Talk:Lucy Walter

Material from Chisholm EB1911 has long since been discredited
Re: Wikipedia's article on Lucy Walter The material from Chisholm (Encyclopedia Britannica, 11 edition) has long since been discredited by numerous researchers. yet it is included at the beginning and not subject to editing. I feel it unfair that not even further research invalidating it is allowed in the opening paragraph. Prime example is that since the 1830 discovery of the 1670 Secret Treaty of Dover, 160 years after the pact was made that Charles II agreed that in exchange for Louis XIV's paid subsidy, Charles would publicly confess his Catholic Religion and return England to the Catholic church. That revelation and Charles request for a Catholic priest at the time of his death gives strong motivation to Charles II denials of marriage to Lucy and should be allowed to be seen in print by those searching for facts. As a Catholic his marriage to Lucy outside of the Catholic church although a legitimate Protestant marriage rite would not be considered valid by his Catholic church. I see no honorable reason to suppress its addition after the last sentence of the first paragraph. references: "The King's Apostasy... is not so late a date as the world is made to believe. For though it was many years concealed and the contrary pretended and dissembled, yet it is certain that he abjured the Protestant Religion, soon after the exilement of the Royal Family, and was reconciled to the Roman Church at St. Germain in France," White Kinnet, Bishop of the Church of England and Charles II's contemporary and supporter. Kennet's Register, p. 598. "Before King Charles left Paris he changed his religion, but by whose persuasion is not yet known." Bishop (of the Church of England) of Salisbury Gilbert Burnet and contemporary of Charles wrote this in November 1655 from his "History of My Own Time" and/ or "Some Unpublished Letters of Gilbert Burnet, Camden Society, 1907. "Appendix A" by G.D. Gilbert, p. 375. "Lucy Walter: Wife or Mistress", pp. 108, 122. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elirets (talk • contribs) 04:31, 28 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Whether or not it has been discredited, since the article was rewritten using DNB and ONDB sources (in January 2014) ), the article is no longer based on the EB1911 text. -- PBS (talk) 10:54, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Courtesan or queen?
Text moved from the article originally placed there through a number of edits see: But it is not in a format acceptable for article space it is more like proposals for an article that appear on a talk page. Hence my reason for moving it here now that I have rewritten the article using the DNB (1899) and ODNB (2006) articles. It may be that some of this information can be used to enhance the current article, but its presentation will have to be changed.
 * Revision as of 16:12, 12 May 2011 (5 intermediate revisions by one user not shown) by AJN
 * Revision as of 06:53, 10 December 2013 (18 intermediate revisions by 4 users not shown) by Elirets

The first paragraph of this article, apparently not subject to editing, primarily from Chisholm (Encyclopædia Britannica, 11 edition) has long since been discredited by numerous researchers. Unfortunately it is unfairly placed at the beginning of this article and never hidden, although the truth of those so-called facts have been doubtful since the 1830 discovery of the 1670 Secret Treaty of Dover. That pact was made because Charles II agreed that in exchange for Louis XIV's paid subsidies, Charles would publicly confess his Catholic Religion and return England to the Catholic church. That revelation and Charles request for a Catholic priest at the time of his death show strong motivation for Charles II to deny marriage to Lucy to allow the throne to be passed on to a publicly declared Catholic, his brother James II, rather than his acknowledged son, the Protestant James Duke of Monmouth. As a Catholic, Charles II's possible marriage to Lucy outside of the Catholic church, even if a legitimate Protestant marriage rite, would not be considered valid by his Faith although the law in the British kingdom at that time specified all marriages of whatever color during the Stuart exile were as valid as if performed by the Church of England.< references: 1. "The King's Apostasy... is not so late a date as the world is made to believe. For though it was many years concealed and the contrary pretended and dissembled, yet it is certain that he abjured the Protestant Religion, soon after the exilement of the Royal Family, and was reconciled to the Roman Church at St. Germain in France," White Kinnet, Bishop of the Church of England and Charles II's contemporary and supporter. Kennet's Register, p. 598. 2."Before King Charles left Paris he changed his religion, but by whose persuasion is not yet known." Bishop (of the Church of England) of Salisbury Gilbert Burnet and a contemporary of Charles wrote this in November 1655 from his "History of My Own Time" and/ or "Some Unpublished Letters of Gilbert Burnet, Camden Society, 1907. 3. "Appendix A" by G.D. Gilbert, p. 375. 4."Lucy Walter: Wife or Mistress", pp. 108, 122.

