The Start

By Cryssa Bazos

Following the execution of his father by Parliament in 1649, Charles Stuart was a king without a throne. He scanned the dance floor for likely partners to help him reclaim his crown, but France, Spain and the Netherlands were taking turns examining the potted plants. There were no takers until Scotland stepped forward and motioned to the orchestra.

Jean Le Pautre [Public Domain] via
Wikimedia Commons

It was a slow and hesitating waltz, broken by alternate periods of negotiation and stubbornness on both sides. Scotland was looking for a Covenanted king, one who would uphold Presbyterianism across the three kingdoms (Scotland, England and Ireland). Reluctantly Charles agreed, and around Midsummer's in 1650, he landed in Scotland to take up one crown and fight for another.

This partnership did not start off with the surest foot. Almost immediately, the Scottish government treated Charles with all the courtesy of a royal hostage. The decision to invite him to Scotland had not been without controversy. Many of the more hardline Covenanters objected, mistrusting his commitment to the Covenant. To them, Scotland was the New Jerusalem, and they looked upon Charles with his Anglican father and Catholic mother with stern disapproval. They were relentless in their determination to make a good Presbyterian out of him.

Over the next three months, the Scottish Parliament debated which of his companions and servants were to be purged from the royal household and/or banned from the country. Some, like the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Wilmot, were given clearance to stay, but on September 27th, the Commission of the Kirk and the Committee of Estates in Perth ruled in favour of an expulsion from the country of twenty-three of the King’s companions and two others to be removed from court.

Sir James Balfour, Lord Lyon King of Arms, brought the list to Charles who requested that Balfour not act against nine individuals until he had time to petition Lord Chancellor Loudoun on their behalf.

Sir James Balfour, by unknown artist
[Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons

The Chancellor refused Charles's petition and the day fixed for the removal of the courtiers was October 3, 1650.

This was when Charles decided to escape from his gilded cage and head north to the Highlands where loyalties were more firmly for King than Kirk.

Charles gathered a few companions to accompany him. The Duke of Buckingham was against the plan and tried to dissuade him, but when Charles remained resolute, he readily agreed to keep his whereabouts secret.

This plot to escape is known as the Start.

On October 3rd, the same day as the expulsion of his loyal companions, Charles and his companions rode out of Perth under the pretext of a hawking trip. They travelled northeast and rested at Dundee, then with their host, Viscount Dudhope, they continued north to Auchterhouse. There they stopped and repeated the process, only this time welcoming the Earl of Buchan into their company.

Dudhope and Buchan urged Charles to continue north to the mountains where they were confident that they would find an army of 7,000 pro-Royalist Highlanders. They continued to Cortachy (still no Highlander army) until they could go no further. With dark beating them down, they took their rest in a hamlet in Clova.

Meanwhile, back in Perth, the Duke of Buckingham was concerned. It may have been that he feared for Charles, wandering the countryside with little to no protection. More likely, he was concerned about his own precarious position in Scotland should Charles's expedition fail. Regardless, after having promised his discretion, Buckingham spilled the details of the Start to Balfour: the King was not hawking--he was on his way to the Highlands.

Balfour went into immediate damage control. He sent out an urgent message to Colonel Robert Montgomery, a trustworthy (and moderate) soldier with a regiment of 700 horse at his disposal, to fetch the King back. Not wanting to give away to the Committee that he had lost the King, Balfour arranged to send along one of Charles's hawks, "that the game might be played out with spirit."

Montgomery wasted no time and sent riders ahead. Just before daybreak, two of Montgomery's men found Charles "laying in a nasty room, on an old bolster above a mat of sedge and rushes." By seven that morning, Montgomery arrived in Clova in time to escort Charles back to Perth, with the King's hawk in hand.

When Charles returned to Perth, he was sent to his bedchamber and forced to hear sermons. But the Start was not a complete waste. Instead of increasing Charles's restrictions, the Committee of Estates was shocked into granting him concessions. They realized that they could not afford to lose him to the Highlanders and lose their advantage. The result was that Charles was invited to attend the Committee of Estates sessions.

And what of Buckingham and his loose tongue? Charles forgave Buckinghman for betraying his plans to Balfour, but did he forget?

Nearly a year after the Start, when Cromwell defeated the Royalist army at Worcester, Charles barely escaped the field and headed north with a company of his lords, including Buckingham. By the time they reached Staffordshire, it became apparent to Charles that if he were to escape, he would have to part from his lords and travel incognito. Buckingham was not invited to accompany him, nor was he told where Charles was headed.

