An English Court in a French Château: The Apartments of James II and his Family at Saint-Germain-en-Laye

Abstract

From 1689, James II, king of England and Scotland, deposed by the Glorious Revolution, together with his wife Mary of Modena and their children, lived in the château of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, close to Versailles, put at their disposal by the king of France. In accordance with his will to ensure that his cousin was still seen as a king, Louis XIV granted him use of his own royal apartment. But after a few years, James decided to move to another apartment where he seems to have attempted to live in a manner more in keeping with the ceremonial traditions of the English monarchy. However, after his death, his son the ‘Old Pretender’ did not maintain the same layout: more than conforming to the tradition of his country, his main aim seems to have been to proclaim that, even in exile, he was still a king.

Notes

1 Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné, Recueil des lettres de madame de Sévigné (Paris, 1801), vol. VII, p. 94.

2 Besides the work of Edward Corp and Jacqueline Sanson (eds), La cour des Stuarts à Saint-Germain-en-Laye au temps de Louis XIV, catalogue of the exhibition held at the Musée des Antiquités nationales, 13 February to 27 April 1992 (Paris, 1992), one can also highlight, amongst the numerous works by Corp: ‘La Maison du Roi à Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1689–1718)’, in L’autre exil: les jacobites en France au début du XVIII^e siècle, proceedings of the conference held in February 1992 (Montpellier, 1993), pp. 55-78; ‘The Jacobite Chapel Royal at Saint-Germain-en-Laye’, Recusant history 23-4 (1997), pp. 528-42; ‘English Royalty in Exile: Maintaining Continuity in France and Italy after 1689’, in François Laroque and Franck Lessay (eds), Figures de la royauté en Angleterre de Shakespeare à la Glorieuse Révolution (Paris, 1999), pp. 181-95; ‘Les courtisans français à la cour d’Angleterre à Saint-Germain-en-Laye’, Cahiers Saint-Simon 28 (2000), pp. 49-66; A Court in Exile: The Stuarts in France, 1689–1718 (Cambridge, 2004), especially pp. 76-103; ‘The Jacobite Court at Saint-Germain-en-Laye: Etiquette and the Use of the Royal Apartments’, in Eveline Cruickshanks (ed.), The Stuart Courts (Stroud, 2009), pp. 240-55; ‘Saint-Germain-en-Laye’, in David Forsyth (ed.), Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobites, catalogue of the exhibition held at the National Museum of Scotland, 23 June to 12 November 2017 (Edinburgh, 2017), pp. 25-42.

3 This research has been undertaken as part of the project for a corpus of sources on the history of the châteaux of Saint-Germain-en-Laye supported by the LabEx Les passés dans le présent, Investissements d’avenir, reference number ANR-11-LABX-0026-01.

4 The subject of exiled sovereigns is the focus of the recent work by Philip Mansel and Torsten Riotte (eds), Monarchy and Exile. The Politics of Legitimacy from Marie de Médicis to Wilhelm II (Houndmills, 2011). See notably the editors’ remarks on p. 7 on the interest in examining the ceremonies which monarchs chose to maintain when in exile.

5 Service historique de la Défense (Vincennes), GR A¹ 814, fol. 9 and GR A¹ 839, fol. 2: letters of Louvois from 1 January 1689 ordering the queen of England to be brought to Vincennes; Archives nationales, O¹ 3306, fol. 114v-115: orders of 2 January 1689 to send furnishings to Saint-Germain-en-Laye for the royal family of England.

6 Service historique de la Défense (Vincennes), GR A¹ 814, fol. 9.

7 Béatrix Saule (ed.), De la naissance à la gloire, Louis XIV à Saint-Germain, catalogue of the exhibition held at the Musée des Antiquités nationales, 24 September to 27 November 1988 (Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 1988), especially pp. 54-113.

8 Étienne Faisant, ‘L’autre château du Roi-Soleil: les grands travaux de Jules Hardouin-Mansart à Saint-Germain-en-Laye’, Bulletin monumental 178-2 (2020), pp. 265-82; idem, ‘Revenir à Saint-Germain: les appartements du château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye de 1681 à 1688’, Versalia 24 (2021), pp. 113-132.

9 Faisant, ‘L’autre château’.

10 Journal du marquis de Dangeau, Eudore Soulié and Louis Dussieux (eds) (Paris, 1854–1860), vol. II, p. 94. The construction of this new building, actively in progress in 1688, was not started again in 1689, without doubt due to the installation of the English sovereigns.

