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It cannot be denied that in
the world of Art or of Literature, Scottish women have never occupied a
very prominent place. Scotland has yet to produce a Rosa Bonheur, a
Georges Sand, and Charlotte Bronté. It is impossible to compare Joanna
Baillie with Elizabeth Barratt Browning, or Miss Ferrier with Jane Austin
or George Eliot. The Scotswoman’s genius is not of a creative or
speculative kind. But for sheer individuality she cannot be rivalled.
Looking back at the history of the past six centuries, it is not difficult
to find many examples of Scottish women whose personalities have had a
profound influence upon their times. Scotswomen of strong – if
occasionally eccentric – character, of shrewd intelligence, of active wit,
have again and again inspired the men of their day to heights which the
latter would never have reached without feminine assistance. The great
ladies of the court, in particular, were fully sensible of the
responsibilities attaching to their high social position, and for the most
part worthily upheld the traditions of their rank.
An excellent example of a
woman of title whose life and conduct earned universal respect, and who
exercised a beneficial influence upon her contemporaries, in Anna, Duchess
of Buccleuch and Monmouth, whom Sir Walter Scott was proud to number among
his distinguished ancestry.
Of the many Scottish
families which rose to greatness upon the ruins of the mighty house of
Douglas, the Scotts were by no means the least important. When the last
Earl of Douglas died in retirement about 1491, some years after he had
been handed over as a prisoner to King James III., his vast estates were
divided among those who had remained loyal to the crown. Sir Walter Scott
of Kirkurd and Buccleuch had assisted in the downfall of the Douglasses at
the battle of Arkinholme in 1455, and his services were rewarded by grants
of lands in the forests of Ettrick and Selkirk and in the shire of
Roxburgh. He acquired also the lands of Branxholm, and in his time
Branxholm Castle was first established as the residence of the Buccleuch
family. His descendant Walter, Lord Scott, was created Earl of Buccleuch
in the year 1619.
Francis, 2nd
Earl of Buccleuch, died in 1651 without male issue, and his title and
estates passed to his daughter Mary, who at once became the greatest
heiress of her day in Scotland. At the early age of eleven this
unfortunate child was married to a kinsman, one Walter Scott of
Highchester, a boy of fourteen. Vainly did some of the girl’s relations
and her tutor, Sir John Scott of Scotstarvet, seek to have this scandalous
marriage annulled. They were not strong enough to counteract the influence
of the little countess’s mother, Lady Margaret Leslie, only daughter of
John, Earl of Rothes, and widow of Lord Balgonie, a clever and determined
woman who, after her second husband’s death, married David, 2nd
Earl of Wemyss. The dowager-countess had her way, and as soon as the
heiress reached the age of twelve, at which she could legally effect a
marriage of her own free will, the girl was persuaded to approve of the
proposed match, and went to Dalkeith to commence married life with her boy
husband.
Mary was a delicate child.
Her premature marriage cannot have had a beneficial effect upon her
health; and having been taken up to London by her mother to be touched by
the King for the “cruels,” she died there, after a short two years’
experience of matrimony, and was succeeded by her sister Anna.
Anna, (or Anne, as she is
generally called), Countess of Buccleuch, was born in the year 1651 at
Dundee, where her mother is supposed to have gone to act as an
intermediary between General Monck and the Scottish nobility. Her early
life was spent at Dalkeith, and later on, when her mother married again,
at Wemyss Castle. She was, of course, as great an heiress as her sister
had been, and the question of providing her with a suitable husband was
one that immediately occupied her mother’s mind. General Monck is supposed
to have wished his son to marry her. But Lady Wemyss was, as has been
seen, an ambitious and designing woman, and, after taking note of all the
possible suitors for her daughter’s hand, fixed her final choice upon
James, Duke of Monmouth, the natural son of Charles II. and Lucy Walters.