To be fair, Charles only took Lord Wilmot in his confidence, but I suspect that Buckingham’s earlier betrayal still rankled. When Charles finally reached France, after six weeks of dodging Cromwell’s men, his initial account soon took on the flavour of tall tales that Mark Twain would have cherished. If you’ve ever been asked the same question over and over again, you can appreciate why Charles threw in a bit of spice.

The Ambassador of Venice for Paris wrote this to the Doge in Venice about Charles’s adventures, dated November 19, 1651:

“I went yesterday evening to welcome the Grand Duke and the Princes back from the country. In the course of conversation the Grand Duke told me of the clever means adopted by the king of England to escape from Cromwell. In the army, when it was seen that all was lost, he took counsel with the duke of Buckingham, who was in the same plight as himself. The duke decided to disguise himself as a falconer, with the goshawks on his arm.”

The Start may have ended in disappointment for Charles, but it did shift the focus to him as a sitting monarch and not a royal hostage. As well, it served as a practice run before his next, and more desperate, escape when capture would have cost him his life.


References:

The Historical Works of Sir James Balfour

Cromwell's Scotch Campaigns: 1650-51, by William Scott Douglas

British History Online: 'Venice: November 1651', in Calendar of State Papers Relating To English Affairs in the Archives of Venice, Volume 28, 1647-1652, ed. Allen B Hinds (London, 1927), pp. 202-206 http://www.british-history

[This is an Editor's Choice archive post, originally published on EHFA 5th March 2016

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Cryssa Bazos is an award-winning historical fiction author and 17th-century enthusiast with a particular interest in the English Civil War. Her debut novel, Traitor's Knot, was the Medalist winner of the 2017 New Apple Award (historical fiction), a finalist for the 2018 EPIC eBook Awards (historical romance) and the RNA Joan Hessayon Award. Her second novel, Severed Knot, was longlisted for the Historical Novel Society 2018 New Novel Award and tells the story of a Scottish PoW transported down to Barbados as an indentured servant.

Connect with Cryssa through her Website, Facebook, and Twitter (@CryssaBazos). Traitor's Knot is available through Amazon, and Severed Knot is available through Amazon and other Online Retailers. 

The Infamous Countess of Carlisle

by Cryssa Bazos

One of the most intriguing characters in historical fiction is Milady de Winter of the Three Musketeers. Alexandre Dumas depicted her as a lethal spy whose loyalties were sold to the highest bidder, notably the Cardinal Richelieu.

The inspiration for Milady was a socialite and renowned beauty of her day, Lucy Hay, Countess of Carlisle. Though Lucy was not an agent of Cardinal Richelieu, she held court at a time of social upheaval when men were drawing battle lines against King Charles I. The real woman was even more fascinating than the fictional one.

Lucy Percy, by Anthony van Dyck
[Public Domain] via Wikimedia Commons

Lucy Hay was born Lucy Percy in 1599 to Lady Dorothy Devereux and Henry Percy, the 9th Earl of Northumberland. Lady Devereux was the daughter of the Earl of Essex and Lettice Knollys whose second husband, Robert Dudley the Earl of Leicester, had once been a favourite of Queen Elizabeth, that is until he and Lettice married without the Queen’s permission. Through her maternal line, Lucy was the great, great granddaughter of Mary Boleyn, sister to Anne Boleyn.

On Lucy's father's side, the Percys were an old and respected bloodline having first arrived with William the Conqueror, and later, descendants of King Henry III. The family stood for centuries as the bulwark against Scottish and Welsh invasion of England. Given Lucy's stellar connections, she was well poised to be a courtly influence.

Unfortunately, her early years were marked by notoriety and not the favourable kind. When Lucy had been six years old, her father had been implicated in the Gunpowder Plot (to blow up Parliament and murder King James I) due to his kinship with one of the leading conspirators, Thomas Percy. For the next seventeen years, Lucy’s father was a prisoner of the Tower of London (along with famous prisoner Sir Walter Raleigh) and during this time Percy indulged his interest in alchemy and chemistry. He was committed to his experiments (even lost the hearing of one ear) and everyone called him the "Wizard Earl."  

