The Mistress Makes Her Escape

Henrietta Howard was saddled with an abusive embarrassment of a husband and no money. She took matters into her own hands, ingratiating herself with the court of the Princess and Princess of Wales. Support Noble Blood: — Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/noblebloodtales — Noble Blood merch https://store.dftba.com/collections/noble-blood — Order Dana's book, 'Anatomy: A Love Story https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250840578/anatomyalovestory' and its sequel 'Immortality: A Love Story https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250861016/immortalityalovestory' See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dana Schwartz?

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  This is the story of the one. As a shipping manager, he's running the dock, stocking supplies, and making sure every order goes out on time. And Granger helps him stay prepared. From shipping supplies to PPE to hand tools, he counts on Granger to keep products moving and trucks rolling, so his operation runs smoothly no matter the shift. Call 1-800-GRANGER, click Granger.com, or just stop by. Granger, for the ones who get it done.

• 0:35Dana Schwartz?

  Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Listener discretion advised. Queen Anne didn't have any living heirs, and because England would need a Protestant monarch, when she died, the throne would be going over to the Hanover branch of the family in Germany. With that in mind, a woman named Henrietta Howard and her husband Charles boarded a boat from England to Germany with one simple goal: to go from penniless nobodies to official members of the new incoming royal court.

• 1:19Dana Schwartz?

  Henrietta and Charles had gotten married six and a half years earlier. They had originally met under dire circumstances. Although Henrietta came from a noble family, it had fallen apart with the death of her mother, her father, and four of her siblings. At just sixteen, Henrietta had become the oldest surviving representative of the family. Medical bills were piling up, and her fortune was in danger, so she sought out the help of the Hobarts' family friends.

• 1:55Dana Schwartz?

  Taking pity on Henrietta, the Hobarts invited her to stay with them in their Jacobean mansion near Saffron Walden. There she met Charles, the family's youngest son, who was 14 years older than she was. Charles was a high-up military official at the time, nicknamed Salamander because he fought in the hottest parts of the battlefield. Other than that, Charles didn't have a lot going for him. Someone described him as "wrong-headed, ill-tempered, obstinate, drunken, extravagant, and brutal" on account of his profligate drinking, spending, and sleeping around.

• 2:40Dana Schwartz?

  "We don't know what attracted them to each other," one of Henrietta's friends later wrote. "How she came to love him, or how he came to love anybody, is unaccountable, unless from a certain fatality which often makes hasty marriages." Whether or not there was a "timely motivating factor," it's undeniable that both Henrietta and Charles did have financial motives to get hitched. Even though Henrietta's family was in dire financial straits, her father had made sure that her large dowry would be protected before his death, which led to a potentially large payday for Charles.

• 3:24Dana Schwartz?

  What's more, the terms of Henrietta's father's and great-grandfather's wills stated that Henrietta would receive a significant inheritance and a modest income paid twice a year only if she got married. Shortly after the wedding, the marriage fell apart. With Charles frittering away their modest fortune with gambling and shopping, the couple's financial circumstances became "the reverse of opulent," according to one contemporary. Charles fled to London to "continue to party," abandoning Henrietta in Berkshire with their young son, who was born a year after the wedding.

• 4:08Dana Schwartz?

  Henrietta insisted that she and Charles move in together in London, and once they did, things only worsened. As historian Tracy Borman put it, "Her respectable life as a gentleman's daughter had been transformed into one of misery and humiliation, as the wife of a notorious drunk and philanderer. The shame of her situation compelled her to live increasingly apart from society, concealing herself and her misery from the world." Any goodwill keeping their marriage together evaporated, almost as quickly as they had fallen in love. As one friend at the time put it,

• 4:52Dana Schwartz?

  "Thus they loved, thus they married, and thus they hated each other for the rest of their lives." Trapped in a loveless, brutal marriage, out of money, and with her husband on the run from various creditors, Henrietta needed to find a way out. Luckily, political circumstances gave them the perfect opportunity. After the Glorious Revolution in 1688 sparked a succession crisis, Parliament passed an Act of Settlement in 1701, which allowed the Electoral House of Hanover to take over England once Queen Anne died. Henrietta planned to go

• 5:36Dana Schwartz?

  to Germany and, in the favor of the Hanover family, to secure herself and her husband positions in the royal court when the Hanovers eventually came to rule over England. It would be a long shot. Henrietta and Charles were from relatively small-time aristocratic families that the Hanovers wouldn't have been familiar with. Henrietta didn't have the fancy clothes to woo the new royal family, and she had sold all of her furniture and jewelry in order to afford the voyage over to Germany. Worse yet, she had to bring Charles over to Germany with her, since a noble woman

• 6:17Dana Schwartz?