To this arrangement, supported as it was by the powerful Earl of
Lauderdale, the King offered no objection, and on 20th April
1663, when little Anne was in her twelfth year and Monmouth but a trifle
older, the marriage between the two children was duly solemnised at Wemyss
Castle in the presence of the King and Queen. Monmouth at once assumed his
wife’s name of Scott. On the day of their wedding he was created Duke of
Buccleuch, and, two days later, his newly-acquired honours were celebrated
by a banquet given by the King to the Knights Companion of St. George on
the name-day of their patron saint.
A marriage under such
conditions, and between parties of so immature and age, was scarcely
calculated to prove a success. From the very first moment of their wedded
life, Monmouth and his duchess were at complete variance. They differed in
character as well as in tastes. The duke’s charms were chiefly of a
physical order. “His figure, and the exterior graces of his person were
such,” says De Grammont, [Memoirs of the Count of Gramont, p.294.
(1846)] “that nature, perhaps, never formed anything more complete:
his face was extremely handsome; and yet it was a manly face, neither
inanimate nor effeminate; each feature having its beauty and peculiar
delicacy: he had a wonderful genius for every sort of exercise, an
engaging aspect, and an air of grandeur: in a word, he possessed every
personal advantage; but then he was greatly deficient in mental
accomplishments.” [On the other hand, in a contemporary MS at the
Advocates’ Library, entitled Historical Researches on the Antiquity
and Anecdotes of the Noble Family of Buccleuch, Monmouth is described
as one whose “learning was greater than any of his Rank at that time,
without the least alloy of Pedantry.”]
His duchess, on the other
hand, was probably not very handsome, or if she was, her contemporaries
were so dazzled by the brilliance of her mental qualities that they failed
to observe of record her physical attractions. John Evelyn, the diarist,
calls her “one of the wisest and craftiest of her sex.” [Diary and
Correspondence of John Evelyn, vol. ii. p87. (1857.)] Grammont,
again, tells us that her mind possessed all those perfections in which the
handsome Monmouth was deficient. [Grammont’s Memoirs, pp.295-6.]
It might be imagined that two persons who were each the complement of the
other could have managed to live together as husband and wife without
friction or unhappiness. Unfortunately, Monmouth’s views of the duties of
a husband did not coincide with those of his duchess – nor indeed with
those of any self-respecting wife. He was “ever engaged in some Amour,” as
the Duke of Buckingham relates in his Memoirs, [The Works of John
Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, vol. ii. p.15 (1723)] and was
consequently not only a severe trial to his duchess, but the universal
terror of husbands and lovers. Wife, widow, or maid, no woman was safe
from his intrigues. “The Duke of Monmouth has so little employment in
state affairs,” wrote the Dowager-Countess of Sunderland to Sidney in
1679, “that he has been at leisure to send two fine ladies out of town. My
Lord Grey has carried his wife into Northumberland, and my Lady
Wentworth’s ill eyes did find cause, as she thought to carry her daughter
into the country in so much haste that it makes a great noise, and was
done sure in some great passion. My Lord Grey was long in believing the
Duke of Monmouth and unfaithful friend to him. He gave her but one night’s
time to take leave, pack up, and be gone.” [Diary of the Time of Charles
II., by the Hon. H. Sidney, pp.263-4 (1843)]
The duke did not confine
his amorous attentions to married women alone. He dallied for a time with
Eleanor, daughter of Sir Robert Needham, and one of their children,
Henrietta Crofts, afterwards became Duchess of Bolton. But the chief
intrigue of his life was the very genuine attachment which he formed for
Henrietta, Lady Wentworth. [She was the granddaughter of Thomas, Earl
of Cleveland, by whose death, in 1667, she became Baroness Wentworth in
her own right.] His affection for the lady was sincere and most warmly
returned. Lady Wentworth lived with Monmouth for many years, and even
shared his banishment, and he was so far faithful to her that on the day
of his death he stoutly declared her to be his only wife in the eyes of
God.
If the duke’s and the
duchess’s views of conjugal morality differed widely, their ideas of
loyalty were equally dissimilar. Monmouth’s perpetual plotting against the
crown is a matter of history. The duchess, on the other hand, by steering
clear of the sea of conspiracies in which her husband was always plunging
with such utter recklessness, managed to preserve the favour of James II.
