The Queen’s House Page 3

  Pepys, then a civil servant in the Admiralty, came to report to the minister at Goring House on 12 July 1666. Apparently Arlington was ‘not up being not long since married, so after walking up and down the house, being the house I was once at at Hartlib’s sister’s wedding, and it is a very fine house and finely finished’.15

  In 1667 Arlington acquired another vast mansion at Euston, near Newmarket, Suffolk, where he could entertain the King, his courtiers and mistresses during race meetings. On 23 June 1667 Pepys reported that a friend was ‘concerned by my Lord Arlington in the looking after some buildings that he is about in Norfolk, where my Lord is laying out a great deal of money …’16

  It was here that the King was to bring his new French mistress, Louise de Kéroualle, for a mock marriage.

  In his two houses, Euston and Goring House, Arlington is said to have employed 1,000 servants. According to Pepys, there was ‘nothing almost but bawdry at court from top to bottom’: an ambitious man had to accommodate himself to the times. Even the upright Evelyn watched with fascination the King’s frolics at Euston and Goring House. Arlington was, Pepys observed, the confidant of the King’s ‘pleasure and much in favour with one of the King’s mistresses’, Barbara Villiers, Countess of Castlemaine (later Duchess of Cleveland), the imperious beauty who dominated Charles II for many years. It was this close connection with both the King and his mistress that provided Arlington with his greatest political coup. On I August 1672 the King gave his natural son by the Countess of Castlemaine as husband to Arlington’s only daughter and sole heir, Isabella. Isabella was only five years old at the time and her husband Henry Fitzroy, 1st Duke of Grafton, was nine, a rough, though handsome boy. Evelyn watched the marriage ceremony with concern and disapproval.

  I was at the marriage of Lord Arlington’s only daughter (a sweet child if ever there was any) to the Duke of Grafton, the King’s natural son by the Duchess of Cleveland; the Archbishop of Canterbury officiating, the King and all the grandees being present. I had a favour given me by my Lady but took no great joy of the thing for many reasons.17

  Seven years later, when Isabella had reached the age of consent, the marriage was confirmed. On 6 November 1679 Evelyn was

  this evening at the remarriage of the Duchess of Grafton to the Duke … she being now twelve years old. The ceremony was performed in my Lord Chamberlain’s (her father’s) lodgings at Whitehall by the Bishop of Rochester, His Majesty being present. A sudden and unexpected thing (when everybody believed the first marriage would have come to nothing) … I was privately invited by my Lady her mother to be present. I confess I could give her little joy and so I plainly told her; but she said the King would have it so, and there was no going back: & this sweetest, hopefulest, most beautiful child, and most virtuous too, was sacrificed to a boy that had been rudely bred, without anything to encourage them but His Majesty’s pleasure. I pray God the sweet child find it to her advantage who if my augury deceive me not will in a few years be such a paragon as were fit to make the wife of the greatest prince in Europe. I stayed supper where His Majesty sat between the Duchess of Cleveland (the incontinent mother of the Duke of Grafton) and the sweet Duchess the bride. My love to Lord Arlington’s family and the sweet child made me behold all this with regret. Though as the Duke of Grafton affects the sea, to which I find his father intends to use him, he may emerge a plain, useful, robust officer and were he polished, a tolerable person for he is exceeding handsome, by far surpassing any of the King’s other natural issue.18

  The Duke of Grafton did in fact turn out as Evelyn hoped. He had rough manners but had spirit and was a brave soldier. In the Monmouth rebellion of 1685 he fought for his uncle, James II, against the rebels near Bristol, distinguishing himself in that campaign. However, later on he deserted the Royal Stuart Standard, having fallen completely under the influence of John Churchill (later 1st Duke of Marlborough) and joined the army of William of Orange in Ireland. In 1690, on 29 September, he was wounded at the Battle of Cork and was carried home dying. He died on 9 October.

