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From its construction in the 1660s to its heyday in the 1960s, Cliveden played host to a dynasty of remarkable and powerful women.

Anna Maria, Elizabeth, Augusta, Harriet and Nancy were five ladies who, over the course of three centuries, shaped British society through their beauty, personalities, and political influence.

Restoration and revolution, aristocratic rise and fall, world war and cold war form the extraordinary backdrop against which their stories unfold.

An addictive history of the period and an intimate exploration of the timeless relationships between people and place, The Mistresses of Cliveden is a story of sex, power and politics, and the ways in which exceptional women defy the expectations of their time.

About the Author

Natalie Livingstone was born and raised in London. She graduated with a first-class degree in history from Christ’s College, Cambridge in 1998. She began her career as a feature writer at the Daily Express and now contributes to Tatler, Harper’s Bazaar, US Vogue, Elle, The Times and the Mail on Sunday. Natalie lives in London with her husband and two children.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Natalie Livingstone has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

First published by Hutchinson in 2015
First published in Great Britain by Penguin Random House in 2015

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CAST OF CHARACTERS

Characters who appear in more than one part are listed under their first appearance.

PART I

ANNA MARIA TALBOT (née Brudenell), Countess of SHREWSBURY, 1642–1702. Married Francis Talbot, 11th Earl of Shrewsbury, and had an affair with George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham. With Mary Villiers, the first mistress of Cliveden.

FRANCIS TALBOT, 11th Earl of SHREWSBURY, 1623–68. Husband of Anna Maria Talbot, died following a duel with George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham.

GEORGE VILLIERS, 2nd Duke of BUCKINGHAM, 1628–87. Husband of Mary Villiers, lover of Anna Maria Talbot, and creator of Cliveden.

CHARLES TALBOT, Duke of SHREWSBURY, 1660–1718. Politician; son of Anna Maria and Francis Talbot.

MARY VILLIERS (née Fairfax), 1638–1704. Wife of George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham; with Anna Maria Talbot, the first mistress of Cliveden.

HENRY BENNET, 1st Earl of ARLINGTON. Statesman, and political rival of the 2nd Duke of Buckingham.

PART II

ELIZABETH VILLIERS (married name HAMILTON), Countess of Orkney, 1657–1733. Lover of William of Orange (later William III); married George Hamilton, Earl of Orkney in 1695. Mistress of Cliveden from 1696 to 1733.

GEORGE HAMILTON, Earl of ORKNEY, 1666–1737. Soldier; husband of Elizabeth Villiers.

WILLIAM of ORANGE (William III from 1689–1702). Husband of Mary Stuart; deposer of James II in the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688.

ANNE HAMILTON, suo jure 3rd Duchess of HAMILTON, 1632–1716. Wife of William Douglas, 1st Earl of Selkirk; mother of George Hamilton, 1st Earl of Orkney.

JAMES HAMILTON, 4th Duke of HAMILTON and 1st Duke of Brandon, 1658–1712. Eldest son of Anne Hamilton and William Douglas; elder brother of George Hamilton, 1st Earl of Orkney.

SARAH CHURCHILL (née JENNINGS), Duchess of MARLBOROUGH, 1660–1744. Politician; wife of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough.

JOHN CHURCHILL, 1st Duke of MARLBOROUGH, 1650–1722. Army officer and politician; husband of Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough.

JONATHAN SWIFT. Writer, and Dean of St Patrick’s in Dublin; friend of Elizabeth, Countess of Orkney.

SIDNEY GODOLPHIN, 1st Earl of GODOLPHIN. Politician, overthrown in Robert Harley’s coup of 1710.

ROBERT HARLEY, 1st Earl of OXFORD. Politician, and sometime ally of Elizabeth Villiers.

PART III

AUGUSTA, Princess of WALES (Princess AUGUSTA of SAXE-GOTHA), 1719–72. Mistress of Cliveden 1738–51; married Frederick, Prince of Wales in 1736.

FREDERICK, Prince of WALES, 1707–51. Eldest son (and heir) of George II and his consort Queen Caroline, and husband of Augusta, Princess of Wales.

GEORGE II, 1683–1760. King of Great Britain and Ireland 1727–60. Father of Frederick, Prince of Wales; husband of Caroline of Ansbach.

QUEEN CAROLINE (Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach), 1683–1737. Mother of Frederick, Prince of Wales; wife of George II.

Lady JANE HAMILTON. Mistress of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and sister-in-law of George Hamilton, 1st Earl of Orkney.

JOHN HERVEY, 2nd Baron HERVEY, 1696–1743. Courtier and memoirist; favourite of Queen Caroline.

Prince WILLIAM, Duke of CUMBERLAND. Soldier, and brother of Frederick, Prince of Wales.

PART IV

HARRIET GEORGIANA LEVESON-GOWER (née Howard), Duchess of SUTHERLAND, 1806–68. Married her cousin, George Leveson-Gower, in 1823. Mistress of Cliveden from 1849 to 1868.

GEORGE LEVESON-GOWER, 2nd Duke of SUTHERLAND, 1786–1861. Husband of Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland.

