Love Romances of the Aristocracy written by Thornton Hall

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Never, it was the common verdict, had his lordship spoken with more
eloquence and lucidity or with more powerful grasp of his subject and
his hearers.

"Cast your eyes for a moment," he declared, amid
impressive silence, "on the state of the Empire.
America, that vast Continent, with all its advantages to
us as a commercial and maritime people--lost--for ever
lost to us; the West Indies abandoned; Ireland ready to
part from us. Ireland, my lords, is armed; and what is
her language? 'Give us free trade and the free
Constitution of England as it originally was, such as we
hope it will remain, the best calculated of any in the
world for the preservation of freedom.'"

It was the speech of a far-seeing statesman; and although it proved but
the "voice of one crying in the wilderness," Lord Lyttelton felt that he
had done his duty and had crowned his growing political fame with the
laurels of the patriot and the orator.

On the following morning Fortescue met his cousin sauntering in St
James's Park, as Mr Makower tells us, "with the idleness of one who has
never known what occupation means."

"Is it because Hillsborough, the stupidest of your brother peers, paid
you such fine compliments on your speech?" he asked.

Lyttelton smiled faintly. "No, it was not of that I was thinking," he
answered. "Those are things of yesterday. Hillsborough was wrong; the
majority who voted with him were wrong; and I was right with my
minority. They don't know Ireland as I do. But a Government which can
lose America can do anything. I have done with politics. I was thinking
of something entirely different when you came upon me. I was
thinking--of death."

Fortescue laughed. But, when he had heard the story of Lyttelton's
dream, something in the manner of the narrator conveyed to him a feeling
of uneasiness.

"No man has more thoroughly enjoyed doing wrong than I have," continued
Lyttelton. "But I should not have enjoyed it so much if I believed in
nothing. With me sin has been conscientious; and I enjoyed the wrong
thing not only for itself but also because it was wrong. Suppose it be
true that I have not more than three days to live--"

"You take the thing too seriously," interposed his cousin.

"Join me at Pit Place to-morrow," said Lyttelton. "Then you shall see if
I take it too seriously."

During the intervening two days he fluctuated between profound gloom and
boisterous hilarity. One hour he was plunged into the depths of despair,
the next he was the soul of gaiety, laughing hysterically at his fears,
and exclaiming, "I shall cheat the lady yet!"

During dinner on the third and fatal day he was the maddest and merriest
at the table, convulsing all by his sallies of wit and his infectious
high spirits; and, when the cloth was removed, he exclaimed jubilantly,
"Ah, Richard is himself again!" But his gaiety was short-lived. As the
hours wore on his spirits deserted him; he lapsed into gloom and
silence, from which all the efforts of his friends could not rouse him.

As the night advanced he began to grow restless. He could not sit still,
but paced to and fro, with terror-haunted eyes, muttering incoherently
to himself, and taking out his watch every few moments to note the
passage of time. At last, when his watch pointed to half-past eleven, he
retired, without a word of farewell to his guests, to his bedroom, not
knowing that not only his own watch, but every clock and watch in the
house had been put forward half-an-hour by his anxious friends, "to
deceive him into comfort."

Having undressed and gone to bed, he ordered his valet to draw the
curtains at the foot, as if to screen him from a second sight of the
mysterious lady, and, sitting up in bed, watch in hand, he awaited the
fatal hour of midnight. As the minute hand slowly but surely drew near
to twelve he asked to see his valet's watch, and was relieved to find
that it marked the same time as his own. With beating heart and
straining eyes he watched the hand draw nearer and nearer. A minute more
to go--half a minute. Now it pointed to the fateful twelve--and nothing
happened. It crept slowly past. The crisis was over. He put down the
watch with a deep sigh of relief, and then broke into a peal of
laughter--discordant, jubilant, defiant.

"This mysterious lady is not a true prophetess, I find," he said to his
valet, after spending a few minutes in further mirthful waiting. "And
now give me my medicine; I will wait no longer." The valet proceeded to
mix his usual medicine, a dose of rhubarb, stirring it, as no spoon was
at hand, with a tooth-brush lying on the table. "You dirty fellow!" his
lordship exclaimed. "Go down and fetch a spoon."

