The Coffee Houses of Queen Anne’s London

By David Fairer

By the turn of the eighteenth century the coffee houses of London had become the great meeting-places of the capital – for relaxation and for stimulation. Whether your drink of choice was coffee, chocolate, or expensive tea, it was here you met with your friends and encountered strangers; where you could exercise your wit, pick up the latest news, sound forth your political opinions, and hear the latest spicy gossip as it did the rounds. Some characters (like Medley in Etherege’s The Man of Mode) were news bulletins in themselves, circulating scandal as a currency – one that gained value in the telling – perhaps to crash by tomorrow.

Jacob Spon’s frontispiece to his tract on coffee, tea, and chocolate (Paris, 1685). The three contrasting figures reflect the far-flung origins of the drinks: Turkey (coffee), China (tea), and Spanish America (chocolate).

A French traveller found London’s coffee houses remarkable: “You have all manner of news there: you have a good fire, which you may sit by as long as you please; you have a dish of coffee; you meet your friends for the transaction of business – and all for a penny, if you don’t care to spend more.” (Henri Misson, 1717).

Coffee houses had their individual character, and this might change over the course of a day. Early in the morning the news-mongers circulated, spreading and exchanging the overnight intelligence; later, well-informed gentlemen might stroll in and put matters right; by afternoon the atmosphere was perhaps one of after-dinner reflection; then the place would ready itself for the arrival of the wits and the theatrical crowd primed for the adventures of the evening; and by nine the critics might reappear with their judgments on the new play at the Theatre Royal.

First established in London during the Commonwealth, after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 the coffee houses seem to have gained a reputation for seditious conversation – places that might attract the disaffected. In December 1675 King Charles II issued a proclamation in the London Gazette to suppress all coffee houses as being the haunts of “Idle and disaffected persons” who were spreading “malicious and scandalous reports to the defamation of His Majesties Government . . . speaking evil of things they understand not.” From the following week it would be forbidden for anyone “to keep any publick Coffeehouse, or to utter or sell any Coffee, Chocolet, Sherbett or Tea, or they will answer the contrary at their utmost Perils.” It was a Draconian move against an institution that was becoming popular, and needless to say, this attempt to end what was proving to be a profitable trade for merchants and proprietors alike, was doomed. After a huge outcry the threat was withdrawn.* (*https://www.thegazette.co.uk/all-notices/content/100707).

By the reign of Charles’s niece, Queen Anne (1702-14), the coffee houses – and their slightly more upmarket cousins the chocolate houses – could be numbered in their hundreds, and they had established themselves as relatively respectable places of resort. Of course, seditious sentiments might still be uttered, and quarrels over politics were liable to break out at any time. The following picture suggests what a lively and disputatious place a London coffee house of the period might be, with the bewigged clientele coming to blows:

‘The Coffee-House Mob, or, Debates Pro, and Con, on the Times’. Frontispiece to Ned Ward, The Fourth Part of Vulgus Britannicus: or, The British Hudibras (1710).

But coffee houses were generally clubbable places, resorts of conversation, grumbling, rumour, wit, scandal, and intellectual and political debate. There was something to suit every taste:

The gentle Beau too, joins in wise debate,
Adjusts his cravat, and reforms the State.
[The Tripe Club. A Satyr (1706)]

One establishment might offer conversations in Latin, another attract projectors and men of science, another one be the resort of members of the clergy in town on church business. But you had to be careful – a confirmed Whig would no sooner think of frequenting the high Tory Cocoa-Tree in Pall Mall, than a Jacobitical Tory would settle himself at Will’s in Covent Garden at the corner of Russell Street and Bow Street.

Each establishment had its own character, and there was all the variety you could wish for. White’s Chocolate House on St James’s Street was a more aristocratic haunt notorious for the ‘deep play’ of hazard, a dicing game at which huge fortunes were made or lost in a single evening, and when the shirt on your back could be the final desperate stake.

The social mix was considerable, but in one important way they were exclusive. Unlike the many taverns and alehouses of the capital, London coffee houses were closed to women. A fair number of them, however, were run by widows. Lillywhite’s compendium lists nineteen of them, including those presided over by Widow Turnbull, Widow Nixon, Widow Lloyd, and Widow Vernon – who in 1713 carried on her business in Fleet Street after the death of her husband. This situation was probably quite common – and it made a widow well set up in business an attractive marriage prospect.

We can see from the following illustration what an imposing figure the chatelaine of a coffee house would cut with her tall tiara and ample gown:

A London coffee house c. 1705

The coffee boy, dressed in his smart livery, was proud of his ability to pour out the coffee in an elegant way – like the young man in the above plate. The few pictures of coffee-boys all show them lifting the pot as high as they can manage and delivering an elegant stream of liquid into the earthenware bowl (china cups with handles had not yet established themselves).

On entering, the customer deposited his penny at the bar, and was expected to seat himself with the other gentlemen. You didn’t go into a coffee house to sit alone and keep your own company. And at these so-called ‘penny universities’, newspapers, books and pamphlets were available, and some of them had their own libraries. They could be venues for auctions, lottery ticket sales, with projectors making their pitch. Business could be transacted, especially in the flourishing coffee houses in Exchange Alley, off Cheapside in the City. The most famous of these were Jonathan‘s, Garraway’s, and Lloyds – which specialised in the latest shipping news. Entering Jonathan’s you would be met with a crowd of stock-jobbers crying their wares, and could hear the price of stocks rise and fall as the deals were made all round you. When the Royal Exchange was closed to share-dealing, the trade simply moved into the warren of streets on the other side of the road, packed with brokers, bankers, and the new trade of insurance.

In contrast to the busy financial dealings in Exchange Alley, at Will’s in Covent Garden the brightest and best in the literary world gathered. In this place where the great Dryden had once held court, aspiring writers formed a coterie in the company of Addison, Swift, Wycherley, Ambrose Philips, John Dennis, and John Gay. Here, as in other coffee houses which aspired to a literary character, a young man’s reputation could be made with a witty epigram or a finely turned pastoral. It was at Will’s that the teenage Alexander Pope made friends with Swift, and brought himself to the notice of influential patrons.

