Rev. Edward Lake | Autograph manuscript diary, recounting the marriage of Mary to the Prince of Orange, 1677-1678

Rev. Edward Lake.

Autograph manuscript diary as chaplain and tutor to princesses Mary and Anne, covering the period of Mary’s marriage to William of Orange, Anne’s bout of smallpox, and William Sancroft’s appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury, closely written on 23 pages in an otherwise unused volume of about 600 pages, narrow ledger-size (c.205 x 80mm), contemporary vellum boards, 21 October 1677 to 23 April 1678, tear to front free endpaper, light spotting

AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT OF THE RESTORATION COURT AT THE TIME OF THE MARRIAGE OF THE FUTURE MONARCHS WILLIAM AND MARY. Edward Lake (1641-1704) was a Church of England clergyman from a respectable family (his father was canon of Exeter Cathedral) who had been appointed as chaplain and tutor to the Princesses Mary and Anne in around 1670. It was a somewhat delicate role as their father, James, Duke of York, was Roman Catholic but was obliged to bring up his children within the established church – a matter of substantial national importance given their proximity to the crown. Lake and the Duke appear to have had a largely cordial relationship although occasional tensions are apparent in the diary such as when he was excluded from the sickbed of Princess Anne (“…Her highnesse the Lady Ann […] appeared to have the smallpox; whereupon I was commanded not to go into her chamber and read prayers, because of my attendance on the princesse and the other children, which very much troubled me, and the more because her nurse was a very busy, zealous Roman Catholick, and would probably discompose her if shee had an opportunity…”)

The great event of the period covered by this diary was the marriage of Princess Mary to William of Orange. Lake’s intimacy with the royal family gives his diary a remarkable immediacy: he records that when Mary was told of the forthcoming marriage on 21 October 1677 she “wept all that after-noon and the following day”. Lake also records the jokes told by the bride’s uncle when the wedding was solemnised just two weeks later:

 “…The King, who gave her away, was very pleasant all the while; for he desired that the Bishop of London make haste, lest his sister should bee delivered of a son, and so the marriage be disappointed; and when the prince endowed her with all his worldly goods, hee willed to put all up in her pockett, for 'twas clear gains. At eleven o'clock they went to bed, and his majesty came and drew the curtains, and said to the prince, "Now, nephew, to your worke! Hey! St. George for England…"

Mary was anxious and unhappy in the days before her departure for the Netherlands (especially as her sister Anne was sick with smallpox), and Lake records whispers around the court that William “took no notice of his princesse at the playe and balle”. He remained anxious about her welfare (and especially her steadfastness to the Church of England) following her departure from England.

Lake also gives over much space in his diary to the surprise appointment of William Sancroft as Archbishop of Canterbury, which he understood to result from Sancroft’s personal loyalty to the King. He recounts, for example, that Mr Masters “did always believe [Sancroft] to bee either a very pious or a very cunning man ; but hee was very sorry to hear what was reported of him by his own servant, that hee was more than suspected to have been more than decently intimate with one Mrs. Bembo, in Maiden Lane.” Elsewhere, he includes references to William Lloyd's book against Papists, quotes a text of Abraham Cowley's poem 'Sors Virgiliana' and recounts the circumstances in which it was written for Charles I. His concern about dissenters gives him further opportunities to indulge his taste for malicious gossip: the death of a friend’s wife in childbirth is blamed on the midwife, a Quaker, whilst a highwayman is “a notorious Presbyterian”.

The diary may be confirmed as being entirely in Lake's own hand by comparison with two autograph letters by him in the British Library (Add. MS. 36988, ff.142, 214).

LITERATURE:

Diary of Dr. Edward Lake’, ed. G.P. Elliott, in The Camden Miscellany: Volume I, London, 1846-1847

PROVENANCE:

Sotheby’s, 20 July 1989, lot 262