When the servant returned a few minutes later he found, to his horror,
his master lying back on the pillow, unconscious and breathing heavily.
He ran downstairs again, shouting, "Help! Help! My lord is dying!" The
alarmed guests rushed frantically to the chamber, only to find their
host almost at his last gasp. A few moments later he was dead, with the
watch still clutched in his hand, pointing to half-past twelve. He had
died at the very stroke of midnight, as foretold by his ghostly visitant
of three nights previously.

Thus strangely and dramatically died Thomas, second Lord Lyttelton,
statesman, wit, and debauchee, precisely as he had been warned that he
would die in a dream or vision of the night. How far his death was due
to natural causes, to the effect of fear on a diseased heart, none can
say with certainty. That his heart was diseased, that he had had many
former seizures, during which his life seemed in danger, is beyond
question; but if it was merely coincidence, it was surely the most
remarkable coincidence on record, that his death should come at the
exact moment foretold by the lady of his vision, as related by himself
three days before the event.

Such a happening was strange and weird enough in all conscience; but it
was no more inexplicable on natural grounds than what follows. Among
Lord Lyttelton's boon companions was a Mr Andrews, with whom he had
often discussed the possibilities of a future life. On one such occasion
his lordship had said: "Well, if I die first, and am allowed, I will
come and inform you."

The words were probably spoken more in jest than in earnest, and Mr
Andrews no doubt little dreamt how the promise would be fulfilled. On
the night of Lord Lyttelton's death Mr Andrews, who expected his
lordship to pay him a visit on the following day, had retired to bed at
his house at Dartford, in Kent.

When in bed, to quote from Mr Plumer Ward's "Illustrations of Human
Life," he fell into a sound sleep, but was waked between eleven and
twelve o'clock by somebody opening his curtains. It was Lord Lyttelton,
in a nightgown and cap which Andrews recognised. He also spoke plainly
to him, saying that he was come to tell him all was over. It seems that
Lord Lyttelton was fond of horseplay; and, as he had often made Andrews
the subject of it, the latter had threatened his lordship with physical
chastisement the very next time that it should occur. On the present
occasion, thinking that the annoyance was being renewed, he threw at
Lord Lyttelton's head the first thing that he could find--his slippers.
The figure retreated towards a dressing-room, which had no ingress or
egress except through the bed-chamber; and Andrews, very angry, leaped
out of bed in order to follow it into the dressing-room. It was not
there, however.

Surprised and amazed, he returned at once to the bedroom, which he
strictly searched. _The door was locked on the inside_, yet no Lord
Lyttelton was to be found. In his perplexity, Mr Andrews rang for his
servant, and asked if Lord Lyttelton had not arrived. The man answered:
"No, sir." "You may depend upon it," said Mr Andrews, thoroughly
mystified and out of humour, "that he is somewhere in the house. He was
here just now, and he is playing some trick or other. However, you can
tell him that he won't get a bed here; he can sleep in the stable or at
the inn if he likes."

After a further vain search of the bed-chamber and the dressing-room, Mr
Andrews returned to bed and to sleep, having no doubt whatever that his
too jocular friend was in hiding somewhere near. On the afternoon of the
following day news came to him that Lord Lyttelton had died the previous
night at the very time that he (Mr Andrews) was searching for his
midnight visitant, and abusing him roundly for what he considered his
ill-timed practical joke. On hearing the news, we are told, Mr Andrews
swooned away, and such was its effect on him that, to use his own words,
"he was not himself or a man again for three years."

CHAPTER VI

A MESSALINA OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

There have been bad women in all ages, from Messalina, who waded
recklessly through blood to the gratification of her passions, to that
Royal mountebank, Queen Christina of Sweden, whose laughter rang out
while her lover Monaldeschi was being foully done to death at her
bidding by Count Sentinelli, his successor in her affections; and in
this baleful company the notorious Lady Shrewsbury won for herself a
dishonourable place by a lust for cruelty as great as that of Christina
or Messalina, and by a Judas-like treachery which even they, who at
least flaunted their crimes openly, would have blushed to practise.

No woman could have had smaller excuse for straying from the path of
virtue, much less for making foul crimes the minister to her lust than
Anna Maria, Countess of Shrewsbury. The descendant of a long line of
honourable Brudenells, daughter of an Earl of Cardigan, there was
nothing in the history of her family to account for the taint in her
blood. She had been dowered with beauty and charms which made conquest
easy, inevitable; and she was honourably wedded to a noble husband, the
eleventh Earl of Shrewsbury, who, although a man of no great character
or attainments, was an indulgent and faithful husband. Nor does she,
until she had reached the haven of married life, appear to have shown
any trace of the wickedness that must have been slumbering in her.

