Category Archives: Seventeenth Century

George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, his brother and their women

Posted on by
Reply
George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham by Sir Peter Lely via Wikimedia Commons

George was born in 1628. He was only an infant when his father was assassinated by John Felton. Charles I arranged for the boy and his brother Francis and their elder sister Mary, to be raised in the royal nurseries and from there to complete his education at Cambridge.

He took part in the Siege of Lichfield in 1643 but was sent with his brother, under the tutorship of the Earl of Northumberland, to Italy but returned to England in time for the Second English Civil War. Because of his age, Parliament returned his sequestrated lands to him. Francis was still only 19 years old when he joined the Earl of Holland’s failed Royalist rising. The boy was killed on 7 July 1648 in a particularly brutal manner following a surprise attack. Part of the reason for the soldiers success was that Villiers had sent his companions away so that he could enjoy the evening which his mistress, Mary Kirke.

George managed to escape the situation after fighting off six Parliamentarians. Parliament once again confiscated his lands and gave them to General Sir Thomas Fairfax. Charles II admitted Buckingham to his council but he was often in opposition to Edward Hyde and he negotiated with Oliver Comrwell’s government which distanced him from the rest of the king’s advisers. Matters were not helped by a dispute with Charles and an attempt to court the widowed Mary, Princess of Orange.

When he returned to England in 1657 he met and married Mary Fairfax, the daughter of the general who held his lands. Fairfax had intended his daughter to marry Philip Stanhope but Mary fell in love with the cavalier. Fairfax was even required to negotiate for the release of his son-in-law from the Tower of London.

It was not to be a happy marriage. Buckingham found his way back into royal favour at the Restoration and was soon up to his neck in intrigue and passion. He became part of the so called CABAL Ministry and in 1668 fought a duel with the Earl of Shrewsbury over the earl’s wife. Having killed the earl, he imported the widowed countess to his home. She apparently had been present at the duel disguised as a page. When Mary protested, he arranged to send her home to her father. In 1671, Anna Talbot gave birth to Buckingham’s son but the boy died soon afterwards. Parliament was not amused and in 1673 the lovers parted. Anna found herself temporarily in a convent in France.

As well as the scandalous affair with Anna, Buckingham also had a liaison with Barbara Villiers, who was his cousin. The pair had, it seems, several amorous encounters with one another at the same time as plotting against their enemies including the Earl of Clarendon. Of course, the fact that both of them wanted to be the most powerful person at court and to have Charles II’s favour it meant that as soon as they’d finished with their intrigues to topple their shared political opponent they turned on one another.

Pepys stated in his diary that Buckingham was unfit for public office after his duel. Pepys also referenced another court observer who described him as an. ‘atheist, blasphemer, violent, cruel and infamous for his licentiousness.’

For Mary Fairfax, a devout Presbyterian, who genuinely loved her erring spouse there was only dignified silence. Perhaps it’s what ensured she and Catherine of Braganza became close friends. Mary served the queen from 1663 until 1692 when Catherine returned to Portugal.

Villiers died in 1687 at Kirkbymoorside. He was given an elaborate funeral at Westminster Abbey. His long suffering wife was buried beside him after her death in 1704. She had spent many of those years fending off her husband’s creditors.

Anna Talbot returned to England in 1677, married again and was welcomed back into society although she was never allowed custody of hers and Shrewsbury’s son – Charles. In 1688, in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, Anna became a Jacobite spy.

Charles Talbot, 12th Earl of Shrewsbury, on the other hand, refused to have anything to do with the Catholic king even when he was sitting on the throne. In 1688 he was one of the so-called Immortal Seven who invited William of Orange to invade England and topple his father-in-law from his throne. Quite remarkably Charles served William, Mary and Anne dying in 1718. By then he was the 1st Duke of Shrewsbury but the title died with him, having no legitimate children.

Charlotte Fitzroy, Countess of Lichfield

Posted on by
1
Charlotte Lee, Countess of Lichfield, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Charlotte Fitzroy was born on 5 September, 1664. By that time Roger Palmer had left his wife, Barbara, so there was no disguising the fact that the little girl was the child of King Charles II. Both Charles and James, Duke of York doted on Charlotte who was as affectionate as she was lovely.

