Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Mankie.
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Let's begin our story In Paris sixteen fifty eight. A woman only twenty eight years old is on her deathbed, dying of a venereal disease. An English churchman is with her in her remaining few hours, allowing her to make a general confession or a Christian prayer of repentance for sins. An English churchman would know these prayers well, Almighty and most Merciful Father, we have aired and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the
devices and desires of our own hearts. That's read by an Anglican congregation and mass during worship. But what did this woman specifically have to confess? Maybe her cause of death can provide you with a clue. But the extent of the words that she would utter to the priest went far beyond simply the sins of lust. She told the churchmen that there existed a black box, and inside of it one could find documentary proof that years earlier
she had married Charles, the second King of England. The story I just told you of the deathbed confession of the mysterious Black Box. Proof is likely highly dramatized, but Lucy Walter, the woman in question, was the very real mistress of the King of England, and the story of her alleged confession would have a very real impact on the country at large. Lucy's confession isn't actually the beginning
of our story, but it's also not the end. A confession of a secret marriage would be enough to cause a scandal, but the confession of a marriage while an acknowledged illegitimate son lived was enough to send the monarchy into turmoil. The churchman from the tale was also very real, but John Couson, future Bishop of Durham, would pass in
sixteen seventy two. Dying with him would be the only chance of finding this infamous black box and proving once and for all that Lucy's son, James Scott, the Duke of Monmouth, was not an illegitimate son, but in fact the King's legitimate, rightful heir to the throne. Notably, the story of Lucy's death comes from the memoirs of James the second, younger brother to Lucy's lover, King Charles the Second and it's a memoir in which she by and
large is portrayed in a rather shameful light. It will become clearer as to why that might have been the case later, but it's a good reminder that when it comes to Lucy's life we could be careful to take
things with a grain of salt. In a real history is written by the victor's moment, we have to ask, did Lucy even truly die of a quote disease incident to her profession, as James the Second put it, or as James was fighting the Duke of Monmouth foreclaim to the throne, did he really just want his enemy to be known as the son of a whore? The story of Lucy Walter and Charles the Second has all the
makings of a really good scandal. Royalty seduction, bastards, secret marriages, a quest for a fabled box, and, since this is the English monarchy, an eventual beheading. As with any scandal, though no matter how important the participants are, at the heart of it is a real messy group of people making real messy decisions. I'm Danish Schwartz and this is Noble Blood. Now to introduce the players in this scandal when there's a king involved, I imagine that ladies first
doesn't really apply. So let's start with King Charles the Second of England. Charles the Second's father, Charles the First was an infamously stuffy and unlikable man, so unlikable, in fact, that it cost him his head to very very succinctly sum up the English Civil War, but his wife, the French Princess Henrietta Maria, was practically his opposite. Charles the First was twenty four and she was fifteen at the time of their vows. He wanted a submissive, traditional queen,
while Henrietta had no such intentions of being one. She had been raised in the comparatively liberal environment of the French court. Charles the First was the head of the Church of England, and Henrietta Maria was a Roman Catholic at a time when religious strife was particularly contentious. The couple's biggest similarity at the time of their marriage seemed
to be that both were fairly onely disliked. Parliament and the English public were very wary when the king announced that he would be marrying a Roman Catholic woman, and due to religious restrictions, she was never even formally crowned in a coronation ceremony. In a situation like this of two very different parents, odds are that children would take more after one parent than the other, and in the young Charles's case, he took after his mother. The Bishop
Burnet once reflected that quote. The Queen Mother, referring to Henrietta Maria, observed often that the great defects of the late king's breeding and the stiff roughness that was in him, by which he disobliged very many and did often prejudice his affairs very much. So she gave strict orders that the young princes should be bred to wonderful civility end quote. Civility may seem a misplaced choice of wording here, but in this case it's a reference back to its archaic meaning,
which was to be learned in the humanities. And so the future Charles the second would take after his mother very much. By design as his mother's favorite, the young Charles spent a lot of time being doted on by Henrietta and her courtiers. The excess of Catholicism opposed by English Puritans around this time was spiritually embodied by Henrietta
who turned the palace into a personal menagerie. She kept herself surrounded by dwarfs, a sadly common practice among royalty at the time, dogs of all shapes and sizes, gestures.