While Henry languished in the Tower, Lucy’s mother tried to secure her husband’s release. She appealed to her friend Queen Anne, who put in a good word with her husband, King James I, but unfortunately the King levied a crippling fine that the Percys couldn’t afford and they found their estates seized. This was Lucy’s early introduction to the influence women could yield in politics as well as the fickleness of royal prerogative [1].

Sometime around 1617, Lucy Percy caught the eye of James Hay, who would become the 1st Earl of Carlisle. At the time he was a baron and a widower. Her father was furious. His imprisonment put him at a disadvantage to squelch his daughter's choice, particularly since his wife favoured the match. Henry Percy did not have a high opinion of the Scottish faction at court, the courtiers who had followed King James to England upon his ascension of the English throne, and James Hay was one of the King’s more extravagent favourites. Henry Percy had been reputed to say, “I am a Percy and I cannot endure that my daughter should dance any Scottish jig.”

James Hay, 1st Earl of Carlisle, by Unknown
National Portrait Gallery: NPG 5210
[Public Domain] via Wikimedia Commons

James Hay was not considered a handsome man, but he was suave, charismatic and knew how to entertain in style. He introduced Lucy to a sophisticated set, lavished her with courtly masques, fine music and theatre. For an ambitious woman like Lucy, James Hay was irresistible. More importantly, he pulled her from the shadow of her father’s disgrace straight into the royal limelight.

In November 1617, Lucy became James Hay’s second wife. Her wedding was attended by the fashionable and the powerful, including Charles, Prince of Wales and George Villiers (later the Duke of Buckingham).

In the early days of Lucy’s marriage, her husband served as a Privy Councillor and a Groom of the Stool. Between 1618 and 1622, Hay travelled to foreign courts on behalf of the King, counselled the King on the growing troubles in Germany and recommended England’s support for the Protestants in Bohemia and the Palatinate. He was a voice for the Huguenots in France though not a successful one. In 1622, the King made him the 1st Earl of Carlisle and Lucy became a Countess.

Lucy flourished in the years to come, greatly celebrated for her  beauty and accomplishments. She had a gift for politics and intrigues, enjoyed poetry and theatre, and cultivated admirers by the score. In later years when she contracted small pox, the entire court feared that she would be disfigured. For a time, she wore masks to hide her healing face and managed to turn them into a fashion statement. Fortunately for Lucy, the disease did not leave lasting scars.

Men waxed poetic over Lucy’s charms. One admirer, John Suckling, wrote a risqué poem about the bewitching Countess of Carlisle in the form of a dialogue between himself and another admirer of hers, Thomas Carew. The poem was entitled, Upon My Lady Carlisle’s Walking in Hampton Court Gardens. Here is one of the stanzas:

“Twas well for thee she left the place;
There is great danger in that face.
But hadst thou viewed her leg and thigh,
And upon that discovery
Searched after parts that are more dear”

Lucy and James Hay’s star continued to rise after the ascension of the new king, Charles I, and the growing influence of his favourite, George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham. Lucy was rumoured to have been Buckingham’s mistress, and through Buckingham’s influence, she was appointed Lady of Queen Henrietta’s Bedchamber, while her husband received a similar honour for the King. 

It suited Buckingham to install Lucy as a companion to Queen Henrietta Maria, in order to be informed of the Queen’s visitors and activities. The Queen was passionately against Lucy's appointment. After all, Lucy was beautiful, witty and entirely Buckingham’s creature, and as her duties brought her in close contact with the King, Henrietta feared that Buckingham worked to install Lucy as the King's mistress. Charles was not so easily led astray and resisted Lucy’s charms; he even refused the Queen's petition to get rid of her. Over time, Lucy overcame the Henrietta's suspicions and became a close confident to her. Through her proximity to the Queen, Lucy became the centre of fashionable society, gathering poets and politicians within her circle. 

 

George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham
By Michiel van Mierevelt
[Public Domain] via Wikimedia Commons

It was around this time when the story of the French Queen’s diamonds surfaced, made famous by Alexandre Dumas in The Three Musketeers. A 17th century French diarist, Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld (Prince de Marcillac) wrote in his memoirs that Lucy stole the diamond studs that Anne of Austria, Queen of France, had given to her admirer Buckingham. Lucy's motives were reputed to be revenge for having been jilted by Buckingham by his obsession with the Queen. Dumas borrowed heavily from Rochefoucauld’s memoirs and created the  character of Milady de Winter in Lucy's image. 