  Traveling alone would not have been a respectable look. Given Charles's bad temper and cold, reserved personality, he could hurt their chances. But Henrietta didn't have any other options. Winning over the Hanovers was her last resort. I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood.

• 6:45Dana Schwartz?

  After traveling, as Henrietta put it, "in the meanest and most fatiguing manner", Henrietta and Charles found themselves in Hanover in early 1714. It was up to them to endear themselves to the electoral family so they could eventually secure themselves spots in the royal court, or they could return to England in disgrace. Henrietta started at the task immediately, applying for an introduction. She quickly made an impression. She was an excellent courtier, both lively and demure. She quickly embedded herself within the royal household, spending nearly all of her free hours at the court in Herrenhausen,

• 7:28Dana Schwartz?

  trying to prove her worth. Soon, she noticed that the electoral princess, Caroline of Ansbach, took a particular liking to her. Caroline was known for her intellect and patronage of the arts. She rubbed shoulders with philosophers like Voltaire and the composer Handel. But Caroline's husband, Prince George II of Hanover, couldn't have been less interested. He had once declared, "I hate poets and painters both", and called reading and learning "something mean and below him". Henrietta expressed to Caroline a fondness for the mathematician Gottfried Leibniz,

• 8:13Dana Schwartz?

  who Caroline had been studying under since she was a child. This so endeared Henrietta to Caroline that Henrietta was made an official Dame du Palais. Despite George's distaste for anything intellectual, he was taken with Henrietta as well. Not only was she attractive, modest, and obedient, she was also a great listener. George was known to be extremely boring. One courtier described his tedious conversations about military victories or European royal genealogy as "always the same thing, over and over again."

• 8:53Dana Schwartz?

  But if Henrietta was bored to tears, she didn't show it. She always appeared genuinely rapt. Caroline was relieved to have someone else listening to her husband's monotonous stories for a change. Even though Henrietta was making her name in the Hanover family, it wasn't enough. She also needed to make sure her husband, Charles, could win over the prince and princess. Somehow, Charles managed to put his temper aside and charm the male members of the Hanover household, winning his spot in the royal court as well. After just six months in the Hanover household, Henrietta and Charles faced a turning point

• 9:34Dana Schwartz?

  in their career. In August 1714, the Electress, George II's grandmother, passed away, and a few weeks later, Queen Anne of England died as well. This made George I the King of England, and Caroline and George II the new Princess and Prince of Wales. After the coronation, Caroline and George II began to determine who would get spots in their new English royal court. All of the goodwill Charles and Henrietta had generated had to pay out. While Caroline

• 10:13Dana Schwartz?

  and George had promised them positions, that was no guarantee. Competition was fierce. Because George I and his wife were estranged, there was no real queen consort, leaving Caroline as the best way for a woman to embed herself within the court. Other ladies of aristocratic heritage were bribing royal officials or using their family connections to secure their spots, which Henrietta, whose family was mostly dead or destitute, had no hope of doing. But luckily, the princess appointed Henrietta a woman of the bedchamber on October 26, 1714.

• 10:57Dana Schwartz?

  Charles also landed a position in court, becoming a groom of the bedchamber to the new King George I, Caroline's father-in-law. Although Henrietta and Charles were technically employed in separate households, they got to live together in an apartment at St. James's Palace rent-free, a huge upgrade from the dismal flat that they had stayed in before they left for Hanover. They were also paid a significant salary: 500 pounds a year for Charles and 300 for Henrietta. Although the couple's financial standing improved, their marriage was still in shambles

• 11:37Dana Schwartz?

  as Charles continued to berate and mistreat his wife. Even though Henrietta was still suffering in her marriage, at least she had her new position to distract her. As a woman of the bedchamber, she took turns with seven other women to be "in waiting." When it was her turn, Henrietta got up before the princess, filled up her bath with hot water, said her morning prayers with her, and dressed her in her undergarments. Throughout the day, Henrietta would run whatever errands Caroline needed or attended to her appearance, before retiring to the princess's private apartments in the evenings to read,