And monkeys.
The idea was constant entertainment and spectacle. After all, Henrietta's mother was Ria de Medici, and if you know anything about that family, you know that extravagance was a prominent genotype in their Punnett Square. When young Charles was around, the courtiers devised games and jokes for the enjoyment of the prince, and in Henrietta's court he received a cultural education simply through exposure. But he was also exposed to the other side of a hedonistic leaning circle of wealthy followers.
As phrased by.
Derek Wilson in his book All the King's Women, quote, flirtations, affairs, and gossip about those flirtations and affairs.
Were part of the daily routine.
And if adulterous liaisons were not officially approved of, everyone knew they happened.
End quote.
It likely took the little prince some time to understand the full implications of what was going on behind the scenes, but adultery and that sort of debauchery was a part of his daily life from a young age. The Queen and her ladies also took great joy in dressing the young Charles and his royal siblings in fanciful costumes and staging masks and dances for the young princes to perform in.
Henrietta was a devoted patroness of the arts, particularly when it came to masks and plays, even ones that didn't involve her children. Her husband, Charles the First, for his part, was a major patron of paintings and visual arts, but their approaches were different. They both wanted the court to embrace the Beaumont, but Henrietta was determined to do so through grand French sensibilities, while her husband was the poster
child for English rigid formality and dignity. To get an idea of the kind of plays Henrietta was hosting, take this criticism from lawyer William Prine, a staunch Puritan, in a paragraph that sounds like it should follow the phrase this club has everything, Prine admonishes the Court for quote effeminate mixed dancing, stage plays, lascivious pictures, face painting, health, drinking, long hair, love, locks, periwigs, women's curling, powdering and cuffing
of their hair, bonfires, new Year's gifts, may day's amorous pastimes, lascivious, effeminate music, excessive laughter, luxurious, disorderly Christmas keeping mummeries with sundry such like vanities end quote. Charles the First was so offended by Prin's accusations that he was not the moral paragon, that he fancied himself that he had Prin sentenced to life imprisonment, find five thousand pounds, deprived of his Oxford degree, and for good measure, liberated of both
his ears. And that was just the initial sentence. But anyway, back to the sun, there was a third person responsible for rearing and influencing the young Prince. Charles's nurse, Christabella Wyndham. She was in her mid twenties when she was appointed, and apparently she was quite beautiful, but one of Charles the second future courtiers once remarked that there was quote nothing of woman in her but her body end quote.
Due to her apparent ambitiousness nature, she and her husband, Sir Edward Wyndham were quickly climbing the social ranks in court, and they were trusted by the King, Queen, and most of all, the young Prince, she readily provided the prince with affection, hugs and kisses that a young royal really
couldn't get anywhere else. In sixteen forty two, when twelve year old Charles was forced to leave his home for the first time to join his father fighting in the First English Civil War, he was separated from his incredibly comfortable home life, which included his mother's court and his beloved nurse. Charles's relatively loose education and preferences for an easy life hadn't prepared him for the battlefield, but nevertheless, in classic Nepo baby tradition, at age fifteen, he was
given his own command. While teenage Charles wasn't a particularly effective general, being in the field did give him a chance to reunite with Christabella, his childhood nurse, for a week. He was stationed in her hometown of Bridgewater, where she herself had become quite the warrior for the Royalist cause. She apparently fired a musket at the Parliamentary General and then sent her trumpeter to the enemy commander to taunt that if he were a real courtier, he would return
the compliment with another shot at her. Charles was thrilled to be reunited with his childhood nurse, but his courtier, Edward Hyde, was far less thrilled. It was he who had earlier described her as lacking womanhood, believing that she, Cristabella, sought to influence and manipulate the young Charles for her and her husband's own gain, which you know, probably to some degree was true. Hyde now admonished the way that she would run across the room to kiss young Charles,
who happily accepted her affection. Hyde feared that his master harbored quote fondness, if not affection end quote for his former nurse, which you know you think, sure he probably did. But some historians have interpreted this to mean that the relationship between them had evolved into something sexual, but there's no evidence to corroborate that idea, so the theory is more likely just a convenient plot point in young Charles's story.