GEORGE GRANVILLE LEVESON-GOWER, 1st Duke of SUTHERLAND, 1758–1833. Husband of Elizabeth; father of George Leveson-Gower, 2nd Duke of Sutherland.

ELIZABETH LEVESON-GOWER, Duchess of SUTHERLAND (and suo jure 19th Countess of Sutherland), 1765–1839. Wife of George Granville Leveson-Gower; mother of George Leveson-Gower, 2nd Duke of Sutherland.

QUEEN VICTORIA (Alexandrina Victoria), 1819–1901. Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 1837–1901; friend of Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland, who served for many years as her Mistress of the Robes.

HUGH LUPUS GROSVENOR, 1st Duke of WESTMINSTER, 1825–99. Married Constance Sutherland-Leveson-Gower in 1852; two years after Constance’s death in 1880, he remarried, to Katherine Caroline Cavendish.

PART V

NANCY ASTOR (née Langhorne), Viscountess ASTOR, 1879–1964. Mistress of Cliveden from 1906 to 1952. Married Robert Gould Shaw in 1897 and divorced him in 1903; married Waldorf Astor in 1906.

BOBBIE SHAW (Robert Gould Shaw), 1898–1970. Eldest son of Nancy Astor, and her only child with Robert Shaw.

NANCY WITCHER KEENE LANGHORNE, ‘NANAIRE’, 1848–1903. Mother of Nancy Astor; wife of Chillie Langhorne.

CHISWELL DABNEY LANGHORNE, ‘CHILLIE’, 1843–1919. Father of Nancy Astor; husband of Nanaire.

WILLIAM WALDORF ASTOR, 1st Viscount ASTOR, 1848–1919. Father of Waldorf Astor.

BOB BRAND (Robert Henry Brand), Baron BRAND, 1878–1963. Married to Phyllis Brand; public servant and banker, and friend of Nancy Astor.

PHILIP KERR, 11th Marquess of LOTHIAN, 1882–1940. Politician and diplomat; close friend of Nancy Astor.

TIMELINE

INTRODUCTION

ON THE SULTRY night of 8 July 1961, the 19-year-old showgirl Christine Keeler was in the swimming pool at Cliveden when she heard voices approaching from the terrace. She had been larking about with her friend Stephen Ward (who rented a cottage at the foot of the estate), a law student called Noel Howard-Jones, and a pretty young hitch-hiker whom the three of them had picked up on the drive down from London. Usually Ward asked permission to use the pool from the estate’s owner Bill Astor, but tonight Bill was occupied by a more sober dinner party in the main house. The pool was tucked away in a walled garden on the west side of the property, so the group thought nothing of going for an impromptu swim without giving Astor prior warning. The party grew raucous, and at some point Keeler shed her swimsuit in a bet.

Up at the main house, the company at dinner included Field Marshal Ayub Khan, president of Pakistan, John Profumo, secretary of state for war, and his film-star wife Valerie. The hosts were Bill Astor, who had inherited the house from his parents Waldorf and Nancy, and Bill’s wife Bronwen. After dinner, the hosts decided to take advantage of the balmy night and suggested a stroll down to the swimming pool to show off a newly installed bronze statue of their son riding a dolphin. What the guests actually saw, as they rounded the corner into the walled garden, was the lithe form of Christine Keeler, lifting herself from the pool and dashing across the patio, her feet making damp prints on the terracotta tiles. Profumo wasted no time in asking Bill for an introduction.

Late that night Keeler returned to London to pick up a couple more of Ward’s girlfriends, and the next morning they were all driven back to Cliveden by the Russian naval attaché and intelligence officer Yevgeny Ivanov. The group spent a lazy Sunday by Bill Astor’s pool, where Ivanov challenged Profumo to a swimming race. Just before Keeler left that evening, Profumo, who according to Ivanov had been ‘flirting outrageously’ with the young girl, asked for her contact details.¹ Ivanov drove Christine back to Ward’s flat where, the Soviet attaché would later claim, they slept together. Two days later, Profumo tracked Keeler down and arranged to meet her while his wife Valerie was visiting his Warwickshire constituency. It marked the beginning of a tepid, half-hearted liaison, which Keeler – who once cooked them sausages before they had sex in front of the television – described as ‘a very, very well-mannered screw of convenience’.²

The weekend at Cliveden was the first act in a drama that would bring down a government and change the course of British history. The apparent ménage à trois between the minister of war, a Soviet spy and a good-time girl made Cliveden synonymous with scandal in the collective consciousness of an entire generation.

But the outraged headlines and lurid scoops of the Profumo Affair – as it came to be known – were nothing new. During its dawn in the 1660s as much as its twilight in the 1960s, Cliveden was an emblem of elite misbehaviour and intrigue. Indeed the 350-year history of the house began when a powerful politician decided to build a secluded mansion in which to enjoy his affair with an ambitious courtesan not much older than Keeler. The courtesan was Anna Maria, Countess of Shrewsbury, and the politician George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, a childhood friend of Charles II and one of the wealthiest men in England. When Buckingham bought Cliveden in the 1660s, it comprised two modest hunting lodges set within 400 acres of land. Over the following decade, he transformed it, landscaping the gardens and constructing a magnificent house as a monument to his scandalous affair with the countess.