Barbara was less enamoured of any of her children. On occasion she threatened to leave them with their father. And, in one notable instance the glass in the window of her mother’s coach broke while Charlotte was in it. She burst into tears fearing her mother’s wrath. Charles II intervened to prevent the girl from being punished.

When she was only ten years old a marriage was arranged by the Countess of Rochester, who was Edward Lee’s grandmother. The pair were distantly related and a similar age. As soon as the couple were engaged, Edward was created Earl of Lichfield. When the couple were married, the union would be a long and, it seems, very happy one.

In 1676 Charlotte went with her mother and her younger sister Barbara to France where the pair were sent to a convent to be educated along with other members of the English aristocracy. The following year Charles II demanded that he daughter be returned home and married. He provided her and her new husband with a town house designed by Christopher Wren which was known as Lichfield House. Charlotte’s dowry, provided by Charles was £18,000 and he also gave his daughter a pension of £2,000 per year.

By the time she was nineteen years old Charlotte had given her husband four children. Fourteen more would be born. In between caring for her expanding family Charlotte remained a favourite with her father and was often at court. Existing correspondence shows that father and daughter retained close contact throughout Charles II’s life and that he was an affectionate father.

After Charles’ death the couple remained at the heart of the court and Charlotte would be one of the women who testified that her aunt by marriage Mary of Modena had indeed given birth to a son rather than a changeling being introduced. However, she was not present at the birth itself. Because of their loyalty to James II, Charlotte and Edward were not welcome at court in the years following the Glorious Revolution of1689. Instead they spent their time at Edward’s home at Ditchley (Yes – Edward was descended from Queen Elizabeth I’s somewhat scandalous champion, Henry Lee.)

Because Edward remained loyal to the Stuart dynasty they were not permitted to return to court when Charlotte’s cousin Anne ascended the throne.

Edward died in 1716, followed by Charlotte who died two years later, aged fifty-three. She was the only one of Barbara Villiers daughters who did not have a scandal in their lives. The next generation were rather less fortunate and in later times Charlotte could count among her descendants the Mitford Sisters who have to be among the most famous, not to mention most scandalous, sisters of the twentieth century. Also descended from Charlotte and thus Charles II was British Prime Minister, Anthony Eden.

Henriette Anne of England

Posted on by
Reply
Peter Lely, Henriette Anne of England via Wikimedia Commons

Henrietta, or Henriette, was the last of Charles I and Henrietta Maria’s children. She was born on 16 June 1644 at Bedford House, Exeter. The queen who had left Oxford earlier that year fled to France soon afterwards leaving the sickly princess in the care of her governess Lady Dalkeith.

Charles I arranged for the infant to be baptised at Exeter Cathedral where she was received into the Church of England. The king also appointed Thomas Fuller as Henriette’s chaplain. That autumn and winter saw the net tighten around the increasingly beleaguered Royalists and although Henrietta Maria wrote to Lady Dalkeith ordering her to bring Henrietta to France there was no one available to ensure hers or the princess’s safety, so they remained at Exeter. In December the city was beseiged by a Parliamentarian army.

Henrietta, and Lady Dalkeith, were still there when the city surrendered to General Sir Thomas Fairfax on 9 April. The pair went to Oatlands but when Parliament gave orders for Henriette to join her siblings at St James and for Lady Dalkeith to be dismissed the princess’s governess took matters into her own hands. She made her escape, carrying the toddler, to Dover – a distance of some 95 miles.

Safely in France, Henrietta was reunited with her mother. Henriette as she was called in France became Henriette Anne when the latter was added to her name in honour of Anne of Austria, the dowager queen of France. Henriette was given solely into the care of her mother who insisted that she was raised a Catholic. Lady Dalkeith remained Protestant and Prince Charles was horrified that his mother had broken the terms of his father’s marriage agreement with her. He recognised the importance of his family retaining their Protestant credentials if his father, and later himself, were to be restored to the throne.

The journey from Oatlands to Dover, dressed in clothes that did not belong to her, was not the end of Henriette’s trials. She and her mother were given a home at the Louvre and at St Germain but the queen spent her pension on supporting her husband and during the civil wars that became known as the Fronde (1648-1653) which targeted Anne of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin she and her mother were deserted by the royal court and trapped in their apartments.

