Monmouth amuses himself with an Orange. 557 to any claim on the Crown, excuse was lacking for disagreement. Holland boasted to yield shelter to all varieties of refugees. Leaving Monmouth where he sought and found amusement on the canals, and brightening the sombre revels of the gloomy Court, let us see what was being plotted in the land he left behind. In the contemporary Bagford poem entitled The Cabal mention is made of statesmen who intrigued, some for him, and some against him. But as every crowd is composed of individual units, separable and used again for mixture, it will be convenient for us to first consider one or two representative figures in their isolation and selfish antagonism. We therefore here introduce, as belonging to the same date, the Roxburghe broadside, Satyres on my Lord All-Pride. A note also may be useful on the gradual rise of suspicions concerning Monmouth's pretension to the Crown. That the legitimating and making him heir was early anticipated as a possible event, is shown by these following extracts from the latest and best edition of Pepys's Diary :— 8 Sept. 1662.-"Mr. Crofts, the King's bastard, a most pretty sparke of about fifteen years old, who, I suspect, do hang much upon my Lady Castlemaine, and is always with her; and, I hear, the Queenes both of them [Catharine, and the Dowager Henrietta Maria] are mighty kind to him.”—Diary, ii. 42. 27 Oct. 1662.-Mr. Creed "told me what great faction there is at Court, and above all, what is whispered, that young Crofts is lawful son to the King, the King being married to his mother. How true this is, God knows; but I believe the Duke of York will not be fooled in this of three Crowns."—Ibid. ii. 69. [Cf. ii. 105, on presumed difference betwixt Charles and James.] 31 Dec. 1662.-At Whitehall, "the maydes of honour and the young Duke of Monmouth playing at cards." "The D. of Monmouth is in so great splendour at Court, and so dandled by the King, that some doubt if the King should have no child by the Queene (which there is yet no appearance of), whether he would not be acknowledged for a lawful son, and that there will be a difference follow upon it between the Duke of York and him; which God prevent!" [But the boy was not created Duke of M. until Feb. 1663.] 2 Feb. 1663.-"The little Duke of Monmouth, it seems, is ordered to take place of all Dukes, and so to follow Prince Rupert now, before the Duke of Buckingham or any one else." 20 April, 1663.-The Duke of Monmouth is married to Anne Scott, at Whitehall, in the King's Chamber. 23 April, 1663.-Installed at Windsor, Knt. of the Order of the Garter, the Queen was present at St. George's feast, and the Duke of Monmouth dancing with her with his hat in his hand, the King came in and kissed him, and made him put on his hat, which every body took notice of." 4 May, 1663.-"I do suspect that all is not kind between the King and the Duke [of York, and that the King's fondness for the little Duke do occasion it; and it may be that there is some fear of his being made heire to the Crown." 14 May, 1663.-Moore "fears the King will be tempted to endeavour the setting the crown upon the little Duke: which God forbid, unless it be his due !" 15 May, 1663." It is made very doubtful whether the King do not intend the making the Duke of Monmouth legitimate; but surely the Commons of England will never do it, nor the Duke of York suffer it, whose Lady [Anne Hyde], I am told, is very troublesome to him by her jealousy.”—ii. 210. 9 November, 1663.-"The Duke of Monmouth is to have part of the Cockpitt new built for lodgings for him, and they say to be made Captain of the Guards in the room of my Lord Gerard. It is much talked of that the King intends to legitimate the Duke of Monmouth.” 20 January, 1663.-"The King only, the Duke of York, and Prince Rupert, and the Duke of Monmouth do now wear deep mourning, that is, long cloaks for the Duchess of Savoy; so that he mourns as a Prince of the Blood, while the Duke of York do no more, and all the nobles of the land not so much; which gives great offence, and he [Mr. Pierce] sees the Duke of York do consider.”—Ib. ii. 402. 8 Feb. 1663.-"The King do doat infinitely upon the Duke of Monmouth, apparently as one that he intends to have succeed him. God knows what will be the end of it." 22 Feb. 166.-The Duke [of Monmouth] hath said that he would be the death of any man that says the King was not married to his mother: though Alsopp [the King's brewer] says, it is well known that she was a common eduins before the King was acquainted with her." In the Heralds' books Monmouth was styled "The most noble and high-born Prince, James Scott, Duke of Monmouth," etc.-(iii. 72.) 26 July, 1665.-"The Duke of Monmouth is the most skittish leaping gallant that ever I saw, always in action, vaulting or leaping, or clambering."-iii. 203. 17 Dec. 1666.-"The Duke of Monmouth, who spends his time the most viciously and idle of any man, nor will be fit for anything; yet he [Lord Brouncker] speaks as if it were not impossible but the King would own him for his son, and that there was a marriage between his mother and him."