Part 38 (1/2)
the poor little ones are always in fear of her severe countenance.”[22]
{353}
With this depressing prospect before him, Charles Louis turned his thoughts to his neglected brother, showing his confidence in Rupert's generosity, by his readiness to entrust him with the care of his children. ”George William says that the Prince Rupert ought to marry,”[23] wrote Sophie, quoting her troublesome brother-in-law, in Jan. 1674. Such was the opinion of the now regretful Elector, and he pressed his brother to return, promising to grant him all he could desire, if he would but come and raise up heirs to the house of Simmern. But Rupert remembered his oath, and answered as we have seen in a former chapter. Then Sophie tried her powers of persuasion, and bade Lord Craven tell Rupert how much the Elector would be pleased, if he would but yield. But Lord Craven showed himself, for once, severely practical. If Sophie would name to him some very rich lady willing to marry Rupert, he would be delighted to negotiate the matter, he said; if not, then he begged to be excused from interference. ”And there I am stuck (je suis demeure),” confessed Sophie, ”for I do not know how he would support her.”[24]
Nevertheless the family continued their solicitations, to which Rupert next retorted that the Elector had better get his cousin, the Elector of Brandenburg, and his sister Elizabeth to persuade Charlotte of Hesse to agree to a divorce; when, Louise being dead, he could marry again.
”He must either be very ignorant of our intrigues here, or wishes to appear so,” wrote the Elector bitterly.[25] He knew that Charlotte would never forego her vengeance by setting him free, and that neither his cousin nor his sister would interfere in such an affair. Elizabeth was, however, so far pressed into the service, that she, in her turn, exhorted Rupert to come over and marry. To her he only replied, ”that he was quite comfortable at Windsor, and had no intention {354} of moving; that Charles Louis had insulted him and might do what he pleased for an heir, he should not have him.”[26] Such was his final word, and consequently the Palatinate pa.s.sed, on the death of Carellie in 1685, to the Neuburg branch of the family.
Charles Louis died in 1680, and Rupert did not cherish the enmity he had borne him beyond the grave. On the contrary, he was anxious to do what he could for the benefit of his impecunious nephews and nieces.
For Carellie he did not care, the young Elector had offended him by his neglect,[27] but it was not Carellie who needed his protection; it was rather against Carellie that he took up the cause of the Raugrafen, as Charles Louis' children by Louise were called. The circ.u.mstances of the case had left them completely dependent on their eldest brother, who bore them no great love. This was not due to the fact that their mother had supplanted his own. Carellie had never loved his mother; he had often told his father that he paid no heed to what Charlotte might say, and had himself urged her to consent to a divorce.[28] But he was of a peculiar temperament, jealous, fretful, difficult, and his dislike of the Raugrafen was really due, partly to the influence of his disagreeable wife, and partly to jealousy of the affection which his father had always shown to them, especially to Moritzien,--poor Moritzien, gifted with all the Palatine fascination and brilliancy, but ruined by a life of uninterrupted indulgence, so that he drank himself to death.