Such coffee-houses had libraries that lent out books, and on the tables, beside the newspapers, would be scattered controversial pamphlets, tedious sermons, or satirical squibs. An aspiring poet might tour the coffee houses and leave behind manuscript copies of his latest inspiration, hoping they would be noticed by the cultural influencers of the day. If he was especially lucky, his piece might find its way into The Tatler, the influential periodical begun by Richard Steele in 1709. This thrice-weekly paper offered regular reports from four carefully chosen coffee houses. As Steele explained in the first number, “All accounts of Gallantry, Pleasure, and Entertainment, shall be under the article of White’s Chocolate House; Poetry, under that of Will’s Coffee House; Learning under the title of the Grecian; and Foreign and Domestick News you will have from St James’s Coffee House.” From those four appropriate outposts, the magazine’s persona, ‘Isaac Bickerstaff’, was able to cover the cultural field – much like the Sunday supplements do today.

Part of the joy of a coffee house was its clientele, and a newcomer might encounter a wide range of characters. In Ned Ward’s series, The Weekly Comedy: Or, the Humours of a Coffee-House (1707), his readers were offered a succession of comic scenes that featured a miscellany of characters, including Hazard (a gamester), Blunt (a plain dealer), Bite (a sharper), Nice (a beau), Whim (a projector), Trick (a Lawyer), Froth (a punster), Bays (a poet), Harlem (a news-writer), and Guzzle (a hard drinker) – a group described by Ward a “Knaves of all Trades, and Fools in Ev’ry Art.” In Ward’s typically dyspeptic words, the coffee houses were full of “a buzzing breed, / That o’er their Coffee tattle, smoke, and read.”

But these places were not just for drinking and talking. Wagers would be taken on the news – men would talk about their trades, their latest reading, pass judgment on new play, speculate on the news from Europe – the triumphs and reverses when Britain was involved in a long continental war. The coffee houses of Queen Anne’s London fed the capital’s insatiable desire for news and sociability. At a time when ‘the World’ was merely five miles across and could be walked in a couple of hours, people sensed that everything was within reach. So much was happening around you that you really ought to know about it, and the coffee houses acted as a busy exchange. Here is Lewis Theobald writing about his daily routine in The Censor, no. 61 (12 March 1717):

“As I am obliged, in order to see how the world runs, and gather observations on the humours of mankind . . . I constantly appear once a Day at the Coffee-houses in vogue, and where I expect to meet with the most matter for speculation. Were it not for these diurnal circulations, and the minutes which I take from what occurs there, I might find myself sometimes at a loss for subjects  . . . I [put] on an air of inadvertence, and glean up the scatter’d papers from every table . . . being seated, and like a profound politician, with my coffee half cold, seeming to nod o’er the respective interests of Europe . . . I have often sat with pleasure to hear the Nation settled, and the Wits arraign’d; and amuse myself with the variety of conversation, which is bandied by every distinct knot of talkers. I have heard a country Squire over his pipe at one corner, sputtering about the age and strength of his October [a strong beer] and recommending the house-wifery of his daughter Penelope. At another, a company of sparks praising the beauty of a bar-keeper. A third clan would be canvassing the sermons and conduct of their parson . . . These disjointed topicks of conversation [are] played off at one time and in the self-same place . . .”

In this world, variety was a stimulus. These sociable spaces offered an unpredictable mixture of entertainment and challenge, knowledge and opportunity, escape and refreshment. The world was surely a better place for these busy harbours of the mind.

Some reading:

[Anon.], The Character of a Coffee-House. Wherein is contained a Description of the Persons usually frequenting it, with their Discourse and Humors (1665)

Ned Ward, The Weekly Comedy, as it is Dayly Acted at most Coffee-Houses in London (1699; reworked and republished as The Humours of a Coffee-House, 1707)

Henri Misson, Memoirs and Observations in his Travels over England (1719)

John Ashton, Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne (1929)

Aytoun Ellis, The Penny Universities: A History of the Coffee-Houses (1956)

Bryant Lillywhite, London Coffee Houses (1963)

Markman Ellis, The Coffee House: A Cultural History (2004)

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David Fairer was born in Kingston-Upon-Hull, Yorkshire. After studying in Oxford for ten years, he took up a lectureship at the University of Leeds in 1976, and since 1999 has been Professor of 18th Century English Literature (Emeritus 2018). He has written widely on the period. Some of his books include Pope’s Imagination (1984), English Poetry of the Eighteenth Century (2004), and Organising Poetry: The Coleridge Circle (2009). Chocolate House Treason (2019) is his fictional début – “not before time!” he says.

Chocolate House Treason is the first in a projected series of whodunits set in the London of Queen Anne during the uneasy months following the Act of Union (1707) when the new nation of ‘Great Britain’ came into being. 

The book is published by Troubador Publishing Ltd:

https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/historical/chocolate-house-treason/

For some more background information, see the Chocolate House Mysteries website: https://davidfairer.com/

The Jacobite Rebellion of 1715

by Morag Edwards

James II of England and VII of Scotland had two Protestant daughters with his first wife but following his second marriage to the teenage Mary Beatrice of Modena, the birth of a son in 1688 meant that there was now a Catholic heir to the throne. The baby was sickly and expected to die, but his survival led to rumours that the royal baby had been swapped for another in a warming pan.
James’ inconsistent domestic and foreign policy meant that friends and foes were suspicious of him. Louis XIV of France, who should have been his greatest ally, was puzzled by his vacillating support for France and had never forgiven James for agreeing to a marriage between his eldest daughter Mary and William III of Orange, instead of to the dauphin.

James II by Peter Lely - Public Domain Image

William of Orange had been preparing to invade England since June and invited by parliament, he landed with his army in Devon in November 1688. James made a half-hearted attempt to resist but distraught that his son-in-law would take such action against him and deserted by his other son-in-law, Prince George of Denmark, he returned to Whitehall. Determined to save his young wife and baby son, he sent them to France, into the protection of an unprepared Louis XIV. James tried to follow and was captured but he was allowed to make a second successful escape to France. To all but his most loyal supporters, he was widely regarded to have willingly renouncing his right to rule, in other words to have abdicated.

Had he been more astute, James could have saved the Stuart dynasty in Scotland, as Scotland did not have to accept the new English monarch. The Scottish Convention of Estates asked both candidates to promote their suitability by letter. William of Orange promised the Scottish people that he would respect and maintain the Protestant faith, while James’ appeal was considered arrogant and threatening. The Convention invited William and Mary to accede to the Scottish throne.

William & Mary Engraving

The exiled court of James II settled at the chateau of St. Germain-en-Laye, just outside Paris, as guests of Louis XIV. Louis’ relationship with the exiled court was courteous and hospitable but often tense. Numbers varied from 1,000 to almost 2,000 residents, who had to be supported financially by the French king. Louis XIV had great concerns about the unreliability of the Jacobite court and maintained high levels of surveillance of their movements and communications. Privately, Louis felt that few men of ability had joined the court in exile. Mary Beatrice of Modena had considerable influence on Louis XIV through her lively intelligence, her social confidence and her beauty. Despite the tension between the men, the royal families met often.

Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye Attribution Link

Frustrations arose on both sides as James II continued to pursue unrealistic ambitions to regain his throne, while Louis XIV used the Jacobites’ hopes to support French interests. James pressed for an invasion of England or Scotland, while Louis thought that a Jacobite presence in Ireland, supported by French military strength, would divert English attention from the French. James’ reluctant expedition to Ireland to fight the Williamite forces was financed by the French and ended in a rout at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. James II fled the battlefield and once back in France he asked Louis to support an immediate invasion of England. Louis refused, maintaining that a rebellion must already be underway in England before he would agree.

In 1692, Louis was finally persuaded to support an invasion of England as James’ sources reported rising Jacobite support in England and it was believed that Admiral Russell of the English fleet would desert to the French. However, news of the invasion leaked and at the same time James II published an ill-timed proclamation that destroyed public support for him in England. When James reached Cherbourg, he found the French fleet damaged by a storm. Tourville, the commander of the French fleet, advised against the attempted invasion but was ignored. In May 1692, the French fleet was destroyed at Cap La Hogue by a combined Anglo-Dutch fleet, the greatest military disaster of Louis’ reign. Preoccupied by the birth of his baby daughter, James made an error of judgement in sending the insensitive Earl of Melfort to account for the failure of intelligence. Louis was furious and in 1693, the French recognised William III as king of England. Thereafter, there were fewer social contacts between the courts.

James planned another invasion in 1696 but Louis remained adamant that there would only be French support if there was an active rebellion in England. At the same time, the Jacobite conspirators hoped the landing of a French army might awaken the English people to their cause. Unfortunately, the conspiracy was uncovered and linked with a plot to assassinate William III. The plotters were arrested, and both James II and Louis XIV were implicated. Louis was again enraged and his relationship with the exiled court became even more distant. He let it be known through his wife Madame de Maintenon that he would never again rely on intelligence from the Jacobite court. The remaining years of James II’s life were dominated by failing health and there were no further invasion attempts.

James II died in 1701 and Louis recognised his son, James Francis Edward Stuart (later nicknamed The Old Pretender) as the true heir to the English throne. However, there was little enthusiasm in England for a boy who had been raised in France and was a stranger to his native land.

For the Scottish people, the end of the Stuart dynasty had brought a decade of natural and political disasters. There were ten years of failed harvests and the struggle between France and England for dominance in Europe, severely affected Scottish exports. Young men were drafted from the fields to supply the Scots regiments fighting the wars in Europe, depleting Scottish agriculture of men to work the land. The failure of the Darien Scheme contributed significantly to Scotland’s financial ruin, since half the nation’s capital had been invested. Originally, the scheme was a joint English/Scottish enterprise to establish new trading colonies in Caledonia and the English were widely blamed in Scotland for the failure of the project.

When William of Orange died in 1702, his successor Queen Anne pushed hard for parliamentary union between England and Scotland. The view from Westminster was that the Scottish parliament was beyond control. A joint Anglo-Scottish parliamentary commission drew up a draft Treaty of Union in 1706 but the union was opposed by both the Jacobites and the Church of Scotland; an uncomfortable political liaison. The Jacobites feared that political union would end the dream of a Stuart restoration and the church feared the undermining of Scots Protestant tradition. The Act of Union was ratified in 1707, through a combination of reasoned argument, bribery and political coercion but was universally unpopular with ordinary people.

Queen Anne Public Domain Image

The Jacobites’ exploited Scottish unrest following the Act of Union and promoted their cause as one of Scottish nationalism. The words ‘No Union’ now appeared on their banners. In 1708, mindful as ever of the possibilities of using the Jacobite cause to distract the English government from the campaign in Europe, Louis XIV financed another attempted invasion of Scotland. A combination of young James’s ill health, bad weather and navigation problems meant that the French fleet could not make land and the conspirators were arrested long before the French ships appeared in the Firth of Forth. The English parliament believed that the Scots failed to adequately punish the conspirators and a series of provocative legislative acts were passed that threatened to undermine the promises of the union. Huge taxes were exacted on key Scottish exports such as linen, salt, cattle and Scotland was forbidden to trade with the English Colonies. In England too, there was little enthusiasm for their difficult neighbours to the north and in 1713 an attempt to repeal the Act of Union was defeated by only a narrow margin. Had it been successful, the political fervour that led to the Jacobite uprising of 1715 might have been avoided.

George of Hanover came to the throne in 1714. John Erskine, the Earl of Mar had been Secretary of State for Scotland under Queen Anne and had played a key role in preparing the Articles of Union. He anticipated a similar political role under George 1st and when this was not forthcoming, he became a militant Jacobite almost overnight. This sudden change of heart, combined with a cautious and indecisive nature, earned him the nickname ‘Bobbing John’.

Earl of Mar - Pubic Domain Image

In September 1715, Mar called together the clans and lowland lairds of Scotland on the pretext of a hunting party. The Stuart standard was raised on the Braes of Mar and war declared on the union. It was estimated that Mar had control of 10,000 men, the strongest ever Jacobite force, formed from an extraordinary alliance of Catholics, Episcopalians and Presbyterians, Lowland lairds and Highland chiefs. The support of peers from the English border regions, represented by the Earl of Derwentwater, was crucial.

The Jacobite force remained in Perth and Inverness until October 1715, allowing the government forces ample time to arm, while Bobbing John waited for support from the French. Finally, he sent two thousand men south under the command of an experienced soldier, Mackintosh of Borlum. Borlum reached Kelso and Jedburgh where he was joined by a few hundred English soldiers led by Thomas Forster, MP for Northumberland. Forster wanted to head for Liverpool, where he believed there was popular support, but disagreement led to further delays and prevarication. The force did eventually aim for Liverpool but they met nothing but hostility on their way. By the time they reached Preston, five hundred clansmen and borderers had gone home. On November 12th, the Jacobite army fought with great bravery and held Preston against the Hanoverian battalions. The next day, facing a reinforced Hanoverian army, Forster surrendered. Nineteen Scots and two English peers were arrested and condemned to death.  Twenty-two ordinary soldiers were hung at Preston and hundreds more soldiers and officers transported to the colonies.