(and later of William III.) to the end of her life. The Duke of York,
speaking to Bishop Burnet on the subject of the duchess’s integrity and
loyalty, in 1673 – when it was proposed that the King should declare that
he had been legally married to Lucy Walters, and thus legitimise the Duke
of Monmouth – affirmed that not even the hopes of a crown would tempt her
to do an unjust thing. [Bishop Burnet’s History of His Own Times,
p.177.] Indeed, if she ever interfered at all in politics, it was
either to save her husband from the consequences of his numerous
indiscretions or to contribute towards his advancement. For this purpose
she was well served by the friendship which the Duke of York openly
professed for her, though the intimacy of so useful and uncle, whose only
object, it is thought, was to convert the duchess to the Roman Catholic
faith, gave mutual enemies an excuse for unfavourable comment. “Whether
this familiarity of theirs was contrived, or only connived at, by the Duke
of Monmouth himself, is hard to determine,” says the Duke of
Buckingham. [The Works of John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham (Memoirs
in the Reign of Charles II.) vol. ii. pp.12-13.] “But I well remember
that after these two Princes had become declared enemies, the Duke of York
one day told me with some emotion, as conceiving it a new mark of his
nephew’s insolence, that he had forbidden his wife to receive any more
visits from him: At which I could not forbear frankly replying, that I who
was not used to excuse him, yet could not hold from doing it in that case;
wishing his Highness might have no juster cause to complain of him. Upon
which,” adds this candid friend, “the Duke, surprized to find me excuse
his and my own enemy, changed the discourse immediately.”
The Duke of York was not
the only good friend made by the duchess during the course of a long life.
Sir Gideon Scott, her guardian, and George, 1st Earl of
Cromartie, were ever ready to give her advice as to the management of her
private affairs; and for the conduct of her estates she depended upon the
business-like qualities of her brother-in-law, George, Earl of Melville,
with whom, however, owing to an unfortunate lawsuit, she quarrelled in her
old age. Lord Wemyss, her stepfather, was a man of active and able mind.
Before Anne’s mother became his wife he had already been twice married,
first of all to Jean, daughter of Lord Balfour of Burleigh, and secondly
to Lady Eleanor Fleming, daughter or the Earl of Wigton. His second wife
was in some ways a remarkable character. During her brief two years of
married life she managed to spend a hundred thousand merks of her
husband’s money. Also, being addicted to a love of strong potations, [Chamber’s
Domestic Annals of Scotland, vol. ii. p.215.] she had a door
pierced through the wall of her bedroom into the adjoining wine-cellar,
in order that, in distant anticipation of Mrs. Gamp, she might “put her
lips to the bottle when so dispoged.” To Lord Wemyss the duchess was
devoted, and always displayed the warmest affection for her half-brother
David, Lord Elcho.
The Princess of Wales was
another of Anne’s friends. Lady Cowper, one of her Royal Highness’s
ladies-in-waiting, describes how at a supper-party given by the princess
in 1716 she met the Duchess of Buccleuch, who entertained and delighted
the company with amusing stories of the court of Charles II. [The Diary of
Mary, Countess Cowper, p.93. (1865)] The princess “loved her
mightily,” says Lady Cowper, “and certainly no Woman of her Years ever
deserved it so well.” [Ibid., p.125.] Owing to her influence at
court the duchess was often able to perform many kindly actions, to which
the natural benevolence of her disposition prompted her. Sir Walter Scott,
in a note to the autobiography of his great-grandfather, declared that
this fire-eating old gentleman – “Beardie,” as he was always called – who
served with Dundee in 1685, ran a grave risk of being hanged but for the
timely intervention of Duchess Anne.
