Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 58.djvu/323

Villiers and customs, these increments being in addition to the income which she obtained from the sale of offices and other favours (such as that which she granted to Sir Edward Hungerford (1632-1711) [q. v.] for 10,000l.) and the huge 'rents' which she exacted from a number of place-holders, including the lord-lieutenant of Ireland. Marvell states that Lord Berkeley paid no less than 10,000l. to 'his landlady Cleveland' (Works, 1776, i. 406). From 1675 she was to have 1,000l. per annum out of the 'undisposed lands' in compensation for claims which she had upon Phoenix Park, Dublin (, County of Dublin, p. 536; Essex Papers, pp. 68-9, 70, 122). Other grants were made to her through the agency of 'trustees' (, Letters, Camden Soc. i. 40, ii. 62), yet, large as her income from the sources enumerated must have been, it seems hardly commensurate with her expenditure. Her jewels at the theatre one afternoon were estimated as worth 40,000l. in the money of that day, and in one single night at cards, according to Pepys, she lost considerably more than half this sum. Her personal expenditure, including the maintenance of a coach-and-eight, was extravagant in the extreme; and now that she had obtained the titles and 'settlements' from the king which she considered to be her due, every year added a new paramour to her pension list. It is not suprising [sic], therefore, that she should have soon found herself unable to keep up Cleveland House, or that, with a total disregard for its historical associations, she should have dismantled and sold the contents of Nonsuch (see Remembrancia, p .51 n;, Surrey, iv. 409; Gent. Mag. 1837, ii. 135-44).

The concession of the title and appropriate 'settlements' was the signal for Charles's emancipation from what had become a most distressing infatuation, and during the ensuing period of what M. Forneron calls 'Cytherean anarchy' the influence of the duchess steadily dwindled until by 1674 it was entirely supplanted by that of Louise Renée de Keroualle [q. v.], who had in August 1673 been created Duchess of Portsmouth. In the interests of her children it was still desirable for Barbara to propitiate Charles, but this consideration did not prevent her smiling upon a regular though ill-assorted series of lovers. Prominent among these were the rope-dancer Jacob Hall [q. v.], whom she discovered in Bartholomew fair, and to whom she granted a salary (cf., iv. 211; , Bartholomew Fair, p. 190); John Ellis [q. v.], afterwards under-secretary of state (cf. State Poems, i. 192; Pope, Works, ed. Warton, 1797, vi. 45); and John Churchill (afterwards Duke of Marlborough), who is credited with the paternity of a third daughter, Barbara, born at Cleveland House on 16 July 1672. Buckingham, who had recently quarrelled with his 'cousin Barbara,' contrived that the king should surprise the handsome young guardsman with his 'open-hearted' mistress. Churchill is stated to have leapt out of the window, but not to have escaped recognition by Charles, who cried after him, 'I forgive you, for you do it for your bread.' There is no doubt that shortly after this date Churchill received a present of 5,000l., with which he prudently purchased an annuity from George Savile, marquis of Halifax [q. v.] (cf., Halifax, ii. 166; French Archives, Affaires Étrang. cxxxvii. f. 400; , Life of Marlborough, i. 68-9). The dramatic supplement to this true story, that Churchill 'lived to refuse his mistress half a crown' (related in the New Atlantis, 1720, i. 57, where Fortunatus is Churchill and the Duchesse de l'Inconstant the lady), was rightly described by Curll as 'a piece of travelling scandal.' In Pall Mall during the same autumn the duchess commenced an intrigue with one of the handsomest men then in London, William Wycherley, who dedicated to her his first play, 'Love in a Wood' (1672), and the outspoken gallantries of either party in this affair furnished matter for the pleasantries, not only of Pope and Dennis, but also of Voltaire (Lettres sur les Anglais, xix.; cf., ed. W. C. Ward, 1888, vols, xxvii-xxx.; , Familiar Letters,1721; Macaulay, in his account of this 'brazen intimacy' in his Essay on the Comic Dramatists, follows Spence, whose account, if more pungent, is clearly less authentic than that of Dennis).

From the close of this year (1672) Barbara's name ceases to appear on the list of bedchamber women, but in compensation for this harsh application of the Test Act she received several douceurs from the king, in addition to grants of arms for her three sons, Charles, Henry (now acknowledged by the king), and George Fitzroy, all of whom were to be elevated to dukedoms within the next few years (all three are separately noticed under ). For her eldest son the duchess intrigued vigorously during 1675-6 to obtain the hand of the great heiress Elizabeth Percy [see under, sixth ]. It is true that the boy was already married (since 1671), but the duchess was sanguine that she would be allowed to ride roughshod over all legal obligations, as in 1671, when by fraud