Henriette’s young cousin, King Louis XIV of France, needed a bride. Henrietta Maria thought that it would be an ideal match for her daughter but so far as Anne of Austria and Mazarin were concerned, Henriette was a penniless refugee. It was only in 1660 in the months following the Restoration that Henriette, a pretty young woman, became a potential bride but for Louis’ younger brother Philippe – who was bisexual and had been associated with a number of scandals.

Negotiations were interrupted when Henriette and her mother travelled to England for Charles II’s coronation and for Henrietta Maria to sort out her finances. The pair delayed their return when Henriette’s older brother Henry died of small pox. It was October before she began her return to France and November, in Dover, before an official request for marriage made. Further delays including the death of her eldest sister, Mary Princess of Orange, meant that Henriette did not return to France until January.

Charles II, who called his sister Minette, agreed a dowry of 840,000 livres as well as other financial gifts and the wedding took place on 30 March 1661. Louis XIV created his brother Duc d’Orléans. At first Philippe was besotted with his pretty bride. Their first child was born within a year of the marriage but questions were raised about Marie Louise’s paternity. Could the father have been Louis or even Guy Armand de Gramont, Count of Guiche? The latter was part of Philippe’s entourage and may even have been his lover. Philippe became increasingly jealous and Henriette’s marriage became strained to breaking point, especially after the arrival of Philippe, Chevalier de Lorraine who did all that he could to drive a wedge between the couple.

Despite this Henriette gave birth to a son in 1664, two still born infants and a daughter, Anne Marie who would become the Queen of Sardinia.

Despite the misery of married life, illness and increasing frailty caused possibly by anorexia nervosa, Henriette had a passion for gardens, for works of art and for correspondence with her brother in England. It was Henriette whose letters lay at the heart of the Secret Treaty of Dover (1670) between Louis XIV and Charles II. Louis had a close friendship with Minette. Aside from the family connection and the early flirtation, Henriette – beautiful, charming and witty became a notable figure at court.

By 1667 Henriette was complaining about a pain in her side, when she travelled to Dover for the secret negotiations she was so unwell that she was only able to drink milk. When she returned to France she travelled, on 26 June, to Saint-Cloud where Philippe was living. On 29 June she became unwell after drinking a glass of iced chicory water. She called out that she had been poisoned and on 30 June she died.

Louis XIV ordered that a post mortem be conducted. The official report stated that Minette died from gastroenteritis but suspicions remained. Today historians believe that she may have died from peritonitis caused by a ruptured stomach ulcer rather than poison.

Henrietta Anne was buried next to her mother at St Denis, who had died in September 1669 having taken an excessive quantity of opiates as a painkiller on the advice of the French court doctor.

Melanie Clegg. The Life of Henrietta Anne

Julia A. Hickey. Preparing Stuart Kings and Princes to Rule (Pen and Sword, 2026)

Linda Porter. Royal Renegades: The Children of Charles I and the English Civil Wars

Guide Stoops and turnpikes – a couple of random facts.

Posted on by
Reply
Ashover – Stone Guide Stoop by Neil Theasby, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I’ve settled down to read The Guide Stoops of Derbyshire by Howard Smith. Essentially prior to the establishment of Turnpike Roads travellers and pack ponies travelled by a network of roads and tracks without much in the way of sign posts – making longer journeys something of a dangerous activity – consider Celia Fiennes local guide who became lost in the Peak District at the end of the seventeenth century.

Derbyshire’s administrators – the local JPs- set about improving matters with the extension in the number of guide stones between 1717 and 1734, although the Hope Cross on the Roman road dates from 1737 and is probably a replacement of a medieval way marker. They were responding – somewhat late in the day to an act of Parliament dating from 1709 which required all parishes to set up way markers. The Peak District’s stoop stones catered for the more isolated routes. North Yorkshire’s justices had issued the same demands in 1711 while the West Riding’s guide stoops were expanded in 1700 in response to an earlier act of Parliament dating to 1697. In Yorkshire stoop stones are also known as hand stones – presumably because of the pointing hands that are sometimes carved on them.

However the arrival of turnpike roads changed matters quite considerably in terms of travelling by road and the marking of roads. In 1773 a Turnpike Act made fingerposts obligatory.

And finally, here is my favourite fact of the day – on page 14 of Howard’s work. A 3-ton waggon needed 8 horses to pull it. The same amount carried on the backs of the animals required 30 horses making the waggon a much more economical way of carrying heavy goods.

