert's explanation must have been accepted, that his dealings with Thurloe and Cromwell had been a mere trick to get money out of the enemy by false pretences ; for he was visited with no punishment. His scheme was in any case spoilt by Richard's escape, as the latter had feared it would be, and he was unable to secure any " com- modities " from Thurloe. Hyde continued to rail at the brothers, particularly at his bete noire, " the foolish Father," who ought to be sent to some distant convent and restrained by his superiors, unless he had " purposely been let loose to do mischief."* But the * These expressions occur in letters from Hyde to Sir Henry de Vic, Charles's resident at Brussels, on January 14th and i8th, 1656, but Hyde is always writing in this strain. 72 Under a Cloud Talbots managed to dispense with Hyde's friendship, and the youngest of them was destined soon to estabhsh himself well beyond the power of even the Chancellor to harm him. Richard Talbot does not come ill out of the affair, except in so far as he consented to take part in a scheme to " do Cromwell's business," as Sexby euphemistically writes of one of these plots. And in that matter, it has been said already, his conduct must not be judged by modern standards. If as high-placed and high-minded Royahsts as Hyde, Ormonde, and Nicholas, to mention no others, did not shrink from the idea, a young adventurer like Talbot could not be expected to look upon the removal of the usurper and regicide as a base act. Had he, however, consented to sell his fellow- conspirators or to turn spy after his capture to save his life and provide himself with an income, he would justly be condemned by both contemporary and modern standards of ethics. But it is impossible to find the slightest evidence for such a charge, and it can only make us think less well not only of such as Robert Dongan and Peter, but also of the Chancellor Hyde, that they should have entertained the ignoble thought about him. Hyde was blinded by the prejudice of a narrow if honest man. Dongan and, in a less degree, Peter Talbot were actuated by selfish fear for their own reputations. 73 CHAPTER IV LIFE IN FLANDERS T N the spring of 1656 Charles's ministers, after -'■ long and what must have been exceedingly exasperating negotiations, complicated by the officious assistance of Peter Talbot, succeeded in bringing about the treaty with Spain which was to act as a counterpoise to Cromwell's treaty with France. The latter agreement had been made definite in November, 1655. On the following April 12th Ormonde and Rochester signed a secret instrument with the Spanish representatives, Fuensaldanha and Cardenas, at Brussels. Spain, hard pressed by want of money and having already on hand as many quarrels as she could well tackle, had been very loth to proceed to war with England, great as were the outrages to which she had to submit from Cromwell. But she yielded at last to the inevitable, and now, as far as promises were concerned, made great concessions to Charles. His Majesty had already entered Spanish territory early 74 Life in Flanders in March, in anticipation of the treaty, and on its signature he took up his residence officially at Bruges. An important clause in the Anglo-Spanish agreement provided for the employment by Spain of English and Irish levies in the war against France. Certain Irish regiments had remained in the Spanish service since their first exile, among their officers being Walter Dongan (now by the death of his father a baronet) and his brother William. But their numbers had constantly dwindled through discontent over lack of pay and rations. On the other hand, France, a better paymaster, had a large body of English, Scottish and Irish troops still in her army ; and the Duke of York, though after the Cromwell-Mazarin treaty he was compelled to give up his French command, continued in the country, in defiance of the provision for his banishment. A necessary consequence of the Brussels treaty was the transference of all royalist volunteers from the French to the Spanish flag. A great advantage of this was that it would collect in Flanders a force ready to move when the long- projected invasion of England should at last take place. In the gathering together of this force the brothers Gilbert and Richard Talbot were assigned a leading part, which seems sufficient proof that they were both considered to have rebutted successfully the accusations against their loyalty. It is chiefly in the correspondence of that indefati- gable letter-writer, Father Peter, that we find allusions 75 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot to his family's doings at this period. Undeterred by anyone's disapproval, secret or openly expressed, he continued to write constantly to the King, to Ormonde, and even to Hyde. In a letter to Charles on May loth he speaks of Gilbert's " rendezvous " at Ghent on the 20th of the month. Gilbert, and with him at intervals Richard, were in charge of the recruiting department in this town. But Richard also was seeing some active service in the Spanish ranks. The arrival of Don Juan, natural son of the King of Spain, as governor of the Spanish Nether- lands, was followed by considerable military activity, and for a time by unwonted success. A Spanish garrison had been shut up in Valenciennes. When Don Juan defeated the French and raised the siege " Dick, with some English gentlemen placed by him among Conde's troops," was present, as we learn from Peter's letter to Ormonde on June 29th. Charles sent a note of congratulation to Don Juan, using as his messenger "/^ chevalier Talbot," probably Gilbert. On July 24th Peter wrote again to Ormonde from Brussels, giving various details about members of their two families. Dick, he says, has found two German counts at Brussels, who promise to bring a hundred German soldiers with them as volunteers whenever the King shall make an attempt on England. Ormonde's nephew Muskerry* is still with his regiment * i. e. Cormac MacCarty, of whom we shall hear again soon. He was com- monly known as Colonel Muskerry, from his father's title of Viscount Musketry. 76 Life in Flanders on the French side, under Turenne. Robert Dongan had been hoping to make his fortune by winning money at play from " a raw young gentleman," but those who had care of the youth refused to pay up. Other letters from Peter introduce frequently the name of " Thom " — Thomas Talbot, the P'ranciscan friar, with whom we have met already as the bearer of a message from Charles II. to Owen O'Neil in Ireland. Of this member of the stock which he so much disliked, Hyde draws a most unfavourable picture. Thomas, like Peter, had entered the Church, but, " being a merry fellow, was the more made of for laughing at and contemning his brother the Jesuit, who had not so good natural parts, though by his education he had more sobriety and lived without scandal in his manners." Thomas, on the other hand, was notorious for his debauchery, and, in consequence of the severe discipline put upon him by the superiors of his order, hated his habit, which he called his " fool's coat." In London after the Restoration, according to Hyde, he preferred to wear what he styled " man's clothes," i. e., lay dress. Hyde's portrait is, no doubt, somewhat highly coloured. But in Peter's correspondence there is quite sufficient to show that the friar was a source of great anxiety to his relatives. Queen Henrietta Maria employed him as an envoy to the new Pope, Alexander VII., in 1655. But in the April of the following year we find Father James Talbot, a 77 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot cousin, writing to Peter in scathing terms of Tom, who was in Paris on some business of raising funds for the royalist exiles. Tom is " a disgrace to his function, name and nation, in a poor and miserable condition, living without mass, matins or any other mark of a Christian, perfidious to all who most oblige him, and no Jew more mercenary than he." Father James wonders the King should impart his secret to one who would for gain sell both secret and master and who would be better in his convent than living as he does now. Peter forwarded this letter to the King, protesting that Tom is not altogether so bad as he is described by his cousin, whom he suspects of being " at cuffs " with him. But on July 12th Peter himself writes to Ormonde that he sends his letter by Dick or by Robin Dongan, for Tom (then in Brussels) cannot be trusted with a letter, as he is too curious; and on July 31st that " Thom tells so many lies that we can never believe him, though sometimes he may speak truth . . . He swears he has never said an ill word of the Chancellor or of Ormonde in this town [Brussels] . . . but his tongue cannot prejudice any man." Peter wrote also about the troublesome Tom to Hyde, who drily replied that he hoped he would persuade his brother to " resume his habit and sit still." The friar, it appears, was cherishing a scheme, of which Hyde did not at all approve, for levying three thousand men in Ireland, ostensibly for the French 78 Life in Flanders service, and preparing the nation to rise when the King thought fit. In this he hoped to interest the head of his house, Sir Robert. As a matter of fact, Father Tom was scarcely more of a terror to the royahst leaders than Father Peter,* about whose visit to Bruges Ormonde writes to Hyde at the beginning of September. He does not know what the Father's business in the town is unless it be to make provision for his brothers upon their raising of the regiments ; but he complains that the Jesuit's religious zeal had transported him into a great passion with O'Neil for endeavouring to make a servant-boy of his a Protestant ; and he fears that Peter may do them ill offices with regard to the practice of their devotions — a question of some con- siderable difficulty under the bigoted rule of Spain. The recruiting of the royalist regiments for the Spanish army, which had begun under the supervision of the Talbots, proceeded apace, in spite of the grudging support of the Spanish military authorities in the Netherlands, perpetually harassed by want of money. By November, 1656, the number of men gathered together was estimated at six thousand, and * The most amusing attack on Peter Talbot is to be found in a letter to Hyde from George Digby, Earl of Bristol, a few months later. Bristol (who before the end of 1658 was to become a Roman Catholic) hopes they may be rid of " the ghostly Father " by getting him sent to a more religious life, unless he go into England, in which case he may possibly be a martyr, which is all the hurt he personally wishes him. " God forgive your uncharitableness of wishing him in a well ! " {Calendar of Clarendon State Papers, III., art. 690. Letter of January i8th, 1657.) 7Q Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot nearly all the Irish nobles formerly in the French service had arrived in Flanders. The transfer of troops from the French to the Spanish side was not accomplished without difficulty, owing to the scruples of some of their officers over this change of coat — and also, no doubt, to the good treatment which they had received in France. Cormac MacCarty had at last been induced to come to Flanders, and he was gradually followed by the rest. It was easier, however, to bring the men together than to keep them together when brought, so meagre and unwilling was the provision made for them by the Spaniards ; and the numbers were therefore always fluctuating through fresh arrivals and desertions. However, four regiments were formed, which were respectively assigned to the Duke of Gloucester, Ormonde, Sir Thomas Middleton, and Rochester ; to which were afterwards added a fifth, under the Duke of York, when he had reluctantly yielded to the pressure put upon him to make him leave France, and a sixth, under the Earl of Bristol at first. A very unflattering picture is drawn of the royalist army by an English enemy in Flanders ; but it must be remembered that it was not to the interest of a man in his profession to represent them in an unduly favourable light. " Of all the armies in Europe," writes one of Thurloe's spies to him in April, 1657, " there is none wherein so much debauchery is to be seen as in this few forces which the said King hath gotten together, 80 Life in Flanders being so exceedingly profane from the highest to the lowest. The Irish are trump among them and bear away the bell for number and preferment." With the general history of the remaining period of royalist exile in Flanders, so full of abortive plots, unsuccessful negotiations, distressing quarrels, and miserable hardships, we are not here concerned, for Richard Talbot played but a small part after his flash into prominence in connection with the scheme against Cromwell in 1655. A piece of good fortune, however, came to him which had the utmost influence upon his subsequent life. He attracted the favourable notice of the Duke of York and was taken by him into his household. James — sorely against his will, for he was sincerely attached to Turenne, the great soldier under whom he had learnt the art of war — reached Flanders from Paris at the end of September, 1656. His position in Spanish territory was very uncomfortable from the first. Treated with distrust and jealousy by the Spaniards, he had really to fight his way to their esteem, and even his reckless bravery was a cause of offence to them.* Moreover, attached as Charles and * Concerning the personal courage of James II., which was to be so much called in question later, the most interesting expression of opinion is to be found in Pepys's Diary for June 4th, 1664. Speaking to Pepys of the Duke, William Coventry says : " He is more himself, and more of judgement is at hand in him, in the middle of a desperate service than at other times, as appeared in the business of Dunkirke [in 1658], wherein no man ever did braver things or was in hotter service in the close of that day, being surrounded with enemies ; and then, contrary to the advice of all about him, his counsel carried himself VOL. I. 81 6 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot James were to one another throughout Hfe, their pecuHar circumstances in exile furnished occasion for many misunderstandings between them. James was both better loved hy his mother and more popular with a large section of the Royalists than was Charles. In 1659 we find Tom Talbot, and even Peter,* accused of attempting to magnify the Duke in England at the expense of the King. Perhaps it was fear of a " Duke's party " which prompted the attempt, immediately after James's arrival in Flanders, to remove from his household those whom he most trusted. Now even James's detractors — and has any King of England had more numerous and more bitter ? — allow that he was loyal to those for whom he had once conceived an affection. Charles, or his advisers, tried to part the Duke from the Berkeleys, uncle and nephew, and from Harry Jermyn, nephew to the powerful lord who ruled the household of and the rest through them safe, by advising that he might make his passage with but a dozen with him ; ' For,' says he, ' the enemy cannot move after me so fast with a great body, and with a small one we shall be enough to deal with them ' ; and though he is a man naturally martiall to the highest degree, yet a man that never in his hfe talks one word of himself or service of his own, but only that he saw such or such' a thing, and lays it down for a maxime that a Hector can have no courage." * Hyde writes to Ormonde that Peter actually proposed to Colonel Bamp- field that James should be put in Charles's place (letter of October nth, 1659, among the Carte Papers). The Jesuit was aware of such charges against him. Among the Carte Papers also is a letter from him to Ormonde, dated July 25th, 1659, in which he says : " The aspersions cast upon me of setting up an interest for the Duke of York in opposition to the King, and speaking disrespectfully of his Matie's person, are so contrary to the principles of honesty [and] good manners that I hope none who knows my conversation and education will believe them." 82 Life in Flanders Queen Henrietta Maria. James was even ordered to leave the elder Berkeley behind him in France, but he disobeyed the order. An attempt was made to undermine Berkeley's influence with the help of Henry Bennet, the Duke's secretary, who pleased the King (according to Hyde) by his " pleasant and agreeable humour." The result was only to make James dislike Bennet. To another command to banish Berkeley, on the ground that he was an enemy of Spain — and he was indeed a warm friend to France — James replied with a positive refusal to give up any of his servants and fled from Bruges into Dutch territory. After about a month's absence he was induced to come back, but only when Charles (who was in the utmost alarm lest his brother should return to France and so compromise him with Spain) had yielded to his demand for the retention of the Berkeleys and Jermyn. As for Bennet, he was sent to Madrid as the King's representative, to console him for the loss of his post as secretary to the Duke. Affairs went none too smoothly even after this concession of the King, and there is no doubt that much of Charles's wretchedness during the last years of his exile, which made him at times declare him- self weary of life, was due to his dissensions with his family, who almost always sided with one another against him when there was a difference of opinion. At what date the Duke of York added Richard Talbot to his household does not appear. Hyde in VOL, I. 83 6* Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot mentioning the fact simply savs : " He was a very- handsome young man, wore good clothes, and was without a doubt of a clear, ready courage, which was virtue enough to recommend a man to the Duke's good opinion, which, with more expedition than could be expected, he got to that degree that he was made of the bedchamber." That Hyde does not exaggerate the rapid rise of Talbot in James's favour is proved by Carte's account of his appointment to the lieutenant-colonelcy of the Duke of York's Regiment. The nucleus of this force had been the men which Cormac MacCarty had taken over with him from Ireland to Spain. Cormac MacCarty, the eldest son of Viscount Muskerry (created by the King Earl of Clancarty in 1658) and Eleanor Butler, sister of the Marquis of Ormonde, was, according to Hyde, " a young man of extra- ordinary courage and expectation . . . and had the general estimation of an excellent ofhcer." His regiment was composed of Munster men, mostly his own tenants and dependents, and had followed him when he changed from the Spanish to the French side, fighting with distinction on the latter. When Charles after the Brussels treaty recalled his subjects from the French army, MacCarty's men, in spite of the obstacles put in their way in France, came after him into Flanders. Here they were renamed the Duke of York's Regiment, MacCarty continuing to command them as colonel. Again they distinguished 84 Will/.. i\ ■! 'I. r II painting hy Sir I'eter l.-li, hii ciiiirlpxii of Mr. Ilenrii Fnnrile. JAMES, DUKE OF YORK 'afterwards James the Second). Life in Flanders themselves in active service against their old allies. When a vacancy occurred for a lieutenant-colonel MacCarty wished to promote one of his officers. But the ambitious Richard Talbot seized the oppor- tunity and " pushed to be put in that command," says Carte. MacCarty having rejected his application, the dispute ran so high that a duel took place, of which we do not hear the result. Talbot must now have appealed to the Duke and received his support, for Hyde and Ormonde in indignation went to the King and pointed out the impropriety of putting him into one of the highest commands in a Munster regiment, over the heads of its officers and in defiance of the wishes of its colonel, who, like his father, had deserved so well of the King. The post, they said, was not one which a man would desire unless his passions had got the better of his judgment. They lectured Charles, indeed, in a manner which reminds one of Hyde's many harangues as reported by him in the Continuation. But His Majesty remained deaf to their arguments, saying that his brother had set his heart on Talbot's appointment and that he would not interfere. Charles, no doubt, was anxious to avoid further interference with favourites of his brother after James had shown so plainly by his flight to Holland the obstinacy of his attachments. In estimating the extent of Talbot's triumph we may note that Pepys, in his entry for December 15th, 85 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot 1664, speaks of the very great influence exercised over the Duke of York by Lords Muskerry and Fitz- harding — the former Cormac MacCarty and Charles Berkeley. And we know that James's friendship with MacCarty was already firm in 1656.* Talbot had therefore succeeded in persuading the Duke to give him the post which he coveted in spite of a strong sentiment prompting James to refuse the favour. The young man was naturally delighted. In view of the intervention of Hyde and Ormonde, he could not forbear exulting in his victory over such powerful antagonists. Peter, Thomas and Gilbert Talbot all congratulated him warmly and " made it their business to trumpet about their brother Dick's great interest with His Royal Highness." In this affair we may perhaps trace the origin of Dick's intermittent enmity towards Ormonde, which was to be manifested on numerous occasions after the Restoration. Ormonde's effort on behalf of his nephew was only reasonable, but this consideration was hardly likely to count with one who, as Carte says, was " subject to the common frailty of youth, vanity, and infinitely ambitious." Talbot and MacCarty, we have seen, attempted to settle their difference with the sword. Duels were of unhappy frequency among the royalist exiles at this period. Among the Sutherland MSS. is preserved a letter to Sir Andrew Newport in England from • See the story in Clarke's Life of James 11.^ I., 282-4. 