It is impossible to account, in many cases, for the strange and extraordinary freaks of bygone sovereigns on any other ground than eccentricity or madness. It is true that Charles the Fat used to excuse himself for the atrocities into which he plunged, by asserting that he was possessed of a devil, but this, of course, was in banter rather than sincerity. But, whatever the motives which prompted such peculiar vagaries on the part of certain monarchs, foibles of this kind, if not instructive, are certainly amusing.
Thus it is related of Marie Casimire, wife of Sobieski, King of Poland, that one of her amusements was to let herself be drenched by the rain, although at the time she might be magnificently dressed. On one occasion, when Monsieur le Comte de Teil, Conseiller du Parlement de Paris, who had been sent to Poland by the King of England, happened to be near the Queen when it rained very heavily, she said to him, “Monsieur l’Envoi, let us take a walk”—a request which he did not dare to refuse. He wore on that day a fine wig; nevertheless he endured the rain for some time, and then said to her, “Madam, your Majesty is getting wet.{11}” “Say, rather,” answered the Queen, “that you are learning how to spoil your fine wig,” and she continued walking in the rain maliciously a full half-hour.
This, however, was a comparatively trivial and harmless amusement compared with the cruel and outrageous freaks of the Russian Emperor, Ivan IV., who has been described as “one of the most savage, yet one of the most enlightened monarchs that ever reigned.” He was only in his teens when he had one of his attendants worried to death by dogs on the public highway; and in one of the so-called frolicsome moods he would let slip wild bears among the affrighted citizens in the streets, and would calmly say his prayers whilst gazing at the slaughter, making compensation “for any irregularity in the matter by flinging a few coins to the wounded after he rose from his knees.” It is even said that Ivan went so far in his insane freaks as to compel parents to slay their children, and children one another; and where there was a survivor, “the amiable monarch, if he was not too weary, would slay him himself, and would laugh at this conclusion to so excellent a joke.” It is not surprising that partial madness eventually overtook him, for what can be said of a ruler who is reported to have sent to the city of Moscow “to provide for him a measure full of fleas for a medicine.” They answered it was impossible; and if they could get them, yet they could not measure them, because of their leaping out. Upon which he set a mulct upon the city of 7000 roubles.{12}
But Ivan IV. was not the only Russian monarch who indulged in freaks of an irrational nature, although his successors did not stoop to the same cruelty. In the case of Peter III. intemperance has been assigned as the probable cause of some of the absurd actions with which his name has been associated in contemporary memoirs. Rulhière, for instance, who was an eye-witness of the Revolution of the year 1762, tells us that his military mania knew no bounds; he wished that a perpetual noise of cannon should give him in representation a foretaste of war. Accordingly, he one day gave orders that one hundred large pieces of cannon should be fired simultaneously, so that he might have some idea of the noise of battle. And it was necessary, in order to prevent the execution of this whim, to represent to him that such an act would shake the city to the centre. Oftentimes he would rise from table to prostrate himself on his knees, with a glass in his hand, before a portrait of Frederick of Prussia, exclaiming, “My brother, we will conquer the universe together.”