Despite that, Christabella was undoubtedly Charles's first crush, and her headstrongness would certainly inspire his future taste. Speaking of headstrong women, let's finally talk about Lucy Walter. There is a definite lack of information on Lucy's early life compared to Charles, but after all, she was the daughter of Welsh gentry and he was the future King of England. Lucy was born in Pembrokeshire, Wales, the same year as Charles, but in the later sixteen thirties her parents moved the family
to London. Attracted to high society, Lucy's parents established their new home in Covent Garden, the most expensive quarter of the capitol. Their attempt to make a name for themselves in the city didn't work out as they had hoped, and by the time Lucy was ten, there was so much strain on their marriage that the couple divorced. It was not an easy or simple separation, and it ended up playing out messily in courts, with claims of infidelity and unpaid dowries.
For Lucy.
This meant she and her siblings would be placed in the care of her grandfather and brought up at his house near Exeter. We know that she received no formal education, but she learned etiquette and.
That's about it. For her childhood.
She likely spent time, as many children of divorce do, bouncing between her grandparents and her parents' respective homes but by her mid teens we know that she ended up back in London. We also know that she was charming, spirited, and a rare beauty, three qualities that she would come to rely on. The English writer John Evelyn once famously described her as quote a brown, beautiful, bold, but insipid
creature end quote. After the two shared a carriage later in her life, and it's believed that she at least understood her appeal. Lucy was at the age when many families would begin thinking.
Of marriage for their daughters.
But Lucy's family was not only fractured, but by this point out of money. Not only that, but England was at this point at war with itself, and most of her potential husband candidates were on the battlefield. It's likely that during this time, without a husband or father to protect her in London, she sought a quote protector. This protector arrangement, which was almost always in exchange for sexual services, was quite common in seventeenth century London, as it has
been informs throughout history. The man who would take on this protector role for Lucy was Algernon Sidney, Younger, son of the Earl of Leicester and bearer of a family name that pops up quite a lot on this show. He had been injured in battle and was waiting to be reinstated when he assumed his parliamentary seat as MP of Cardiff. That was the summer of sixteen forty six, and at the same time he entered into an agreement with Lucy. It said she must have made a considerable impression,
as he paid fifty pounds for her services. He later complained that he never received them because he was called back into battle and missed his chance. Shortly after Sidney's departure, the conclusion of Lucy's parents's long divorce proceeding was fined, finally reached, and Lucy's father was given custody of Lucy and her siblings, likely because her mother couldn't afford to
care for them. It's fairly clear that Lucy didn't care for her father because rather than move in with him, she chose to flee the country, changing her last name to Barlow borrowed from a maternal relative, she boarded a ship to Holland to stay at her uncle's family home. She wouldn't take much with her except a collection of letters of recommendation from Algernon Sidney addressed to his younger brother, Robert Sidney, who had recently become colonel of the English
regiment in the Netherlands. The letters apparently worked, as Lucy became Robert's mistress by spring sixteen forty seven. Though Robert Sidney was married, he was powerful enough that it didn't matter if he paraded his a newfound relationship around, and Lucy likely gained inadvertent access to the heart of culture happening in the Hague.
On Robert's arm.
Robert Sidney was, however, not the most important affair that Lucy would.
Have in Holland.
