Wheatley Henry Benjamin
Samuel Pepys and the World He Lived In
Moll Davis it is well known charmed the King by her singing of the song, “My lodging is on the cold ground,” in the character of the shepherdess Celania in Davenant’s “Rivals,” a play altered from “The Two Noble Kinsmen,” and the Duke of Buckingham is said to have encouraged the King’s passion for her in order to spite the Countess of Castlemaine. She was also a fine dancer, and greatly pleased Pepys on more than one occasion. On March 7th, 1666–67, he expresses the opinion that her dancing of a jig in boy’s clothes was infinitely better than that of Nell Gwyn. About a year after this, when Moll Davis had been “raised” to the position of King’s mistress, she danced a jig at court; and the Queen being at this public exhibition of one of her rivals in her own palace, got up and left the theatre.271
After the ladies come the male courtiers, but these butterflies of the court do not figure very prominently in the “Diary.” Rochester is occasionally mentioned, as is Henry Jermyn rather oftener. Buckingham appears more frequently, but then he set up for a statesman. He was one of the most hateful characters in history, and as one reads in the “Diary” the record of his various actions, the feelings of disgust and loathing that they inspire are near akin to hatred. He gave counsel to the King at which Charles recoiled; he showed himself a coward in his relations with Lord Ossory, and his conduct towards his wife proves that he was not even a gentleman. Grammont calls Buckingham a fool, but he was more of a knave than a fool, for he was too clever for us to be able to despise him. He seems to have exerted the fascination of the serpent over those around him, and the four masterly hands that have drawn his portrait evidently thought it worthy the devotion of their greatest care. Walpole says of these four famous portraits: “Burnet has hewn it out with his rough chisel; Count Hamilton touched it with that slight delicacy that finishes while it seems but to sketch; Dryden caught the living likeness; Pope completed the historical resemblance.”272
In conclusion, some mention must be made of those who did not take a prominent position at court, but who nevertheless exerted considerable influence in that corrupted circle, such as the Chiffinches, Bab May, and Edward Progers, with all of whom Pepys had constant communication. Thomas Chiffinch was one of the pages of the King’s bedchamber, and keeper of his private closet. He died in 1666, and was succeeded in his employments by his brother William, who became a still greater favourite of the King than Thomas, and was the receiver of the secret pensions paid by the court of France to the King of England. Progers had been banished from Charles’s presence in 1650, by an Act of the Estates of Scotland, “as an evil instrument and bad counseller of the King.” Baptist May, Keeper of the Privy Purse, had a still worse rebuff than this, for when he went down in state as the court candidate for Winchelsea, he was rejected by the people, who cried out that they would have “No court pimp to be their burgess.”273 It would not be fair, however, to throw all the obloquy upon these understrappers, for we have already seen that the bearers of historical names could lend themselves to perform the same duties.
CHAPTER X.
PUBLIC CHARACTERS
“So violent did I find parties in London, that I was assured by several that the Duke of Marlborough was a coward, and Mr. Pope a fool.”—Voltaire.
IN dealing with the public characters at the time of the Restoration, the two men who were mainly instrumental in bringing that event about—Monk and Montagu—must needs be given a prominent place.