‘She-intelligencers’ – nothing so simple as spying

Posted on by
Reply
Lucy Hay, Countess of Carlisle, Anthony van Dyck, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

If you haven’t read Nadine Akkerman’s work, Invisible Agents, I heartily recommend it. It covers the world of espionage and women during the seventeenth century in Britain. It has been suggested that successful female agents were few and far between – but Ackerman sets out to disprove the view.

One of the most famous intelligencers – was Lucy Hay, Countess of Carlisle. Born Lucy Percy, the daughter of the 9th Earl of Northumberland (the so-called Wizard Earl) and Dorothy Devereux – making her a descendent of Mary Boleyn. At the age of 18-years she married James Hay soon to become the Earl of Carlisle.

James was one of King James I’s Scottish favourites and a Groom of the Stool (Yes, he wiped the king’s bottom for him!). The Hays’ proximity to the Crown continued when Charles I ascended the throne, thanks in part to James’s assisting with the negotiations for Charles’ marriage to Henrietta Maria. It is thought that Lucy was the Duke of Buckingham’s mistress at this time as well as becoming one of the Queen’s ladies in waiting. At first Henrietta was not keen on Lucy’s presence – mainly because Lucy wasn’t a Catholic and because she was spying on the Queen on Buckingham’s behalf. Ultimately the two women became friends – although it was a relationship destined to be a rocky one on occasion.

In 1636 the Earl of Carlisle, who was twice Lucy’s age, died. The Duke of Buckingham had been assassinated in 1628 – so there she was an independent and glamorous widow. She took up with Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford – the new royal favourite. He also advised her on her Irish property. However, when Strafford was impeached by Parliament she distanced herself from the earl. In any event she had found a new beau- the Parliamentarian John Pym.

By the outbreak of the civil war in 1642 both the Royalists and the Parliamentarians thought that Lucy was their intelligencer. She had after all warned her lover, John Pym, about the king’s intentions to have him arrested. Henrietta believed that Lucy was cosying up to Parliamentarians like the earls of Warwick and Essex to spy on her behalf and they, in turn, believed that she was spying on the Royalists. Her house, it should be noted, was full of Royalists but it didn’t prevent her moving seamlessly between London and the Royal Court at Oxford.

Lucy would go on to raise funds for the Royalists and took messages to Henrietta when she was in France. In 1649 – shortly after the king’s execution, Lucy was arrested and carted off to the Tower. Somehow or other her jailors didn’t spot that she was writing letters to the new king, Charles II. She used her brother as a courier. Ultimately, eighteen months after her arrest, she was freed and continued her work as a royalist agent seeking the restoration of the monarchy.

Lucy died at the beginning of November 1660 but is remembered in fictional form today as Alexander Dumas’s Milady de Winter in The Three Musketeers.

Derbyshire in the English Civil War

Posted on by
Reply

Predominantly Parliamentarian in sympathy, Derbyshire raised a regiment under the command of Sir John Gell of Hopton Hall and secured Derby in early December 1642. The Earl of Derbyshire went into exile and Chatsworth found itself being occupied by both sides at different times. The earl’s younger brother Charles Cavendish, would die in the Royalist cause.

Bolsover, the home of the earl’s cousin, William Cavendish, Marquis of Newcastle, also had a Royalist garrison although it was never besieged. Wingfield Manor was also garrisoned as well Tissington Hall in the Peak District and Barton Hall to the south of the county. Gell set about securing the property of Royalists in February 1643. He began with Elvaston Castle the home of his rival Sir John Stanhope who had died in 1638. At the time Stanhope’s widow, Mary, was in residence. Gell’s forces ransacked the manor, ruined her flower garden and defaced Sir John’s newly erected tomb before entering the family vault and repeatedly plunging their swords into the coffins it contained. The destruction of Mary’s flower garden was at Gell’s express orders – I’m not warming to the man whose own tomb can be viewed in Wirksworth Church. Not content with his work, Gell went on to raid Jacinth Sacheverell’s home at Morley and Sir John Coke’s property at Melbourne.

By November that year Chatsworth, Wingerworth and Staveley, all Royalist locations, were garrisoned by Parliamentarian troops as was Wingfield Manor. In December, Newcastle’s Royalists laid siege to Mary Queen of Scots former prison and on 19 December the Parliamentarian garrison there surrendered.