Lord George Scott has disputed in "Lucy Walter, Wife or Mistress" the biography of Lucy Walter drawn from a short memoir from the state papers of King James II, her son's successful rival for the throne. These so-called State Papers of James the Second state that Lucy Walter moved from Wales to London as a young girl, and nearly became the mistress of Algernon Sidney, a Roundhead officer and second son of the Earl of Leicester. When he was sent out of the capital on military duty, she moved to the Netherlands, and instead began an affair with his younger brother, Colonel Robert Sidney, who commanded a regiment of English soldiers in the Dutch army. Beginning on pages 207- 210, in the same book used as reference for these accusations, Scott discredits that James II’s so-called state papers were written by James II but rather by Innes or Dicconson in the narrative form. Further several contemporary biographies exists disputing the claims of James II and his supporters including: the referenced "Wife or mistress" by Lord George Scott, "Althorpe Memoirs" by George Steinman Steinman, "Appendix A" by G. D. Gilbert of "Memoirs of the Court of England in 1675" by Baronne D’Aulnoy, "The Abandoned Woman" by Frank Arthur, "The Defence of Lucy Walter: Putting to Right a Towering Injustice" by T. G. Lamford, and "Brown, Beautiful and Bold" by Brat Mac All among others.

John Evelyn, a junior member of James II's government, also reported the story of a relationship with a member of the Sidney family, and Samuel Pepys, a supporter of James II, and Lord Clarendon, father-in-law of James II, also record similar tales about her background. Evelyn claimed to have met Lucy Walter briefly in 1649, and remembered her as a "brown, beautiful, bold but insipid creature", a "beautiful strumpet".. Evelyn diary’s record of that August 18, 1649 event refers to the Duke of Monmouth, which was a non-existent title until February 14, 1663. Thus the accuracy of it has been seriously questioned by authors. If Evelyn indeed witnessed the event it was written down or altered at least fourteen years after the recorded date. Other quotes from Evelyn’s diary made much later add credence to these authors’ suspicions. For example September 6, 1676 in the same Evelyn diary he noted “the Duke of Monmouth, Duchess of Cleveland (both natural children of the King by the Duchess of Cleveland)…” That erroneous quote shows that even at that late date Evelyn didn’t know the paternity of Monmouth. 

Numerous authors and historians other than Scott support the claim that the marriage took place: Mrs. Everett Green in "The Lives of the Princesses", vol. v, p. 20 speaking of Lucy's son the Duke of Monmouth, " an unproved though not improbable legitimacy." P.F. William Ryan in "Stuart Life and Manner",(1912) on pp. 271–272 wrote, "From the first it was said That Charles and Lucy were man and wife." Leopold von Ranke is quoted in the Nicholas Papers, vol. 1, p. 124, speaking of her (Lucy's) son being greeted in Paris as the Prince of Wales says a bit more, "Lucy Walters, the wife - or as some say the mistress - of Charles II and mother of the Duke of Monmouth." In "A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James II" on p. 106 Charles Fox calls the marriage ' a controverted fact'. Doubly descended from Monmouth, and thus perhaps biased, Smyth-Stuart in "Death and Fortitude", vol. iv, p. 20 said that at the time, the public considered Charles II repeated public denials as confirmation rather than denials... "and the priest who performed the service was promoted to a bishop to conceal it." A.I. Dasent on p. 38 of "The Private Life of Charles II" (Cassel, London, 1927) says "The story of her intrigue with Sidney... coming as it does from a tainted source, must not be hastily accepted." Then Dasent adds, " I believe that the story of Lucy's relation with Robert Sidney and his brother is, if not a pure invention, a gross exaggeration of the actual facts."