George Monk, Duke of Albemarle, was a singularly unheroic character. He was slow and heavy, but had a sufficient supply of good sense, and, in spite of many faults, he had the rare good fortune to be generally loved.274 He was so popular that ballads were continually being made in his praise. Pepys said there were so many of them that in after times his fame would sound like that of Guy of Warwick.275
Aubrey tells us that Monk learned his trade of soldiering in the Low Countries, whence he fled after having slain a man. Although he frequently went to sea in command of the fleet, he always remained a soldier, and the seamen laughed behind his back when instead of crying “Tack about,” he would say “Wheel to the right or left.” Pepys tells a story of him to the same effect: “It was pretty to hear the Duke of Albemarle himself to wish that they would come on our ground, meaning the French, for that he would pay them, so as to make them glad to go back to France again; which was like a general, but not like an admiral.”276
Monk was fond of low company; both he and his vulgar wife were quite unfit for high—I cannot say refined—society, for there was but little refinement at court. Ann Clarges had been kind to Monk when he was a prisoner in the Tower, and he married her out of gratitude. She had been previously married to Thomas Ratford, of whose death no notice was given at the time of the marriage, so that the legitimacy of Christopher, afterwards second Duke of Albemarle, was seriously questioned. Aubrey relates a story which cannot well be true, but which proves the general feeling of doubt respecting the point. He says that Thomas Clarges came on shipboard to tell Monk that his sister had had a child. Monk cried out, “What is it?” and on hearing the answer, “A boy,” he said, “Why, then, she is my wife.” Pepys was told a tale by Mr. Cooling which corroborates the opinion expressed on the company kept by the Duke. “Once the Duke of Albemarle, in his drink, taking notice as of a wonder that Nan Hide should ever come to be Duchess of York. ‘Nay,’ says Troutbeck, ‘ne’er wonder at that; for if you will give me another bottle of wine, I will tell you as great, if not a greater miracle.’ And what was that, but that our dirty Bess (meaning his Duchess) should come to be Duchess of Albemarle?”277
Sir Edward Montagu, Earl of Sandwich, was in every respect the opposite of Monk. He was a courtier and a gentleman, but he did not manage to gain the popularity of his great contemporary, nor to retain such as he did at one time possess. As Pepys’s great patron his name naturally occupies a very prominent position in the “Diary,” and as such he has already been frequently alluded to in these pages. He appears to have been a very agreeable man, but so easy and careless in business matters that he was continually in want of money. In 1662 Pepys found that he was above £7,000 in debt, and his enemies soon after gave out that his debts amounted to £100,000. At any rate, his finances were so often in an unsatisfactory state that Pepys had a special dislike to lending his money in that quarter. Three years afterwards he had grown very unpopular, and “it was purposed by some hot-heads in the House of Commons, at the same time when they voted a present to the Duke of York, to have voted £10,000 to the Prince, and half-a-crown to my Lord of Sandwich; but nothing came of it.”278 It was, therefore, well for him when he obtained an honourable exile by being appointed ambassador to the court of Spain, as there he was held in high esteem. His enemies, however, were not satisfied, and they continued to attack him during his absence. Whatever his faults, and they were probably many, Lord Sandwich was by far the most able naval commander of his time, so that the nation had a heavy loss when he was killed in the naval action against the Dutch at Solebay, in May, 1672.
Prince Rupert, as the cousin of the King, naturally held a prominent position in the State, but he did not gain much credit from the undertakings he was thrust into. His fame as a brilliant, though rash, soldier, was gained during the troubles of his uncle’s reign, and not from anything he did after the Restoration. He was out of place on board ship, although he is said to have displayed immense bravery and much skill in the sea-fight against the Dutch, from August 11th to 13th, 1673. His interest in science and mechanical art appears to have been real, and to him we owe the invention or introduction into England of mezzotinto engraving, and the introduction of
… “that glassy bubble
That finds philosophers such trouble,
Whose least part cracked, the whole does fly,
And wits are cracked to find out why.”
The Prince’s courage was so patent to all that his friends were rather surprised to find that when he was very ill and like to die, “he had no more mind to it than another man;” so they came to the rather lame conclusion that “courage is not what men take it to be—a contempt of death.”279
The next great public character was Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, who for the few years before his fall was the greatest man in the kingdom. Public opinion has been much divided as to his merits. In spite of many very evident faults, he certainly exhibited on several occasions a high-minded spirit. He would not consent to do any business with the King’s mistresses, and Burnet says that he “kept a register of all the King’s promises, and of his own, and did all that lay in his power afterwards to get them performed.” His disposition was rather ungracious, and he made many enemies, who attacked him with success when the King was tired of him. Clarendon was very dictatorial with Charles, and sent him such missives as this, “I pray be at Worcester House on Sunday as soon as may be.” On one occasion he fixed eight o’clock in the morning, for Lord Broghill to have an audience with the King, who did not think the arrangement quite fair, and wrote, “You give appointments in a morning to others sooner than you take them yourself, but if my Lord Broghill will come at nine, he shall be welcome.”
On the institution of the Royal Society, Lord Clarendon was appointed visitor for life, but after his death the position was to be held by several high officers, by reason of their offices. Sprat, in his “History of the Royal Society,” specially thanks the Lord Chancellor, Attorney-General, and Solicitor-General, for their assistance in the preparation of the charter; a proof, says Sprat, of the falsehood of the reproach that law is an enemy to learning and civil arts.
