crossed it out. He saw Frances’s behaviour as a direct provocation, a breach of friendship and faith, ‘therefore I hope you will pardon me if I cannot so far forget an injury which went so neere my hart’. Minette begged him to take her into favour again, but his pride was hurt. A poem survives in his hand, an easy exercise in courtly pastoral:
I pass all my hours in a shady old grove,
But I live not the day when I see not my love;
I survey every walk now my Phillis is gone,
And sigh when I think we were there all alone;
O then, ’tis then, that I think there’s no hell
Like loving, like loving too well.
This is conventional enough but with regard to Frances the sentiment rings true. Charles had loved her.
Frances spent the months after her marriage looking after the Richmond estate at Cobham in Kent, while her husband raised troops in Dorset amid the fears of a French invasion. 22 After the war ended the couple thought of going to France, where Richmond, as duc d’Aubigny, had estates in Berry, and where Frances could attach herself to the household of Henrietta Maria. But in the end Frances decided to come to London and join her mother at Somerset House. When she arrived there at Christmas 1667, her old friends from court flocked to see her. Charles, however, scotched any rumours of a reconciliation. ‘You were misinformed in your intelligence concerning the Duchesse of Richmond,’ he told his sister. ‘If you were as well acquainted with a little fantastical gentleman called Cupide as I am, you would neither wonder, nor take ill, any sudden changes which do happen in the affaires of his conducting, but in this matter there is nothing to be done in it.’ 23 And then, in the early spring of 1668, Frances contracted smallpox. His anger forgotten, Charles dashed to see her.
Frances’s illness hardly marred her beauty and it saved her friendship with Charles. In May, the month of Catherine’s miscarriage and Barbara’s move from Whitehall, Charles appointed Richmond Lord Lieutenant of Kent. Pepys noted that while the King supped nightly with Catherine, it seemed that he was ‘mighty hot upon the Duchess of Richmond’. 24 One night, rather than taking a coach to see her at Somerset House, he impetuously took a scull and rowed downriver alone. Since the garden door was shut, he climbed over the wall to see Frances. There was no talk of an affair, but Charles admitted to Minette that being with her, and worrying about her illness, made him completely forget to write, ‘and I must confess this last affliction made me pardon all that is past, and cannot hinder myself from wishing her very well’. 25 With affectionate concern he fretted about Frances’s scars and problems with her eyes and hovered over her progress to recovery.
Catherine had always remained friends with Frances, and later that year, after the Richmonds gave ‘a grand dinner for their majesties’, she appointed her a Lady of the Bedchamber. 26 The Richmonds moved into rooms by the bowling green in Whitehall, and Frances was back among her friends and family. (Her sister Sophia, a dresser to Henrietta Maria, also became one of Catherine’s attendants, and married the son of Charles’s Master of the Household.) Barbara was said to be so furious at her reinstatement that she refused to have supper with the king, who took to dining instead with Monmouth, Buckingham and Rupert at the Duchess of Monmouth’s. (He was always kind to Monmouth’s young duchess, who had dislocated her hip while dancing at court and walked with a limp for the rest of her life.)
Visiting Frances became one of the few untroubled areas of Charles’s life. Her husband, however, remained a problem, intemperately demanding overseas posts and getting into brawls. In 1672 Richmond was sent to Denmark as ambassador, where he splashed out on furs, ran up debts and complained loudly of the dullness of the Danes. After a few months, in the winter snows, despite
I pass all my hours in a shady old grove,
But I live not the day when I see not my love;
I survey every walk now my Phillis is gone,
And sigh when I think we were there all alone;
O then, ’tis then, that I think there’s no hell
Like loving, like loving too well.
This is conventional enough but with regard to Frances the sentiment rings true. Charles had loved her.
Frances spent the months after her marriage looking after the Richmond estate at Cobham in Kent, while her husband raised troops in Dorset amid the fears of a French invasion. 22 After the war ended the couple thought of going to France, where Richmond, as duc d’Aubigny, had estates in Berry, and where Frances could attach herself to the household of Henrietta Maria. But in the end Frances decided to come to London and join her mother at Somerset House. When she arrived there at Christmas 1667, her old friends from court flocked to see her. Charles, however, scotched any rumours of a reconciliation. ‘You were misinformed in your intelligence concerning the Duchesse of Richmond,’ he told his sister. ‘If you were as well acquainted with a little fantastical gentleman called Cupide as I am, you would neither wonder, nor take ill, any sudden changes which do happen in the affaires of his conducting, but in this matter there is nothing to be done in it.’ 23 And then, in the early spring of 1668, Frances contracted smallpox. His anger forgotten, Charles dashed to see her.
Frances’s illness hardly marred her beauty and it saved her friendship with Charles. In May, the month of Catherine’s miscarriage and Barbara’s move from Whitehall, Charles appointed Richmond Lord Lieutenant of Kent. Pepys noted that while the King supped nightly with Catherine, it seemed that he was ‘mighty hot upon the Duchess of Richmond’. 24 One night, rather than taking a coach to see her at Somerset House, he impetuously took a scull and rowed downriver alone. Since the garden door was shut, he climbed over the wall to see Frances. There was no talk of an affair, but Charles admitted to Minette that being with her, and worrying about her illness, made him completely forget to write, ‘and I must confess this last affliction made me pardon all that is past, and cannot hinder myself from wishing her very well’. 25 With affectionate concern he fretted about Frances’s scars and problems with her eyes and hovered over her progress to recovery.
Catherine had always remained friends with Frances, and later that year, after the Richmonds gave ‘a grand dinner for their majesties’, she appointed her a Lady of the Bedchamber. 26 The Richmonds moved into rooms by the bowling green in Whitehall, and Frances was back among her friends and family. (Her sister Sophia, a dresser to Henrietta Maria, also became one of Catherine’s attendants, and married the son of Charles’s Master of the Household.) Barbara was said to be so furious at her reinstatement that she refused to have supper with the king, who took to dining instead with Monmouth, Buckingham and Rupert at the Duchess of Monmouth’s. (He was always kind to Monmouth’s young duchess, who had dislocated her hip while dancing at court and walked with a limp for the rest of her life.)
Visiting Frances became one of the few untroubled areas of Charles’s life. Her husband, however, remained a problem, intemperately demanding overseas posts and getting into brawls. In 1672 Richmond was sent to Denmark as ambassador, where he splashed out on furs, ran up debts and complained loudly of the dullness of the Danes. After a few months, in the winter snows, despite
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