What is certain is that Lucy was a distant cousin of the Sidneys, and that she left England around the age of eighteen, using the name "Mrs. Barlow" (or "Barlo"). Around the same time, The Hague became a base for exiled English Cavaliers after the king's defeat in the Civil War, and by the autumn of 1648, Lucy was with the exiled PrincePrince of Wales.

In January 1649, the prince became Charles II, king-in-exile. Shortly after this, Lucy bore a son, James, who Charles acknowledged as his own, and whom he subsequently created Duke of Monmouth. James II and Evelyn, in contrast, reported that the boy's father was one of the Sidney brothers.

There is no conclusive evidence to support the story that Lucy Walter was secretly married to the king, but the intimacy between them lasted with intervals until at least the autumn of 1651, and perhaps for rather longer. Lucy's maid claimed to Oliver Cromwell's interrogators that the couple had spent "a night and a day together" as late as May 1656, long after the memoir claims their relationship was over.

The next month, Lucy Walter moved back to London. The reason is not clear; The French historian de Larrey in 1713 wrote, "before her imprisonment her servants served her on the knee: which they would not do unless they regarded her as the wife, and not the mistress of Charles II." This is in support of claims that she was received as Queen by the royalists, but she was quickly arrested by the Republican regime, who publicly announced the capture of "Lucy Barlow, who... passeth under the character of Charles Stuart's wife or mistress", and sent her back to Holland perhaps in a bid to embarrass the king. However, according to the head of the Tower of London, in Barksdale's surviving record of her testimony, Lucy denied she was the wife (to protect her children who were with her at the time). So the Commonwealth's part of the report that she passeth as Charles Stuart's wife was from another source other than Lucy and her party. 

After her return from London, there were claims of an affair with her cousin Colonel Thomas Howard. The exact words claiming such are based on a Cromwell spy's report to Thurloe: August 25, 1657, "'a little young gentleman, cousin of Mrs. Barlow, who by former challenge demanded satisfaction from Tom (Howard) for WORDS dishonoring his cousin'. Howard declined to accept the challenge and so the young man stabbed Howard with a stiletto and left him for dead." < ref: Quoted Arthur, Frank, "Abandoned Woman", p. 167 from Macphersonson's "James II", vol. 1, p. 76.> At the end of 1657 and the start of 1658, concerted attempts were made by the King, encouraged by Sir Edward Hyde, to separate her son from her; the King's clumsy attempt at kidnapping was obstructed by the Earl of Castlehaven, the Spanish rulers (of the Spanish Netherlands and the burghers of Brussels, but eventually, her son was transferred into the care of a Cambridge-educated tutor named Thomas Ross.

By this time, however, Charles's exiled court had moved to Brussels, where Lucy already was; in August, a Commonwealth spy reported that she had engaged in a "combat" against his chaplains, and emerged victorious. But by December, she was reported to be dead, apparently in Paris, where she was living in the care of the Earl of Mar's brother - his sister's granddaughter would later marry Lucy's son Monmouth. It is generally assumed that she had been separated from her son, but he seems to have also been brought to that city; the memoir says she died of syphilis, but is certainly wrong about the date, which it places after 1660. Actually the discredited memoir, attempting to disparage James II rival Monmouth by attacking his deceased mother, did not name the disease as syphilis either. 

A daughter, Mary Crofts (The Hague, 1651 - 1693), was later repudiated by the king. James II's papers identified the father as "E. Carlingson" (according to the copy made by Thomas Carte around 1740) or "the Earl of Carlington" (in the copy by James Macpherson in the 1770s, the independence of which is unclear). Later historians have identified this man with the Earl of Carlingford, who was sometimes called "Earl of Carlington" by James II and who acted as go-between for Lucy and the King, or else with the Earl of Arlington. However, Arlington was only named after it was discovered Carlingford, like Algernon Sidney was in Ireland at the requisite time (1650–51).