John Campbell, 2nd Duke of Argyll 

On the same day as the defeat at Preston, the Earl of Mar fought against the Duke of Argyll’s force at Sherriffmuir. Despite Mar’s military superiority the outcome was inconclusive, and Mar retreated to Perth. There, he waited until December 17th when James, once again in poor health, landed at Peterborough. Although James marched in triumph into Perth and Dundee, faced with the Duke of Argyll’s advancing army, he gave the order to burn all the land, animals and homes ahead of Argyll’s troops, leaving ordinary people to starve through the Scottish winter. James retreated to Montrose and left for France in February 1716, his reserved and aloof manner having disappointed all who met him.  The Jacobite cause fell silent for thirty years until the young Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie) attempted a second Jacobite rebellion in 1745.

[all images Public Domain unless otherwise stated]

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After trying many different forms of writing, in 2005 Morag Edwards decided to focus on the novel and took a leave of absence from her work to do a full-time M.A in creative writing. The Jacobite’s Wife is her first published novel and is a fictionalised account of the life of Winifred, Countess of Nithsdale from the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688 to the aftermath of the Jacobite uprising of 1715. Winifred aided her husband’s escape from the Tower of London on the eve of his execution in 1716.

Researching Winifred’s life story revealed a headstrong, impulsive and ultimately wise woman whose turbulent life story needed to be told. As a child psychologist, Morag used her knowledge of child development and adult relationships to try and understand what drove Winifred but there remains much room for conjecture. She looks forward to hearing the views of readers!

Connect with her on Facebook and Twitter 

The Trouble with Duchesses in Queen Anne's Court

by Margaret Porter

'Perhaps . . . in the reign of Queen Anne ’tis a sign the power of women will increase.' Sarah Cowper, April 1702

Queen Anne by Godfrey Kneller

The average follower of English history, when confronted with the equation Queen Anne + Duchess + Trouble, would assume the resulting total to be Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough. Of all the non-royal females of her era, she is surely the most famous--or infamous. Sarah published various editions of her memoirs (a form of self-justification and self-defence), she's the subject of scholarly biographies and entertaining novels, she was the heroine of the television series The First Churchills, she and Anne are currently the main characters in a play on the London stage, and a film about their relationship is reportedly on the horizon.

But Anne's childhood friend, confidante, and eventual enemy was not the only duchess frequenting her court. Although the others did not leave so indelible a mark on the historic record, they are worthy of interest and scrutiny.

Elizabeth, Duchess of Somerset

 

Duchess of Somerset by Kneller

Young Elizabeth Percy seemed destined to challenge Sarah for Most Interesting Courtier. At age twelve she became Countess of Ogle, and was widowed the following year. The year after that the immensely wealthy Thomas Thynne lured her into a secret marriage. Not long afterwards he was murdered at the instigation of Count von Konigsmark, a Swede who was infatuated with Elizabeth. Within five months the double widow married again. Her third husband was Charles Seymour, Duke of Somerset, 'The Proud Duke'--a dynastic marriage rather than a love match. After that her marital history was far from scandalous, and probably not the happiest.

During Princess Anne's quarrels with her sister Mary II and brother-in-law William III, when they demanded she dismiss Sarah from her household, the Somersets were her firmest allies. Forced to relinquish her Whitehall lodgings, Anne accepted her friends' offer to take sanctuary with them at Syon House, where she suffered through one of her many stillbirths. She remained forever grateful for their support.

On Anne's accession in 1702, Elizabeth joined the royal household as a Lady of the Bedchamber. She was a witness to the protracted and nasty breakdown in Anne's relationship with Sarah Churchill, and was ultimately a beneficiary. In 1710/11 she succeeded Sarah as Mistress of the Robes and Groom of the Stole. Her prominence stirred up old scandals--her unusual and colourful past had for many years provoked rumour and innuendo. Because of her red hair, she was sometimes lampooned as 'Carrots.' The cruelest accusation--that she might do harm to the Queen--was penned by Jonathan Swift in The Windsor Prophecy:

Beware of Carrots from Northumberlond.
Carrots sown Thynne a deep root may get,
If so be they are in Somer set:
Their Conyngs mark thou; for I have been told,
They assassine when younge, and poison when old.

Although the Duke incurred the Queen's displeasure and was removed from office, Elizabeth retained the royal favour, vying with Abigail Masham as chief confidante. Wisely she refrained from employing Sarah's bullying tactics. According to one observer, 'She never pressed the Queen hard; nothing makes the Queen more uneasy than that.' A daughter of the ancient aristocracy, she maintained a graciousness and dignity that the Queen must have appreciated greatly after the strife Sarah stirred up.

She retained her positions of authority until Anne's death in 1714, and was present as the Queen lay dying. A witness described the 'soft, courteous way of the Duchess's speaking to the Queen, and her majesty's look and motion of her face in receiving it, though so ill.' Elizabeth was designated chief mourner for the funeral but was herself indisposed and unable to participate.

Mary, Duchess of Ormonde

 

Duchess of Ormonde by Michael Dahl

Following the death of his first wife, whom he mourned deeply, the 2nd Duke of Ormonde married Lady Mary Somerset, the Duke of Beaufort's daughter, in 1685. Like the Duchess of Somerset, she was named a Lady of the Bedchamber at the outset of Anne's reign and held that position till its end.  


She allegedly lined her pockets by brokering places in the royal household. When selecting her maids of honour, the young unmarried women who attended the Queen, Anne wanted girls who 'had good education and beauty.' The stipend and the visibility to prospective husbands was tempting, and parents were very eager to place their daughters at court. Christian Temple's entire marriage portion was £2000, and apparently £1200 of it was paid to Mary as a bribe to obtain her place. The duchess then paid the all-powerful Sarah £500 for acquiescing to the appointment!

Mary was in waiting at Kensington when the Queen suffered the convulsions and stroke that resulted in death. It was she who replaced the ailing Duchess of Somerset as chief mourner at Anne's funeral. Her life changed drastically the following year when her husband was impeached for high treason, as a supporter of the Jacobite rebellion of 1715. He fled to France rather than stand trial in Parliament. Subsequently he was attainted, and his estate was forfeited.

Catherine, Duchess of Buckingham

 

Duchess of Buckingham

Catherine Darnley was the illegitimate daughter of James II by his mistress Catherine Sedley, and she was therefore Queen Anne's half-sister. She first married the Earl of Anglesey, and the union did not prosper--in 1701 she petitioned the House of Lords for a separation, on the grounds of cruelty. The next year he died. Her second husband was John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Normanby, and she was his third wife. At one time he had courted Anne, resulting in his dismissal from court. Anne was fond of her former suitor Buckingham, who had proved himself a fast friend of her father's prior to his exile. He also shared her strongly Tory sympathies. She merely tolerated Catherine.

