The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series eBook
Rafael Sabatini
The estrangement between her ladyship and the King,
which dated back to the time of his desperate courtship
of Miss Stewart, was at last made up; and once again
we see her ladyship triumphant, and firmly established
in the amorous King’s affections. She had
cause to be grateful to the Chancellor for this.
But her vindictive nature remembered only the earlier
injury still unavenged. Here at last was her
chance to pay off that score. Clarendon, beset
by enemies on every hand, yet trusting in the King
whom he had served so well, stood his ground unintimidated
and unmoved—an oak that had weathered mightier
storms than this. He did not dream that he was
in the power of an evil woman. And that woman
used her power. When all else failed, she told
the King of Clarendon’s part in the flight of
Miss Stewart, and lest the King should be disposed
to pardon the Chancellor out of consideration for
his motives, represented him as a self-seeker, and
charged him with having acted thus so as to make sure
of keeping his daughter’s children by the Duke
of York in the succession.
That was the end. Charles withdrew his protection,
threw Clarendon to the wolves. He sent the Duke
of Albemarle to him with a command that he should
surrender his seals of office. The proud old
man refused to yield his seals to any but the King
himself. He may have hoped that the memory of
all that lay between them would rise up once more
when they were face to face. So he came in person
to Whitehall to make surrender. He walked deliberately,
firmly, and with head erect, through the hostile throng
of courtiers—“especially the buffoones
and ladys of pleasure,” as Evelyn says.
Of his departure thence, his disgrace now consummated,
Pepys has left us a vivid picture:
“When he went from the King on Monday morning
my Lady Castlemaine was in bed (though about twelve
o’clock), and ran out in her smock into her
aviary looking into Whitehall Gardens; and thither
her woman brought her her nightgown; and she stood,
blessing herself at the old man’s going away;
and several of the gallants of Whitehall—of
which there were many staying to see the Chancellor’s
return—did talk to her in her birdcage;
among others Blandford, telling her she was the bird
of passage.”
Clarendon lingered, melancholy and disillusioned,
at his fine house in Piccadilly until, impeached by
Parliament, he remembered Strafford’s fate,
and set out to tread once more and for the remainder
of his days the path of exile.
Time avenged him. Two of his granddaughters—Mary
and Anne— reigned successively as queens
in England.
X. THE TRAGEDY OF HERRENHAUSEN
Count Philip Koenigsmark and the Princess Sophia Dorothea
