Tea at Trianon: The Exile of Charles II

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

Tuesday, July 29, 2025

The Exile of Charles II

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From Caroline Willcocks at The Seventeenth Century Lady:

Shakespeare’s play “As You Like It” has been seen by historians as a metaphor for Charles’s exile.  He is likened to the exiled Duke, living in the magical Forest of Arden.  It is this dreamlike quality which I find fascinating.  There is no doubt that Charles and his court lived for some of the time in a pleasurable limbo, where dancing, music and hunting were engaged in with passion, as were affairs of the heart. But there were also times when he struggled to keep any form of court going. In my books, I have a running joke about the quality of the wine the courtiers drink. Most of them were not paid and had to support themselves. My protagonist earns his keep from acting as an escort to wealthy but lonely women.
There was no secure future.   Looking forward a few months, the exiles could have found themselves back in the splendour of Whitehall, or dead on an English battlefield. What was possibly even worse, they might have been inexorably relegated, as time went on, to insignificance and poverty. No wonder they escaped into living for the day. Here were a number of young, good-looking aristocrats facing a fearful future. Is it any surprise that the licentiousness which marked Charles II’s later Restoration court started in exile?

At this time, spies were suspected of lurking at every corner.  Both Charles and the Parliament used spies.  And who was to know whether a fellow Englishman or woman was exactly who they said they were?  The idea that many had something to hide has intrigued me.  While they were hiding their political allegiances, who was to say they weren’t hiding anything else?   There was always the threat of assassination. As writer, I revel in this high-stakes game where death is always in the background. At times, I’ve felt I was writing a farcical seventeenth-century version of “You Only Live Twice.” (Read more.)