• 12:22Dana Schwartz?

  chat, and play cards, or to accompany the princess to the drawing room if there were any formal gatherings. Afterwards, Henrietta would undress the princess and get her ready for bed, finishing her work as late as 2:00 in the morning. Being a woman of the bedchamber required putting in long hours and was often unpredictable, given that you would be attending to Caroline's every whim. The hardest part of the job for Henrietta, at least at the beginning, wasn't dealing with the princess, but rather dealing with the dramas of the rest of the court. Rivalries abounded, and quarrels among the ladies in waiting could start up over matters

• 13:04Dana Schwartz?

  as small as who kissed the lady on the cheek. Henrietta tried to stay out of these squabbles and became known as "The Swiss" because of her neutrality. But Henrietta's neutrality would be put to the test. George II and his father, the king, had always had a fraught relationship, but their animosity was kept at bay until the christening of George II's son, George William. After a dispute over who should be the godfather of the child came to a head, the prince went up to his father's chosen candidate and said, "You are a rascal, but I shall find you."

• 13:47Dana Schwartz?

  Unfortunately, his heavy German accent meant that everyone thought he had said, "I'll fight you." In response, George I put his own son, the Prince of Wales, under house arrest. This left Henrietta out of work. She couldn't go to the princess's apartment without a guardsman pointing a halbert at her breast, preventing her from entering. Prince and princess were under arrest at St. James for four days, until the king expelled the royal couple from court. The chaos sent the palace into a tizzy, putting Henrietta's previously secure position at

• 14:32Dana Schwartz?

  risk. Because Charles and Henrietta now worked for households that were at war with each other, they were barred from living together at St. James. Henrietta had to pick between staying with her abusive husband... Potentially jeopardizing her position at court, or living separately from Charles and risking her reputation. Worse, it was now that Henrietta's health started to fail. She had suffered from horrible headaches throughout her twenties, and around this time, she started losing her hearing. This was a huge blow. As Tracy Borman put it, "To be hard of hearing in a world that fed on gossip, intrigue, and scandal

• 15:17Dana Schwartz?

  was clearly a great disadvantage." But still, the prospect of losing her hearing and staying with an abusive man seemed unbearable. After much deliberation, Henrietta approached Charles about a potential compromise. Charles immediately flew into a rage that Henrietta would even consider choosing the princess over him. Steely with resolve, Henrietta left the apartments without taking any of her belongings. Charles sent a message that he no longer considered her his wife, and she made it clear that she was equally done with the marriage. Siding with Caroline and George II

• 16:01Dana Schwartz?

  over the king and her own husband was a startling show of loyalty. Henrietta threw herself into life at court, hosting dinner parties at Hampton Court and winning over all who attended. "In spite of her difficult circumstances, 'she had as much good nature as if she had never seen any ill nature and had been bred among lambs and turtle doves instead of princes and court ladies,' one dinner party attendee remarked." Among Henrietta's admirers was the Prince of Wales himself. Not only was he attending all of Henrietta's dinner parties, he found himself visiting Henrietta's apartments more often,

• 16:45Dana Schwartz?

  spending three or four hours at a time regaling her with his, probably boring, stories of his military achievements.

• 16:54Dana Schwartz?

  It seemed he was on the hunt for a mistress. He had recently been rejected by another courtier. This left Henrietta with another difficult choice. The prince was, despite his title, not exactly prince charming. He was dull, ugly, and, like her husband, prone to rages. If she pursued an affair with him, she would have a target on her back from the rest of the court, including, potentially, his wife Caroline, who was still her boss. Worse yet, Henrietta's marriage was not technically over, even though she was estranged

• 17:35Dana Schwartz?

  from her husband, and cheating on him could put her reputation further at risk. On the other hand, pursuing an affair with the Prince of Wales could provide her with more money, power, and prestige at court, which Henrietta desperately needed to avoid a life of poverty with her husband. For better or for worse, an affair with the prince could change her life forever.

• 18:04Dana Schwartz?

  The affair probably began during the Prince and Princesses' Day at Richmond, from June to September 1718. George and Caroline's summers away had a more casual atmosphere, as "formal occasions tended to be replaced by intimate supper parties or evening strolls around the gardens." While the summertime atmosphere was romantic, George II's reasons for pursuing an affair with Henrietta were less so. George dutifully flirted with various courtiers, but he always reserved his true passion for his wife, even after 13 years.