James Hay meanwhile continued his diplomatic service for Charles I, engaging in intrigues against Cardinal Richelieu of France and was even named Governor of the Caribbees. Eventually his health failed, and he died in 1636.

Now Lucy found herself a wealthy widow, and it gave her a degree of freedom that she had never previously enjoyed before. Though she would not be shy of male companionship, she never remarried and so maintained her independence. During this chapter of her life, she fell in love with Thomas Wentworth, the Earl of Strafford. Intense, serious and ambitious, Strafford was the exact opposite of Lucy’s late husband.

Strafford had at one point been a vocal supporter for the rights of Parliament against royal prerogative, but he eventually switched sides to become one of the King’s most ardent supporters. As discontent against the King grew and the country headed toward civil war, Strafford became a scapegoat for the country's ills, and Parliament called for his impeachment. The impeachment failed but a bill of attainder was passed against him, and Charles I had no choice than to sign the attainder and seal Strafford's death. To read more about Strafford’s trial, see Strafford Must Die by Annie Whitehead.

Politically astute, Lucy managed to distance herself from Strafford so she was not brought low by his ruin. Lucy Hay was a survivor, after all. She switched sides and started passing information to one of Parliament’s most ardent advocates, John Pym. Some even said she became his mistress. Perhaps one of the most important pieces of information that she passed to Pym, and which was credited with igniting the spark of civil war, was a warning that the King was planning to arrest Pym and four of his companions. Pym managed to escape, and a week later, he returned triumphant to Parliament to resume his crusade against the King.

When the English Civil War broke out in 1642, Lucy favoured Parliament, though she took care to not entirely burn her bridges on the other side. She had a growing aversion to royal prerogative. Lucy favoured moderation, where the nobility retained their privilege instead of being irrelevant by the whims of the king. By the end of the 1st civil war, when it became apparent that Parliament was being circumvented by a fanatic Puritan faction, moderate Lucy switched sides to help spy for the Royalists. 

During the second civil war (1647-1648), Lucy raised funds for the king and acted as a go-between the Royalists in the north and Queen Henrietta. In the end, all her efforts were for naught. The King was captured and in January 1649, executed.

Two months later, Parliament arrested Lucy and sent her to the Tower of London for questioning. They threatened her with torture but could not break her. Lucy remained in the Tower for eighteen months, ironically not far from where her father had been kept all those years. Eventually she was paroled and released.

In the final years of Cromwell’s Protectorate, Lucy became a Royalist agent, joining others who worked to restore Charles II to his father's throne. A few short months after the Restoration, on November 5, 1660, Lucy Hay, Countess of Carlisle quietly passed away. 

Femme fatale, informant, spy, Lucy Hay was a fascinating character. Alexandre Dumas obviously agreed.


Further reading:

Court Lady and Country Wife: Royal Privilege and Civil War (Two Noble Sisters in 17th century England), by Lita-Rose Betcherman.

[1] The English Civil War: A People’s History, by Diane Purkiss

Poem of the week: Upon My Lady Carlisle’s Walking in Hampton Court Gardens by John Suckling.

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Cryssa Bazos is historical fiction writer and 17th century enthusiast with a particular interest in the English Civil War. Her debut novel, Traitor's Knot, will be published by Endeavour Press and will be released in 2017. For more stories about the English Civil War and the 17th century, visit her blog cryssabazos.com. Follow Cryssa on Twitter (@CryssaBazos) and on Facebook. 

The Six Lady St. Johns and their influence on the Court of King James I

By Elizabeth St. John

On July 20th, 1615, the six St.John sisters stood proudly commemorated in the polyptych portrait at St. Mary’s Church, Lydiard Tregoze, in Wiltshire. According to Lucy Hutchinson, author of Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, “there were not in those days so many beautiful women found in any family as these.” She went on to say, “but my mother was by the most judgments preferred before all her elder sisters, who, something envious at it, used her unkindly.”

(L to R) Lucy, Barbara, Eleanor, Jane, Anne and Katherine

Her mother was Lucy St.John, the youngest of the six sisters, and one who would perhaps lead the most adventurous life of all of them. As a generation of women who were central to the Stuart milieu of patronage and influence, the portrait also celebrated their husbands, for at the foot of each woman rests a tablet with the coat of arms of the men they married. Only Lucy’s lozenge is blank, for although she had met her future husband, Sir Allen Apsley, they were not yet married. And yet, he arguably promoted Lucy to one of the most influential of the sisters, for shortly after the marriage he was appointed Lieutenant of the Tower of London, and they moved into The Queen’s House overlooking Tower Green.

