From midnight sword fights to introducing champagne to England, the affair between Hortense Mancini and Anne Lennard was nothing short of dramatic
BY YASMIN VINCE, IMAGES BY WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Thanks to Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite, it’s hard not to think of Queen Anne and her not-so-secret love affair with Sarah Churchill when someone mentions early 1700s lesbians. But, what would you say if we told you that, when we turn the history pages back a few decades earlier, there is a much more dramatic sapphic couple at the English court?
It’s 1675 and Queen Anne isn’t even a teenager yet. Riding into London is Hortense Mancini, the cross-dressing, pistol-shooting aunt-in-law to the future James II of England.
Hortense was universally acclaimed as beautiful. Eccentric, yes, but beautiful nonetheless. The then King of England and Scotland, Charles II definitely thought so and she quickly became his mistress. But he wasn’t the only person in his family that Hortense would become attached to – Charles’ illegitimate daughter, Anne Lennard, also fell in love with her. And their full story, culminating in a nighttime sword fight, is surely worthy of a film…
1659 – an exiled Charles proposes
Two years before Anne Lennard would be born, Charles, aged 29, proposed to Hortense, then aged only 12. Her uncle rejected the offer, as Charles was, at the time, living in exile.
In the years since, Hortense was married off to one of the richest (and worst) men in Europe, Armand-Charles de La Porte de La Meilleraye, whose behaviour forced his wife to flee in the middle of the night. Under the protection of the French king Louis XIV and the Duke of Savoy, Hortense wrote her experiences down and had them published, becoming one of the first women to publish an autobiography.
After the death of the Duke, Hortense was turfed out by his widow and subsequently fled again, this time to London, under the pretence of visiting her niece, married to Charles’ brother, James.
1675 – Hortense arrives in London, dressed as a man
It may have been to help disguise herself as she fled France, but Hortense often dressed as a man even when she did not need to smuggle herself out of a country, so riding into London in men’s clothing could have been a fashion statement too.
Either way, her arrival in London was at the behest of Ralph Montagu, the English ambassador to France. He hoped Hortense would replace Louise de Kerouaille as the King’s mistress. And she did. By 1676, the woman Charles had proposed to 17 years earlier was now his mistress.
Hortense and the King’s daughter strike up a “romantic friendship”
As the King’s mistress, Hortense met his illegitimate daughter. Anne Lennard had been unhappily married for two years before Hortense would arrive. It’s not known when they began to see each other outside of Court, but their relationship has been well-documented as a “romantic friendship”. Much like the later reports of Queen Anne and Sarah Churchill’s relationship, it was a well-known secret that the one between Hortense and Anne was decidedly more romantic than it was friendship.
1676 – The two have a midnight duel in St James’ Park
Even for Restoration England, where compared to the Puritan values of the years prior were shaken off, the relationship between Hortense and her (kind of) step-daughter was scandalous. Especially as Hortense’s eccentricities rubbed off on Anne.
The event that set gossipers’ tongues wagging happened in December, 1676. Having learnt to fence, the two had a very public, albeit friendly, showdown in St James’ Park. In the middle of the night, in front of several on-lookers, the two met in their nightgowns for a fencing duel.
1678 – Anne’s husband carts her off to a convent
Predictably, Lord Sussex was not happy with his wife’s relationship with Hortense. He regularly threatened to separate the two and send Anne away. Following their midnight sword fight, he made good on his threat and packed Anne off to the country and then on to a nunnery in Paris.
Distance made the heart grow fonder for Anne, who spent her days and nights in bed, crying her eyes out and kissing a miniature portrait of Hortense.
Time to see other people?
While Anne mourned the loss of her love, the same could not be said of Hortense, who continued her affair with Anne’s father and took on an additional lover, Louis I de Grimaldi, Prince of Monaco. She went on to found a salon of intellectuals, attended by both men and women, including her formal rival, Louise de Kerouaille, and Charles’ most famous mistress, Nell Gwyn.
Her salon was also one of the first places champagne was introduced to England. Disgusted by English wines, she and another French exile, Charles de Saint-Evremond, order in their alcohol from Champagne, popularising the region and its drink of choice.
And what happened to Anne? She quickly escaped the Parisian convent and ran off to start a new life with a new love – none other than Ralph Montagu, the very same ambassador that orchestrated bringing Hortense to England. But that’s not how Anne knew him. When they met, he was simply the man having an affair with her mother!
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