In some instances the conduct of the Russian Emperor Paul was most eccentric, and his vagaries were so extraordinary that they have been explained on the theory of madness. One of the most curious stories about him is related by Kotzebue. He was summoned into the presence of the Emperor, who said to him in German, “You know the world too well not to be adequately informed about political occurrences, and must, therefore, have learned how I have figured in it. I have often{13} made rather a foolish exhibition of myself, and,” continued he, laughing, “it’s right that I should be punished, and I have imposed on myself a chastisement. I want this”—he held a paper in his hand—“to be inserted in the Hamburg Gazette and other newspapers.” He then took him confidentially by the arm, and read to him the following paper which he had written in French:—
“On apprend de Petersbourg que l’Empereur de Russie voyant que les puissances de l’Europe ne pouvoit s’accorder entre elle et voulant mettre fin à une guerre qui la desoloit depuis onse ans vouloit proposer un lieu ou il inviteroit touts les autres souverains de se rendre et y combattre en champ clos ayant avec eux pour ecuyer juge de camp, et héros d’armes leurs ministres les plus éclairés et les generaux les plus habiles tels que Messrs. Thugust, Pitt, Bernstoff, lui même se proposant de prendre avec lui les generaux C. de Palen et Kutusof, on ne s?ait si on doit y ajouter foi, toute fois la chose ne paroit pas destituée de fondement en portant l’empreinte de ce dont il a souvent été taxé.”[3]
We may compare this eccentricity with that of Charles I. of England, who would bind himself to a particular line of conduct by a secret obligation. One day he drew aside Dr. Sheldon, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, and placed in his hands a paper which detailed certain measures he proposed to adopt for the glory of God and for the advancement of the Church, intimating that he “had privately bound himself by the most awful vow to{14} ensure their accomplishment.” And one particular obligation which the document contained was to perform public penance for the injustice he had been guilty of to Lord Strafford, in consenting to his death. In delivering this paper to Dr. Sheldon, Charles solemnly conjured him to remind him of his contract, should he hereafter ever find him in a condition to perform any one of the articles which it contained.
In his moments of irritation Peter the Great, like William III. of England, would not hesitate to strike the person who had given him offence, whatever might be his rank; and, as his Majesty was easily upset, he was at times very lavish of his blows. His subjects, it is said, did not consider a blow from the Emperor an affront, and thought themselves honoured by an apology. But this was not the case with foreigners, for Le Blond, a French architect whom the Czar had invited into his dominions, having received the stroke of a cane in the first transport of imperial anger, took it so much to heart that he sickened of a fever and died.
The Czar Nicholas was fond of frightening or fascinating people by his eyes, and it is said that one of his terrible glances once terrified a Swedish admiral into the Russian service. On another occasion, we are told how happening to encounter a poor fellow who had strolled into the private part of the Imperial Park, Nicholas gazed at him with so fierce a glance that the trespasser was stricken with brain-fever. This strange peculiarity of the Czar reminds us of Augustus, who, according to{15} Suetonius, was always well pleased with those persons who, when addressing him, looked upon the ground, as though there were a divine splendour in his eyes, too dazzling for them to gaze upon.
Eric XIV. of Sweden in early life was stunned by a violent fall, a circumstance which, it is said, in after years accounted for his lack of judgment, and occasional eccentricity of conduct. His highly suspicious turn of mind made him at times morose, and almost maniacal, causing him to interpret “the most natural and insignificant of gestures as some dreadful telegraphing of hideous treason. At such seasons his violence was frantic, and, after a day marked by acts of frightful outrage, he would make record against himself in his journal that he had sinned, and would then start to commit further crime.” By a terrible irony of fate, when deposed by his brother John, he was thrown into a horrible dungeon, and “there were placed over him men whom he had offended, and who claimed to be avenged. The vengeance which they exacted was diabolical, for they aggravated as far as in them lay the horrors of his position—one of them fastening to his crippled limbs a mass of iron which may yet be seen in the museum at Abo.”[4] But can this be wondered at, when it is remembered how Eric when possessed of power had in his moments of frenzy and freaks of passion sent innocent men to the scaffold, and like a lunatic had, after the performance of some diabolical act, wandered about the fields likening himself to Nero, and heaping execration{16} upon his own head. He was his own enemy, and as such incurred his own destruction.
