The Three Crowns epub (54 page)

Their relationship would never be a comfortable one until this question was answered. He could never show her that he was an affectionate husband until she said to him: “When and if the crown of Britain comes to me, you shall still be my master.” That was what he wanted from her; if she would give it, he would be prepared to treat her with respect and affection (although he would never give up Elizabeth). Until then, he would be cold to her, because he was uncertain of her.

He was miserable. Mary baffled him; and Elizabeth, the balm of whose company he needed, was gone.

But he told no one this; he asked no questions of anyone concerning her.

Nor did he mention to Mary that her action had angered him.

It is true, she thought. Elizabeth Villiers was not important to him.

Once she was
safely on the boat which was to carry her to Harwich, Elizabeth’s captors relaxed their vigil, while she sat huddled against the wind and cursed her bad luck. What was she, who had made herself so comfortable in Holland, doing on a boat which was carrying her to England?

What would William say when he returned and found her gone? She knew William well. He would deplore her loss but he would do nothing about it. What could he do? He was not a man to rant and rave about something that could not be altered.

Who would have believed Mary capable of such a plan! But Mary was often deceptive. She had been in the old nursery days. But for the fact that she was so sentimental and, strangely enough, over-modest, she would have got far more of her own way. Mary was a dreamer who wanted others to dream with her.

But why waste time thinking of Mary now! Her plan had succeeded, Elizabeth had left Holland, and that was an end of that. What Elizabeth had to think of now was how to get back to Holland.

She touched the letter which was in her pocket. A letter to the King. She could imagine what was in it. “Keep this woman in England and do not let her return to Holland.” That was almost certain to be the gist.

And was she going to be so foolish as to present that letter to the King and meekly accept a lodging, possibly in the Tower?

When they reached England her captors were at her side.

She said: “I have to await an answer from my request to the King. I propose to have a message sent to him telling him I come from the Princess. In the meantime I shall lodge at my father’s house.”

This seemed reasonable and her guards accompanied her to the house of her father, Colonel Villiers, in Richmond. There her father welcomed her warmly for he knew of her position at The Hague and that of all his children she was, through her connection with William, the most influential.

As soon as she was alone with him she told him what had happened.

He listened gravely and said: “If James reads that letter you will never return to Holland.”

“So I believe.”

“You know what is happening here? There is trouble … Each week there are further complaints of the King’s rule. What the people dread is that James will have a son who will be brought up as a Catholic and thus we should have Catholicism back in England. They will never endure it. If the Queen has a son there will be big trouble.”

“You think that they will ask James to abdicate and set Mary in his place.”

“They might ask it, but James would not go. He is a fanatic, I do assure you. But that is for the future. More immediately, what of
your
future, my dear?

“I want to return to The Hague as soon as possible.”

“Before delivering that letter?”

“I should not be such a fool as to deliver that letter to the King.”

“Where is it?”

She brought it out and showed him.

“Her Highness’s seal,” said the Colonel. “Well, we must break it in a good cause.”

They did so and read the letter which was, as Elizabeth had suspected, an account of how the bearer, Elizabeth Villiers, was the mistress of the Prince of Orange and the Princess asked her father not to allow her to return to Holland.

“Well?” said the Colonel.

“There is only one thing to be done with such a document,” answered Elizabeth briskly, leaning forward and holding it in the flame of the candle.

Her father watched her with amusement. “And now?”

“I will rest, for I am tired. While I sleep you must prepare an account of everything you know is happening here. At dawn I rise and ride for Harwich. With a good wind I shall soon be back in The Hague.”

Anne Bentinck presented
herself to Mary.

“Your Highness, my sister Elizabeth is in the Palace and asking to be received.”

Mary said: “I do not wish to receive her.”

“But Your Highness, her place …”

“Your sister has no place in my service.”

Anne Bentinck retired to tell Elizabeth that she would have to leave the Palace at once; for Anne’s husband had forbidden her to shelter her sister and as Anne was as docile a wife as Mary often was, she dared not disobey him.

When she was alone Mary asked herself why her father had failed her. Surely he would not, as he was trying to break her marriage with William. But of course Elizabeth had not given him the letter. She had guessed its contents, or read them.

In any case she was not going to have her back as a maid of honor. William might attempt to insist but she would stand out even against William.

Elizabeth was waiting
for William in a small anteroom of the palace.

They embraced and she told him how Mary had planned to be rid of her.

William nodded. “She astonishes me.”

“And me. Will you command her to take me back?”