• 18:48Dana Schwartz?

  Every evening after dinner, George spent hours in Caroline's chambers and said that no other woman could even buckle her shoe. But his wife-guy energy bucked standards for royal masculinity. There was a rumor that Caroline truly wore the pants in the relationship. A contemporary said that George seemed to "look upon a mistress rather as a necessary appurtenance to his grandeur as a prince than an addition to his pleasures as a man."

• 19:22Dana Schwartz?

  Henrietta was an ideal choice. Not only was she a great listener to his boring stories, but she was also discreet, appeasing, and well-liked. Unlikely to spread rumors about how he was in bed or use her new power to sow discord among the rest of the court. It was an affair of convenience in every sense. A highly regimented person with a strict daily routine, George went to Henrietta's apartments every night at exactly 7 o'clock with "such dull punctuality" that he frequently walked about his chamber for 10 minutes with his watch in his hand if the stated minute was not arrived.

• 20:07Dana Schwartz?

  He did this while also visiting his wife at her bedchambers for two hours every night after dinner. If there was any interruption in this routine, he would fly into a rage. Despite the regimented new schedule, Henrietta's new role did have some perks. For one, George paid her an annual salary of 2,000 pounds, which would be more than 250,000 pounds today. As the mistress to the heir to the throne, she was treated with more deference and respect by the rest of the court. George's wife Caroline had a remarkably lax stance on the affair, at least initially.

• 20:51Dana Schwartz?

  One courtier said that she was so devoted to George's pleasures, which she often told him were the rule of all her thoughts and actions, that whenever he thought proper to find them with other women, she even loved whoever was instrumental to his entertainment. But Caroline did not tolerate the prospect of competing with another woman for political influence over the prince. She worried that Henrietta would use her three or four hours a day with George to sway him politically. Henrietta's closest friends were powerful Tory politicians and sympathizers, who disagreed with her.

• 21:32Dana Schwartz?

  discussed their political opinions during her dinner soirees. Henrietta's own aspirations were modest. She was more interested in her own safety and security than any broader political gains. But Caroline, as a supporter of the opposing Whig party, wanted to minimize Henrietta's threat to the status quo. Caroline began condescending to Henrietta, calling her "my dear Howard" while giving her increasingly lowly tasks. She ordered Henrietta to kneel while she held her waist basin, a subtle indignity.

• 22:12Dana Schwartz?

  Henrietta did so, but as Caroline continued to undermine her, Henrietta snapped. One day she told off Caroline, refusing to kneel. Caroline responded, "Yes, my dear Howard, I am sure you will. Indeed, you will. Go, go, fai, for shame. Go, my good Howard, we will talk of this another time." Caroline also exploited Henrietta's fear of returning to her abusive husband. She told another courtier, "She knew I had held her up at a time when it was in my power, if I had pleased any hour of the day, to let her drop through my fingers." Thus, humiliated, Henrietta knew that from that moment on, she had no choice but to submit to Caroline's every whim.

• 22:57Dana Schwartz?

  Having to negotiate between the desires of Caroline and George began to take a toll on Henrietta. One of her friends said that she was forced to live in the constant subjugation of a wife, with all the reproach of a mistress, and to flatter and manage a man whom she must see and feel had as little inclination to her person as regard to her advice. Henrietta began to suffer more acute headaches, and was at times bedridden, unable to attend to Caroline as she was supposed to. Henrietta was growing increasingly frustrated with her life at court, and wanted to plot an escape. Shockingly, the prince was amenable to helping her.

• 23:41Dana Schwartz?

  Fairly bored with her at this point, he gifted her some diamond jewelry, a ruby cross, a gold watch, and all of the furniture in her and her servants' rooms. He also gave her a stock worth eleven thousand five hundred pounds in the South Sea Company. Better yet, in the settlement, the prince wrote that the gifts were for, quote, "Henrietta Howard alone, and not for the use or benefit of the said Charles Howard, her husband." Thrilled, Henrietta started building a house that would be hers alone for her to escape to. But she had to keep this a secret from her husband,

• 24:21Dana Schwartz?

  who, again, even though they were estranged, would still try and wrest control of her new fortune. Henrietta also had to hide her plans from Caroline, who, despite tormenting Henrietta, preferred having her as her husband's mistress, as opposed to somebody more ambitious and threatening to her power.

• 24:45Dana Schwartz?