Some of the characteristics of one of his successors on the throne—the celebrated Christina—were uncommon, for having been educated by men, and brought up under the guardianship of men, she gradually imbibed a dislike of all that was womanly. Her ambition seems to have been to be as much like a man as possible, and nothing seems to have pleased her more than to don male attire. For womanly refinements, too, she had the most profound contempt, and it only coincided with this trait of character that she expressed her conviction of the utter disability of woman to conduct the affairs of a nation. In short, it is said that there was nothing of the woman in her save her sex, and that her presence, voice, and manners, were altogether masculine. Many of her strange freaks of conduct were attributable to this peculiar whim, in accordance with which she not only swore like a dragoon, but encouraged conversation of a by no means refined character. Thus a writer states that one of his friends used to entertain her with stories of a very unseemly nature, with which she was abundantly delighted, and adds, “Yet because there were some of his narrations which did sometimes require more modest expressions than the genuine or natural, chiefly before a Royal Majesty and in a maid’s presence, as she saw him going about his circumlocutions and seeking civil terms, she would boldly speak out the words, though they were never so filthy, which modesty forbids me to{17} write here.” Indeed, her own acknowledgment that she was never nice of speech more or less corresponded with her personal habits, inasmuch as Manneschied, the confessor of Pimentelli, the Spanish ambassador at the Swedish Court, and a great admirer of the Queen, thus wrote of her: “She never combs her hair but once a week, and sometimes lets it go untouched for a fortnight. On Sundays her toilet takes about half-an-hour, but on other days it is despatched in a quarter.” Manneschied then adds, “Her linen was ragged and much torn.” And occasionally, when a bold person would hint at the salubrity of cleanliness she would reply, “Wash! that’s all very well for people who have nothing else to do!”
Nothing, again, pleased Christina more than to indulge in some outrageous freak whereby she would astonish and horrify those around her. When visiting, for instance, the French Court, she startled the stately ladies there by her strange conduct; and according to Madame de Motteville, “In presence of the King, Queen, and the whole Court, she flung her legs up on a chair as high as that on which she was seated, and she altogether exhibited them a great deal too freely.” Then, again, her impatience and irreverence at church were not infrequently matter of public comment. She would use two chairs, one of purple velvet in which she was seated, and one in front of her, “over the back of which she would lean her head or arms, thinking of divers matters.” If the sermon was a trifle long and somewhat prosy, she would begin{18} playing with the two spaniels which usually accompanied her, or she would chat with some gentleman-in-waiting; and, if the sermon did not come to a close, she would rattle her fan on the back of the chair before her, and distract the attention of the congregation, if she could not stop the preacher. But she was perfectly indifferent as to what the public thought of her conduct, and almost up to the end of her life she adhered to the same freedom and laxity of manners. It was towards the close of the year 1688 that she received an anonymous letter intimating that her death was not far off, and that she would do well to set her house in order, which she could commence by destroying the indecent paintings and statues with which her mansion was crowded.
But this note of warning had no effect on Christina, and with a smile she put it in the fire, little anticipating that the prediction would be fulfilled the following year. Despite her many foibles and follies, Christina was a great and remarkable woman, a riddle indeed to many who have read her history. She had a masterful character, and, however much her various eccentricities and habits of life may have created disgust, her intellectual powers, on the other hand, were of no mean order. But one reason, perhaps, which induced her to indulge in such extraordinary freaks of conduct was her supreme contempt for the parade and symbols of worldly power, and the conventionalities of society.
It was no matter of surprise that Gustavus IV. proved an incapable and unreliable monarch, de{19}veloping eccentricity of character bordering on insanity. What could be expected of one who in his young life was so overdone with religious teaching that “he pored over the Book of Revelations till he became nearly insane, recognised himself as one mysteriously alluded to in Scripture, and hailed in his own person that ‘coming man’ who as prophet, priest, and king was to rule the world”? Thus on his wedding-day, at the completion of the marriage ceremony, he took his bride, Princess Frederica of Baden, to her apartment, and opening the Book of Esther, bade her read aloud the first chapter.
