8 - Conclusion

Summary

[Lady Castlemaine] is fallen in love with young [Henry] Jermin, who hath of late lain with her oftener then the king and is now going to marry my Lady Falmouth. The king, he is mad at her entertaining Jermin, and she is mad at Jermin's going to marry from her, so they are all mad; and thus the kingdom is governed.

The sexual mores of Restoration courtiers and courtesans were, and are, well known. The king and his more notorious courtiers indulged in priapic pursuits with a number of mistresses and Charles himself begat a panoply of bastards. In the process the king wasted vast amounts of money and it seemed that he made himself vulnerable, largely through the pillow-talk influence of the Duchess of Portsmouth, to the nefarious influence of Louis XIV. One (not atypical) attack on Portsmouth listed twenty-two charges relating to treason and high misdemeanour which included: cohabiting and keeping company with Charles; working to introduce Popery and tyranny to Britain; converting servants to her faith; nourishing the alliance between England and France; trying to convince the king that the Popish Plot was a sham plot; meddling in other matters of government; placing and displacing ministers in church and state; and spending prodigious sums of money. Evidently, to de-sex the Restoration court would be grossly to misrepresent important anxieties at the heart of the Restoration polity. It has been the intention of this book, however, to place such behaviour within the varied spectrum of other manifestations of court culture.

So far we have seen a lively culture characterized by disagreement and dissatisfaction, by advice and challenges offered by court figures of differing roles and natures. Even those paid to celebrate the late Stuart monarchy often took the opportunity to glance quizzically or contemptuously at the king, his intimates and advisers and his policies. Those at court free from the constraints of patronage could be even more vociferous and brutal in their deconstruction, corrosion and destabilization of the Restoration monarchy.