DISAPPROVED OF BY ROYAL FAMILY. 67 II. bedside, adjured her, in the name of the living God, to CHAP. speak the truth before the noble ladies, who attended A.D. 1660. by order from the king. To his questions she replied that the duke was the father of her child, that they had been contracted to each other before witnesses, and that she had always been faithful to his bed. For some days James had continued silent and melancholy. The birth of the child, and the assertions of the mother, revived his affection; on examination, Berkeley confessed that his charges against her were calumnies, and the duke, ashamed of his credulity, resolved to do her justice. He visited her at her father's house, sent for her accusers, and introduced them to her by the title of duchess of York. They Dec. 24. knelt, she gave them her hand to kiss, and, acting up to the instructions of her husband, never afterwards betrayed any hostility against them. One of her ene mies, the princess of Orange, died; and the queenmother, at the request of the French minister Mazarin, who wished to conciliate the chancellor, desisted from her opposition. Anne was received by her at court Jan.1. with a smiling countenance, and the appellation of daughter; and the new duchess supported her rank with as much ease and dignity as if she had never moved in an inferior situation.1 This marriage was founded in affection; two others followed, the origin of which is to be sought in the policy of courts. The treaty which Mazarin concluded with Cromwell had taught the French monarch to value the aid of that power by which he had been "form and words prescribed by our church."-Morley, apud Kennet, Register, 385. See Clarendon's very minute and ridiculous account of the whole transaction, 28-40. Pepys, i. 144, 150, 162, 164, 165. Mem. de Gram. i. 233—241. 1661. II. CHAP. enabled to conclude with honour and profit the long A.D. 1661. and expensive war with Spain. Still Spain was a formidable rival: the existing peace was considered by the two cabinets as only a breathing-time preparatory to the renewal of hostilities; and Louis, to secure the services of England under the restored dynasty, resolved to cultivate the friendship of the prince whom, to gratify Cromwell, he had formerly excluded from his dominions. This became, during the whole reign of Charles, one great object of French policy; and the first step taken was the proposal, through the queenmother, of a marriage between Henrietta, the youngest sister of Charles, and Philip, the only brother of Louis. To Henrietta it opened a brilliant and seducing proMarch 31. spect; by the English king it was received with joy and gratitude; and the ceremony was performed with becoming magnificence, soon after the return of the princess with her mother to France.1 Charles himself, in 1659, with the hope of repairing by the assistance of France the loss which his interests had suffered from the defeat of Sir George Booth, had made the offer of his hand to the niece of the Cardinal Mazarin; but that minister, aware of the weakness of the royal party in England, modestly declined the honour, as far above the pretensions and the wishes of his family. In a few weeks the tide of popular feeling turned in favour of royalty, and Mazarin sought to renew the negotiation; but the king's ardour for the lady had already cooled; to recover his crown, he wanted not the assistance of her uncle; and he was 1 These reasons are assigned by Louis himself, as his motive for proposing the marriage.-Euv. i. 61. Charles, by the marriagecontract, bound himself to give to his sister forty thousand jacobuses, by way of portion, and twenty thousand as a present.-Dumont, vi. part ii. p. 354 PORTUGUESE MATCH PROPOSED. 69 II. unwilling to bind himself in the trammels of wedlock.' OHAP. After his return, the more sober among his counsellors A.D. 1661. saw with pain the scandal which he gave by his amours; they repeatedly and earnestly advised him to marry; and at last the example of his brother induced him to think seriously on the subject. But against the royal and princely families in the north of Europe, he had, from some cause or other, contracted an invincible antipathy; and to marry a Catholic princess from the south was likely to shock the religious prepossessions of the majority of his subjects. From this state of indecision he was drawn by a tempting proposal, made through the Portuguese ambassador, at the secret instigation of the French court. During the war between France and Spain, Portugal, with the aid of the former, had preserved its independence; but, by the treaty of the Pyrenees, Louis had bound himself to leave the house of Braganza and its rebellious adherents to their fate. It was not, however, his intention that Portugal should be again incorporated with Spain; and, aware that the king, Alphonso, a weak prince, under the guardianship of his mother, could oppose no effectual resistance to his more powerful foe, he suggested to the court of Lisbon a marriage between the infanta Catarina, the king's sister, and Charles, king of England. It would induce the English monarch to support the pretensions of his wife's family, and would open a new channel through which France might forward assistance to Portugal without any manifest violation of its friendly relations with Spain.