She obeyed, and then wonderingly asked for an explanation of his strange conduct. Gustavus at once expounded the passage, warning the Queen that should she ever disobey her lord and master she would be punished as Vashti had been, and her dignity would be given to another. This was not a happy inauguration of married life, and the young Queen soon found to her bitter disappointment what a miserable existence was enforced upon her. On one occasion, when Gustavus discovered his young wife having a romp with her German maids, he immediately dismissed her playful attendants, and introduced in their place cold and formal aged Swedish ladies, who would have scorned even the idea of such frivolities. But it was in his public as well as his private life that Gustavus indulged in these strange freaks, alienating by his conduct the sympathies of the aristocracy, many of whom, “to mark their indig{20}nation, threw up their patents of nobility,” while the people generally did not shrink from showing in an unmistakable manner their annoyance and disgust. The climax of his follies and freaks was reached when he absented himself from his kingdom—from 1803 to 1806—so that he was advertised for on the walls of Stockholm as a stray king, a suitable recompense being promised to any who should restore him to his “disconsolate subjects.” Ultimately, as is well known, he was deposed—his uncle, the Duke of Sudermania, ascending the throne as Charles XIII.—and imprisoned in the Castle of Gripsholm, where he amused himself by drawing “a portrait of himself seated on a white horse, trampling upon the Beast”![5]
The Duke d’Alen?on, afterwards Duke of Anjou, and his brother Henry III. regarded each other with puerile hatred, a circumstance which led to the most absurd rivalry between themselves. Each bestowed his favour and time, and lavished his resources, on a band of young, handsome, swaggering gallants, to whom the King especially set the example of great extravagance, and, at the same time, effeminacy of dress. The freaks of folly they committed seem scarcely credible, for it is reported that they painted their cheeks, adorned their necks with the most outrageous frills of enormous dimensions, and curled their hair with a nicety and care which exceeded male pretensions. Indeed, Henry III. carried this absurdity so far as actually to appear accoutred{21} in a female garb. “These acts of idiotcy,” writes Crowe,[6] “the people construed to be indicative not merely of perverted taste, but of degrading crime; and the King’s mignons were the object of such universal execration that when they perished by the hands of each other, or of more invidious foes, and when Henry III. consoled himself for their loss by the performance of splendid funeral rites, and the erection of superb mausoleums, the public applauded the acts of vengeance by which these base parasites were slain.” But, contemptible as such conduct was, it certainly lacked the brutality of his predecessor, Charles IX., who, when engaged in the chase, is said to have pursued wild beasts more with the fury of their species than the excitement of man. Thus it is recorded that he would cut off the heads of donkeys, embowel pigs, and would take a pleasure in arranging their entrails butcher-fashion.
Another of the freaks of Charles IX. consisted in his hiring ten young thieves, whom he brought to the Louvre, where he set them to rob the guests of their swords and jewellery, laughing heartily “as he witnessed their success, or saw the unconsciousness of the victims, or beheld their surprise and indignation after they had been despoiled.” These young thieves, says Dr. Doran, who were amply rewarded for the exercise of their ability, “rank among the most singular of hirelings paid to excite laughter in a gloomy king.{22}”
The Comte d’Artois, a brother of Louis XVI., was noted for his frivolous pursuits and his unbecoming follies. One anecdote about him shows the levity of his conduct; and, as it has been observed, a royal duke “who had tried the same jest in England would have been summoned before the next Justice of the Peace”:—
“The Comte d’Artois has taken it into his head to pull down a country house in the Bois de Boulogne, and to rebuild it from top to bottom. It is to be newly furnished, and a fête is to be given there to the Queen. Everybody thought it absurd to attempt to finish such a piece of work in six or seven weeks; yet it has been done—nine hundred workmen having been employed day and night. The most extraordinary part of the case is that, as there was a deficiency of materials, especially of stones, lime, and plaister, and that time was not to be lost in procuring them elsewhere, M. le Comte d’Artois gave orders that patrols of the Swiss Guards should search the main roads, and seize every cart containing materials of this kind which they came across.”
At sixty years of age, Louis I., or Ludwig, King of Bavaria, took under his protection the notorious dancing-woman, Lola Montes, under whose wretched influence the misguided monarch was guilty of the most inconceivable follies. She so outraged every idea of propriety, that on one occasion the mob threatened to pull her house to the ground. But she treated the matter with a high hand; and, to show her contempt for the{23} crowd, flung a dog among them, and she is even said to have thrust her tongue in her cheek at the people. And, when it is remembered that there was scarcely a freak of folly which Ludwig did not do at her bidding, it is not surprising that the public indignation was unbounded. She succeeded, however, in dragging the weak-minded King with her in her fall, whose position, after the terrible scandal and disgrace, had become so unbearable that he found himself forced to abdicate, which took place in the year 1848. In his time of retirement one of the pleasantest associations of his past was the velvet-covered mattress stuffed with beards and moustaches, which the soldiers of his father’s regiment had cut off for the express purpose, and presented to him.