Promises of providing for these cadets had been wrung from Carellie by his anxious father, but these promises he showed himself in no haste to keep, and Sophie appealed, on their behalf to Rupert. He showed himself ready to a.s.sist them, and demanded a concise account of the whole {355} busiess, in order that he might be qualified to interfere.[29] ”Not that he thinks the Elector will break his sacred promise to his father,”[30] declared Sophie. Nevertheless she urged the eldest Raugraf, Karl Ludwig, or ”Carllutz,” who had shortly before visited Rupert in England, to write very affectionately to his uncle, in grat.i.tude for the interest shown in them.[31] But, unfortunately for the Raugrafen, Rupert did not long survive his brother; and only a few months later Sophie wrote to one of her nieces: ”You have lost a great friend in my brother Prince Rupert. I am very much troubled and overwhelmed with the unexpected loss. I know the Electress Dowager will also bewail him.”[32]
Considering that for more than twenty years Sophie had not seen her brother, her grief seems a little excessive, but doubtless she lamented him for many reasons. The memory of old days dwelt with her all the more as she advanced in years, and latterly she had drawn nearer to her brother. By his means a marriage had been projected between Sophie's eldest son George and the Princess Anne, the second daughter of the Duke of York. During the progress of this negotiation, Sophie sent George over to England, on a visit to his uncle. She had some misgivings about his reception, for, as she confessed, George was not ”a.s.sez beau” to resemble a Palatine in any way, though her second son Friedrich, or ”Gustien,” as she called him, was tall and handsome,--”the very image of Rupert” (Rupert tout crache).[33]
Gustien had, moreover, not only Rupert's handsome face and gigantic stature, but also his resolute character. ”If he would have changed his religion, he might have succeeded well at the Imperial Court,”
{356} wrote his mother; ”but he has too much of his uncle Rupert not to be firm in his religion.”[34]
However, George, if less favoured by nature, was still the eldest son, and therefore of necessity the bridegroom elect. Notwithstanding his want of good looks he was very kindly received, both by King Charles and Rupert. The King declared that he would treat him ”en cousin,” and lodged him in Whitehall. Rupert paid him daily visits when his health allowed of it, but he was very ill, and often confined to his bed. ”I went to visit Prince Rupert, who received me in bed,” wrote George to his mother; ”he has a malady in his leg, which makes him very often keep his bed; it appears that it is so, without any pretext, and that he has to take care of himself. He had not failed one day of coming to see me.”[35]
But though entertained with ”extraordinary magnificence,”[36] the Hanoverian was not favourably impressed with either England or the Princess Anne. The country was in a ferment over the alleged discovery of the Popish Plot, and George regarded the judicial murders then perpetrated with astonished disgust. ”They cut off the head of Lord Stafford yesterday, and made no more ado than if they had chopped off the head of a pullet,” he told his mother.[37]
But notwithstanding the averseness of the intended bridegroom, the project was not at once renounced; and Rupert's last letter to Sophie, written shortly before his death, contained definite proposals on the subject. ”En ma derniere, chere soeur, je vous ai informe que cette poste je pourrai dire plus de nouvelles a.s.surees de l'affaire en question. Saches done, en peu de mots, on offre 40 mille livres sterl.
a.s.signe caution marchande, et 10 mille livres sterl. par an, durant la vie de M. le Duc, votre mari; et on souhaite {357} que donerez liberte a M votre fils de demeurer quelques temps en ce pays la, fin d'aprendre la langue, et faire connaitre au peuple, ce qu'on trouve necessaire en tout cas. Voyez ce que j'ai ordre de vous dire, et de demander un reponse pour savoir si l'affaire vous agree; si vous avez pour agreable, quelle en face, il sera necessaire que M. le Duc m'envoie un homme d'affaires, avec ses instructions, et ses a.s.surees que sera bien ... de celui qui est a vous; Rupert.
”Il faut vous dire si 1'affaire se fait ou non vous avez fort grand obligation a la d.u.c.h.esse de Portchmouth;[38] elle vous a.s.sure de toutes ses services en cette affaire.”[39]
Apparently the offered terms were not acceptable to the Hanoverians, for the negotiation closed with Rupert's death.
Rupert died, to all appearance, unmarried, but he left two children, a son and a daughter. More than once he had seriously contemplated matrimony. In 1653 it had been rumoured that he was about to wed his cousin Mary, the Princess Royal, widow of the Prince of Orange.[40] In 1664 he made proposals for a Royal lady of France, but the said lady objected that he had been ”too long and too deeply attached to a certain d.u.c.h.ess.”[41] That obstacle was removed in the same year by the d.u.c.h.ess of Richmond's clandestine love-match with Thomas Howard; but the French lady was long in coming to a decision, and in the meantime the young Francesca Bard crossed Rupert's path.
