Her cries had been so horrible that many stated they may hardly bear to hear. But the king – James II & VII – exhorted the members of his council to return nearer, to look extra carefully. He had heard the rumours that the being pregnant was faux, and was decided to make sure that nobody may say this baby was not born of the queen.
The sight of so many faces so near Maria was overwhelming; she couldn’t give beginning with so many males wanting on her, she stated. However whereas James stooped to cowl her face along with his periwig, the remainder of her physique remained on full show – and everybody current witnessed that essential second.
That night, the London Gazette reported the information to the residents of the capital: “Today between 9 and 10 within the morning the Queen was safely delivered of a PRINCE.” Protestant England now had a Catholic inheritor – and a constitutional disaster.
It didn’t take lengthy for the disaster to unfold. To maintain the queen heat as her labour started, a serving lady had positioned a bedpan stuffed with sizzling coals below the blankets. That straightforward act prompted whispers {that a} baby had been smuggled in – and, whether or not or not anybody believed the hearsay, it offered enough pretext for seven politicians and nobles to ask William of Orange to invade England, launching the episode now broadly often called the ‘Wonderful Revolution’.
If Queen Maria of Modena is thought as we speak, it’s for these occasions of 1688. However behind the story of political upheavals lies one other story – of an Italian Catholic princess who, at simply 15 years previous, was despatched to a Protestant nation that feared ‘popery’ greater than the rest. There she would marry a person 25 years her senior, inheritor to the English throne. It’s the story of a younger lady whose objective in life was seen because the breeder of heirs, however who deserves to be seen as excess of merely a Catholic womb.
Dynasty in decline
Maria Beatrice d’Este was born on 5 October 1658 in Modena, round 23 miles north-west of Bologna in northern Italy. Although as soon as an awesome ruling dynasty, by the mid-Seventeenth century the Estensi household was a lot in decline. Maria’s father died when she was not but 4 years previous, leaving her two-year-old brother, Francesco, to take his place as Duke of Modena, with their mom, Laura, performing as regent. A formidable and extremely educated lady, Laura stored her kids at what Maria later known as an “terrible distance” from her, and was decided that each of them could be students.
A lot of Maria’s schooling occurred within the convent connected to the palace, and he or she felt at residence in that lifetime of devotion to God, in a spot of schooling, group and friendship. Whereas nonetheless a toddler, she decided that she would grow to be a nun. Unbeknown to her, occasions unfolding in England would quickly change the course of her life.
Anne Hyde, the primary spouse of James, Duke of York – youthful brother of King Charles II – died in 1671. Her physique was hardly chilly earlier than discuss turned to James’s remarriage. Charles’s nine-year marriage to Catherine of Braganza had produced no kids, so James was the inheritor to the thrones of England, Scotland and Eire, and must make a dynastic match with one of many princesses of Europe. James despatched his trusted pal the Earl of Peterborough as ambassador extraordinary, to search out him a spouse and future queen. After many months of looking out, Peterborough encountered a portrait of a stupendous younger lady, and wrote to James and Charles that he had “discovered his mistress and the Fortune of England”.
The truth that Maria needed to grow to be a nun mattered little to those highly effective males. When she instructed Peterborough that she would fairly throw herself within the hearth than marry James, he replied that he “couldn’t imagine… that she was made for another finish than to provide Princes to the World”.
Tellingly, one other highly effective man had taken an curiosity within the match: Pope Clement X. He knowledgeable Maria by letter that, in marrying James, she would open herself “to a vaster discipline of advantage than that of the virginal cloister”: by bearing Catholic heirs, she may deliver England again to the true religion. After studying this letter, she cried for 3 days – to the extent that she was held down by drive. Peterborough merely wrote that: “The princess finally gave herself as much as the desire of her mates.” Over in England, James despatched a word to his daughters, Mary and Anne, explaining that he had “discovered a brand new playfellow”. They had been 11 and eight years previous, respectively; Maria was 14.
Controversial match
Maria arrived on the hedonistic courtroom of the ‘Merrie Monarch’ in 1673, utterly unprepared for what she encountered there.
“I can not but adapt myself to this state – a state to which, as you already know, I’ve been opposed,” she wrote to her former mom superior. “Many nights I weep and grieve and can’t eliminate this melancholy.”
The match induced controversy. Merciless and scurrilous pamphlets circulated, through which it was hoped that she would “be envenom’d with the pox” and to “die earlier than 20, rot earlier than 16”.