But one of the strangest and most eccentric of modern kings was Ludwig II., known as the “Mad King” of Bavaria, who from his earliest youth appears to have been a dreamer and a visionary. The romantic legends which charmed him as a boy retained their influence over him in after years, and he grew up with the most morbid propensities, never taught to control himself, or to keep his nerves in check. He disliked physical exertion, and an aversion to anything disagreeable became in him a monomania, for he could not endure even the sight of a cripple or of an ill-formed person.[7]
As a boy, we are told, the Castle of Hohenschwangau in the Bavarian Alps fascinated his{24} imagination, for “knights in armour spoke to him; Rhine maidens drew him into their arms; he saw his ancestors, the old Wittelsbach heroes, seated upon their war-horses, their swords drawn, fighting their way into Rome, or resting under the palms by the banks of the Nile.” At two and twenty he betrothed himself to his cousin, Sophie Charlotte—daughter of Maximilian of Bavaria and sister of the Empress of Austria—who afterwards became Duchesse d’Alen?on, and perished in the fire at the Bazar de la Charité. But for some reason the match was broken off, and henceforth he became “more melancholy and more enamoured of solitude,” dwelling “in pathetic loneliness, with little society save his brooding dreams—his days, or rather his nights, for he had already begun to invert the division of the twenty-four hours, peopled with the heroes and legends of myth.”
Once only, it is said, did he really rouse himself, when he threw in his lot with Prussia in 1870. But after all it was only a fictitious enthusiasm, for he would not accompany his army, backing out on the plea that he had strained a sinew. He grew tired of life and disgusted with everything, and there seems to have been in his unbalanced mind some jealousy of the Crown Prince Frederick, who had performed the deeds which had ever been the subject of his dreams. And his extraordinary eccentricities got gradually worse, and he acquired the habit of drinking a mixture of champagne and Rhenish wine in which violets floated, consorting only with his servants. Finally, when it was{25} announced to him that his deposition had been decided, he exclaimed, “Let the traitors be thrown into the deepest dungeon, loaded with chains, and leave them to die of starvation.” But not very long afterwards he was removed to the Chateau of Berg, where he was mysteriously drowned in the Starnberg Lake.
At an early age Alfonso VI. of Portugal had the misfortune to have his limbs and his reason partially paralysed by fever—a circumstance which must account for his wicked and vicious life in after years. On any other ground it is impossible to excuse his conduct, which was infamous and contemptible. But some of his freaks were so outrageous as to be attributable only to insanity, and it is surprising that they should have been tolerated for any length of time. What would be said of a monarch at the present day who, with a set of ruffianly companions, roamed the streets at night, “assaulted passengers, fired into the coaches of the nobles, and routed religious processions at the point of the sword.” We nowadays can scarcely realise a responsible ruler attending midnight orgies of the most disreputable and repulsive kind, and afterwards returning to his palace with flaunting females of the most dissolute and repulsive character. On one occasion, however, in one of his mad freaks he encountered two passengers, and drawing his sword attacked them; but they drew in return, and, after giving his Majesty far more than he bargained for, they left him to be picked up by his followers, who{26} carried him home to bed. A humiliation of this kind was lost on a monarch who was too depraved to have any feeling of self-respect; for, when he was summoned to the bedside of his dying mother, he tarried so long on the way to amuse himself, that when he arrived she had lost the power of sight and speech.
Despite his natural gifts, which were great, there can be no doubt that the texture of Don Sebastian’s mind was inwoven with the threads of that hereditary insanity which broke out so tragically in his cousin, Don Carlos. One of his eccentric freaks was to have the body of John II. lifted from its quiet resting-place in the Abbey of Batalha, where it had lain three-quarters of a century; and which, being found entire and uncorrupted, was placed erect on its feet, clad in kingly robes, and was armed with the rusty sword it had once wielded. Whereupon the Duke of Aveiro was commanded as a token of homage to kiss the withered hand of the corpse, and Sebastian, exclaiming, “Behold the best officer of our kingly office!” turned away to pursue his sepulchral visitations elsewhere.