Though born on the wrong side of the blanket, Catherine was ever at pains to remind everyone of her royal blood, 'exhibiting a love of display, a violent temper,' and frequently travelling to France to kneel at the tomb of her father, 'shedding tears over the threadbare pall which covered his remains.' Because of her husband's position as Lord Privy Seal (prior to 1703) and later Lord President of Council, Catherine frequented the court. At the Queen's birthday celebration in January 1711, 'The Duchess of Buckingham and Lady Paulet were scarce able to move under the load of jewels they had on.'

After Anne's death, Catherine's drawing room was a magnet for Tories and Jacobites, as she was in regular contact with her legitimate half-brother James, the Old Pretender, and would doubtless have preferred him as King to George I. She was buried with other Stuarts at Westminster Abbey, where her splendid funeral effigy can be found in the museum.

Adelhida, Duchess of Shrewsbury

 

Duchess of Shrewsbury

This lady's father was Marquis Andrea Paleotti and her mother was Maria Cristina Dudley, daughter of the titular Duke of Northumberland--an Englishman who was also a Tuscan nobleman. She grew up in Italy and was apparently an engaging and accomplished young woman, but also a scandalous one. She might or might not have been married to Count Brachiano, and she might or might not have been the Duke of Shrewsbury's mistress before their 1705 marriage in Rome. (Lady Cowper spitefully recorded that her brother forced the nobleman to wed her 'after an intrigue together.')

Shrewsbury, a one-eyed aristocrat known as the 'Duke of Hearts' for his good looks, brought his duchess to England, where she caused a stir in society. She won the favour of the newly widowed Queen Anne by expressing her sympathy: 'Oh, my poor Queen, I see how much you do miss your dear husband.' This was in contrast to Sarah, who was very unfeeling towards her grieving mistress.

In 1712 Shrewsbury served as Ambassador to Paris, where his duchess was appreciated for her hospitality and conversation, though she was also regarded as an eccentric. This did not prevent her becoming a Lady of the Bedchamber to Caroline, Princess of Wales, after the accession of George I, a post she held until her death in 1726.

Diana, Duchess of St Albans

 

Duchess of St Albans by Kneller

The eldest daughter of Aubrey de Vere, 20th and last Earl of Oxford, Diana was very much a child of the court. During her infancy, her father and Charles II supposedly discussed a possible marriage between Diana and Charles Beauclerk, Duke of St Albans, the King's illegitimate son by Nell Gwyn. Diana grew up to be an ornament of Queen Mary II's court. At the same time, the young duke won the favour and patronage of of William III. Neither fact would have endeared them to Anne, who was estranged from her sister and loathed her brother-in-law. But the de Veres were courtiers for centuries. And the Duke was a Whig, the party in power at the outset of Anne's reign, so he held various appointments.
 
In the course of researching my latest novel, I stumbled upon an intriguing mystery. On 26 March, 1702, Luttrell the diarist reports, 'The dutchesses [sic] of Ormonde and St Albans are made ladies of the bedchamber to the Queen.' Yet Diana's name never appears again, and cannot be found in the official or unofficial lists of Anne's attendants. If Anne reconsidered, it could have been for any of four reasons, or a combination. Diana and her husband supported William and Mary in their quarrels with Anne, doubtless provoking her resentment. As well, Anne never much cared for her uncle's bastard offspring and that attitude might have extended to their wives. Alternatively, Sarah 's enmity towards one or both Beauclerks (she famously feuded with their son and heir) was such that she persuaded Anne to revoke the appointment. Or else Diana declined the position after rumours about it circulated--which is the unlikeliest explanation, as it was a prestigious and salaried post, ensuring access to the monarch.

With a change from Whig to Tory government in the last years of Anne's reign, the duke lost his court position. At the accession of George I, the Beauclerks were restored to high favour. Diana was chosen by Caroline, Princess of Wales, as First Lady of the Bedchamber and Groom of the Stole, and her husband was a Gentleman of the Bedchamber and captain of the King's personal guard.

Conclusion

When the meddlesome, overbearing, battle-tested, impulsive Sarah toppled from her perch, the Duke of Beaufort told Anne, 'Now is your Majesty Queen indeed!' None of the other duchesses who served in her household or who appeared at court attempted to rival or rule the ruler as Sarah had done for so long. Consequently, they are far less familiar--the price they paid for their discretion, submissiveness, and loyalty turned out to be their obscurity!

Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough by Kneller

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Image credits: Petworth House, The National Trust; Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons; www.thepeerage.com; Private Collection
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Margaret Porter is the award-winning and bestselling author of twelve period novels, nonfiction and poetry. Lady Diana de Vere's association with Queen Mary's court, and Queen Anne, is featured in A Pledge of Better Times, her highly acclaimed novel of 17th century courtiers the 1st Duke and Duchess of St. Albans (available in trade paperback and ebook). Margaret studied British history in the UK and the US. As historian, her areas of speciality are social, theatrical, and garden history of the 17th and 18th centuries, royal courts, and portraiture. A former actress, she gave up the stage and screen to devote herself to fiction writing, travel, and her rose gardens.

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The Politics of Love

by Linda Root


The pages of history are crowded with tales of great passions that proved deadly when it cooled.  The first example that comes to mind is Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, but there are others. In modern times, attractions between an American President and a movie star left her suicidal.  However, there is another phenomenon equally tragic.  We’ve all heard the trite saying Love Conquers All.  The truth is, not always.  History is populated by lovers whose passions never cooled, but the character traits of the one brought down the other.  There is another  group whose strengths and weaknesses interplayed in a manner proving fatal to them both, and a final group in which the passions or the partners were largely a construct of historians with an agenda or movie moguls who believe fiction sells better than fact.

When perusing lists of history’s greatest loves, on most lists most of the nominees are fictional or mythic.  Of lists I viewed, none mentioned Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, but many included Elizabeth Bennett & Fitzwilliam Darcy, and Tristan & Isolde. Of the actual historical characters appearing on several lists such as Antony and Cleopatra, fictionalized versions prevailed over the factual.  Out of the American candidates, the clear front runners were Bonnie & Clyde. I would have included Rachel and Andrew Jackson, or John and Abigail Adams, but apparently my view of historical lovers is too…historical.

Wallace Warfield Simpson and King Edward VIII came out second on one of the lists.  I have not chosen them for detailed analysis because they were the subjects of my last post, but if I were to have included them, I would have had to design a category just for them.