Like Lucy, young Charles also arrived at the Hague seeking refuge. The First English Civil War ended in sixteen forty six, with Charles the first surrendering and the prince going into exile, spending much of it in France with his mother. His younger brother James, however, was imprisoned in the Palace alongside their other siblings. By sixteen forty eight, conflict was already renewed,
marking the beginning of the Second English Civil War. James managed to escape the palace disguised as a girl and safely arrived in the Hague. To live with his sister Mary and her husband, William, the second Prince of Orange. This feels like one of those spoiler alerts that later in history, probably later in a Noble Blood episode, that
couple comes back. Young Charles, the prince in exile, had exhausted his options for aid in France, and so he too, traveled to meet his brother and pitch the Royalist cause to Mary and William. Lucy and Charles met almost immediately upon his arrival in Holland in May sixteen forty eight. We don't have details about their first meeting, or about how their affair began, or as to how Lucy broke off her arrangement with Sidney, but we know that Charles
was infatuated from the moment they met. Madame d'lnoy, the baroness and French author who actually coined the term fairy tale for her collection of stories, once wrote that upon seeing Lucy's beauty for their first meeting, the prince was quote so charmed and ravished and enamored that, in the misfortunes which ran through the first years of his reign, he knew no other sweetness or joy than to love
her and be loved by her end quote. The couple were both eighteen, and Lucy was almost certainly Charles's first, possibly only love, despite his already gained reputation as something of a cad. Lucy was the first woman Charles began a relationship with, which explains the buzzy, impassioned language many historians youth to describe their affair. On Lucy's part, we don't have any real insight into how reciprocal her feelings
truly were, at least on first glance. It's equally likely that Charles was the great love of her life as it is that she was just seeking out more powerful quote protection, and positive and negative interpretations of her motives have ebbed and flowed with history and shifts in historical
schools of thought. What we know for sure, though, is that by July Lucy was pregnant, the same month in which the Prince Charles would return to his position of command and depart with his fleet back to the seas. In December, tensions escalated back in England, but the Prince, still in exile, returned to the Hague for the holidays.
At this point in English history, Christmas had been all but banned by the Puritan Parliament, associating its festivities too closely with indulgent Catholicism and arguing that Christmas encouraged drunkenness and debauchery. In Holland, however, the festive season was in full swing, and it can be assumed that pregnant Lucy joined Charles at court for celebration. Their happy period quickly came to an end, though by the time their son James was born in Rotterdam on April ninth, Charles had
been gone from the Netherlands two months earlier. He had learned of his father's execution, and he immediately set off for Jersey, the only one of his father's dominions in which he was now declared king. His agree that the death of his father marked a near immediate shift in Charles. The prince, who had once been described as soft hearted, had hardened, and will see the consequences of this shift
as our story goes on. Baby James was left in the care of a wet nurse in Rotterdam, while Lucy returned to Charles's side months later in either Jersey or his next destination, Paris, where Charles would reunite with his mother, Henrietta Marie in court. It seems the Queen mother was not too fond of the mother of her beloved son's child.
From Hyde, the man who once admonished the way Christavella showed affection to Charles, we get an account of the young lady Lucy, who had quote procured a lodging there without her majesty consent, and with whom her Majesty was justly offended for the little respect she showed toward her majesty end quote. Hyde prevailed upon Charles to have this
woman removed from court, and the King ultimately complied. We don't know actually for sure that this woman was Lucy, but the timeline matches up, and more specifically regarding Lucy, Hyde later comment that Lucy resided for quote some years in France in the King's sight, and at last lost his Majesty's favor end quote. And so it's believed that the couple traveled together for periods through the sixteen fifties as Charles made his way to Belgium and the Netherlands
for negotiations with the Scottish. But the affair between Charles and Lucy was ultimately destined to end in the place where it began. The details we have of the couple's post relationship interactions and of Lucy's later life at large are very limited. There's a letter from May sixteen fifty five from Charles to Viscount Taife, an Irish Royalist officer who accompanied Charles into exile, that reads quote, as soon as I have any money, I will not fail to
send some to missus Barlow. But in the meantime advise her, both for her sake and mine, that she goes to some place more private than the Hague for her stay there is very prejudicial to us both end quote. It's widely believed that Taife is actually the father of Lucy's second child, a daughter named Mary, likely born in sixteen fifty one.
When it came.
