When James II. fled from Whitehall his hopes turned naturally to Ireland and Talbot. The exiled King at once created him Duke of Tyrconnel and Viceroy. There never has reigned at Dublin Castle a more striking figure. Nor was the Vicereine unequal to the position of power, splendour, and intrigue to which she had climbed with such difficulty. Destiny ruled that her magnificent reign should be short and her ruin an arresting contrast to the success of her equally ambitious and clever sister, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough. She took advantage of her temporary fortune to marry her three daughters by her former husband, Hamilton, to rich and influential Irish noblemen. Of one of these "three viscountesses," as they were popularly known in their day, there is, says Mrs. Jameson, a picturesque legend still current among the Irish peasantry. Laughlen Castle was left to the Viscountess Dillon on the death of her husband with the proviso that she should reside in it during her life. In her widowhood, falling in love with a young Englishman, and being unable to detain him in Ireland or follow him to England while her castle existed, she ordered a banquet to be prepared in her garden and, having set fire to the castle and feasted by the light of the blazing pile, went off to England after supper with her lover!
It is not surprising to learn that the mother of such a daughter had a commanding spirit and temper. "She is said to have ruled her husband without much effort, but as all her prejudices and passions held in the same direction, she on many occasions only added the fuel of her feminine impatience to his headlong self-will." Her influence over Talbot was, in fact, supreme. Struggling, as she did with all her force, to maintain her husband and herself at the summit they had scaled, it was but natural that she should have made enemies among the distracted and desperate Jacobites who surrounded her contemptible master, James. All sorts of efforts were made at St. Germain to induce the fallen King to supersede the Viceroy, or at least banish his wife from Ireland. Lord Melfort, foiled by her intrigues, declared that she had "l'âme la plus noire qui se puisse concevoir."
The Talbot influence was, however, too strong to be easily broken, and James, having decided to fight for his crown in Ireland, trusted implicitly to the Duke of Tyrconnel, who had refused to go over to William of Orange in spite of heavy bribes. From the coming of James and his French army to Ireland in March 1689, to the fatal Battle of the Boyne, the struggle between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism entered upon its final and most distracted phase. In these months of peril the Jacobite camp was honeycombed with anarchy. Round the Viceroy and his wife envy and malice coiled like a hydra. It required all their skill to baffle the intrigues and treachery in their own party. At the same time the terror and hatred of the English vented themselves on the frenzied Duke of Tyrconnel, who, still sure of the support of his weak King, was ruthless in his vengeance and desperate in his measures to out-manœuvre William of Orange, that master of strategy. Of the lampoons that rained upon him the following is a sample:—
The French authorities quoted by Macaulay are probably quite correct in stating that the Duke of Tyrconnel had arranged with James to make Ireland a French protectorate, in case the English crown should again be on the head of a Protestant king. The thought that he was just the Irishman to entertain such a design was sufficient to make him execrable to the Englishmen of his own day, and no less infamous to Macaulay, that strict respecter of conventions, who ferreted his forgotten name out of the oubliettes of history to depict him as the traitor par excellence. But it was certainly not England that Talbot would have betrayed had his schemes succeeded. To him the yoke that crushed his race and creed was foreign. Nor would Ireland have altogether resented his handing her over to France, all bleeding as she was from Protestant and English wounds. Of the two yokes the French would assuredly have been the easier for Ireland—at least so Irishmen have declared on many occasions.
Be all this as it may, perhaps no other but Talbot could have maintained himself against the calumnies and intrigues that began slowly to break down his iron frame. It must have been with something of relief, something of despair, that the high-spirited Duchess of Tyrconnel learnt that the factious Franco-Irish army was finally to meet the common foe. She knew well enough, when on the night of the 30th of June a courier brought her the news that a battle would be fought on the morrow, that on its issue hung all her future. The agony of suspense in which she passed the day of the Battle of the Boyne found her at evening no less exhausted than the conquered and fugitive James when he reached Dublin Castle. Nevertheless, in this hour of her deepest humiliation she rose proudly above despair. As soon as the worst was told her she bore herself with as high a spirit as when years before she had faced Jermyn. When the fleeing King arrived, faint and covered with mud so as to be hardly recognisable, the Duchess of Tyrconnel assembled her household in state, and dressing herself magnificently received him with all the splendour of Court etiquette. Never has Dublin Castle witnessed a function more dramatic than this of Dick Talbot's Vicereine on the night of the Battle of the Boyne. Having on one knee congratulated James on his safety, she invited him to partake of refreshment. His answer is celebrated. Shaking his head sadly, he replied that his breakfast that morning had spoiled his appetite, and ironically complimented her on the swiftness of her husband's countrymen's heels. "At least your Majesty has had the advantage of them," she could not help retorting, stung by the ruin of her hopes and ambitions. When Lauzun, the French general, told her that fifteen Talbots and half as many Hamiltons had been slain, and that her husband had fought like a hero of romance, she might have been acquitted of disloyalty had she cried, as she must have felt, with the Irish soldiers, "Change kings, and we will fight the battle over again!"
