Now, I was not as versed in the ways of the world as many of my age, but young Meg left me in no doubt of the kind of need she was willing to meet. I did not propose to make use of these services and, to be frank, was more than a little surprised to find the suggestion made to a clergyman, but perhaps the Church of England is more liberal than I had been led to suppose. There were several reasons why I should refuse Meg’s offer. These included very limited funds, a disinclination to avoidable sin, and a strong suspicion that women who were so free with their favours were likely to be poxed to the very armpits, and a clergyman who finds himself suffering from the distempers of Venus has some awkward explaining to do.
On the other hand, it seemed impolite to say this to her face, so I thanked her for her offer and said that I expected to be very busy.
As things turned out, I was going to be busier than I could have imagined.
I left my room at the appointed hour and found Van Langenburg in the corridor outside.
‘Where’s your hat, man?’ he barked.
‘Hat? Are we going out?’
He sighed a deep, exasperated sigh. ‘You are one of those who will sup with the King tonight. You’ll need a hat.’
‘Surely even the English do not wear a hat in the presence of their King,’ I replied.
Van Langenburg sighed again. ‘No, but he’ll expect you to take it off as you bow to him. And you can’t take it off if you don’t have it on. So, don’t argue and get a hat!’
I rummaged in my trunk for something suitable. In the normal run of things, I wear a small black cap, changing to a larger square cap when I am preaching. However, I had not brought that with me, and the only other hat I had was a broad brimmed hat designed to keep the rain from my face. Reasoning that I should appear ridiculous meeting the King wearing such an everyday garment, I decided to wear my small cap and carry the large one, completing my bow with it in my hand. The King would not expect a minister to remove his skullcap, I was sure.
The discovery that I was one of the small number who would dine with the King had taken me so much by surprise that I had completely forgotten to ask why, nor did I have the opportunity to do so as the Heer Van Langenburg led our party through twisting corridors and up and down small flights of stairs in pursuit of a palace official.
We were greeted at the final staircase by the Lord Chamberlain, Lord Arlington, a fussy and pompous man who wore a patch over his nose to disguise a large scar earned in battle. I had been told something about Arlington during the voyage across, because there existed some jealousy between him and Sir William Temple.
Arlington had been sent to The Hague less than two years earlier on exactly the same mission as we were now undertaking, to procure the marriage of William and Mary, but had failed dismally. I could immediately see why that might have been, for William was a straightforward man who preferred plain speaking, and Arlington was a born schemer who had inserted one or two clauses of his own devising into the draft treaty, chiefly that William should disclose the names of any Englishman known to be disaffected to the King and should secretly co-operate in entrapping them; to which, if Van Langenburg were to be believed, William had replied that it was beneath the dignity of any King to proceed secretly in so dishonourable a manner, so that he could not believe that his uncle Charles should desire it of him.
If William genuinely thought that, he was a bigger fool than I thought, but I suspect it was just a ruse to avoid discussions, for when Arlington raised the question of a marriage with the Princess Mary, William replied that he was not yet in a position to keep a wife as he would wish, causing Arlington to return home with his tail firmly between his legs. In fact, Van Langenburg suspected that if anyone wished his embassy to fail, it would be Arlington.
On the other hand, Arlington was keen to avoid any entanglement with France, against the wishes of some of Charles’ circle who favoured such an alliance very much. Although they had been relegated to the fringes in recent months, largely because being an ally of France had proved ruinously expensive over the past few years, there were some — chiefly aligned behind the King’s brother, the Duke of York — who still pursued a marriage between Mary and some leading Frenchman, the difficulty here being the short list of available candidates.
King Louis, while willing to bed anything that wore a skirt, was already married, and his brother, the Duke of Orleans, was a notorious sodomite who was one of the few in skirts whom Louis left alone. The Dauphin was already engaged to be married, and while the Duke of Orleans had a son, Philippe, he was not yet three years old. This circumstance did not seem to deter the French party in the least. I have attended very few marriages, but I think I should be uncomfortable in presiding at one where the groom cannot reach above the bride’s knee.
King Louis had a substantial number of royal bastards whom he was keen to marry off, ideally to rich heiresses, but the problem here was that Charles thought it beneath his dignity to marry his daughter to an illegitimate man, and Louis thought it beneath his to accept a daughter-in-law as poor as Mary would be. This was an undoubted difficulty for the French party, but they might well try to break off any Dutch matchmaking in order to buy some time for a suitable Frenchman to appear.
Arlington was making a little speech of welcome of his own. Being an English diplomat he was, of course, speaking French, so many there had no idea what he said. This, it seemed to Van Langenburg, was a deliberate slight, because Arlington could speak Dutch tolerably well, being married to a Dutchwoman. In fact, his wife’s grandfather and William’s grandfather were brothers, but don’t ask me to tell you what relation they were to each other, because all this “once removed” stuff gets me in knots.
Anyway, after a while Arlington concluded his welcome, and Van Langenburg replied (in Dutch), expressing our delight at being there and our regret that Arlington did not, apparently, speak Dutch, since this must deprive him of the pleasure of conversing with his wife in her native tongue. Arlington looked like he had swallowed a beggar’s spittle, but interestingly he did so before the translator told him in English what Van Langenburg had said, which rather made a point, I thought.
We were conducted into the King’s presence. This was a source of great anxiety to me, because I had no idea what Charles looked like and I feared that I might make my obeisance to the wrong man. As it happened, there was a tall chap with an enormous black wig sitting on a gold throne on a dais at the end of a long crimson carpet, which was a pretty good hint that he might be the King.
Each of us was introduced in turn by Van Langenburg, and then Charles said a few words. Having lived in the Low Countries for some years, Charles could manage a pretty speech in Dutch, though he must have learned it by heart because I never heard him speak the language again.
At last we were invited to sit at table and shown to our places. The Bishop of London said Grace, and once the King had picked up his spoon we all tucked in. I have to admit that after our sea voyage I was not quite as hungry as I might have been, but I ate some bread. The English have a great love of sweet things, so there were any number of pies and pastries, many containing excellent fruit.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see mijnheer Wevers. He ate heartily, spoke little, and caused some consternation when he asked for small beer rather than the jugs from which the rest of us were drinking.