Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 36.djvu/373

Mary of Modena p. 92). Some months before this she had been established in St. James's Palace, and her mother had returned to Italy at the close of 1673. In 1675 an allowance of 5,000l. a year was granted her by the king (Campana di Cayelli, i. 156).

Mary was welcomed by the court poets, Dryden and Waller. To Cambridge she paid an early visit with the duke, and the youthful Lansdowne eulogised her in verse. At court she found general favour, except with the queen (ib. i. 158) ; on the other hand, she grew much attached to her step- daughters Mary and Anne (ib. pp. 154, 202). But among the public at large, which viewed the Duke of York's second marriage as a crowning proof of his subservience to France, Mary Beatrice shared her husband's unpopularity (ib. i. 144 seqq. ; Lingard, His- tory of England, 6th ed. 1855, ix. 139). At all events, from about 1676 onwards she was regarded as a valuable ally by the French government ; and Louis XIV, though looking coldly on her wish to engage his assistance in obtaining a cardinal's hat for her uncle Rinaldo — an object on which she had set her heart (ib. i. 157-9, 170, 184) — testified to his regard for her by valuable gifts (ib. p. 185).

Mary Beatrice's eldest child, a daughter, christened Catherine Laura, was born 16 Jan. 1675, but died on 3 Oct. following. A second daughter, Isabel, born 28 Aug. 1676, survived till 2 March 1680. Her eldest son, Charles, duke of Cambridge, born 7 Nov. 1677, whose birth was reported by Barillon to have excited no joy among the population of London, and to have taken away much of that called forth by the Orange marriage (Campana di Cavelli, i. 203), was carried off by the small-pox 12 Dec. of the same year (see Mary Beatrice's letter, 16. pp. 205-6 ; cf. Lake, Diary, Camd. Soc, pp. 7, 14). He was followed by a third daughter, Elizabeth, born 1678, and a fourth, Charlotte Margaret, born 15 Aug. and died 6 Oct, 1682 (W. A. Lindsay, Pedigree of the House of Stewart).

In 1678 the Duchess of York, who had had the satisfaction of inducing the English fovernment to use its influence in favour of lodena, then in conflict with Mantua (Campana di Cavelli, i. 215-17), paid an incognita visit with the Princess Anne to the Princess of Orange in Holland (ib. i. 231 ; Miss Strickland, ix. 80-2). With her return began serious troubles. Her secretary, Edward Coleman (d. 1678) [q. v.], was fatally involved in the discoveries connected with the 'Popish Plot' charges, but the letters from the duchess to the pope that were seized were very harmless (Clarke, Life of James II, i. 523; Campana di Cavelli, i. 235, 347). She accompanied the duke on his withdrawal into the Low Countries in March 1679, visiting Brussels and her step-daughter at the Haffue, and writing home in June : ' i have no hops yett of going to my dear England again (ib. i. 276). In July the Duchess Laura, and in August the Princesses Anne and Isabel, were with her at Brussels. In October the duke took her home to England, and in November she proceeded with him to Scotland (ib. p. 309). They were recalled in January 1680, and landed at Deptford before the end of February (cf. Terriesi's despatch, ib. pp. 316-18, as to their ' triumphant entry '). Yet she seems after their return to have suffered much from depression, which gossip attributed to her husband's liaison witn Catherine Sedley. Her position was not improved by another visit from her mother, whose unpopularity in England transferred itself to her (H. Sidney, Diary, ed. Blencowe, 8 July 1680, ii. 12). In September she visited Newmarket and Cambridge (Miss Strickland, ix. 111).

In October 1680 the duchess embarked with her husband for a longer sojourn in Scotland, and she aided him in holding his court at Edinburgh. Among the evil signs of the times were the charges of plotting the death of the king, brought in 1681 by Fitzharris against her husband, her mother, and the late Modenese envoy Montecucoli, the head of a family devotedly attached to her (Campana di Cavelli, i. 354, 384 ; cf. Clarke, Life of James II, i. 168; Miss Strickland, ix. 129-30). In January 1682 she had a serious fall from her horse. On their return to London from Scotland (6 June 1682), the duke and duchess met with a warm welcome ; but they were still exposed to suspicion, and on the birth in August of the Princess Charlotte Margaret, it was rumoured that the substitution of a male child had been entertained (Gregorio Leti ap. Miss Strickland, ix. 149). In December all the London tradesmen whose shops bore the arms of the Duke of York had been insulted by the mob, and the Duchess of Modena seems to have feared for her life (Campana di Cavelli, i. 398,414-15). Fortherest, the death of the infant princess had, according to Barillon, been a cause of great grief to the duke, inasmuch as it left him without hope of having children who would live (ib, pp. 394, 399, 407,415). In both November 1683 and May 1684 Mary was seriously ill, but she was able in October 1684 to accompany the duke on an excursion to Salisbury and to assist at a review on Putney Heath (ib. pp. 416 seqq.) She was at this time much