Mary Crofts married firstly William Sarsfield and had female issue, and married secondly William Fanshawe (b. The Hague, May 1651), and had issue.


 * Notes

BTW, nearly all of this text is not acceptable for article space because it breaches WP:NOR. -- PBS (talk) 00:59, 15 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Most researchers of this subject see a serious problem with accepting without question Thomas Seccombe since his reply to G.D. Gilbert questioning of his reference: Shown on p. 285 of Appendix A to D'Aulnoy's "Memoirs of the Court of England in 1675" it says:
 * "It is so long since I wrote the article that I really cannot verify the evidence at all without going to the Museum and devoting some time to the matter, and circumstances quite prevent my doing this... If I can follow it up a little later I will do so but at the moment I am so pressed for time that I cannot go into it."
 * — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elirets (talk • contribs) 22:50, 3 February 2014‎


 * Coincidentally when I did my rewrite, I included the book by G.D. Gilbert (1913) -- with the appendix you mention as the chapter (and a URL to that chapter) -- in the "Further reading" section with an inline comment "" In the edition of the book I used the comment you mention is on also on page 385. The reason I did not include any of his comments is I presumed that Robin Clifton who wrote the 21st century version in the ONDB will have checked the facts he mentions against the primary sources. If indeed his work suffers from the same problems as Thomas Seccombe's DNB then a peer reviewed article should be used to present such criticisms. -- PBS (talk) 11:16, 19 February 2014 (UTC)


 * It is convenient to use text copied from the DNB as it gets around the problems of copyright on the ODNB article, but the criticisms you are raising about Thomas Seccombe's DNB article are not really pertinent. Instead you should address yourself to the 21st century article in the ODNB by Robin Clifton. The only place were criticisms such as the one you have raised above are relevant is if facts included in this Wikipedia article are not also present in the ODNB article. When I rewrote the article I checked the facts used from the DNB article against the ODNB and I believe that there is no serious contradictions between this article and the ODNB. If there are then of course these should be addressed. Do you have access to the ODNB article? -- PBS (talk) 01:48, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Self-published sources
I am reverting this edit by Elirets with the editorial comment "I have indicated what are conflicts of data in several paragraphs. Since I own the copyright for MacAll's Brown, Beautiful and Bold, I grant free use of it solely to this specific article in Wikipedia."

The reasons for the revert are varied and I intend to list them:
 * A footnote "Lucy Walter is often spoken of incorrectly ..." was changed to "Lucy Walter is often spoken of incorrectly (ref. needed) ...", this is a quote from the source at the end of the quotation so "" is meaningless
 * I have remove the rest of the additions to the article because they come from a self published source and because of the tone used. For example there is a quote from the ODNB (which is a 21st century source) in the lead. The edit I am reverting added "Most outstanding of these so-called straws are several surviving" which implies that there is a academic debate published in a peer reviewed historical journal which criticise the ODNB  (a not infrequent occurrence), but instead the supporting citation is from a self-published source:

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform states: "It's that simple. Our innovative free tools and top-notch professional services make publishing and distribution easier than ever. Plus it pays to self-publish with CreateSpace."

Self-published sources are not considered a reliable source on Wikipeida and can not be used to support text. This is laid out in a section of the verifiability policy (see WP:SELFPUBLISH). So I am removing the other comments, some of which may be supportable by using conventional reliable secondary sources but Elirets please read WP:PSTS regarding the use of primary sources to support points of view in a Wikipedia article. -- PBS (talk) 13:46, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Just in case there's any doubt, that is quite definitely not a reliable source. Brat All gets no hits in JSTOR, Scholar or WorldCat (where searching for the ISBN also gives no result); nor even in a Google web search. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 15:45, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Other sources
With regards to the the question posed at WP:RSN about whether the view expressed here is representative. Here are two more modern biographies from tertiary sources that in no way contradict this article: -- PBS (talk) 14:41, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

French expression in Biography
Can someone do something about this sentence in the Bio section: "He was only eighteen, and she is often spoken of as his first mistress, but there seems good reason to suppose that he was déniaisé as early as 1646..."