The Queen's House, the Tower of London

For the next thirteen years, Lucy St.John looked after the prisoners and raised her children within the confines of the Tower of London. Sir Allen was generous, and gave her “a noble allowance of £300 for her own private use.” She certainly put this to good use, for her daughter goes on to say, 

“Sir Walter Raleigh and Mr. Ruthin being prisoners in the Tower, and addicting themselves to chemistry, she suffered them to make their rare experiments at her cost, partly to comfort and divert the poor prisoners, and partly to gain the knowledge of their experiments, and the medicines to help such poor people as were not able to seek physicians.”

Sir Allen Apsley did not attain his appointment a Tower on his own merit, however. Lucy St.John’s sister, Barbara, married Edward Villiers, the fatherless second son of a Leicestershire squire. However, five years later, his older half-brother, George Villiers, was made Knight of the Garter, after being “discovered” by James I. Once knighted, George Villiers ascended rapidly, a comet at the court of King James with a multitude of relatives and supporters trailing in his tail. One of these was Allen Apsley. According to contemporary court papers, Sir Allen was given the option of securing the lucrative position of Lieutenant of the Tower because of his wife’s relationship to George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham. For a mere £3,000 (£500,000 in today’s money), the job was his. 

The view from Lucy's parlour, overlooking Tower Green

Unfortunately, the close friendship that evolved between Sir Allen and the Duke did not end in harmony. Sir Allen also held the position of Victualler of the Navy, and Buckingham’s frequent forays overseas to engage in foreign wars strained the nation’s finances immensely, and placed a huge personal burden on Sir Allen as he struggled to provision a Navy that was poor on men, ships and supplies. At the time of Buckingham’s assassination in 1628, Sir Allen was almost £100,000 (£9,000,000) in debt, putting his own credit and that of others on the line to support his patron. The money was never recovered, and Lucy and her children were hauled through the courts for decades after his death in 1630 in attempts to recover funds. 

Riches and perquisites for the Ladies St.John did not stop here, however. Katherine St.John, the eldest of the sisters, married a gentleman of shrewd business acumen but shaky character, Sir Giles Mompesson. He devised a scheme of licensing inns that enabled his patron – the Duke of Buckingham – to secure thousands of pounds worth of fines to satisfy his very expensive habit of acquiring Italian artwork. Sir Giles’s method of extracting fines left a lot to be desired and in his resulting prosecution he was forced to leave the country in a hurry. However, no shrinking violet was Katherine, for when the attempt to arrest Sir Giles was made in his chambers, his escape was orchestrated by Katherine, her brother-in-law Sir William St.John, and her half-brother Sir Edward Hungerford. The St.John women were obviously very persuasive.

Barbara St. John Villiers

And what of Barbara, the sister who married Edward Villiers? She, along with her husband, nearly caused the downfall of the Duke of Buckingham through his tacit endorsement and granting of gold and silver thread monopolies. Sir Edward (he was knighted around the same time as George started his rise to fame) was involved in this scheme up to his neck, and when he forced the Attorney General to imprison several gold and silver makers for not paying fees to him, there was an immediate uproar. The House of Commons were out for blood, and although they were told that Buckingham had given his half-brother no encouragement in the matter, the reaction was such that it was felt an example should be made of Buckingham. Monopolists such as George and Edward Villiers were “bloodsuckers of the kingdom and vipers of the commonwealth,” and the furor nearly brought down the Duke.

Interestingly, Barbara maintained a secure hold on the gold and silver thread monopolies long after her husband’s death. It is quite possible that income from this lucrative opportunity could have funded the education and lifestyle of her granddaughter, another Barbara Villiers – future Countess of Castlemaine and mistress of King Charles II.

The remaining older sisters, Anne and Jane, appeared to lead fairly quiet lives, although without a doubt they observed the antics of their sisters at Whitehall. However, they were not immune from the influences of court – Anne’s husband Sir George Ayliffe left this rather touching bequest in his will:

“…to my dearest and best friend that ever I found in the world, my Ladie Villiers, my dear sister, £20 for a diamond ring, in memories of me her poor brother, who ever truly loved her and honour her even to death…”

And what of the younger sister, Eleanor? The tablet at her feet reveals she married a distant cousin, Sir William St.John of Highlight in Wales (the same gentleman who arranged the escape of Giles Mompesson). A soldier, a pirate, and a commander of the King’s Ships, Sir William was a good friend of Sir Walter Raleigh, and tragically was instructed by the Duke to arrest him in his final escape attempt before being executed.