At the Council held on the following day it was decided that James should return to France, and the Duchess of Tyrconnel either went with him or followed shortly afterwards. It was no doubt necessary for the Viceroy to have his clever wife to intrigue in his behalf at St. Germain, where his enemies were the most dangerous. She did her best for him in that plot-laden atmosphere, but Tyrconnel and the cause he represented were hopelessly broken, and the doom of the wicked fairy had fallen on the Duchess. Her star had set, never to rise again.
In the following year the patriotic Viceroy died suddenly at Limerick, whither he had gone in brave despair to give battle to the fatal William of Orange once more. Before he died his enemies at St. Germain had triumphed over his wife, and the weak, ungrateful James had at last allowed himself to be persuaded to deprive him of all authority in Ireland. But, so loved as well as feared was he, the despatch which disgraced him was kept a profound secret. His death was generally attributed to poison, but the real cause, according to a more trustworthy opinion, was apoplexy. So exciting were the times, that his end scarcely caused a thrill. Death must have been welcome, for his passionate heart was broken.
Thus perished this questionable hero, whose virtues and abilities have been covered with infamy by failure and the unbounded popular passions of the times in which he lived. Two voices only have ever been lifted in his defence: one was Berwick's, his contemporary, who, when the opportunity was offered, nobly refused to supplant him; the other was Lady Morgan's, a sympathetic critic of a later day. "Of Richard Talbot, Duke of Tyrconnel," she said, "much ill has been written and more believed; but his history, like that of his unfortunate country, has only been written by the pen of party, steeped in gall, and copied servilely from the pages of prejudice by the tame historians of modern times more anxious for authority than authenticity."
His brilliant wife, whom his death reduced to poverty, paid his memory such honour as she could. At her entreaty Anselme, the most popular preacher of the day, pronounced his oraison funèbre in Paris, and the Courts of Versailles and St. Germain assembled to hear it. The obscurity in which the rest of her long life was spent has only been fitfully illuminated. Neglected in the distracted Court of the exiled Stuarts, she was so poor that she was often in want of the necessaries of life. On one occasion temporary relief was afforded her by the gift of four hundred pounds from the pension the Pope gave to James II. Her proud spirit having been embittered by misfortune, she quarrelled with nearly all her relations, living on especially bad terms with her "three viscountesses;" her only child by Talbot that survived, and whom she had married to the Prince of Vintimiglia; and her luckier but no cleverer sister, the Duchess of Marlborough. Many years later, in the reign of Queen Anne, when her famous brother-in-law was at the height of his power and playing his double game between the Whigs and the Jacobites, she was employed for a time in his secret negotiations. But the proceedings are wrapped in mystery. There is a story said to be apocryphal, though Horace Walpole and others believed it, that she was in England in 1705, and sold haberdashery at the Royal Exchange, which was at that time let out in stalls.
"Above stairs," said Walpole, "sat, in the character of a milliner, the reduced Duchess of Tyrconnel, wife of Richard Talbot, Lord Deputy of Ireland under James II. This female, suspected to be his duchess after his death, supported herself for a few days, till she was known and otherwise provided for, by the little trade of the place. She had delicacy enough to wish not to be detected; she sat in a white mask and a white dress, and was known by the name of the White Milliner."
It is certain that three years later she was at Brussels, where she had a meeting of a political nature with the Duke of Marlborough. In describing it to his wife he wrote that he found her grown very old and hoarse, and so much changed as to be hardly recognisable. Through his influence some of her confiscated property in Ireland was restored to her, and she went to Dublin, where she remained for the rest of her life, with what thoughts one would like to know! She lived for nearly thirty years in a most devout and lonely retirement, and, her funds being now more than sufficient for her wants, founded a nunnery for the Order of Poor Clares. "Her death," says Walpole, "was occasioned by falling out of her bed on the floor in a winter's night, and being too feeble to rise or to call out, she was found in the morning so perished with cold that she died in a few hours." Her age was eighty-three, and she had survived the fatal Battle of the Boyne forty years!
Of the beauty for which "the Lovely Jennings" had been so celebrated at Whitehall, when she scattered the Duke of York's love-billets "like hailstones around her," there had long ceased to remain the slightest trace.
IN all ages there are persons of whom it may be said that they have been born out of their proper era. The manner in which such beings are received by the times in which they find themselves depends entirely on the standard of public opinion then existing. The Countess of Shrewsbury was one of these strange individuals. She should have flourished in France under the Valois and the great Dumas should have been her historian. In times like our own, for instance—for whether in or out of her proper period her individuality was too striking to have permitted her to pass unnoticed—she would undoubtedly have proved the truth of the verse that declares—
It was certainly fortunate for her that Fate did not retard her appearance until after the Stuarts had vanished. As it was, even the Restoration looked askance at her; and it was only to her rank that she owed the immunity she enjoyed. There was a magic in rank in those days that secured liberty for its crimes. And no name appeared grander to the popular imagination than that of Talbot.