It was at about the same time that the Royalists garrisoned Tissington Hall, then the home of William FitzHerbert. Colonel Eyre was able to garrison Chatsworth, the Parliamentarians having withdrawn, as well as his own home at Hassop. It meant that the Royalists looked more secure in Derbyshire than they had since the beginning of the conflict. Unfortunately for them, Newcastle, withdrew into Yorkshire to counter the Scottish invasion into England in January 1644.

In July, Gell besieged Wingfield Manor but when he discovered that Colonel Eyre (the Royalist from Hassop who incidentally was at Marston Moor) was intent on raising the siege he sent men, commanded by Major Saunders, to shadow their movements. It meant that when Saunders saw at opportunity at Boylestone he was able to surround the colonel’s men in the church where they spent the night and capture them.

Even so, without artillery it would be impossible to capture Wingfield and it was only when Gell arranged for some cannon to be sent from Sheffield that he was able to capture it. Staveley Hall had already surrendered as had Bolsover Castle.

With key positions secured, Gell returned his attention to other Royalist homes in the area. One of his targets was Barton Blount just three miles from Tutbury. However, Sir John’s own career was coming to an end. King Charles’ surrender in May 1646 members the gentry who had been at war returned home and began to challenge Gell’s position and, after an acrimonious election, complaints about Gell arrived in London.

And as an aside – the lady whose flower garden had been destroyed at the start of the war – Mary Radcliffe, the widow of Sir John Stanhope — she was married to Gell in 1644. It was an unlikely match and it appears Gell wanted to get his hands on her money. They were separated four years later. He took her children, from her first marriage, to court claiming that Mary had secretly set up a trust so that Gell could not get his hands her £1000 per year income.

Mary Radcliffe. William Larkin, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

And it just goes to show that a peruse of the Internet can reveal some unlikely finds. it appears that Mary, having separated from her unpleasant spouse (and Sir John Stanhope was described as choleric – so neither marriage sounds particularly comfortable) moved to London and the newly fashionable area of Covent Garden. She died there in 1653.

Mary Radcliffe’s shoes – Kerry Taylor auctions 2015

The Great Picture, Lady Anne Clifford

Posted on by
Reply
The Great Picture, Lady Anne Clifford By Attributed to Jan van Belcamp (1610-1653) – http://www.abbothall.org.uk/sites/default/files/Abbot%20Hall%20Art%20Gallery/documents/AH-Great-Picture-Large.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41649100

The image on the left depicts Lady Anne Clifford, aged 15, with pictures of her governess Mrs Anne Taylor, or Taylour, and her tutor, the poet, Samuel Daniel. She studied Ovid, Chaucer and Cervantes Don Quixote. The latter was published in two parts in 1605 and 1615.

The middle picture portrays George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland as well as Anne’s mother, Lady Margaret Russell and Anne’s two short lived older brothers, Francis and Robert, who died before they were breeched- hence the long dresses. The four images on the wall behind depict George’s sisters, Lady Frances Clifford, Baroness Wharton and Lady Margaret Clifford, Countess of Derby. In addition there are images of Lady Anne Russell, Countess of Warwick and Lady Elizabeth Russell, Countess of Bath.

The final image, on the right hand side, portrays Lady Anne Clifford, aged 56-years, and images of her two husbands – the earls of Dorset and Pembroke.

Baroness Wharton was married to Philip Wharton – named after his godfather who just so happened to be Philip II of Spain. He was born in 1555. He narrowly avoided bankruptcy when he entertained James I. Frances died in 1592.

I’ve blogged about the Countess of Derby previously. Lady Anne Clifford’s grandfather, Henry Clifford, 2nd Earl of Cumberland was married to Lady Eleanor Brandon, the daughter of Henry VIII’s sister Mary, prior to his union with Anne Dacre, who was Lady Anne Clifford’s grandmother. It meant that Anne’s aunt had a claim to the throne. Prior to the death of Edward VI, the Duke of Northumberland attempted to arrange a marriage for Margaret Clifford that would bolster his position but in the event she was married following the accession of Mary I to the 4th Earl of Derby – Henry Stanley. In 1579 she was arrested for seeking a prediction regarding Elizabeth I’s death. Predicting the death of a monarch let alone plotting to kill one was a serious crime. The countess’s doctor was executed and she lived under house arrest. She died in 1596, never having been returned to royal favour.

