Agnes Strickland's Queens of England (34 page)

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MONVMENT OF WILLIAM AT THE HAGUE.

from some serious work. Although not seventeen years of age at that time, the princess managed her ladies remarkably well. She never showed more favor to one than another ; insisted on the observance of eveiy point of etiquette, and exercised so much authority that a look from her was sufficient to put a stop to any conversation that did not meet with her approval. Some years later Dr. Hooper paid her the compliment of saying, " that during the entire time of his sojourn in her household, — over a year and a half, — he never heard her say or saw her do one thing that he could have wished she had not said or done."

The climate of Holland did not agree with the princess, and she had a dangerous attack of malarial fever the following summer, from which she did not entirely recover for many weeks. With the hope of cheering her and accelerating her convalescence, the Duke of York sent his wife and his daughter Anne to visit her. Princess Mary was beside herself with joy, for she had not seen her sister since her marriage, and she had always been the best of friends with her stepmother. The Duchess of York called her " the Lemon," and her husband " the Orange " ; and most of her letters to Mary before the revolution began " My dear Lemon."

[A.D. 1679.] The following year the Duke of York was banished from England on account of his religion, and went to visit his daughter in Holland, who treated him with the most tender affection. Her health was not then entirely restored, for she still suffered from attacks of ague, and was ordered to try the climate of Dieren, where her husband owned a hunting palace. The change did her a great deal of good, and she returned to the Palace of the Wood in time to see Dr. Hooper go back to England to marr} a lady to whom he Ijad been engaged for many norrths.

Mary was very much alarmed lest she should lose the ser vices of her almoner, and begged him to prevail upon his lady to come to Holland. He promised to do his best and succeeded; but it was very mortifying to the princess that she was unable to extend her hospitality to Mrs. Hooper. The doctor had always taken his meals with the ladies of the bed-chamber and the maids-of-honor of the princess, and his wife was invited to do the same.

But knowing, as everybody did, that Prince William was too stingy to be willing to feed one person more than he was actually obliged to. Dr. Hooper never allowed his wife to eat at the palace, but took his meals with her at their lodging-house, not far away. Fortunately he was a man of means, for as he received only a few pounds from Prince William for all his services at the Dutch court he could not otherwise have subsisted.

The Princess Mary had another visit from her sister Anne, when she was permitted by King Charles to join her father during his banishment; and the whole family of the Duke of York spent some time together in Holland on the most amicable terms. At that period Mary did not know how her husband was intriguing with such men as Sunderland, Gates, and Bedloe, who were mixed up in the popish plot, for the purpose of depriving her father of his succession, and bringing on her native land the curse of civil war. She would have been horrified at such an idea.

Princess Mary was not happily married, for her husband was so cross and disagreeable that it was impossible for her to love him. Her life was almost one of imprisonment, because, although she was condescension itself to the wives of the burgomasters and other ladies, she never lost sight of her own high birth sufficiently to permit of any intimacy or exchange of visits; consequently she was confined to the narrow circle of her own court, which was very tiresome

to a woman accustomed to all the pomp, grandeur, and gayety of royal life in England.

One thing that interested her was the building of a palace by her husband at Loo. She laid the corner-stone with all the ceremony that usually attends such a performance, and planned the decorations of the building as well as the laying out of the gardens and walks. After the palace was completed, Princess Mary occupied apartments that were called " the queen's suite " forever after, though when she became Queen of England she ceased to live in Holland, and never even visited there. Under the windows of this suite was " the queen's garden," in the centre of which was a splendid large fountain. This garden opened through a hedge into another adorned with a number of fine statues. Then the princess had a poultry-yard, where she raised a fine breed of fowls that she was fond of tending, feeding, and watching, — an amusement that served to pass away many a tedious hour.

[A.D. i68o.] Beyond the park was an immense aqueduct that supplied all the fountains and the fish-pond, as well as the means for irrigating; then there were further on long shady walks that terminated in a grove, where Mary often went to enjoy an hour's solitude, or perhaps to weep over her forlorn situation. She read, embroidered, and continued her drawing-lessons with Gibson, the dwarf master, who had followed her to Holland; but had scarcely any society besides her maids-of-honor and her good nurse, Mrs. Langford, whose husband was one of her chaplains. All her English attendants were heartily detested by the prince, who managed to get rid of as many of them as possible and replace them with his Dutch subjects, who were, in most instances, by no means agreeable to Mary.

[A.D. 1684.] Year by year William of Orange imposed so many acts of cruelty on his wife that at last she was