  One worthwhile thing to briefly point out here is even as Henrietta's new fortune would be allowing her to build her tenuous independence, she would be directly profiting from the oppression of others. The South Sea Company was involved in the transatlantic slave trade, and the materials that Henrietta was using to build her new house were sourced from the then-British colony of Jamaica. This is one of the challenges when it comes to understanding historical figures, being able to put them in the context of when they lived, but also to try to understand that context and all of its complexities more fully.

• 25:25Dana Schwartz?

  Anyway, it wasn't long before Charles found out about his wife's change in fortune. Immediately, he started to blackmail her for the money. He petitioned the Archbishop of Canterbury to help him, knowing that if he brought the issue to trial in the ecclesiastical courts, he would have a bulletproof case. There's no chance that a judge would side with him. ...with an unfaithful wife over her long-suffering husband. The case would also be a public scandal, putting Henrietta's reputation at further risk. Charles also threatened her by preventing her from ever seeing her son again, a son

• 26:05Dana Schwartz?

  she missed dearly, given that she hadn't seen him since she arrived in Hanover so many years ago. Caroline also learned of Henrietta's attempt to escape court, and she told her that she would happily let Henrietta quit if she returned to her husband, which Henrietta did not want to do under any circumstances. So Henrietta was biding her time at court while she continued to build a country home at Marble Hill with her new gifted fortune. Charles decided on a new tactic to try to wrest control of the fortune from his wife.

• 26:45Dana Schwartz?

  He got a warrant from the Lord Chief Justice to seize his wife wherever he found her. She was so afraid of her husband that Henrietta hid at Leicester House for weeks, knowing that Charles wasn't going to try and forcibly remove her from a palace. When June rolled around, the royal household was preparing for their annual summer retreat to Richmond, and Henrietta was terrified. She was worried that Charles would ambush her carriage on the way there and finally seize her for good. A duke told her that she could ride with him early in the morning before the rest of the coaches and stay in his more secure house to avoid her scheming husband.

• 27:30Dana Schwartz?

  The plan worked. She made it to the duke's house unscathed, but the experience terrified her. She wrote to one of her friends, "I have not been abroad since I left London, nor have I courage yet to venture out." Her life would only get more complicated that summer. On June 15th, while the prince and princess were taking an afternoon rest, they heard a knock at the door. The king had died. The prince, of course, was furious, not because of his sudden promotion, but because the message had interrupted his precious daily routine. When he heard the news, he said, "That is one big lie," and left the room.

• 28:16Dana Schwartz?

  From her isolation at the duke's house, Henrietta weighed her options. The death of the king meant that her husband, who was installed in his court, was now out of a job, and he would probably be using everything in his power to try to steal her fortune and bring her back under his thumb. Even though Henrietta was trying to leave royal life altogether, the prince's promotion gave her an opportunity for even greater fortune, prestige, and security. She could become mistress to a king.

• 28:54Dana Schwartz?

  After George II became king, politicians and courtiers alike began flooding Henrietta's apartments, trying to get her to put in a good word with the king. "The busy and speculative politicians of the antechamber, who knew everything but knew everything wrong, naturally concluded that a lady with whom the king passed so many hours every day must necessarily have some interest with him and consequently apply to her," said one of her friends. Henrietta was apprehensive about all of these new requests, and about her position in general. After the coronation, the royal family typically restructured their courts.

• 29:37Dana Schwartz?

  Henrietta could easily be dismissed from her position. Henrietta's relationship with the new King George had been decaying. Even though he followed his routine of visiting her every day at seven, he was pretty much tiring of her. Once, a year after the coronation, she offended him by accident while they were walking together in the gardens at St. James. He responded with such outrage that she worried she was going to be fired immediately. It's worth noting that perhaps this outburst was part of George's personality. He had kept Henrietta around for almost ten years, longer than any of his other mistresses.

• 30:20Dana Schwartz?