“No,” said William. “Not yet. I think she would stand against it.”

“And you will allow her to?”

“For the time, I can do nothing else.”

Elizabeth was surprised but too clever to show her surprise. He was, then, afraid of Mary. Well, he had to remember that if ever the crown of Britain came to him it would be through Mary, for Anne and her children would stand between his inheriting it in his own right.

Elizabeth accepted this. She had much to tell him. There was above all the information she had collected from her father in England.

“I made him sit up all night that he might write a clear account of what was happening there. I thought you would find it useful.”

William pressed her hand.

“For the time,” he said, “go to your sister Katherine. I will visit you at their house. And later …”

She kissed his hand.

“Later,” he went on, “you shall come back to Court.”

William Bentinck had
a commission to carry out for his master.

Bentinck guessed for whom the Prince was buying the necklace, and was sorry for the Princess, for a few months after Elizabeth’s return she was back in the Palace wearing a diamond necklace.

Mary did not know her strength; or perhaps she did not want to know it. She could have dismissed Elizabeth; she could have made her husband understand that she demanded to be treated, not as a meek consort, but as a Princess in her own right.

But she did not seem sure of the way she wanted to go. Thus there were these spurts of independence followed by subservience.

What would happen? wondered Bentinck, if she came to the throne of Britain? He knew that it was a question which disturbed his master.

M
ary was twenty-four years old and
would have been very beautiful indeed had she not grown so fat. The people of Holland delighted in her; for whenever she went among them her manner, while gracious and charming, was undoubtedly friendly. She was a contrast to her taciturn husband; she had a measure of that Stuart charm which Monmouth had possessed to a great degree and Charles overwhelmingly, and which usually meant that, whatever their faults, there would always be some to forgive them.

Mary, it seemed to those about her, had few faults. Perhaps she would have been understood better if she had had. She loved card playing, but that could not be called a fault; and although she was friendly in general, after the departure of Anne Trelawny she did not make a close friend of anyone.

They did not entirely understand her, so they remained aloof; her docility to her husband was interrupted now and then by those outbursts of firmness which showed themselves in the part she had played in the Zuylestein marriage and in sending Elizabeth Villiers to England. She was meant to be gay and vivacious as she had been in the days of childhood; but life with William had subdued that. She had become devoutly religious, devoted to the Church of England—and to her husband. Those about her believed that no one could love a man like William as she professed to do, and that her obvious devotion was like a religion to her. She had chosen it as the right way of life and determined to pursue it. Those who remembered how gay she had been during the visit of the Duke of Monmouth were certain of this. Mary, because of some strange bent in her nature, was determined to subdue her natural impulses and become the sort of person she felt it her duty to be.

She knew that Elizabeth Villiers continued to be William’s mistress. For some time she had visited William at the Palace and now was installed in her old position, yet Mary preferred to ignore it. Neither Elizabeth nor William ever mentioned to her that trip to England; it was as though it had never been.

Her women said that they could not understand a woman in her position accepting what Mary did; and Mary was an enigma.

She was to William also. If he could have been sure of how she would act in the event of ascending the throne of England, his entire attitude toward her would have changed. He could have talked to her more freely of his plans; but this stood between them; and he could not bring himself to talk openly of the position she would expect him to hold. Although to all outward appearances he had subdued her, yet he was afraid of her; and although she was the meek wife, seeming always to bend to his will, yet it was in her power to exclude him from the brilliant future which had been his goal ever since he had contemplated marrying her.

This was the state of affairs when Gilbert Burnet arrived at the Court of The Hague.

Gilbert Burnet was
in his forties when he came to Holland. He had been a favored chaplain of Charles II but he had quickly fallen foul of James, for he deplored the threat of papacy. It became clear to Burnet that while his position was precarious under Charles, for his friends Essex and Russell had been involved in the Rye House Plot, it would be untenable under James. After that plot he had left England for France where he was warmly received.

One of the first things he did on returning was to preach a sermon against popery which was received with wild enthusiasm by an anti-Catholic congregation; and when Burnet thundered out: “Save me from the lion’s mouth; thou hast heard me from the horn of the unicorn …” the applause rang out in the church, for the lion and unicorn were the royal arms and this could only mean that Burnet when denouncing popery was denouncing James.

After that there was only one thing for Burnet to do—leave the country. He had been writing busily for the last few years and had produced his History of the Rights of Princes in the Disposing of Ecclesiastical Benefices and Church Lands among other works. He was a man whom James could not afford to keep in England.