It is fascinating to contemplate the effort required to survive and prosper during the time this generation of St.John sisters were alive. Not only were they facing the daily threat of contagion, disease and childbirth, they faced the continual challenge of relying on others to look after their interests. Thus, their life must have been an intricate dance where partners changed daily and the steps were never the same. More than four hundred years later we can look back and admire these women for their courage and dexterity.

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Photos © 2016 Anthony St.John and Elizabeth St.John

Elizabeth St.John was brought up in England and lives in California. In the course of writing her best-selling debut novel, The Lady of the Tower, she has tracked down family papers and sites from Nottingham Castle, Lydiard Park, and the British Library to Castle Fonmon and The Tower of London. Although the family sold a few castles and country homes along the way (it's hard to keep a good castle going these days), Elizabeth's family still occupy them - in the form of portraits, memoirs, and gardens that carry their imprint. And the occasional ghost. But that's a different story...

For more information about Elizabeth visit her website at elizabethjstjohn.com, or for more information about her novel, visit Lady of the Tower.

The novel The Lady of the Tower is available through Amazon. 

The Marriage of George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham and Lady Katherine Manners

by Pamela Womack

George Villiers, 1st Duke 
of Buckingham attributed 
to William Larkin, and 

studio of William Larkin 
(circa 1616) 

© National Portrait Gallery 
London  

When early in 1619 it became known that King James I wished his powerful favourite George Villiers, Marquis of Buckingham, to marry, there was a flurry of excitement in the court as wealthy courtiers with daughters of marriageable age scrambled to push them forward. However, Buckingham and his redoubtable mother Mary Beaumont, Countess of Buckingham, had already determined that George would marry Lady Katherine Manners, the greatest heiress in England. Although this marriage, achieved through deception and coercion, has often been briefly mentioned in works about Buckingham and judged to have been either unusually happy or a one-sided love affair, research reveals a complex and fascinating story of a relationship which was characterised by continuous infidelity on one side and passionate devotion on the other, but which also reveals that Katherine was neither meek nor subservient, but was a spirited and determined woman who was prepared to flout convention to marry the man she loved.

Katherine Manners was the daughter of Francis Manners, 6th Earl of Rutland and Frances Knyvett.  After the death of his first wife Rutland married Cecily, the daughter of Sir John Tufton, who bore him two sons who died in apparently mysterious circumstances which were the centre of a notorious witchcraft case. Their deaths resulted in Katherine becoming the heir not only to the Knyvett property from her mother, but also to the unentailed estates in Yorkshire and Northamptonshire.

Portraits of Katherine show her to have been a rather plain woman, but doubtless her inheritance more than made up for her lack of beauty, and Buckingham and his mother opened negotiations. However, there were complications: Rutland was a Roman Catholic and the king would only permit his favourite to marry a Protestant, therefore pressure was brought to bear upon Katherine to abandon her religion. Rutland may well also have heard the talk and speculation about the exact nature of King James’s intense relationship with his handsome young favourite; the Earl was often at court and must have witnessed the very public display of kissing and caressing. The amount of dowry demanded, too, was exorbitant and Rutland was offended. The negotiations floundered, but Buckingham and Mary’s solution to the deadlock was a plan which reflects badly on them both.

In March 1620 Mary visited the Countess of Rutland in the absence of the Earl, and invited Katherine to dine with her, promising to bring her back home before night-fall. It has been commonly assumed that the invitation was to Mary’s Leicestershire home at nearby Goadby Marwood. However, Mary brought the innocent girl to her lodgings at the Gatehouse in Whitehall. Even worse, Katherine stayed overnight, and so did her suitor, despite the fact that his own lodgings were within walking distance. The next day Katherine was returned home, but her outraged and furious father refused to receive her at Belvoir. The fact that Buckingham had also slept under the same roof ensured that Katherine’s reputation was ruined. Rutland was now forced into the position of insisting that Buckingham marry his daughter to save both her and the family’s honour.

The affair caused great scandal and despite Buckingham’s importance, the marriage did not take place at court with the usual lavish and lengthy entertainments, instead the couple were married privately in 1620, witnessed only by the Earl and the King.