86 Life in Flanders somebody in Amiens, dated September 4th [1658], which says : " 'Tis strange to hear of the dissensions among the exiled Enghsh, Scotch and Irish in Inlanders ... I saw a relation of a quarrel, under my [Lord Taajffe's hand, between him and a Scotch- man of my acquaintance, one Sir William Keith ; the dispute was only for three royals and a half at tennis. Sir William Keith was slain upon the place ; upon this great occasion also were engaged four persons besides the principals. Upon Taaffe's side Dick Talbot fought and wounded Dick Hopton in two places ; and on Taaffe's side, again, one Davis fought with Sir William Fleming, but no harm done." The Hopton whom Talbot wounded in so trivial a cause was the man who attempted in the year after Talbot to carry out a scheme against Cromwell similar to that in which he had been engaged. Like his adversary, Hopton had been captured and confined at Whitehall, and, like him, again, he had succeeded in escaping at a considerable expense of money. It may be gathered that it was not so much a matter of a debt for a game of tennis as national jealousy which occasioned the quarrel. The exiles in Flanders were disheartened by their long waiting, suspicious of one another, penniless and often hungry, and prone to squabbles. The King was always an enemy of the duel, but at the present juncture in his affairs he was powerless to prevent his adherents from letting 87 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot loose their ill-temper in this fashion. Both the lay members of the Talbot family then in Flanders took their share in the outbreak of violence, though we do not hear that either killed his man. It is reasonable to suppose that it was at this time that our hero gained his name of " Fighting Dick Talbot." But the end of the evil days of exile was gradually approaching. The death of the Protector, it is true, was not immediately followed by the recall of the King, as had been hoped, and a further period of plots and disappointments inter- vened. New opportunities hereby offered themselves to Peter and Thomas Talbot for gratifying their mania for intrigue. The friar came under grave suspicion of dealing with the enemy; but it is quite probable that he had really no disloyal intentions, and imagined himself to be furthering the King's cause. On May 6/i6th, 1659, ^^ writes to Ormonde from Paris, justifying a secret journey of his into England and a meeting with Thurloe the previous year. " Though I went into England," he says, " upon the score I mention, you may say I condemn myself for not acquainting the King. I assure you, my Lord, I durst not appear in Court, [as], being commanded from it, it was not seasonable; my intention being, if the treaty were real, both to acquaint the King and improve my endeavours for his service." Both Talbot's scheme and the style of his letter are 88 Life in Flanders tortuous, and it is not easy to understand what he intended. His protestations of innocence were apparently beHeved, for no harm came to him. Peter was not so fortunate. It would take too long to follow his persistent intrigues with the Spaniards, first in Flanders and then in Madrid, in the course of which he began by opposing and belittling Bennet, the King's representative, as " a creature of Bristol's and our enemy," and ended by making a friend of him and persuading him to accept him as a kind of unofficial colleague in the Spanish capital, to Hyde's loudly expressed disgust. He too, like Tom, had paid a visit to England in 1658 ; in fact, according to one account, he was in London for Cromwell's funeral. When he arrived in Madrid his enemies accused him of being an agent of the Commonwealth. Hyde directly affirms that he was sent to Spain, when the negotiations for the Treaty of the Pyrenees were in progress at Fuentarabia, to procure England's inclusion in the peace and Charles's exclusion and banishment from Flanders. Charles complained to Bennet of this, but the Jesuit pre- vailed so much with the Ambassador that he actually undertook to reconcile him to the King. In this Bennet did not at first succeed, if the statement of Peter's bitter opponent, Peter Walsh, be true that, in return for his attempt to " betray and utterly ruin " his cause in 1659, Charles brought about his formal expulsion from the Jesuit order. Although the 89 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talboc Franciscan is a doubtful authority where Peter Talbot is concerned, his statement is supported by a letter of Hyde's at the end of July, in which he speaks of " Talbot, late a Jesuit." But Peter is found on perfectly good terms with the Jesuits afterwards ; and as for his relations with the King, in May, 1660, he acts as conveyer of a Spanish contribution to Breda, and Hyde himself represents him as a conspicuous figure at Whitehall after the Restoration, daringly displaying himself in his clerical robes about the Palace.* In the household of the Duke of York Richard was happily removed from the temptation of mixing himself up in the intrigues of his clerical brothers, and we hear little more of him before the Restora- tion. In August, 1659, hopes were strong that England would at once declare for the King's return, and in anticipation of a general rising, Charles hastened from Flanders to the French coast, with orders to James to come after him at once. The Duke left Brussels accompanied only by Lord Lang- dale, Charles Berkeley, and one attendant. Talbot followed with the elder Berkeley the same evening, and the rest of the Duke's household apparently soon after, for in September we find them all returning to Brussels. The expected rising proved a disappoint- ment, and there was nothing to be done except go * He proposed from the first to live there openly, " as many more do of my condition, who are openly winked at," but yielded to pressure until he was able to appear as almoner to Queen Catherine. 90 Life in'^FIanders back to Flanders. A letter of September 14th says : "All the Duke of York's people, viz. the Barkleys, Talbot, Bronkart [i.e. William Brounker], Leyton, with my Lord Langdale, &c., are returned to Bruxells, and the Duke himself expected to-morrow." Another season of gloom followed, deepened by the with- drawal of funds for the royalist troops by Spain when she came to terms with France. Poverty was acuter than at any period during the long exile, and the Duke was glad enough to accept a post as Admiral of the Spanish navy, though knowing that it was bound to be honorary unless he became a Roman Catholic — which at this time was very far from his thoughts, in spite of Carte's belief to the contrary.* With the arrival of 1660 the end at last came to the distressing situation. When restoration was certain, first the Royal Dukes and then the King himself, with their households, escaped from the hospitality of Spain, which had inspired in them so few pleasant memories, and sought that of Holland, hitherto denied to them, but now gladly proffered and even pressed on them. At the Hague their reception was on a most lavish scale, £6,000 being presented to the King ; and the flocking thither of deputations from across the Channel added to the enthusiastic rejoicings over the changed state of * Carte even asserts that Richard Talbot " knew the secret of the Duke of York's religion " [Ormotid, IV., 70). It is now certain, however, that there was as yet no such secret to be known. James had a secret at this period ; but that was his contract with Anne Hyde, to which we come in the next chapter. 91 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot affairs. Then arrived the Enghsh fleet, under Pepys's cousin, Edward Montagu, to carry the royal party home. When all was ready for the journey to England, the Duke of York, accompanied no doubt by Richard Talbot, boarded the Naseby, now renamed the Royal Charles, and took command of the squadron as Admiral once more of the English navy, after a lapse of a dozen years. On May 24th the exiles left the Hague, and on the morning of the 25th they landed at Dover, amid a most remarkable demonstra- tion of thankfulness and joy. Four years and a half previously Talbot had made his escape from the country, nailed up under the boards of a boat, a fugitive from the enemies of the King. Now he returned to witness the landing of the King who had apparently no enemy left. (^2 CHAPTER V TALBOT AND HIS TRADUCERS T N the general joy of the nation over the restoration of Charles II. was mingled a pleasurable anticipation, on the part of all who had deserved or thought they had deserved well of the King, concerning the rewards which they were to receive. The Talbots and their kindred were among those who hoped for honours. For Sir Robert Talbot a viscountship was asked, if he did not himself make such a claim. Sir Walter Dongan did not scruple to press his uncle Peter to recommend him to Ormonde for a similar distinction.* Neither of them obtained the honour, though Sir Walter's brother Wilham in February, 1661, was created Viscount Dongan of • "Sir Robert is so bashfull," writes Peter Talbot to Ormonde on June 5th, 1660, " that if you speake not to him and persuade him to be a Viscount he will never move it." On the other hand, " Sir Walter Dongan . . . recom- mended me to put your Exce in mind of his Viscountship of Kildroght." 93 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot Clanc. In truth, it would have been impossible for the King to gratify the wishes of all who looked to him for favour. Whitehall was besieged by a clamorous crowd, all urging their own eminent merits and depreciating one another. Well might Clarendon speak of the " unhappy temper and constitution of the royal party," which he believes to have had a most pernicious eflfect on the King's character, driving him to " leave all things to their natural course and God's providence," while abandoning himself to dissipation. At the restored Court Richard Talbot, now at the age of thirty Gentleman of the Bedchamber to the Duke of York and lieutenant-colonel in his regiment, was well placed for advancement. He soon succeeded in attaining higher military rank, being made colonel of a troop of cavalry, in spite of his Roman Catholicism. Yet even he, so great a favourite with his master, could not but experience the severity of the struggle for posi- tion, in which straightforward methods could do little for an ambitious man. The temptation was strong to have recourse to crooked ways, and many of the greatest persons of the period stooped — and stooped very low indeed, in some cases — to conquer. We are now brought to the examination of the question whether Talbot in his anxiety for preferment sank to th^ degradation which Lord Macaulay alleges 94 Talbot and his Traducers against him ; and the evidence must be examined in detail, for if Macaulay's accusation be proved, then our verdict upon Talbot's character cannot be other than hostile. In fact, if the charge be true, we may without difficulty believe almost anything against him. When Edward Hyde went into exile from England he took with him his daughter Anne. Mary Princess of Orange, whether attracted by her or out of a desire to gratify her brother Charles's trusted minister, offered to make her one of her maids of honour. Hyde was against Anne's acceptance of the post, but his wife, ambitious for her daughter, overruled him, and Anne went to Mary's Court. On a visit to Queen Henrietta Maria in Paris, Mary brought her maid with her ; and here she was seen by James, Duke of York. James in his memoirs, relates the sequel thus : " Besides her person, she [Anne Hyde] had all the qualities proper to inflame a heart less apt to take fire than his ; while she managed so well as to bring his passion to such a height as, between the time he first saw her and the winter before the King's restoration, he resolved to marry none but her; and promised her to do it : and though at first, when the Duke asked the King his brother for his leave, he refused and diswaded him from it ; yet at last he opposed it no more ; and the Duke married her privately, owned it some time after, and was 95 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot ever a true friend to the Chancellor, for several years."* The secret contract between James and Anne was made in the autumn in 1659, and after it they looked upon themselves as man and wife, with the result that, when the Restoration took place, they must have known that a child was on its way to them. But James the exile, dependent on the bounty of France or Spain, and James Duke of York at White- hall, standing near the throne which might one day be his, were very different persons. The exile had shown considerable decision of character. The Royal Duke was a prey to a host of conflicting desires, and by his wavering attitude now brought discredit upon his name. Two contemporary accounts of what followed are to be found, in the Memoirs of Gramont and in the Continuation of the Lije oj Clarendon; the one sparkling and malicious, the other sober and senten- tious. The version in the Memoirs may be dealt with first. Gramont, or Anthony Hamilton, whichever of them we may consider responsible for this particular story, asserts that the Duke of York, at first, " was so far from repenting of his secret marriage with Anne Hyde that he seemed only to wish for the • Carte's Extract from the Memoirs, in Macpherson, Original Papers, I., 17. Concerning James's admission of the aptitude of his heart to take fire, see his instructions to his son in Macpherson, I., 77, where he acknowledges with shame and regret that he was too much a slave to the passion. 96 Talbot and his Traducers King's restoration, that he might have an opportunity of declaring it with splendour." But when he saw himself enjoying a rank which placed him so near the throne and reflected on the indignation which the announcement would create at Court, and indeed throughout the whole kingdom, the matter looked otherwise to him. He knew that his brother would refuse his consent. On the other hand, his conscience bound him to adhere to his marriage contract, even if, after the early fervour of his affection for Anne Hyde had passed away, he had eyes for the many beauties of Whitehall. In his perplexity James " opened his heart to Falmouth " — that is to say, to Charles Berkeley, for Gramont anticipates by more than four years his rise to the rank of Earl. The Duke " could not have applied to a better man in his own interests, nor to a worse in Miss Hyde's. For at first Falmouth maintained not only that he was not married, but that it was indeed impossible that he could ever have conceived such an idea ; that any marriage was invalid for him which was made without the King's consent, even if the party were a suitable match ; but that it was a mere jest even to think of the daughter of an insignificant lawyer,* whom the favour • The " insignificant lawyer " was made Lord High Chancellor of England on Sir Edward Herbert's death at the beginning of 1658 — having been for fifteen years previously Chancellor of the Exchequer to Charles I. and his son ; but he was not raised to the peerage (as Baron Hyde of Hindon) until November, 1660. VOL. I. 97 7 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot of his sovereign had lately made a peer of the realm, without any noble blood, and chancellor without any capacity; that, as for his scruples, he had only to give ear to some gentlemen that he could introduce, who would inform him thoroughly concerning Miss Hyde's conduct before he became acquainted with her ; and, provided that he did not tell them that he really was married, he would soon have sufficient grounds to come to a determination. The Duke of York consented, and Lord Falmouth, having assembled both his council and his witnesses, led them to His Royal Highness's cabinet, after having instructed them how to act. These gentlemen were the Earl of Arran,* Jermyn, Talbot and Killigrew, all men of honour, but who infinitely preferred the interest of the Duke of York to Miss Hyde's reputation, and who, besides, were greatly dissatisfied, like the whole of the Court, at the insolent authority of the Prime Minister." The story goes on that the Duke informed the assembled gentlemen that they could not be unaware of his affection for Miss Hyde, but they might not know that he was under an engagement to perform certain promises to her. Therefore, as the innocence of persons of her age was generally exposed to Court scandal, and as some reports, false or true, had been spread abroad concerning her conduct, he asked them, both in friendship and in duty, to tell him sincerely * i. e., Richard Butler, Ormonde's second son. 98 Talbot and his Traducers all they knew upon the subject. " All appeared rather reserved at first," continues Gramont, " and seemed not to dare give their opinions on so serious and delicate a matter; but the Duke of York having renewed his entreaties, each began to relate the particulars of what he knew, and perhaps more than he knew, about poor Miss Hyde ; nor did they omit any circumstance necessary to strengthen the evidence." We need not follow the Memoirs of Gramont into all the unpleasant evidence which they allege to have been brought forward by the four witnesses against Anne Hyde's moral character. But, since Lord Macaulay finds in Gramont's accusation against Richard Talbot here the ground for his most virulent abuse of his victim, it is necessary perhaps to quote the actual words of the Memoirs. " Talbot said that she had made an appointment with him in the Chancellor's cabinet, while he was at a council meeting ; and that, not paying so much attention to what was on the table as to what they were engaged in, they had spilt a bottle of ink upon a despatch of four pages, and that the King's monkey, which was blamed for the accident, was a long time in disgrace." When he had heard what the four had to say, the Duke thanked them for their frankness, enjoined secrecy upon them, and went to the King's apart- ments. Berkeley, waiting in the presence-chamber VOL. I 99 7* Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot while the brothers conversed long in private, told Lord Ossory, eldest son of the Duke of Ormonde, what had just happened. At last the Duke of York came out and told them to meet him in about an hour's time at the Chancellor's. When they arrived, Berkeley and Ossory found Anne Hyde weeping, and her father in rage and despair. But the Duke said to them, with the serene and pleasant countenance generally accompanying the announcement of good news : " As you are the two men of the Court whom I most esteem, I desire that you should first have the honour of paying your respects to the Duchess of York. There she is ! " Gramont concludes the tale by saying that, while the four coxcombs who had slandered Anne Hyde were much afraid of the consequences of their conduct, she, though fully aware of their accusations, so far from showing resentment, treated them with studious kindness and told them that nothing was a greater proof of the attachment of a man of honour than the putting his friend's or master's interest above his own reputation. Gramont's comment is : " A remarkable example of prudence and moderation, not only for the fair sex, but even for those who value themselves most upon their philosophy among the men." Perhaps it is hardly necessary to remark that this narrative is not of such a kind that we should be willing to accept it implicitly, coming from so 100 Talbot and his Traducers generally untrustworthy a source as the lively com- position of Gramont and his brother-in-law, unless we could find some contemporary corroboration. Now the quarter in which we should naturally look for corroboration is the autobiography of the maligned lady's father. If anyone had reason to inveigh against the conduct of Anne's traducers it was Edward Hyde. We cannot go far wrong in assuming that what Hyde does not say about the matter could not truthfully be said ; for, honest man as he was, he was a bitter enemy, and with regard to the Talbots he himself admits that he was considered to be biassed against the whole family. Let us see therefore the Chancellor's account of the plot against Anne Hyde, confining ourselves to a brief paraphrase, for the most part, of the narrative of a very verbose writer. According to the Continuation " the first matter of general and public importance " after the Restoration, apart from Parliamentary affairs, was the discovery of the secret marriage of the Duke of York and the Chancellor's daughter — " with which nobody was so surprised and confounded as the Chancellor himself, who being of a nature free from any jealousy, and very confident of an entire affection and obedience from all his children, and particularly from that daughter whom he had always loved dearly, never had in the least degree suspected any such thing ; though he knew afterwards that the Duke's affection lOI Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot and kindness had been much spoken of beyond the seas, but without the least suspicion in anybody that it could ever tend to marriage." (Absorption in public affairs, no doubt, accounts for his ignorance of what was going on in his own household ; for it is related that Ashley Cooper, dining at the Hydes' one day with Southampton, told him that he was convinced Anne was married to one of the Royal brothers, her mother's only half-suppressed respect for her proving this.) Hyde goes on to state that the Duke's fondness was encouraged by his own declared enemies, who hoped to see disgrace falling on him and his family through it. Chief among these was Sir Charles Berkeley, who was abetted by most of the others of the Duke's household. James himself, in spite of his love for the daughter, was unfavourably disposed toward Hyde, sharing the prejudice of Queen Henrietta Maria. The Chancellor's foes, therefore, had no very difficult task in exerting an evil influence in the matter. At first, however, the Duke of York acted honourably enough. When it was reported that Hyde was desirous of making a good match for his daughter, he went to the King, informed him of the secret contract and of Anne's expectation of a child, and begged permission for a public marriage. If consent were denied, he protested with many tears, he would immediately leave the kingdom and spend his hfe in foreign parts. Charles, very much troubled, I02 Talbot and his Traducers called to him Ormonde and Southampton, as bosom friends of the Chancellor, and told them to bring him into his presence. Ormonde explained what the business was, whereon Hyde " broke out into a very- immoderate passion against the wickedness of his daughter " and swore he would turn her out of his house, using some very strong language and calling for her execution ! In the midst of his agony the King came into the room and attempted to calm him, " looking upon him with a wonderful benignity." Indeed, Charles, on the Chancellor's testimony, behaved most admirably. He put aside Hyde's reiterated demand for his daughter's instant punish- ment, and at every discussion of the matter urged that, there having been a marriage, there was no remedy but to make it public. To show how little offended he was personally, he was most gracious in his manner toward him and very soon after- wards bestowed on him a present of ^20,000 and a barony. A visit to London of the Princess of Orange caused a temporary silence at Court over the affair, though a rumour was industriously spread about the town that the business was broken off, " the Duke being resolved never to think more of it." Further it was reported " that the Duke had discovered some disloyalty in the lady, which he had never suspected, but had now so full evidence of it that he was resolved never more to see her ; and that he was not 103 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot married. And all his family, whereof the Lord Berkley and his nephew were the chief, who had long hated the Chancellor, spake very loudly and scandalously of it."