One day in July, 1664, Lord Sandwich told Pepys that Lord Clarendon was very displeased with him for being forward in the cutting down of trees in Clarendon Park; so the Diarist sought an interview with the Lord Chancellor in order that he might soothe the great man, and he was successful in his endeavour.280
Clarendon Park, near Salisbury, was crown-land mortgaged by Charles I. for £20,000, and granted by Charles II. to the Duke of Albemarle subject to this mortgage, and with the right to the timber reserved to the Crown. Lord Clarendon bought the place of Albemarle, and his complaint against the Commissioners of the Navy was, that while they had all the royal forests at command, they chose to spoil the beauty of his property. He further affirmed that he had no intention to contest the King’s right, nor to defraud the Crown of timber; but complained that at the very time the Commissioners sent down a person to mark standing timber for felling, there was a large quantity of wood belonging to the Crown lying on the estate unappropriated, which had been “felled divers years” before.281
Two of Pepys’s patrons—Sir George Downing and Sir William Coventry—are frequently mentioned in the “Diary;” the first almost always with some expression of dislike, and the other invariably in terms of respect. He sometimes describes his whilom master as “a stingy fellow,”282 and laughs at his ridiculous pieces of thrift, “and niggardly manner of entertaining his poor neighbours.”283 At another time he calls him “a perfidious rogue” for betraying former friends;284 still, he could appreciate Downing’s business capabilities, and when setting down the fact that the Commissioners of the Treasury had chosen Sir G. Downing for their secretary, he added, “I think, in my conscience, they have done a great thing in it, for he is active and a man of business, and values himself upon having of things do well under his hand; so that I am mightily pleased in their choice.”285 At this time Pepys had forgotten the constant causes of annoyance which Downing had given him, and he could afford to be magnanimous in acknowledging his enemy’s good qualities. I have already remarked that Sir William Coventry stands out prominently as the only person who is noticed in the “Diary” in terms of unqualified praise. Other men of the time did not equally admire him, so that it is not easy to come to a just estimation of his character.
Poor Pepys was placed in an awkward predicament on one occasion when he was on a visit to Hampton Court, owing to the enmity between Coventry and Lord Sandwich. He was pleased when the latter asked him to come privately to his lodgings, but adds, “Lord! to see in what difficulty I stand, that I dare not walk with Sir W. Coventry for fear my Lord or Sir G. Carteret should see me; nor with either of them, for fear Sir W. Coventry should.”286
When Clarendon fell, in 1667, it was thought likely that Coventry would succeed him as virtual prime minister. His quarrel, however, with the Duke of Buckingham put him out of favour with the King and out of office; so that, although he survived until 1686, he never again took a prominent part in political affairs.
Arthur Annesley, afterwards Earl of Anglesey, is called by Pepys “a grave, serious man,”287 and “a very notable man,”288 but he does not appear to have been a very friendly one. Although he was under obligations to Sir Edward Montagu’s family, he took the opportunity, when the thanks of Parliament were voted to Montagu, to quash the motion which was made to give him a reward.289 He was made Treasurer of the Navy in 1667, in succession to Sir George Carteret, and in the following year when he answered the Duke of York’s letter, he bid the Duke call for Pepys’s books,290 in hopes that the Clerk of the Acts might get a reprimand. A peace seems afterwards to have subsisted between the two, for in 1672 Lord Anglesey signed himself in a letter to Pepys, “Your affectionate friend and servant.”