In the remote past when, first coming out of Normandy into Britain, that family of which Tyrconnel was the most illustrious representative had settled in Ireland, its titular chief had remained in England. From him in the course of the centuries had sprung a line which yielded to none in pride of birth. Before the Howards or Percys had been heard of the English Talbots had become famous. One family alone boasted a more ancient lineage. This was de Vere, of which at the time we are now contemplating Aubrey, twentieth Earl of Oxford, was the last of his race. Since the fifteenth century the earldom of Shrewsbury had been the chief of the many dignities honourably borne by the head of the Talbots—a title whose unbroken succession the family boasts down to the present day. At the Restoration this distinguished house was represented by the eleventh of the line. He was a colourless aristocrat who, the year before the return of the Stuarts, had been married in London to his second wife, Lady Anna Maria Brudenell, daughter of the Earl of Cardigan, by a Justice of the Peace in the church of St. Giles-in-the-Fields.
When the Chevalier de Gramont arrived at Whitehall at the beginning of Charles II.'s reign the Countess of Shrewsbury was among the most beautiful and fascinating women he found there. If she had not already out-Castlemained the Castlemaine it was only from want of opportunity, not of inclination. Her terrible career had, however, begun. "As for Lady Shrewsbury," declared Gramont, "she is conspicuous. I would take a wager that if she had a man killed for her every day she would only hold her head the higher for it. One would suppose that she had plenary indulgences for her conduct. There are three or four gentlemen who wear an ell of her hair made into bracelets, and nobody finds any fault."
Judging from the virtuous, no less than the vicious, men on whom she cast her spells, my Lady Shrewsbury, like King Arthur's sister Morgan le Fay, must have possessed the secret of enchantment. Not otherwise can one explain how the Earl of Arran, the noble Duke of Ormond's noble son, became the first and most ardent of her many lovers. This brave and upright young man long languished a slave to the passion with which she had inspired him. Perhaps, so powerful and seductive was her charm, he might never have been freed but for her own caprice. For the sorceress soon tired of her victims, and disenchanted them or had them slain as it pleased her. Few, like her kinsman, Dick Talbot, ever "sacrificed for another her letters, pictures, and hair" with impunity. But then he was quite an extraordinary man.
To those who care to peep into the seraglio of the Countess, it may cause some surprise to discover the "invincible" Jermyn bleeding in it. Both of these voluptuaries were attracted to each other by the same motive—the desire to subjugate a notable rival in the art of enchantment. But the ever-victorious Jermyn never embarked on a more ill-advised undertaking than that of adding Lady Shrewsbury to his list of triumphs. At the time of his attempt the slave of her ring, so to speak, was Thomas Howard, brother to the Earl of Carlisle. Like Arran, he had a fine character, which under a shy exterior concealed a sensitive, jealous spirit. In his infatuation for the Countess he invited her one evening to a tête-à-tête supper at a sort of café chantant known as Spring Garden, a fashionable place of amusement in the neighbourhood of Charing Cross. To give a little éclat to his hospitality, Howard, who was an officer in the Guards, had engaged one of his soldiers who played pretty well on the bagpipe to entertain them during the supper. The little festivity was in full swing when Jermyn, having been previously informed by her ladyship of her engagement for this particular evening, arrived at Spring Garden as if by chance, and insinuated himself into her company. Howard politely asked him to join his guest and himself at supper, and Jermyn not only accepted, but at once began to monopolise the lady's attention; and the better to impress her with his superiority to her host, to whom, unlike to himself, the subtle advantages of a life passed entirely in the air of Courts had been denied, he had the insolence to gibe at the cooking, the music, and the Spring Garden generally.
Naturally under such circumstances the cynical wit of Jermyn, which seemed to delight Lady Shrewsbury, was offensive to Howard, who possessed none at all. Stung by the veiled insults levelled at him by this impertinent intruder on his evening's amusement, as well as by the jealousy of watching the Countess's smiles bestowed on another, he had the greatest difficulty to refrain from drawing his sword. A quarrel on her behalf between these two men, one of whom had begun to bore her while she wished to dupe the other, was perhaps exactly what Lady Shrewsbury most desired to complete her evening's amusement. Jermyn, no doubt, would willingly have assisted her, for he owed some of his victories over the fair sex to his skill in the art of self-defence. But a chivalrous dread of exposing the fatal woman he loved to scandal prevented Howard from staining the supper with blood.
The next morning, however, Jermyn, who had gone to bed with the satisfaction of having made Howard appear ridiculous, was awakened by a challenge. He at once chose his second, one Rawlings, while Dillon, an intimate friend of Rawlings, served in the same capacity to Howard. The place of meeting was "at the old Pall Mall at St. James's," and the battle, such was the determination of the impetuous Howard, was à l'outrance—the seconds, according to the custom of the times, engaging as well as the principals.
"Mr. Coventry," recorded Pepys in his Diary that day, "did tell us of the duel between Mr. Jermyn, nephew to my Lord St. Albans, and Colonel Giles Rawlings, the latter of whom is killed, and the first mortally wounded, as is thought. They fought against Captain Thomas Howard, my Lord Carlisle's brother, and another unknown (Dillon), who they say had armour on that they could not be hurt, so that one of their swords went up to the hilt against it. They had horses ready and are fled." Thus did my Lady Shrewsbury rid herself of a lover grown inconvenient, and without the blood of her victims staining her. For, adds Pepys, "what is most strange, Howard would not to the last tell Jermyn what the quarrel was, nor do anybody know."