* Further trouble arose with the arrival in England of Queen Henrietta Maria. The Princess Mary could not have been expected to look with pleasure on the admission of a commoner's daughter to the Royal circle. But she was at least personally friendly to Anne Hyde. With the Queen, on the other hand, this was not the case. As early as July 15th, 1655, * John Berkeley, knighted by Charles I., was appointed Governor to the Duke of York in exile at Paris and succeeded in gaining his pupil's affection, as we have seen in the last chapter. Having refused to allow Sir John to be removed from his household in Flanders, James persuaded the King in 1658 to make him Baron Berkeley of Stratton. On the Restoration he was appointed Comp- troller. Pepys describes him as " the most hot, fiery man in discourse, without any cause, that ever I saw." {Diary, December 3rd, 1664.) Hyde says of him : " If he loved anyone it was those whom he had known a very little while, and who had purchased his affection at the price of much application and very much flattery ; and if he had any friends, they were likewise those who had known him very little." {Clarendon State Papers, 111., Supp., p. 80.) We shall meet with Lord Berkeley again. We must suppose him to have had some redeeming points of which his critics do not tell us. His nephew Charles is even more severely handled by some of his contemporaries, and what we hear of him in this chapter is certainly disgraceful enough. Some of the comments upon his character may be found in My Lady Castlemaine, p. 80 and footnote. To supplement King Charles's testimonial to him there might have been quoted James's remark : " The Earl of Falmouth in the highest favour [In 1663], mind- ing his master's, not his own, concerns. He was killed at sea, and died not worth a farthing, though not expensive." {James's Memoirs in Macpherson's Original Papers, I., 24.) And Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, writing to her brother Charles on June 22nd, 1665, says : " I cannot end without expressing my sorrow at the death of poor Lord Falmouth, whom I regret as much for the sake of the friendship you felt for him, which he so justly deserved, as for his goodness to me. Indeed, I had to weep with all my heart for him, on the very day the news of your victory gave me the greatest joy." 104 Talbot and his Traducers Hyde writes from Cologne to Lady Stanhope concern- ing his " poor girl " and the Queen's " old dislike " of her. Henrietta Maria never disguised her hatred for Hyde himself, and it may have been merely on his account that she was unkind to his daughter. But, whatever the reason, James could have no doubt as to how his mother regarded Anne. When she heard the report of the marriage she wrote to him in deep anger — she was wont to express herself strongly at such times — to reproach him for having fallen so low, and threatened to come over in person to prevent so great a stain and dishonour to the Crown. James quailed before her, and, when she fulfilled her threat and reached England in November, he went so far as to deny his marriage, or at least its validity. As a matter of fact, as early as September 3rd, he had fulfilled his promise at a secret wedding, which took place at Worcester House, the unsuspecting Chancellor's own residence ! The reasons for haste were obvious when, on October 22nd, still at her father's house, Anne gave birth to a son. By the special desire of the King, the Marchioness of Ormonde, the Countess of Sunderland, and some other ladies were present at the event. The Bishop of Winchester was also at Worcester House, and to him Anne solemnly declared that she was married to the Duke. The ladies were convinced of her innocence, and Lady Ormonde went to the King and informed him so. In spite of this, the enemies of the Hydes did not 105 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot relax their efforts. " And it was now avowedly said that Sir Charles Berkley, who was captain of his guard, and in much more credit and favour with the Duke than his uncle (though a young man of a dissolute life, and prone to all wickedness in the judgment of all sober men), had informed the Duke ' that he was bound in conscience to preserve him from taking to wife a woman so wholly unworthy of him ; that he himself had lain with her ; and that for his sake he would be content to marry her, though he knew well the familiarity the Duke had with her.' This evidence, with so solemn oaths presented by a person so much loved and trusted by him, made a wonderful impression on the Duke ; and now confirmed by the commands of his mother, as he had been before prevailed upon by his sister, he resolved to deny that he was married, and never to see the woman again who was so false to him." Henrietta Maria expressed her satisfaction with James, and there was exultation among the foes of the Chancellor. The only hindrance to their joy was the King's persistent graciousness to his minister, " which," says Hyde, " made it evident that he believed nothing of what Sir Charles Berkley avowed, and looked on him as a fellow of great wickedness ; which opinion the King was long known to have of him before his coming into England, and after." The correctness of the last statement we may take leave to deny ; but His Majesty may well have io6 Talbot and his Traducers disbelieved the scandal without hating the scandal- monger. Since the Princess Mary's arrival James had not spoken to his father-in-law. Now he asked for an interview. Obviously still very much under the influence of others, he remonstrated with him warmly. He had been informed that Hyde was shortly about to bring before Parliament evidence of the marriage. James threatened him that it would be the worse for him if he did so. As for his daughter, " she had behaved so foully (of which he had such evidence as was convincing as his own eyes, and of which he could make no doubt) that nobody could blame him for his behaviour toward her." Hyde made a dignified reply, denying any intention of bringing the matter before Parliament and saying that he was not concerned with the vindication of his daughter, which he would leave to God Almighty. According to the Continuation, Hyde's ill-wishers had expected that his attitude would provoke in- dignation against him ; but they were disappointed. " On the contrary, men of the greatest name and reputation spake of the foulness of the proceeding [to annul the marriage] with great freedom and with all the detestation imaginable against Sir Charles Berkley, whose testimony nobody believed." Queen Henrietta Maria did her utmost to keep the Duke to his resolution ; but the Princess of Orange, falling a victim to smallpox (of which she died in December, 107 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot 1660), "in her last agonies expressed a dislike of the proceedings in that affair, to which she had contri- buted too much." The Duke now grew so melancholy and discon- tented that everyone noticed it, and at last Charles Berkeley, touched by conscience and by the distress of his master, came to him and confessed the falsity of his accusation, declaring that he had only acted out of pure devotion to the Duke and had tried to prevent a marriage which would be mischievous and inconvenient to him. He begged pardon for what he had done. " The Duke," says Hyde, " found him- self so much relieved in that part that most afflicted him that he embraced him and made a solemn promise that he should not suffer in the least degree in his own affection for what had proceeded so absolutely from his good-will to him, and that he would take so much care of him in the compounding that affair that ... he should receive no dis- advantage." After this remarkable scene with Berkeley James wrote to Anne that he would speedily visit her ; and to the King, expressing his joy at the turn which affairs had taken. Berkeley apologized to Anne, who gave him a gracious reception. " He came likewise to the Chancellor with those professions that he could easily make ; and the other was obliged to receive him graciously." There only remained Henrietta Maria, who was 108 Talbot and his Traducers highly offended with her second son, and more bitter than ever against the Hydes. Recourse was had to diplomacy to convince her of the unwisdom of her conduct. As she was going back to Paris, it was suggested that her welcome at the French Court would be by no means warm if she left England on bad terms with the King and Duke and at enmity with the chief minister. She gave way and agreed to a reconciliation with her daughter-in-law and Hyde before she departed. So the affair which was to have effected the ruin of the Chancellor led only to an increase of his influence. In April, 1661, Charles gave a token of his great regard for him by creating him Earl of Clarendon. He would also have bestowed on him the Garter and 10,000 acres of Crown land, had not the Chancellor refused to accept these. We have now had Hyde's version of the plot to ruin his daughter, wherein there is not one word of accusation against Talbot. The evidence being before us, it remains to see how Macaulay has dealt with it. In his sixth chapter, after mentioning Talbot's readiness for " the infamous service of assassinating the Protector," he goes on : " Soon after the Restoration, Talbot attempted to obtain the favour of the royal family by a service more infamous still. A plea was wanted which might justify the Duke of York in breaking that promise of marriage by which he had obtained from Anne Hyde the last proof of female affection. Such a plea Talbot, 109 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot in concert with some of his dissolute companions, undertook to Jurnish. They agreed to describe the poor young lady as a creature without virtue, shame or delicacy, and made up long romances about tender interviews and stolen favours. Talbot in particular related how, in one of his secret visits to her, he had unluckily overturned the Chancellor's inkstand upon a pile of papers, and how cleverly she had averted a discovery by laying the blame of the accident on her monkey. These stories, which, if they had been true, would never have passed the lips of any but the basest of mankind, were pure inventions. Talbot was soon jorced to own that they were so ; and he owned it without a blush. The injured lady became Duchess of York. Had her husband been a man really upright and honourable, he would have driven from his presence with indignation and contempt the wretches who had slandered her. But one of the peculiarities of James's character was that no act, however wicked and shameful, which had been prompted by a desire to gain his favour, ever seemed to him deserving of disapprobation. Talbot continued to frequent the Court, appeared daily with brazen front before the Princess whose ruin he had plotted, and was installed into the lucrative post of chief pandar to her husband." The last statement may be left alone for the present. With regard to the charge against Talbot of bearing false witness against Anne Hyde, it can be no Talbot and his Traduccrs seen that Macaulay not only takes the veracity of Gramont's account for granted, but introduces a few extra touches* to heighten the blackness of the picture. Of these extra touches, it is true, two are borrowed from Hyde's account, with this diflference, that Hyde is speaking not of Talbot, but of Charles Berkeley. Such perversion of the evidence is characteristic of Macaulay's way of dealing with one whom he dislikes, particularly if he be a Jacobite. Much as Macaulay reprobates the judicial methods of Lord Jeffreys, he is singularly prone to imitate the Jeffreys manner when he sits in judgment upon a political opponent. And no one, except perhaps Talbot's master, James, receives unfairer treat- ment than Richard Talbot at the hands of this judge. The truth of the whole matter is that there are two witnesses only in the case against the slanderers of Anne Hyde ; the lady's own father, and either Gramont or Anthony Hamilton. Hyde, whose good faith we cannot impugn, does not implicate in the disgraceful business the man whose person and very * Indicated by the italics in the above passage, which are of course ours, not Macaulay's. Gramont does not say that Talbot undertook to furnish the necessary plea for the Duke of York, but that Berkeley did so. Gramont does not make Talbot's the chief evidence ; on the contrary, he calls Arran's, Talbot's and Jermyn's depositions " trivial " compared with Killigrew's (which is frankly disgusting). And, lastly, Gramont does not say that Talbot was forced to own that his story was a pure invention and that he did so without a blush. He speaks of no confession on the part of the conspirators. Hyde makes Berkeley undertake to furnish a plea, as we have seen, atvd afterwards confess that his story was false. Ill Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot name he detested. Gramont, according to his fellow- countryman Cominges, was " the most bare-faced liar in the world," and the graces of style and the wit which Anthony Hamilton imparted to the Memoirs of his brother-in-law should not blind us to the fact that the work was designed to amuse — and often, we may suspect, to pay off old scores, like some notorious memoirs of the present day. Gramont was not in England at the time of Berkeley's plot. As for Anthony Hamilton, the year of his birth is iixed by some as late as 1646, which would make him only fourteen in the autumn of 1660. Even if he were a little older than this, he could not be looked upon as a first-hand authority on the occurrences of that period. Therefore the story in the Memoirs may be dismissed as mere gossip, unworthy to be considered for a moment beside an obviously genuine account. Yet the vile charge against Richard Talbot is almost universally accepted. Why ? Mr. Andrew Lang has, somewhere, well called the Muse of English history a " Whiggish Muse." And in the affairs of the Stuart period our historians have nearly all been content to follow the beaten track — beaten, chiefly, by the stately feet of Macaulay. Macaulay takes as trustworthy Gramont's tale against the man of whom he believed nothing too bad to be true. Therefore Talbot must be immortally branded as the ijifamous traducer of Anne Hyde. It would not be 112 Talbot and his Traducers necessary to dwell so insistently on this point in our story, were it not that no one down to the present day who has walked in the steps of Macaulay has considered it incumbent on himself to inquire whether, after all, the evidence on which Talbot has been convicted is enough to hang a dog.* We may now turn to the statement that after the affair of Anne Hyde Talbot was " installed into the lucrative post of chief pandar to her husband," for which the support of Bishop Burnet and of the Memoirs of Gramont again is claimed. Burnet in one place speaks of " Richard Talbot, one of the Duke's bedchamber men, who had much cunning, and had the secret of his master's pleasures for some years." In another he says : " The Duke had always one private amour after another, in the managing of which he seemed to stand more in awe of the Duchess than, considering the inequality of their rank, could have been imagined. Talbot was looked on as the manager of those intrigues." Surely not much weight can be * For instance, in Dr. R. H. Murray's Revolutionary Ireland and its Settle- ment (191 1) it is simply stated that Talbot's "services were at the disposal of Charles II. and his brother James, then Duke of York. When the latter wanted to break his promise of marriage to Anne Hyde, Talbot undertook to blacken her character, and, on the failure of the attempt, it is astonishing to find that the Duke kept him as his friend " (pp. 52-3). Similarly, in The English Court in Exile (191 1), by E. and M. S. Grew, it is said : " We need not be astonished to find that he [Talbot] was a boon companion in James's vices. The worst that can be said of him is that, when James was meditating a way of escape from the consequences of marrying his first wife, Anne Hyde, the Irishman allowed himself to be one of a party of four ' gentlemen of honour ' instructed by Lord Falmouth to give personal testimony against her reputation " (P- 157)- VOL. I. 113 8 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot attached to vague remarks Hke these from one who had such views of history as Burnet.* Gramont is certainly more definite in his charge than Burnet, and at the risk of provoking the feehngs aroused by crambe repetita we must give a brief abstract of the narrative concerning the Duke of York, the Carnegies, and Richard Talbot in the eighth chapter of the Memoirs. Robert Carnegie, son and heir to James, second Earl of Southesk, had married Anne, daughter of the loyal Duke of Hamilton who lost his life at the battle of Worcester. Anne Hamilton, friend in girlhood of Barbara Villiers, was already notorious before her marriage ; but as she brought him ^30,000, her husband perhaps did not at first inquire too closely into her character. After the Restoration the Duke of York was attracted by Lady Carnegie, as she was called. Gramont says that, having quieted his conscience by the declaration of his marriage with Anne Hyde, he " thought himself entitled by his generous effort to give way a little to his inconstancy " ; and Lady Carnegie, " still tolerably * In his Reflections on the History of Mr. Varillas Burnet says : " An historian that favors his own side is to be forgiven . . . and if he but slightly touches the failings of his friends, and severely aggravates those of the other side, though in this he departs from the laws of an exact historian, yet this bias is so natural that if it lessens the credit of the writer, yet it does not blacken him." Lord Ailesbury, in his Memoirs, remarks of Burnet, "As to the history of his own times, I could give him the lie as many times as there are pages in his book." It might perhaps have troubled Ailesbury to prove the numerical correctness of his statement ; but, speaking generally, he was justified in his language. It is a sad example of how political views warp the standard of honesty that a scurrilous creature like Burnet, whose evil tongue and evil mind were a disgrace to his cloth, should be elevated to the position of a censor of his fellow-men. 114 Talbot and his Traducers handsome " — she was Httle over twenty ! — was the first he could lay his hands upon. She was not obdurate. But Carnegie, who had been away in Scotland, lost his father suddenly and returned to London with the title of Earl of Southesk. He was informed of what had happened in his absence and now began to keep a strict watch upon his wife. The Duke, therefore, took the precaution of always calling in the company of a friend, for appearances' sake. One day Talbot, who had recently come back from Portugal, was the friend selected. " This connection had taken place in his absence, and, without knowing who Lady Southesk was, he had been told that his master was in love with her." The Duke took him into the house and introduced him to the lady, after which Talbot " thought it his duty to give His Royal Highness an opportunity to pay his compliments," and accordingly retired into the ante-room, which looked into the street, and sat looking out of the window at the passers-by. " He was on such occasions," remarks Gramont, " one of the best-meaning men in the world." A coach drove up to the door and a man got out and came upstairs. It was the new earl, who was much surprised to see Talbot carelessly lolling in his wife's ante-room ; for the Duke had dismissed his coach, and Southesk was not aware that there were any visitors. Talbot had not met him since they were both in Flanders and, knowing him only as Carnegie, greeted him warmly by that name and asked him VOL. I. 115 8* Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot what he was doing here. If he came to see Lady Southesk, he might go away again, for the Duke was now with her. Southesk was so confounded that he went downstairs again, got into his coach, and drove away. Talbot waited for the Duke's reappearance and, having told him what had occurred, " was very much surprised to find that the story afforded no pleasure to those who had the principal share in it." Such is Gramont's account. There is not much that need be said about it. It is unfortunately true that the Duke of York had an intrigue with Lady Carnegie soon after the Restoration. (Creed tells Pepys in 1668 about her husband " finding her and the Duke of York, at the King's first coming in, too kind.") And as Talbot returned from Portugal in April, 1662, he might have found his master engaged in this discreditable affair then. But the whole tale falls to the ground for this reason, that the second Earl of Southesk did not die until the beginning of 1669, by which time the intrigue had long ago come to an end, to be followed by some very unpleasant rumours about the lady. We have here, therefore, a mere piece of invention on the part of Gramont or Hamilton. And this is the sole basis, apart from the two passages quoted above from Burnet, on which is built the most degrading accusation against Richard Talbot. Again we may ask whether the evidence is enough on which to hang a dog. Yet it has been accepted with- out hesitation, as far as we can see, by our historians. 116 CHAPTER VI THE IRISH CHAMPION IV T O more difficult problem awaited solution by ^ ^ Charles II. and his ministers after the Restoration than that of the settlement of Ireland. And no problem received more attention with less satisfactory results.* Charles inherited from his father and took over from the Commonwealth a task which it was probably beyond human skill to perform. The tangle of conflicting rights and wrongs would have defied the efforts of the most impartial justice to unravel it. Justice had hitherto played but little part in the composing of Irish affairs. That they should have been unable to see their way to an arrangement acceptable to all parties is not fair ground for censure of Charles's advisers. There was no such acceptable arrangement, and those who started with the best intentions in the world to find * Edward Hyde, it may be noted, so well appreciated the hopelessness of the Irish settlement question that, as he says, he " made it his humble suit to the King, that no part of it might ever be referred to him." His son Henry was destined one day to recognise how great was his father's wisdom in the matter. 117 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot one were at last forced by sheer weariness to content themselves with putting expediency in the place of justice and bringing about a settlement which might at least be called a compromise, though one very unevenly balanced between the parties. Towards the end of 1660 the government of Ireland was put in the hands of three Lord Justices pending the appointment of a Lord-Lieutenant in place of the absentee George Monk, Duke of Albemarle, who had accepted the post among many other gifts from his grateful sovereign, but valued his ease too much to care to take up the work. The King, having been furnished with a favourable estimate of the amount of land available in Ireland to be restored to the loyal natives after the settlers had been confirmed in their possessions, expressed his delight that it would be in his power to satisfy the interests of all his subjects. " His inclinations," as Carte says, " led him to make them all happy ; and he eagerly embraced a scheme which flattered those inclinations." On November 30th, 1660, he signed a Declaration, in which he made promises to the Adventurers (who had formerly lent money in England on the credit of Acts of Parliament, receiving security in the shape of land in Ireland) ; to the soldiers settled by Cromwell ; to the officers who had served in the army in Ireland previous to June 5th, 1649 ' ^° ^^7 Protestants, not being rebels, who had lost their land to soldiers or Adventurers ; to 118 The Irish Champion " innocent papists " who had taken land in Connaught in exchange for that of which they had been dis- possessed ; to those Irish who had faithfully served him abroad (such as Richard Talbot and the Dongans, for instance) ; and to thirty-six of the Irish nobility and gentry by name, hence known as the Nominees. The King's amiable intentions were frustrated. The Adventurers' and soldiers' party, indeed, was satisfied. But the Irish were not, and made a great outcry. Particularly was offence taken over the question of " innocent papists." Commissioners had been ap- pointed to carry out the Declaration, and in their instructions the qualifications of an innocent Papist were made very strict. There were numbers who had never drawn sword against the King, but, living in rebellious districts, had kept themselves apart from the rebels entirely ; others who had actually been driven out of Dublin by the Lord Justices of the day on pain of death into the rebels' country, and still had not opposed the King. Yet they were, by the instructions to the Commissioners, not " innocent." In contrast to them, Cromwellian soldiers who had fought against the King were confirmed in the possession of the land assigned to them, unless actually regicides or notoriously disloyal. Again, it was soon found that the stock of land available for distribution was at an end ; the hard- ship falling on the Irish, whose restoration to their estates was to follow the " reprisal " elsewhere of the 119 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot dispossessed Adventurers and soldiers. An official protest, however, was impossible. In the Irish House of Commons at the time the Roman Catholics were not represented at all. The Corporations of the towns having been filled by Cromwell to his own liking, the Adventurers' and soldiers' party was in a great majority. These arrogated to themselves the name of " the English interest " and designated the settlers who had preceded them as mere " Irish." Nothing would have pleased them better than to drive the earlier colonists out of the island. The older Protestant proprietors, however, though a small minority in the Lower House, were the more in- fluential in the Upper, and had means of self-defence which the Roman Catholics had not. When the question of interpreting the Royal Declaration arose the Adventurers and soldiers wished for a literal interpretation, which would put them in the same position as the greatest loyalists. They hurried a draft Bill of Settlement through the House of Commons and decided to send commissioners to the King and Privy Council in England to press for its immediate passing into law. To back their commissioners' endeavours they raised a sum of between twenty and thirty thousand pounds amongst themselves. The Lords also sent agents to London to present their views, and on the prorogation of the Irish Parliament on July 31st, 1661, the scene of the struggle shifted to England. 