Why write about the Stuarts?  Well, they were the Kennedys of the seventeenth century. Attractive, powerful, marked by tragedy. For a novelist, they are a glittering temptation of a subject.  But the long, grinding years of exile cast a long shadow over their later history.

Did that put me off?  On the contrary, I have long been fascinated by the period when Charles the Second and his court were in exile in Europe, from 1649 to 1660.   During this time, Charles and his court hung on at the edges of his relatives’ courts in France and the Netherlands, often unwelcome.  It was a time that tested characters.

On one side, Charles and his brother James were condemned for their laddish behaviour. (At the end of 1648, the two brothers behaved badly at the court of the Prince of Orange, demanding that they take precedence over their host, and refusing to eat with those they considered beneath them). On the other hand, as time went on and their circumstances worsened, their characters softened, and they became much more sympathetic. I take the period of exile from the death of Charles the First, when his heir first learnt he was King by his chaplain addressing him as “Your Majesty”. The young Charles then dissolved into tears.  It is touching to realise how much Charles I’s family loved him, and the mark that his death made on all of them.

Shakespeare’s play “As You Like It” has been seen by historians as a metaphor for Charles’s exile.  He is likened to the exiled Duke, living in the magical Forest of Arden.  It is this dreamlike quality which I find fascinating.  There is no doubt that Charles and his court lived for some of the time in a pleasurable limbo, where dancing, music and hunting were engaged in with passion, as were affairs of the heart. But there were also times when he struggled to keep any form of court going. In my books, I have a running joke about the quality of the wine the courtiers drink. Most of them were not paid and had to support themselves. My protagonist earns his keep from acting as an escort to wealthy but lonely women.

There was no secure future.   Looking forward a few months, the exiles could have found themselves back in the splendour of Whitehall, or dead on an English battlefield. What was possibly even worse, they might have been inexorably relegated, as time went on, to insignificance and poverty. No wonder they escaped into living for the day. Here were a number of young, good-looking aristocrats facing a fearful future. Is it any surprise that the licentiousness which marked Charles II’s later Restoration court started in exile?

At this time, spies were suspected of lurking at every corner.  Both Charles and the Parliament used spies.  And who was to know whether a fellow Englishman or woman was exactly who they said they were?  The idea that many had something to hide has intrigued me.  While they were hiding their political allegiances, who was to say they weren’t hiding anything else?   There was always the threat of assassination. As writer, I revel in this high-stakes game where death is always in the background.  At times, I’ve felt I was writing a farcical seventeenth-century version of “You Only Live Twice.”

Domestically, family relationships were very important during this period, and they are the stuff of fiction. Daughter of France, Queen Henrietta Maria had by birthright a place at the palace of the Louvre. But her sons did not. For much of this time, they were dependent on her for their keep.  This inevitably led to tensions. Charles undoubtedly loved his mother.

But her interventions were often irritating and unwelcome. He was alarmed when he was told that she was trying to convert his younger brother Henry to Catholicism. He immediately intervened to stop her plan, despite her recriminations. I believe she found it hard to accept that her dissolute son was now King, in the place of her beloved husband. She would tend to judge Charles by the yardsticks of his father, her Catholic faith, and her motherly hopes.

Understandably, she was always pro-French, and it must have been very hard for both mother and son when Louis XIV’s minister, Cardinal Mazarin, made a treaty with the English Parliament.  One of the conditions was that the French could no longer shelter Charles. And so, funded by a payout from the French, Charles and his court made their way to Spa, Aachen and eventually Cologne.

There were many tensions between the royal family and the advisers who surrounded Charles. Queen Henrietta Maria hated Edward Hyde, the hard-headed loyalist who helped form much of Charles’s policies and politics during that time.

Prince James, the Duke of York, had fled from captivity in England to join his brother.  He was unwilling to pass the time as a hanger-on at someone else’s court. As he often did in the future, he decided to follow his own path, serving with distinction in the French army. I found this an interesting example of someone who adapted to the situation and forged his own independent career. I wonder if he was happier at this point in his life than ever before not having to perpetually take second place to his brother?

Unfortunately, the French treaty with Parliament meant that James was no longer able to pursue his career in their army. This loss must have been very hard for him to bear, as he then returned to his subordinate role in his brother’s court. But he pursued his destiny in other ways. He fell in love with Edward Hyde’s daughter, and when she became pregnant stood out against immense pressure to marry her shortly after the Restoration.

The period of exile was marked by strong women. Charles and James depended on the support of their mother, and of their sister Mary, Princess of Orange. Then there was Lucy Walter, who bore Charles possibly his first illegitimate child. Lucy was hot-tempered and devoted to her son. She was involved in several emotional scenes at court, which embarrassed other members of the family. Indeed, Henrietta Maria was incandescent with fury when she discovered Lucy squatting in a room in the Louvre, to try to extract some financial support from the penniless Charles.

The period of exile enabled the Cavaliers to rethink the way they would govern, should they return to power. Charles and James had both experienced hardship and known ordinary people. During exile, Charles had negotiations with both the Scottish and the Irish.  In the end, he was returned to power by the actions of a Parliamentary commander, General Monck. He realised that his hopes of regaining and keeping the throne depended on a coalition which included loyalists, other nations and those who had supported the Parliament.  During this time, both Charles and James were exposed to thinkers from all denominations, from the Catholics to the Nonconformists. Ideas of tolerance and forgiveness for fellow citizens grew in the exiled court. They realised that their one-time enemies had, like them, suffered terrible losses as a result of the Civil War. Religious beliefs, political theories and old loyalties were subordinated to peace. As the indomitable Edward Hyde noted:

“The King himself, who had so much experience of the miseries of proscription and banishment, was sensible to the benefit of peace and reconciliation.”

 

I have referred to many books and articles, but the main ones are:

“King Charles II” by Antonia Fraser

“Charles II” by Ronald Hutton

“The Private Life of James II” by Justine Brown

“James II” by John Miller

Caroline Willcocks is an author, podcaster, and history nerd, based in rural Herefordshire. She has a background in theatre, journalism and charity work, focusing on women’s and refugee issues. Caroline writes historical fiction, notably the Tudor Queens series. She is now immersed in the wonderfully dashing Stuarts and has just published the first novel in a series called “Exiled Cavaliers: Of Shadows, Love and Lust”, where she enters a world of uncertainty, danger and romance. Her writing explores human emotions within historical settings.