  The Duchess of Grafton, too, fulfilled Evelyn’s prophecy. On 26 October 1683 he went to see her ‘lying in of her first child a son … she was become more beautiful if it were possible, than before and full of virtue and sweetness. She discoursed with me on many particulars, with great prudence and gravity beyond her years.’19

  While her husband was at the wars, Isabella lived with her parents in Goring House, now one of the finest in London. Lady Arlington sent to Paris ‘for the finest Venice brocatelle’ to make hangings for an ante-room and covers for twelve chairs, bed curtains in green damask and coverings of the same stuff for a sofa.

  On 17 April 1673 Evelyn visited Goring House and saw Lady Arlington’s ‘new dressing room with the glasses silver jars and vases cabinets and other, so rich furniture as I had seldom seen’. Evelyn also admired the paintings Arlington had acquired, and the

  incomparable piece of Raphael’s, being a Minister of State dictating to Guicciardini, the earnestness of whose face looking up in expectation of what he was next to write, is so to the life, and so natural, as I esteem it one of the choicest pieces of that admirable artist. There was a woman’s head of Leonardo da Vinci: a Madonna of old Palma, and two of Vandyke’s, of which one was his own picture at length, when young, in a leaning posture; the other an eunuch singing.20

  But nemesis was waiting. Arlington had become too proud and powerful and his enemies now moved in to diminish him. On 15 January 1674 he was impeached for popery, with some justification. In addition to receiving bribes from the Spanish, his wife, so they said, was in the pay of the French. But the King could not afford to desert him: Arlington knew too much, so he was not convicted. He did, however, resign as Lord Chamberlain. To recover from the stressful months, he went to Bath. In September 1674, while he was away, his splendid house was totally destroyed by fire.

  On 21 September 1674, Evelyn went to see

  the great loss that Lord Arlington has sustained by fire at Goring House, this night consumed to the ground, with exceeding loss of hangings, plate, rare pictures and cabinets; hardly anything was saved of the best and most princely furniture that any subject had in England. My Lord and Lady were absent at Bath.21

  Arlington, as tenacious as ever, retreated to his country estate at Euston, and meanwhile rebuilt Goring House more splendidly than before.

  In 1677 Arlington was finally able to buy from the trustees of Hugh Audley’s estate ‘The … mansion called Goring House lying near St James Park wall, and all that garden having therein a terrace walk, and a mount set with trees.’ The mount was, presumably, part of the Civil War fortifications. There were also kitchen gardens ‘lying beside the Highway leading to Chelsea [the site of today’s Royal Mews], a great yard and pond enclosed with a brick wall and a flower garden’. In addition there was ‘that Great Garden adjoining to the premises and enclosed round with a brick wall’.22 The site of the old Mulberry Garden still belonged to the Crown.

  Newly furnished after the great fire, Arlington House, as it was now called, was again a splendid mansion fit for the entertainment of great men of influence and the King himself. The new house had an additional advantage, one that would be of great importance in the future: Arlington realigned it so that, instead of facing south as the preceding houses had done, it now faced east, and his main rooms now looked over St James’s Park towards the Palaces of St James, Whitehall and Westminster.

  The poet John Dryden described Arlington House and gardens in ecstatic verse – a long Latin poem, translated into a florid jingle by a contemporary versifier. Arlington, a classical scholar, would have appreciated the subtle flattery of Dryden’s Latin.

  Here wondering crowds admire the owner’s state,

  And view the glories of the fair and great;

  Here falling statesmen Fortune’s changes feel

  And prove the turns of her revolving wheel.

  Arlington certainly lost political favour but he never lost th
e King’s friendship. He retired from politics and enjoyed the delights of his house and garden.

  John Evelyn, as Arlington’s friend, adviser and man of taste, and who had seen the potential in Goring House, would certainly have had a hand in planning the new Arlington House. It was he who had discovered the woodcarver Grinling Gibbons at work in his cottage and had introduced him to Arlington and Charles II. Evelyn was also an expert on arboriculture and would have advised Arlington on the planning of the gardens at Arlington House, as he did at Euston.

  The gardens were idyllic. Dryden described them in verse which reads better in his Latin than in translation.

  Here watch the fearful deer their tender fawns

  Stray through the wood, or browse the verdant lawns.

  Here from the marshy glade the wild duck springs

  And slowly moves her wet, incumber’d wings.

  Charles II, his courtiers and his ladies were frequent visitors, strolling round the parterres filled with

  A thousand flowers of various form and hue.

