currently in Paris but the three youngest, Henry, Charlotte and baby George, moved across the Park with their mother. Charles dropped in every day to see them, ‘as a good friend’ only, reported Ambassador Ruvigny. 15
Barbara’s reign was over. At the end of the year, when the court attended a performance of Macbeth , Pepys was shocked to see Moll Davis lounging in a box just above the King’s. He watched Moll look down on Charles, and saw him look up at her, ‘and so did my Lady Castlemayne once, to see who it was; but when she saw her, she blushed like fire’. 16
In May 1668, between dismissing parliament and setting off on his summer journeys, when he pensioned off Barbara, Charles made a series of such personal decisions, an emotional clearing of the decks. The catalyst was probably not the actions of his mistresses but a problem with his queen. When Magalotti tried to fathom Catherine’s nature, he jotted down notes about her liking for playing ombre and chatting with her women, her constant praying and her habit of lauding Portugal above all other nations. But he also liked to think that there was a wild, sensual creature within this small, plain woman. Catherine, he wrote, was thought to be ‘unusually susceptible to pleasure’:
She finds the king provided by nature with implements most suitable for exciting it, and it is said that her ecstasy is then so extreme that after the ordinary escape of these humours that the violence of pleasure presses even from women, blood comes from her genital parts in such great abundance that it does not stop for several days. 17
If there were such alarming reports, and Catherine did bleed abundantly, this almost certainly says less about Charles’s performance than about her frail reproductive system. Charles never mentioned her miscarriage in Oxford in 1666, and may have believed that that pregnancy was a false alarm. But he had not yet abandoned hope of her bearing children and was delighted, early this year, when she announced that she was pregnant. Almost inevitably she miscarried, at dawn on 7 May. ‘And though I am troubled at it’, Charles told Minette, ‘yet I am glad that ’tis evident she was with childe, which I will not deny to you, till now, I did feare she was not capable of.’ 18 He added that the doctors had put her on a course of physic, ‘which they are confident will make her holde faster next time’.
As if looking afresh at his life, within days of Catherine’s miscarriage Charles set aside Barbara. Later in the month, when the weather turned from cold wind and rain to sudden heat, he left for two days in Newmarket. Back in town, he was kind to his wife, who grieved bitterly over her lost child, yet although he dined with her often he had not really changed. Catherine, as usual, knew just what was happening. At the end of May, when Moll Davies was about to dance her jig during a play at Whitehall, Catherine rose and left the room, ‘which people do think it was out of her displeasure at her being the King’s whore, that she could not bear it.’ 19
Charles’s affair with Moll would last on and off for the next six years and they had a daughter, Mary, in 1673. 20 But she hardly touched his heart: in 1668 his deepest feelings were still for Frances Stuart. The previous year, after peace was proclaimed and he could write to Minette again, he had tried to explain why he acted so harshly towards Frances, whom Minette had been fond of since she was a girl in Paris:
I do assure you that I am very much troubled that I cannot in everything give you that satisfaction I could wish, especially in this business of the duchesse of Richmonde, wherein you may thinke me ill natured, but if you consider how hard a thing ’tis to swallow an injury done by a person I had so much tendernesse for, you will in some degree excuse the resentment I use towards her. 21
Before he wrote the word ‘tendernesse’ he first wrote ‘love’ then
Barbara’s reign was over. At the end of the year, when the court attended a performance of Macbeth , Pepys was shocked to see Moll Davis lounging in a box just above the King’s. He watched Moll look down on Charles, and saw him look up at her, ‘and so did my Lady Castlemayne once, to see who it was; but when she saw her, she blushed like fire’. 16
In May 1668, between dismissing parliament and setting off on his summer journeys, when he pensioned off Barbara, Charles made a series of such personal decisions, an emotional clearing of the decks. The catalyst was probably not the actions of his mistresses but a problem with his queen. When Magalotti tried to fathom Catherine’s nature, he jotted down notes about her liking for playing ombre and chatting with her women, her constant praying and her habit of lauding Portugal above all other nations. But he also liked to think that there was a wild, sensual creature within this small, plain woman. Catherine, he wrote, was thought to be ‘unusually susceptible to pleasure’:
She finds the king provided by nature with implements most suitable for exciting it, and it is said that her ecstasy is then so extreme that after the ordinary escape of these humours that the violence of pleasure presses even from women, blood comes from her genital parts in such great abundance that it does not stop for several days. 17
If there were such alarming reports, and Catherine did bleed abundantly, this almost certainly says less about Charles’s performance than about her frail reproductive system. Charles never mentioned her miscarriage in Oxford in 1666, and may have believed that that pregnancy was a false alarm. But he had not yet abandoned hope of her bearing children and was delighted, early this year, when she announced that she was pregnant. Almost inevitably she miscarried, at dawn on 7 May. ‘And though I am troubled at it’, Charles told Minette, ‘yet I am glad that ’tis evident she was with childe, which I will not deny to you, till now, I did feare she was not capable of.’ 18 He added that the doctors had put her on a course of physic, ‘which they are confident will make her holde faster next time’.
As if looking afresh at his life, within days of Catherine’s miscarriage Charles set aside Barbara. Later in the month, when the weather turned from cold wind and rain to sudden heat, he left for two days in Newmarket. Back in town, he was kind to his wife, who grieved bitterly over her lost child, yet although he dined with her often he had not really changed. Catherine, as usual, knew just what was happening. At the end of May, when Moll Davies was about to dance her jig during a play at Whitehall, Catherine rose and left the room, ‘which people do think it was out of her displeasure at her being the King’s whore, that she could not bear it.’ 19
Charles’s affair with Moll would last on and off for the next six years and they had a daughter, Mary, in 1673. 20 But she hardly touched his heart: in 1668 his deepest feelings were still for Frances Stuart. The previous year, after peace was proclaimed and he could write to Minette again, he had tried to explain why he acted so harshly towards Frances, whom Minette had been fond of since she was a girl in Paris:
I do assure you that I am very much troubled that I cannot in everything give you that satisfaction I could wish, especially in this business of the duchesse of Richmonde, wherein you may thinke me ill natured, but if you consider how hard a thing ’tis to swallow an injury done by a person I had so much tendernesse for, you will in some degree excuse the resentment I use towards her. 21
Before he wrote the word ‘tendernesse’ he first wrote ‘love’ then
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