The Buckinghams lived a lavish life-style, but it seems clear that this was not the fairy-tale life which Katherine had imagined. Perhaps she had unrealistically believed that Buckingham would leave his life at court and devote himself exclusively to her, and in a bitter, reproachful letter in 1627 she told him that, ‘… there is none more miserable than I am, and till you leave this life of a courtier which you have been ever since I knew you, I shall think myself unhappy.’

The Duke of Buckingham and his Family 

after Gerrit van Honthorst (1628) 

© National Portrait Gallery, London

Whatever the dreams and hopes for her marriage had been, Katherine had to contend with reality and accept that she had not only gained a husband but also all his family, which included the doting King himself. Then there were the mistresses, notably the spirited court beauty Lucy, Countess of Carlisle. When Buckingham was in Madrid with Prince Charles in 1623, during which time he was created a Duke, his behaviour at the straight-laced Spanish court caused great offence.

Buckingham again outraged convention and stretched Katherine’s devotion to the uttermost when he travelled to Paris in May 1625 to escort England’s new Queen, Henrietta Maria, to her new home. The English favourite scandalised the French court by blatantly making love to the French Queen Anne of Austria, giving scant thought to his pregnant wife at home. The Duke’s obsession with Anne, which he did not try to disguise, must have caused Katherine great heartache, and he made determined attempts to see the queen again.

King Charles I 

by Gerrit van Honthorst (1628) 

© National Portrait Gallery, London

A cursory reading of Katherine’s letters gives the impression of a woman whose life was utterly bound up with her adored husband. However, further readings suggest a strong-willed woman who was no door-mat and whose relationship with her illustrious husband could be stormy. Buckingham pampered his ‘poor little wife’ as her father may have done, and it seems that she made clear her displeasure with his frequent absences, and was not above using emotional blackmail.

The evidence suggests that although Buckingham was never in love with his wife he nonetheless genuinely cared for her, and notwithstanding his inability to remain faithful, treated her well. When he discovered that Katherine had been ill, perhaps seriously, while he was in Madrid, he seems to have been genuinely alarmed, confessing his adultery and asking for forgiveness, and even telling her he would return home if she was still sick. Katherine was aware of her husband’s weakness, and comforted by his concern for her, she was able to be sufficiently magnanimous to tell him that he was a good man save for his one sin of "loving women so well."

The increasing attacks upon the Duke during the first three years of Charles I’s reign, and the attempts by Parliament to impeach him in 1626 caused Katherine serious alarm. The Duke survived because of the King’s deep attachment to him, but Katherine and his mother and sister were devastated to hear that Buckingham intended to command a naval expedition to La Rochelle to relieve the Protestant Huguenots in the summer of 1627. Such was Katherine’s distress that Buckingham promised her that he would not accompany the fleet, and she wrote to him several times reminding of his promise to her, telling him in one letter that, "I hope you will not deceive me in breaking yours, for I protest if you should, it would half kill me."

However, Buckingham lied and left without saying goodbye. When she realised that he had really gone, Katherine told him she could almost wish herself dead, but although she had failed to keep her husband at home, her letters indicate her continued attempts to control his behaviour.

Buckingham and Charles planned another attempt to liberate La Rochelle, but this time Katherine refused to allow him to quietly slip away, determinedly accompanying him to Portsmouth in August 1628. Fortunately she was still in her bedchamber when the Duke was stabbed to death by John Felton.

The Duchess returned to her Catholic faith after Buckingham’s death. The king, whose devotion to the Duke had matched her own, removed his beloved friend’s children from her care and had them brought up with his own children. Katherine again occasioned the king’s wrath when she married the Irish Randal MacDonnell, then Viscount Dunluce, in 1635 to general censure. Katherine’s second marriage was equally eventful but seems to have been a far more equal partnership, with Katherine playing a leading role. MacDonnell was deeply distressed when she died in November 1649.

Living through a time of political upheaval and the tumultuous events of the Civil War, Katherine Manners was fiercely loyal and passionately devoted to her two husbands, even to the extent of defying convention and incurring the displeasure of her father and the king to marry the men of her choice.

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Pamela J. Womack is the author of Darling of Kings, published by Hayloft Publishing Ltd., an historical novel which tells the tragic story of the friendship between Charles I and George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham. She has also written An Illustrated Introduction to the Stuarts, published by Amberley Publishing Ltd. She is currently writing the Duke of Buckingham’s biography.

For more information visit her website at www.thebuckinghamchronicles.com