11 Saule (ed.), De la naissance, p. 7 (‘avait de plus cher à offrir au courage malheureux’).

12 Mémoires du marquis de Sourches sur le règne de Louis XIV, Gabriel-Jules de Cosnac and Arthur Bertrand de Roussillon (eds) (Paris, 1882–1883), vol. III, p. 7.

13 We designate here the floor containing the royal apartments as the ‘first floor’ in considering that the level beneath, between this one and the ground floor (rez-de-chaussée), is an entresol. Edward Corp has considered it as a distinct floor itself, and thus considers the floor with the royal apartments as the ‘second floor’.

14 Bibliothèque nationale de France (hereafter BnF), Manuscrits Français 16633, fol. 483.

15 Bodleian Library, Carte Ms 2078, fol. 287-287v, list of courtiers lodged at the château-vieux of Saint-Germain-en-Laye circa 1692; Corp, A Court in Exile, p. 82.

16 The identification of the lodgings occupied by James II is certain because, when the Dauphin came to visit him on 9 January, after having seen the king of England in his ‘petite chambre’, he was able to pass directly into that of the Queen in traversing her cabinet (BnF, Manuscrits Français 16633, fol. 484v).

17 Archives nationales, O¹ 3306, fol. 125v-135: drawn up in June 1689, this account ‘de plusieurs meubles de broderies anciennes faits et livrez cy-devant pour les appartements du château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye’ describes quite clearly the works undertaken before the arrival of James II and his spouse, since the planned distribution, with an apartment for the King and a ‘grand appartement’ without a smaller chamber, was not adapted for a royal couple, but was conceived for Louis XIV alone, a widower since 1683.

18 The same accounts made in June 1689 indicate that several tapestries and beds had remained ‘imparfaits’, ‘les ouvrages ayant cessé par ordre de Sa Majesté’. The work was never completed, the planned bed for the King’s small chamber, for example, remaining in that state. Jules Guiffrey (ed.), Inventaire général du mobilier de la Couronne sous Louis XIV (1663–1715) (Paris, 1885–1886), vol. II, p. 457, no 1980.

19 If one relies on a ‘mémoire historique relatif à Sa Majesté la reine d’Angleterre, femme de Jacques II’, made by the nuns of the convent of the Visitation at Chaillot (a text which undoubtedly should be read with caution), the bedchamber of Mary of Modena ‘dans le tems qu’elle arriva à Saint-Germain’, was thus hung with a set of tapestries of the history of Alexander produced at the Gobelins (Archives nationales, K 1302, pièce 220, fol. 11v).

20 Archives nationales, O¹ 3306, fol. 116.

21 Guiffrey (ed.), Inventaire, vol. II, p. 220. We know that these furnishings were used by the queen of England thanks to the description of the balustrade in the inventory of the Crown furniture (Guiffrey (ed.), Inventaire, vol. II, p. 171, no 463), where it says that it was placed ‘autour du lit de velours rouge en broderie, n° 87, servant à Leurs Majestez Britanniques, à Saint-Germain-en-Laye’.

22 The furnishing account from June 1689 attests in fact that the small chamber had been transformed, prior to the arrival of Mary of Modena, into a large cabinet. After the death in 1683 of Queen Marie-Thérèse, her former lodgings had been considered as a ‘grand appartement’, reserved for receptions and where no one would live anymore.

23 This bed, which bears the number 496, is mentioned in AN, O¹ 3306, fols 115 and 118v. A description of it is given in Guiffrey (ed.), Inventaire, vol. II, p. 272.

24 Archives nationales, O¹ 3306, fol. 114v.

25 BnF, Manuscrits Français 16633, fol. 485v. A cadenas was a lockable casket containing a person’s table requisites, cutlery, etc. A nef was a table ornament in the form of a ship that could be used to contain a napkin but was above all, in the seventeenth century, a mark of status.

26 BnF, Manuscrits Français 16633, fols 485v-486. See also on this subject: Corp, A Court in Exile, p. 111. On the arrival of his cousin, Louis XIV equally dispatched guards from the prévôté de l’hôtel to accompany the king and queen of England, ‘pour exécuter leurs ordres’ (Archives nationales, E 699a, fols 31-32, 1 June 1700). These officials of the Maison du Roi, in charge of the policing and security of the court, turned out to be useless and were replaced by a specially commissioned officer.