As it was not to the interest of the "invincible" Jermyn, who received three wounds and was carried off the field with very little sign of life, to breathe his suspicions regarding the lesson he had received, when Lady Shrewsbury's share in this duel finally came to light long afterwards her reputation was too deeply stained with the blood of others to make these drops remarkable. Possibly, had she only had gentlemen to deal with, like Arran and Howard, the Countess might have managed to evade the infamy with which she came to be regarded. But as her career proceeded her amours became more wanton, and the men she attracted lacked both chivalry and decency. Her depravity was already the subject of the idle gossip of the Court, when Harry Killigrew, having nothing better to do, had the folly to fall in love with her, and thereby proved in the sequel how fatal an enemy she could be. His advances were well received, for, said Hamilton, "as Lady Shrewsbury, by an extraordinary chance, had no engagement at that time, their liaison was soon established."
Wide as had been her experience of men, it is doubtful if she had ever had a lover quite so impudent and foolish as young Killigrew. He was the son of Thomas Killigrew, a man bien vu at Whitehall and well known in the Restoration times, who had, says Pepys, "a fee out of the wardrobe for cap and bells and the title of King's Fool or Jester, and might revile or jeer anybody, the greatest person, without offence, by the privilege of his place." Indeed, this Master of the Revels of the Court of Charles II., to give him his official designation, though he was commonly known as "Tom the Jester," spared no one, and, like the still more famous Chicot, took liberties even with the King himself. Not that there was any particular daring in making merry at Charles's expense, for his Majesty had so little care of his dignity that any one could take almost any liberty with him. But Tom Killigrew had the courage to aim his quips at much more dangerous targets; to his sorrow very often, once being boxed on the ears and another time even stabbed for his jests. For the palmy days of the Court Fool had long since disappeared, and the revival of the office was only due to the cynicism of the Merry Monarch. Tom, however, took his knocks with a good grace, and reaped all the advantage possible out of his dangerous sinecure.
Many anecdotes of his daring are extant, but the only one that seems to us worth repeating is the sample he gave, as Court Jester be it understood, to Louis XIV. It is not recorded whether the Sun King laughed or bit his lips—the latter, we should judge from what we know of him—when showing Killigrew a picture of the Crucifixion hanging between two portraits of himself and the Pope, the Fool remarked: "Ah, Sire, though I have often heard that our Lord was hung between two thieves, I never knew till now who they were."
But perhaps he may best be remembered now as the original founder of the Drury Lane Theatre and as the first to introduce Italian opera to England. He had ever had a fondness for the stage, and as a boy, in order to obtain admittance to the play, used to wait outside the doors till one of the actors, as was customary, would come out in search of one of the urchins loitering there to act the devil. From acting he had taken to writing plays, and during the time he had spent in Venice, whither he had been sent by the exiled Charles to try to raise money for him, and from which he was turned out for his immoral life, he wrote some indifferent comedies. It was under his management that Nell Gwynn and the Duchess of Cleveland's Goodman first appeared at Drury Lane in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Rule a Wife and Have a Wife." Coupled with his fooleries and his profligacy he had much sound sense—a faculty that his son Harry wholly lacked.
This young man, who owed what prestige he enjoyed to his father, affected the beau of his period. He had plenty of wild, obscene wit, and early gained the reputation of being a swashbuckler. Pepys met him and some of his associates one night at Vauxhall, "as very rogues as any in the town, who were ready to take hold of every woman that came by them." They invited Pepys, who was apparently nothing loth, "to supper in an arbour, but Lord! their talk did make my heart ache! Here," continues the prurient gossip, whom we must thank for giving us many a sidelight on Restoration manners, "I first understood the meaning of the company that lately were called 'Ballers'; Harry telling me how it was by a meeting of some young blades, when he was among them, and my 'Lady' Bennet (a notorious procuress) and her ladies and their dancing naked, and all the roguish things in the world."
That the Countess of Shrewsbury should have admitted this man to her closest intimacy, without any pretence at concealment, is sufficient to show the free rein she had come to give to her passions. But though he had a preference for the lowest haunts of the town, a shadow of respectability still clung to him. Through the Killigrew interest at Court—besides the favour his father enjoyed with the King, one of his aunts, Lady Shannon, had been a mistress of Charles—he had secured the post of groom of the bedchamber to the Duke of York, with whom he was somewhat of a favourite. His station in life had consequently brought him in contact with the cream of Restoration society, but owing to the insufferable airs and impertinences he allowed himself there were few whom he had not offended. Once, indeed, much to the general satisfaction, the Duke of Buckingham gave him a lesson he richly deserved. For having presumed to take some insolent liberty with this nobleman at Drury Lane, his Grace, in full view of the approving audience, "did soundly beat him, and take away his sword, and make a fool of him, till the fellow prayed him to spare his life." The salutary effect of this lesson was, however, only temporary, and when Harry Killigrew had the Countess of Shrewsbury for his mistress the memory of his public chastisement had quite ceased to have any effect on his volatile nature. Even the resentment he might naturally have been supposed to feel towards the Duke of Buckingham had disappeared. He was, says Hamilton, "a frequent guest at his Grace's table."