The estate sits just 5 miles upriver from Windsor Castle and fewer than 30 from the Palace of Westminster in London, a privileged location that would be crucial to the lives of its residents. Its outlines have changed little since the 17th century, and, then as now, Cliveden is one of England’s most breathtaking landmarks. To the south-west, the grounds overlook the Thames from the tall chalk cliffs that give the site its name – over the centuries it has also been spelt Cliefden, Clifden, and Cliffden. Further north, the cliffs, which are densely planted with oak, beech, ash and chestnut, dip into a hollow, and the gardens trail like skirts down to the water. At the top of these gardens, at the end of a long parterre, and raised to an even more imperious height by an arcaded terrace, stands the house itself, an elaborate Italianate mansion, flanked by two wings and approached by road from the north, down a long gravel drive.

In April 2012 Cliveden became central to my life when my husband acquired the property. When it came into our possession it was no longer a private residence – Cliveden had been reincarnated as a university and a hospital, and latterly run as a hotel. But amid its faded charms there were clues everywhere to the past lives of the estate, most noticeably in the portraits of the house’s former mistresses.

In the great hall hangs a portrait of Anna Maria, the original inspiration for the house, a courtesan much maligned in her own time and misunderstood by subsequent generations. Carved into the staircase is Elizabeth, Countess of Orkney, a formidable intellect, power-broker and long-time lover to Britain’s conqueror of 1688, William III. Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, the queen that Britain was promised and then denied in the middle of the 18th century, is immortalised in a painting over the grand staircase, while the fourth mistress, Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland, a glittering society hostess and the closest confidante of Queen Victoria, presides over the dining room. Finally, hanging beside the fireplace in the great hall is John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Nancy Astor – Cliveden’s last great mistress, Britain’s first female Member of Parliament, and one of the most controversial and colourful women in British political history.

The struggles and sacrifices of these women, their juggling of outer image and inner life, are familiar and universal. Their privileges, however, were extraordinary. It is from their elite viewpoint that this book narrates the tumultuous events of the last three centuries: Restoration and Glorious Revolution, aristocratic rise and fall, two world wars and the Cold War. Along the way there are tales of fanaticism and fashion, of censorship, disease, slavery and the unlikely correlation between gardening and warfare.

As well as being a story about women and power, this book is also the biography of a house. Conceived by Stuart aristocracy, Cliveden later served as a counter-court during the power struggles of the Hanoverian dynasty, and in the 19th century became a crucible for a new brand of liberal politics, while continuing to offer a safe haven for royalty. With the decline of aristocratic wealth, it was one of the first houses to be bought up by American money, and in the later 20th and 21st centuries, it has become part of a new commercial order in which my husband and I – Jewish and self-made – play our part. Throughout the narrative Cliveden itself remains central – the constant character and a defining presence in the lives of all these women. For more than three centuries, the house provided opportunity and authority to women; in return, successive mistresses shaped the house, transforming both its architectural appearance and its social role.

While these women’s biographies reflect the gender politics of their times, their story is not a simple one of progress towards emancipation and equality. Nancy, in the 20th century, was more financially reliant on her husband than Elizabeth Villiers was in the 17th. In the early 19th century Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland, watched from the balcony of the Lords as an act passed into law that would formally prevent women from participating in parliamentary elections – a privilege that had been enjoyed by women burgesses in the Tudor period. The life of each mistress is a dance of progress and reaction, of old and new. In this way, the biographies are not dissimilar from the house itself, where past and present are woven together: where 20th-century wiring runs underground along 16th-century tunnels, service bells from the 19th century hang from the wall above Wi-Fi boxes, and a swimming pool from the 1950s sits within a garden landscaped in the 1700s.

On the opposite side of the house to the pool, between the main block and the east wing, lies an unusual monument from the early 20th century that commemorates an event from the late 17th. Carved into the grass, inlaid in brickwork, is a rapier with an elegant handle, the sort a gentleman would have used in a duel. Alongside it lies a date: 1668.

It is a monument to the day on which a duel was fought between two of the most powerful people in the land, the Duke of Buckingham and the Earl of Shrewsbury. They were fighting for one woman – Anna Maria – Shrewsbury’s wife and Buckingham’s lover. The duel was to the death. Buckingham killed Shrewsbury and claimed Anna Maria as his prize. She became the first mistress of this great house, and it is to her that I turn to begin my story.

PART I

ANNA MARIA

1642-1702

Chapter 1

THE DUEL

BARN ELMS, 16 JANUARY 1668

IN THE THIN light of a January morning, the Duke of Buckingham galloped towards Barn Elms, the appointed site for the duel he had so long awaited. In springtime and summer, revellers flocked to Barn Elms with their bottles, baskets and chairs, recorded the diarist Samuel Pepys, ‘to sup under the trees, by the waterside’, but in winter the ground next to the Thames was frozen and deserted. Nevertheless, there was still activity on the river.¹ Nearby Putney was famous for its fishery and was also the point at which travellers going west from London disembarked from the ferry and continued by coach.² The harried cries of watermen and the shouts of fishermen returning from dawn trips filled the air as Buckingham neared his destination.

