Which Idiot Put The Queen In NYC ‘Queens’?
And what else can you tell us about minor English royals and the Big Apple?
I briefly mention the answer to this question in my last article ‘Who Was The Grand Old Duke of York?’. Nursery rhymes are fascinating insights into history. If you’ve always wanted to know the answer to that question, tough… you missed it. Just kidding. You can find it here.
But when Alyson Muldoon commented to tell me she’d been wandering around New York and living in Queens without knowing the history, I saw an opportunity to write a brand new article.
Because I do love a history article and I do love NYC. This is the best of both worlds right here!
The different boroughs
Each of the different boroughs has its own etymology. The word “Manhattan” comes from a dialect of the Lenape Native Americans, and can be translated as “a thicket where wood can be found to make bows.”
The Bronx is named after early settler Jonas Bronck. Brooklyn is named after the ego of David Beckham’s eldest child — not really... it’s named after ‘Breuckelen’, a little dutch town near Utrecht. That name comes from Broek which is German for ‘wetland/marsh’ and where we get the English word ‘brook’
A fact that will become remarkably ironic and prescient if we don’t sort out the whole climate change thing sometime soon.
Staten Island is named after Staaten Generaal, the name for the Dutch parliament. The Dutch being very fond of putting unnecessary extra vowels in things and the Americans being the worldwide experts at removing them and linguistic overcorrection. Still struggle to believe they got squirrel to rhyme with girl.
Kings County (which is Brooklyn) was named after the King. Richmond County (which is Staten Island) was named after the Duke of Richmond — so it seems only fair that Queens is named after the Queen.
But who was the King, who was the Duke of Richmond and more importantly who was the Queen?
Meet the Stuart Family
The King in question is the floppy-haired good-time-Stuart Charles II, the Duke of Richmond is Charles Lennox one of his many illegitimate children, — this one’s mother being the very lovely and very french Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth.
As well as inadvertently setting up the royal observatory, Louise was also the lady in waiting to the Queen. Charles’ long-suffering wife, the frequently cheated upon Catherine of Braganza. The Queen for whom Queens is named.
Oh yeah, of course, her Catherine of Bruh…broo…….. okay one question. Where the fuck is Braganza?
Well, I’m glad you asked. It’s in Portugal. Catherine was a political move on behalf of the Stuarts, one of those zero-romance marriages that were all the rage back in the day. England got Bombay and Tangier and some serious queue jumping when it came to trading in Brazil and the East Indies — as well as a massive cash payment.
Portugal got…. look it’s not important what Portugal got. Okay, they got a continuation of the longest European alliance of all time. Portugal and England have still never gone to war and this peace deal was signed in 1386.
This particular bit of the peace was about who’d succeed the Hapsburg family who’d chinned themselves out of existence by only having sex at family gatherings. England wanted the Braganza family to rule and though Charles didn’t exactly fancy her, he was still pleased with the match. He wrote to Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon:
“Her face is not so exactly as to be called a beauty, though her eyes are excellent good, and nothing in her face that in the least degree can disgust one. On the contrary, she hath as much agreeableness in her looks as I ever saw, and if I have any skill in physiognomy, which I think I have, she must be as good a woman as ever was born. You will wonder to see how well we are acquainted already; in a word, I think myself very happy, for I am confident our two humours will agree very well together.”
The Portuguese and the English… best friends since the time of John of Gaunt…. the ‘old guy’ in a number of Shakespeare’s histories
Being the Queen was awful
Without delving too deeply into the Catholic/Protestant mess created by Henry VIII in 1529 and ended by William III in 1688 — I’ll just tell you that Catherine was on the wrong side. She was Catholic. At this point in English history, that wasn’t the right team colours to wear.
And so life for Catherine of Braganza was pretty hard. She gets mentioned in the diaries of Samuel Pepys.
“Catherine lived in her husband’s court as Lot lived in Sodom. She did justly, and loved mercy, and walked humbly with her God in the midst of a seething corruption and iniquity only equaled, perhaps, in the history of Imperial Rome.”
Sounds fun right? She was frequently a target of political machinations and often pointed at by screaming protestants as being the root cause of all evil. Titus Oates, a man who has one of the best names in history, accused her of trying to poison the King. Something that a) wasn’t true and b) got him put in jail.