Sir Thomas Osborne, subsequently Viscount Dunblane, Earl of Danby, Marquis of Carmarthen, and Duke of Leeds, was appointed joint Treasurer of the Navy, with Sir Thomas Littleton, to succeed Lord Anglesey. This appointment was greatly disliked by the Duke of York and the officers of the navy, who looked upon the two men as spies set to watch them. Pepys calls Osborne a creature of the Duke of Buckingham’s,291 and at another time says he is a beggar “having £11 or £12,00 a year, but owes about £10,000.”292 It is clear that the Diarist did not foresee the great figure Osborne was about to make in the world; a rise somewhat due to his own parts, and much to the favour of the King. When Charles made him Lord High Treasurer, he told him that he ought to take care of himself, for he had but two friends in England. This startled Osborne, until his majesty explained himself by saying that he (the King) was one, and the other was the Treasurer’s merits.293
Joseph Williamson, who rose from a college tutorship to the office of Secretary of State, has a few words of praise given to him in the “Diary.” He was the son of a clergyman, and in early life is said to have acted as secretary to a member of parliament. He graduated at Oxford as a member of Queen’s College, and in December, 1661, was appointed Keeper of the State Paper Office. About the same time he was Latin Secretary to the King, an office the reversion of which had been promised to John Evelyn. In 1666 Williamson undertook the superintendence of the “London Gazette,” and in 1672 obtained the post of Clerk to the Privy Council, on the resignation of Sir Richard Browne, when he was knighted. The King had many years before promised to give the place to Evelyn, but in consideration of the renewal of the lease of Sayes Court, the latter parted with it to Williamson. Honours now came thick upon the new-made knight. He was Plenipotentiary at the Congress of Cologne in 1673 and 1674, and on his return to England was made Principal Secretary of State, a position which he held for four years. He was President of the Royal Society in 1678, and married Catherine Stuart, daughter of George, Lord Aubigny, and widow of Henry O’Brien, Lord Ibracken, eldest son of the Earl of Thomond, in 1682. He died in 1701, and was buried in the Duke of Richmond and Lennox’s vault in Henry VII.’s Chapel, by right of his wife’s connection with the Duke of Lennox.
The widow’s eldest son by her first husband, Donald O’Brien, was lost in the wreck of the “Gloucester” in 1682, and he is mentioned in a letter of Pepys to Hewer, written from Edinburgh on May 8th of that year. The will of the father contains the following very remarkable paragraph:—“I conjure my son Donatus O’Brien, to honour and obey his King in whatever he commands that is not contradictory to the Holy Scripture and Protestant religion, in which I conjure him (upon pain of my curse) not only to continue himself, but to advise his brothers and sisters to do the same; and that he never marry a Papist; and that he take great care if ever God bless him with children (which I trust he will many) to breed them strictly in the Protestant religion. I advise him to cherish the English on his estate, and drive out the Irish, and especially those of them who go under the name of gentlemen.”294
Before passing on to make a final note on some of the celebrated sailors alluded to in the “Diary,” a place must be found for one of the most eccentric women that ever lived—Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle. Pepys writes, “the whole story of this lady is romance, and all she does is romantic.”295 Every one who came in contact with her fooled her to the top of her bent. Evelyn likened her to Zenobia, the mother of the Gracchi, Vittoria Colonna, besides a long line of other celebrities, and when she “took the dust” in the park she was followed and crowded upon by coaches all the way she went, so that nobody could come near her.296
Her husband’s play, “The Humourous Lovers,” was, Pepys says, “the most silly thing that ever came upon a stage,”297 and also “the most ridiculous thing that ever was wrote,”298 yet she and the Duke were “mightily pleased with it, and she at the end made her respects to the players from her box, and did give them thanks.”
On the 30th of May, 1667, the Duchess made a visit to one of the meetings of the Royal Society, when various fine experiments were shown for her entertainment. She was loud in her expressions of admiration as she was led out of the room by several noblemen who were among the company present. There had been great debate among the philosophers as to the advisability of inviting the lady, for many believed that the town would be full of ballads on the event. Her footmen were habited in velvet coats, and she herself appeared in antique dress, so that there is no cause for wonder that people came to see her as if she were the Queen of Sheba. Mrs. Evelyn drew a very lively picture of the Duchess in a letter to Dr. Bohun: “I acknowledge, though I remember her some years since, and have not been a stranger to her fame, I was surprised to find so much extravagancy and vanity in any person not confined within four walls.... Her mien surpasses the imagination of poets or the descriptions of romance heroine’s greatness; her gracious bows, seasonable nods, courteous stretching out of her hands, twinkling of her eyes, and various gestures of approbation, show what may be expected from her discourse, which is airy, empty, whimsical, and rambling as her books, aiming at science difficulties, high notions, terminating commonly in nonsense, oaths, and obscenity.” Pepys’s summing up of the Duchess’s character is shorter, but accords well with Mrs. Evelyn’s opinion—he says she was “a mad, conceited, ridiculous woman.”299
In a book written by a man so intimately connected with the navy as Pepys was, it is not surprising that mention should occur pretty frequently of sailors and soldiers who commanded at sea.