The grounds of the old manor of Barn Elms lay on a curve in the river just west of Putney. The land was divided into narrow agricultural plots – some open, others fenced off by walls or hedgerows. Pepys recorded that the duel took place in a ‘close’, meaning a yard next to a building or an enclosed field – somewhere screened off from passers-by.³

But as his horse’s hoofs thundered along the icy riverbank, Buckingham’s thoughts lay on a more distant turf. Anna Maria, the woman who had provoked the duel, was 270 miles away, in self-imposed exile in a convent in France. Nine years before, in 1659, Anna Maria Brudenell had married Francis Talbot, 11th Earl of Shrewsbury, but the union had been an unhappy one. He was 36, a wealthy but sedate landowner; she was a pleasure-loving 16-year-old already conscious of her seductive charms. Anna Maria kept a series of lovers but Shrewsbury turned a blind eye, making himself a laughing stock at court. During a trip to York in 1666, she began a new affair, this time with the flamboyant courtier George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, and the following summer sexual rivalry between him and another of her paramours, the hot-headed rake Henry Killigrew, exploded in a violent scuffle.⁴ This very public fracas made it abundantly clear that Anna Maria had been serially unfaithful, and Shrewsbury’s failure to challenge either man to a duel was seen as a dereliction of his role as a noble husband. Anna Maria fled to France in shame.

Amid reports that Buckingham was actually hiding Anna Maria in England, Shrewsbury at last summoned the courage to defend his marriage and his name. He challenged Buckingham to a duel and the duke eagerly accepted. Anna Maria exerted an extraordinary hold over a great number of men but she quite simply possessed the duke. ‘Love is like Moses’ serpent,’ he lamented in his commonplace book, ‘it devours all the rest.’⁵

Pepys reported that King Charles II had tried to dissuade Buckingham from fighting the duel but the message was never received.⁶ Even if it had been delivered, Buckingham would probably have taken little heed of the king’s wishes. Charles II was more like his brother than his monarch. Buckingham’s father, also George Villiers, had been made a duke by Charles I and, when Villiers senior was assassinated in 1628, the king took the Buckingham children into his household. Young George became a close friend of the future king and many of Charles’s happiest childhood memories involved Buckingham. The pair spent their student days at Cambridge University and their names appear side by side in the records of matriculation at Trinity College.⁷ Buckingham felt little obligation to defer to the king, while Charles tended to turn a blind eye to Buckingham’s reckless conduct.

Unknown to Shrewsbury, Buckingham had another reason to be riding to Barn Elms that January day in 1668. Shortly after the start of his affair with Anna Maria, Buckingham had viewed a magnificent estate next to the Thames. The site, then owned by the Manfield family, was within easy boating distance of London and included two hunting lodges set in 160 acres of arable land and woods. The estate was known as Cliveden, or Cliffden, after the chalk cliffs that rose above the river. From the lodges the ground dropped sharply towards the Thames, and on the far side of the river flooded water meadows and open land spread out for miles beyond. There had once been a well-stocked deer park on the site and Buckingham knew he could restore the estate to its former glory. He intended to replace the lodge with a large house that would boast the best views in the kingdom.

Buckingham bought Cliveden with the pleasures of the flesh at the forefront of his mind. This, he fantasised, would be his grand love nest with Anna Maria, a place for them to freely indulge in their affair – hunting by day, dancing by night. It was Buckingham’s obsession with Anna Maria and his dream of a gilded life with her at Cliveden that led him to accept Shrewsbury’s challenge.

Buckingham’s fight with Shrewsbury was not to be an impulsive brawl of the sort seen every night across London’s streets and taverns, but a carefully calibrated episode of violence. Although there had been medieval precedents for settling disputes through combat, the duel of honour was essentially a Renaissance invention, imported from Italy. Duelling formalised conflicts between aristocrats, replacing cycles of revenge, usually romantic in nature, with a single, rule-bound encounter. Its outcome served to resolve and annul any other grievances. The duel was part of a new court culture, which placed heavy emphasis on civility and courtesy; when these principles were ignored, duelling provided a means of redress. In the 1660s, after the monarchy was restored, duels became more common and attracted significant public interest and press comment, even if the participants lacked any kind of celebrity status.⁸ Charles II did issue an anti-duelling proclamation in 1660: ‘It is become too frequent,’ this stated, ‘especially with Persons of quality, under a vain pretence of Honour, to take upon them to be the Revengers of their private quarrels, by Duel and single Combat.’⁹ In reality, however, Charles II had no moral objection to the culture of romantic fighting, and in the absence of effective legislation from Parliament, duels were judged on a case-by-case basis.