And yet, before she had worn her Countess's coronet a year, she had made
herself notorious, even in Charles II.'s abandoned Court, for passions
which would ruthlessly crush any obstacle in the way of their
indulgence. Lover after lover, high-placed and base-born indifferently,
succeeded one another in her fickle favour, as Catherine the Great's
favourites trod one on the heels of the other, each in turn to be flung
contemptuously aside to make room for a more favoured rival.

Even Gramont, seasoned man of the world and far removed from a saint as
he was, was frankly horrified at the carryings-on of this English
Messalina, compared with whom the most lax ladies of the English Court
were veritable prudes. "I would lay a wager," he says, "that if she had
a man killed for her every day she would only carry her head the higher.
I suppose she must have plenary indulgence for her conduct." The only
indulgence she had or needed was that of her own imperious will and her
elastic conscience.

As we glance down the list of her victims, we see some of the most
honourable names, and also some of the most despicable characters in
the England of the Restoration. The Duke of Ormond's heir caught her
capricious fancy for awhile; but, though his love for her drove him to
the verge of suicide, she wearied of him and trampled him under foot to
seek a fresh conquest.

To my Lord Arran succeeded Captain Thomas Howard, brother of the Earl of
Carlisle, a shy, proud young man of irreproachable character, whose love
for the fascinating Countess was as free from dishonour as a weakness
for another man's wife could be. She caught him securely in the net of
her charms, ensnared him with her _beaute de diable_, and then,
satisfied with her ignoble triumph, proceeded to make a fool of him.

Nothing pleased this Countess more than to bring her lovers together, to
watch with gloating eyes their rivalries, their jealousies, and their
quarrels, which frequently led to her crowning enjoyment--the shedding
of blood. And it was with this object that one day she induced Howard to
join her at a _petit souper_ at Spring Gardens, a favourite
pleasure-haunt of the day, near Charing Cross. The supper had scarcely
commenced when the _tete-a-tete_ was interrupted by the appearance of
none other than the "invincible Jermyn," one of the handsomest and most
notorious _roues_ of the day, a famous duellist, and one of my lady's
most ardent lovers.

Here was a prospect of amusement such as was dear to the heart of the
Countess, who, needless to say, had arranged the plot. Jermyn needed no
invitation to make a third at the feast of love. That was precisely
what he had come for; and although Howard played the host with admirable
dignity to the unwelcome intruder, Jermyn ignored his courtesy and
brought all his skill to bear on fanning the flames of his jealousy. He
flirted outrageously with the Countess, kept her in peals of laughter by
his sallies of wit and scarcely-veiled gibes at her companion, until
Howard was roused to such a pitch of silent fury that only the presence
of a lady restrained him from running the insolent intruder through with
his sword. Nothing would have delighted her ladyship more than such a
climax to the little play she was enjoying so much; but Howard, with
marvellous self-restraint, kept his temper within bounds and his sword
in its sheath.

Such an outrage, however, could not be passed over with impunity; and
before Jermyn had eaten his breakfast on the following morning, Howard's
friend and second, Colonel Dillon, was announced with a demand for
satisfaction--a demand which met with a prompt acquiescence from Jermyn,
who vowed he would "wipe the young puppy out." The duel took place in
the "Long Alley near St James's, called Pall Mall," and proved to be of
as sanguinary a nature as even the grossly-insulted Howard could have
desired.

On the 19th of August 1662, Pepys writes:--

"Mr Coventry did tell us of the duel between Mr Jermyn,
nephew to my Lord of St Alban's, and Colonel Giles
Rawlins, the latter of whom is killed, and the first
mortally wounded as it is thought. They fought against
Captain Thomas Howard, my Lord Carlisle's brother, and
another unknown; who, they say, had armour on that they
could not be hurt, so that one of their swords went up to
the hilt against it. They had horses ready and are fled.
But what is most strange, Howard sent one challenge
before, but they could not meet till yesterday at the old
Pall Mall at St James's; and he would not till the last
tell Jermyn what the quarrel was; nor do anybody know."

