It likely came as no surprise to Henrietta that, when news spread of her purchase of land in Twickenham and the subsequent construction of Marble Hill, her husband reared his head once more. Charles had continued to be a thorn in his estranged wife’s side from afar, lobbying her trustees for money at the same time as going into battle with his own brother, now the 8th Earl of Suffolk. The conflict had come about when the 7th Earl, their nephew, died without an heir in 1722. He left a will that bequeathed Audley End to Charles, whilst Edward succeeded to the title. Edward was outraged at this perceived slight and took Charles to court to claim ownership of the family estate. He failed, but an agreement was reached whereby Charles must pay Edward a nominal sum each year from the estate. Naturally, Charles didn’t give his brother a penny. How could he, when he was still the dissolute soak he had always been?
When Edward came calling to collect his money, Charles fell back on his old ways and turned to Henrietta. As a member of George I’s entourage, he naturally knew all about the payment of £11,500 that she had received from George Augustus. When he then saw the beautiful home that his wife was having built at Twickenham, he became convinced that he deserved a share of her good fortune. This time Charles took a different approach. Rather than relying on intimidation, he pretended instead that he was repentant and longed only to be reunited with his estranged wife. Henrietta certainly had no wish to be forced back into her husband’s society after so many years apart, but Charles wasn’t about to go away. Instead he wrote to the Princess of Wales in the guise of the wounded party. In his letter he assured Caroline that it wasn’t merely his wish that Henrietta be relieved of her duties, but the king’s royal command.
“It is with the greatest respect and Deference, that I presume Addressing myself to your Royal Highnesse in this manner. When I first received the King’s commands for my wife to leave your Royal Highnesse’s Service, the persuasions I used with her were innefectual and this morning I have again received his positive directions, that she immediately retires from her Employment under your Royal Highnesse. I cannot be insensible of my unhappiness in this difficulty, which makes me hope Your Royal Highnesse will not impute it as any disrespect in me recalling of her by the King’s Commands being unavoidable for me to disobey.”139
Caroline showed the letter to Henrietta to gauge her response. She probably derived some pleasure in doing so too, because it allowed her to remind her Woman of the Bedchamber that all it would take was a word from the royal household and she’d be returned to her abusive spouse. Yet even if the princess did feel a little satisfaction in this obvious demonstration of power, Henrietta probably knew that she would remain protected in her role. After all, Caroline still held true to her better the mistress you know opinion. When Henrietta rejected her husband’s advances, Charles went for broke and pulled out what he must have expected to be the biggest gun of all. If she wouldn’t come home for him, he said, then perhaps she would for her child.
“I can say no more to persuade you,” he wrote, “(if you have any thought of ease to the small posterity of a child you seemed to love) how ungrateful and shocking a part he must share in life, to hear the reproaches of your public defiance to me, and what the world will interpret the occasion of it.” In refusing to return to him, said Charles, Henrietta was shaming her son all over again. It was a calculated twist of the knife. He closed his letter with the self-pitying cry of the supposedly wronged spouse, signing off as “a man who always loved you, and will continue doing it”140. There was no truth in that whatsoever.
To make sure his scheme met with success, Charles petitioned the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr William Wake, to ask the Princess of Wales whether she would be willing to intervene. The archbishop explained in his letter to Caroline that Charles was on the verge of obtaining a writ that would force Henrietta to leave the royal service. The delivery of this writ to Leicester House would be a source of some public embarrassment, Dr Wake warned, and he urged Caroline to act now to avoid being dragged into the messy proceedings. Things between the two Georges were hardly rosy after all.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, however, had reckoned without Caroline’s love of the status quo. Henrietta was her woman and more importantly, she was a tame mistress to the Prince of Wales. The princess had no intention of upsetting that well-established arrangement. This time when Henrietta responded to her husband, it was in the sure knowledge that the Princess of Wales would not cave in to Charles Howard’s demands, even if the king had made a royal command of them. She reminded Charles that he had ordered her out of his house and even invoking the name of their son would not see her return.
“[After] having been directly dismissed by you and absolutely discharged your company, after your passions having led you to say more of me than I can with decency repeat, what refuge more safe, more honourable or more rational can a wife so abandoned by her husband have recourse to than to continue in the service of the Princess of Wales where to her husband’s great satisfaction and to his and her own honour she was formerly placed?
You mention, Sir, a tender subject indeed, my child. I wish to God he was of a riper age to be a judge between us; I cannot but flatter myself he would have more duty and humanity than to desire to see his mother exposed to misery and want if not by his father’s commands, by yet worse by the influence men in power have over him.”141
When his efforts met with rejection, Charles’ threats to resort to legal action became a reality. He obtained a warrant from the Lord Chief Justice that he claimed gave him the absolute right to seize his wife by force if that was the only means necessary. Henrietta was terrified and made a prisoner of herself at Leicester House as surely as George I had made a prisoner of his wife at Ahlden. Charles might be impetuous in his anger, but even he knew better than to mount an assault on a royal household, so for now she was safe. If she left the confines of Leicester House though, the danger could become very real indeed. Horace Walpole, a friend and neighbour of Henrietta’s in her later life, related an eyebrow-raising story that perfectly illustrated just how afraid Henrietta really was of her husband.
As the summer of 1727 approached, the Prince of Wales and his household prepared for their usual jaunt to their summer home at Richmond Lodge. Naturally Henrietta was expected to go too, but she was convinced that Charles would attempt to seize her on the road. Eventually a plan was concocted whereby Henrietta’s friends, the Duke of Argyll and the Earl of Ilay, would spirit her away at dawn and get her safely out of London hours before the royal party left for Richmond. Though Henrietta made the journey safely she had no more freedom in Richmond than she had in London. Instead she spent the summer hidden away from the clutches of Charles Howard. It was a miserable time.
Henrietta knew that something had to change and if Charles had obtained a writ, then legal measures were all that remained for her too. With that in mind, she approached lawyer James Welwood and asked him to negotiate with Charles on the terms of a formal separation.