Free The Kings' Mistresses by Elizabeth Goldsmith Page A

been informed of his recall to France and the arrival of his replacement Paul Barrillon at about the same time that Marie-Sidonie had arrived in London. Courtin wrote a rueful letter to the French minister Pomponne: “Madame de Courcelles arrived here two days ago; England is the refuge of all women who have quarreled with their husbands; it will be a fine affair for Monsieur de Barrillon.” 22

    Social life in the “little palace” was only the livelier without Courtin’s daily presence in the library. But it was a period of increasing hostility toward Catholics in England, and by extension toward French and Italian residents there. The pope was routinely burned in effigy. Protestant Parliament was hostile to the king’s policies promoting religious tolerance, and there was great anxiety about the succession to the throne. Charles had no legitimate children and the heir apparent, his brother James, was Catholic and married to a Catholic of French and Italian origin. Between 1678 and 1681 hysteria mounted surrounding a supposed Catholic conspiracy to assassinate Charles II, with accusations of this “popish plot” brought by Titus Oates, a Protestant clergyman. At first Charles dismissed the accusations as ridiculous but was pressured by Parliament into hearing them. Before it all came to an end in 1681, with Oates arrested and convicted of perjury, fifteen people were falsely tried and executed.
    Many highly placed foreign Catholics found themselves threatened by accusations of complicity in this fictitious conspiracy, among them the Duchess Mazarin. In November 1678, Barrillon wrote Louis XIV, “I think that Your Majesty will learn with some surprise that Madame Mazarin was named today by Oates as an accomplice in the schemes formed against the state and religion. The King of England mocked this accusation and spoke to me of it as something that was utterly ridiculous. But he says the same of the Lords who are in the Tower and have been tried by the courts.” 23
    Among those tried and executed was Edward Coleman, secretary to Hortense’s cousin Mary Beatrice of Modena. Charles attempted to dismiss most of the accusations, but he was unable to protect Catholic noblemen from exclusion from the House of Lords. It was not easy to count on his protection, so Hortense considered her other options. She was in contact throughout this period with her sister Marie, by now in Madrid, living in a convent where she
was considered a secular pensioner who could leave at will, and where she felt comfortably connected to the court of Spain. For a few months it seemed that Hortense’s best course of action might be to join her sister in Madrid. Her friend Saint-Evremond sent her a letter railing against convents, even liberal ones, and pleading with her to abandon such a notion. Even the pleasure of reuniting with her sister, he wrote her, would be short-lived; they would reminisce for a few days and then she might easily find that further conversation would be forbidden her, for after all, he warned, “one of the rules in a convent is that pleasurable contacts must not be sustained. . . . After you have spoken for three or four days about France and Italy, after you have talked about the King’s passion and the weakness of your uncle Mazarin, of what you thought you would be and what you have become, . . . of your flight from Rome and the unhappy successes of your travels, you will find yourselves locked in a convent.” 24
    Saint-Evremond’s eloquence may have worked its magic: Hortense did not leave England. A few months later Oates was thrown in prison, and those friends who were counseling the duchess to leave to avoid persecution were relieved.
    Over the next several years Hortense resumed her pleasurable life, punctuated by what had become her almost routine appeals for the restitution of her dowry. Money continued to be her biggest challenge. The “Mazarine” salon