The Duke, who had, perhaps, the most brilliant wit of any person of the period and enjoyed that of others, was, in the cynical indifference with which he regarded both vice and virtue, amused by Killigrew. If, as was said of this foolish son of the Court Fool, "he would never leave off lying as long as his tongue would wag," it was equally true of this organ that it would never leave off wagging as long as there was a bottle to be drunk. Buckingham, who not only used him as a pimp but as a spy and mistrusted him, knowing Killigrew's weakness, delighted to intoxicate him as the surest means of pumping the truth from him. But Killigrew, whose self-love was enormously flattered by being the accepted lover of such a woman as the Countess of Shrewsbury, no sooner got drunk than his tongue would wag by the hour in praise of her ladyship's "most secret charms and least visible beauties, concerning which more than half the Court knew quite as much as he knew himself."
His Grace, into whose ears these glowing descriptions were being continually dinned, resolved at last to test the truth of them himself, with the result that Harry Killigrew lost his mistress and my Lady Shrewsbury gained a new lover. And now the foolish young libertine gave the crowning proof of his folly. For, being cut dead by Lady Shrewsbury, "he assailed her with invectives from head to foot. He painted a frightful picture of her conduct, and turned all her charms which he had previously extolled into defects."
Buckingham was not the person to be trifled with, still less Lady Shrewsbury, who had no more hesitation in removing an enemy from her path than Messalina. But as Killigrew's compromising indiscretions had after all only served to provide her with a fresh lover more to her taste, "he was privately warned of the inconvenience to which his declamations might subject him, but as he despised the advice, and persisted, he soon had reason to repent of it." His punishment was, however, deferred by an event and its consequence, that for some sixteen months engrossed the attention of his Grace and my Lady to the exclusion of all other considerations.
It is said that there comes a time when even the worm will turn, and that time had come to the colourless Earl of Shrewsbury—to his cost. For his wife, having ignored him as long as he was complaisant, promptly put her foot on him, so to speak, and crushed him the moment he dared to protest. This unfortunate man, who had silently endured being made a cuckold by infatuated chivalrous Arrans and Howards, and even by an impudent Killigrew, drew the line at a Duke of Buckingham. He accordingly challenged this latest lover of his wanton wife, and "his Grace," says Hamilton, "as a reparation for his honour, having killed him upon the spot, remained a peaceable possessor of this famous Helen."
This duel, or murder, for it was nothing less, in which the Earl and one of his seconds lost their lives, while the other was dangerously wounded, was particularly infamous from the active part Lady Shrewsbury herself took in it. For, like some "foul traitress lady" of the Morte d'Arthur, having accompanied her lover to the field of battle clad as a page, she held his horse during the combat, and when he was victorious embraced him all covered as he was with her husband's blood.
Unbridled as were the times even Whitehall could not stomach so shameless and outrageous a crime. Catherine of Braganza, on her own initiative, but powerfully supported by an indignant public, endeavoured to bring the Messalina and her paramour to justice. But the Duke of Buckingham was still more powerful at this time than the law, at which both he and Lady Shrewsbury snapped their fingers. As if to flaunt his defiance of all authority in the face of the angry nation, shortly after the death of Lord Shrewsbury—who did not, as Hamilton says, die on the spot, but lingered two months—his Grace actually installed his mistress in his own house. To the poor Duchess of Buckingham, who was as saintly as her husband was impious, this was the last straw. "It is impossible for both of us to live under the same roof," she protested, when the Shrewsbury arrived. "So I thought," retorted the Duke, "and therefore I have ordered your carriage to be got ready to carry you back to your father's."
The public, staggered by the contempt with which this brazen couple treated their laws and opinions, were reduced to the usual futile expedient with which virtue when baffled by vice seeks to console itself. Aware of the fickle characters of these two arch-evildoers, which presupposed their speedy falling-out, the righteously indignant public, agreeing with the Psalmist that the way of the wicked shall be turned upside down, prophetically awaited this dénouement. Nevertheless, even this satisfaction was denied the virtuous, for "never before had my Lady Shrewsbury's constancy been of such long duration; nor had his Grace ever been so solicitous a lover."
When the noise of their murderous outrage had somewhat subsided the Duke was able to assist his mistress to perpetrate her long-deferred revenge on foolish Harry Killigrew. As the Messalina wished to be present in person when the punishment was inflicted, the ingenuity required to arrange matters to suit her made this fresh crime particularly cold-blooded. The victim, who had no suspicion, after a silence of sixteen months, of the attempt to be made on him, was to a certain extent safe owing to the very irregularities of his life, which made it difficult to know where and when to despatch him conveniently. The bravoes, however, who were employed to watch his movements were at last able to inform the Countess that one night at a certain hour, after having performed some trifling duty to the Duke of York, he would leave St. James's Palace for a house in Turnham Green. Her ladyship took her measures accordingly. Killigrew, who had fallen asleep in his coach, was suddenly, somewhere on the road, "awoke by the thrust of a sword which pierced his neck and came out at the shoulder. Before he could cry out he was flung from the vehicle and stabbed in three other places by the valets of the Countess, while"—to continue this extract from a despatch of the French Ambassador to the Minister for Foreign Affairs at Versailles—"the lady herself looked on from her own coach and six, and cried out to the assassins, 'Kill the villain!' Nor did she drive off till he was thought dead."