It does seem that the Duchess perceived she had been used by the Duke to get him out of a job he did not want. One might agree with Sir Winston Churchill and credit her for doing modern history a colossal favor. My personal list of famous and infamous couples is purely mine. In this first segment, I chose three whose love stories I find compelling, each for different reasons.

Antony and Cleopatra – A Union of Expedience or a Tragic Love Affair?


I do not recall how old I was when I first became interested in Antony and Cleopatra, but it antedated my fascination with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. I remember dressing as Cleopatra on Halloween when I was a child in Cleveland. I would have been nine or ten. I did not know the history, but I loved the costume. Although the charismatic couple has been dead for more than two thousand years, books are still being written about them, many of them focusing on the romance and downplaying the politics. No matter how their stories are shelved in the bookstores, all of them appear to contain a large amount of fiction. The reason is, most of the early historians were subsidized by politicians.

If we accept the recent analysis of Adrian[i] Goldsworthy in his recent book Antony and Cleopatra, we may conclude that Liz and Dick, not Antony and Cleopatra were the only star-crossed lovers on the 1960’s movie set.[ii][1] The characters they portrayed were political shakers and movers.  Their romance was coincidental to the power play, a natural result of the late hours they spent together endeavoring to redraw the map of the ancient world.

According to Goldsmith, their attraction was indeed political. If Cleopatra had been in anyone’s thrall, it would have been Caesar. She and Antony were allies in a civil war they lost.  Goldsmith also draws attention to the fact that in lists of formidable ancient rulers (i.e., those who ruled before the Fall of Rome) Cleopatra is often the only female mentioned.

Other modern biographers of Cleopatra, especially Stacy Shiff, in her Cleopatra: A Life[2], suggest it was Caesar, not Antony, who was the Queen of Egypt’s soul mate. They had compatible aspirations and philosophies, and there is little doubt they had a passionate love affair.  Antony, to put it in a cinematic context, was Cleopatra’s Eddie Fisher, following after the death of Taylor’s personal Caesar, the cinemascope tycoon Michael Todd.  The historic coupling of the actual Antony and Cleopatra was a partnership of two ambitious people endeavoring to grab what they could, and later, as Octavian’s power increased, seeking to retain what portion of the ancient world remained in their grasp. This does not mean the relationship was asexual.  Three children prove otherwise.  The twins Cleopatra Selene and Alexander Helios were conceived during their first meeting. A third child, Ptolemy Philadelphus  was born four years later,  when Antony returned to Egypt from Rome to secure a power base there. On the second trip, the couple married in an Egyptian rite of a questionable effect since Antony was already married to his rival Octavian’s sister.  William Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw’s characters are artful literary constructs. Politics, not romance, was the passion making the Roman soldier and the ethnic Greek Queen of Egypt partners.

At the time Caesar came into Cleopatra’s life, she was a young girl in a power struggle with her brother Ptolemy. The Macedonian Greek Ptolemy dynasty’s hold on Egypt was tenuous at best. Caesar’s arrival stabilized the country.  He tried to negotiate a peace between the warring siblings, but that was not easily done. Cleopatra's brother was having none of it. There is apparently more than a hint of truth in the tale of Cleopatra having herself rolled into a rug and delivered to Caesar’s chambers to make her pitch.  It is an example of her ingenuity, and it worked.

When Caesar was assassinated, Antony was the muscle on the scene.  Unbiased accounts support a view finding him a better senator than a military leader and far less intelligent than the woman with whom he co-ruled Egypt for three years after his falling out with Caesar’s son and political heir Octavian until he and Cleopatra were defeated in the naval battle of Actium.  Rather than face humiliation, and possibly believing Cleopatra was already dead, Antony stabbed himself in the heart.  Some historians report Octavian had him transported to Cleopatra, to die in her arms. Cleopatra's suicide a few days later was just as likely an act to avoid capture and display in a victory parade as in despair over Antony’s death.

Painting her as a harlot who was utterly dependent on the powerful men she had seduced was the practice among Roman historians, and was largely propaganda inspired by Octavian and his supporters.  Although Cleopatra’s expertise as a military commander and a noteworthy a naval strategist should have been acceptable to Elizabethan audiences and the English Queen, those were not the traits stressed by Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, who modeled his queen on Plutarch’s works. Thus,  it is the Shakespearean seductress whose image has endured.


A few recent historians have dared to take an unbiased look at her.  To them, she appears as the most capable leader of the romantic pair. Antony was no Caesar. Even the Roman hierarchy was willing to concede that she died well, like a soldier. It is believed Octavian supervised her burial in a secret tomb she shares with Antony, and stage-managed the drama of her death.  Until modern times, suicide was considered a noble death. While poison is likely, Octavian liked the imagery of the snake bite better, and Octavian, who became the mighty Caesar Augustus, ruled. At least one of her biographers declares Cleopatra too much a pragmatist to have left her fate to anything as uncertain as a snake bite. New technologies have sparked current efforts to find Cleopatra’s tomb. One hopes she does not sleep alone.

Marie Stuart, Queen of Scots, and James Hepburn, 4^th Earl of Bothwell: A Mismatched Pair

Recently, on a Facebook page devoted to Victoria and Albert and their children, a member proposed a thread on the Queen of Scots, particularly dealing with her guilt or innocence of the murder of her second husband Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. Her relationship with her third husband, James Hepburn, best known by the title of his earldom, ‘Bothwell’ became a hot topic.  I doubt anyone could have predicted the high degree of participation or the passions of the debates that followed. Arguments became so heated there was talk of closing down the thread.  The discussion was finally upstaged by an announcement in the Scottish press claiming a scholarly tribunal had ‘cleared’ the queen of guilt in her second husband’s murder.

Marie Stuart’s husband and consort, King Henry Stuart, aka Darnley, was found dead at a bizarre crimes scene in an Edinburgh suburb, on February 10, 1567. He was lodging there while recovering from a bout of tertiary syphilis. His illness was being treated by his supposedly doting wife. But was she a sympathetic caregiver or a deceiver who was conspiring with a new lover, Bothwell, to have Darnley killed?