Why is there a French word in the middle of an English article? It is idiomatic, and Google translate gives "smartened" as the meaning, but obviously that can't just be plugged into the sentence. I thought the meaning was something to the effect of "lost interest in" but that doesn't seem right, either, given the rest of the Bio section. I don't understand why the sentence was written this way, but perhaps someone who knows what the heck the sentence is supposed to mean can rewrite it in English so that everyone who reads it doesn't have to translate it, then puzzle over it? Thanks. --TEHodson 10:46, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * @TEHodson: Like many words (and French doesn't have many) it has more than one translation into English. As you say Google translate says "smartened", but another translation is "initiated" (see Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years (4) -- From the Salons to the Café (28 April 2013))


 * The sentence is cut and pasted from the DNB (1899) and is a coy word used by a late Victorian scholar to mean "initiated [in sex]"/lost his virginity/took his first mistress -- the precise meaning is difficult to deduce without reading the secondary source which the DNB author cites. I had a look at them (but different editions) and it is not clear to me that they refer to events of 1646.
 * https://archive.org/details/historyofgreatci03gard
 * https://archive.org/details/memoirsmademois00montgoog
 * I think you point is a valid one so I am going to change the word to "tryst" which I think is a better word in this context. -- PBS (talk) 13:05, 17 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Now that I know what it means, I changed the language to be less romance novel-ish. It sounds as though the editor who used the French expression was trying to say that Lucy seduced Charles and took his virginity??!!?? Very romance novel-ish!--TEHodson 12:12, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
 * @TEHodson: I have partially reverted your edit. I read the sentences differently. I understand them to mean that she was not his first mistress and that he was sexually active two years before he started his affair with her. -- PBS (talk) 15:13, 21 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I see. It's fine with me. I don't really like the word "tryst" as it doesn't seem a proper word for an encyclopedia, but I'm not going to argue with it. If you feel like coming up with a different word, it might be better. Thanks for keeping me in the loop.--TEHodson 21:15, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I am not very happy with the word tryst either but it was the simplest patch for the current wording. The problem is that the sources provided by the DNB are not clear (being at least 110 years old). So I will ask others interested in Charles II to join in the conversation (by putting a question onto talk:Charles II of England. Perhaps they can come up with a more authoritative source. -- PBS (talk) 19:58, 22 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Charles supposedly had a son by Marguerite de Carteret (James de la Cloche), conceived during his visit to Jersey in 1646. However, later historians think the letters used to support this claim are forgeries (Antonia Fraser, King Charles II 1979, pp. 43–44; Ronald Hutton, Charles II, King of England, Scotland and Ireland 1989, p. 25). DrKay (talk) 07:12, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Lucy Walter. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://archive.is/20130414191622/http://www.elizabethgoudge.org/Postings/Child%20From%20The%20Sea.htm to http://www.elizabethgoudge.org/Postings/Child%20From%20The%20Sea.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 08:34, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Marriage again
In A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Vol.2 (p. 281 in my paperback edition), Churchill states:

'Nevertheless, the legend of the "black box" has persisted, and in our own time we have been told how a Duke of Buccleuch, descended from the unfortunate Monmouth, discovered and destroyed, as dangerous to the monarchy, the marriage certificate of Lucy Waters.'

I have been unable to discover any trace of this story. Does anyone know anything further?

Paul Magnussen (talk) 17:37, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Page 14 of James, Duke of Monmouth by Bryan Bevan seems to have a story about this: Bernard Burke claimed he heard from the Duke of Abercorn that the Duke of Buccleuch had been going through papers at Dalkeith and had found the certificate. There's also something on pages 27-28 of The Mistresses of Charles II by Brian Masters (saying it was found at Montagu House in 1879 in an old black box) and page 105 of Lucy Walter by Lord George Scott (talking abut the claim that the 5th Duke found and destroyed the certificate) but I can only see snippets on google books. DrKay (talk) 21:04, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

Thank you! Paul Magnussen (talk) 17:05, 23 April 2020 (UTC)