  There spotless lilies rear their sickly heads,

  And purple violets creep along the beds;

  Here shews the bright jonquil its gilded face,

  Join’d with the pale carnation’s fairer grace;

  The painted tulip and the blushing rose

  A blooming wilderness of sweets compose.

  The wilderness and the maze were haunted by nightingales whose descendants would enchant George III and his young Queen. In fact this idyllic setting was one of the main reasons for George III’s choice of a home.

  Here at Arlington House Charles II held secret political meetings, met his natural son, the Duke of Monmouth, or bargained with his opponents in support of his brother, James.

  Dryden’s sycophantic hymn of praise concluded:

  Here, Arlington, thy mighty mind disdains

  Inferior earth, and breaks its servile chains,

  Aloft on Contemplation’s wings you rise,

  Scorn all below, and mingle with the skies.

  It went on to describe how this paragon among politicians, having resisted the calls of Glory and Ambition, received Jove’s final accolade:

  Thy only daughter, Britain’s boasted grace,

  Join’d with a hero of the royal race;

  And that fair fabrick which our wondering eyes

  So lately saw from humble ruins rise,

  And mock the rage of the devouring flame!

  A nobler structure, and a fairer frame!

  Whose beauties long shall charm succeeding days,

  And tell posterity the founder’s praise.

  Venus blessed ‘the united happy pair’:

  The aweful father gave the gracious sign,

  And fix’d the fortunes of the glorious line.23

  Nothing gave Arlington more pride in his last years than the thought of his ‘glorious line’ continuing through the ages in his splendid new mansion at the end of the Mall.

  At the end of his life Arlington possessed a fine mansion with groves and bowling greens, a ‘Dwarf tree garden … the very extensive orange houses with the Bagnio, Bathing cisterns and the like’. There were stables for at least thirty horses, and offices for a large retinue of servants. ‘There were 8 rooms on the ground floor besides the Chapel’, whose seats were lined with purple velvet and the floor was made of black and white marble. On the first floor were six rooms and a ‘long gallery of nine sash windows towards the Park… a chimney piece of blue marble … fifteen pictures at full length with gilt frames’. Here Arlington spent his retirement, looking out over the newly planned gardens of St James’s, and admiring his paintings as he walked up and down his long gallery, where at the end ‘was a small frame of olive wood with holes and pins for the exact computation of walking a mile’.24

  On 6 February 1685, Charles II died, and in July Arlington followed his master. Both had concealed to the end their true faith. When death approached, Arlington, like his King, recognized that the time of dissimulation was over and sent for a Roman Catholic priest.

  Apart from making provision for his wife, Arlington left his entire estate to his son-in-law, the Duke of Grafton, and his daughter, Isabella, who also inherited his title. After her husband’s death, she retired with her seven-year-old son, Charles, now 2nd Duke of Grafton, to their mansion at Euston and let Arlington House to the Duke of Devonshire. He took little care of the property and once again it was damaged by fire. On 14 October 1694 Isabella took as her second husband Sir Thomas Hanmer. Trustees took care of the young Duke’s inheritance. The next tenant of Arlington House was John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave and Marquess of Normanby, who in 1703 was to become the Duke of Buckingham. In 1702 the Trustees granted him permission to buy the house and gardens, but it took two years to disentangle the legal ownership of the estate, since the Mulberry Garden was still Crown property.

  Isabella lived until 1722 – long enough to see a new magnificent mansion, Buckingham House, rise on the ruins of her old home.

  So the present Buckingham Palace was named, not after the ambitious Arlington, nor even the enchanting Duchess of Grafton. That honour was reserved for one who, like Arlington, had royal connections. In 1705 the Duke of Buckingham married the formidable Katherine, widow of the Earl of Anglesey and natural daughter of James II. Throughout the next centuries, however, the Grafton family was to remain close to the Court. Today the Queen’s Mistress of Robes is the Duchess of Grafton.

  The Duke and Duchess of Buckingham at Buckingham House

  The Duke of Buckingham was born John Sheffield, in 1647, the son of the 2nd Earl of Mulgrave, to which title he succeeded at the age of ten. William III created him Marquess of Normanby in 1694; and in 1703 Queen Anne made him Duke of Normanby and then Duke of Buckingham. Until 1703 he was generally known as Mulgrave.