The Countess of Bath was the second wife of William Bourchier, 3rd Earl of Bath. The marriage was about power in Devon. At the time the Earl of Bedford, who was Elizabeth, Anne and Margaret’s father was the county’s Lord Lieutenant as well as an important landholder in the region. She died in March 1604/1605 (depending on which calendar you’re using).

Knole and Lady Anne Clifford

Posted on by
1

In 1609, Lady Anne Clifford married Richard Sackville who became the 3rd Earl of Dorset the same year. They were the same age, with Anne being 19-years at the time of the marriage and Richard being 20. But the union was not a success. Richard had expensive tastes as well as mistresses and something of a gambling problem. Anne wrote that the ground steadied beneath her feet when her husband left the country to complete his education. Lady Anne Clifford, on the other hand, was determined to win her Westmorland inheritance as her father’s only legitimate child. Sackville was more interested in the money which was offered to Anne as an alternative. Supporters of the earl, of whom King James I was one, thought that Anne ought to be obedient to her husband’s wishes. Her lack of compliance saw Richard deny her access to their eldest child, Margaret, for a time. In the end Richard received £20,000 despite Anne’s continued objections. Her husband considered her ‘devoid of reason.’

Anne kept a diary of her life, in part to keep track of her legal battles and her claim to the Clifford estates. She thought that it would be a useful document if she had to go to court. Her diaries from Knole make sad reading as it is clear that she lived in self imposed isolation much of the time. As well as her writing she also completed needlework. Although, it is evident that she got on well with many of her staff. There is mention of her playing backgammon with the steward for instance. There is also evidence of Anne ensuring that she fulfilled her duty as the mistress of Knole. She lists the whole household in 1623 and arranged her notes according to their place in the Great Hall which makes fascinating reading, not least because it lists the nursery staff among the 100 or so servants. Among the number was Grace Robinson described as a ‘blackamoor’ who was seated at the table with the laundry staff. The Sackville family were linked to the trade in slaves, the 4th Earl – Richard’s brother- was Governor of the Somers Island Company . However, it is unclear whether Grace was a paid servant or someone who had been trafficked into forced labour.

What makes her diary sad is she records living with a ‘discontented heart’ but putting on a brave face. I’m not entirely sure that a brave face was what most women would put on these days if their husband openly brought their mistress to live in the family home as Sackville did when he moved Lady Martha Penistone in to Knole. Sir Thomas Penistone, Lady Penistone’s husband was among the earl’s retinue of thirty gentlemen. Each of them received £50 a year. Martha died from smallpox in 1620, about a year after becoming the earl’s mistress.

For Anne, the grandeur of Knole was nothing compared to the castles that she felt should be hers in the north of England. Sackville died in March 1624. Anne Clifford recorded in her diary that news of her husband’s death came at a time when her two daughters both had small pox, as did she. One of her first actions after Richard’s death was to buy the wardship of her daughters, Margaret and Isabella, from the king. Their other three children had died in infancy.

The earldom of Dorset passed to Richard’s brother, Edward. The fourth earl was forced to sell some of his family’s land to pay his brother’s debts but he rose at court as Queen Henrietta Maria’s chamberlain. He fought on the side of the royalists during the English Civil War but his wife Mary Curzon of Croxhall in Derbyshire who had served as governess for the royal family remained in London to care for Princess Elizabeth and her brother Henry, Duke of Gloucester. her payment from Parliament ensured that Knole remained in the Sackville family. She died in 1645 having been asked to be relieved of her employment and she received a funeral in Westminster Abbey- making her another remarkable woman of the 17th century.

Richard Sackville, 3rd Earl of Dorset Attributed to William Larkin, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Loving the gold lace pompoms on his shoes – shoe roses and heels were two ways that you could express your wealth and status. I don’t suppose the gold work embroidery on his stockings downplayed his position in society either. In fact I rather suspect the whole outfit would be described as among the extravagances that led to the earl having to mortgage Knole in order to pay his debts.

Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke – the paradox of early modern women

Posted on by
1

I’ve encountered Mary Sidney on several occasions in the past few years. She was the sister of Sir Philip Sidney, their mother was born Mary Dudley, the sister of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Mary, the wife of Sir Henry Sidney, was one of Queen Elizabeth I’s favourite ladies. Sir Henry who was raised alongside Prince Edward, his father being the prince’s chamberlain and his mother the prince’s governess. It’s easy to see how the pair were married to one another – the Sidneys were already close to Edward VI and Dudley, who later became the Duke of Northumberland, wanted to ensure their support.

Henry and May had seven children. Mary was the fifth child, born in 1561. Her eldest sister, Margaret, died while she was still a toddler in 1558. Elizabeth died when Mary was just six, while Ambrosia who was only a year older than Mary died in 1575. Mary’s youngest brother, Thomas, also died at a young age.

All of them were raised at Penshurst in Kent, at Ludlow Castle in Wales and Ticknell Palace near Bewdley. They also travelled to Dublin. It was while they were there that Elizabeth died. When Mary was three, her 10-year-old brother, Philip, was sent to Shrewsbury School where he remained for the next four years before continuing his education at Oxford University. Having finished his studies there, Philip was granted a licence to travel for two years in order to improve his knowledge of foreign language.

For Mary education, of the humanist kind enjoyed by Elizabeth I, meant a proficiency in French and Italian. She was also taught Latin, music and needlework. They were essential skills for a young woman who might find herself in Elizabeth’s court.

By the time Philip returned home in 1575, following Ambrosia’s death, Mary and her mother were residing at Elizabeth’s court. It was an opportunity for her to acquire court polish and for her parents to make her a good match. The good offices of the queen and of the Earl of Leicester gave the Sidneys an advantage in securing a union with the Herbert family in 1577. It was another factor in making a daughter’s education arrangements. It was essential that a young woman should meet the expectations of the family into which she might marry. Manners and conduct were consequently an important part of education. Girls were expected to be respectful and modest.

After her marriage to Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke (becoming his third wife) who was more than two decades older than her, she was responsible for the good management of his estates as well as providing him with a family of four children. Much of her surviving writing is business correspondence. It’s a reminder that while women were regarded as having roles within the private rather than pubic sphere, that as representatives of their husbands, their influence could be wide ranging. Somehow, as well as entertaining the queen, running a household and managing her husband’s estates, she managed to find time to have a chemistry laboratory at Wilton House where she developed medicines and invisible ink.

More important, she created the Wilton Circle of poets that included the likes of Edmund Spenser and Ben Johnson. She would receive more dedications than any other woman of non royal status. And she wrote her own work -unusual in publishing under her own name- but avoiding criticism by focusing on religion, translations, elegies and works of praise. It helped that her that she was the sister of Sir Philip Sidney. Her story of patronage began after his death when she encouraged authors to publish works written in his praise. It seems that she wrote throughout her life thereafter but most of what exists today dates from the 1590s. it is likely that much of what she wrote has been lost to history. There was a fire at Wilton during the seventeenth century and also at Baynard’s Castle which was another of her homes.

In short, Mary Sidney is a perfect example of the paradox that many early modern women became. On one hand they were expected to be obedient wives, interested in the domestic and the religious but on the other they were business women, patrons of the arts and like Mary, on occasion, able to demonstrate their intellect and achieve remarkable things.

November 1641- Criticising a king

Posted on by
2

Charles I set off for Scotland on 10 August 1641. At the beginning of the summer he had signed the death warrant of his friend the Earl of Strafford and Ship Money Tax had been declared illegal. How much respite the king enjoyed from the turbulence of his three kingdoms when he arrived in Edinburgh on 14 August is another matter entirely. He was still there when an Irish rebellion broke out in October.

Which brings me to November. On the 8th of November, ten days before the king left his Scottish capital, the English Parliament demanded that in future Charles should only appoint advisers and ministers approved by them. On the 23 the Commons narrowly voted in favour of the Grand Remonstrance which criticised the king’s temporal and religious policies. Even so, when he arrived back in London on 25 it was with much ceremony and popular acclaim.

Ferdinando Fairfax second Baron Fairfax of Cameron and the father of Sir Thomas Fairfax who was Member of Parliament for Yorkshire was part of the committee that presented the Grand Remonstrance. This was a list of 200 grievances against the king including his perceived abused of power as well as things like illegal taxation.

The full text can be found here:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/63567/63567-h/63567-h.htm