  After spending three or four hours a day with Henrietta for nearly a decade... The relationship had long lost whatever initial spark it had once had. Besides, at times, George burst into a rage even at his own wife, who he was unquestioningly devoted to, in front of the entire court. Luckily, both the king and queen kept Henrietta on as both a woman of the bedchamber and a royal mistress once George became king. But George's growing annoyance with Henrietta worried her. She still needed her position at court to avoid the wrath of her husband,

• 31:02Dana Schwartz?

  who was preparing yet another strategy to steal her fortune. Late one night, Charles snuck into the inner courtyard of the palace and shouted his demands for Henrietta to return to him, waking up the whole of St. James. He broke into the queen's apartment, insisting on a position in the king's court and custody over his wife, before the royal guards carried him out by force. With her husband getting increasingly brazen and embarrassing, Henrietta was in a catch-22. As one of her friends put it, Henrietta simultaneously had "a husband who ordered her home, who did not desire to have her there,

• 31:45Dana Schwartz?

  and a lover, who was to retain her, who seemed already tired of keeping her." With all of this stress around her, Henrietta's headaches worsened, and she was bedridden for days. Miserable, she took a drastic and unprecedented step. She applied for a legal separation from her husband. Given that it was incredibly difficult, if not impossible, for a woman to legally divorce her husband at that time, Henrietta's best option was to seek out an "informal divorce", or a private deed of separation. It was still risky for a woman to seek out a deed of separation.

• 32:28Dana Schwartz?

  As historian Tracy Boorman explained, "In most cases, the wife would forfeit any income she might have from real estate, as well as any future earnings or legacies, all of her personal property, and, worst of all, custody of any children."

• 32:46Dana Schwartz?

  Still, Henrietta found witnesses attesting to Charles's violence, cruelty, profligacy, and drunkenness, and with her lawyers, she managed to create a deed of separation that mandated that he could no longer claim, seize, retrain, or detain her, nor could he access any of her fortune, aside from a twelve-hundred-pound yearly allowance. Charles agreed to the document, except he insisted on one addition: that Henrietta could not pursue a legal divorce. Even though this was a major concession, they signed the deed and their separation

• 33:27Dana Schwartz?

  was finally agreed to on February 29, 1728, after twenty-two years of misery. Four years later, Charles was dead. Things were finally looking up for Henrietta. "She is happier than I have ever seen her," said one of her friends. Not only was she free from her husband for good, her country house was finally completed, giving her a place to escape to once her court life was officially over. Once more, she got a promotion. Charles's brother Edward had died, and Charles had succeeded him as the Ninth Earl of Suffolk, which made Henrietta a countess, even though she and her husband were separated.

• 34:12Dana Schwartz?

  Her new title meant that she was too high status to hold her previous position as Woman of the Bedchamber, so she was promoted to Mistress of the Robes, the most senior member of the household. No longer did she have to kneel while holding Caroline's wash basin, or attend to Caroline's every impulse. She even met a new romantic interest, George Berkeley. An affable, gentle man with a good sense of humor, he couldn't have been more different from either George or Charles. Henrietta had been introduced to him through his sister, a friend, in 1730.

• 34:54Dana Schwartz?

  While the two maintained a flirty friendship for a few years, after Charles's death, their relationship grew more passionate and openly romantic. In their letters, Henrietta flirtingly teased George about his ill-breathing and forgetfulness, and called him dull and want of taste. Now that she had a lover, a posh country house, and a fortune to live off of, she felt more ready than ever to actually leave court. As one friend observed, she was tired of acting the mistress while she had, in reality, all the slights of a wife. She took a six-week vacation in Bath to test the waters,

• 35:38Dana Schwartz?

  making sure to return in time for King George's birthday on October 30. But the king was not particularly happy to see her return. Angry that she had interrupted his routines and that she had entertained some of his political enemies in Bath, he avoided Henrietta at all costs. He did not go to her apartments as he had done once every day, nor did he even say hello during his birthday festivities. The snub shocked Henrietta. Even though she was ready to leave court for good, she wanted to do so on good terms. She met with the Queen, planning to seek her advice and offer her resignation.

• 36:21Dana Schwartz?

  Knowing that the Queen might not grant her request to quit, Henrietta painstakingly prepared her case. She told Caroline that she wanted to quit her job at court, saying that she had taken to heart the "public marks" that the king had given me of his displeasure. But as she predicted, the Queen would not let her quit. She said that the ordeal at George's birthday festivities was just a minor spat, nothing worth quitting over. When Henrietta refused to budge, the Queen said, "Child, you do not know how differently, when you are out, people will behave", suggesting that her friends may abandon her if she no longer occupied a position of political power.

• 37:06Dana Schwartz?

  Henrietta replied, "Some people may show me it was the court here and not me that was liked. I cannot say that keeping of such acquaintance will be an inducement to keep me at court." After some deliberation, the Queen proposed a compromise, that Henrietta could quit after taking a week to consider it.