Thanks to the factionalism in Marie Stuart’s Scotland, and powers unfriendly to the queen, almost four hundred fifty years later, a debate still rages as to whether she had her second husband murdered to make way for the third.  I doubt a panel convened by the Royal Society of Edinburgh and reported in the Daily Mail will silence the discord. [3]  The queen did little to stifle the scandal when she chose Hepburn as her champion and confidante. Hepburn was a committed Anglophobe. With him guiding the queen through the political quagmire that followed Darnley’s murder, there was no question of Elizabeth promoting a union of the crowns by making the Queen of Scots her heir. Unfortunately for Marie, her formidable advisors William Maitland of Lethington and her brother James, Earl of Moray, were only a few of the high placed Scots who had staked their futures with England and Elizabeth. On the other hand, Bothwell was a reiver warlord of considerable military prowess and a large following, but he was also an ardent Anglophobe. He was inordinately intelligent and highly educated,  not the sort of man to take advice from politicians. However, at the time of the queen’s son’s Baptism in December 1566, Darnley’s behavior had become unpredictable and dangerous, as the saying goes, politics makes strange bedfellows Such unions rarely last. After Darnley’s murder late in the winter of 1567, Bothwell and the queen closeted themselves for long hours in the queen’s private apartments discussing the governance of the nation. Bothwell began holding audiences and bestowing grants and favors as if he were the king.  The queen gave her new confidante her dead husband’s suite of gilded armor.


In spite of the scandal surrounding the queen’s abbreviated period of mourning and her obvious preference for Hepburn, when Parliament opened in April, there was yet no sign of the open hostility that had surrounded Darnley before the queen’s second marriage. After the last session of Parliament, Hepburn hosted a dinner party for the leading parliamentarians, including many high ranking peers and members of the clergy.  The site of the event may or may not have been at Ainslie’s Tavern, but historians refer to the accord reached at the end of the evening as the AinslieTavern Bond.  A large majority of Bothwell’s dinner guests, including eight bishops, nine earls, and seven lords, signed it[4]. When and where and under what circumstances is unclear.  The queen’s brother James, Earl of Moray, who had led a rebellion when the queen married Darnley, is named as one of the signatories.  However, according to historian John Guy[5], Moray was out of the country and could not have signed it. The Bishop of Ross and Lord Elphinstone apparently left early to avoid being pressured, and Sir William Kirkcaldy of Grange, who hated Bothwell, declined the invitation. [6] According to Guy,[7] Argyll refused to sign the bond and, like Kirkcaldy, Maitland and Atholl  did not attend the dinner, although they may have signed a copy later. Like many of the operative documents during the last days of Marie Stuart’s personal rule, the original bond has disappeared. The instrument urged the queen to take Bothwell for her third husband.

The events of the next few days are puzzling and pivotal as to what followed. According to Antonia Fraser, [8] on the day after the signing of the bond, Bothwell, Bellenden  and Maitland of Lethington visited the Queen at Seton House and delivered the bond to the queen, who was in seclusion there.  Guy, however, reports an incident at Holyrood in which Bothwell incurred the wrath of the garrison on a issue of nonpayment of wages, and the queen intervened and paid them from her little-embroidered purse. Hepburn was upstaged and displeased.  In any event, the queen later stated that April 20^th was the date when Bothwell first plied his suit.  All parties agree she refused, on grounds it might tarnish her honor due to the lingering questions concerning Bothwell’s role in Darnley’s death.  It may well be that both versions are true. 

If Bothwell took Maitland to Seton house to present the bond, it would have been solely to give his presentation credibility. Although, in March, when Bothwell was tried and acquitted of Darnley’s murder before a highly biased court, Hepburn had selected Maitland to escort him to the hearings, he and Maitland were never friends. Their joint trip to Seton House  may have been a coincidence since the Queen and Maitland were planning a trip to Stirling the net day ostensibly to collect the prince. In either case, the queen’s rejection of Bothwell’s proposal in Maitland’s presence would have enraged a prideful man like Bothwell and might explain his actions four days later when he waylaid the Queen’s party on its way home. There are other indications the queen returned to Holyrood with Maitland to prepare for her trip to Stirling the following day, April 21, 1567, which makes both Fraser’s and Guy’s versions feasible. Both events, taken together, would explain why at day’s end on April 20^th Bothwell would have been seething.

By early spring of 1567, the queen had grown increasingly dependent on the man who had been tried and acquitted of her husband Darnley’s murder, but she still had the determination to refuse him her hand in marriage or let him alienate her palace guard. Yet, the puzzle then and a mystery even now is whether they  were lovers before April 24, 1567, the day Hepburn hijacked the queen and carried her off to Dunbar.  In a nutshell, was she so in love with him she was unable to see the political implications of acknowledging him as her lover, or was she responding as a classic rape victim?  On this point, I have the audacity to disagree with my hero, historian John Guy, based on my expertise as a prosecutor dealing with victims of sexual assault.  While my analysis is by no means dispositive, my personal training and experience, her behavior is consistent with that of a rape victim. Even in the last decades of the Twentieth Century when new Rape Shield Laws were enacted in the United States, the bold, empowered victim ready to publically wreck vengeance on her assailants by pointing her finger and calling sexual assault  a rape was the exception, not the rule.

After April 24^th, the queen acted very much like a woman who had been humiliated in a very personal way. She cried at the slightest provocation, but she also hardened, adopting the crude language for which Bothwell was known. At times, she called for a dagger so she could kill herself. She was given to bouts of both histrionics and hysterics, not at all the woman whose personality had been shaped by the cool, politically astute Diane de Poitiers, and whose public imagine and personal belief was as one ordained a queen by God. Whatever happened to Marie Stuart on April 24^th changed her, and it does not sound like love, or as some writers have suggested, the attainment of her first orgasm. There is, however, another explanation consistent with the queen’s behavior in the past which adds a new dimension to the mystery.

Due to his past loyalty and willingness to pursue both the queen’s mother Marie de Guise’s and her own agenda, might the Queen of Scots have come to look upon the bold Border warlord as her champion? Certainly, she trusted him. The year before when she traveled to Alloa to recuperate from a difficult childbirth, she left her son in Bothwell’s care at Edinburgh Castle. Guy’s account and others suggest at least a portion of the events of April 24^th were contrived. There were rumors the queen’s trip to Stirling to retrieve custody of Prince James and Bothwell’s side trip to the Borders to enforce the law were part of a two-pronged scheme to shift the guardianship of the prince from the Earl of Mar to Bothwell, who would spirit the infant off to Dunbar.  Guy and others, including Sir James Melville, who was there, believe the queen’s show of surprise when Bothwell and a force of 800 intercepted her entourage. She apparently dispatched at least one rider to capital to sound the alarm.

However, later in the encounter, she and Bothwell spoke privately, and thereafter, she instructed her escort of thirty armed men to stand down.  It is possible that after two days of simmering over the humiliation of a rejected suitor, the earl had changed the game plan and instead of a peaceful rendezvous to take custody of the prince, he decided to go for the higher stakes by carrying her off and raping her?  A young woman with the background of the Queen would have been devastated, not because she did not love James Hepburn, but because she did.