Not long before his death, Charles II. of Spain had one of those strange funereal yearnings, so distinctive of the last days of nearly every member of the Austrian House of Spain. Thus, Juana la Loca would not surrender the embalmed body of her husband, and Philip II., shortly before he died, called for a skull and placed a crown upon it. Philip IV. went and lay in the niche destined{27} for him in the Pantheon. And similarly, a weird sepulchral fancy animated the decaying brain of Charles II. To indulge his morbid and diseased feelings, he would descend into the royal mausoleum, open the coffins, and look face to face on the chiefs of his race who had worn his crown before him. He went down by the light of torches into the dark vault of the Pantheon, the huge candelabrum was lit, and all the coffins, beginning with that of Charles V., were opened for him in order. Charles V. was much decayed; the features of Philip II. were distorted; Philip III. was nearly perfectly preserved in form, but crumbled into dust as soon as his body was touched. After the kings he passed to the queens, and when that of his first queen was opened, and he saw the form and still charming features of her who had glorified his dark life and brain for a while, his throat was convulsed, tears streamed from his eyes, and he fell with outstretched arms on the bier, crying, “My queen, my queen, before a year is past I will come and join you.”[8] This visit of the last descendant of the House of Austria to view the corpses of his race is one of the strangest scenes in history.
Charles V. had his funeral rites celebrated before him, but, as Dr. Doran writes, the spectacle of the ex-Emperor celebrating his own funeral service has been divested of much of its apparent absurdity by the simple statements of eye-witnesses and modern writers who have reproduced their{28} statements. It was a ceremony, however, on which even Charles did not venture till he had received ecclesiastical permission. He did not attend it in his shroud, nor lie down in his own coffin. There were the ordinary ornaments which the Romish Church uses at the usual services for the dead, and nothing more. The only exception to the ordinary service was when Charles, extinguishing the light which he held, surrendered it into the hands of a priest, in token of yielding up his life to the will of God.
And similarly, we are reminded how Maria Theresa, who survived her husband fifteen years, lived amid the emblems of perpetual mourning. She shut herself up on the 18th of every month, and the whole of every August, the day and month of his death. As her life drew near its end, she spent many days at times in the funeral chapel before the picture of her husband, taken as he lay in his coffin, and her last words, well understood by those around her, were, “I come to thee.”
Queen Victoria was not altogether free from the morbid tendency of mind “which comes of excessive study of incidents of sorrow and suffering,” and her habit of accumulating sepulchral memorials of relations and friends was one manifestation of it.
Her Majesty, too, was a strong believer in the reality and near presence of the spirit world. A writer in the Quiver (March, 1898) states that Mrs. Oliphant’s “Little Pilgrim in the Unseen” was of great interest to her, as, since the death of{29} the Prince Consort, she had manifested a special liking for writings dealing with the mystic and unseen. And to quote from this article:—
“She believes that it is given to our departed loved ones to watch over those who still struggle with the temptations and sorrows of the earthly life. It has been the real consolation of her bereaved years that she felt that the Prince was watching over the events of her life. During her retirement at Osborne, immediately after the Prince Consort’s death, the Queen found ‘her only comfort in the belief that her husband’s spirit was close beside her, for he had promised that it should be so.’ This was told to Dean Stanley by the Queen’s half-sister, the Princess Hohenlohe.”
The belief of this kind, it may be added, in the spiritual world, was one of the links which bound together her Majesty and the late Poet-Laureate in affectionate sympathy. In one of his published letters to the Queen the poet wrote: “If the dead, as I have often felt, though silent, be more living than the living, and linger about the planet in which their earth-life was passed, then they, while we are lamenting that they are not at our side, may still be with us; and the husband, the daughter, and the son, lost by your Majesty, may rejoice when the people shout the name of your Majesty.”
That sentiments such as these found an echo in the heart of her Majesty may be gathered from what she wrote to Lord Tennyson on one of the anniversaries of her wedding-day, which she de{30}scribed as a day that she could never allow to be considered sad: “The reflected light of the sun which has set still remains. It is full of pathos, but also full of joyful gratitude, and he who has left me nearly fifty years ago surely blesses me still.”
