Free Courtiers: The Secret History of the Georgian Court by Lucy Worsley Page A

beautiful Maids of Honour. I’ve selected the stories of just seven of them to illuminate the strange phenomenon of the Georgian court and to give a new perspective upon the lives of the kings, queens and princes inhabiting the rarefied court stratosphere above their heads.
    *
     
    While the monarchy was slowly sinking in status throughout the eighteenth century, the glamour of the court still attracted the pretty, the witty, the pushy and the powerful.
    But although Kensington Palace teemed with ambitious and clever people in search of fame and fashion, it was also a lonely place, and courtiers and servants alike often found themselves weary and heart-sore. Success in their world demanded a level head and a cold heart; secrets were never safe. A courtier had to keep up appearances in the face of gambling debts, loss of office or even unwanted pregnancy.
    Thousands longed to be part of the court, but John Hervey, one of our seven, knew all too well that danger lay hidden behind the palace walls.
    ‘I do not know any people in the world’, he wrote to a courtier colleague, ‘so much to be pitied as that gay young company with which you and I stand every day in the drawing-room.’ 4

    Notes
     
    1 . Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, Letters written by the late right honourable Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, to his son Philip Stanhope, esq. , published by Mrs Eugenia Stanhope, Vol. 1 (London, 1774), p. 442.
    2 . W. S. Lewis (Ed.), The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence (Oxford, 1937–83) Vol. 9, p. 202.
    3 . William A. Shaw (Ed.), Calendar of Treasury Books (January–December 1716) (London, 1957) pp. 321–2.
    4 . Hervey (1931), Vol. 2, p. 625.

ONE
     

To the Palace

     
    ‘Really, it must be confessed that a court is a fine thing. It is the cause of so much show and splendour that people are kept gay and spirited.’ 1
    (James Boswell, 1763)
     

     

TWO
     

The Petulant Prince

     
    ‘Ungodly papers every week
Poor simple souls persuade
That courtiers good for nothing are
Or but for mischief made.’ 1
    (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu)
     
     

     

THREE
     

The Pushy Painter

     
    ‘Courts are the best keys to characters: there every passion is busy, every art exerted.’ 1
    (Lord Chesterfield) 
     

     

FOUR
     

The Wild Boy

     
    ‘The best Court-talent in the world is Silence.’ 1
    (Lord Berkeley of Stratton, 1760)
     

     

FIVE
     

The Neglected Equerry

     
    ‘An unfortunate man as I am is glad to catch at any glimpse of happiness.’ 1
    (Peter Wentworth, 1718)
     

     

SIX
     

The Women of the Bedchamber

     
    ‘In courts … the affections of the heart are as much conceal’d as its substance.’ 1
    (Lord Berkeley of Stratton)
     

     

SEVEN
     

The Favourite and His Foe

     
    ‘You and I know enough of courts not to be amaz’d at any turns they may take.’ 1
    (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu)
     

     

EIGHT
     

The Queen’s Secret

     
    ‘May Caroline continue long 
For ever fair and young! – in song.
… the royal carcass must, 
Squeezed in a coffin, turn to dust.’ 1
(Jonathan Swift) 
     

     

NINE
     

The Rival Mistresses

     
    ‘A man at his time of day to be playing these youthful pranks, and fancying himself in love, was quite ridiculous.’ 1
    (John Hervey)
     

     

TEN
     

The Circle Breaks

     
    ‘I now behold only a withering King.’ 1
    (Horace Walpole)
     

     

ELEVEN
     

The Survivors

     
    ‘I had lost all taste for courts and princes and power.’ 1
(Horace Walpole)
     

     

Acknowledgements

     
     

     

 
     
    Firstly, I would like to single out a group of eighteenth-century historians – Jeremy Black, Tracy Borman, John Brewer, Bob Bucholz, Clarissa Campbell Orr, Isobel Grundy, Joanna Marschner, Lucy Moore and Stella Tillyard – whose books have given me so much information and inspiration. Above all, Hannah Smith’s Georgian Monarchy seems to me to be the most rigorous and refreshing re-examination of early Georgian