However although younger in years, Maria was resourceful. She discovered English rapidly, and started to navigate courtroom politics through the use of the sort of mushy energy for which the Estensi household was so celebrated – notably, by means of patronage of the humanities. The poet John Dryden wrote verse in her honour, Dutch artist Peter Lely painted her portrait, and the courtroom was crammed with the sounds of Italian opera – “the primary that had been in England of this type”, based on famend diarist John Evelyn.
As her friendship along with her stepdaughters burgeoned, Maria inspired their abilities for singing and dancing by commissioning The Masque of Calisto. This was a lavish spectacle even by the requirements of the Restoration courtroom, and the princesses – together with Maria’s favoured maid of honour, Sarah Jennings (later Sarah Churchill, Queen Anne’s ‘favorite’) – took the starring roles.
Shortly earlier than the masque’s first efficiency, Maria gave beginning to her first baby. It was not the hoped-for boy, however the toddler’s mother and father had been overjoyed, and named her Catherine Laura – Catherine after the queen, Laura after Maria’s mom. Quickly after, Maria had her daughter baptised in her rooms – as a Catholic. When her brother-in-law, King Charles II, discovered what she’d executed, he smiled and patted her hand. That was all very nicely, Charles stated, however the baby could be raised within the English church, so she must be baptised once more, as a Protestant.
This expertise gave Maria a concrete understanding of her place at courtroom for the primary time. Her kids weren’t simply her personal, however kids of the crown; although she gave beginning to them, she had no say over their upbringing. (Tragically, Catherine Laura didn’t dwell lengthy; although Maria was pregnant a complete of 12 occasions, solely two of her kids survived to maturity and one outlived her).
Maria’s personal life as Duchess of York was one among fixed uncertainty, as anti-Catholic feeling intensified. Parliament was more and more divided into two factions, Tories and Whigs; the previous supported hereditary monarchy, whereas the latter was implacably against James ever changing into king. In the meantime, tensions had been rising extra broadly in London. The years after Maria’s arrival in England had been marked by two plots. The primary, the so-called ‘Popish Plot’ of 1678, was a sequence of accusations by the fantasist Titus Oates, who claimed to have unearthed treasonous Catholic plans to kill the king. Regardless of being a whole fabrication, it resulted in imprisonments and the execution of a few of Maria’s shut mates, and he or she and James had been despatched into exile – first in Brussels, then in Scotland.
The second plot was actual, and got here shortly after James and Maria’s return to courtroom in 1682. Had it been profitable, the ‘Rye Home Plot’ of 1683 would have seen Charles and James assassinated, with James, Duke of Monmouth – Charles’s favorite illegitimate son – made king.
It was over time following the Rye Home Plot that Maria was lastly capable of recreate one thing of the lifetime of feminine friendship and mental endeavour that she had loved within the convent in Modena. Two of her maids of honour, Anne Kingsmill (later Finch) and Anne Killigrew, had been prodigiously gifted: each had been poets, and Killigrew was additionally a painter. Amongst her maids extra typically, Maria inspired a tradition of studying and mental endeavour, and each Annes produced work in her honour.
Two items specifically present a snapshot of this shared artistic life, each depicting Maria because the goddess Venus. The primary, a collaboration between Kingsmill and Killigrew, was a masque entitled Venus and Adonis – a proto-feminist retelling of the classical fable. The second was Killigrew’s portray Venus Attired by the Graces, that includes each Annes among the many Graces. A brand new daybreak of ladies’s artwork and poetry appeared on the horizon.
A Catholic queen
On 6 February 1685, Charles II died abruptly, aged 54. Maria mourned him deeply – although was cautious of displaying her grief in public. “I used to be so drastically by the dying of King Charles that I dared not present how a lot,” she wrote, “lest I be suspected of hypocrisy.” Regardless of their worries concerning the reception they could encounter, James and Maria had been welcomed because the king and queen. This gave her a possibility for larger patronage: the author Aphra Behn wrote a celebratory coronation ode, and Anne Killigrew painted coronation portraits. Then tragedy struck once more in April when Killigrew died of smallpox, aged simply 25.