As was becoming in a woman
of her station, the duchess extensively patronised the drama and
literature of her day. The poet Gay – afterwards destined to become famous
in the service of another duchess – was for a time her secretary. She
showed especial appreciation of Dryden, who, in return for her favour,
dedicated The Indian Emperor – the first of his plays to attract
public notice – to one whom he termed his “first and best patroness.” [Dryden’s
Works, vol. viii. p.120 (1808)] In his preface to this work the
poet heaps compliments upon both duke and duchess, whom he declares to be
“a pair of Angels sent below to make Virtue amiable in their persons” –
for, though Monmouth’s far from angelic conduct somewhat belied this
description, poets could not then afford to be too particular. The
Indian Emperor was played at the King’s Playhouse in 1667, with Nell
Gwyn in the part of the Emperor’s daughter, “a great and serious part,”
says Mr. Pepys with his customary candour, “which she does most basely.”
[Diary of Samuel Pepys, August 22, 1667.] And in the following year
the play was performed at court by an amateur company which included the
Duke and Duchess of Monmouth. The histrionic talent displayed by these
titled amateurs was not apparently of a very high order, if we are to
believe Mr. Pepys, who bluntly remarks that “not any woman but the
Duchesse of Monmouth and Mrs. Cornwallis did any thing but like fools and
stocks” [Ibid., January 14, 1668.] – though it is only fair to add
that the diarist was not himself among the audience on this occasion.
In The Duke of Guise,
which was produced in 1682, Dryden frankly brought his patrons upon the
stage. This play was of an avowedly political character; its meaning and
moral were but lightly veiled. The Covenant was represented in the play by
the League in France; the return of the Duke of Guise to Paris was
analogous to that of the Duke of Monmouth to London. It naturally followed
that the character of Marmoutičre, tenderly treated by the dramatist, was
that of the duchess, whose intimacy with the Duke of York corresponded to
that of the king and Marmoutičre in the play.
Monmouth’s position was at
this time a perilous one. In 1679, owing to suspected complicity in the
Rye House Plot, he had been banished, a punishment which would doubtless
have taken a more severe form but for the duchess’s influence in high
places. And on the death of Charles II., he planned a futile invasion with
the Duke of Argyll, landed at Lyme in 1685, was defeated and taken
prisoner at Sedgemoor. His trial and death sentence followed in due
course.
Monmouth had many good
points besides his personal attractions. “Brave, generous, affable,” is a
description given of him by a contemporary, [Memoirs of the Most Material
Transactions in England, by S.J. Welwood, p.152. (1820)] “constant
in his friendship, just to his word, and an utter enemy to all sort of
cruelty.” Of his humanity the Covenanters had experience after the fight
at Bothwellhaugh, when he forbade his troops to put the prisoners to
death. His personal bravery has never been questioned. He served with
distinction in France in 1673, and in Flanders a few years later. And on
the day of his execution he evinced a spirit of unflinching fortitude
which evoked general admiration. The duchess, too, bore this tragic ordeal
with wonderful courage. She and the duke had long been estranged, owing to
the latter’s invariable inconstancy and the curious fancy he entertained
for any wife but his own. But however little real affection she may have
felt for him, it was impossible for a woman of her sensitive temperament
to contemplate with equanimity the execution of one who was still her
husband and had once been her lover.
The scene at their meeting,
on that night that Monmouth was committed to the Tower, must have been
peculiarly affecting. At this interview the duchess behaved with becoming
calm, adopting a generous attitude towards the man who had wronged her so
deeply and for so long. If, she declared, she had ever said or done
anything displeasing to her husband – save in regard to his predilection
for other women or his disobedience to the late king – if she had failed
in duty or obedience as became a wife and a mother, she was ready to fall
upon her knees and humbly ask his pardon. Monmouth’s reply was equally
creditable to his good sense and feeling. He assured his wife that he had
no cause for complaint in her conduct either towards himself, his
children, or his king. And at the final farewell meeting, which took place
on July 15, in the presence of his two sons and a company of officials and
friends, Monmouth publicly declared his duchess to be innocent of any
cognisance of his designs against the crown. He further begged her to
forgive him for his many offences against her and for the irregular life
which he had led, and earnestly committed his children to her charge. His
composure throughout this affecting scene was remarkable, and he bade
adieu to his weeping children with perfect self-control. [He continued
to assert, however, that Lady Wentworth was his wife in the eyes of God,
and that it was to her he owed all affection and fidelity (Memoirs of
Sir John Reresby, p,213.)]
