Roger Palmer, 1st Earl of Castlemaine

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Roger Palmer, Earl of Castlemaine

Barbara Palmer nee Villiers, Lady Castlemaine by Sir Peter Lely.

Roger Palmer, 1st Earl of Castlemaine, (1634-1705) was the husband of Barbara Villiers, one of Charles II's mistresses. He was also a noted Catholic writer and courtier.

Born into a Catholic family, Roger was the son of Sir James Palmer, a gentleman of the bed-chamber under King Charles I, and Catherine Herbert, daughter of William Herbert, 1st Marquess of Powis. He was educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge.

On April 14, 1659 he married Barbara Villiers against his family's wishes; his father predicting at the time of the wedding that she would make him one of the most miserable men in the world. Roger was a quiet, studious, bookish man and a devout Roman Catholic whilst his wife was an accomplished sexual athlete and a woman who her later lover, Charles II himself, is recorded by Pepys on 15th May 1663 as having claimed that “she hath all the tricks of Aretin that are to be practised to give pleasure.”

At the time of Roger's wedding to Barbara, she was already the mistress of the Earl of Chesterfield and the marriage does not appear to have prevented her from continuing this relationship nor indeed of seeking out new partners. Indeed within a year, Barbara became the favourite mistress or 'mistresse en titre,' of King Charles II, coincident with his restoration to the throne in May 1660. In an entry to his diary on the 13th July 1660 Pepys describes “the King and Dukes there with Madame Palmer, a pretty woman that they have a fancy to, to make her husband a cuckold“. She claimed to have borne the King five children and had another by, it is thought, John Churchill later 1st Duke of Marlborough. It is believed that her unfortunate husband did not father a single one of Barbara's children.

In the February of the year following the marriage Barbara, gave birth to a daughter named Lady Anne Palmer (b. 25 February 1660/61) which Palmer himself believed was his own daughter and the diary of Samuel Pepys on 23 August 1662 said: "But that which pleased me best was that my Lady Castlemayne stood over against us upon a piece of White-hall - where I glutted myself with looking on her. But methought it was strange to see her Lord and her upon the same place, walking up and down without taking notice one of another; only, at first entry, he put off his hat and she made him a very civil salute - but afterwards took no notice one of another. But both of them now and then would take their child, which the nurse held in her armes, and dandle it". The child was Anne. However, Charles II also acknowledged her (with her sister Charlotte) as one of "his dear and natural daughters by the Duchess of Cleveland" and described her as "the Lady Anne Fitzroy" when granting her a patent of the arms granted to her brother Charles, then Earl (later Duke) of Southampton. In addition it should be noted that the Earl of Chesterfield also claimed the child as his own.

In early June 1662 Barbara had given birth to a son named Charles who it is believed was fathered by the King. Although Roger Palmer insisted on treating the boy as his and ensured that he was christened as a Roman Catholic, Barbara snatched away the young boy and arranged for him to be re-christened in the Church of England.

Barbara Palmer was notably unrestrained in her personal conduct and it is worth remembering that just as she was clearly not faithful to her husband, she wasn't faithful to the King either, and had numerous other sexual liaisons. In addition to the King, the Earl of Chesterfield and the future Duke of Marlborough, Roger was cuckolded by amongst others the playwright William Wycherley, Ralph Montagu the 1st Duke of Montagu, Henry Jermyn, Charles Berkeley, James Hamilton, a rope-dancer named Jacob Hall plus others too numerous to mention. Thanks to her promiscuity Roger found himself the laughing stock of London.

Such was his wife's notoriety that the song at the end of the first act of Wycherley's play Love in a Wood in praise of harlots and their offspring was widely assumed to have been intended as a glorification of Mrs Palmer and her profession. It seems to have attracted the attention of Barbara, for Wycherley lost no time in calling upon her, and was from that moment the recipient of those "favours" to which he alludes with pride in the dedication of the play to her. Voltaire's Letters on the English Nation mentions that Mrs Palmer used to go to Wycherley's chambers in the Temple "disguised as a country wench, in a straw hat, with pattens on and a basket in her hand".

As noted above, besides Roger, two different men claimed paternity of Palmer's eldest daughter, the King claimed fatherhood of his eldest son and although Charles II was declared the father of Henry the next son, no less an authority than Pepys declared that as Barbara was to be found more frequently in the bed of Henry Jermyn prior to the birth, Jermyn is far more likely to have been the father. It is therefore largely a matter of conjecture as to which of his wife's many lovers was the father of any specific child. It was however in Barbara's own interests to claim that the king rather than any other man, including her husband, was the father of her children. Thus although Charles informally recognised five of her children as his, it does not mean to say that they all actually were his offspring.

Charles II created Palmer, Baron Limerick and Earl of Castlemaine in 1661, but the title was limited to his children by Barbara (as opposed, that is, to any later wife he might have) which made it clear to the whole court that the honour was for her services in the King's bedchamber rather than for his in the King's court. This made it more of a humiliation than an honour: see the diary of Samuel Pepys for 7 December 1661: "...to the Privy Seale...And among other things that passed, there was a patent for Roger Palmer (Madam Palmer's husband) to be Earle of Castlemaine and Baron of Limbricke in Ireland. But the honour is tied up to the males got on the body of his wife, the Lady Barbary - the reason whereof everybody knows." Palmer did not want a peerage on these terms but it was forced on him; and he never took his seat in the Irish House of Lords (although he did use the title).

As Lady Castlemaine and later in her own right as Duchess of Cleveland, his wife's bed-hopping meant that she was the talk of the court and often of the town whilst Roger was the butt of much hilarity and the subject of cutting barbs on his inadequacy as a husband and lover from the many wits and satirists of the day. Roger had to resign himself to all this whilst the diarist John Evelyn condemned his wife as "a vulgar mannered, arrogant slut when at her best", the poet Andrew Marvell described her as "the royal harlot" whilst Samuel Pepys despite liking her appearance wrote that “I know well enough she is a whore”.

In the course Roger Palmer charted from this point, two factors remain constant: his unwavering and public devotion to Roman Catholicism, in spite of heavy legal and social penalties; and his staunch support of the Stuart monarchy. There was no way out of his marital dilemma: his religion forbade divorce, and he would therefore have no legitimate children of his own. His loyalty to the throne and the Stuart succession in general and to the person of Charles II in particular forced his complaisant acquiescence to his wife’s position as the King's mistress and to his humiliating quasi-official role as the court cuckold.

In 1680 Roger was tried at the King's Bench Bar in Westminster for high treason and was acquitted. He became a member of the English Privy Council in 1686, following James II's accession to the throne. He was appointed Ambassador to the Vatican where he was ridiculed as Europe's most famous cuckold, a cuckold being a role regarded with particular dishonour in Italy. As ambassador, he promoted James's plan to have Pope Innocent XI make his Jesuit privy councillor, Edward Petre, a cardinal. Innocent declined to do so. He proved inept at the job and was recalled. After the Revolution of 1688, Palmer spent most of 1689 and part of 1690 in prison. After enduring almost 16 months in the Tower, he was freed on bail. He died quietly in the country in 1705 at the age of 70 still married to Barbara, his faithless wife, who on his death wasted no time grieving and instead promptly married one Major-General Fielding. This marriage turned out to be bigamous and Barbara followed Roger to the grave four years later in 1709.

His writings include the Catholique Apology (1674), The Compendium [of the Popish Plot trials] (1679) and The Earl of Castlemaine's Manifesto (1681).