Charles II did quite a lot to defend his wife from the mad ramblings of the English aristocracy — but before we hold him up as a beacon of male virtue we need to remember his illegitimate children. There’s no handy mnemonic for them so you’ll just have to memorise them.
Little Jimmy Crofts, Charlie FitzCharles, Charlotte Jem Hem Maz Fitzcharles, Anne Fitzroy, Backup Charlie Fitzroy, Henry Fitzroy (direct ancestor of Princess Diana), Another Charlotte Fitzroy, George Fitzroy and little baby Babs Fitzroy, Charlie (Jesus wept another Charles) Beauclerk, James Beauclerk, Charles Lennox, and Mary Tudor (?!?!) I know… always pays to have a twist at the end.
The important thing to note about these kids is that the middle ones are all Fitzroys. That’s because they all have the same mother. Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland — or as she’s known to history. The lovely Lady Castlemaine. She’d been Charles II’s lover since the Civil war and gave zero fucks about causing chaos in the court.
Samuel Pepys wrote this about an encounter with Barbara Villiers in the Privy garden.
I saw the finest smocks and linnen petticoats of my Lady Castlemaine’s, laced with rich lace at the bottom, that ever I saw; and did me good to look upon them”
Whilst Bishop Burnet noted she was ‘a woman of great beauty, but more enormously vicious and ravenous, foolish but imperious.’
Either way, she made Catherine of Braganza’s life fairly hellish. She got herself appointed as Lady of the Bedchamber in 1662. That came with board, lodgings and a decent income. Catherine was furious and struck her name off the list.
Charles put it back on and brought Babs to be presented to Catherine, who promptly lost her shit, got a nosebleed and fainted.
Having Babs Villiers around was a constant reminder that Catherine was unable to bear children. She had three miscarriages. It was evident to the entire court that her inability to keep a pregnancy to term was her fault — Charles firing out children at the rate of one per minute with everyone else he’d ever met confirmed it.
Her existence at court wasn’t a happy one, but Charles refused to divorce her, even though he came under a lot of pressure to do so. Their relationship warmed towards the end of his life and as he lay on his deathbed, he asked for Catherine to attend him.
She didn’t, but she sent a message “to beg his pardon if she had offended him all his life.” He answered, “Alas poor woman! she asks for my pardon? I beg hers with all my heart; take her back that answer.”.
Once Charles died, she is said to have suffered a profound depression and melancholy.
When the Glorious Revolution happened in 1688, life in England became even harder for Catholics. Catherine left here in 1699 and returned to Portugal, she became a military leader and a regent within the Portuguese Royal family and died in Lisbon in 1705 at the age of 67.
She didn’t have the happiest of lives but she made the most of what she had.
She’s the most influential queen you’ve never heard of
Most people haven’t heard of Catherine of Braganza, but she was Queen of England for a long while. Quietly cracking on with her little Catholic life amid the chaos and merriment of Restoration England.
But she was highly influential in more ways than one.
Over her time in the English court, she loosened up and relaxed a little and began to enjoy the finer things in life. One thing she seemed particularly fond of was drinking tea. This became a staple of the English aristocracy and I’ve already had two cups today and it’s only 11am.
We love our tea.
We also love fine dining. It was par for the course in Portugal for members of the aristocracy to have their own dining forks — over here, we’d pretty much been using knives and spoons. Occasionally a two-pronged pointy bastard to spear meats. Catherine of Braganza may have introduced the forks we know and love today to our shores.
Cheers, Cathy.
Which brings us on to her legacy. In 1988 there were plans to erect a statue of Catherine in Hunters Point. It met with fierce opposition. NYC residents of Irish descent weren’t overly happy with a British monarchy being erected anywhere, whilst others said that raising a statue to a Portuguese Princess was out of touch with modern sensibilities.
Personally, I think Catherine is an interesting figure. Someone who made a new life for herself in a hostile world. I think she did her best under the circumstances and she would’ve fitted in with other residents of NYC.
She is the Queen after whom Queens is named — and I think they made a good choice.
Fancy more History a la Penguin? Got you covered…
