Jean Plaidy - The Prince and the Quakeress

‘Jacobite sympathies…’ George stammered. ‘But… I could never have sympathies against my own family.’

‘Unless they were presented to Your Highness so cleverly, so attractively, that you felt them to be the truth.’

‘But…’

‘Your Highness says that Mr Stone gave you this book?’

‘Yes, but he thought…’

‘I must ask Your Highness to allow me to take this book.’

‘I have not finished…’

‘Nevertheless my duty impels me to take it.’

‘I… I…’

‘With Your Highness’s permission…’

George was always unsure how to deal with a situation of which he had had no experience, so he allowed the Bishop to take the book from him; he sat staring before him wondering what fresh trouble was about to break.

* * *

On his way to his mother’s apartment he met one of her maids of honour, Elizabeth Chudleigh. He blushed as he always did when he met her; she seemed to him such a wonderful woman. She must be about eighteen years older than he was, but he felt more at ease in the company of women older than himself than in that of younger ones. And Elizabeth seemed to possess the qualities he most admired. She was one of the most self-possessed persons in his mother’s entourage; she was flamboyant and beautiful, always resourceful, not caring a jot for all the scandal that surrounded her, and there was plenty of that. Only recently she had appeared at a ball at Somerset House as Iphigenia for the sacrifice, and her gown – or lack of it – had caused such a stir because it had appeared that she was naked. In truth she had been clad in flesh-coloured silk so tight that it gave the appearance of being a skin and this was decorated in appropriate places by fig leaves. She had laughed at the storm such an appearance had aroused.

There were many scandals about Elizabeth and George often wondered why he liked her so much. He did not usually care for people who were talked of. It was his grandfather perhaps who had brought scandal to Elizabeth’s name, for he had been taken with her when she first came to Court and had presented her with a watch which cost thirty-five pounds. Whether she had been his mistress or not George was unsure. There were many women who did refuse the King’s attentions; and although this irritated him, it did not necessarily result in their being banished from Court. Long ago the Duke of Hamilton had been greatly enamoured of her and they actually became engaged before he was sent off by his family on the Grand Tour. That romance came to nothing – it was foiled, some said by a maiden aunt of Elizabeth’s who had intercepted their correspondence and withheld it so that they both believed the other had broken the promise to remain faithful. Exciting events would always circulate about Elizabeth. She was doubtless engaged in some secret adventure at this time; but all the same she had time to spare for an uncertain boy.

‘You look disturbed, Your Highness,’ she said, with that charming concern which was half flirtatious, half motherly.

He told her about the book he had been reading and how Hayter had taken it from him.

She snapped her fingers. ‘He’s out to make trouble. Don’t give him another thought.’

‘But he is accusing Mr Stone of trying to make a Jacobite of me. Of me, Miss Chudleigh! Why how could I possibly be a Jacobite?’

‘I’ll tell Your Highness this: Hayter and Harcourt are only trying to make trouble. Just laugh at them<<<…<<<that’s all.’

‘I wish I were like you, Miss Chudleigh. Everything seems so easy for you.’

That made her laugh. ‘If only Your Highness knew,’ she whispered. Then she was motherly again. ‘Don’t worry. If you’re in any trouble, just let me know. You do understand, don’t you, that I’d put all my worldly wisdom at Your Highness’s disposal?’

‘Oh, Miss Chudleigh, I am sure you would.’

He meant it. It was comforting to think that he had the support of his mother, Uncle Bute and Miss Chudleigh.

* * *

The trouble came quickly. Hayter and Harcourt lost no time in laying their complaint against Mr Scott and Mr Stone before the Duke of Newcastle, who immediately took it to the King.

‘Young puppy,’ growled the King. ‘Ve should look into this. Vat does he think he is doing? Trying to drive himself off the throne before he’s reached it!’

The Dowager Princess was indignant. Because the Prince had read a book which put forward the case for James II it did not mean that he must agree with it.

‘If we are going to be accused of supporting every opinion of which we read we are going to be in difficulties. Do my lord Harcourt and my lord Bishop believe that we must read only one set of opinions, then? My son is heir to this throne. I should like him to study all opinions; only thus will he have a clear understanding of history.’

Newcastle was nonplussed. There had been too much shouting about the whole affair. Many men had read Revolutions d’Angleterre. Were they all going to be accused of harbouring Jacobite tendencies because of that?

Harcourt and Hayter believed themselves to be in a very strong position and declared that unless Stone and Scott were immediately dismissed, they would resign.

‘Dismiss Scott and Stone!’ cried the Princess. ‘But who, then, is going to teach my son? He learns little from my lord Harcourt or my lord Bishop. It is Mr Scott and Mr Stone who are the teachers.’

Too much notoriety had been given to the affair and in the coffee and chocolate houses the conflict between the Prince’s tutors was being discussed. To dismiss the Prince’s tutor simply because he had been discovered reading a book was going to arouse ridicule and criticism so the matter was shelved. But Harcourt and Hayter had sworn they would resign unless Scott and Stone were immediately dismissed. The tutors were not dismissed because there was no one of the academic ability to replace them.

Nonplussed, yet clinging to their dignity, there was only one thing Harcourt and Hayter could do. Resign.