To Charles's request, Lucy evidently ignored his warnings she was still in the Hague six months later. This prompted Charles to issue an allowance to her of five thousand livres per month, which he promised to raise once he was formally king. Realizing that he could actually control where she chose to live, the allowance was directed to be given at Antwerp quote, or some other place as she shall desire.
Charles wanted Lucy out of the Hague to avoid scandal in the Court of Orange, but scandal Lucy did find. An account from court reads that Lucy quote was living a life so disorderly that the princess's own servant proposed to banish.
Her from the place end quote.
In this case, a disorderly life consisted of having an affair with a married man, allegedly at tempting to murder a maid who threatened to reveal the affair, and being accused by the same maid of having two abortions. Now, the legitimacy of any of these claims has not been verified, but for Charles's ye old pr team at the time, any press was not a good press. Thus Lucy was apparently persuaded to return to England, where she was imprisoned, along with the married man with whom she had had
an affair, her maid, and her brother. Historians have widely theorized about why she was arrested and why she returned to England in the first place. The most exciting theory is that she was working for the king as a Royalist spy. In reality, Lucy claimed that she had returned to claim the inheritance of fifteen hundred pounds left for
her by her mother, who had recently died. The timing makes this plausible, but her testimony is riddled with lies, including the fact that she was the widow of a Dutchman who was the father of both of her children. She had been the king's mistress, she explained, but they had not seen each other for two years and their child had died. The parliamentary regime would not have treated her favorably as an active mistress of the king, so to frame herself instead as a sympathetic widow was likely
a strategic move. Her maid, however, snitched on every detail of the affair, which the parliamentary regime at the time.
Was more ready to believe.
Lucy's arrest covered in the pro Republican newspaper Mercius Politicus, referred to Lucy as Charles's wife or mistress, and reported that order is taken forthwith to dispatch the King's quote, lady of pleasure and the young heir and set them on shore in Flanders, which is no ordinary courtesy end quote.
Learning about Charles having a lady of pleasure was a great boon for Puritans who supported the parliamentary cause, because that knowledge reinforced the perception that royals were impure and superficial. It's not clear when exactly James had returned to Lucy's care, but we know that they were together in Brussels in sixteen fifty eight, when an attempt was made by Charles's regime to physically remove his son from his mother's presence.
Colonel Arthur Slingsby attempted to detain Lucy in a city prison while he abducted her son, but this apparently failed spectacularly and publicly. Lucy resisted loudly as he attempted to drag her away, which drew a crowd of spectators who were allegedly scandalized at the violence of the colonel, and they were moved by the actions of a mother trying to protect her son. This turned into a diplomatic incident.
The Spanish ambassador, governor of the Spanish Netherlands, and the local town council all got involved to protect Lucy, believing that the colonel was not acting on Charles's authority. The colonel actually was, but he had been ordered to carry out his task quietly, which gave room for the king
to now pin the blame on him. Still, Charles wanted his son in custody, which prompted one of Charles's chief advisers to explain to the Spanish ambassador that it was in the father and the mother's best interests to have baby James collected. Quote, it will be a great charity to the child, the adviser wrote, as in the conclusion to the mother, if she shall now at length retire herself into such a way of living as may redeem in some measure the reproach her past ways have brought
upon her. Basically, if she didn't have the burden of an illegitimate baby hanging over her head, she could start living as an honest woman. If Lucy was to continue to live in, as the ambassador put it, mad disobedience to his pleasure, the King would be forced to disown
both Lucy and their son. Lucy, learning of the King's plans to have baby James placed in the care of a chosen guardian, countered with her own plan that she would be allowed to live in the home of the chosen guardian, and she would have a say in the choice of said guardian. If King Charles didn't agree to these terms, she threatened she would publish a collection of
his letters that she had in her possession. For a short period of time, it seemed that Charles would comply with these terms, but by the spring of sixteen fifty eight, a second mission to remove James from Lucy's care was successfully completed, and the now nine year old bastard prince was placed in Paris. Charles's agent warned that James was not yet safe quote from his mother's intrigues, but they justified the abduction by noting that he observed that Lucy
had not been properly educating her son. The letters that Lucy had blackmailed the king with were also dealt with the same Spanish authorities who had once protected Lucy now complied with Charles's orders to search and seize any papers that they found. The tragic and ironic aftermath of James's forced removal from his mother's care is that she would die that same year. The next account that we have of Lucy catches us up to where our story began,
with her deathbed confession to John Coussen. The assertion that she had actually married Charles legally, and that proof was out. There would be a quiet whisper for years before it escalated into a roar. England restored the monarchy and invited Charles the Second to claim his throne in sixteen sixty two, years after Lucy died. When their son James was nearly fourteen, he was brought to England to live in the restored Stuart Court, where Charles took an instant liking to him.