The darkness, however, favoured him, and it was his unfortunate servant, who was slain in defending his master, that in the hurry and excitement of the fray the Countess took for Killigrew. When she learnt that he had escaped, though badly wounded, and was thinking of demanding redress, far from being alarmed at the consequences to herself, she sent him word that he had better be satisfied with the punishment he had got, for the second time she tried to murder him she should not fail! Killigrew, growing wise by experience, like the majority of us, took the hint, and lived so circumspectly afterwards that little more was ever heard of him. It is rumoured that he succeeded his father as Court Fool in the reign of William and Mary, and was three times married, once to a peer's daughter and twice to servant-girls! But he never crossed Lady Shrewsbury's path again, and the Duke of Buckingham having explained the affair to the satisfaction of the easy-going King, the matter was hushed up.
Some time elapsed after these adventures before her ladyship again came prominently before a public to whose opinion she was so indifferent. Not so his Grace. There was scarcely ever a day of his life that he was not feverishly employed in providing the world with news associated with his name. When not getting himself thrown into the Tower for offending the King, he was caballing for power at my Lady Castlemaine's, or denouncing an unpopular Clarendon in the House of Lords; when not championing the people and Protestantism, in neither of which he believed, against despotism and Popery, both of which he despised, this prince of profligates was squandering his enormous wealth on his enormous vices. Quiet he never was. But so still was Lady Shrewsbury during the year or two in which her passions slumbered that but for the web of enchantment in which, to the world's marvel, she was known to hold the fickle, restless Duke, it might have been fancied she was engaged, like a tigress after a feast, in cleansing herself of gore. It may, however, be taken for granted that though withdrawn from view for a time it was neither from shame nor weariness nor, least of all, repentance.
Now and then from her seclusion at Buckingham's splendid palace of Clieveden on the Thames, afterwards so celebrated by Pope as "the bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love," there came strange rumours. It was whispered that as the Duke had pulled the strings of intrigue at my Lady Castlemaine's, so Louis XIV.'s agents were pulling his Grace at Clieveden by means of his mistress. The series of events which had been slowly working for the realisation of Buckingham's ambition, and the manœuvring of which he, even when most volatile, never neglected, had at last culminated in his political triumph. The Cabal ministry had juggled themselves into power, and of that corrupt crew his Grace was easily the leader. Not only the Protestant and virtuous section of England, but the ambitious French King, to both of which factors Buckingham owed his success, looked to him as a chief and a confederate respectively. This brilliant libertine was capable, had he wished, of proving himself a patriot, perhaps of changing the whole course of English history. He had something almost like genius and a great opportunity. But he who had never been true to any principle in his life, or to any person for twenty-four hours together, save Lady Shrewsbury, had neither the desire nor the will to choose between his country and his country's enemies. With diabolical cynicism, which in Buckingham sometimes resembled a sort of subtle insanity, he determined to be true to both by despising both. It was, perhaps, the difficulty of playing this double game that was its chief attraction for him. But while it was easy to hoodwink Protestant England, whose idol he was, it was not so easy to dupe Louis XIV., whose tool he was. That astute monarch, informed of the influence Lady Shrewsbury had over the unprincipled minister, had tied the great Villiers fast by bribing his mistress. It is true that Buckingham eventually snapped his bonds, but when that happened he was no longer worth the French King's consideration. The day that the French Ambassador paid the Shrewsbury her first ten thousand livres he had the satisfaction of writing to his master that she had sworn, "Buckingham should comply with the King in all things." Of course, only the vaguest suspicion of this corruption was felt by the public, but the mere fact that while the Duke openly expressed in Parliament contrition for his past evil ways he still kept Lady Shrewsbury under his roof, was sufficient not only to cause his reformation to be doubted, but to remind England that its Messalina was not yet among the damned.
It was now, when Buckingham was at the zenith of his career, that these two terrible phenomena of the Restoration decided to give the world a crowning proof of their supreme contempt of it. The nation was suddenly staggered by the news that the chief Minister of the State, though his wife was still living, had, without any pretence at secrecy, been married to the Countess of Shrewsbury! As if to emphasise the scandal the bigamous ceremony was performed according to all the rites of the Church by the Duke's chaplain, Dr. Sprat, afterwards Bishop of Rochester. To the pious when such things could be done with impunity it seemed as if they were living in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah. But the impious crew that revelled at Whitehall merely laughed, and jestingly spoke of the lawful Duchess of Buckingham as the "Dowager Duchess." The sun of the Restoration had reached the meridian.
Strange to say, historians have passed over this foolish and gratuitous infamy with comparative indifference, as if the period and the notorious characters of the bigamous couple made further comment unnecessary. This may be a sufficient explanation for the profane Sprat's share in the crime, but it was something more than the mere lawless gratification of lust that forced Villiers and the Shrewsbury into bigamy. As no reason has ever been given ours can only be a guess. The agents of Louis XIV. did not often squander his money without a quid pro quo, and perhaps it does not exceed probability to suggest that before receiving French bribes Buckingham's mistress was called upon to show some proof of her influence over him? The same year his Grace went to Paris, ostensibly to represent Charles II. at the funeral of his sister, the Duchess of Orleans, but in reality to prepare the way for selling his King and country, as he had already sold himself, to France. His reception at Versailles was magnificent, and he returned laden with wealth and dignities. So favourably did he impress the French Court that Louis remarked "he was almost the only English gentleman he had ever seen!"