Their resignation, much to their chagrin, was accepted; and in their places came Lord Waldegrave and Dr John Thomas, Bishop of Peterborough.

While these matters were coming to a head and reaching a settlement, George’s attention had wandered away. He had not disliked Harcourt and Hayter; he did not much care whether they left him or not; he did not greatly take to Waldegrave but Dr John Thomas seemed charming.

His thoughts, though, were far from the schoolroom. George was growing up; he was no longer a child.

For the last few months he had begun to notice the young girls of the court – never of his own age, usually those much older like Elizabeth Chudleigh. They seemed to him entirely delightful. He would like to chat with them, perhaps to kiss their hands and tell them how pretty he found them. That would be very pleasant, but there must be nothing sordid in the friendship. George wanted an ideal relationship. It would be wonderful to be happily married.

Yes, that was the idea. To be happily married as Papa and Mamma had been, as Lord Bute and his wife were   …

This thought made George pause and frown a little. But Papa and Mamma had been happy; they had said so many times. Papa had had lady friends. Just friends, George supposed. And although Uncle Bute had a wife – he had been most punctilious in supplying her with children – his Court duties naturally kept him in attendance on the Princess of Wales.

Yes, these were ideal relationships and only such a one could satisfy George. He could never reconcile himself to doing wrong.

He wanted a wife, a home and children. He was not quite sixteen but he was tall and physically well developed; he was man enough to desire a woman and the only way he would wish to satisfy such desire was in marriage.

Marriage! he thought of it constantly. While his mother and Uncle Bute talked earnestly about the scheming Harcourt and Hayter, he thought of marriage. He could see his bride quite clearly. Very beautiful and older than he was because there was something so comforting about older women.

And gradually his picture of the woman he wanted for his wife took shape. He had seen her when he rode in his carriage from Leicester House to St James’s. – She was sombrely dressed in a grey Quaker gown; she was demure; and she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

She would be sitting in the upper window over a linen-draper’s shop in St James’s Market so he always commanded his chairman to take that route. As his chair came level with the linen-draper’s window he would raise his eyes and flush; and she would look at him with wide-eyed innocence and after a few such occasions she too took to flushing. It was clear that she was as conscious of him as he was of her; and this fact delighted him.

His mother might rage about the fiends who wanted to take her son from her; he would always answer her mechanically. Even when Lord Bute spoke to him he scarcely heard. His thoughts would be occupied by the beautiful young woman in the linen-draper’s shop.

HANNAH LIGHTFOOT HAD been about five years old when she and her mother had come to live with Uncle Henry Wheeler in St James’s Market. Memories of life before that were vague, something to dream of with horror, to awake from shuddering in the comfortable bed in the room she shared with her mother, for her father’s shoemaker’s shop in Wapping had been very different from Uncle Henry’s prosperous establishment in St James’s Market.

She could not remember her father; perhaps life had been easier when he was alive; she had been two when he died. Her mother told her of how her family – the Wheelers, always spoken of with awe – had not been very pleased with the marriage. Matthew Lightfoot had not been a good Quaker and it had been against the advice of her family that she had married him; they were not surprised that she had lived so poorly in Wapping.

But Matthew had died and Uncle Henry being a deeply religious man and a Quaker had, after giving his sister Mary three years in which to struggle on in expiation of her folly, come to her rescue and offered her a home in his linen-draper’s establishment.

So as a child Hannah would lie in the big bed beside her mother and listen to the sounds outside the shop which never failed to delight her – the voices raised in bargaining, the lowing of cattle brought to the market for sale; the grunting of pigs, the reedy voice of the ballad singer; the shouts of the pieman; the street traders’ songs.

‘Won’t you buy my sweet blooming lavender

Sixteen branches one penny . . .’

Or:

‘Three rows a penny pins,

Short whites and middilings.’

She would sing the songs to herself – quietly because singing was frivolous – as she dressed in the warm sun of summer or the cold of winter, for it was bitterly cold in winter. It was not that Uncle Henry could not have afforded a fire; but he believed in the Spartan life. In spite of prosperity they must live simply.

In the bad dreams – which grew less as the years passed – she would hear the scrape of a boat against the stairs; she would smell the slimy, tarry smell of the river; she would hear men whistling tunes or singing river songs, shouts of abuse, the voices of men and women raised in anger as they fought each other. She would remember the vague empty feeling which was hunger; the numbness which was cold – not the healthy cold of Uncle Henry’s house but the cold which came of insufficient covering, insufficient food. They had stepped over a bridge it seemed to Hannah from hunger and poverty and want to the well-being which came from righteous living – thrift and piety. Uncle Henry was like a beneficent god – a knight of old who had rescued them from dragons, and carried them away from the dungeons of despair into the castle of comfort.

Her mother shared her pleasure, she knew. Mary Lightfoot could not do enough for her brother.

Uncle Henry had been a bachelor of thirty-one when Mary and her daughter came to live with him. Mary therefore could be of use to him, for she was an excellent housekeeper and she began to transform his house into a home as no servant could do. Henry was fond of his niece, for she was a charming girl and indeed grew prettier every day. Not that as a Quaker he believed in stressing those charms. The dark curls should be severely strained back from the oval face and neatly braided. The child should be attired in a simple gown of grey cloth.