A duel was conventionally initiated with a challenge from the aggrieved party, whose complaint could be anything from the monumental to the trivial. The philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote that men fought duels ‘for trifles, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other sign of undervalue in their Kindred, their Friend, their Nation, their Profession or their Name’.¹⁰ Even if a challenge were accepted, the duel itself could be avoided, either by one of the parties backing down or by a third party intervening. When a fight did take place, the duellists were each required to select two men as ‘seconds’. In earlier times the seconds had merely an auxiliary role, carrying weapons and arbitrating, but by the 1660s it had become fashionable for them to engage at the same time as the main combatants – turning the duel into a ritualised piece of gang violence. Nominally, the aim was to prove one’s honour by exposing oneself to danger, not to kill the opponent, but inevitably some duels ended in serious injury or death.

Fired up by the occasion and all it signified for him, Buckingham arrived at Barn Elms early. He had already dismounted, stripped off his riding cape and put on his duelling gloves by the time Shrewsbury arrived at the close. The duke’s seconds were his friend Sir Robert Holmes and the accomplished fencing master Sir John Jenkins. Shrewsbury had picked Sir John Talbot, a soldier, and Bernard Howard, a son of the Earl of Arundel.¹¹ The combatants lined up opposite each other and stared across the frozen earth in tense expectation. This would be no token contest: the stakes were too high. At the agreed signal, all six engaged at once. Bernard Howard, Shrewsbury’s second, ran furiously at Jenkins, killing him instantly. On Buckingham’s other flank, his cause was more successful: Holmes severed John Talbot’s arm, leaving Buckingham and Shrewsbury to fight alone. The rivals squared up, their breath pluming white in the cold air, the ghost of Anna Maria between them. Their contest was over in seconds. Shrewsbury launched himself first, finally intent on proving himself a man. But Buckingham parried the attack, feinted and then straightened his arm. His sword pierced Shrewsbury’s right breast and came out through his shoulder. As Buckingham withdrew his weapon, Shrewsbury fell to the ground, blood pulsing from his wound. His manservant stripped off his bloodied shirt, hastily bandaged his chest and carried him to a house in nearby Chelsea. It was five days before Shrewsbury could be safely moved to Arundel House in the Strand to recuperate. Buckingham, meanwhile, suffered little more than a scratch.¹²

For a while, it seemed that Shrewsbury would make a full recovery. Newsletters from London reported the opinion of surgeons, that ‘his wound doth now well digest, and … his spitting blood was a good sign of his recovery’,¹³ and Pepys was told by his apothecary that ‘Lord Shrewsbury is likely to do well’.¹⁴ However, in the first week of March 1668, Shrewsbury deteriorated suddenly and inexplicably and he died on 16 March. The doctor’s report concluded that ‘his heart had grown very flaccid, and his liver and entrails much discoloured and decayed’.¹⁵ ‘Seven of the most eminent of physicians and three surgeons’ examined the body and stated that Shrewsbury’s death had nothing to do with his duelling wound, which was ‘well, and fairly cured’.¹⁶ The verdict was important for Buckingham as it relieved him of direct responsibility for the death, but it seems unlikely that the wound had nothing to do with Shrewsbury’s deterioration.

Now free to return from France, in public Anna Maria would have to adopt the demeanour of a grieving widow. In private, however, she and Buckingham were determined to begin a life of hedonism together on the banks of the Thames. Even though these pleasures would in fact elude them, Anna Maria and Buckingham, easily caricatured as a whore and a rake, were a pair of ‘star-crossed lovers’ who inaugurated Cliveden as a place of beauty, luxury, love and intrigue.

Chapter 2

‘BEDS OF JEWELS AND RICH MINES OF GOLD’

SIX MONTHS BEFORE Anna Maria married the Earl of Shrewsbury, the diarist Rachel Newport tartly wrote that Shrewsbury was ‘in motion to two sisters … the elder being unhandsome and crooked, the younger tolerable; it is thought he will not have the elder’.¹ Newport was one of many women whose jealousy was aroused by Anna Maria. With cheeks unblemished by smallpox and chestnut hair curled into tight ringlets over her forehead, her features, although not those of a delicate beauty, were striking. Contemporary depictions show a woman with large, heavy-lidded eyes, an elegant, well-defined nose, and, just below her chin, a ‘soggiogaia’ – a little swelling of extra flesh that was considered attractive among Restoration aristocrats. At the nape of her neck she would sometimes have sported two small curled locks of hair, known as ‘heartbreakers’.

Born on 25 March 1642 to Robert Brudenell, 2nd Earl of Cardigan, and his second wife, Anne Savage, Anna Maria had grown up in a period of political and religious turmoil. Continental Europe had been wracked by religious wars, as the Protestant Reformation struggled for hearts and minds, land and power with the Catholic Counter-Reformation. England had itself undergone a prolonged and difficult transformation from Catholic to Protestant nation in the 16th century and debate over doctrine – especially the extent of the religious toleration – continued to rage throughout the 17th century. Like Shrewsbury, Anna Maria’s family were prominent Catholics – a faith viewed in Protestant England not only as theological error, but also as a dangerous political force. Catholics owed their allegiance to the Pope in Rome in religious matters and it was felt that this undermined the politico-religious authority claimed by the monarch as head of the Church of England. Moreover, the papacy claimed the right to depose ‘ungodly’ princes, and was backed by the military might of the Holy Roman Empire. Talk of Catholic plots – both real and fictitious – abounded. English Catholics risked persecution for their faith and, before Anna Maria was born, her family had already been charged with recusancy, the failure to attend worship in the Anglican Church.²

