The Weaker Vessel: Woman's Lot in Seventeenth-Century England (54 page)

There was that Cornet Wroth who, dining with Sir Robert Vyner at his country house, took the opportunity to carry off an heiress named Miss Hyde in a coach after dinner. When a wheel broke, the egregious Cornet was still not checked: he put the girl across his horse and got as far as the Putney ferry, where another coach-and-six awaited, before his pursuers finally caught up with him. The girl, speechless after her ordeal, was recovered; but Cornet Wroth escaped. In February 1680 the mere rumour that one of Lady Tirrell’s daughters possessed a considerable fortune was enough to encourage certain ‘robbers’ to break into her house in Buckinghamshire. The motive, it was explained afterwards, was not robbery at all, but the desire to lay hands on Miss Tirrell. One of the housebreakers, fearing not to be able to accomplish his design by ordinary means, ‘did endeavour to have carried her away under some crafty pretence and to have married her’.
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Matters had not really progressed very far since the presumptuous Roger Fulwood abducted the schoolgirl Sara Cox from Newington Common in the reign of Charles I (see p.27).

The matrimonial affairs of ‘my lady Ogle’ were on an even more sensational level, owing to the particular combination of enormous wealth and high position in society. John Evelyn quoted a contemporary opinion: she was ‘one that both by birth and fortune might have pretended to the greatest prince in Christendom’. This child’s father was Joceline Percy, eleventh and last Earl of Northumberland of the ancient Percy creation. Her mother, Elizabeth Wriothesley, Countess of Northumberland – ‘a beautiful lady indeed,’ wrote Pepys goggling at her in court in 1667 – was seldom mentioned without some allusion to her celebrated looks.
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Certainly Lely’s portrait of her among the Hampton Court beauties shows an angelic blonde docility; an
impression borne out by the blameless quality of her personal life. A daughter of the Earl of Southampton by his second marriage, Lady Northumberland was one of the co-heiresses of the Southampton fortune with her step-sisters Rachel Lady Russell and Lady Noel. But through her mother, a Leigh, who had been the sole heiress of
her
father, the Earl of Chichester, Lady Northumberland was also extremely rich in her own right. Elizabeth Percy was her only surviving child.

At the death of the Earl of Northumberland in 1670, it was possible to see in Elizabeth Percy merely a little red-headed girl of three years old. More romantically, one could see in her ‘the last of the Percies’ (she inherited all those ancient resonant Percy baronies which could pass through the female line). It was also possible to envisage this small child as a prize to be captured. On the whole society took the latter view.

Still in her early twenties and quite apart from her beauty said to be worth £6,000 a year, Lady Northumberland was also now herself a natural target for a stream of suitors. In September 1671 bold Harry Savile found himself staying at Althorp at the same time as the lovely widow. Finding her door open, he entered in his nightgown, went right up to her bedside, and started to call ‘Madam! Madam!’ until Lady Northumberland awoke. He then acquainted her with the passion he had long nourished for her but had somehow been unable to confess in the hours of day-light. Lady Northumberland, in a fright, called her women, and Harry Savile was advised to leave Althorp as soon as possible. He did so, and subsequently went abroad rather than fight the duel which would have been proposed to avenge Lady Northumberland’s honour.
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Thereafter the young Lady Northumberland resided chiefly in Paris, her valuable affections having been secured by Ralph Montagu, Charles II’s Ambassador to the French court, who married her three years after her first husband’s death. In 1696 Francis Viscount Shannon would dedicate the second edition of his
Discourses and Essays
, in which he strongly advocated against marrying for ‘mere love’, to Lady Northumberland, then keeping herself ‘in a kind of religious retirement’; but there seems to have
been something of love implicit in the widow’s selection, for the unprincipled but fascinating Ralph Montagu had the knack of attracting the opposite sex. Ralph Montagu’s motives were more cynical and the marriage was not a very happy one, any more than Lady Northumberland enjoyed her sojourn in France. Here the tart wit of Madame de Sévigné found an ideal target in the appearance of this famous English beauty – her features were not good, she looked surprisingly old and careworn and in case her dress might be supposed to atone for these defects:
‘elle est avec cela mal habillée, point de grâce’
.
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One of Lady Northumberland’s problems abroad was not understanding the French language; one hopes that as a result she was at least spared knowledge of Madame de Sévigné’s chauvinist criticism.

