350 years ago, Charles II ruled over a Britain whose destiny – as a world power or a defeated backwater – was intricately tied to its relations with Europe.
The King’s chief minister was the Lord Chancellor Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon. Sober and high-principled, Clarendon favoured alliance with the Hapsburg powers of Spain and Austria simply because they were the most powerful rivals of France.
But Charles II did not pursue such a policy consistently. Throughout his reign, Britain’s relations with France vacillated between open hostility and close friendship. Why?
A close study of the original records reveals a triangle of very human relationships at work in the Stuart court. Besides Clarendon, another powerfully influential character emerges by Charles’s side – the yang to Clarendon’s ying – Henry Jermyn. Flamboyant and sociable, Jermyn’s influence at Court rested on his close friendship with Charles’s French Catholic mother, Queen Henrietta Maria (Pepys even thought they were married).
Jermyn’s grand political vision was of a Special Relationship with France.
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