The brand new king, James II & VII, had discovered all of the fallacious classes from the execution of his father, Charles I; he thought that anybody who disagreed with him was towards him, and believed that every one of parliament had been his enemies. His longstanding mistress, Catherine Sedley, was made a countess, and appeared to carry extra affect over him than anybody, together with his spouse. It was stated that Maria “loves her husband in all sincerity” however that “she is an Italian, and really proud”. She determined that, not like queens who had come earlier than, she wouldn’t tolerate this example, and instructed James to decide on: his mistress or his spouse. If he continued his affair, she would go away England. “Give her my dower,” she instructed him. “Make her Queen of England, however let me see her no extra!” If James was shocked by this outburst, he would quickly be much more astonished when he encountered Maria’s monks, all on their knees, begging him to ship away his mistress and save his soul. Overwhelmed, he agreed.
These rising tensions had been heightened by the absence of a male inheritor. Maria had not been pregnant in three years so, on the finish of August 1687, went to Tub to take the waters in the hunt for fertility. Her therapy grew to become a type of well-liked leisure: members of the general public flocked to the galleries to look at her bathe as an Italian orchestra carried out. Virtually instantly afterwards Maria grew to become pregnant however, no sooner had she discovered, rumours started – fuelled (even perhaps began) by King James’s daughter Anne, whose personal anti-Catholicism had turned her towards her father and stepmother.
Scorching coals in a bedpan
After the keenly noticed beginning of Prince James Francis Edward in June 1688, the rumours solely intensified. Some stated that the being pregnant had been a hoax; others claimed that Maria had miscarried, or that the kid had been a woman and changed with a boy. All agreed that the kid, who was given the title of Prince of Wales, had been smuggled into the room in a bedpan, though at the very least two Protestant witnesses noticed the bedpan stuffed with sizzling coals initially of the labour.
The seven males who wrote to encourage the invasion by James’s nephew and son-in-law, William of Orange, exploited these rumours, together with of their letter the declare that the kid was an imposter. William ensured that his fleet landed on 5 November – a day on which effigies of the pope had been ritually burned in bonfires.
Fearing for his or her security, James and Maria took their child and fled into exile on the courtroom of Louis XIV in France. They by no means stopped believing they could be capable to get again the throne. However it wasn’t to be, and so they remained at Saint-Germain-en-Laye for the remainder of their lives. Right here, free of the obligations of queenship, Maria may as soon as once more commit herself to patronage of the humanities and of ladies’s schooling. In some methods, her life had come full circle: she grew to become the patron of a convent of the Visitation – the identical order that she had needed to affix as a toddler.
Maria outlived her husband by 17 years, bearing him one other baby in exile. She “has been overwhelmed with calumnies,” James stated of Maria on his deathbed. “However time, the mom of Reality, will I hope, finally make her virtues shine as vibrant because the solar.”
MARIA’S MOMENTS
The occasions and travails of a Catholic queen
1658: Maria is born on 5 October on the Ducal Palace (proper) in Modena to Duke Alfonso IV d’Este and Laura Martinozzi
1662:
Maria’s father dies and her two-year-old brother, Francesco, turns into Duke of Modena. Laura is appointed regent till he comes of age
1673: On her fifteenth birthday, Maria begins the journey to England to take her place as Duchess of York, escorted by her mom
1675: Maria’s first baby, Catherine Laura, is born in January however dies in October. Racked with grief, Maria suffers the primary of a number of miscarriages
1678: Titus Oates comes ahead with tales of a Catholic conspiracy towards Charles II, and in 1679 Maria and James are despatched into exile. Whereas she is away, Maria’s four-year-old daughter, Isabella, dies in London
1682: The courtroom of James and Maria returns to England. Maria’s new maids of honour embody the poet Anne Kingsmill and the poet/painter Anne Killigrew
1685: Charles II dies on 6 February. James and Maria’s coronation is on 23 April
1688: Maria provides beginning to James Francis Edward Stuart on 10 June, an occasion dubbed the “child within the bedpan fable”. It’s the catalyst for the so-called Wonderful Revolution – the invasion of Britain by William of Orange
1689: With Maria and James in exile in France, William and his spouse, Mary (James II’s daughter), are topped as joint monarchs of England, Scotland and Eire on 11 April
1718: Maria dies in Paris on 7 Could. She is buried on the convent in Chaillot, of which she has been a patron whereas in exile
Breeze Barrington is a cultural historian specialising within the inventive cultures of the Seventeenth century. Her new guide is The Graces: The Extraordinary Untold Lives of Ladies on the Restoration Court docket (Bloomsbury, July)
This text was first printed within the August 2025 challenge of BBC History Magazine