Виктория Холт - A Health Unto His Majesty

But on this January day, early in the morning, his melancholy thoughts pursued him, for those first months of his restoration had been overshadowed by tragedy.

The first trouble had been James’ affair with Anne Hyde, the daughter of his Chancellor, the man whom he had trusted more than any other during the years of exile. James had married the girl and then sprung the news on his brother at a most inconvenient time, falling on his knees before him, confessing that he had made this mésalliance and disobeyed the rule that one so near the throne should not marry without the consent of the monarch.

He should have been furious; he should have clapped them both into the Tower. That was what his ancestors—those worthy Tudors, Henry and Elizabeth—would have done; and they were considered the greatest King and Queen the country had ever had.

Clap his own brother into jail! And for marrying a girl who was so far gone in pregnancy that to delay longer would have meant her producing a bastard, when the child might well be heir to the throne!

Some might have done it. Not Charles. How could he, when he could understand so well the inclination which had first led James to daily with the Chancellor’s daughter (though to Charles’ mind she was no beauty, yet possessed of a shrewdness and intelligence which he feared far exceeded that of his brother) and, having got her with child, the impossibility of resisting her tears and entreaties.

Charles saw James’ point of view and Anne’s point of view too clearly even to feign anger.

“Get up, James,” he had said. “Don’t sprawl at my feet like that. ’Od’s Fish, man, you’re clumsy enough in less demanding poses. What’s done is done. You’re a fool, but alas, dear brother, that’s no news to me.”

But others were not inclined to view the matter with the King’s leniency. Charles sighed, contemplating the trouble which that marriage had caused. Why could they not take his view of life? Could they unmake the marriage by upbraiding James and making the girl’s life miserable?

It was a sad thing that so few shared the tolerance of the King.

There was Chancellor Hyde, the girl’s father, pretending to be distraught, declaring that he would have preferred to see his daughter the concubine rather than the wife of the Duke of York.

“A paternal sentiment, which is scarcely worthy of a man of your high ideals, Chancellor,” Charles had said ironically.

He had begun to wonder about Hyde then. Was the man entirely sincere? Secretly he must be delighted that his daughter had managed to secure marriage into the royal house, that her heirs might possibly sit on the throne of England. There had been whispering about Hyde often enough; a man so high in the King’s favor was bound to have his enemies. He had followed Charles in his exile and had always been at his side to give the young King his advice. Charles did not forget that when Hyde had left Jersey to come to him in Holland he had been taken prisoner by the corsairs of Ostend and robbed of his possessions, yet had not rested until he had effected his escape and joined his King. His one motive was, he had declared, to serve Charles and bring about his restoration; and Charles, believing him, had made the man his first adviser, had asked his counsel in all political matters, had made him Secretary of State in place of Nicholas, and later, when it seemed that one day Charles might have a country to rule, he had become Chancellor. The man had had many enemies who envied him his place in the King’s counsels and affections; they had done all they could to poison the King’s mind against him. But Charles had supported Hyde, believed him to be his most trusty servant because he never minced his words and was apt to reproach the King to his face concerning the profligate life he led. Charles would always listen gravely to what Hyde had to say, declaring that although he was ready to accept Hyde’s advice on affairs of state he felt himself to be the better judge in matters of the heart.

Chief of Hyde’s critics had been Henrietta Maria, the King’s own mother, who traced all the disagreements—and they were many—which existed between herself and her son, to this man.

Still Charles supported Hyde; and only now, when the man declared himself to be so desolate because his daughter was the wife and not the mistress of the Duke of York, did Charles begin to doubt the sincerity of his Chancellor.

He made him Baron Hyde of Hindon, and had decided that at his coronation he would create him Viscount Cornbury and Earl of Clarendon, to compensate him for his years of loyal service; but he had decided he would not be quite so trusting as hitherto.

Poor James! Charles feared he was not the most courageous of men. He was afraid of his mother. Odd how one, so small and at such great distance, could inspire terror in the hearts of her grown-up children. Henrietta Maria had made a great noise in Paris concerning this marriage—weeping, assuring all those about her that here was another instance of the cruelty of fate which was determined to remind her that she was La Reine Malheureuse. Had she not suffered enough! Was not the whole world against her! Charles knew full well how the tirades had run, and who had borne the brunt of them—his beloved little sister Henrietta, his sweet Minette. So James had trembled in Whitehall although it was so far from the Palais-Royal or Colombes or Chaillot or the Louvre, wherever his mother had been when calling those about her to weep for her sorrows, and the saints to bring vengeance on those who persecuted her. Then there had been his sister, Mary of Orange, who was furious that James could so far forget himself, and who had blamed herself because it was while Anne Hyde was in the retinue that she had first met the Duke.

Poor James! Alas, no hero. Alas, possessing no true chivalry. Terrified at what he had done in bringing upon himself the wrath of his formidable mother and strong-minded sister, he had declared his mistake to the world; he had lent his ears to the calumnies, which those who hated the Hyde family were only too ready to pour into them. Anne was a lewd woman, he declared; she had trapped him; the child for whose sake he had rushed into marriage was after all not his.

And so poor Anne, deserted by her family and by her husband, would have been in a sorry state but for one person.

Charles shrugged his shoulders. He did not believe the calumnies directed against the poor girl, but he suspected that if he had, his reaction would not have been very different, for he could never bear to see a woman in distress.

So the one who had visited the Duchess at her lying-in, when all the world seemed against her, was the King himself; and it was the royal hand which had been laid upon her feverish brow with, as he said, the tenderness of a brother, and it was Charles who whispered to her to have no fear for all would come right for her, since it was the envious enemies of her family who, denigrating its special talents and good fortune, had sought to harm her.

Whither the King went so must the Court go too. How could the courtiers neglect one whom the King chose to honor? “Come, man!” he cried to Hyde. “This business is done with. ’Tis a fool who makes not the best of what cannot be mended!”

To James he said: “You shame me! You shame our family. The Duchess is your wife. You cared enough for her to make her that. Is your love for her then less than the fear you have for our mother? You know she is innocent of these calumnies. For the love of God, be a man.”

Thus had that most unhappy matter been satisfactorily settled, and it was then that Charles had given Hyde his peerage to show where his sympathies lay.

The next disaster had been the death of his brother, Henry of Gloucester, the younger of his brothers, and the best loved. Death had come swiftly in the guise of the dreaded smallpox; and young Henry, strong and healthy one week, had been gone the next.