The Girl Who Came with Bombay

An essay in the tradition of popular British history writing, combining factual history with dry wit, irony, and conversational storytelling.

Certainly. A splendid little tale for tea time, this one. Pull up a chair, pour yourself a proper cup of Assam or Darjeeling, and contemplate the strange business of kings, treaties, and poor souls who had absolutely no say in any of it.

One of the more extraordinary stories in British history begins not with a battle or a coronation, but with a young Portuguese princess quietly minding her own affairs in Lisbon whilst a collection of distinguished gentlemen in London busily arranged her future without troubling themselves with such modern inconveniences as asking her opinion.

Poor Catherine of Braganza.

In 1661, whilst she was residing in Lisbon and presumably expecting the usual concerns of a twenty-three-year-old princess, a treaty was signed in London on 23 June which effectively announced:

"Right then. We'll have the girl, Tangier, Bombay, some trading rights half across the world, and two million Portuguese crowns, if you please."

Nobody thought to ask Catherine what she made of all this.

Indeed, nobody asked her anything.

One rather gets the impression she was considered somewhere between a queen and an item of cargo. Imagine being twenty-three years old and discovering that not only are you to marry Charles II, but that you come attached to colonies, ports, commercial privileges, and enough money to make diplomats positively giddy. One suspects she might have preferred a quiet life and an embroidery frame.

Then along came the Earl of Sandwich to collect both bride and dowry.

A magnificent title, by the way. One cannot hear "Earl of Sandwich" without becoming slightly peckish. One hopes His Lordship occasionally reflected upon the fact that posterity remembers him chiefly because hungry gamblers could not be bothered leaving the card table.

Unfortunately, Portugal had a minor inconvenience.

No money.

Or at least not enough.

The treaty promised millions. Reality supplied sacks. Sugar and spices.

One imagines Sandwich standing on the quay, surveying the cargo, and thinking:

"Good heavens. I appear to have come for a queen and received a grocer's inventory."

Or perhaps:

"Good Lord. I appear to have come for a queen and received the inventory of Fortnum &

Mason."

None of this was Catherine's fault, naturally, though history has always possessed the

irritating habit of holding women responsible for the arithmetic and bookkeeping of men.

So off she sailed.

She arrived at Portsmouth in May 1662.

Did Charles rush to greet his bride?

Did he dash across England in excitement?

Did he thunder down the road crying, "At last, my queen!"

Did he heck.

His Majesty took six days.

Six.

Samuel Pepys tells us precisely where he spent those six days: with Barbara Palmer, his principal mistress, who happened at the time to be pregnant with his child.

One scarcely knows whether to laugh or throw one's teacup at Whitehall.

One does feel for Catherine. Imagine crossing half Europe and the Bay of Biscay to meet

your husband and finding him otherwise engaged.

Eventually Charles arrived and offered what may be the least romantic review ever given to a bride.

According to contemporary accounts, she was not exactly beautiful, though she had good eyes, nothing shocking about her appearance, and seemed a very good woman.

A remarkably backhanded compliment.

The poor woman had travelled hundreds of miles for that review.

One has received warmer comments from railway ticket inspectors.

Modern internet ratings are kinder.

Still, they married.

And then Charles committed one of the most astonishing acts of cheek ever performed by an English monarch.

He introduced Barbara Palmer to Catherine and announced that his mistress would become one of the Queen's Ladies of the Bedchamber.

For those unfamiliar with seventeenth-century etiquette, this meant placing one's pregnant mistress inside one's wife's private apartments and expecting the wife to employ her.

Even by Restoration standards, that took brass.

Enough cheek to supply the entire Royal Navy.

Poor Catherine burst into tears and suffered a nosebleed.

Entirely understandable.

Most ladies would have reached for the fireplace poker.

Most of us merely spill the tea.

Yet Catherine endured, because queens, like cricket umpires, are expected to remain dignified whilst surrounded by lunatics.

Her married life was a sorrowful one.

Several miscarriages.

A stillborn child.

No surviving heir.

Meanwhile Charles busied himself producing illegitimate offspring with such enthusiasm that one suspects he considered the matter a competitive sport. By the end he had enough acknowledged children to field a respectable cricket eleven, complete with reserves and perhaps an umpire besides.

And yet history remembers Catherine for rather different reasons.

Everyone counted the money.

Everyone counted Tangier.

Everyone counted Bombay.

Nobody counted the truly valuable things Catherine quietly brought with her.

Forks.

Marmalade.

And Camelia sinensis.

That is to say, tea.

Civilisation itself, one might argue.

Before Catherine, Englishmen apparently attacked their dinners with the enthusiasm of Vikings and drank ale from breakfast onward. The woman introduced refinement to a nation which had only recently discovered that cutting off kings might have been a trifle excessive.

The tangerine owes its name to Tangier, which came as part of her dowry.

Bombay, then merely a line in a treaty, would one day become one of the jewels of the British Empire.

Not bad for a woman whom nobody consulted.

Then, because history occasionally loses its senses entirely, along came Titus Oates and the Popish Plot of 1678.

Titus accused so many people of treason that one is amazed he did not denounce the pigeons in St James's Park or the household cat.

Eventually he accused Catherine herself of plotting to poison the king.

Charles, to his credit, refused to believe a word of it.

And I confess I rather admire him for that.

After twenty years of marriage, he probably reasoned that if Catherine had truly wished him dead, she had demonstrated a patience worthy of canonisation.

Charles died in 1685.

Everyone expected the Queen Dowager to fade gently into obscurity.

Instead, Catherine returned to Portugal.

And here comes my favourite part.

Everyone had assumed she was merely a diplomatic parcel wrapped in silk and delivered

with colonies attached.

The foreign princess nobody consulted.

The wife everyone pitied.

The queen who had endured humiliation with remarkable grace.

Instead, she proved considerably more capable than many of the gentlemen who had spent decades telling her what to do.

Her brother, King Pedro II, appointed her Regent.

And she governed.

Quietly.

Sensibly.

Competently.

Without mistresses.

Without scandals.

Without producing national embarrassments every fortnight.

Without requiring anyone to wait six days before turning up.

Quite frankly, she made a better ruler than many of the men who had spent their lives explaining power to her.

She died in 1705.

By then, every statesman who had signed the treaty that disposed of her life was gone.

Every diplomat.

Every grand planner.

Every clever gentleman with his treaties and signatures.

Every fellow who had thought himself terribly important.

Catherine buried the lot.

And as I sit here taking tea during the interval at Nevil Road, perhaps watching the covers come on because somebody has spotted three drops of rain over midwicket, I find that rather delightful.

They treated her like an attachment to a contract.

History promoted her to captain.

The poor girl they treated like a parcel ended by outlasting the entire opposition.

Which, if you ask me, is the sort of innings one raises one's teacup to.

History occasionally possesses a sense of humour.

And thank Heaven for that.