120 The Irish Champion If the Irish Roman Cathohcs, both of the Pale and outside, were at a disadvantage in their own land through the control of their enemies over Parliament, they were still worse placed when the fight was transferred to London. They had no abundance of funds at their command like the Adventurers and soldiers. They could count but a scanty number of friends at Court, where few Papists had even as high a position as Richard Talbot ; and public opinion was prejudiced against them, not merely on account of their religion, but also as being Irish. The rebellion and the massacres of 1641 had not been forgotten, nor would be for many more years to come. In such a plight their best step was to secure as powerful a patron as possible. The ideal man, had they been wise enough to moderate their demands, would have been Ormonde. He was admirably fitted by blood and interests to negotiate between the English and the Irish. James Butler could trace his descent to a grandchild of Edward I., and one Queen of England, Anne Boleyn, was great-grandchild to Thomas, seventh Earl of Ormonde. Though he had an English mother and had been brought up at the English Court, he had great estates and a host of kinsmen and dependents in Ireland, where the Butlers had been since the time of the first conquest. Himself a Protestant, he was the only one in his immediate family circle, and yet he was on good 121 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot terms with his brothers and sisters.* He was sympathetic with the Roman Cathohc nobiHty and gentry of Ireland, far more than with the later settlers, and, as we have seen, had fought side by side with them when the struggle between England and Ireland had changed to one between Royalists and Parliamentarians. Of his great influence now at the age of fifty-one there could be no doubt, especially when Charles II. in the spring of 1661 bestowed on him such tokens of his esteem as an Irish Dukedom and the Lord High Stewardship of England. But, with all his qualiiications and inclinations to be of service to them, Ormonde was not allowed by the Irish Roman Catholics to help them. Persuaded of their own merits and their claims on the royal favour, they took high ground and claimed, if not much more than was just, at least more than it was reasonable to expect at a period when the English Parliament had forced the King to break the liberal promises of * Writing to Sir Robert Southwell on November 30th, 1678, Ormonde says : " My father and mother lived and died Papists, and bred all their children so, and only I, by God's merciful providence, was educated in the true Protestant religion. . . . My brothers and sisters, though they were not very many, were very fruitful and very obstinate (they will call it constant) in their way. Their fruitfulness hath spread into a large alliance, and their obstinacy has made it altogether Popish. . . . But I am taught by nature and also by instruction that difference in opinion concerning matters of religion dissolves not the obligations of nature ; and in conformity to this principle I own not only that I have done, but that I will do, my relations of that or any other persuasion all the good I can." {H.M.C. Reports, Ormonde MSS., II., Old Series.) For a very favourable report on Ormonde by an English Roman CathoUc, see Carte, Original Letters found among the Duke of Ormond's Papers, II., 63-4. 122 The Irish Champion his declaration from Breda. Ormonde was a Protestant and would not — indeed, could not — go as far as they wished to go. Moreover, so far from attempting to conciliate him, they did their best to drive him into opposition against them. Carte's explanation of this mistaken policy seems reasonable. He says that the Irish now in London included very many who had formerly belonged to Rinuccini's party and who still cherished their hatred for Ormonde. They considered that they had purged their former offence of rebellion by the military service which they had done with the other Irish in Flanders, and now claimed to be most deserving loyalists. In their hostility to the Duke of Ormonde these men looked about for someone to plead their cause, through whom they could at the same time strike at him. They settled upon Richard Talbot, although he had belonged to the section of the Confederates which had resisted the Nuncio. Carte says that Talbot had been careful not to damage himself up to now by favouring the Roman Catholics, which was a point that Sir Nicholas Plunket and the other Irish agents took into consideration in choosing him as their patron. " His vanity and zeal," he continues, " made him forward to undertake everything ; as his enmity to the Duke of Ormonde, whom he had injured, and the habit he had contracted of raihng against him, moved him to render His Grace's friendly and wise advice to the agents suspected." 123 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot It is difficult to reconcile Richard Talbot's later professions of regard for Ormonde and his continued friendship with Ormonde's sons, Ossory and Arran, with his conduct now, for which we do not have to depend on Carte's account alone. We can only suppose that his very impulsive nature led him, in his advocacy of the case of his countrymen and co-religionists, to greater lengths than he realised himself. There was already a soreness between him and Ormonde over the affair of the lieutenant- colonelcy in the Duke of York's Regiment. Now he threw himself whole-heartedly into the campaign against one whom he had called " the patron of us all." Besides, another failing of his came into play. Carte says : " The vanity of appearing considerable and making himself popular induced him to espouse the cause of these men and to join with them and his brothers in openly bespattering the Duke of Ormonde with all the calumnies imaginable and treating the Chancellor with satirical reflections not easy to be digested." In the case of Hyde, or, as we must now call him, Clarendon, there was little reason for the Talbots to spare him, particularly as he was now very hostile to the Irish claims. But gratitude should have induced them to treat Ormonde better.* * Even Sir Robert seems to have been estranged, at least for a time. Clarendon says that Ormonde had recommended him to the King as a person fit for his favour, but because he did not ask everything on his behalf " this refusal was looked on as the highest disobligation." {Continuation, III., 117.) 124 The Irish Champion So disgusted was Ormonde, " seeing that his advice would not be followed and that his character was every day torn in pieces by some or other of their country," that he refused to take a prominent part in the adjustment of the Bill of Settlement, and until his appointment as Lord-Lieutenant, in November, 1661, confined his activity in Irish affairs to helping his personal friends and giving certificates of good behaviour on behalf of those Irish whose loyalty was unjustly questioned. Richard Talbot's influence was unavailing to help his clients, who indeed ruined their own chances. While insisting on their personal fidelity, they violently attacked those who had formerly taken the Parlia- mentary side. They spoke of them as if they had all been regicides, provoking the obvious retort that they themselves had been guilty of the 1641 massacres, and had attempted to put Ireland under foreign domina- tion. They offended the Privy Councillors, before whom they had to plead ; tor the Council included several Commonwealth men. They alienated the King, in spite of his secret Roman Catholic sympathies and his desire to please all he could, in Ireland as else- where, by insistence on their rights and his duties. They threatened him with a charge of breach of faith if he did not observe the terms of the treaty of 1648. Charles was not a man to be treated in this way ; and the Adventurers' and soldiers' representatives knew better than to act so, being effusive in their 125 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot protestations of loyalty and submission. The result was what was to be expected. Charles declared himself in favour of the maintenance of an " English interest " in Ireland, which, as Carte says, " showed the Irish plainly enough who were likely to be the sufferers " from the lack of land to go round. Policy carried the day. So unsuccessful were the Irish agents that they could not even obtain a modification of the qualifica- tions of " innocent papists," the most unjust point in the Instructions given to the commissioners ap- pointed to execute the King's Declaration. They vented their mortification over this in a fresh attack on Ormonde, whom they accused of persuading the King against them, or at least of not using his in- fluence at the Privy Council to save them from injustice. Their champion was called upon to do something for them. So, in Carte's words, " Colonel Talbot went to expostulate with him [Ormonde] upon the matter. He came in so huffing a manner, and used such impertinent and insolent language in his discourse, that it looked like a challenge ; and His Grace, waiting upon His Majesty, desired to know if it was his pleasure that at this time of day he should put off his doublet to fight duels with Dick Talbot." However strong Talbot's influence might be with the Duke of York, the provocation of a Privy Coun- cillor to a duel could not be overlooked by a King 126 The Irish Champion who was steadfastly opposed to all duelling at his Court. Charles ordered the offender to be sent to the Tower, apparently some time in October, 1661. This was the first time Talbot went to the Tower on account of Ormonde, but not the last. He did not now stay there long, however, but, having duly offered his submission, was released. Ormonde could indeed afford to disregard him. In council, on November 4th, he was declared Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. Albemarle had persuaded the King to appoint him his successor and Ormonde to accept the post. Clarendon, who had not been consulted, and was annoyed at being deprived of the support of his friend in English affairs, frankly told Charles that he would do very ill in sending Ormonde to Ireland and Ormonde that he would do much worse if he desired to go. But this failed to produce an alteration of the decision. Ormonde, it was true, could not yet be spared from England, but his appointment stood, the Lords Justices remaining in control of Irish affairs until he should cross to Dublin. Although the Settlement of Ireland was far from being effected yet, Richard Talbot's active interest in it was temporarily checked by the punishment which he had brought upon himself by his indis- cretion. With or without him, the cause which he had embraced was lost when, before the Privy Council one day, Sir Nicholas Plunket was suddenly confronted with his signature on a document authorising the 127 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot offer of Ireland in 1647, first to the Pope, and if he should refuse, then to any Roman Catholic prince willing to protect her. Plunket was banished from Court, all further addresses from Roman Catholics to the Council were forbidden, and the Bill of Settlement, with the clauses to which the Irish so much objected, received the royal assent. The only cause for Irish congratulation was that the King appointed a good solid commission to administer the Act,* including Sir Winston Churchill, future father- in-law of Sarah Jennings. On his release from the Tower, perhaps to soothe his injured pride and no doubt through the influence of the Duke of York, Talbot was sent on a small diplomatic mission to Portugal. This is the mission of which we hear in Gramont, who says that Talbot " was so subject to forgetfulness and absence of mind that he once left behind him in London a compli- mentary letter which the Duke had given him for the Infanta of Portugal, and never recollected it until he was going to his audience." It would be interesting to know what Talbot did when he found that he had not the letter. The oversight was rather grave, see- ing that the said Infanta was soon to be Queen of England. Talbot's return home is fixed by Pepys, in the only * " All men of good parts, learned in the laws, and clear in their reputation for virtue and integrity," says Carte. The offence which they gave to the soldiers' party, by the number of " innocent papists " whom they admitted, is a testimony to their impartiality. 128 The Irish Champion entry in the Diary which mentions him. Under the date April loth, 1662, he says : " Yesterday came Col. Talbot with letters from Portugal that the Queen is resolved to embarque for England this week." Catherine's start from Lisbon was delayed, however, and it was not until May 21st that the marriage took place. It does not appear where Talbot was at the time of the royal wedding. As the Duke of Ormonde stayed for it and did not leave to take up his Lord-Lieutenancy until early July, it is possible that Talbot thought it best to avoid meeting him for a time, and therefore went to his relatives in Ireland.* Anyhow, we know that he was in Dublin in the autumn of the year, for two letters written by him there survive to prove it. In one, dated September 30th, he says that he hears his brother Peter is under the King's displeasure. It is reported that either Peter or he had said that he (the writer) was often " employed by the King to Lady Castlemaine." He denies having discoursed with the Queen about the matter. The second letter, dated November 20th, also refers to the King and Lady Castlemaine. Richard obviously resented being accused of having informed Catherine — possibly while he was at Lisbon on his mission — that he had acted as a go-between * since the above was written, I have discovered an entry in the Calendar of Treasury Books, 1 660-67, which shows Talbot to have been in England as late as July : " 1662. July 21st. Warrant for Treasurer Southampton to Customs Commissioner for Colonel Richard Talbott to ship a coach and ten horses and six trunks for Ireland, he being commanded by the Duke of York to go thither." VOL. I. 129 9 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot from the King to the royal mistress, Hke Charles Berkeley. Now as Catherine expressly told Clarendon, when he came to her at Hampton Court to persuade her to accept Lady Castlemaine as Lady of the Bed- chamber, that she did not think, when she arrived in England, to find the King engaged in his affections to another lady, the accusation was no doubt unjust. But the Talbots were out of favour again at this time. Through the friendship of the Duke of York they had managed to live down the ill reports against them before the Restoration and to enjoy their share in the sunshine of the Court. The Chancellor, however, con- tinued their unrelenting foe, and struck when he could. With regard to Richard, Clarendon says himself that he " had sometimes at the council-table been obliged to give him severe reprehensions and often desired the Duke [of York] to withdraw his coun- tenance from him." As for the Jesuit, who to his indignation " walked with the same or more freedom in the King's house (and in the clergy habit) than any of His Majesty's chaplains did," Clarendon " declared very loudly " against him. Father Peter's efforts to conciliate him by letters and through the medium of friends were unavailing. Once he so far prevailed with the King that Peter was " forbid the Court." The same fate befell the friar, of whom Clarendon complained that he saw him too often in the galleries of Whitehall, and sometimes drunk there. 130 The Irish Champion Peter's disgrace, if this be the same occasion to which Clarendon refers, was not solely due to the Chan- cellor's representations. After Henry Bennet had per- suaded Charles to forgive him for his dubious conduct in connection with the Treaty of Fuentarabia, and to allow him to frequent the Court, he managed in 1662 to secure for himself the post of almoner to the young Queen. " His busy nature did not suffer him to continue long in that post," says Carte ; " he was always telling the Queen some story or other, and the uneasiness which she suffered in October, 1662, upon Lady Castlemaine's being put about her, was imputed in a good measure to his insinuations," (Richard's two letters from Dublin confirm Carte here.) Once he said to Catherine that the lady was an enchantress, speaking in Spanish, which was the only other lan- guage besides Portuguese that she understood at present. The simple, ill-educated girl took the remark literally and cautioned the King against the sorceress. The puzzled Charles took the trouble to get to the bottom of the affair, and, finding that the Jesuit had once more been officious, banished him from Whitehall — no doubt with the hearty appro- bation of the Chancellor. After making a vain effort to get himself reinstated, Father Peter crossed over to Ireland, where he dis- covered that his young brother had been by no means idle since they had parted. An opportunity for making money had come his way, and from this he was no VOL. I, 131 9* Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot more averse than most other men of his time. The Irish House of Commons had drawn up and trans- mitted to England a Bill of Explanation, designed to make clear the meaning of the King's Declaration of November, 1660. Among other things the Bill endeavoured to " make provision for eminent and deserving persons who were cut off from all manner of relief by the power of the Court of Claims being determined." This Court of Claims had been set up to investigate the pretensions of the " innocent papists " who wished to come under the Declaration. The Court's commission, however, only extended down to August 22nd, 1662, by which time out of four thousand claims entered not more than four hundred had been heard. Now there was a great opportunity, both during the sitting of the Court of Claims and in connection with the Bill of Explanation, for a man of influence to make money. However conscious of their own innocence great numbers of the Irish Roman Catholics were, they were aware of the difficulty of their restora- tion to their estates if they relied on that alone. So many of them were willing to give bonds at least for payment in event of their successful restoration. For the insertion of provisos in the Bill some gave pro- mises of as much as j^8oo, ^1,000, or even more. Of course they expected to secure very influential patrons for such prices, but there were plenty of well-known men ready to undertake the work. Indeed, they had 132 The Irish Champion their agents employed in looking out for clients in Ireland. Among those thus selling their influence were the old Earl of St. Albans, one of whose proteges was the afterwards famous Patrick Sarsfield of Lucan ; Sir Charles Berkeley, Sir Gilbert Gerard, Lord Car- lingford, and Sir Audley Mervyn, Speaker of the Irish House of Commons and spokesman of the " English interest " party before the Privy Council recently. None had more dealings in this scandalous traffic than Richard Talbot, says Carte. His credit with the Duke of York was well known, and he was supposed to be great at Court, which procured him an infinite number of clients — so many in fact that some, after applying to him, went elsewhere for a patron, think- ing that he was engaged on behalf of too many to give the necessary attention to their particular business. In addition to this work for the dispossessed Irish, there was a great opportunity for making money through commissions from Englishmen wanting estates in Ireland at the smallest possible cost to themselves. Henry Bennet, now Secretary of State, was one of those who entrusted Talbot with a " job " of this kind, and there are letters among the Irish State Papers of the period which show that Talbot exerted himself strenuously to earn his money. The King had granted Bennet the reversion of the forfeited property of Viscount Clanmalier, but there were others in possession, and the difficulty was to effect a compromise with them. This Talbot was able to do in 1665, but 133 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot we do not hear what was his reward. He also en- deavoured to interest the Secretary in another affair. " I am promised," he writes to him on March 25th, 1663, " a discovery of a great sum — ^^10,000 — to be got here, and hope to be able to send particulars by next post. The discoverer only desires a third. You may have the rest, and treat me as you will." We may be sure that Bennet was nothing loth to hear of this discovery, nor of another matter which Talbot reveals to him on April 28th. The Jesuits are alarmed about the security of their mortgages in Ireland, and have made them all over to Talbot, desiring him to get a grant from the King for them. " You and I are to have half, about ^^4,000, and they the other half. It's good money : therefore pray despatch it."