James was legitimized as the Duke of Monmouth. He became popular among the people for his Protestantism, especially since Charles's younger brother James had openly converted to Catholicism. The exclusion crisis and the Popish plot would need dedicated episodes to be completely explained, and I think they probably eventually will
get them. But know that in sixteen seventy nine, Charles the Second would have to make no fewer than three public claims that he had only been married once, and it was in sixteen sixty two, and it was to his Queen Catherine. This was because his wife had given him no legitimate heirs, and there was a grit g owing faction in England who wanted to name Protestant James the illegitimate son with Lucy as the successor to the throne instead of Catholic.
James, who was King.
Charles the second brother and this faction were encouraged by the rumor that James of Monmouth, Protestant illegitimate son was secretly a legitimate heir. Charles's denial did not have the effectiveness that he had hoped for, because after his passing, Lucy's mythologized confession that the two had been legally married would fan the flames of the Monmouth Rebellion, an epic battle of James versus James that would ultimately cost Lucy's
son his head. Neither the contents of the mysterious black box she confessed, nor the box itself wherever found, but they, and by extension, Lucy, had a profound impact on a pivotal moment in English history. Charles the Second would go on to have eleven more illegitimate children from mistresses, but historians conclude that his affair with Lucy in the days before he had the weight of the crown on his shoulders,
was the only true love he knew. That's the story of Lucy Walter and her illegitimate possibly legitimate son James. But keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more about that mysterious box. The truth of the Black Box still evades us, but recently discovered documentation may shed some new light unto the truth.
Of its existence.
Historians have found a deposition dated April nineteenth, sixteen forty nine by a sixteen year old named Edward Fenn, who spoke on behalf of the honorable Miss Lucy Barlow, also now staying here in the Hague. Fenn testified that he had accompanied his master, a naval Captain Robert Killigrew, on
a trip with Lucy from the Hague to Rotterdam. The contents of the testimony detail that Lucy had with her in her possession a small cabinet or box, which, by Killigrew's orders, Fenn was in charge of keeping safe in the inns where they stayed. Fen was consistently urged by his captain to get his hands on the contents of the box, with him, going so as to purchase lead to replace the box's minted silver, even ordering Fenn to drop the box in the water and remember the spot
where he did so. Fenn reasonably confident that he would in fact not be able to retrieve the box after dropping it in the water. Refused, Killigrew then took matters into his own hands, and Fenn spied him with the box under his cloak, taking out quote the papers and counting the coins of minted gold. Fenn's deposition concludes with him explaining that he didn't know if the captain ever put the money back, but that the box was now once again in the hands of its rightful owner, Lucy Barlow.
Based on the captain's earlier orders to Fenn, we can assume that Killigrew was really only after the money that Lucy had stored in box. But what about the papers. It's unclear as to why this testimony was being recorded in the first place, and all we know is that it was requested by Lucy only a few days after her son's birth. Was she seeking to document proof that Kilgrew had tried to steal from her despite no further record of legal action it's plausible, or was she instead
documenting proof that this cabinet was in her possession? In a search for answers, we are unfortunately left with only more questions. But maybe the fabled box really was nothing more than a fairy Tale. Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankie. Noble Blood is created and hosted by me Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, Hanna Zwick, Mira Hayward,
Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and rima il Kaali, with supervising producer Josh Fain and executive producers Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show.