  Like the Duke of Grafton, he was one of the young courtiers whom Charles II made captains of ships and commanders of army troops – a practice which infuriated the regular sailors and soldiers, as civil servants like Pepys and Evelyn reported. Macaulay cites Mulgrave as an example:

  any lad of noble birth, any dissolute courtier, for whom one of the king’s mistresses would speak a word, might hope [for] a ship of the line … If in the interval of feasting, drinking and gambling, he succeeded in learning the names of the points of the compass, he was thought fully qualified to take charge of a three decker. In 1666, John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, at seventeen years of age, volunteered to serve at sea against the Dutch. He passed six weeks on board, diverting himself [with] young libertines of rank and then returned home to take command of a troop of horse. After this he was never on the water till the year 1672 when he was appointed Captain of a ship of 84 guns, reputed the finest in the navy. He was then 23 years old … As soon as he came back from sea, he was made Colonel of a regiment of foot.25

  Though Mulgrave was a typical Restoration rake, he had ability and immense self-confidence and charm. In 1673 Charles II made him a Gentleman of the Bedchamber and he was already earning himself the nickname ‘Lord Allpride’. His levees were held with all the panache of the Restoration Court and were attended by courtiers and ambassadors from home and abroad.

  It was this overweening pride that for a while brought him down. He had the temerity to woo, and perhaps to win, Princess Anne, daughter of the King’s brother, the Duke of York, later to be James II. For his presumption, Charles II banished him, but later reinstated him and in 1685 he had followed the late Lord Arlington as Lord Chamberlain and was living as a tenant in Arlington House.

  Even his enemies acknowledged him to be a man of distinction. ‘In parliamentary eloquence,’ as Macaulay wrote, he was ‘inferior to scarcely any orator of his time’.26 As a writer and poet he was praised and imitated by Pope and Dryden. As a collector of fine paintings he had the advice and approval of John Evelyn.

  After Charles II’s death his political power grew. Although, unlike Arlington, he had no real belief in Roman Catholic
ism, he won James II’s approval and was seen attending him to Mass. In 1679 Charles II made him Lord Lieutenant of the East Riding of Yorkshire and he became the leader of the Tory party in the Lords.

  When William of Orange landed, Mulgrave attempted to hold the line for James II by keeping the Lords in session; but finally he voted for William of Orange and his wife Mary. Like Grafton, he was one of the first to take the oath of allegiance: while Grafton carried the King’s crown at the Coronation of William III and Queen Mary, Mulgrave carried the Queen’s. But unlike Grafton he did not leap into battle on William’s behalf. The new King had to win his support and William was shrewd enough to bribe him. In 1694 he made Mulgrave a Privy Councillor with a pension of £3,000 a year – though he did not in fact consult him. But there were limits to Mulgrave’s flexibility. He retained some loyalty to the ‘King over the water’ and refused to support William III’s attack on Jacobites. William III, who also had his limits, therefore dismissed him as a Privy Councillor.

  However, when Queen Anne came to the throne in 1702, she showed that she had not forgotten her former lover. One of her first acts was to create Mulgrave Lord Privy Seal and in 1703 she made him Duke of the county of Buckingham and Normanby. But the Whig influence was growing, and as a leading Tory Buckingham, as we must now call Mulgrave, was increasingly unpopular. The Crown no longer had its old power: Queen Anne could not protect him and in 1705 he lost all his appointments.

  Now all his ambition and considerable talents were centred on the new house which was rising from the rubble of Arlington House and which he renamed Buckingham House. In 1705 he took a new wife – his third – who was to make him even more ambitious. He had failed to win the hand of Anne, James II’s legitimate daughter by his wife Anne Hyde; but now he married Katherine (the divorced wife of the Earl of Anglesey), James’s natural daughter by his mistress, the plain but clever Catherine Sedley (created Countess of Dorchester), whose wit was inherited from her father, the brilliant and licentious Sir Charles Sedley, the author of the Restoration comedy The Mulberry Garden.