* Altogether Talbot spent his time in Ireland, whether it was virtual exile or not, to his great profit. In the summer of 1663 he returned to England to prosecute the work which he had undertaken, carrying with him ^18,000 in bonds and other securities from fellow- countrymen desirous of restoration to their estates. Things did not go smoothly, however, for the " undertakers," as they were called. The King and * In this same letter is an amusing reference to the activities of Peter Talbot. " I find," says Richard. " Don Pedro hath been too free in talking there [in London], as if I intended to take a wife. If I had a fortune and did think of one, I could not dispose of myself better than where he proposes. Pero, Senor, no estoy yo aun para cassar me, no tengo mucho el cassamiento en la cabeza. [But, Sir, I am not one to marry myself, I have little thought of marriage in my head.]" The Irish Champion the Privy Council, on examining the Irish Bill of Explanation, entirely disapproved of it, and orders w^ere sent to Ormonde and the Council in Dublin to draw up a new Bill for transmission to England. Richard wrote from London to his brother Peter, whom he had left behind him, that " the King had resolved in council not to leave the obliging of his subjects to any minister, and the Lord-Lieutenant only proposed to restore about thirty of the Irish nation." This was an over-statement of the case, but the writer was doubtless labouring under feelings of disappointment. We do not know on how good terms Richard Talbot had been with Ormonde in Ireland after the Lord- Lieutenant's arrival in July, 1662. In one of his communications to Bennet he mentions that he has had an hour's private converse with Ormonde at the Castle about the Clanmalier estate, and the interview, as reported by him, was peaceful and even genial. After his return to London he wrote a curious letter to Ossory, with whom at least he seems always to have maintained friendly relations. (Seeing how high stands the character of " the Bayard of the Restoration," by the general consent of his contemporaries,* this is certainly a point in Talbot's favour.) The letter is preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and is interesting as an example of the writer's style, apart from the light which it throws upon his sentiments * His only vice was gambling, if we may believe Carte. Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot towards Ormonde and Ossory. The principal part of it is as follows : " Whytehall, Oct. 13th, 1663. " Yrs. of the i6th of the laste came unto my hands but Saterday night laste, and by this doe make you my humble acknowledgments for concerneing yrselfe soe perticularly in yr. serv*^ concernes as you seem to doe. I never expected less from you ; nor I hope will never deserve less. " When I gave you the troble of my first letter truely it was to the end you shoulde speake to my Lord Duke of the whole perticulers I had writ to you, for I know hee last writ to S" George Hamilton what I writ to you, and I know hee would not have writ to him what hee did if hee had not beene misinformed by som malitious tonges that doe make it thyr busines to doe people ill offices because they have practiced it all thyr leives. You may easily guess who I suspect to have done mee this good turne, hee did me just such another a little before I came away from thence. I am sure I could render him laparreye \la -pareille] very justly and saye nothing but the truth, but hee is so despicable a person (though a great one) that I swear unto you I doe pitty him. " My Lord, I have often repeated an ould Spanish proverb to you, and that is La meyor politica es la verdad-> and nothing is more true ; whearfore I would now so farr put that in practise at this time that I would desier 136 The Irish Champion you to knowe of yr. father upon what grounds hee did express his dissatisfaction to mee to yr. unkle Hamilton. It must bee that somone did mee good offices to him, and truely all that ever I asked his Grace for myself was that hee would tell myself of any thing hee tooke ill from mee, and hee was pleased to promise mee hee woulde. I knowe I doe not want enemyes thear that perhaps will buss in his earres upon every occation the worst things they can of mee, and if it shall be in the power of such little iiutterers to doe honest men ill offices I knowe noe gentleman safe. . . . " My Lord, you know as much of my soule as any man liveing. You may doe in this what you thinke best, and notwithstanding what you say to mee I knowe something sticks by him, but what it is God is my judge I know not. " For what you say of my Lady Dutchess* being soe just to mee is that I never doubted, and I hope I may expect that from her Grace. I wear the un- worthyest man liveing if I did not honor her as much as any creature in the world, haveing beene used so kindlye by her. I hope she doth not doubt it. . . ." It is not as easy for us as for Ossory to guess who is the " despicable person (though a great one) " suspected * Elizabeth Preston, a cousin of Ormonde's, whose parents had been at serious dispute with the Butlers over the Ormonde estates in Ireland ; James I. espousing the cause of his favourite, Preston, created by him Earl of Desmond. When left an orphan Elizabeth became a royal ward, and her secret marriage in 1629 with her cousin, then only Viscount Thurles, gave great displeasure to Charles I. It was, however, a happy union. Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot by Talbot of having misrepresented him to the Duke of Ormonde. His affected ignorance of the cause of Ormonde's dissatisfaction with him is amusing, in view of the incident which only two years before had occasioned his imprisonment in the Tower. Having himself a short memory, he seems to have ex- pected the Duke to have the same. And, as a matter of fact, Ormonde was not of a nature to cherish grudges. Clarendon once told him, with his refresh- ing frankness, that he and King Charles suffered from the same infirmity, " an unwillingness to deny any man what they could not but see was impossible to grant, and a desire to please everybody, which whosoever affected should please nobody." The work of the Royal Commission on the details of the Irish Settlement dragged on slowly. At the beginning of November, 1663, the commissioners re- turned from Ireland. On the 3rd of that month, Arthur Annesley, Earl of Anglesey, wrote to Ormonde from London : " Dick Talbot's coach with six horses went yesterday to meet the commissioners and bring them this day to town, upon notice whereof one jested they might have come on foot before an English coach would have been sent to meet or fetch them." This coach of Talbot's seems to have been rather celebrated, for we hear of it on various occasions — as when Sir Nicholas Armorer in 1668 writes to Sir Joseph Williamson returning to London from the country : " You may come through in a day if met by Dick 138 The Irish Champion Talbot's coach at St. Albans, but you must send orders to bespeak it." Talbot, therefore, was not neglecting the interests of his Irish clients, for it was most important to con- ciliate the royal commissioners, in whom rested so much power over the fortunes of the " innocent papists." His hands were certainly not clean in the matter of his championship of his fellow-Irishmen, and Macaulay is at least justified in saying that he " took care, when pleading the cause of his country- men whose estates had been confiscated, to be well paid." With a mixture of truth and gross injustice, Macaulay goes on to state that Talbot " succeeded in acquiring, partly by the sale of his influence, partly by gambling, and partly by pimping, an estate of three thousand pounds a year." A gambler he undoubtedly was, like many other men — Ossory, for instance — who play a not unworthy part in history. The lack of grounds for the third, and most unpleasant, accusa- tion we have seen in the last chapter. The Memoirs of Gramont draw a picture of Richard Talbot about this period which may perhaps be taken as Gramont's personal verdict upon him, since the Count was at the English Court on his first visit, from the time of the royal marriage to nearly the end of 1664. If so, the Chevalier considers Talbot no mere money-grubber. " There was no man at Court who had a better appearance," the Memoirs say. " He was, indeed, but a younger brother, of a 139 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot family which, though very ancient, was not very con- siderable, either for its renown or its riches. Yet, though he was naturally of a very careless disposition, being bent, however, on making his fortune, and much in favour with the Duke of York, and fortune likewise being propitious to him at play, he had im- proved both so much that he was in possession of about 40,000 livres [^£2,000] a year in land." * * It should be noticed that Marshal Berwick, who as a young man knew Richard Talbot in his old age only, says in his Memoirs (I., 103-4) : " Although he had acquired great property, it could not be said that it was by ill means ; for he never seemed greedy for money." Berwick is accused of being unduly favourable to Talbot. On the other hand, those who paint him as dishonest and grasping were certainly unduly prejudiced against him. Talbot's desire for money was that of an intensely ambitious, not of a grasping and miserly, man. 140 PART III WHITEHALL CHAPTER I THE HAMILTONS ON his return to London from Ireland with his valuable collection of bonds, Richard Talbot took up his duties again in the household of the Duke of York, where he was soon to meet the future partner of his honours and misfortunes. But the little Frances Jennings did not make her appearance at Court until some time after his return, and his attentions were at first attracted elsewhere. Or perhaps we should say his honourable attentions, if the Memoirs of Gramont are to be believed when they make Talbot offer him- self to Elizabeth Hamilton with his fortune of 40,000 livres, " together with the almost certain hopes of being made a peer of the realm by his master's credit ; and, over and above all, as many sacrifices as she could desire of Lady Shrewsbury's letters, pictures, and hair — curiosities which, indeed, are reckoned as nothing in housekeeping, but which testify strongly to the sincerity and merit of a lover." The notorious Anna Maria Brudenel, daughter of the second Earl of 143 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot Cardigan — " this beauty less famous for her con- quests than for the misfortunes which she occasioned," as the Memoirs rightly say — had married the Earl of Shrewsbury* the year before the Restoration and after it had soon made herself conspicuous at White- hall. Gramont mentions among her admirers, besides Talbot, Ormonde's son Arran, Captain Thomas Howard (brother of the Earl of Carlisle), the younger Jermyn, Harry Killigrew — and, of course, the Duke of Bucking- ham. With regard to her hair, there were " three or four gentlemen who wore an ounce of it made into bracelets." This intrigue with Lady Shrewsbury, it may be noted, is the only one actually reported against Richard Talbot during his whole life, although another is implied by the existence of an illegitimate son.f Even if both cases be considered proved, the record is sufficiently remarkable for a handsome and popular young man at a period of such licence. His suit to Miss Hamilton was perfectly honest, as, indeed, it was bound to be to one who was above reproach in matters where her sex so failed at the Court of Charles H. The Hamiltons were a remarkable family, of whom we shall hear much in the course of this book, so that we may conveniently stop to speak of them here. Sir George Hamilton married a sister of the future Duke of Ormonde, Mary Butler, a Roman Catholic like all * Francis Talbot, eleventh Earl, a very distant connection of the Irish TalbQts, f See pp. 518, 588 below. 144 The Hamiltons her family except Ormonde and like her husband him- self. Sir George was the fourth son among the nine children of James Hamilton, favourite of James L, who, after the union of England and Scotland, made him Earl of Abercorn and gave him estates in Tipperary, which were settled on his younger sons. James Hamil- ton was a grandson of James, second Earl of Arran, Duke of Chatelherault in France, and, as " second person of the realm of Scotland," Regent during the minority of Mary Queen of Scots ; so that, as far as nobility was concerned, Sir George was no less well descended than the Butlers with whom he intermarried, and the young Hamiltons had some of the best Scottish and Irish-Norman blood in their veins. Sir George was faithful to the royalist cause. Although arrested as a Papist in 1641, during a visit to England, sent to the Tower, and deprived of his commission in the army, after his release on bail he crossed over to Ireland and took up arms under his brother-in-law the Lord-Lieutenant. For some reason, when the rebel leader Owen O'Neil took Roscrea, Tipperary, the home of the Hamiltons, in September, 1646, and put the inhabitants to the sword, he spared Lady Hamilton and her young family — to which act of clemency we owe, incidentally, the Memoirs of Gramont, Anthony being then but newly born. After the English Parliament's triumph. Sir George did not immediately follow Ormonde out of Ireland, staying to pass his accounts as Receiver- voL. I. 145 10 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot General, a post to which he had been appointed in 1648. This he did, says Carte, " to the satis- faction of all parties, notwithstanding much clamour had been raised against him." In the spring of 1 65 1 he took his family to Normandy and settled down temporarily with the Ormondes near Caen. Here all lived in great poverty and distress until, in the middle of 1652, Ormonde consented to his wife going to London, where she obtained from Cromwell a grant of _£2,ooo a year out of the estates of her husband and herself in Ireland. The secret of Lady Ormonde's influence with the Protector we do not know. She was a woman of high character, and is said to have inspired him with great respect. But her husband was the King's right hand,* and his dealings with the Royalists remaining in England were weU known to Cromwell. Lady Ormonde took no share in any plot, to our knowledge ; but, whether or not her residence in London was at last considered in- convenient, before the end of 1655 she retired to Ireland, accompanied by her younger children. The Hamiltons moved with Ormonde to Paris. Sir George, however, was seldom at rest from missions on behalf of the King, of which evidence may be found among the vast collection of Ormonde manuscripts surviving to this day. An interesting letter is one sent by Ormonde to Lord Jermyn in February, 1652. * Down to the time of the Restoration Ormonde was certainly this — and a considerable part of the brain of the royalist party as well. 146 The Hamiltons " Sir George Hamilton," he writes, " goes toward you with all the recommendations from this to that Court [i.e., from Charles's to Saint-Germain] that can be thought necessary. . . . He has made many ex- pensive and dangerous voyages for the late and this King, and entirely lost his fortune by his faithfulness to them against the rebels of all their kingdoms, but his not going the last voyage he was designed for* and his attendance so long upon it will conclude his ruin if he prevail not in his pretensions to the French Court, or will cast him as a very unseasonable and unwilling burden upon His Majesty's care, who, God knows, had need to bestow it wholly upon himself." Sir George was troubled not only by want of money, but also by the problem of finding some employment for his two elder sons, James and George — Frances Jennings's future first husband. Ormonde did what he could to help his brother-in-law in both difficulties. Before the move to Paris we find Hamilton writing to thank Ormonde for " your care to place my son George in a condition that I hope may enable him to acknow- ledge it with better service than I have ever been in a condition to do you." As for James, he " begins early, as your Excellence is pleased to advertise me, of which I will be at care to prevent as I may, though I know nothing so like to prevail in that case as good counsel and some way of employing his time to divert idleness, * Apparently the expedition planned to set out from St. Malo in August, 1651, which was abandoned after the battle of Worcester had ruined royalist hopes. VOL. I. 147 10* Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot which is the greatest curse of that gentlemanly vice." The scheme to keep James out of mischief is revealed in the same letter. " You have been pleased to put the place of the Janedarme to a very probable condition of success, if the business do serve right," says Hamilton. But it seems as if the plan of making the young man one of the gens d'armes, or lifeguards, to the little King Louis was not immediately carried out, for three years later Sir George writes expressing the fear that Ormonde's care of his sons is heaping still more trouble upon him. " I hope you will see it so ordered as if the eldest, whose fancy is flown a little high, may through that passion set a higher value upon a good face and some quality of blood than upon a fortune, of which he stands much more in need at present ; that in this case, I say, I hope you will provide that such an unhappiness in him, if it should fall out, might not prejudice the advantage may be made of this occasion for his second brother George." Sir George Hamilton can scarcely be called a lucid writer. But it seems possible to gather that some love affair or matrimonial idea made James unwilling to fall in with the views of Ormonde and his father — and his mother, too, who wishes to " induce her son Jamie to lay hold of such a providence from God which is by your Lordship thought fit for him to embrace." If it were not that this was only 1654, ^^ might imagine that it was already the attraction of Lord Culpepper's daughter which caused " Jamie " to be reluctant to 148 The Hamiltons enter the French service, and so be cut off from proximity to his charmer. He succeeded in getting his way, helped, no doubt, hy the estrangement of the exiled Charles from the French Court ; for in October, 1659, ^^^ father writes to Hyde, describing as " a great cordial in this sad time " some information about his two sons and their master's favour towards them. Whenever it was that he first fell in love with his future wife, he allowed her to have a great influence upon him ; and finally he gave up Roman Catholicism to espouse her. His mother's disgusted reply to Ormonde's announcement of the marriage still exists. She writes : " I must confess I never was more afflicted or sur- prised then when I found in your leter the unworthy- ness of Jamy, who I know two well to beleeive from him that he had anny other motive to dislike the Religion he has left than that he could not profess it liveing soe great a libertine as he did and the assur- ance he did [? had] that it would be an obstacle to his mariage with M'"'' Culpeper, for whom he had this unhapy affection about foure yeares agoe (as I can shew in his leters), and at that time did he resolve to become an apostate rather then not have her. He has a deare bargain of her if she be soe unfortunat as to be engaged to him, and I am confident she will never have much satisfaction in one that has forsaken God for her. I am most certaine it was noe aprehention of his being out of the way of salvation made him 149 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot thus base, he has no such tender conscience, as you will finde in a little tieme. I humbly begg your pardon for being thus bitter when I writ to you, and if I have sayd annything against your religion that may offend you it was not my intention. . . . God's will be don in all things. I am much troubled that I know not wheare S'" George is. I feare he will be sencible of this misfortun as it will drive him to som sicknes. Excuse me, I beg you, and beleeive that I shall never be other then " Your ever affectionate Sister and most humble servant, " Ma. Hamilton."* George junior does not appear to have caused anxiety to his parents like his brother James. A post was found for him, through Ormonde's influence, as page of honour to King Charles, in which position he is mentioned to Thurloe by one of his spies in April, 1655, at Cologne. In it he continued down to the Restoration. Of the four younger boys, Anthony, Thomas, Richard and John, we do not hear anything in these * Letter of May 14th, 1660 (quoted in Spicilegium Ossoriense, IL, 182, from the Carte Papers). The very change which grieved Mary Hamilton so much caused James to be looked on w^ith benevolence by other good people. Hyde writes to Ormonde, November ist, 1659 : " Your nephew James ... is a very honest, and I think a very pious young man, and will proceed with that wariness that you advise, tho' in the main he is fully resolved, and truly, I think, upon right principles, severed from passion or appetite." (Carte, Original Letters, L, 252.) The Hamiltons early days ; and the same is the case with Ehzabeth and her two sisters. The great event of May, 1660, brought to the Hamiltons, if not wealth, at least a certain material prosperity to which they had long been strangers. Being very numerous, Gramont says, they lived in a large and commodious house near the Court. " The Duke of Ormonde's family was continually with them ; and here persons of the greatest distinction in London constantly met." Of the sons, James obtained first the rangership of Hyde Park and then a place as groom of the bedchamber to the King, as well as a colonelcy of a foot regiment. George, having given up his post of page, and having received a retiring pension of ;/^i20 a year, was appointed to " the King's Owne Troope of Guards." In this, which may be called the first regiment of the present-day British Army, George Hamilton received his four shillings a day as one of the two hundred gentlemen troopers. His younger brothers seem similarly to have joined the ranks as time went on, except Thomas, who entered the navy. Elizabeth Hamilton, although unattached to either of the royal households, quickly made her mark at the Court of Charles H. Her beauty was famous. Gramont describes her and Frances Stewart as the chief ornaments of that Court in its early days, and the glowing account of her charms at the beginning of the seventh chapter of his Memoirs is familiar to all 151 Litrle Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot readers of the book. She was full of accomplish- ments,* and the only blots upon her character which can be discovered are her excessive love of practical joking (for this the Memoirs are sufficient evidence) and very great pride of race, both of which failings led her to be somewhat regardless of the feelings of others. Had her head been turned, it would have been no wonder ; for not only did the Duke of York press attentions upon her for a time, but her honour- able suitors included the Duke of Richmond, Henry Howard, afterwards Duke of Norfolk, Charles Berke- ley, Harry Jermyn, Lord Arundel, the two Russells — ^John, son of the Duke of Bedford, and his nephew William — Richard Talbot and Gramont, who won her in spite of this distinguished competition. Philibert, Comte de Gramont, when he arrived in England, was forty-one years of age. A reputed grand- son of Henri IV., and, in any case, of high extraction, he had been a favourite at the French Court, until he was banished for making love to a young lady on whom Louis XIV. had previously smiled. With regard to the other sex he appears to have been, previous to his conquest of la belle Hamilton, a rather ineffectual Don Juan. But he evidently had the ability to make many male friends. He was recommended to White- hall not merely by his gallantry and lively humour, but also by the fact that he had served under the Duke * Dangeau in his yournal (I., 241) describes her as having " a most lively wit, the most extensive information, the greatest dignity, the utmost ease, and the most polished elegance at Court." The Hamiltons of York's idol, Turenne. The Hamiltons were among those who gave a warm welcome to the French visitor, and Gramont confesses not only to spending much time at their house, but to astonishment that he spent so much time elsewhere. He soon was on intimate terms with James and George. " He had a great esteem for the elder," according to the Memoirs^ " no less esteem and far more friendship for his brother, whom he made the confidant of his passion for his sister." For he had soon fallen in love with Elizabeth, after a brief attachment to the more notorious beauty Mrs. Middleton. Cominges, in one of that series of surely the oddest communications ever sent by an ambas- sador to his royal master, tells Louis XIV. of the Chevalier's " very ridiculous aifair." Gramont, it seems, bribed Mrs. Middleton's maid to carry a love- declaration to her mistress. The maid took both the bribe and the declaration to herself, and when the mistress heard of this she told Gramont to " keep quiet and look elsewhere." Cominges adds : " Gramont did not fail to take her at her word, and he is now, six months after his coming, in a fair way to marriage."