Francesca was the eldest daughter of Sir Henry Bard, one of the wilder Cavaliers, who had been raised to the Irish peerage as Viscount Bellamont; the same who had pleaded so earnestly with Rupert for Windebank's life in 1645. He had died during the exile, when on a mission to {358} Persia; and Francesca, on the death of her only brother, a.s.sumed the family t.i.tle, as Lady Bellamont. Except a t.i.tle her father had nothing to bequeath, and it was probably the urgent pet.i.tions for the relief of their poverty, addressed by the family to the King, that first brought Francesca into contact with Rupert.[42]
The Prince loved Francesca Bard, renounced his French alliance, and thenceforth turned a deaf ear to all entreaties that he would marry. A son was born to him, and christened ”Dudley.” Rupert seems to have cared for the boy, and he certainly conducted his education with anxious solicitude. He sent him first to school at Eton, where he could himself watch over him from Windsor. At Eton the boy was distinguished for his ”gentleness of temper,” and ”the aimiableness of his behaviour,” characteristics which he certainly did not inherit from his father. Nevertheless he had Rupert's martial spirit, and like his father before him, he early showed an aversion to study, and a pa.s.sion for arms. Rupert observing this and remembering his own boyhood, removed his son from Eton and placed him under the care of Sir Jonas Moore at the Tower, in order that he might receive instructions in mathematics and other subjects necessary for a military profession.[43]
To Dudley, at his death, the Prince left his house and estate at Rhenen, the debts still due to him from the Emperor, from the Elector Palatine, and from all persons not natural born subjects of England.
The English debts, which were considerably less, he destined to be divided amongst his servants.[44]
”Der armer Dodley,”[45] as his Aunt Sophie called him, went to Germany to secure his property, and was received {359} with great kindness by the Palatines, though there was a difficulty about the house at Rhenen, that being entailed property.[46] In 1685 he was back again in England, fighting loyally for King James, as his father would have approved. In the battle of Norton St. Philip, where Monmouth fought an indecisive battle with Grafton, Churchill and Feversham, we find ”Captain Rupert, the Prince's son,” in command of the musketeers, and playing a prominent part.[47] But when the rebellion had been suppressed, Dudley returned to Germany, seeking employment in the wars waged by the Empire against the Turks. He had all his father's active spirit and dauntless courage, but he had not also his enchanted life.
In August 1686 young Dudley fell, in a desperate attempt made by some English volunteers to scale the walls of Buda. His death is mentioned with deep regret in several contemporary letters and diaries. Though so young--he was only nineteen--he had already become famous for his valour, and exceedingly popular on account of his lovable character.[48]
Many believed him to have been Rupert's lawful son, and there seem to have been some grounds for the belief. He was universally known as ”Dudley Rupert”, and his mother maintained to the end of her days that she had been Rupert's wife. Her claim was practically acknowledged in Germany, where morganatic marriages were already in fas.h.i.+on; and even in England rumours of it were rife. ”Some say Prince Rupert, in his last sickness, owned his marriage,” says a letter in the Verney Correspondence, ”if so, his son is next heir, after him, to the Palsgrave.[49] But no public acknowledgment ever took place, and Rupert styled the boy in his will, ”Dudley {360} Bard.” On the other hand, he bequeathed to him property entailed on heirs male, and the Emperor actually paid to Francesca, after her son's death, the sum of 20,000 crowns which he had owed to Rupert.[50]
It seems possible that there was some kind of marriage,[51] but that such marriages were of rather doubtful legality. It could not have given Dudley royal rank, and hardly even a claim to the Palatinate,[52]
for, had such a claim existed, Rupert would certainly have put his son forward when the House of Simmern was crying out for an heir. His niece, Elizabeth Charlotte of Orleans, declared that he had deceived Francesca with a false marriage. But the good d.u.c.h.ess was notoriously ignorant of her uncle's affairs, and added to her story several impossible circ.u.mstances which tend to discredit it, a.s.serting, among other things, that Rupert had been lodging at the time, in Henry Bard's house, though Bard had been dead nearly ten years.[53] Moreover, such treachery is at variance with Rupert's whole character and all his known actions, and, though he cannot be said to have treated Francesca well, he may at least be acquitted of the baseness suggested by his niece.
During Rupert's life-time no mention is made of Francesca in letters or papers, public or private. Yet, after his death, we find frequent reference to her as to a well-known personage. Two reasons for her retirement suggest themselves. In the first place she was, as she herself a.s.serted, too virtuous to care to have any dealings with the corrupt Court, and in the second place she was a devout Roman Catholic.
Considering the prevalent horror of ”Popery,” the fanatical agitation concerning the second marriage of the Duke of {361} York, and Rupert's position as the popular hero, it may be that Francesca's religion made him unwilling to bring her forward publicly. But, be the exact facts of his connection with her what they may, that bond was probably the true reason for his obdurate refusal to hear of any other marriage.