Yet, there is no credible evidence they were lovers before that fatal week in April. Fables identifying them as long-time conniving paramours are a construct of Marie Stuart’s political and religious critics. A confession made by Bothwell toward the end his life indicating the queen was blameless of Darnley’s murder is often cited as evidence of his fidelity and love, but they are equally consistent with a man seeking to unburden himself of heavy guilt. In my analysis, the combination of his pugnacious arrogance and the queen’s naive obsession with honor combined to ruin them both.  Regardless of whether what occurred between them at Dunbar was a rape or a lover’s tryst, without having the prince in their custody and control, they were doomed.

The banner flown by the Lords of the Congregation at Carberry was one of the factors that gave the day to the Lords. Large numbers of the Queen's army deserted.

The queen surrendered to Kirkcaldy of Grange while Bothwell (shown in the background of the watercolor) rode away. They never saw one another again.

Linda Root from The Last Knight and the Queen of Scots

John and Sarah Churchill, the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough: A Love Story















Not a single list I reviewed mentioned John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough and his Duchess Sarah Jennings Churchill, although there was a dynamic love that endured long after the Duke’s death. Marlborough was every bit the military hero Henry V had been at Agincourt. He came close to handing France to Queen Anne on a platter.

But he was only half of a dynamic partnership that in almost any light comes across as an unlikely love story. Both John Churchill and Sarah Jennings were incredibly ambitious people, and each of them was looking to make an advantageous marriage at the time they met and quite accidentally, fell in love. Churchill had risen from a mere page to become a favorite of the Duke of York, later James II.  Sarah came from lower tier aristocracy, but became an intimate of Princess Anne. Although neither had the social status to be a likely candidate for marriage at the time they met, they simply found one another irresistible. Sarah’s parents had urged her to hold out for someone rich.

When Sarah was an equal partner, theirs was a winning team.  John was the military strategist and statesman.  Sarah was the politician and courtier, both at the Court of James II, and later, at the courts of William & Mary and later, Queen Anne.


It was during Queen Anne’s reign that Sarah Churchill became the power behind the throne.  Unfortunately, she did not wield her power graciously. While her husband was in Europe waging war, his duchess was heavy-handed in her management of the Queen and at times was a notorious bully. Sarah was incredibly bright and spared no words in letting Anne know which of them was the superior intellect. She also was an avid Whig, who made every prominent Tory  her personal enemy. As time went on, Sarah overplayed her hand with the queen and Marlborough paid the price.  Queen Anne withdrew her support of Marlborough’s military efforts on the eve of a complete capitulation of the opposition, and Marlborough was recalled.  His political enemies lodged trumped-up charges of embezzlement against him over a government contract for bread, what today would be called a kickback. Soon thereafter, The Queen was so embittered by Sarah’s insensitivity over the death of her son that she and her ministers reneged on their gift of funds to complete the Marlborough’s mammoth construction project  near Woodstock, Blenheim Palace.

In the wake of a campaign to discredit the duke, the Marlboroughs withdrew not just from the court, but from the country. They lived in high style in the German principalities and the Netherlands, where the Duke’s military genius  and statesmanship during the War of the Spanish Succession was a legend. Even the French king held him in high esteem.

When Queen Anne died childless and the crown passed to the House of Hanover, the Churchills were again in favor at home in England. King George and Marlborough had fought side by side and were good friends. Nevertheless, the Duke would probably have been happy staying away, but Sarah wanted to go home.  However, even in an England ruled by the House of Hanover, Sarah’s strong will and irascible temper alienated Queen Caroline.  They devoted most of their attention to managing their properties. When the Duke died, Sarah Jennings Churchill was one of Europe’s wealthiest women.  She completed construction of Blenheim Castle after her husband’s death and made life close to unbearable for its architect.


Even in her advanced age, she was plagued by suitors young enough to be her son.  She is said to have spurned one of them in the language quoted by Sir Winston Churchill in his famed biography[9]:

“If I were young and handsome as I was, instead of old and faded as I am, and you could lay the empire of the world at my feet, you should never share the heart and hand that once belonged to John, Duke of Marlborough."

If that quotation does not provoke a tear, it is hard to imagine what would. Theirs was so torrid a love affair that the Duchess once remarked to a friend that when he came home from the wars, they made love before he took his high boots off.

While Sarah’s outspoken politics and rude treatment of the Queen prevented her husband from achieving total domination of Europe, he is widely  credited for raising England from a minor to major power.[10] There is no doubt his success was aided by the support he received from Queen Anne at the insistence of his Duchess.  In conclusion, there is more to the life and times of the Duke of Marlborough than politics and romance. While I was in college in the late 50’s, I discovered John and Sarah Churchill and fought the battle of Blenheim on my cot.  For those who have the slightest interest in military history, it is worthy of a reenactment.

Thank you for joining me in a brief glimpse of three of history’s many great love stories.  I predict there will be more to come.

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Linda Root is the author of six historical novels set in the late 16th and early seventeenth century, The First Marie and the Queen of Scots, (2011) and The Last Knight and the Queen of Scots (2013), both large historicals, and the Legacy of the Queen of Scots Suite consisting of four books to date and the fifth coming in November. She also writes historical fantasy under the name J.D. Root. Root is a former major crimes prosecutor living in the high desert above Palm Springs with husband Chris and two Alaskan malamutes Maxx and Maya.  Visit her Visit her author’s page.

Artwork from Wikimedia Commons, original art by Linda Root.

[1] Goldsworthy, Adrian, Antony and Cleopatra, Yale University Press; 1St Edition edition (September 28, 2010)

[2] Shiff, Stacy, Cleopatra: A Life

[3] Daily Mail, Keiran  Cochoran, September 25, 2015, Mailonline ‘Mary Queen of Scots is CLEARED of murdering her husband by a panel of experts who re-examined the evidence... just 428 years after she died.
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[4] Wikipedia Commons, Ainslie Tavern Bond

[5] Guy, John, Queen of Scots, The True Life of Mary Stuart, pp 314-318.

[6] Wikipedia, op. cit.

[7] Guy, op cit.

[8] Antonia Fraser, Mary Queen of Scots,

[9] Marlborough: His Life and Times. By Winston S. Churchill. 4 vols. (London: George G. Harrap and Company, 1933-38).
[10] Politics and War in Churchill’s Life of the Duke of Marlborough by James W. Muller. The Imaginative Conservative