And in connection with spiritualism associated with royalty, we may incidentally mention the many stories told of the White Lady of the House of Hapsburg and other weird visitants. Napoleon, as is well known, was haunted by the spirit known as “the little red man,” invariably seen a short time before, it is said, some great disaster befell the Emperor; and among the curious stories of the kind current in this country we are told how George II., when walking on the balcony at Windsor Castle with some of his courtiers, suddenly drew their attention to a singular spectacle in the clouds, where an armed Highlander was clearly seen fighting with a British Grenadier. Several times the Grenadier appeared as if getting the worst of the encounter, but at last it was vanquished, and the picture faded from the sky.
“Thank God,” exclaimed the King, “my kingdom is saved.” Not many days afterwards despatches were received from the Duke of Cumberland, announcing that the Highlanders had been completely routed at Culloden.
And like Henry III., Louis XV. endeavoured to associate profligacy with devotional practices; for he would read sermons to his mistresses, and go down on his knees and pray with his victims{31} in the Parc aux Cerfs. He was fond of talking about maladies, death-bed scenes, and graves, and worms, and epitaphs; he professed to have the gift of reading death in a courtier’s face, and several of them he terrified with a notice of this kind.[9]
The short and tragic life of Don Carlos, son of Philip II., must in a measure be attributed to the vein of insanity in his nature. He behaved in so reckless and violent a manner, that some excuse has been made for the acts of severity which cut short his eccentric career. But his wild follies were such as to bring contempt and discredit on the throne, for he gave blows to one of his attendant gentlemen, called another by opprobrious names, drew his dagger upon another, caused children to be beaten, and, according to the historian Cabrera, he wanted to burn a house down because some water had fallen from one of the windows.
His violence, too, extended itself even to animals; he maimed the horses in his own stables, and he so ill-treated one which his father held in particular affection, that the unfortunate animal died in a few days. And yet his cruelties and eccentricities were not unaccompanied with kindness, for he paid the charges of the education of children thrown on the world without resources, although at the time he was himself much embarrassed with debt.
Many anecdotes are told of Edward I. of England and his strange doings, and of his merry pranks in the royal household. One day, when the Queen{32} went to her palace at Waltham, the King, so runs the story, espied her laundress, Matilda of Waltham, among the lookers-on in the courtyard while the hounds were coupling and the hunters were mounting. Thereupon, in a mischievous mood, he made a wager that Matilda could not ride hunting with them, and be in at the death of the stag. To his surprise she accepted the challenge, mounted the horse, and rode with such success that Edward was fain to pay his fine of forty shillings. In the earlier part of his life Edward appears to have been subject to violent fits of rage; and at the nuptials of his daughter Margaret, having given one of his esquires a rap with his wand without just cause, he afterwards paid him as compensation ￡13, 6s. 8d. He is also said on more than one occasion to have thrown coronets behind the fire.
But among the merry scenes which took place between Edward and the Queen’s ladies, with whom he now and then indulged in romping, was his being “heaved” on Easter Monday, 1290. It is recorded how seven of Queen Eleanora’s ladies unceremoniously invaded the chamber of the King, and seizing their majestic master, proceeded to “heave” him in his chair, till he was glad to pay a fine of ￡14 to enjoy “his own peace,” and be set at liberty.
Levity of deportment has been laid to the charge of Edward II., and in one of his freaks he is accused of having made a party on the Thames in a returned fagot-barge, and of buying cabbages of the gardeners on the banks of the river to make his soup. On one{33} occasion, when he was keeping his Court with his queen at Westminster during the Whitsuntide festival of 1317, as they were dining in public in the great banqueting-hall, a masked woman entered on horseback, and riding up to the royal table, delivered a letter to King Edward, who, thinking it contained some elegant compliment, ordered it to be opened and read aloud for the amusement of his courtiers; but, to his great disgust and mortification, it was a cutting satire on his unkingly propensities, setting forth the various calamities which his misgovernment had brought on the country.