• 37:29Dana Schwartz?

  Henrietta took that week to try to get herself back into the king's good graces. George refused to see her in private, so she found him walking in the gardens at Kensington and tried to plead her case. He ignored her. She wrote him two letters that defended her conduct, begging for his understanding after an over twenty-year affair, but he refused to respond. When the Queen told him that she was trying to get Henrietta to reneg on her request to quit, the king told his wife, "What the devil did you mean by trying to make an old, dull, deaf, peevish beast stay and plague me when I had so good an opportunity of getting rid of her?"

• 38:13Dana Schwartz?

  Henrietta failed to endear herself again to the king, and on November 22, 1734, she finally resigned. Although Henrietta had left court on a sour note, her new life was now finally ready to unfold. She moved into her estate, Marble Hill, which she had painstakingly constructed over so many years. Even though the Queen, Caroline, had warned her that she would lose her friends after leaving court, she hosted plenty of them at Marble Hill at her many lavish dinner parties and salons. She maintained her relationship with George Berkeley, and on June 26, 1735, the two

• 38:58Dana Schwartz?

  got married at a small ceremony on the Berkeley family estate. Henrietta's life had become unrecognizable from the day she boarded the cheapest boat to Hanover in 1714, penniless and stuck with a cruel, abusive husband. She weathered her ex-husband's attempts to tie her down and steal her money, power, and play at court. She weathered a decades-long affair with a king who barely tolerated her, and a rivalry with the Queen, who controlled her future. In May 1736, Henrietta set sail for Germany with her husband once again, going overseas

• 39:41Dana Schwartz?

  for only the second time in her life. This time, it was a vacation.

• 39:51Dana Schwartz?

  That's the story of Henrietta Howard, but stick around to hear about Henrietta's relationship with her frenemy, Jonathan Swift.

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• 41:03Dana Schwartz?

  In 1726, a new visitor began attending Henrietta's salons at Lester House, Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver's Travels. They had mutual friends in the literary world, and one friend set the two up. He wrote to Swift in a letter, "I can help you to a lady who is as deaf, though not as old as yourself. You'll be pleased with one another. You'll converse like spirits by intuition." When the two finally met, the friend was right. They became close almost immediately. When Gulliver's Travels came out later that year, Henrietta was delighted, including references to the book in her letters. Swift pretended not to understand them

• 41:46Dana Schwartz?

  because he published the book anonymously. "The perverseness of your lines astonished me," he wrote. He was such a frequent visitor that he called himself "the chief butler and keeper of the ice house of Marble Hill", which was still under construction at this time. But their convivial and close relationship came to an abrupt halt. When George II took over the throne as king, Swift was hoping that Henrietta would put in a good word with him about making Swift the Chancellor of Dublin University. He also wanted to secure a position for his friend John Gay.

• 42:26Dana Schwartz?

  But Caroline, wanting to put Henrietta in her place, denied Gay's and Swift's requests. She put Gay in one of the lowest-paid and least prestigious positions at court, and Gay turned it down. Even though Gay was sympathetic to Henrietta's difficult decision, noting that she had done what she could, Swift was incensed. "I have long hated her on your account, more because you are so forgiving as to not hate her," Swift wrote to Gay. "Mrs. Howard was good for nothing but to be a rank courtier," he wrote on another occasion. "I care not whether she ever writes to me or no, she has cheated us all and may go hang herself."

• 43:10Dana Schwartz?

  For the next six years, he continued to denigrate Henrietta in letters to his friends, and even published a poem about it. Many of the recipients of these letters were friends with Henrietta too, and tried to encourage Swift to bury the hatchet, to no avail. In 1731, Henrietta sent Swift a remarkably restrained letter, imploring him to stop going after her so intensely. Quote, "You seem to think you have a natural right to abuse me because I am a woman and a courtier," she wrote. She ended her letter with a plea for forgiveness, and that she wanted to follow her own inclination

• 43:53Dana Schwartz?

  and continue very truly and very much his humble servant. Polite until the end.

• 44:06Dana Schwartz?

  Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manke. Noble Blood is hosted by me, Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Courtney Sender, Amy Height, and Julia Milani. The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk, with supervising producer Reema Ilkayali, and executive producers Aaron Manke, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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• 45:17Dana Schwartz?

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.