If no one else knew of the cause of the quarrel, certainly Jermyn did;
and never did man pay a more deserved penalty for dastardly behaviour.
Lady Shrewsbury's delight at thus ridding herself of two lovers, of both
of whom she seems to have grown weary, may be better imagined than
described. Although Jermyn was carried off the field of battle, to all
appearance a dead man, he survived until 1708 when he died, full of
years and wickedness, Baron Jermyn of Dover.

The Court, as Pepys records, was "much concerned in this fray"; but it
was long before Lady Shrewsbury's part in it came to light, to add to
the infamy which she had by that time heaped on herself. Her wayward
fancy next settled on a man of a different stamp to either Howard or
Jermyn. It seemed, indeed, to be her ambition to make her conquests as
varied as humanity itself. Her next victim was Harry Killigrew, one of
the most notorious profligates in London, a man of low birth and lower
tastes, a haunter of taverns, the terror of all decent women, and a
roystering swashbuckler, with a sword as ready to leap at a word as his
lips to snatch a kiss from a pretty mouth.

Such was my Lady Shrewsbury's successor to the aristocratic, high-minded
brother of Lord Carlisle. Killigrew's father was a well-known man of his
day, for he wore cap and bells at Charles's Court, and was privileged to
practise his clowning on King and courtier and maid-of-honour with no
heavier penalty than a box on the ears. The extreme licence he permitted
himself is proved by that joke at the expense of Louis XIV., which might
well have cost any other man his head. Louis, who always unbended to a
merry jester, was showing his pictures to Killigrew, when they came to a
painting of the Crucifixion, placed between portraits of the Pope and
the "Roi Soleil" himself. "Ah, Sire," said the Jester, as he struck an
attitude before the trio of canvases, "I knew that our Lord was
crucified between two thieves, but I never knew till now who they were."

Such was Tom Killigrew who kept Charles's Court alive by his pranks and
jests, and who is better remembered in our day as the man to whose
enterprise we owe Drury Lane Theatre and the Italian Opera; and it would
have been better for the world of his day if his son had been as decent
a man as himself. His fun, at least, was harmless, and his life, so far
as we know it, was reasonably clean. His son, however, was notorious as
the most foul-mouthed, evil-living man in London, whose very contact
was a pollution. Once Pepys, always eager for new experiences, was
inveigled into his company and that of the "jolly blades," who were his
boon companions; "but Lord!" the diarist says ingenuously, "their talk
did make my heart ache!"

That my Lady Shrewsbury should stoop to such a _liaison_ astonished even
those who knew how widely she cast her net, and how indiscriminating her
passion was in its quest for novelty. That such a man should boast of
his conquest over the beautiful Countess was inevitable. He published it
in every low tavern in London, gloating in his cups over "his lady's
most secret charms, concerning which more than half the Court knew quite
as much as he knew himself."

Among those to whom Killigrew thus boasted was the dissolute second Duke
of Buckingham, whose curiosity was so stimulated by what he heard that
he entered the lists himself, and quickly succeeded in ousting Killigrew
from his place in my lady's favour. To the tavern-sot thus succeeded the
most splendid noble in England, a man who, in his record of gallantry,
was no mean rival to the Countess herself. To be thus displaced by the
man to whom he had boasted his conquest was a bitter blow to the
libertine's vanity; to be cut dead by Lady Shrewsbury, who had no longer
any use for him, roused him to a frenzy of rage in which he assailed her
with the bitterest invectives; "painted a frightful picture of her
conduct, and turned all her charms, which he had previously extolled,
into defects." The Duke's warnings were powerless to stop his
vindictive tongue; even a severe thrashing, which resulted in Killigrew
begging abjectly for his life from his successful rival, failed to teach
him prudence. His slanders grew more and more venomous until they
brought on him a punishment which nearly cost him his life.

But before Killigrew's tongue was thus silenced, the wooing of the Duke
and the Countess was marred by a tragedy, to which our history happily
furnishes no parallel. The Countess's husband had hitherto looked on
with seeming indifference, while lover after lover succeeded each other
in his wife's favour. But even the Earl's long forbearance had its
limits; and these were reached when he saw the insolent coxcomb,
Buckingham, a man whom he had always detested, usurp his place. He
screwed up his laggard manhood to the pitch of challenging the Duke to a
duel, which took place one January morning in 1667, and of which Pepys
tells the following story:

"Much discourse of the duel yesterday between the Duke of Buckingham,
Holmes and one Jenkins, on one side, and my Lord Shrewsbury, Sir John
Talbot and one Bernard Howard, on the other side; and all about my Lady
Shrewsbury, who is at this time, and hath for a great while, been a
mistress to the Duke of Buckingham. And so her husband challenged him,
and they met yesterday in a close near Barne-Elmes, and there fought;
and my Lord Shrewsbury is run through the body, from the right breast
through the shoulder; and Sir John Talbot all along up one of his
armes; and Jenkins killed upon the place, and the rest all, in a little
measure, wounded. This will make the world think that the King hath good
Councillors about him, when the Duke of Buckingham, the greatest man
about him, is a fellow of no more sobriety than to fight about a
mistress."