almo^ afraid to express her opinion on any subject, and by the grossest misrepresentations he turned her heart from her own family, and in every possible way encouraged an intimacy between her and the Duke of Monmouth while he was an exile from England. This was before the Duke of York had ascended the throne. Charles II. had banished Monmouth from his realm ; and William's object in being so friendly with him was, that in this enemy of the Duke of York he knew he should find a powerful ally who would further any plan of his, no matter how unscrupulous, by which he meant to prevent James from assuming the crown and usurp his place. The banished duke must have exerted a powerful influence over the mind of the princess in some mysterious way, otherwise it is hard to understand how she could consent to show marks of favor to a man who calumniated her own father. But she was sadly changed by this time, and all the affection she had once entertained for her parents had vanished. She went constantly to hear political sermons preached against her father, who was accused of dreadful crimes, that, whether true or false, should never have been pronounced within the hearing of his daughter. Her life that had been so monotonous became gay in the extreme after the appearance of Monmouth at the Hague; and she danced, flirted, and promenaded with him in a most undignified manner. Her father heard of this conduct, and remonstrated with the princess. She shed tears over his letter, but said, " that the prince was her master and would be obeyed." This was partly true, no doubt; but after being shut up as she had been for several years, she went to the other extreme, and enjoyed the gayety that her husband permitted her to indulge in while he was using her as a tool to further his intrigues with Monmouth. She is certainly to blame for her undignified behavior, but still more for the disrespect

she showed her father, who had always been most kind and indulgent to her. In one of his fault-finding letters he wrote his daughter to warn her husband against Monmouth, who, in the event of King Charles's death and his own, would, he assured her, give them a struggle before they could get possession of the throne of Great Britain. Thus we see that James knew Monmouth was not to be trusted, though suspicion with regard to his son-in-law had not yet entered his head.

It was not long after the marriage of Mary that King Charles began to think about a husband for his other niece, the Princess Anne. Several candidates for her hand were duly presented and considered, but at last the choice fell on Prince George of Denmark, brother to King Christian of that country. He was a valiant soldier, and had distinguished himself in several battles with the Swedes, during which he had rescued his brother, the king, from the enemy by his wonderful dash and presence of mind. He and the Princess Anne were married in 1683 ; and their nuptials, unlike those of Mary and the Prince of Orange, were conducted with great pomp, and succeeded by the usual celebrations. King Charles settled on the bride an income of twenty thousand pounds per annum, and presented her with a small palace adjoining Whitehall for her residence, for it was arranged that she was not to go to Denmark to live.

[A.D. 1685.] We have spoken of the gay doings at the Holland court, but they were not to continue long; for suddenly everything was changed to mourning on the announce-m.ent of the death of King Charles II. of England. Princess Mary was very much grieved on account of this sad event, for all her remembrances of her uncle were of the most agreeable nature. The Duke of Monmouth and Prince William were closeted together for several hours after the

The Queens of England.

news came, and that very night the duke started for Eng land. But so secretly were his preparations and departure made that he was supposed to be shut up in his own room until late on the following day. It was the prince who fur-

TIll- RETREAT.

nished him with money for the rash mvasion of England which resulted in his execution. The details of his bold exploit are given in the last reign.

After James was firmly seated on the throne, it would never do tor the Prince of Orange to appear in the light of

an enemy, so he had to change his tactics forthwith. He pretended that the affectionate letters to his wife from her father were addressed to himself, and read them aloud to the ambassadors. To the king he wrote in the most humble terms, promising fidelity till death, and explaining that Monmouth had received only common hospitality at his hands, and been sent away-from the Hague as soon as possible.

Certainly James H. regretted the necessity which compelled him to put Monmouth to death, but Princess Mary had formed such an attachment for him that she never forgave her father for causing that execution. ^

[A.D. 1686.] During the following spring a plot against the life of Prince William was revealed to the princess, and she became so alarmed that she obtained for him a bodyguard, which had not previously been considered at all necessary.

Then William Penn was sent by James W. to convince the prince that all laws tending to religious persecutions ought to be abolished ; but his errand was'a failure, because the prince declared " that he would lose all the revenues and prospects of the kingdom of Great Britain, to which his wife was heiress, before one should be abolished." And the princess indorsed this decision, adding; " That if ever she were Queen of England she should do more for the Protestants than even Queen Elizabeth had done."

Penn spoke so plainly to the princess, and expressed his opinion so freely, that she disliked him forever after.

[A.D. 1688.] The Prince and Princess of Orange had their spies in England, who kept them daily informed of every change in the political drama. Of these Lord and Lady Sunderland were the principal agents, and as this lord was prime minister he had special facilities for gaining knowledge. Another was the Princess Anne whose letters

were remarkable for coarseness, vulgarity, and bad spelling. As she did not know of the bond existing between Lady Sunderland and her sister Mary, she sometimes filled her letters with abuse of that person, on whom she did not hesitate to bestow some very hard epithets. Her remarks must often have amused both William and Mary, who were better aware of what was going on in Great Britain than she was, although they were not on the spot. One of Anne's letters closes with this sentence : " One thing I forgot to tell you about Lord Sunderland, which is that it is thought if everything does not go here as he would have it, that he will pick a quarrel with the court and so retire, and possibly make his court to you."

This shows that the princess little suspected Lord Sunderland of already being in the service of William. She had reasons of her own for trying to create ill-feeling between Mar}' and her father; and once when the princess had hinted at the possibility of her visiting England, Anne warned her in rather vague terms that her life might be in danger were she to present herself at her father's court. If Mary had considered how kind and indulgent that father had always been to his children, she would have insisted on an explanation; but the correspondence between these two sisters was interrupted for awhile by Anne's illness. The king watched by her bedside until she was past danger, and nursed her with the most tender care. What would have been his feelings, could he have known the treachery of the invalid at whose side he sat hour after hour, anxiously awaiting the result of her disease ?