In the great victory over the Dutch in 1665, the Earl of Falmouth, Lord Muskerry, and Richard Boyle, second son of the Earl of Burlington, were all killed by one shot, as they were standing on board the “Royal Charles,” close by the Duke of York, into whose face their blood spurted. The Earl appears very frequently in the “Diary” as Sir Charles Berkeley, Lord Berkeley, Lord Fitzharding, and Earl of Falmouth, and he was to have been created a Marquis had he lived. Charles II. shed a flood of tears when he heard of his friend’s death, but Pepys tells us that none but the King wished him alive again.300
Lord Clarendon put in a few bitter words the most thorough condemnation of the man. He said, “few had observed in him any virtue or quality which they did not wish their best friends without.” The various allusions to Lord Falmouth in the “Diary” quite bear out this character, and yet because he was Sir William Coventry’s friend we are told of “his generosity, good nature, desire of public good, and low thoughts of his own wisdom; his employing his interest in the king to do good offices to all people, without any other fault than the freedom he do learn in France of thinking himself obliged to serve his king in his pleasures.”301
A much greater national loss which took place in this engagement was the death of the famous admiral Sir John Lawson. This chief among the “tarpaulins” was well known to Pepys, as he was the vice-admiral under Sir Edward Montagu at the time when Charles II. was brought over by the fleet. He is described as the same plain man as ever after all his successes,302 yet an enemy called him a false man, and the greatest hypocrite in the world.303 When Lawson died, Pepys could not but acknowledge that the nation had a loss, although he was not sorry, because the late admiral had never been a friend to him.304 In the great engagement against the Dutch of the 3rd of June, 1665, Opdam’s ship blew up, and a shot from it, or rather a piece of iron, wounded Lawson on the knee, from which he never recovered. The national loss is expressed in one of the “Poems on State Affairs.”305
“Destiny allowed
Him his revenge, to make his death more proud.
A fatal bullet from his side did range,
And battered Lawson; oh, too dear exchange!
He led our fleet that day too short a space,
But lost his knee: since died, in glorious race:
Lawson, whose valour beyond Fate did go,
And still fights Opdam in the lake below.”
In October, 1666, there was a rumour that Sir Jeremy Smith had killed Sir Robert Holmes in a duel, and Pepys was not sorry to hear it, although he soon found that report did not tell true.306 Holmes was very unpopular, and Andrew Marvell called him the “cursed beginner of the two Dutch wars;” describing him as “first an Irish livery boy, then a highwayman, now Bashaw of the Isle of Wight,” who had “got in bonds and by rapine £100,000.”307
Sir Jeremy Smith was befriended by the Duke of Albemarle, when Holmes delivered articles of accusation against him to the King and Cabinet, and he suffered no ill from the vengeance of his enemy, for in 1669 he was appointed a Commissioner of the Navy in place of Sir William Penn. Pepys was able to find an epithet for him, and although he liked him fairly well, he called him “an impertinent fellow.”308
This slight notice of some of the sailors of the Restoration period may well be closed by a relation of the remarkable action of certain seamen at the funeral of Sir Christopher Mings. Mings, like Lawson, was of poor extraction, and, like him, grew up a worthy captain. He was wounded in the face and leg in an engagement with the Dutch, and shortly afterwards died of his wounds. Pepys and Sir William Coventry attended the funeral, and on their going away, “about a dozen able, lusty, proper men came to the coach side with tears in their eyes, and one of them that spoke for the rest begun and said to Sir W. Coventry, ‘We are here a dozen of us that have long known and loved and served our dead commander, Sir Christopher Mings, and have now done the last office of laying him in the ground. We would be glad we had any other to offer after him, and revenge of him. All we have is our lives; if you will please to get His Royal Highness to give us a fireship among us all, here is a dozen of us, out of all which choose you one to be commander, and the rest of us, whoever he is, will serve him; and if possible do that that shall show our memory of our dead commander and our revenge.’” When this speech was finished Coventry was much moved, and Pepys could scarcely refrain from tears.309 What became of these worthy men we are not told.
