DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51519#0098
80
THE DUCHESS OF CLEVELAND.
unfortunately cut off.” He married Mary, third daughter of Paul,
Viscount Bayning, by whom he left an only daughter and heiress,
Barbara Villiers, afterwards Duchess of Cleveland.
Of the early life and education of this too celebrated woman, I
have not been able to collect any authentic information. She
married, at the age of eighteen, Boger Palmer, Esq., a gentleman
of fortune, and loyal adherent of the exiled King. Her first
acquaintance with Charles probably commenced in Holland, whither
she accompanied her husband in 1059, when he carried to the King
a considerable sum of money to aid in his restoration, and assisted
him also by his personal services. But her connexion with Charles
cannot be traced with any certainty before the very day of his
entrance into London: on the evening of that day, Charles, instead
of sleeping in the palace of his ancestors, to which he had just
been restored, skulked away privately to the house of Sir Samuel
Morland, at Vauxhall, where he had an assignation with Mrs.
Palmer.
That an accomplished prince, in the prime of life, skilled in all
the arts that ensnare her sex,—the sovereign for whose sake her
father had fought and bled; whom she had just seen restored—
miraculously restored, as it was then believed,—to the throne of
his fathers, welcomed to his capital with almost delirious joy, and
who, in such a moment, threw himself and his new-found kingdom
at her feet, should have conquered the heart and triumphed over
the virtue of a woman so vain and volatile, is not marvellous: she
was only nineteen, and thrown by the blind confidence or time-
serving carelessness of her husband, into the very way of tempta-
tion. Thus far her frailty, if not excusable, might have been
pardoned, if the end had not proved that personal affection for the
King had little to do with her lapse from virtue, and that, in short,
she was more of a Montespan that a La Valliere, more of an
Alice Pierce than a Jane Shore.
In a few months after the Restoration, Palmer was created an
THE DUCHESS OF CLEVELAND.
unfortunately cut off.” He married Mary, third daughter of Paul,
Viscount Bayning, by whom he left an only daughter and heiress,
Barbara Villiers, afterwards Duchess of Cleveland.
Of the early life and education of this too celebrated woman, I
have not been able to collect any authentic information. She
married, at the age of eighteen, Boger Palmer, Esq., a gentleman
of fortune, and loyal adherent of the exiled King. Her first
acquaintance with Charles probably commenced in Holland, whither
she accompanied her husband in 1059, when he carried to the King
a considerable sum of money to aid in his restoration, and assisted
him also by his personal services. But her connexion with Charles
cannot be traced with any certainty before the very day of his
entrance into London: on the evening of that day, Charles, instead
of sleeping in the palace of his ancestors, to which he had just
been restored, skulked away privately to the house of Sir Samuel
Morland, at Vauxhall, where he had an assignation with Mrs.
Palmer.
That an accomplished prince, in the prime of life, skilled in all
the arts that ensnare her sex,—the sovereign for whose sake her
father had fought and bled; whom she had just seen restored—
miraculously restored, as it was then believed,—to the throne of
his fathers, welcomed to his capital with almost delirious joy, and
who, in such a moment, threw himself and his new-found kingdom
at her feet, should have conquered the heart and triumphed over
the virtue of a woman so vain and volatile, is not marvellous: she
was only nineteen, and thrown by the blind confidence or time-
serving carelessness of her husband, into the very way of tempta-
tion. Thus far her frailty, if not excusable, might have been
pardoned, if the end had not proved that personal affection for the
King had little to do with her lapse from virtue, and that, in short,
she was more of a Montespan that a La Valliere, more of an
Alice Pierce than a Jane Shore.
In a few months after the Restoration, Palmer was created an