Just months after Anna Maria’s birth, England descended into a chaotic period of civil war that pitted the king, Charles I, and his Royalist supporters against the Parliamentarian forces who believed that Charles’s monarchy of personal rule had descended into tyranny. The conflict lasted almost eight years. On 30 January 1649, when Anna Maria was six years old, the king was executed at the command of a radical Parliamentarian minority. This horrified most English people – Royalist and Parliamentarian alike. To kill a king, it was said, was next to killing God. One of those who signed the death warrant was Oliver Cromwell. He became the leader of the new regime, first as head of the Council of State that ruled in what was known as the Commonwealth period, and later as the first holder of the office of Lord Protector, which afforded him greater personal power. Cromwell eventually died in 1658, a few months before Anna Maria’s wedding. His son Richard Cromwell proved an inept successor and so the monarchy was restored in May 1660, in the person of the beheaded king’s son, Charles II. Anna Maria came of age in the wake of the Restoration.

Her wedding to Shrewsbury was an arranged match, bringing together two Catholic families and offering her status, security and wealth. Shrewsbury, a widower 20 years her senior, would never ignite her passion. The epithalamium – a poem in celebration of a marriage – included an appeal to Hymen, the Greek god of wedding ceremonies:

May Hymen’s torch burn clear as your Desires

Lighted in heaven with pure Promethean fires …

Fit for a Husband who hath practised Love

Whose Beds of Jewels and rich mines of Gold

Are lodged within, to be enjoyed, not told.³

Shrewsbury did bring ‘rich mines of gold’ to the marriage, in the form of his sizeable estates, but although married previously, he was far from practised in the ‘art of love’. At the age of 36, he was staid, sombre and reserved. After the Restoration, he shunned the decadence of Charles II’s court, devoting himself instead to managing his land. He brought a daughter, Mary, from his first marriage, and on 24 July 1660, when Anna Maria was 17, she gave birth to the couple’s first son, Charles. Although they were to have a second son, Jake, it was Anna Maria’s relationship with Charles, Shrewsbury’s heir, which would in time define her future. Soon after his birth, Anna Maria began to evince an interest in dancing and music and drifted into the frenetic social whirl of Restoration society. After a straitened and often traumatic childhood during the Civil War and the puritanism of the Protectorate, she was ready to throw herself into the new culture of hedonism. If Buckingham was fascinated by the culture of the duel, Anna Maria was captivated by the role of the mistress.

After his father was executed, Charles II had spent some of his exile at the French court of Louis XIV, whose mistresses were well known. At the Restoration, French fashion, culture and music became prevalent at the English court. The musician Louis Grabu was brought over from France and appointed ‘Composer to His Majesty’s Musique’, the French style for ornamental interior design became popular in aristocratic households and, during the first five years of the monarchy, lace coats became more elaborate and sleeves more voluminous in imitation of the French mode.⁴ Along with these other Francophile imports came the cult of the mistress. Like most court fashions, the trend for mistress-keeping arose in imitation of the monarch’s own behaviour. Charles II had married Catherine of Braganza in 1662, but the match did not prevent the king from courting other women: he already had a number of other lovers and, while he and Catherine were on their honeymoon, his mistress Barbara Villiers (a cousin of Buckingham’s) gave birth to their second child at Hampton Court Palace.⁵ In Whitehall, the king was supplied with young women by the redoubtable team of William Chiffinch, Page of the Royal Bedchamber, and his wife. Using bribery, blackmail and flattery, the Chiffinches sourced royal mistresses from the streets of London, from the stage, and from within the court itself. Although the paramours of Charles II did not have the quasi-constitutional powers of their Continental counterparts, they were given wealth and titles and could contribute – albeit informally – to political debate. Villiers’s apartments in Whitehall, which were maintained by the government and included an aviary, doubled up as a political arena where both office and reputation could be made and broken. She was given land in Ireland, conferred the title of Duchess of Cleveland and endowed with sufficient resources and influence to deliver patronage of her own.

Mistresses were not only able to attain political influence – they also stood to gain widespread popularity. Many of the lovers of Charles II became national celebrities in their own right. A healthy market sprang up for woodcuts and mezzotints depicting this elite tribe of women. Those looking for images of the king’s most famous mistresses such as Nell Gwyn and Barbara Villiers had at least a dozen different prints to choose from, and portraits of the less famous courtesans still enjoyed successive editions, at a price of at least six pence.⁶ Court mistresses were not forbidden from enjoying their popularity, and the more successful ones kept lovers of their own. Barbara Villiers, whose insatiable sexual appetite became the stuff of legend, stood out in this regard. Villiers counted the playwright William Wycherley, Jacob the rope-dancer, and the actor Cardonnell Goodman among her exotic and energetic coterie of bedfellows.