27 Sourches, Mémoires, vol. X, pp. 1-2.

28 Bodleian Library, Carte Ms 2078, fols 287-287v. On this document, see Edwin and Marin Sharp Grew, The English Court in Exile: James II at Saint-Germain (London, 1912), p. 267, and Corp, A Court in Exile, pp. 85-87.

29 Faisant, ‘Revenir’, fig. 6.

30 William Edward Buckley (ed.), Memoirs of Thomas, Earl of Ailesbury (London, 1890), p. 323.

31 Corp, A Court in Exile, p. 85, has attributed one of the apartments of the southern wing to the ‘lieutenant des gardes en quartier’, though this does not figure in the list and without justifying this addition.

32 Which is what Corp has done (A Court in Exile, pp. 86-7). As stated above, Corp designates as the ‘first floor’ what we call the entresol between the rez-de-chaussée and the first floor.

33 Archives départementales des Yvelines, 3 E 37. 179, 22 September 1694.

34 We will see that Mary of Modena changed apartments between 1692 and 1694, but she never lived in the southern wing of the château.

35 David Nairne was charged in December 1697 to find an apartment for the duke of Albemarle, who stayed there from January to June 1689: Corp, ‘James II and David Nairne’, p. 1396. Nairne himself saw his own requests for lodgings within the château refused: ibid., p. 1399, n. 96.

36 Corp, ‘Les courtisans français’, p. 53.

37 Archives départementales des Yvelines, 3 E 37.186, 12 July 1701.

38 Archives départementales des Yvelines, 3 E 37.201, 4 October 1717.

39 Archives nationales, O¹ 3308, fols 12v-13, August 1705 and fol. 45, 1 February 1708. These notices are indicated by Corp, ‘Les courtisans français’, p. 53, who included them as exceptions because he thought that ‘les jacobites logés au château devaient meubler eux-mêmes leurs appartements’. In fact, they needed only to supplement the principal furnishings loaned by the French Crown.

40 Corp, A Court in Exile, p. 83, argues that James II never left the former apartments of Louis XIV.

41 Archives nationales, O¹ 2182, fol. 190 (Jules Guiffrey (ed.), Comptes des bâtiments du Roi sous le règne de Louis XIV (Paris, 1881–1901), vol. III, col. 1159).

42 Dangeau, Journal, vol. XVIII, pp. 345-52; this account by the baron de Breteuil has been published again more recently in Évelyne Lever (ed.), Baron de Breteuil. Mémoires (Paris, 1992), pp. 260-69.

43 See on this topic Corp, A Court in Exile, p. 45

44 He noted that: ‘Entering into the body of the House I was to pass a gallery, even to the ground, and winding about as round a tower’. This can only correspond to that staircase, by means of which one gained access to the ground floor by a circular hallway.

45 Buckley (ed.), Memoirs of Thomas, Earl of Ailesbury, p. 323.

46 The prince of Wales passed in June 1695 ‘into mens hands’ (as David Nairne noted on 4 June 1695: see Corp, A Court in Exile, p. 258). In 1696, he received a new bed of ‘damas rouge cramoisy’, made from a part of the furnishings that had been prepared for Madame Royale, daughter of Louis XIV (Archives nationales, O¹ 3307, fols 295v-296v).

47 Archives nationales, O¹ 3307, fol. 356v, 16 May 1698.

48 This detail excludes once more the possibility that James II was still installed in the former apartment of Louis XIV, where the rooms had five and one windows respectively.

49 This room is noted several times by David Nairne in his journal: see Edward Corp, ‘Sir David Nairne: Servant and Diplomat’, Diplomacy and Statecraft 25-1 (2014), pp. 3-25, p. 7; and idem, ‘James II and David Nairne’, p. 1395.

50 This room is also mentioned by David Nairne: Corp, ‘James II and David Nairne’, pp. 1391, 1395-6.

51 Dangeau, Journal, vol. XVIII, p. 351.

52 Hugh Murray Baillie, ‘Etiquette and the Planning of the State Apartments in Baroque Palaces’, Archaeologia or Miscellaneous Tracts relating to Antiquity 101 (1967), pp. 167-199, p. 175; Anna Keay, The Magnificent Monarch: Charles II and the Ceremonies of Power (London, 2008), notably p. 184.