In the following year the virtuous public, which had indignantly predicted three years before the speedy falling-out of this precious couple, were still further scandalised to learn, in the words of Marvell, that "the Duke of Buckingham exceeds all with Lady Shrewsbury, by whom he believes he had a son, to whom the King stood godfather." We may further add that this infant, to which the courtesy title of Earl of Coventry, borne by the eldest son of the Dukes of Buckingham, had been given, died young and was buried in the family vault at Westminster Abbey!
And now, in such favour was the Duke at Whitehall, the mock Duchess returned to Court and brazenly dared to show herself about the country. Evelyn relates that at Newmarket "he found the jolly blades racing, dancing, feasting, and revelling, more resembling a luxurious and abandoned rout than a Christian country. The Duke of Buckingham was in mighty favour, and had with him that impudent woman, the Countess of Shrewsbury, and his band of fiddlers." The day of reckoning, however, came at last. Unfortunately, it did not depend on any sudden belated awakening of the moral sense in Charles II., or a revival of virtue in a country prepared to sweep away the indecencies that were outraging it. Buckingham and Lady Shrewsbury were only brought to book when his political power was broken. The Restoration went on more deliriously than ever till it reached the fatal climax in 1688. With the Duke's fall the enchantment of the Shrewsbury was snapped. Called before the bar of the House of Lords, with no Duchess of Cleveland or King to stay the arm of the law now in his behalf, he was ordered to separate altogether from this woman, and each of them was required "to enter into security to the King's Majesty in the sum of ten thousand pounds apiece for this purpose."
It may be doubted whether the scathing indictment he received from his peers made any impression on him. But his day was over and, though he tried to recover the license he had so shamefully abused and the confidence of the nation he had so infamously betrayed, his star steadily continued to set. His future career was one of baffled hopes and pleasures, of ever deepening disgrace, humiliation, and even poverty. He lost everything of the wonderful store of gifts that Fortune had so bounteously bestowed on him—all, save his brilliant wit, which in a world of wits acknowledged none superior. But even wit deserted him at the end, and he died miserably enough. We have already, on an earlier page, expressed our opinion of this remarkable libertine who occupies such a prominent place in his times, and in mentioning him now for the last we can find no more fitting words in which to dismiss him than Pope's familiar lines. As the oraison funèbre of the great Buckingham they will be quoted as long as the phenomenal age in which he flourished is remembered:—
As for Lady Shrewsbury, she was not only compelled to separate from her lover and provide a surety of ten thousand pounds to that effect, but obliged to leave the country. There were thousands of honest people who would, no doubt, have liked to see her burnt or hanged, as would probably have been her fate had she been a woman of the people. But Lady Shrewsbury was a peeress and the widow of a Talbot, and criminal rank in those days was banished not executed. She had not committed the aristocratic crime of high treason, for which alone rank could suffer death. There was, however, a very irksome durance to which offenders of her sex and station were subjected, and in banishing her to Dunkirk Charles obliged her to retire to a convent. How long she remained there, or what intrigues finally freed her from what to such a woman must have been a rigorous imprisonment, history does not relate. As far as the public were concerned she had ceased to exist.
Lady Shrewsbury was, however, very much alive, and having spun her web round the younger son of a Somerset baronet, she married him, and under the name of Mrs. Bridges played a secret and dangerous game in the coming years. For her passions having burnt themselves out, from their ashes sprang a fresh lust—the lust of political intrigue. Its victim was her eldest son, the new Earl of Shrewsbury. A boy when his father was slain, he had resented the ignominy of having to live with his mother under Buckingham's roof; and though the spirit which urged him to appeal to the House of Lords that he and his brother might be removed from the care of such a mother was nipped in the bud, nevertheless it was sufficient to make both children distasteful to Buckingham. They were sent to their maternal grandfather, Lord Cardigan, to whom the young Earl owed his education. At the time his mother married Bridges he was one of the most promising young peers in England. A worthier representative of the proud line from which he sprung it had, perhaps, never had. Gifted with great personal beauty (his mother's legacy) and a shy, gentle manner, he at once attracted all who met him. The seriousness of his character corresponded with the high hopes he raised. Born in a profligate and indulgent age, he had, like most young men of spirit, yearned to taste all the pleasures of the senses. With the blood of such a mother in his veins, to resist desire was impossible. He tasted the cup of vice. It intoxicated him, and in that moment of delirious pleasure it seemed to him, as to many another youth before and since, that to be the slave of lust was a fate more enviable than that of the conqueror of the world. The reputation of being a "king of hearts," a title satirically applied to him at this period, he never quite lost. But this young Talbot was not one of your commonplace striplings who sway like reeds before the wind. He had a thoughtful, intelligent mind and a great ambition. Already, by "a very critical and anxious inquiry into matters of controversy," assisted by the celebrated Tillotson, the young nobleman, a Roman Catholic by birth, heredity, and education, had publicly professed his adherence to the Anglican faith. A youth who could of his own initiative reason himself into taking such a step was not to be long entangled by vice. The world was to be won, and he meant to win it; he would be the greatest of all the Talbots, the champion of liberty, the hope of Protestant England. It was a noble ambition, and the times were favourable.
