Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/113

 vii. 547), but sought an occasion to practise what he preached (, 18 Oct.;, 15 Oct. and 22 Nov. 1666). The passion which in him swallowed up all others was a love for women, in which, as Halifax says, he had as little of the seraphic part as ever man had. The palliation which he once attempted for his wantonness (, 165) is contemptible; better is Halifax's half excuse, that 'sauntering' is a stronger temptation to princes than to others (see (, 16). It would be an error to suppose that the public was indifferent to the king's proceedings, or regarded them as matter of course. The task would be too arduous to endeavour to give an accurate list of his mistresses. The names of Lucy Walters (or Waters or Barlow), Catharine Peg (afterwards Green), Lady Shannon (Elizabeth Killigrew), and Lady Byron (Eleanor Needham) belong to the period of his exile after his restoration, Mrs. Palmer, successively Countess of Castlemaine and (from 1670) Duchess of Cleveland, was mistress en titre till she was succeeded by Louise de Kéroualle, duchess of Portsmouth (1673), who was, like her predecessor, named a lady of the bedchamber to the queen. The king's futile passion for 'la belle Stewart,' who married the Duke of Richmond, at one time aroused the jealousy of Lady Castlemaine but the position of the Duchess of Portsmouth was never seriously threatened, though a rumour to that effect arose in 1680 (((sc|H. Savile}}, i. 298). In rank and notoriety, but not in political power, the Duchess of Mazarin (Hortensia Mancini) was her foremost rival (, ll June 1699 et al.) But she had to submit to endless other infidelities on the king's part, among which his attachment to Nell Gwynne (from the beginning of 1668) had preceded the opening of 'Madame Carwells' own reign, and endured throughout it (see, ii.) Other actresses in the list were Margaret Davis and Margaret Hughes; and further names are those of Winifred Wells, Mary Knight, and Jane Roberts, the daughter of a clergyman. By these and others Charles II had a numerous progeny, of which may be mentioned his children by Lucy Walters, James, duke of Monmouth and Buccleuch (born 1649), and a daughter Mary (?); by Catharine Peg, Charles Fitzcharles, earl of Plymouth (born 1657); by Lady Shannon, Charlotte, countess of Yarmouth; by Lady Castlemaine, Charles Fitzroy, duke of Southampton and Cleveland (born 1682), Henry Fitzroy, duke of Grafton (born 1663), George Fitzroy, duke of Northumberland (born 1665), Anne, countess of Sussex, Charlotte, countess of Lichfield, and Barbara Fitzroy (?), who became a nun in France; by Margaret Davis, Mary Tudor, countess of Derwentwater; by Nell Qwynne, Charles Beauclerk, duke of St. Albans (born 1670), and James Beauclerk born 1671); by the Duchess of Portsmouth, Charles Lennox, duke of Richmond, born 1678, Genealogische Tabellen, i. 78; ; ; ).

In his relations to the government of the country Charles II was under the influence of motives not very different from those which swayed his private life. His desire to be free from the control of parliament, and yet provided with the means which he could not honourably obtain elsewhere, brought about his corrupt dependence upon France. His own council (at the time when it had been put on a broader basis) would not trust him to have private interviews with the foreign ambassadors, and though he contrived such with Barillon, it was with many signs, on the king's part, of the fear of detection (, ii. 280). He even owned to having taken a bribe to help a colonial job through the council itself (, ii. 105). Of course he expected others to be equally venal, and he rarely resorted to threats (for an instance see Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson (1885), ii. 266 n.) Charles II may be excused for not having loved parliamentary government as he pretended to do (see Somera Tracts, vii. 553 ; cf., Life, ii. 225-6), and for having failed to combine the system of cabinet government, which was not his invention, with the principle of a collective ministerial responsibility to parliament, for which the times were not yet ripe. But it was his fault that throughout his reign the system of backstairs influence prevailed. He can hardly be said to have had favourites proper; neither Rochester nor Buckingham, neither Arlington nor Falmouth, actually had an ascendency over him. But he was surrounded by courtiers of the menial type, and the real centre of government lay in the apartments of the reigning sultana. Among the chief potentates of the backstairs were Baptist May, keeper of the privy purse; Thomas Chiffinch [q. v.], keeper of his private or cabinet closet, succeeded on his death in 1666 by his brother William, who enjoyed still greater favour; lastly, Edward Progers, who, after attending Charles in Jersey, and being banished from his presence in Gotland, afterwards became, in Grammont's words, 'the confidant of the king's intrigues,' and M.P. for Breconshire (cf., 181-2). There was the same disorder in the accounts of the court as in those of the state, and in truth parts of both were hopelessly mixed up under the head of