Meanwhile at home the child Elizabeth Percy fell into the care of her strong-minded paternal grandmother, widow of Algernon, tenth Earl of Northumberland. (She was his second wife; Lady Anne Cecil, that bride he had insisted on marrying for love, had died in 1637). Indeed, old Lady Northumberland seized the opportunity of her daughter-in-law’s second marriage to insist that the marrying off of Elizabeth Percy was to be her, grandmother’s, sole concern.
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The younger woman, being of a far gender character, made no exaggerated counter-claim but protested that it was very hard that her own child ‘should be disposed of without her consent’ – especially since Elizabeth Percy ‘if she had no other children must be her heir’. In the end some kind of accommodation was reached between the two Countesses of Northumberland on this important subject, by which the ladies both agreed not to marry off the girl without each other’s consent – and without her consent as well. (It was also incidentally agreed that Elizabeth Percy should not be married below the age of legal consent.)

Nevertheless it was the old Countess, a redoubtable and scheming character, who in effect won out, since she retained control of the girl in England. The first match she arranged, in 1679, when Elizabeth Percy was only twelve, had at least the merit of dynastic suitability: this was with the thirteen-year-old Lord Ogle, heir to the Duke of Newcastle. Immediately on
marriage, he assumed the surname of Percy. Dorothy Countess of Sunderland, however, thought him ‘as ugly as anything young can be’.
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Either for this or some more worldly reason connected with old Lady Northumberland’s intrigues and Elizabeth Percy’s tender age, her mother did not approve of the match. This led to a quarrel between young Lady Northumberland and the new Lady Ogle.

Rachel Lady Russell, Lady Northumberland’s wise step-sister, tried to effect a reconciliation between the two in a letter to her niece on the subject of her marriage: ‘You have my prayers and wishes, dear Lady Ogle, that it may prove as fortunate to you as ever it did to any and that you may know happiness to a good old age; but, Madam, I cannot think you can be completely so, with a misunderstanding between so near a relation as a mother …’ Lady Russell begged Lady Ogle to seek her mother’s pardon. After all Lady Northumberland’s advice had had but ‘one aim and end … your being happy’.
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But Lady Ogle did not enjoy happiness to a good old age, at least not just yet, and not with this bridegroom.

A few months later Lord Ogle died. What was to happen to ‘my Lady Ogle’ now? Rumours abounded, correspondence of the period avidly reported the latest supposed developments in her situation as though the fate of ‘my lady Ogle’ was some major matter of State. Everyone was talking ‘about Lord Ogle’s death and Lady Ogle’s position’.
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The person soon selected for Lady Ogle by old Lady Northumberland was Thomas Thynne Esquire of Longleat Hall in Wiltshire, and some kind of contract between the two was signed. This produced consternation in more than one quarter. The match was not considered worthy of Lady Ogle by the world at large, she whose name had been coupled with a bridegroom as august as the Prince of Hanover. Nor was Mr Thynne himself a specially savoury character, having seduced another girl under promise of marriage, before abandoning her for the lure of Lady Ogle. Lord Essex, Lady Ogle’s uncle by marriage, believed that her grandmother had ‘betrayed’ her ‘for money’; the Earl of Kingston or Lord Cranborne (Lord Salisbury’s heir) would have
been far more suitable.
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Another unsavoury participant in the whole affair was the financier Richard Brett, who was rewarded by Thynne with valuable property for helping to bring about the ‘sale’ of Lady Ogle; Brett’s wife being a connection of the heiress.
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As for Lady Ogle herself, it was said that ‘the contract she lately signed rises in her stomach’. It may be that Lady Ogle had encountered a powerful counter-attraction in the shape of the handsome Count Königsmarck, who had been paying her court. At this point the drama increased when Lady Ogle herself vanished from her grandmother’s house. On 10 November 1681, as Sir Charles Hatton wrote excitedly, no one yet knew with whom or to where she had fled. But it was generally believed that ‘she went away to avoid Mr Thynne, whom she sometimes [that is, previously] married’. This marriage, which took place in the summer, had not been consummated before Lady Ogle’s flight. There was now a rumour that it would be made void and that Lady Ogle would be wedded to George Fitzroy, one of Barbara Duchess of Cleveland’s sons by Charles II, who had recently been granted that Northumberland title which had become extinct at Lady Ogle’s father’s death.
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The next stage of the drama took place when Mr Thomas Thynne, the unsuccessful husband – or suitor – of Lady Ogle was shot by a posse of Count Königsmarck’s men; with five bullets in his belly he died next morning. Now the furore reached new heights. Had there been a duel? Duelling was against the law, and the King did all he could to enforce the prohibition but it was at the same time a recognized social procedure where honour was concerned. Murder hardly came into the same category. Count Königsmarck’s men tried to maintain that one of them – a Pole – had challenged Mr Thynne to a duel, but unfortunately this man was known to have asked the Swedish Ambassador the night before ‘whether if Mr Thynne was removed, his master might not marry the Lady Ogle according to the law of England’. The girl Thynne had betrayed was said to have played some part in the conspiracy, hence the satirical epitaph:

Here lies Tom Thynne of Longleat Hall

Who never would have miscarried,

Had he married the woman he lay withal;

Or laid with the woman he married.
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The responsibility of the Count himself – who had fled – was another much debated point.

In fact the Count only got as far as Gravesend where he was found in a boat ‘disguised in a poor habit’. He was taken to Newgate and subsequently put on trial. However, his men loyally stuck to the story that there had been a challenge to a duel. It had actually been refused but one of their number, ‘the Polander’, had failed to appreciate this fact and thus fired the fatal shot.
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So the Count was acquitted. (His men were hanged.)

None of this of course had improved the Count’s chances of marrying Lady Ogle although, imperviously, he did renew his suit. In any case on 30 May 1682, the exciting chase was ended. Steps had been taken earlier in the year to render the Thynne marriage contract void at the Court of the King’s Bench. In May Lady Ogle was married to the nineteen-year-old Charles Seymour, sixth Duke of Somerset. No one could deny that that was a splendid match: the latest bridegroom was dark and handsome, generous and cultivated. His only defect – an overweening arrogance on the subject of his ancestry, which led to his being termed ‘the Proud Duke of Somerset’ – was perhaps not such a defect after all for one who was herself ‘the last of the Percies’. It showed tact on the part of the new Duchess that she did not finally hold the Proud Duke’ to that promise which was part of the marriage contract, to change his surname from Seymour to Percy.

So the former Elizabeth Percy, Lady Ogle, lived in splendour for forty years as Duchess of Somerset, bearing her husband thirteen children, and ornamenting the court of William and Mary. Later her political influence was feared by the Tories under Queen Anne, when she became First Lady of the Bedchamber following the fall of Sarah Duchess of Marlborough. This incurred for her the enmity of Swift and thus was her red hair (and her dramatic past) angrily mocked:

Beware of carrots from Northumberland;

Carrots sown Thynne a deep root may get,

If so be they are in Somer set.
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For all the
Sturm und Drang
which had surrounded the early years of ‘my lady Ogle’, it is appropriate to note that her aunt Rachel Lady Russell, the tragic much admired heroine of the same period, was herself an heiress and as such made a supremely happy marriage. It was possible in the second half of the seventeenth century, as it had been in the first, for love to flourish under rich bedcovers. The sorrows which came to Lady Russell, came from her husband’s political convictions and his defeat at the hands of the established order. Her pleasures were on the contrary produced by her acceptance of the rules of society, within which framework she brought her own remarkable character and intelligence to play.

Rachel Wriothesley was born in 1636, the daughter of the Earl of Southampton by his first wife, a French Protestant noblewoman named Rachel de Ruvigny. Where her education was concerned, like her future sisters-in-law the Ladies Diana and Margaret Russell, she benefited from a domestic chaplain, Dr Fitzwilliam; at the age of seventeen she was married to Lord Vaughan, heir to the Earl of Carbery, a match later referred to as ‘acceptance without choosing on either side’. In later years Lady Russell would describe herself as having been at this period fond of ‘a great dinner and worldly talk’, following a sermon which was not too long.
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The only child of this marriage was born and died in 1665, in which year died also Lord Vaughan.