There was a tension between the sexual availability of these women and the way they were portrayed in contemporary art, often as saints, penitents or goddesses. Barbara Villiers was herself painted as Mary Magdalene, and as St Agnes the shepherdess, the patron saint of virgins. Sir John Reresby described her as ‘the finest woman of her age’.⁷ Samuel Pepys, who bought a copy of her portrait, was mesmerised by the sight of her smocks and pretty linen petticoats drying in the Privy Garden: ‘Did me good to look on them’, he wrote in his diary.⁸ Pepys exemplified the way in which court mistresses were at the same time idealised for their beauty and disparaged for their moral frailty when, reflecting on her disrespectful behaviour towards her husband, he commented, ‘for her beauty I am willing to construe all this for the best and to pity her wherein it is to her hurt, though I know she is a whore’.⁹ This mix of desire and contempt was not simply a product of Pepys’s sexually tortured mind. The same celebrity that inspired penny ballads, woodcuts and mezzotints could also inspire downright hostility, and even public disorder. The first significant political riots of Charles’s reign centred on London’s brothels, haunts of many courtiers, and symbols of the sexual corruption that was supposedly abetted by the monarch himself.¹⁰ However much power and wealth and celebrity a mistress enjoyed, and however effectively she revenged herself against aggressors at court, in the public arena she was still ‘a whore’. Her reputation, for good and for ill, depended on her sexuality.

Anna Maria quickly learned that the way to achieve recognition within the court was to wield her sexual power. She understood how her beauty and allure could be harnessed to further her personal fortunes and political influence. Embarking on numerous affairs, she soon became notorious to the extent that court satirists even cast aspersions on the integrity of her mother, the upright Lady Anne Brudenell. One poem depicted her as having experienced a sort of Damascene conversion to vice and pimping.

Brudenell was long innocent,

But for the time she has misspent,

She’ll make amends hereafter.

Who can do more,

Than play the whore,

And pimp too for her daughter?¹¹

A rivalry developed between Anna Maria and Nell Gwyn. On one occasion, Anna Maria was denied an invitation to a house-warming party hosted by Nell, who quipped that ‘One whore at a time is enough for his Majesty’.¹² A contemporary recorded with incredulity the cult-like behaviour displayed by men who had become infatuated with Anna Maria: ‘there are three or four gentlemen wearing an ounce of her hair made into bracelets, and no person finds any fault’.¹³ She was also the cause of many duels, some of them fatal. ‘I would wager she might have a man killed for her every day’, wrote Anthony Hamilton in his Memoirs of Count Grammont, ‘and she would only hold her head the higher for it.’¹⁴

Chapter 3

‘HE CAME, HE SAW AND CONQUERED’

WHEN THE CIVIL War broke out in 1642, Buckingham was 16 and his brother Francis 15. Given the family’s close connections to the Crown, they naturally signed up to fight for the Royalist cause but, fearing for their lives, Charles I sent them abroad, and for the next few years they lived in Italy and France, ‘in as great state as some of those sovereign princes’.¹ In Rome and Florence, they received tuition from some of the most remarkable thinkers of the time, including Thomas Hobbes – although Buckingham clearly did not acquire his mentor’s distaste for duelling. But the brothers could not bear to stay away from England and, six years after leaving home, they returned to fight. Francis lost his life in a skirmish near Kingston in 1648 and Buckingham fled once more to the Continent, this time to Charles II’s court in exile in Holland. Parliament offered him a pardon and an opportunity to keep his estates if he returned to the country within 40 days, but he decided to stay with the king, sacrificing his vast estates in London, Rutland, Essex, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, Nottingham, Buckinghamshire and Yorkshire. He was received with ‘great grace and kindness’ by Charles, though without the income from his lands, he was forced to sell some of his father’s paintings in order to finance his lifestyle.²