53 This room measured about thirty-six square metres. We do not know if it was here where James II lived in his last moments or if a bed had at that time been brought into the former bedchamber of the Dauphin. When Louis XIV came to see his cousin shortly before his death, he saw him in the company ‘de la reine et de plusieurs seigneurs des deux cours’ (Mercure Galant, September 1701, p. 374). A remark by the Nuncio regarding the ‘Inglesi, de’ quali era piena la camera’ (British Library, Add. MS. 20268, fols 337v-342, published in Bruno Neveu, ‘A Contribution to an Inventory of Jacobite Sources’, in Eveline Cruickshanks (ed.), Ideology and Conspiracy: Aspects of Jacobitism, 1689–1759 (Edinburgh, 1982), pp. 152-5, p. 153) allows us to visualise that this room was quite crowded, but it still does not inform us if it applied to the ‘little bedchamber’.

54 Corp, ‘Les courtisans français’, p. 53

55 Even if this distribution was fully adopted, it remained inferior to the layout then in usage in the principal residences of the king of England. See among others on this subject: Brian Weiser, Charles II and the Politics of Access (Woodbridge, 2003), notably pp. 40-42.

56 Royal Archives, Windsor, Stuart Papers, 1.79 G (printed in Nathalie Genet-Rouffiac, Le grand exil, les jacobites en France, 1688–1715 (Paris, 2007), pp. 519-24).

57 Edward Corp, ‘James II and David Nairne: The Exiled King and his First Biographer’, English Historical Review 129, 541 (2014), pp. 1383-1411, p. 1391.

58 Archives nationales, O¹ 3307, fol. 341v, 8 October 1697.

59 Archives nationales, O¹ 3307, fols 412-412v: in January 1700 a new set of furnishings were delivered for this room, which included only one window hanging. The small chamber of the former apartment of Louis XIV was the only one, in all the royal apartments, that had only one window.

60 Besides the public route, the sovereign could arrive there by passing across the terrace which surrounded the château at that level. It is moreover this ‘picciolo balcone al di fuori’ that Louis XIV crossed when he came to Saint-Germain shortly before the death of James II (British Library, Add. MS. 20268, fols 337v-342, published in Neveu, ‘A Contribution’, p. 153).

61 Emily, marquise Campana de Cavelli, Les derniers Stuarts et le château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, documents inédits et authentiques puisés aux archives publiques et privées (Paris, 1871), vol. II, p. 501.

62 On the English practice for royal dining, see Keay, The Magnificent Monarch, pp. 42 and 136-43. One of the differences from French usage was that service was done on bended knee.

63 This problem reminds us that the court of France was traditionally noted for its particular familiarity and a notable closeness between the king and his subjects (Monique Chatenet, La cour de France au XVI^e siècle. Vie sociale et architecture (Paris, 2002), pp. 107-11; Pierre Goubert (ed.), Mémoires pour l’instruction du Dauphin (Paris, 1992), p. 53). Even if, since the second half of the sixteenth century, the different royal residences had been designed with progressively more successive antechambers, Louis XIV nevertheless had lived for fifteen years at Saint-Germain-en-Laye with only one antechamber of a quite reduced size, and although he enlarged it at the time of the works undertaken in the 1680s, he did not have his apartment completed by adding another antechamber.

64 Archives nationales, O¹ 3307, fols 430-430v.

65 Edward Corp (‘La Maison du Roi’, p. 75, n. 12, and A court in Exile, pp. 93-94) affirms that in 1699 the Queen was installed in the apartment of the Dauphin, the prince of Wales in that of the former queen, and Princess Louise-Marie in that of the Dauphine. Besides the previously noted description by the baron de Breteuil of the visit of Philip V in 1700 (Dangeau, Journal, vol. XVIII, pp. 345-52), he gives nothing as reference but the account books of the Bâtiments du roi (Guiffrey (ed.), Comptes, vol. IV, cols 502-5, and details for the first two weeks of October conserved in the Archives nationales, O¹ 1716). but these tell us absolutely nothing on this subject: nothing is mentioned but the works of ‘grosse peinture’ and of floor washing in the apartments of the queen of England, without any more precision. The royal family would have again moved, according to Corp, at the end of 1702, the Old Pretender returning at that time to the apartment of the Dauphin, Mary of Modena returning to her own and the Princess being installed into that of the King. The only reference given in justification is, however, again the accounts of the Bâtiments du roi (Guiffrey (ed.), Comptes, vol. V, cols 871-5), where one finds no trace but the maintenance of the parquet in the Queen’s apartment, without giving any indication of the space which she inhabited. We will see that the account of furnishings delivered in 1701 permits us to arrive at totally different conclusions.