* 1 James, Memoirs, i. 395. Le premier de soutenir les Portugais que je voyois en danger de succomber bientôt sans cela; le second de me donner plus de moyen de les assister moi-même, si je le jugeois nécessaire, nonobstant le traité des Pyrénées, qui me le defendoit.-Louis, Œuvres, i. 62. It II. CHAP. The advice was adopted; and Francisco de Mello, the A.D. 1661. ambassador in London, offered with the princess a dower of five hundred thousand pounds, the possession of Tangier on the coast of Africa, and of Bombay in the East Indies, and a free trade to Portugal and the Portuguese colonies. Charles consulted Hyde, Or1660. mond, Southampton, and Nicholas; their advice concurred with the royal inclination; and De Mello was given to understand that the proposal would be accepted.1 November. The treaty with this minister had not escaped the notice of Vatteville, the Spanish ambassador, who, the moment he discovered its real object, represented to the king that Spain would never forego her claim to the crown of Portugal; that the Donna Catarina was known to be incapable of bearing children; and that a marriage with her would infallibly lead him into a war, and deprive his subjects of the Spanish trade; but that, if he chose to take one of the two princesses of Parma, Philip would give with either the dower of a daughter of Spain. Charles began to waver; he listened to the suggestions of the earl of Bristol, the enemy of the Portuguese match; and that nobleman proceeded by his order on a secret mission to the city is amusing to observe how the royal casuist proceeds to justify this underhand dealing, the sending, under false names, of forces to the aid of a power which he had bound himself by treaty entirely to desert. He tells us that the experience of centuries had taught the French and Spanish courts to know the real import of the words employed in the treaties between them; that the expressions "per"petual peace" and "sincere amity," &c., were used with as little meaning as compliments in ordinary conversation; and that neither party expected anything more from the other than to abstain from manifest and public violations of the articles, while each remained at liberty to inflict on his rival, by clandestine and circuitous means, every injury in his power. This necessarily followed from the great principle of self-preservation.-Ibid. 63-65. 1 Clarendon, 78-81. II. of Parma. There he saw the two princesses on their CHAP. way to church, and nothing more was necessary to A.D. 1660 hasten his return. One was so plain, the other so corpulent, that he dared not recommend either to the royal choice.1 1661. March. In the meantime Charles had been recalled to his first intention by the remonstrances of his advisers and the arguments of the French king. Bastide, secretary to the late ambassador Bordeaux, arrived in England with a commission to purchase lead for the royal buildings in France; but, in a private conference with Hyde, he informed that minister that his real object was to propose the means of establishing a private communication between the two kings, to be conducted by the chancellor on one part, and Fouquet on the other, without the knowledge of their colleagues in the cabinet, or of the ordinary ambassadors at either court. Charles eagerly accepted the proposal; and the correspondence was maintained during August 26, five months, till the disgrace of Fouquet. During that time Louis continually inculcated the advantages of the Portuguese match, offered Charles a considerable sum of money to purchase votes in the parliament, consented to lend him fifty thousand pounds whenever he might want it, and engaged to furnish two millions of livres, in the event of a war between England and Spain. Thus was laid the foundation of that 1 Clarendon, 86-89. Clarendon Pap. Supplem. ii. viii. 2 Clarendon, 90. Euvres de Louis XIV. i. 67, and the correspondence itself in the supplement to the third volume of the Clarendon Papers, i.—xv. Charles acquainted no one but his brother James with the secret. Two others were employed in it; Bastide, as secretary to Fouquet, and Lord Cornbury, Clarendon's eldest son, as secretary to his father. Hyde had the prudence or the honesty to refuse an offer of ten thousand pounds from Louis, though both Charles and James laughed at his simplicity, but he afterwards ac |