* • Cominges to Louis, August, 1663. In another letter to Louis, Cominges (who is far from being an admirer of Gramont) says : " As he has noticed that his age is becoming a great obstacle to all his imaginary pleasures, he has resolved to secure himself more solid ones by marrying. With this view he has cast his eyes on a beautiful young lady of the house of Hamilton, niece to the Duke of Ormonde, adorned with all the graces of virtue and nobility, but so little with mere material wealth that, according to those who give her most, she has none. I think that at first the Chevalier did not mean to go so far in this business, but, whether conversation has completed what beauty began, or the noise made by two rather troublesome brothers may have had something to do with it, certain it is that he has now declared himself publicly." Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot It is only in the Memoirs of Gramont that we hear of Richard Talbot as a candidate for the hand of Eliza- beth Hamilton ; and there is great difficulty in making Gramont's account fit in with the known facts of Talbot's career at this period. Yet we can hardly suppose that Gramont and his biographer invented the story of his pretensions, however inaccurate they may have been in the details. We are told that Gramont looked on Talbot as a rival not to be despised and " thought him the more dangerous as he per- ceived that he was desperately in love ; that he was not one to be discouraged by a first repulse ; that he had too much sense and good breeding to draw upon himself either contempt or coldness by too great eagerness." And, besides this, his brothers began to frequent the Hamiltons' house — the one " an in- triguing Jesuit and a great match-maker";* the other " what was called a lay-monk, who had nothing of his order but the immorality and infamy of character which is ascribed to them, and withal frank and free and sometimes entertaining, but always as ready to speak bold and offensive truths as to do good offices." On the whole Gramont found good reason for uneasiness over Talbot's competition with him for his lady's favour. " Nor was the indifference which Miss Hamilton showed for the addresses of his rival sufficient to remove his fears ; for, being absolutely * This agrees well with what is said of " Don Pedro " in Richard Talbot's letter of April 28th, 1663, to Bennet. The Hamiltons dependent on her father's will, she could only answer for her own intentions." But, according to the Memoirs^ Fortune, who seemed to have taken Gramont under her protection in Eng- land, now delivered him from all uneasiness. Then we get the story of Talbot's quarrel with Ormonde over Irish affairs and his imprisonment in the Tower. " By this imprudent conduct he lost all hopes of marrying into a family which, after such a proceeding, was not likely to listen to any proposal from him. It was with great difficulty and mortification that he was obliged to suppress a passion which had made far greater progress in his heart than the quarrel had done good to his affairs. This being the case, he was of opinion that his presence was necessary in Ireland, and that he was better out of the way of Miss Hamil- ton, if he was to remove those impressions which still troubled his repose." Obviously there is a great confusion here. Talbot went to the Tower, the first time, six months before Gramont reached London. If he abandoned his hopes after his imprisonment and went to Ireland to forget Elizabeth Hamilton, then he was never a competitor with Gramont for her love. On the other hand, if he ever was a rival to him, it must have been between his own return to London in the summer of 1663 and the Chevalier's marriage to Elizabeth in December. It would not be surprising — in view of the letter to Ossory quoted in the last chapter — to find Talbot still 155 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot aspiring to the hand of Ormonde's niece, in spite of having so seriously offended Ormonde. It is perhaps the simplest solution of the difficulty to suppose that this was the case, and that Gramont or Anthony Hamilton, when the Memoirs were being written, erroneously introduced Talbot's imprisonment and departure to Ireland into the story. Before leaving the subject of Gramont and the Hamiltons we may notice a tale about Frances Jennings's first husband, which may be true, because George is a favourite with his brother-in-law and receives kinder treatment from him than do most people. George Hamilton has been represented in recent literature as a great rake, but there does not appear anything to justify such a portrait. Certainly on the present occasion he was not particularly iniqui- tous. At the time when Richard Talbot returned from Ireland Elizabeth Hamilton was paying a visit of charity to a cousin, Elizabeth Whetenhall, living near East Peckham, in Kent. Thomas Whetenhall the husband, though a layman, was profoundly in- terested in theology and very little in his wife, who being young and very pretty, pined for a change of scene. She persuaded her cousin, at the end of her visit to East Peckham, to take her back to town with her, and on the road they were met by George Hamil- ton and Gramont, who had ridden to meet them. The former, being " both agreeable and handsome, made a great impression upon Mrs. Whetenhall, and 156 The Hamiltons he was struck in his turn. Amid the amusements of London the acquaintance ripened, but at the last the lady began to show scruples. Hamilton immediately- ceased his siege, and Mrs. Whetenhall, extremely mortified, returned to " her cabbages and turkeys at Peckham." Hamilton " suffered himself to be intoxi- cated with visions which unseasonably cooled the vigour of his pursuit and led him astray into another unpro- fitable undertaking " — which was nothing less than falling in love with Frances Stewart, who was causing such uneasiness to Lady Castlemaine just now. According to Gramont, Hamilton proceeded very far indeed in his suit to the little favourite, until at length he was obliged to warn him that such conduct could only ruin him. The young man took the advice very philosophically and ceased his dangerous attentions. It was another and a less easily captivated Frances that was destined to secure his affections finally. 157 CHAPTER II MISTRESS JENNINGS AT COURT WE have now reached again the time of Frances Jennings's arrival in London, though we cannot date this event precisely. The occasion of it was the determination of the Duchess of York to form a new court for herself. Gramont says that she " resolved to see all the young persons that offered themselves and, without any regard to recommendations, to choose none but the handsomest." This sounds as if the Duchess took her maids of honour, so to speak, without a character. Such was not the case, however. Cir- cumstances combined to reduce her household, and in 1664 there appear to have been vacancies for three new maids. Mary Bagot, who was one of the greatest beauties of the day — and at the same time a virtuous woman — in that year married Charles Berkeley, recently created Viscount Fitzharding. Goditha Price had been dismissed in disgrace, and Miss Hobart, whose christian name we do not know and whose morals are painted 158 ■ijiiivinj I'lj /■'. r.nrtohnzi, a/ler the painting by Sir Peter Lely. GODITHA PRICE. Mistress Jennings at Court a very peculiar colour by Gramont, had been removed by the Duchess to other duties in her household, to shelter her from certain scandals which were afloat. The only one of her former maids of honour still re- maining was Mary Blague, who is found still with her in 1669, and must therefore have commended herself better to her mistress than she did to Gramont and to Elizabeth Hamilton, who played so cruel a joke upon her at the masquerade described in the seventh chapter of the Memoirs. In place of those whom she had lost, the Duchess of York took Frances Jennings, Arabella Churchill and Anne Temple. Arabella Churchill, " a tall, pale- faced, skin-and-bone creature," as she is called by Gramont, was possibly the eldest of the three, being born in 1648. Of Miss Temple, who was about the same age as Frances Jennings, Gramont says : " She had a good shape, fine teeth, languishing eyes, a fresh complexion, an agreeable smile, and a lively air. Such was her outward form, but it would be hard to describe the rest ; for she was simple and vain, credulous and suspicious, a coquette and a prude, very self-sufficient and very silly." She and Frances entirely eclipsed the other two maids, while Frances as completely eclipsed her in person and still more excelled her in mental accomplishments. In fact, except with regard to Elizabeth Hamilton, the Memoirs are nowhere so enthusiastic about any beauty of the Court as about Frances Jennings. That with regard to her 159 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot appearance Gramont's description was a true one may be gathered from its close agreement with that written by the French envoy Courtin in 1665.* The surviving portraits of Frances are somewhat disappointing when we compare them with these glowing accounts of her charms. Judged by them alone, she would not stand out among the fair ladies of her time. Clearly they fail to do her justice. Frances Jennings is not the only one of the Restoration beauties whom the Court painters somehow could not manage to catch on their canvases. On the other hand, some whom their con- temporaries considered plain astonish us by their good looks. But Lely, of course, knew how to flatter as well as other and more recent fashionable portrait-painters. Stripped of verbiage, Gramont's description repre- sents Frances as having beautiful flaxen hair and a dazzlingly fair complexion, with an animated expression, which redeemed her from the insipidity often accom- panying such fairness. Her nose and her hands were her weakest points. Nor was her mouth very small, but it was beautifully shaped. The comparison she suggests is " Aurora, or the goddess of spring." " With this amiable person," continues Gramont, " she was full of wit and sprightliness, and all her movements were unaffected and easy. Her conversa- tion was charming when she had a mind to please, subtle and delicate when she was disposed to raillery ; but as she was subject to flights of the imagination • * Quoted below, p. 191. 160 Mistress Jennings at Court and frequently began to speak before she had finished thinking, her utterances did not always convey what she wished." As the little maid of honour was probably not more than fifteen, it is not surprising to hear the last state- ment. It is surprising, however, to find what was expected of girls of fifteen in those days ; and still more surprising how often they answered expectations. It assuredly required a budding woman of the world to go through the temptations of Whitehall without serious scandal. And yet many girls did so (in spite of their " mad freaks," of which Lady Sandwich once talked to Pepys) and reached the haven of marriage without shipwreck on the way. Doubtless, owing to the extremely gossip-loving character of so many of our informants, we get an over-coloured picture of the life of peril through which the maids of honour had to walk. But, even if we make a considerable allowance for credulity and malice in our authorities, we are still bound to admit the grave dangers attending on the office of the maids, and to admire the wisdom which many of them dis- played. Frances Jennings was severely beset from the first and yet is never seen to falter. The Memoirs of Gramont are not wont to overload chastity with praise, but they are warm in their admiration of her conduct, which soon, they say. " left her companions no other admirers but such as remained constant from hopes of success." VOL. I. l6l II Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot Gramont's account of the Duke of York's persecu- tion of Frances and the careless way in which she put aside his attentions and dropped his love-letters is too well known to need quotation. How much truth or fiction there is in it is impossible to say. We do not hear anything about it elsewhere. When the Duke had failed, Gramont makes the King attempt to fascinate her, thinking it unnatural that she should be beyond the power of temptation when, " in all probability, she had not imbibed such severe precepts from the prudence of her mother, who had never tasted anything more delicious than the plums and apricots of St. Albans." (This picture of Mrs. Jennings as the country housewife is scarcely what we should have expected to find in the Memoirs of Gramont ; but evidently they knew nothing about " Mother Haggy.") Charles exerted himself to please ; and he was not only a wit, but a king also, whereas James was neither. " The resolutions of the fair Jennings were commend- able and very judicious ; yet she was wonderfully pleased with wit, and royal majesty prostrate at the feet of a young lady is very persuasive. Mile. Stewart, however, would not consent to the King's project. She immediately took alarm, and desired His Majesty to leave to the Duke his brother the care of tutoring the Duchess's maids of honour and only attend to the management of his own flock " — unless he would consent to her getting married. " This menace being of a serious nature, the King obeyed ; and Mile. Jennings 162 Mistress Jennings at Court had all the honour arising from this adventure, which both added to her reputation and increased the number of her admirers." Among these admirers was soon reckoned Richard Talbot. Seeing that one was attached to the Duke, the other to the Duchess of York, we should have expected them to meet soon after Frances's arrival in London. But Gramont, when he brings them together, says : " I do not know how it was that he had not yet seen her, though he had heard her much praised." When they did meet Talbot found her so exceeding what he had been told that he fell in love with her at once and soon proceeded to a declaration. Before making the acquaintance of Frances Jennings, however, Talbot had first come across another maid of honour — this one attached to the Queen — who was also destined to be his wife. Among the six maids appointed to the household of Catherine of Braganza after her arrival in England occurs the name of " M*^ Boynton." Katherine Boynton was the elder daughter of a Colonel Matthew Boynton, who had lost his life fighting on behalf of Charles in 1651, after a brave defence of Scarborough Castle, and her appointment in the Queen's household was no doubt a recognition of her father's merit, on account of which pensions had been assigned — but apparently not paid with more regularity than most other Restoration pensions — to her mother, herself, and her sister. Judged by her surviving portrait, which is at Malahide Castle, VOL. I. 163 II* Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot Katherine was a beautiful woman. But Gramont, for some unknown reason, is very spiteful about her. In his iirst mention of her he classes her with " Mile. Levingston and Mile. Fielding " as little deserving of mention in the Memoirs * Speaking later of Talbot's endeavour to banish thoughts of Elizabeth Hamilton from his mind, he says that he saw no one in the Queen's new Court whom he thought worthy of his attention. " Mile. Boynton, however, thought him worthy of hers. Her person was slender and delicate, to which a good complexion and large motionless eyes gave at a distance an appearance of beauty, which vanished on closer inspection. She affected to lisp and to languish and to have two or three fainting fits a day. The first time that Talbot cast his eyes upon her she was seized with one of these fits. He was told that she had swooned on his account, believed it, and was eager to afford her assistance ; and ever after that accident he showed her some kindness, more with the intention * Gramont is quite inaccurate in his account of the Queen's maids of honour. He makes the original list consist of Frances Stewart, Miles. Warmester, Bellenden, de la Garde and Bardou. The four last were replaced, he says, when the Queen altered her household, by Miles. Wells, Levingston, Fielding and Boynton. Now we know, from a letter written by Lord Cornbury at Hampton Court on June loth, 1662 {H.M.C. Reports, XII., App., Pt. 9, Beaufort MSS., pp. 52-3), that Gramont's memory played him false. " We have yet a very unsettled household, nothing at all in order," says Cornbury (who was himself in attendance on the Queen). " Not one Lady of the Bed- chamber named besides my Lady Suffolke. . . . The four dressers are fixed, who are my Lady Wood, Lady Scroope, M''^ Fraizer, and M'* La Garde. The Maydes of Honour are likewise in waiting, viz., M'** Cary, M™ Stuart, M"^ Wells, M''* Price, M'''^ Boynton, M''^ Warmestry. The Maydes of the Privy Chamber are but two, my Lady Mary Savage, my Lady Betty Levingstone — my Lord Newbrugh's daughter." 164 Mistress Jennings at Court of saving her life than to express any affection he felt for her." The writer of the above description was evidently no admirer of the type of young lady which was later to become common both in life and in literature. Whether or not the picture was exaggerated there is no means of judging. The only allusion to Katherine Boynton in Pepys's Diary is at least consistent with what Gramont tells of her ; for should we not expect a journey down the Thames to upset so delicate a creature ? Pepys is describing the State visit to Woolwich, on October 26th, 1664, for the launching of the Royal Catherine. The King, Queen and Duke of York were all present, but we do not hear of the Duchess. The behaviour of the Court does not impress the diarist favourably. " M""" Boynton and the Duchesse of Buckingham," he says, " had been very sicke coming by water in the barge (the water being very rough) ; but what silly sport they made with them in very common terms, methought, was very poor, and below what people think these great people say and do." The fragile beauty, according to Gramont, was visibly affected by Talbot's apparent tenderness for her and sufficiently showed him her willingness to become his wife : an event which might have come about now, instead of five years later, had not Frances Jennings appeared on the scene and captivated Talbot's heart to such an extent that he felt compelled to declare his love to her. 165 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot His suit prospered at first. Gramont suggests a trait in Frances's character, of which we shall hear again, and which was prominent in her sister Sarah's. " Talbot," he says, " was possessed of a fine and bril- liant exterior ; his manners were noble and majestic ; in addition to this he was particularly distinguished by the favour and friendship of the Duke ; but his most essential merit in her eyes was his 40,000 livres a year in landed property, besides his employments. All these qualifications came within the requirements of the rules which she had resolved to follow with regard to lovers." She gave Talbot, therefore, a better reception than her earlier admirers, and, with the Duchess's approval, decided to marry him, though " her reason was more favourable to him than her heart." The actual writer of this cynical remark, it must be remembered, was George Hamilton's brother ; and we do not find evidence of any particular friendship between Anthony and Talbot, such as there was between yet another brother, Richard Hamilton, and Talbot later in life. In fact, to judge by the Memoirs of Gramont alone, we may imagine that Anthony cherished some grudge against his connection by mar- riage, to pay off which he gladly collaborated with Gramont after death had safely removed Talbot out of the way. Nevertheless, her suitor's income, added to his good looks and his influence, may well have entered 166 Mistress Jennings at Court into the reckoning of Frances Jennings. Her father's struggles cannot have failed to make her appreciate the value of money, and now she had tasted the luxuries of the life at Court. Talbot was accepted. But he soon spoilt his chances. He did not discover any personal fault in the lady of his choice ; but he did not like her acquaintance with Miss Price, whose dismissal had made one of the vacancies in the Duchess of York's household. Goditha Price suffers badly at the hands of Gramont. She was no beauty, being " short and thick," and, " as her person was not very likely to attract many admirers (which, however, she was resolved to have), she was far from being coy when an opportunity offered." One of her lovers was the Robert Dongan of whom we have already heard. Gramont, who calls him " Duncan," re- lates with gay malice the struggle for him between Miss Price and Miss Blague, and the victory of the former. But Dongan died, leaving Miss Price " plunged in a gulf of despair," and bequeathing to her a sealed box Not having the heart to open this herself, she took it to the Governess, or mother as she was also called, of the maids of honour. The Governess suggested that the Duchess of York should be asked to open the box, which she did, in the presence of a number of ladies. Inside she found all kinds of trinkets which Miss Price had sent to Dongan, and some packets of letters so " tender " that the Duchess, after the public discovery of the scandal, was obliged to dismiss her 167 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot maid. This is Gramont's account ; but as Pepys, two years later, speaks of Miss Price as being " mistress publicly to the Duke of York," we may assume that the Duchess had another reason for wishing to get rid of her. On her dismissal Goditha Price transferred her services to Lady Castlemaine — a proceeding which scarcely tends to vindicate her character. She was, however, a lively young person, full of wit and in- fectious spirits, and understood well how to make herself pleasant. It was not long before she met her successor in the Duchess of York's household and charmed her. Frances Jennings, though not herself gay, in the bad sense of the word, was amused to hear all the gay stories of the Court, and Goditha Price knew them and could tell them vivaciously. Talbot, however, not unnaturally was afraid that this intimacy with Miss Price would damage Frances's reputation. " In the tone of a guardian rather than a lover," says Gramont, " he took upon himself to chide her for the disreputable company she kept. Mile. Jennings was haughty beyond conception when once she took it into her head ; and, as she liked Mile. Price's conversation much better than his, she ventured to ask him to attend to his own affairs, and told him, if he only came over from Ireland to read her lectures, he might take the trouble to go back again as soon as he pleased." Talbot left her abruptly and sulked for a time. Then he altered his conduct and became i68 Mistress Jennings at Court very humble, but without producing any effect upon her. At this point the Memoirs make Harry Jermyn first reappear at Court after his departure in disgrace for having made love to Lady Castlemaine. He had left at the end of 1662, whether actually banished or, as Gramont states, forced by his uncle to anticipate the King's command by a previous retirement into the country. Gramont has not much that is good to say about either uncle or nephew. Henry Jermyn, senior, " a man of no great genius, had raised himself a con- siderable fortune from nothing, and by losing at play and keeping a great table made it appear still greater." Harry, though the youngest of all his nephews, was adopted by him and found his uncle's wealth of great service to him, even in his favourite pursuit of love- making. " For though [the younger] Jermyn was brave, and certainly a gentleman, yet he had neither brilliant actions nor distinguished rank to set him off ; and as for his figure there was nothing advantage- ous in it. He was little ; his head was large and his legs small ; his features were not disagreeable,* but he was affected in his carriage and behaviour. All his wit consisted in expressions learned by rote, which he occasionally employed either in raillery or in love. • Wissing's painting of him at Rushbrooke Hall, Bury St. Edmunds, bears this out. Later in Ufe, when, as Lord Dover, he was about to be attainted for high treason — i. e., for fidelity to James II., a witness before the House of Lords Committee describes him as " an indifferent, gross man, with black hair." {HM.C. Reports, XII., Pi. 6, House of Lords MSS., p. 231.) 