-iv. 188. 26 April, 1667.-Evelyn "did see my Lord Oxford and the Duke of Monmouth in a hackney-coach with two footmen in the Parke, with their robes on; which is a most scandalous thing, so as all gravity may be said to be lost among us."-iv. 314. 10 June, 1667.-Going to Harwich were "the Duke of Monmouth, and with him a great many young Hectors, the Lord Chesterfield, my Lord Mandeville, and others; but to little purpose, I fear, but to debauch the country-women thereabouts."-iv. 360. The position of Samuel Pepys, as an earnest and trustworthy Secretary of the Admiralty, had given him opportunities for much personal intercourse with James Duke of York; the Lord High Admiral until the Test Act and conversion to the Church of Rome compelled him for awhile to lose his influence. Both personal friendship and loyal attachment justly inclined Pepys to dread the growing favour of the King towards Moumouth. **The following contemporary statement of somebody's "My Opinion" may help to mark the time and situation. We agree with the writer in all except his final line. All modern authorities are opposed to this classification: it is tout au contraire. The ironical portraiture of the two rival Dukes, York and Monmouth, in the fourth verse, shows a practised hand. We know not of the poem being elsewhere in print, or mentioned. [From a contemporary Harleian Manuscript, marked "Oxford, B.H."] My Opinion. After this and the short of the story: Fter thinking this fortnight of Whig and of Tory, They are all Fools and Knaves, and keep up this puther, Poor Rowley, whose maxims of State are a Riddle, 4 8 "Twixt Brother and Bastard, those Dukes of renown, 12 The first is a Prince well-fashion'd, well-featur'd, 16 Had I this soft Son, and this dangerous Brother, I'd hang up the one and p[itch over] t'other. The fools might be Whigs, none but knaves should be Toryes. [No date, but written betwixt two satires, viz., "A Ballad from Tunbridge, 1682," beginning, "By Tunbridge I went, and having there spent a fortnight in puшep nasty weather;" and "Satire in its true Colours, 1682," [on Cleaveland] A Countess of Fame, haveing try'd without shame Both Lords, Knights, Squires and Pages, Complains of her fate,' etc. We reckon "My Opinion' to be of date 1680-82. Rowley is the well-known nickname of Charles II.] Satires upon my Lord All-Pride. "Gentle Reproofs have long been try'd in vain, -Colonel Aston's Prologue. Too little account has been made of the multitudinous seditious pamphlets, satirical personalities, and scurrilous lampoons which abounded from the time of Titus Oates's sham "Discovery of the Popish Plot" until the Fall of the Stuart dynasty. In our coming introduction to "A Satyr upon Coffee" we give a summary of some of the libels and libellers belonging to a couple of years, 1681 and 1682. A fair specimen of the unhesitating vituperation previously in vogue is afforded by the Bagford-Collection poem entitled "The Cabal." We have previously to give two other and shorter pieces of Mulgrave's courtship of Princess Anne. 561 personal invective, a double attack on the same person, nick-named "Lord All-Pride." The title characteristically marks John Sheffield, known better among his contemporaries as Lord Mulgrave, and afterwards Duke of Buckingham, or Buckinghamshire: who is not to be confounded with George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham. He had been "by the Duke of Monmouth opposed in his pretension to the first troop of foot-guards" (Colonel Russell's regiment); but displaced him as Lieutenant of Yorkshire and Governor of Hull, when contumacious in 1679. Mulgrave's success in des bonnes fortunes (one adventure embroiling Monmouth and the Duke of York, while another compromised Princess Anne), his boastfulness, his selfconceit, and the lofty contempt which he chose to show to others, made him an unlovely companion. He is one whom it is impossible to admire, or to wholly despise. Creature of his own age, little less corrupt than any, he lacks all the noble qualities which might have atoned for faults. Naturally ("like drawing to like,") William of Orange drew to him, and made him Marquis of Normanby in 1694. We need do little more than mention the attempts of Mulgrave to ally himself with the royal family of the Stuarts, by paying suit to the Duke of York's daughter Anne, before she was given to Prince George of Denmark. One reference to the intrigue is the poem of The Parallel "As when proud Lucifer." Another is in the following, A Supplement to the late Heroick Poem: Ah, Mulgrave! why art thou a garter'd Knight? But now thy star betrays thee through the dark: Just such a Governess as one I know. etc. In a ballad, to the Tune of Chevy Chase, with commencing lines "Come all youths that yet are free from Hymen's deadly snare," the fourth verse refers to the same intrigue of 1682 between Anne and Lord Mulgrave, in which she was not an unwilling principal: VOL. IV. And first and foremost princely Nan heirs both her parents' lusts, And Mulgrave is the happy man by whom our breed is crost: 20 |