66 Corp, ‘Les courtisans’, p. 56; Raphaël Masson, ‘Esthétique et étiquette du deuil à la cour’, in Gérard Sabatier and Béatrix Saule (eds), Le roi est mort. Louis IX — 1715, catalogue for the exhibition held at château de Versailles, 27 October 2015 to 21 February 2016 (Paris, 2015), pp. 50-59 (p. 54).

67 Archives nationales, O¹ 3307, fols 442-446, November 1701.

68 Corp, A Court in Exile, pp. 83 and 94.

69 Archives nationales, O¹ 3307, fol. 458, 28 December 1702.

70 Archives nationales, O¹ 3307, fol. 458v, 26 January 1703.

71 Archives nationales, O¹ 3308, fols 16-16v, 20 October and 17 November 1705.

72 Archives nationales, O¹ 3308, fol. 29v, 22 June 1706.

73 This ‘grand cabinet’ cannot correspond with the small chamber of the King’s apartment, which included only one window.

74 This new presentation is indicated by a note in the margins of the inventory of possessions left by James II: Keith Wilson, ‘The Will and Inventory of James II’, The Historian. The Magazine of the Historical Association 7 (1985), between pp. 16 and 17.

75 Lever (ed.), Baron de Breteuil. Mémoires, p. 172.

76 Calendar of the Stuart Papers belonging to His Majesty the King preserved at Windsor Castle, vol. I (London, 1902), pp. 162-3.

77 Archives nationales, O¹ 3307, fol. 442-446, November 1701.

78 If Mary of Modena had always been installed in the former apartment of the king of France, it would have been necessary to have five curtains for the windows of the first chamber, and one for the window of the second. The mention, 16 October 1701, of a ‘coridor au-dessus de l’apartement de la reyne d’Angleterre à Saint-Germain’ (Archives nationales, O¹ 2194, fol. 264v; Guiffrey (ed.), Comptes, vol. IV, col. 758) confirms that Mary was once more installed in the apartment traditionally belonging to the queen, because there was no hallway above that of the king.

79 Corp, A Court in Exile, pp. 83 and 94, who believes that Mary of Modena was installed at the end of her spouse’s life in the former apartment of the Dauphin, concluded that she did not return into that of the queen until 1702.

80 Calendar of the Stuart Papers, vol. I, p. 164.

81 Archives nationales, O¹ 3307, fols 442-446, November 1701. This ‘oratoire de la princesse d’Angleterre’ had benefitted in the first months of 1701 from painting and gilding works (Guiffrey (ed.), Comptes, vol. IV, col. 755). This small oratory appears already on a plan from 1685 (BnF, Estampes, Va 78c) and was not therefore created in 1689 for Mary of Modena as Edward Corp believed (‘The Jacobite Chapel Royal’, p. 535), on the basis of the minor painting jobs done in that year ‘aux oratoires de l’appartement de la reyne’ (Guiffrey (ed.), Comptes, vol. III, col. 323). The formula suggests moreover that this minor job did not pertain to the oratory of the antechamber of the apartment then in use by the prince of Wales, but that constructed in the reign of Louis XIII behind the queen’s bedchamber, facing the courtyard.

82 Corp, A Court in Exile, p. 83, indicates that the Princess lived at that time in the apartment of the Dauphine and that she later took possession of that of Louis XIV, but these conclusions, unsupported, are contradicted by the furnishing accounts.

83 British Library, Add. MS. 31261, fol. 133, 30 June 1718, published in Corp, ‘English Royalty’, pp. 183-4.

84 Keay, The Magnificent Monarch, notably pp. 196-7.

85 After the death of the Queen, seals were placed across the door and the window of ‘un petit cabinet attenant le grand cabinet de Sad. déffunte Majesté servant de garderobbe, ayant vue sur la cour du château neuf, faisant partie de son appartement’ (Archives départementales des Yvelines, B 2851, 7 May 1718), which corresponds to a small room at one end of the apartment of the queen, behind the antechamber of the apartment of the king.

86 Corp, ‘The Jacobite Court at Saint-Germain-en-Laye’, pp. 245-6.

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Étienne Faisant

Étienne Faisant

Étienne Faisant holds a PhD in art history from the Sorbonne Université (Paris). His research focuses on architecture in France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He has been a postdoctoral fellow at the research laboratories of excellence ‘Les passés dans le présent’ and ‘Écrire une histoire nouvelle de l’Europe’, and at the Université de Paris-Nanterre.