As the fatal hour
approached, the duchess, who had hitherto restrained her emotion, broke
down, and, bursting into tears, once more asked her husband to forgive her
if she had ever in any way offended him.
Even on the scaffold
Monmouth’s courage did not forsake him, and his conduct made a deep
impression upon all who were present on this tragic occasion. “Rash in his
undertakings,” as Grammont describes him, [Memoirs, p.294]
“irresolute in execution, and dejected in his misfortunes, in which, at
least, an undaunted resolution ought to equal the greatness of the
attempt,” James, Duke of Monmouth, me his death – made needlessly painful
by the bungling of an incompetent or nervous executioner – with exemplary
fortitude.
They sympathy felt for the
duchess under this trial was universal, nor was it lessened by the sudden
death of her daughter Anne, a few days after Monmouth’s execution. The
King showed his goodwill in a practical manner by giving her a re-grant of
her titles and estates, so that she continued, as she had been since 1666,
Duchess of Buccleuch in her own right. Badly as her husband had treated
her, she could not refrain from mourning his loss. To the friends who, in
order to cheer her, explained to her how highly the world had extolled her
conduct during the duke’s unkindness and disloyalty, she replied simply
that she had bought that commendation dear.
After three years of
widowhood the duchess was secretly married to Charles, third Lord
Cornwallis, [“Visited the Duchess of Monmouth, she being newly come to
town. She owned that she had been married three weeks to Lord Cornwallis,
and that she went into the country to avoid the clutter usual upon those
occasions.” – Correspondence of the Earls of Rochester and Clarendon,
vol. ii. p.173] by whom she had one son and two daughters. Lord
Cornwallis has been described by a contemporary as “a Gentleman of sweet
disposition, and great lover of the Constitution, and well esteemed in his
native County of Suffolk; inclining to Fat, fair Complexion.” [Memoirs of
the Secret Service of John Mackay, Esq., p.105.] She continued to
reside a great deal in England, paying occasional visits to Scotland. She
bought a house in Edinburgh in 1712, and, at her palace at Dalkeith, which
in her old age she restored and refurnished, continued to keep up a state
befitting the widow of a prince. Johnson, in his Life of Gay, says
that she was “remarkable for inflexible perseverance in her demand to be
treated as a princess.” She ordered a canopy to be erected in her room,
and would sit beneath it to receive her friends with much ceremonial,
while her attendants stood round in attitudes of respectful deference. It
is said that even at meals she was the only person present who was allowed
a chair. And Robert Chambers tells us that she was the last person of
quality in Scotland to keep pages of good birth.
At her house at Moor Park
she gave sumptuous entertainments to numerous guests (among them being
Queen Mary), and some idea of the state maintained at Dalkeith may be
gathered from an extract taken from the Duchess’s household book, quoted
by Arnot in his History of Edinburgh:-
Table of Her Grace the
Duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth, kept at Dalkeith, A.D. 1701 and 1702.
Present, the family, Earl
of Rothes, Earl of Hadington, Lord Elcho, and three gentlemen.
DINNER
First Course.
Haunch of venison boiled; roast mutton; veal
collops; boiled fish; pidgeon pye; brown fricassee of rabbits; whiting
pottage. Second Course. Roasted wild fowl; roasted chickens; eggs
in gravy; fried flounders; collard pig; buttered crabs; tarts.
DINNER. (Her Grace’s Table)
First Course.
200 Oysters; bacon and pease pottage; haggiss, with
a calf’s pluck; beef collops; mutton roasted, three pints; fricassee of
five chickens; remove, a roasted goose. Second Course. Six wild
fowl, and six chickens; buttered crabs; collard beef; tarts; four roasted
hens.
