Tea at Trianon: The History of Bedford House

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, May 18, 2025

The History of Bedford House

Where Princess Henrietta Anne was born in June, 1644. From Demolition Exeter:

Bedford House remained at the centre of Exeter's history throughout the 17th century. In 1644, during the English Civil War, the house was still in the possession of the Bedford family, the then owner being William Russell, the 1st Duke of Bedford and lord-lieutenant of the county of Devonshire. Because it was regarded as a relatively safe pro-Royalist retreat amidst the havoc of the civil war, Charles I sent his wife Henrietta Maria of France to Exeter when she was pregnant with their child.

The Queen lodged at Bedford House and it was here that she gave birth to the king's youngest daughter on 16 June 1644, baptised in the nearby cathedral as Henrietta Anna Stuart right, later Duchess of Orleans and sister-in-law to the French king Louis XIV. Soon after the birth, on the 26 July 1644, Charles I arrived in the city where he lodged with his daughter at Bedford House, the Queen having already left England for the continent. (A portrait of the princess still hangs in the Guildhall. Given to the city in 1671, it was a personal gift from her brother, then King Charles II.)

By the 1740s Bedford House had been sub-divided into three separate tenements, and it was in one of these houses that Exeter's most prominent 18th physician, Thomas Glass, took up residence in 1740. Unfortunately time was running out for Bedford House and in the early 1770s the house was completely demolished. A speculative builder by the name of Robert Stribling drew up building plans for the empty ground that, when completed, would prove to be one of Exeter's most important architectural creations: Bedford Circus. (Read more.)