But Edward’s frolics were nothing compared with the wild dissipation and mad pranks of Henry V. when Prince of Wales. His poverty, it has been urged, made him reckless, and forced him into company below his rank. Thus one of his freaks caused him to see the inside of a London prison. In one of the street uproars common at the period, the Lord Mayor arrested his favourite servant and carried him before Judge Gascoigne. As soon as the Prince of Wales heard of the detention of his servant, he rushed into the court of justice, where the man stood arraigned at the bar, and endeavoured there and then with his own hands to free him from his fetters, and on the judge interposing he struck him. Gascoigne fearlessly reproved the Prince, and committed him to the prison of the King’s Bench—a punishment to which he submitted with so good a grace that Henry IV. made the well-known remark: “He was proud of having a son who would thus submit himself to the laws, and that{34} he had a judge who could so fearlessly enforce them.”
On another occasion his mad frolic made him an inmate of Coventry gaol, for some of his most outrageous acts were done at a manor of his close to Coventry, called Cheylesmore, a residence appertaining to his Duchy of Cornwall. But John Hornesby, the Mayor of Coventry, disregarding his royal position, took him and some of his friends into custody for raising a riot.
As long as the world lasts the strange marriage freaks of Henry VIII. will be matter of comment. And a peculiarity of Elizabeth, which gave rise to many amusing scenes, was her indecision—a trait of character which occasioned considerable inconvenience, her ministers not even knowing what freak her Majesty’s fickleness of will would next take. The story goes that a carter was once ordered to go with his cart to Windsor to remove a portion of the royal wardrobe. But on his arrival he ascertained that her Majesty had altered the day, causing him to make the second journey in vain; and when on a third summons he attended, and was informed, after waiting a considerable time, that “the remove did not hold,” he clapped his hands and exclaimed, “Now I see that the Queen is a woman as well as my wife!” Elizabeth, as she stood at an open window, overheard this remark and inquired, “What villain is this?” afterwards sending him three angels as a compensation for the inconvenience she had caused him.{35}
A bit of mischief her successor, James I., much enjoyed was to listen to personal allusions in the pulpit. Among those who pandered to this freak was Neile, Bishop of Lincoln, and afterwards Archbishop of York. On one occasion one of the royal chaplains selected for his text St. Matt. iv. 8: “And the devil took Jesus to the top of a mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world, saying, All these will I give thee,” &c. He first proceeded “to demonstrate the power of the devil at that period; he then brought his kingdom down to the present time, expressing his belief that as the devil was in possession of such large dominions, there could be no doubt but that he had his viceroys, councillors of state, treasurers, &c. This gave him an opportunity of attributing the several vices of which James’s advisers were accused to the ministers of his Satanic majesty, and portraying their characters accordingly. At last he came to the devil’s treasurer, when he fixed his eyes on the Earl of Cranfield, and pointing at him, he exclaimed: ‘That man who makes himself rich and his master poor is a fit treasurer for the devil.’ Cranfield kept his hat over his eyes, while James sat smiling at his minister’s discomfiture.”[10]
William III. behaved in a strange fashion at church. If ever he happened to be uncovered during the recital of the liturgy, he assumed his hat directly the sermon began. His partisans observed that such was the custom among the Dutch congregations, and pleaded that Jews did the same. But members of the Church of England considered{36} the King’s behaviour irreverent, and were in no way pacified by the examples he followed.
In speaking of his Majesty’s religious freaks, we are reminded of Queen Anne, who was in the habit of dressing herself while her chaplain prayed. On one occasion, when decency compelled the attendants to close the door while the Queen put on some of her under garments, the chaplain suddenly stopped; and on her Majesty’s inquiry as to the reason of this pause, he replied, “Because I will not whistle the Word of God through a keyhole.”
Similarly, it was Queen Caroline’s custom while she dressed herself to have prayers read in an outer room, where there hung a picture of a naked Venus. Dr. Maddox, afterwards Bishop of Worcester, was one day the chaplain on duty, when the bed-chamber woman-in-waiting conveyed to him the Queen’s command to begin the service, at which he looked up archly at the picture and said, “And a very pretty altar-piece is here! ”