It may be presumed that the
duchess, her family, and six guests, after devouring 200 oysters and the
remainder of this gargantuan feast, did not carry out the modern precept
which insists of the advisability of rising from the table hungry. To
provide so vast a daily meal as this was not in reality as expensive a
matter as it sounds today. A price-list of provisions is also given in the
Dalkeith household book, from which we learn that a hen cost 1s2d, a pair
of chickens 10d, that oysters were only 2s per 100 – fourpence more than
the same number of onions – but, on the other hand, such luxuries as
anchovies were priced as high as 4s per lb., and an equal quantity of
nutmeg could not be obtained for less than 16s. [“The Countess of
Argile debit to John fferguissone, June 15, 1690.
To 6 ounce and a half
tea. . . . . . . . . . . . . 10. 16. 00
To 2 botles hungarie
water. . . . . . . . . . . . 02. 02. 00
To 2 Indian florored
gravatts. . . . . . . . . . 10. 16. 00
23. 14.
00.”
(from the Duchess of
Argyle’s Letters. MSS. in the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh.)]
In 1668 the duchess had the
misfortune to meet with a painful accident whereby she sprained her thigh,
- “dancing at her lodgings,” says Mr. Pepys [Diary, May 9, 1668.] –
and the muscles of one leg became contracted, making it shorter than the
other and laming her for life. This physical infirmity does not seem to
have affected either her spirits or her temper. When she was sixty-five
years old, says Lady Cowper, “she had all the Life and Fire of Youth, and
it was marvellous to see that the many afflictions she had suffered had
not touched her Wit and good Nature, but at upwards of Threescore she had
both in full Perfection.” [Diary of Mary, Countess Cowper.]
Luttrel [Brief Relation of
State Affairs, vol. v.] declares that she married a third time, the
Earl of Selkirk, but there seems to be no foundation in fact for this
assertion.
In her old age the duchess
was sometimes in temporary financial difficulties owing to the
unbusiness-like and casual fashion in which her pension was paid. On
September 11, 1712, we find her writing to complain of this to Robert
Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford:-
“MY LORD. - You will oblige
me verie much if you put her Majesty in mind that I did the other day
represent to her the uneasiness I suffer in my affairs, by reason of the
great Arrears due upon my jointure, Your Lordship can not but think it
verie hard for me to pay Interest for borrowed money, whilest I have a
Grant settled in the manner your Lordship knows mine is…”
The Earl’s reply, though it
was not written until an interval of four months had elapsed, has at any
rate the merit of extreme candour:-
“MADAM (he writes), I
received the honour of Your Grace’s Lre, and I do assure Your Grace, that
it is very greivous to me to see any thing unpaid of the Demands upon the
Civill List, but particularly that Your Grace’s payments are in Arrear;
Let me acquaint Your Grace with the true reason: when the Queen comanded
my Service in the Treasury I found the Establish’d Expence of the Civil
List exceeding the Income One hundred Thousand pounds Yearly, add to this
a Debt of severall hundred Thousand pounds, and for the most part due to
the meanest and most necessitous people. This has been struggled with and
I hope we are near a Method of Discharging the whole Debt. I have thus
plainly laid the truth before Your Grace, and I beseech Your Grace to
accept the assurances that I will take particular care of Your Grace’s
payments…” [These letters are preserved among the family papers at
Welbeck Abbey, and have never before been published. On the back of the
duchess’s letter is the following note, probably in Lord Oxford’s hand: “
Ds Bucclieuch, paid by Wt. [Warrant] dated 28th Febry.
1710/1711 6000l. for a year & halfe to Xmas 1709: 4000l. p. annum.”]
It is to be hoped that Lord
Oxford kept his promise, and that his correspondent was not put to any
further inconvenience owing to the curious inadequacy of the Civil List.
The duchess lived to the
age of eighty, and died on February 6, 1732. on the day that the notorious
Colonel Charteris was buried – when so great a storm arose that the
superstitious believed it to be caused by the Devil’s arrival in person to
carry away the wicked Colonel – Anne, Duchess of Monmouth and Buccleuch,
who,
“In pride of power, in
beauty’s bloom,
Had wept o’er Monmouth’s bloody tomb,”
was laid to rest in her own peaceful sepulchre in the
family vault of the old church of Dalkeith. |