169 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot This was the whole foundation of the merit of a man so formidable in amours." No doubt professional jealousy coloured Gramont's description of Harry Jermyn ; for the latter had cer- tainly more conquests to boast of than the Chevalier. Lady Castlemaine, perhaps, was not much of a feather in his cap. But the Duchess of York was assigned to him by the scandalmongers as an admirer, and there can be no question that Mary, Princess of Orange, in her widowhood was considerably attracted by him. When James visited his sister at Breda in 1658, taking his friend with him, rumour coupled their names together so much that Charles heard of it and angrily summoned the young man back to Bruges. An acrimonious correspondence passed between the King and his sister, ending in a violent quarrel when they next met. Charles was not altogether unreason- able, for Mary confessed to her friend Lady Stan- hope that " she was pleased with Harry Jermyn's love and had a kindness for him." In view of the gossip occasioned by Queen Henrietta Maria's depen- dence upon the elder Jermyn, it was certainly undesir- able that there should be any occasion for talk about another royal widow and another Jermyn. The Memoirs of Gramont make Harry Jermyn, spurred by the tales of Frances Jennings's pride and powers of resistance, come back to town just at the time when she had quarrelled with Talbot. She had also heard of him already, through her friend Miss 170 Mistress Jennings at Court Price, and when she saw him, promptly iell in love with him. Jermyn, " not surprised at this victory, though not a little proud of it," felt his heart affected in turn. The Duchess of York, who had taken Frances under her protection ever since she had declined placing herself under that of the Duke, asked Jermyn his inten- tions and was satisfied with his assurances. The young man, moreover, let it be publicly known that he was willing — though he seemed in no hurry — to marry. So Frances received congratulations from everyone on her victory over " the terror of husbands and the plague of lovers." Her triumph, however, was not destined to last long ; and, indeed, neither side seems to have been very serious in the affair, if Gramont (the only writer to mention it) tells the story truly. They tired of each other about the same time. Jermyn, hearing of the naval raid planned under Prince Rupert against the Dutch — that " Guinea Expedition " which never sailed any farther on the way to Guinea than Ports- mouth harbour — offered himself as a volunteer and went to Frances to tell her about it. But his manner of paying his addresses, " as though by habit," had already disillusioned her, and now his resolve to join the expedition without previously consulting her com- pleted her disgust. When he acquainted her with his " heroical project," so far from giving him an oppor- tunity for consoling her, she rallied him unmercifully. Nothing could be more glorious, she told him, for him 171 Little Jennings and Figliting Dick Talbot who had triumphed over the liberty of so many in Europe than to extend his conquests to other regions of the world, and she advised him to bring home all his female captives to replace the beauties who would die of grief for him in his absence. Gramont also makes her write a burlesque epistle to Jermyn from " a shepherdess in despair," in imitation of Ovid's epistle from Ariadne to Theseus, of which he says that an English verse translation had lately been published. But here Gramont anticipates by sixteen years the publication of the first English verse translation of the Epistles, so that the value of this testimony to the wit and education of Frances Jennings is at least doubtful. Realising that Frances no longer cared for him, and confounded at his dismissal, Jermyn felt his love revived and even increased. But it was in vain. She continued to ridicule him, and ridicule is not a weapon which Don Juan cares to face. On October 5th, 1664, Prince Rupert sailed down the Thames in the Henrietta and proceeded to Portsmouth. Here the fleet stopped, not being sufficiently strong to put out to sea in face of the Dutch warships in the Channel. There was not even a brush with the enemy. The only danger run was from smallpox, which carried off one of Jermyn's personal companions at Portsmouth. Early in December the idea of the raid was definitely aban- doned, and the Duke of York, who had taken over the command from Prince Rupert, returned to London. 172 Mistress Jennings at Court The inglorious end of the " heroical project " probably inspired the sharp tongue of Frances Jennings to further gibes against the bold volunteer. Jermyn did not at once give up all hope. But, " notwith- standing all the efforts and attentions which he prac- tised to regain her affections, she would never more hear of him." Thus within the first year of her arrival at Court, not only had the country maiden of fifteen succeeded in putting aside the compromising attentions of the King and his brother, but she had also engaged herself in turn to two rising young men and sent them about their business. Such a record in itself is remarkable ; in fact, may almost be called admirable when we con- sider what the careers of so many of her fellow maids of honour were like. And we shall see that she con- tinued for more than another year in the atmosphere so fatal to the reputation of beauties without giving occasion to any worse reproach than that her high spirits made her easily led into adventure by a gay com- panion. Richard Talbot early discovered this weak- ness in her ; but it did not prevent him from marry- ing her in the end and living with her happily, as far as we know, for the last ten years of his life. The period of her youth was pre-eminently an age of scandal, and many a good woman was foully slandered ; yet to the last only one of the bitterest enemies of her second husband ventured to breathe a suspicion about her chastity. 173 CHAPTER III TALBOT IN THE TOWER AGAIN ALTHOUGH Jermyn had suffered the same fate as himself at the hands of the coquettish young maid of honour, Richard Talbot was not in a position to take immediate advantage of his rival's humiliation to renew his suit. For now he came into conflict again with the Duke of Ormonde over Irish affairs. In the spring of 1664 the Lord-Lieutenant had received a summons from the King to cross over to England, and he quitted Dublin at the end of May, leaving his son Ossory as Deputy. The matter requiring his pre- sence in London was still the slowly dragging Settle- ment of Ireland. On his arrival he was set to work with a committee on the Bill of Explanation which he and the Irish Privy Council had drafted at the King's command the previous year. This laborious task occupied Ormonde and his colleagues until the May of 1665, so numerous were the petitions and provisos to be considered. 174 Talbot in the Tower again The collision between Talbot and Ormonde was not long in taking place. The committee commenced its sittings in August. Now Talbot had been working hard since his arrival in England with the ^^i 8,000 in bonds, etc. Carte, while censuring him for his behaviour toward some of his clients, admits that he was not negligent " in cases of real difficulty, and where there was real guilt of the party as an obstacle to restitution." To prove that a former rebel ought to be included under the head of innocent Papists was obviously a hard matter, and of course among those who had appKed to Talbot and the other " under- takers " were many such. It was to hide the fact of their guilt that they had been willing to promise so much money to their patrons. One of Talbot's clients was a certain James Allen, of St. Woolston's, alias Allen's Court. He had succeeded in getting on his behalf a decree from the Court of Claims, restoring him to his estate.* But he only managed this, his enemies said, by the corruption of witnesses before the Court.f Unfortunately for him, the case interested Hugh Montgomery, second Earl of Mount-Alexander * Allen proceeded to sell it to Lord Berkeley and Richard Talbot {Calendar of State Papers, Ireland, 1663-5, under date April 13th, 1663). Talbot's anxiety about the matter is therefore easy to understand. t It is but fair to Talbot to state that he alleged corruption on the other side. He writes to Bennet on February 4th, 1663, concerning Allen: " Though he was as innocent a person as could be, yet the horrid practices of my Lord of Mount-Alexander suborning witnesses against him will, I fear, prove him nocent." Mount-Alexander, he says, is " the greatest cowhyerd living." (Calendar of State Papers, Ireland, 1663-5.) Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot — who was in possession of Allen's property. Lord Mount-Alexander by some means got hold of some letters from Talbot to his brother Peter and to Sir Brian O'Neil, which revealed the fraud that had been practised. These he laid before Ossory and the Privy Council in Dublin, demanding a reversal of the decree of the Court of Claims. About the same time that Ormonde's son in Ireland was asked to disturb Talbot's work on behalf of Allen, Ormonde himself in England made a suggestion to the Privy Council that a clause should be inserted in the Bill of Explanation to annul all decrees of restitution already obtained by bribes and perjury. Talbot, taking this suggestion to be aimed at him and his conduct in the Allen case particularly, was foolish enough to make public threats against the Lord-Lieu- tenant's life ; taking care, says Carte, that the Duke should hear them. His brothers, too, " lay and eccle- siastical," echoed the threats. Ormonde disregarded them, believing — no doubt correctly — that they were only intended to frighten him into withdrawing his proposed clause. The publicity of the outrage, how- ever, as in 1661, made it impossible for the King* * Charles was first told of it, according to Clarendon, by Ormonde's brother- in-law, the Earl of Clancarty (the former Donogh MacCarty, Viscount Mus- kerry) ; and it was Sir Robert Talbot, anxious to keep his brother out of more serious trouble, who first went to Clancarty. With regard to the conduct of some other members of the family, there are two instructive letters to Ormonde in the summer of 1664 from one Patrick Moore, whose duty it was to keep the Lord-Lieutenant posted as to affairs in Dublin during his absence. Moore was friendly with John Talbot, who, though busying himself ip finding 176 Talbot in the Tower again to treat the matter thus hghtly. He accordingly apphed to the Lord Chancellor for his advice as to what should be done. And here Clarendon's Continuation supplements Carte's account. Clarendon relates that the King and the Duke of York came together to him, the former telling him, " with a very visible trouble in his countenance," how Dick Talbot had a resolution to assassinate the Duke of Ormonde, and had sworn in the presence of two or three persons that he would do it to avenge some injuries which he pretended the Duke had done his family. He had said that he would rather fight Ormonde, who he knew would be willing enough ; but that he should never be able to bring to pass, and so he would take his revenge in any way that offered. " And every body knew that the man had courage and wickedness enough," says Clarendon. The Chancellor considered Richard Talbot's conduct scandalous enough to deserve exemplary punishment, but he advised moderation. He did not believe Ormonde in any present danger of his life, but he was afraid that what would happen would be that Talbot, after first denying his threats, would repent and, clients for his brothers among the dispossessed Irish, was apparently willing to make certain disclosures concerning them. On August 13th Moore says: "I have perused some letters written to John Talbot by his brother Peter from Court" — Peter had ventured back into England, but was in a cautious mood — " wherein he writes that Thomas Talbot so exclaims against Your Grace that they are all like to be lost, and that he wonders he is not banished." In the other letter Moore relates, on John Talbot's authority, that Lord Orrery had advised " Dick " at least to show Ormonde a " good outside." VOL. I. 177 12 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot giving any satisfaction that might be asked of him, obtain the forgiveness of the King and the Duke of York ; for he represents James as being equally angry with Charles. He, therefore, was in favour of hush- ing the matter up rather than calling attention to it only to inflict some light and ordinary punishment. The King, however, protested that there need be no fear of inadequate punishment. The offence was unpardonable, and both he and the Duke had deter- mined to take the opportunity of freeing themselves from the whole family's importunity. " All the brothers were naughty fellows," said Charles, " and had no good meaning." He went on to speak severely of Father Peter and Father Tom, while the Duke spoke against Dick. Both asserted that they would be in great ease by the absence of them all. If Clarendon's recollection of this interview be accurate, it is tantalizing that he does not tell us why the Duke was so provoked with his Gentleman of the Bedchamber at this moment that he was thoroughly in accord with the King as to the necessity for stern action. He merely says that he " knew there was something else, which was not so fit to be mentioned, that had offended them both as much." The Duke of York had only recently returned to town from the fleet. We do not hear that Talbot had gone with him when he went down to Portsmouth in November to supersede Prince Rupert. But, even if he did not go, this does not necessarily show that he was then 178 Talbot in the Tower again in the Duke's displeasure, as he might well have obtained leave to remain in London to look after his clients' interests. Still Clarendon, prejudiced though he was, would not have invented the circumstance of the Duke's anger against his favourite, so we must allow that Talbot had managed to give offence to James, without attempting to guess how. Seeing that the royal brothers were resolute in their intention. Clarendon advised that Dick should be sent to the Tower, and that the Privy Council should be told the story the next day, when it would no doubt order a prosecution. " Thereby the gentleman would be put in such a condition that he should not trouble the Court with his attendance ; and other men should by his example find that their tongues are not their own, to be employed according to their own malicious pleasures." The same night, says Clarendon, Talbot was sent to the Tower, both King and Duke declaring them- selves determined on the full rigour of the law. The warrant still survives, dated December 22nd, 1664, to the Lieutenant of the Tower for the imprisonment of " Richard Talbot, esq., committed for high mis- demeanours."* * Gramont's story of Talbot and his gambling debt, if there be any basis of fact in it, must belong to this period ; for Gramont was not in England in 1 66 1. He says : " Talbot played deep and was tolerably forgetful. The ChevaUer de Gramont won three or four thousand guineas of him the very evening on which he was committed to the Tower. That accident had made him forget his usual punctuality in paying the next morning whatever he had lost overnight ; and this debt so far escaped his memory that it never once occurred VOL. I, 179 12* Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot Ormonde's rash opponent was likely to spend much longer in the Tower on his account this time than he had spent three years before. And not only he, but also two more of his family were involved in the punish- ment ; for Carte says that Sir Robert and " the other brother " (Thomas, it appears) were simultaneously sent to the Fleet prison. This is the only instance of which we hear of Sir Robert Talbot falling into disgrace in the company of his juniors. Possibly he had allowed himself to be carried away by momentary irritation to the extent of speaking indiscreetly against Ormonde ; though we must remember that Clarendon makes him already alienated from Ormonde because he had not asked sufficient on his behalf from the King. It is clear, however, that Ormonde had not lost his kindness for Sir Robert, for he now appealed to the King and persuaded him to release him before the Christmas holidays were over. Dick's Christmas was perforce spent in jail. But his friends were not idle on his behalf. Clarendon says that from the first day of his imprisonment those most closely attached to the King and the Duke of York, in violation of the rule against such civilities being paid to persons under His Majesty's displeasure, to him after he was released." So the ChevaHer took an occasion to remind him poUtely. Talbot was going on a journey to Ireland, when Gramont came to bid him farewell, and besought him not to fall sick on the road— or, if he did, to remember him in his will. Talbot at once recollected the debt and, embracing him, promised to send the money instantly. " The Chevalier possessed a thousand of these genteel ways of refreshing the memories of those who were apt to be forgetful in their payments." i8o Talbot in the Tower again presumed to visit the prisoner and to censure those who had advised his commitment. And after a few days, when it was thought that the Duke's passion had in some degree abated, Lord Berkeley summoned courage to tell him that his reputation was suffering for allowing a servant so near to him to be imprisoned for a few hasty words, to which he had been provoked. Berkeley said also that it was well known to be the doing of the Chancellor, an enemy of all the Talbots and no great friend of any of the Duke's servants, who might expect in a short time to be few in number if he had power to remove them. The bystanders supported Berkeley ; and though the Duke did not at once yield, his resolution was weakened. The same method was then tried with the King. Finally the brothers grew weary of their severity, and appealed to Ormonde to forgive his enemy. They had no difficult task here. Although he had previously made no effort on behalf of any but Sir Robert, now Ormonde " disdained to make himself a prosecutor in such a transgression. And so the prisoner returned to Whitehall, with the advantage which men who have been unjustly im- prisoned usually receive : and all men thought he triumphed over the Chancellor." The approximate date of Talbot's release is fixed by a letter written on January 28th, 1665, frorn Sir John Perceval in Dublin to Robert Southwell. " We hear," says Perceval, " that R. Talbott is out of the Tower, the two friars being taken and owning the words and 181 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot acquitting him." The DubHn version of the affair, it seems, was not quite the same as Clarendon's ; and we cannot tell who were the two friars who owned the words, though one may be Father Thomas. Richard Talbot came out of the Tower, after about a month's detention, with no sense of defeat. He found himself strong enough, moreover, to get the decree in favour of Allen confirmed, the claim of Lord Mount-Alexander being settled by compensation being awarded him in a clause of the Bill of Explanation. Nor did the affair damage the rest of the family ; at any rate, not Sir Robert. When Ormonde, before the end of the sittings of the committee on the Bill of Explanation, presented to the King in council some lists of persons who had been recommended to him as worthy of His Majesty's grace and favour, among the five men to whose recommendations Ormonde had listened one was Sir Robert. The exertions of the youngest of the Talbot brothers on behalf of the Irish concerned in the Settlement were not yet over, as we shall see. But for the present there was nothing more for him to do. The com- mittee having finished its discussions on May 26th, and the King having inserted in the Bill twenty " nominees " from the lists submitted to him, Ormonde left England and on September 3rd landed again in Ireland. The Irish Parliament passed the Bill of Explanation as presented to it, and on December 23rd, 1665, the royal assent was given and it became law. 182 Talbot in the Tower again All that remained was its execution, for which a com- mission was appointed, one of whom was Sir Winston Churchill again. So the Settlement was at last legally effected — a weary compromise which pleased no section, least of all that which it most favoured. The Protestants of the Soldiers' and Adventurers' party, who were called upon to give up comparatively little of what they claimed, were very dissatisfied ; and at the begin- ning of 1666 there was a " fanatic " plot in Munster, soon followed by a mutiny of troops in Ulster. The Roman Catholics, who were heavy losers by the Settlement, worked to upset it by other ways than by futile rebellion. And the youngest of the Talbots, hot-headed though he had shown himself on various occasions, was able to adapt himself to the needs of the time. " Fighting Dick Talbot " had as keen a liking for the methods of diplomacy as either of his professionally peaceful brothers. 