1642	ANNA MARIA BRUDENELL born
1642–1651	English Civil War
1657	ELIZABETH VILLIERS born
1659	ANNA MARIA marries Francis Talbot, 11th Earl of Shrewsbury
1660	The Restoration: Charles II becomes king
1666	ANNA MARIA begins her affair with the 2nd Duke of Buckingham
	The Duke of Buckingham buys the Cliveden estate
	Great Fire of London
1668	The Duke of Buckingham fights a duel with the Earl of Shrewsbury; Earl of Shrewsbury dies
1674	ANNA MARIA and the Duke of Buckingham ordered by the House of Lords to separate
1676	Construction of a new house begins at Cliveden
1677	ANNA MARIA remarries
	Princess Mary marries William of Orange; ELIZABETH accompanies them to live in the Dutch Republic
1679–1681	The Exclusion Crisis
1685	ELIZABETH begins an affair with William of Orange
	James II becomes king; the Duke of Monmouth attempts a rebellion and is executed on Tower Hill
1687	The 2nd Duke of Buckingham dies
1688	The Glorious Revolution: William of Orange invades England, deposing James II and becoming William III
1689	ELIZABETH returns to England
	William III and Mary II become co-regents
1694	Queen Mary dies; her dying wish is that William end his affair with ELIZABETH
1695	ELIZABETH given Irish lands by William III; marries George Hamilton, Earl of Orkney
1696	The Earl of Orkney buys Cliveden
1700	ELIZABETH stripped of her Irish lands by Parliament
1701–1714	War of the Spanish Succession, in which the Earl of Orkney and the Duke of Marlborough fight
1702	ANNA MARIA dies
	William III dies; Anne becomes queen
1704	Battle of Blenheim (part of the War of the Spanish Succession), in which Marlborough distinguishes himself
1706	Thomas Archer begins renovating Cliveden for the Orkneys
	Battle of Ramillies (part of the War of the Spanish Succession), in which Orkney leads a charge across the Petite Ghee
1707	The Act of Union joins the crowns and parliaments of Scotland and England
1712	Archer’s renovation of Cliveden complete
1714	Queen Anne dies; George I becomes king
1717	George I’s first visit to Cliveden
1719	PRINCESS AUGUSTA OF SAXE-GOTHA born
1727	Giacomo Leoni’s Blenheim Pavilion built at Cliveden
	George II succeeds his father as king
1729	Queen Caroline and her son Frederick, Prince of Wales visit Cliveden
1733	ELIZABETH dies
1735	Leoni’s Octagon Temple built at Cliveden
1736	AUGUSTA marries Frederick, son of George II
1737	Earl of Orkney dies and Cliveden passes to Anne, 2nd Countess of Orkney
	AUGUSTA and Frederick lease Cliveden
1738	AUGUSTA gives birth to George William Frederick, later George III
1740	‘Rule, Britannia!’ performed at Cliveden
1745	Bonnie Prince Charlie lands in Scotland; Jacobite Rebellion
1746	Battle of Culloden
1751	Frederick dies; Anne, Countess of Orkney, regains possession of Cliveden
1760	George II dies; succeeded by AUGUSTA’s son George III
1772	AUGUSTA dies
1795	Cliveden burns down; the ruins become popular among tourists interested in Gothic sites
1806	HARRIET HOWARD born
1813	Architect Peter Nicholson commissioned to design a tea room by the Thames at Cliveden; George Devey would later develop the tea room into Spring Cottage
1813–1821	Highland Clearances in Sutherland
1821	Cliveden is sold at auction
1823	HARRIET marries George Gower, 2nd Duke of Sutherland
1824	Cliveden is conveyed to Sir George Warrender, who commissions William Burn to build a new main block
1832	First Reform Act
1833	HARRIET’S father-in-law, the 1st Duke of Sutherland, dies; HARRIET becomes the Duchess of Sutherland
1837	Victoria becomes queen
1839	Bedchamber Crisis
1848	The ‘Year of Revolution’ in Europe
1849	HARRIET and George buy Cliveden; the house burns down
1850	Architect Charles Barry produces plans to rebuild Cliveden
1851	Great Exhibition
1852	HARRIET enters the anti-slavery debate
1853	Gladstone confined at Dunrobin; becomes good friends with HARRIET
1855	Charles Barry is fired by the Sutherlands
1857	The Sutherlands employ George Devey and Henry Clutton to design several new structures for the grounds of the estate
1861	George, 2nd Duke of Sutherland, dies
1861–1865	American Civil War
1864	Garibaldi visits Cliveden
1866	Queen Victoria stays at Cliveden for ten days
1867	Second Reform Act
1868	HARRIET dies
	Cliveden is bought by Hugh Grosvenor, later the Duke of Westminster
1879	NANCY LANGHORNE born
1893	William Waldorf Astor buys Cliveden
1895	National Trust established
1897	NANCY marries Bob Shaw
1903	NANCY divorces Bob Shaw
1906	NANCY marries Waldorf Astor; Waldorf and NANCY given Cliveden as a wedding present; NANCY redesigns the garden and the interior
1914–1918	First World War; hospital built at Cliveden
1918	Representation of the People Act extends the vote to women aged 30 and over
1919	NANCY becomes the first female MP to take her seat
1937	The Week runs the Cliveden Set story
1939–1945	Second World War; new hospital built at Cliveden
1942	Waldorf approaches the National Trust about the donation of Cliveden
1945	NANCY resigns from Parliament
1952	Waldorf dies; NANCY gives Cliveden to their son Bill
1961	Jack Profumo meets Christine Keeler at Cliveden beside the newly built swimming pool
1963	Profumo Affair becomes a public scandal
1964	NANCY dies and is buried next to Waldorf at Cliveden
1966	Bill Astor dies of a heart attack. The Astors vacate Cliveden
1969–1983	Stanford University leases Cliveden from the National Trust for use as an overseas campus
1970	Bobbie Shaw commits suicide
1985	Lease acquired by the Von Essen hotel group
2012	Lease acquired by Ian Livingstone of London and Regional Properties to run as a hotel

About the Book

About the Author

CAST OF CHARACTERS

PART I

PART II

PART III

PART IV

PART V

TIMELINE

INTRODUCTION

PART I

ANNA MARIA

1642-1702

Chapter 1

THE DUEL

BARN ELMS, 16 JANUARY 1668

Chapter 2

‘BEDS OF JEWELS AND RICH MINES OF GOLD’

Chapter 3

‘HE CAME, HE SAW AND CONQUERED’