It is said that the Countess, in the guise of a page, accompanied her
lover to the scene of this bloodthirsty duel; held his horse as, with
sparkling eyes, she saw her husband receive his death-blow; and, when
the foul deed was done, flung her arms around the assassin's neck in a
transport of gratitude and affection. Never surely since Judas sent his
Master to his death with a kiss has the world witnessed such an infamous
betrayal.

From the scene of this tragedy the Duke escorted the Countess-page to
his own home, where he installed her as his avowed mistress in the eyes
of the world, at the same time ordering the carriage which was to take
his outraged wife back to her father's house. Even in such an abandoned
and profligate Court as that of Charles II., the news of this dastardly
crime and Lady Shrewsbury's callous treachery was received with
execration, while a thrill of horror and fierce indignation ran through
the whole of England. But the Countess and her paramour smiled at the
storm they had brought on their heads, and with brazen insolence
flaunted their amour in the face of the world.

Now that the Countess's husband had been removed from their path the
shameless pair had time to attend to Killigrew, whose malicious tongue
must be silenced once for all. They hired bravos to track his footsteps,
and at a convenient moment to remove him from their path. The
opportunity came one day when it was learnt that Killigrew, who seemed
to know that his life was in danger and for a long time had evaded his
enemies successfully, intended to travel from town to his house at
Turnham Green late at night. His chaise was followed at a discreet
distance by my Lady Shrewsbury, who arrived on the scene just in time to
witness the prepared tragedy which was to crown her revenge. Killigrew,
who was sleeping in his chaise, awoke, to quote a contemporary account,

"by the thrust of a sword which pierced his neck and came
out at the shoulder. Before he could cry out he was flung
from the chaise, and stabbed in three other places by the
Countess's assassins, while the lady herself looked on
from her own coach and six, and cried out to the
murderers, 'Kill the villain!' Nor did she drive off till
he was thought dead."

The man whose murder she thus witnessed and encouraged was not, however,
Killigrew, as in the darkness she imagined, but his servant. Killigrew
himself, although severely wounded, was more fortunate in escaping with
his life. But the lesson he had received was so severe that for the rest
of his days he gave the Countess and her lover the widest of berths, and
retired into the obscurity in which alone he could feel safe from such
a revengeful virago. This second crime, like its predecessor, went
unpunished, so powerful was Buckingham, and so deep in the King's
favour; and he and the Countess were left in the undisturbed enjoyment
of their lust and their triumphs.

"Gallant and gay, in Clieveden's proud alcove,
The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love,"

the infamous pair defied the world, and crowned their ignominy by
standing together at the altar, where the Duke's chaplain made them one,
almost before the body of the Countess's husband (who had survived his
duel two months) was cold, and while the Duchess of Buckingham was, of
course, still alive. The Countess was not long before her brazen
effrontery carried her back to Court, where she took the lead in the
revels and at the gaming-tables, and made love to the "Merrie Monarch"
himself. Evelyn tells us that, during a visit to Newmarket, he

"found the jolly blades racing, dancing, feasting and
revelling, more resembling a luxurious and abandoned rout
than a Christian country. The Duke of Buckingham was in
mighty favour, and had with him that impudent woman, the
Countess of Shrewsbury, and his band of fiddlers."

It was only with the downfall of the Stuarts that this shameless
alliance came to an end, when Buckingham's reign of power was over, and
he was haled before the House of Lords to answer for his crimes. He and
the partner of his guilt were ordered to separate; and for this purpose
to enter into security to the King in the sum of L10,000 apiece. Thus
ignominiously closed one of the most infamous intrigues in history.
Buckingham, buffeted by fortune, rapidly fell, as the world knows, from
his pinnacle of power to the lowest depths of poverty, to end his days,
friendless and destitute, in a Yorkshire inn.

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