183 CHAPTER IV THE DIVERSIONS OF A MAID OF HONOUR FRANCES JENNINGS had clung so firmly to her friendship with Miss Price that she had for its sake broken off her engagement with Talbot. It was not long before she paid the penalty for her attachment to so volatile and reckless a person ; though it is improbable that, at her age, she therefore thought any less of her dangerous friend or put an immediate end to the intimacy between them. The scrape into which Frances was led by Goditha Price is a very well-known story, thanks to the Memoirs of Gramont. But it is necessary to mention it here, if at less length than Gramont devotes to it, because it has been made the foundation of an attack on the moral character of the younger girl. The occasion of the adventure was one of the freaks of that extraor- dinary character John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester. During his short life of thirty-three years Rochester made himself famous for his wit, his literary achieve- ments (however little they may appeal to modern 184 From an eiigraring, after a paintimj hy Sir Peter Lelii. FRANCES JENNINGS, DUCHESS OF TYRCONNEL. The Diversions of a Maid of Honour taste), his masquerading, and his debauchery. In 1665 he was only eighteen years of age, but he had already taken his degree at Oxford and spent a year or two in travels through France and Italy. When he came to Court he had the recommendations of his late father's services to Charles I. and his own brilliant qualities. His ready tongue appealed to Charles II. and his courtiers, and in return for the amusement which he gave them they initiated him into the life of pleasure which occupied so much of their days. But his satire was too undisciplined and frequently got him into disgrace. At the beginning of 1665 he was in retirement at his country seat at Adderbury, Oxfordshire, having been banished for the third time, according to Gramont. Bishop Burnet (who had an odd friendship with him, imagined that he prepared his soul for death, and wrote a biography of him) merely says that Rochester was " under an unlucky accident, which obliged him to keep out of the way." He wearied of his exile before he was re- called by the King and came up to town to live incog- nito, making himself agreeable to the merchants and their wives and railing before them against the ways of the Court — a favourite topic with the City people, as we may see from Pepys's Diary. But this disguise did not satisfy Rochester for long ; so he suddenly changed his personality again, took rooms at a gold- smith's house in Tower Street, and gave himself out as Alexander Bendo, an Italian wonderworker, with 185 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot infallible remedies (for women in particular) and a knowledge of palmistry and the stars. His fame quickly spread from the City to Whitehall, first to the servants and then through them to their mistresses. Miss Price's woman came to her with a tale of the facts which he had read from her hand. Goditha passed the news on to Frances, who was at once fired with a desire to go to the magician's. " The enter- prise was certainly very rash," says Gramont, " but nothing was too rash for Miss Jennings, who was of the opinion that a woman might despise appearances, provided she was in reality virtuous." It was necessary, of course, for them to disguise themselves for their excursion into the City, and Frances needed a good disguise to hide her brilliant fairness. They decided to go as orange-girls. Orange- selling in those days (though probably lucrative, with oranges at sixpence apiece) was scarcely a reputable pursuit, owing to the freedom with which the gentle- men were wont to treat the sellers. Dressed in their novel attire and with a basket each, the two slipped through St. James's Park and took a hackney-coach at Whitehall Gate. The Duchess of York was going to the theatre that evening, and had excused Frances from attendance at her request. As the coach passed the playhouse. Miss Price was seized with a fresh idea, and suggested that they should go in and sell their oranges under the very eyes of the Duchess and the rest of the Court. Frances accepted the challenge at once. i86 The Diversions of a Maid of Honour The Memoirs of Gramont have now a graphic account — vivid enough to have been written from notes made at the time or to have been invented by a clever romancer — of how the girls reached the theatre door and offered their wares ; first to the handsome Henry Sidney, soon to be Master of the Horse to the Duchess of York, who was too busy adjusting his own curls to attend to anything else ; and then to Harry Killi- grew. This latter young man, whom some of his contemporaries liked so much, but whom the refer- ences in Pepys alone suffice to prove a complete black- guard, replied, as might have been expected, with offensive suggestions to Frances. Upset and agitated, she had no longer any wish but to get home. Miss Price took her away hurriedly from the theatre, but, being still eager to continue the adventure, persuaded her not to go back yet. So they took their coach again and drove on to the City. They had almost reached the astrologer's in Tower Street, and had already ordered the coachman to pull up, when by ill chance there appeared on the scene Henry Brounker, just starting on his way back from dinner with a city friend. This man, a remote connection by marriage of the Jennings family, is described by Clarendon as " never notorious for anything but the highest degree of impudence and stooping to the most infamous offices." Clarendon is supported by Pepys (who at this very time was terribly afraid that Brounker would get the post of treasurer at the Navy Office, which he 187 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot wanted, and obtained, himself) and Gramont. The last-named, after speaking of Brounker's disagreeable character and his passion for women — his harem at Sheen Abbey, the former Carthusian Abbey at Rich- mond, was a byword — concludes with the strange remark : " In other respects he was a very honest man and the best chess-player in England." Whatever Brounker's strength at chess, it Vv^as cer- tainly safer for an opponent to meet him across the board than for unprotected women to meet him in the street at night. When the two companions saw him they tried to escape his eye and drove on a little way. But he followed them, and when they alighted came up to them. Gramont says that he noticed that their shoes and stockings were better than women of their assumed station usually wore. He had first taken them for a girl and her " mother-abbess." But their endeavours to avoid him and their disregard of his advances caused him to look so hard that he recog- nised them. He did not betray this fact at once, but tormented them awhile, releasing them at last with an enigmatic remark, from which they could not tell whether he knew them or not. The oranges then brought down on them the final disaster. They had handed their baskets to the coach- man when they got out. Having shaken off Brounker and abandoned all thought of visiting the astrologer, they returned to the coach, to find the man in the midst of a mob of young ruffians, who were trying i88 The Diversions of a Maid of Honour to steal the fruit. With difficulty they persuaded him to abandon these and to drive them home, assailed with low abuse as they fled. They then got back to Whitehall, vowing never to attempt a like adventure again. In comparison with Gramont's elaborate tale, Pepys's account in his entry for February 2ist, 1665, is very brief. Lady Sandwich, his cousin's wife, talks to him that day of " what mad freaks the Mayds of Honour at Court have," and tells how " M^^ Jenings, one of the Duchesse's mayds, the other day dressed herself like an orange wench, and went up and down and cried oranges ; till falling down, or by such accident, though in the evening, her fine shoes were discovered, and she put to a good deal of shame." It is upon this orange-girl story — and this story alone — that Lord Macaulay builds his statement that Frances Jennings was " distinguished by beauty and levity even among the crowd of beautiful faces and light characters who adorned and disgraced Whitehall during the wild carnival of the Restoration." A more preposterous deduction from the silly escapade of a girl of fifteen, led away by an older companion, could scarcely have been imagined. Macaulay continues : " Sober people predicted that a girl of so little dis- cretion and delicacy would not easily find a husband." This is an obvious reference to Lady Sandwich, whom Pepys records to have observed that few men would venture on these maids of honour for wives. Now 189 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot Lady Sandwich was doubtless an estimable lady ; but she was forty years of age and scarcely likely therefore to look with sympathy on the frivolity of fifteen. Yet she only describes the affair as " a mad freak " — which is a very suitable description of it. If anything be required to disprove the imputation that Frances Jennings was pre-eminent among " the light characters who adorned and disgraced Whitehall during the wild carnival of the Restoration," it may be found in the next episode in her career, in which she figures, on unimpeachable authority, as an innocent child, indulged and petted by the Court in general. In the April of 1665 Hugues de Lionne, Foreign Secretary to Louis XIV., sent over on a visit to Eng- land his first-born, Louis, Marquis de Berny, aged about nineteen, who, he thought, would be the better for such polish as he might acquire at Whitehall, then recognised as the centre of the polite world. The young man was far from brilliant, and his father put him in the charge of Courtin, one of the celehre Am- bassade which strove in vain from April to November to prevent the unofficial Anglo-Dutch hostilities ex- tending so far as to involve the intervention of France, at this time bound by treaty to help the Dutch in case of war. Courtin and Cominges, the regular French Ambassador in London, bestowed on the youth a paternal care, as is proved by the most enter- taining letters preserved in the French Foreign Office amid much that is of the greatest political importance. 190 The Diversions of a Maid of Honour Louis de Berny received a warm welcome at White- hall on account of his father's eminent position in France, and was duly pleased with it. He also lost no time before starting his education as a man of the world. The first letter which interests us is one dated May 24th (new style), 1665, in which Courtin tells the father of his son's good beginning : " He is rather bashful, but we have put courage into him and ... he has at last made his declaration, which was well received by one of the prettiest girls in England, Mademoiselle Genins, who is of the household of the Duchess of York. She is small, but has a fine figure, a splendid complexion, hair like Madame de Longueville's (you will remember), quick brilliant eyes, and the finest and whitest skin I have ever seen. The Duchess, who is somewhat severe towards others, finds the pair so well matched that she is the first to favour them. The Queen-Mother, King and Court are of the same opinion. People laugh, but I assure you that the affair progresses well, and that you need feel no anxiety, for you may be certain I will give due warning if our cavalier goes too far. His gallantry has just reached the right point to make him a man of the world. I will let you know how things go." Gifts of strawberries were sent every evening by the young Frenchman to his lady-love, and he himself 191 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot was sick once from an over-indulgence in cream — which at least suggests that he shared the repasts. But the envoy, while he smiled benignantly on such conduct, recognised that de Berny had come to White- hall for polish, not for an entanglement. Only four days after he had written the above-quoted letter, Courtin remembers his promise to give due warning if the cavalier goes too far. On May i6th/26th the Duchess of York went down to Harwich to meet the Duke, who was expected there with the fleet after a coasting raid along the Dutch coast. Anne took her Court with her, and de Berny was anxious to accompany her in order to see as much as possible of Frances Jennings. He was not allowed to have his way, however. " I opposed your son's plan of visiting the fleet with the Duchess of York," wrote Courtin to Lionne on May 28th (new style). " He is of so ardent a temperament that I did not think it right to trust him for five or six days, from morning to night, in the company of a young lady, with whom he might perhaps get on more inti- mate terms than I could wish." Instead of flirting with Frances, de Berny was set to write to the French Ambassador at the Hague, on lines laid down by Courtin, informing him of the progress of political affairs in England. The assistance of Cominges was also called for to keep the youth employed and out of mischief. To judge from what he wrote, Cominges looked on 192 The Diversions of a Maid of Honour the love affair with a more indulgent eye than Courtin. He confessed in a June despatch to Lionne that he had not the heart to cut it short when it might make a man of the hoy, " especially as he could not make a better choice than his little mistress." Already, he said, he noticed more ease in de Berny's conversation, a greater care of his person, and less shyness in society. But sufficient discipline was exercised over de Berny to make him at least restive, and he showed this in a peculiar way. " Your son is faithless," wrote Courtin on June 8th, " and the King has discovered it. The truth is, as I have told you, that he felt his honour touched, and did not wish us to be suspicious of his exceeding due bounds. So there is nothing to fear on this score." The one pity was that, on his own confession, de Berny could only love young ladies, whereas, according to Courtin, persons of his age should be taken in hand by the mature to cure them of their bashfulness and slowness to act. How the faithlessness of Lionne's son was shown we are told in another of Courtin's letters. " Your son," he says, " will inform you what Mistris Bointon is like.* He pretended to be in love with her to spite Mistris Genins. It is true Mistris Genins was quite in the wrong. She would not let him kiss her hands, but in the end she saw that it was better to yield her hands than to lose her gallant, and so the quarrel was made up." * Courtin himself calls her very pretty. VOL. I. 193 13 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot It is certainly curious that, in order to pique the maiden who afterwards became Richard Talbot's second wife, Louis de Berny should have elected to flirt with her who was to be his first. We may at least take this as a tribute to the good looks of both ladies. This innocent love-making, however, was brought to an end very soon. The plague intervened, and although the French ambassadors stayed on to accom- pany the Court in its flight, first to Hampton Court, then to Salisbury, and finally to Oxford, it was thought advisable to send Lionne's son home to France, ad- vantage being taken of the fact that the Queen-Dowager Henrietta Maria was leaving for France at the same time. Before the Court left Whitehall at the end of June, according to the English calendar, de Berny had made his farewells. On July I2th (new style) Courtin writes to Lionne, from the temporary lodgings of the French envoys at Kingston, that on the previous Thursday evening the King of England had greatly teased " Mistris Genins " about her admirer, causing her to blush and to appear more beautiful than ever. As for de Berny, the King related to Courtin that he had asked one of the courtiers who saw him off at Calais to let him know how Frances looked on the day he left. Charles declared he himself had never seen such a picture of desolation and woe as the young gallant made on the Queen-Mother's yacht. Lionne had already received a letter written jointly by three of the Embassy, telling him of his son's great 194 The Diversions of a Maid of Honour success at the English Court, where he would be much missed, and assuring him that de Berny was " esteemed by the King and the two Queens, and dearly loved by the prettiest girl in England." Courtin was also sure of the little lady's love — or, at least, said he was. Nevertheless, we need not suppose that her heart was deeply touched, though she may easily have been flattered at the addresses of the celebrated Lionne's son. Frances had played her part in the education of the Marquis, to the satisfaction of his various guardians. Cominges wrote to Paris that he hoped the trip would not have hurt de Berny, and that his exacting father would find a pleasing change in his attitude towards life. But whatever Lionne thought of him on his return home, the young man completely failed to make his mark in the world. He married a cousin, and after a fall which injured his head became incapable of managing his own afiFairs. As far as Frances Jennings was concerned, however, he passed entirely out of her life at the end of June, 1665. After the departure of Louis de Berny, a former suitor reappeared to plead his love again to the maid of honour. After his second imprisonment in the Tower Richard Talbot is lost to view for a while, in spite of the bold manner in which we are assured that he carried off the affair when he had obtained his release. We do not know whether he was present at the great naval victory of the Duke of York over the VOL. I. 195 13* Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot Dutch on June 3rd. George Hamilton we hear of as one of the volunteers who joined the fleet just before the battle. Talbot may have been present in attendance on the Duke on board the Royal Charles and seen the tragic death, at their master's very side, of Falmouth and Muskerry. He may, too, have been one of those who, on June i6th, returned with the Duke, as Pepys says, " all fat and lusty, and ruddy by being in the sun." But we cannot say for certain that he was with James until after the flight from London to escape the plague. It is on the northern progress of the Duke and Duchess that we meet with Talbot again. While the King and Queen went westward to Salisbury, James and his wife visited York. They came down on August 5 th, according to the Memoirs of Sir John Reresby ; * on September 23rd the Duke left for Oxford, followed soon by the Duchess. No attention need be paid to Gramont's ridiculous story of the Duchess having * A very entertaining letter from Sir William Coventry to Lord Arlington, written from Leicester on August ist, describes the first part of this journey. At Northampton the Duke of York declined an invitation to breakfast at Lord Banbury's ; but his lordship stopped the coach as it passed and, being again refused, " laid hold of His Highness's leg and pulled so hard that he had almost drawn off his shoe." This rhetoric, with the trouble he expressed, induced their Royal Highnesses to go in, where a table was prepared with sweetmeats and fruit. He was importunate with the Duchess to see his lady, who was lying in, but as she was not ready to be seen the Duchess broke loose, with a promise to see her on her return. Coventry adds that " Lady Yerbury's sisters [Mary and Margaret Blague], M"* Jennings and M'* Temple have impaired their beauty by heat and swelling in the face," and considers this " a providence to preserve those who approach them frequently from danger." {Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1664-5.) 196 The Diversions of a Maid of Honour urged her husband to go to York, in order the better to hide an intrigue with Henry Sidney. But it may be noted that Gramont says that if the move to York was agreeable to her (" to avoid exposing the indina- tions of her heart to the scrutiny of so many in- quisitors "), it was also far from displeasing to any of her household except Miss Jennings. And Miss Jennings was displeased, he says, because Jermyn was not one of the party. (Gramont has forgotten that he made Frances have nothing more to say to Jermyn after the time of the Guinea Expedition ; or, rather, he has so forgotten the course of events that he places the Guinea Expedition of 1664 after the ride to York, which was really a year later.) Jermyn's absence was caused by an illness which he had contracted through an attempt to ride a horse twenty miles in one hour for a wager of five hundred pounds. Frances had therefore to go to York without seeing Jermyn, but " had the gratification of venting her ill-humour throughout the journey by appearing displeased with everything which seemed to please the rest of the company." In view of Gramont's confusion of dates with regard to Talbot's courtship of Frances Jennings, it is impos- sible to tell how much belief should be given to the details of his account of the ride to York, and what happened after it. The account, however, is amusing enough to reproduce in part, and we may presume it to have some foundation in fact. On the journey, 197 Little Jennings and Fighting Dick Talbot Talbot, says Gramont, flattering himself that his rival's absence might produce some change in his favour, was attentive to every movement of Frances ; while it was contrary to her disposition to remain long in a serious humour, and her natural vivacity led her into witty sallies which encouraged him to hope that she would soon forget Jermyn and remember that he himself was the first whose passion she had encouraged. He kept his distance, however, being of opinion that it ill became an injured lover to betray the least weakness. But " Mile. Jennings was so far from thinking of his resentment that she did not even recollect he had ever paid his addresses to her ; and her thoughts being wholly taken up with the poor sick man, she conducted herself towards Talbot as if they had never had anything to say to each other. It was to him that she usually gave her hand in getting into or out of the coach. She conversed more readily with him than with any other person, and without intending it did every- thing to make the company believe her cured of her passion for Jermyn in favour of her former lover. Talbot seemed convinced of this like the rest, and, thinking it proper now to act another part in order to let her know that his sentiments towards her were still the same, he resolved to address her in the most tender and affectionate manner upon the subject. Fortune seemed to favour him and smoothe the way for his intended discourse. He was alone with her in 198 The Diversions of a Maid of Honour her chamber ;* and, what was better still, she was rallying him about Mile. Boynton, saying that ' they were undoubtedly much obliged to him for his attend- ance upon them on their journey, while poor Mile. Boynton had fainting fits at least twice a day for love of him.' " Talbot was just on the point of protesting his continued love for his hostess, when Anne Temple came in with a satirical verse epistle by Lord Rochester, in which he touched on the subject of Miss Jennings, and said that " Talbot had struck terror among the people of God by his gigantic stature, but Jermyn, like a little David, had vanquished the great Goliath." Frances at first laughed heartily at this, but afterwards sighed tenderly, " Poor little David ! " and turned her head aside to shed a few tears. Talbot, stung to the quick, went abruptly out of the room, " vowing never to think any more of a giddy girl, whose conduct was regulated neither by sense nor by reason ; but," concludes Gramont, " he did not keep his resolution." This is the last incident of which we hear concerning Frances Jennings and Richard Talbot together until they meet again, widow and widower, in Paris, thirteen years later. Talbot went to Dublin ; and soon after Frances accompanied her mistress to Oxford for the long visit of the Court there to avoid the plague. * This was no sign of levity of character on the part of Frances, for it was not considered improper for ladies at Court to receive male visitors in their bed- rooms. 199 CHAPTER V TWO MARRIAGES WE have heard little of George Hamilton since he took his friend Gramont's advice to abandon his dangerous flirtation with Frances Stewart. In spite of the large part which he plays in the memoirs of his brother-in-law, his name does not figure very frequently in other contemporary writers during the period between the Restoration and his marriage. Pepys, for instance, only mentions him casually on January 20th, 1664, with his elder brother under the name of " the Hambletons," who, like Fitzharding and Sandwich, are reputed lovers of Lady Castlemaine. But George advanced steadily in favour. The King made him a grant at the beginning of 1664, of the curious post of joint licenser of peddlars in Ireland, and on April 30th, of the same year, ordered that Sir Charles Sedley's fine of a thousand marks, inflicted on him by the Court of King's Bench for " mis- 200 Photo hii Emery Walkfi\ iifler t)ie pirl are by an iinknvictt iirlist in lln' yational Portrait Oollery. SIR GEORGE