But from the very start two influences stronger than he pulled him back at every step he took. One of these was his temperament. The conduct of his mother, the death of his father, and that of a dearly loved only brother—who within five days of his twenty-first birthday was killed in a duel by one of the Duchess of Cleveland's bastards—had combined to deepen the morbid tendencies of a naturally hyper-sensitive nature. To the influence of these terrible family tragedies was added that of a perpetual and vain struggle to subdue the lust he had inherited. He lived, as it were, under the shadow of some fatal curse which seemed to predestine all his actions to failure. Knowing full well the value of self-confidence, he doubted himself constantly, and, like a man from the brink of a precipice, was ever recoiling from great crises which he had enthusiastically helped to create. With all the wish in the world, he had not the will to be brave. And life demanded bravery, spirit, initiative from him at every turn.
The other influence fatal to his career was his mother. He could never rid himself from the fear in which he stood of her. To the Countess of Shrewsbury, become now as fierce and vindictive in political intrigue as she had formerly been in her amours, such a son was an asset of the highest value. Married to her second husband, middle-aged, and buried in a remote part of the country, the once notorious Messalina had long ceased to be remembered. But there lived not in England in that day of plots and counterplots a more inveterate conspirator. In the obscurity of her retired life she was steeped to the throat in intrigue. Long before the Revolution she was a spy and pensioner of the French King, and with the fall of the Stuarts, under whom she had fared so safely, she became, as was natural, a rabid Jacobite. The young Earl, her son, long separated from her, was developing on quite opposite lines. In the endeavour to realise his ideals, the year before the Revolution he showed his disapproval of King James's policy by resigning all his Court appointments, and in 1688, in behalf of the cause of freedom he had publicly professed, joined the party that deprived the stubborn, stupid Stuart of his throne. It was natural, as Miss Strickland says, that this young man "might be considered (when all his advantages were computed) the mightiest power among the aristocracy of Great Britain." William of Orange, like all great statesmen, was quick to recognise talent; he readily offered high office to this young Earl of Shrewsbury who had helped to make him King of England, and on whom such high popular hopes were built. It may be said that a young career never bloomed under a more vivifying sun.
But now his mother, who lived remote from him and had never come into his life but to bring doom with her, like the terrible, mysterious queen in Maeterlinck's Mort de Tintagiles, reappeared. What was the exact secret of her hold, what fears she worked on, what hopes she appealed to, cannot be said; but her effect was like the effect of blackmail. The young Earl with the ardent ambition and the noble ideals yielded—with what anguish the indecision of his whole future career indicates—to the inexplicable influence of his mother. One of the first steps in that life of brilliant promise was one of treachery. The would-be saviour of England secretly trafficked with the Court of St. Germain. Nor was he allowed to stand forth as an open champion of the Stuarts whom he could not love; he was made to remain at Whitehall as William of Orange's chief and most confidential Minister in order that his mother and the Jacobites might know all that was going on there. That such a man as Shrewsbury could continue to play this double game long was impossible. His pleas to be allowed to resign the seals of office were pitiable, and his behaviour, when his treachery was finally denounced and King William nobly and secretly gave him the chance to clear himself by a lie which he professed to believe, was painful. The King's attitude on this occasion gave him a fresh chance; he took it but to betray it and his own better nature. At last his conscience could endure the strain no longer; he left office and the country after a veritable martyrdom of ten years. "Had I a son," he said, "I would sooner bind him a cobbler than a courtier, and a hangman than a statesman."
After the death of his mother, who, if not wilfully, at least heartlessly, contributed quite as much as his own temperament to the ruin of his career, he returned to England in Queen Anne's reign. But now, though his country, still believing in him, "called" him and he tried to respond, it was too late. He flung all his influence on the side of liberty and Protestantism, but his statecraft was demoralised by his past experiences, and his opportunity, which seldom comes to a man more than once, had been bungled in the previous reign. Like his mother, he too was born out of his fitting age. In the more congenial atmosphere of our day he would have won something more worthy of his great talents than his dukedom and garter. To his lofty ambition such prizes were of small account beside what his soul lost in grandeur.
Of all tragedies those of one's ideals are the saddest. The lives of statesmen who have failed are always interesting, and as English history is full of such the book that may some day record them will be worth both reading and writing. In such a work, of a surety, the career of the first and only Duke of Shrewsbury, who set out not to win fame and fortune, but to do what he believed right, and miserably failed, will be not the least dramatic. Like Tyrconnel, he was more sinned against than sinning; to be forgotten by posterity as they are is not so dreadful as to have the faint memory of them revived by the fleeting mention of some "Wanton Shrewsbury" or other. To us the marring of her son seems the greatest of this Messalina's crimes.