The Churchills Read online

  Westminster Hall. On Winston’s eightieth birthday, members of Parliament presented him with a portrait by Graham Sutherland, one of the greatest living painters. Churchill loathed the painting and Clementine arranged for it to be secretly destroyed. (Churchill Archives)

  Winston’s ninetieth birthday – crowds of well-wishers called all day long. Winston, beautifully turned-out, waved but he was nearing the end of his long road. (Getty)

  30 January 1965. Sir Winston’s coffin is borne from St Paul’s Cathedral after the funeral service. (PA/PA Archive/Press Association Images)

  PREFACE

  It is no easy task to write about a family that produced so many strong and active personalities, some of whose lives were so colourful that they provided source material for bestselling contemporary novelists such as Anthony Trollope, Edith Wharton and Henry James. Even so, everyone in this extraordinary family is overshadowed by one of the most remarkable men in modern history. There is very little not already well known about him, and yet his life was so full that if twenty historians sat down to write a biography of him and all were given exactly the same source materials, twenty quite different books would result.

  In addition to the scores of books written about Winston Spencer Churchill, he produced a mini-library himself; fifty-odd titles, some multivolume, all written in prose that could hardly be bettered. And there remains an enduring fascination with the man. What made him so special? Many of the books about Churchill are heavyweight political biographies in which the private man is lost to the average reader amid the history of the great events of the twentieth century. But in a book about the Churchill family it is impossible to provide an in-depth account of Winston Churchill’s political career – and this is not my intention. Churchill appears here as a family man, a pivot around whose activities, to a greater or lesser extent, other family members live out their lives. I hope to give readers easier access to these individuals, especially those of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is the way Winston’s personality and activities impinged on the lives of his family members that is important here, rather than those events which made him a household name and a national hero.

  Despite all the reading I have done on Churchill over the years, there is always more to read. Even in the last year, 2009/10, newspaper articles have raised questions about aspects of his life and the lives of some of those close to him, such as the true cause of his father’s early death; and it has been claimed that his mother Jennie had over two hundred lovers, that his younger brother Jack was the result of an affair between Jennie and a lover in Ireland, that Winston and Clementine were estranged for a good deal of their marriage, that Churchill was a bully; and, more recently, that Jennie ‘robbed’ her two sons of their inheritance. Sir Winston’s last Private Secretary wisely wrote in his memoir of Sir Winston’s final years, ‘History is history and nothing portrayed or written of Winston Churchill can diminish his stature.’ All the same, are there any facts behind these allegations?

  Some reviewers may take me to task for adopting a gossipy approach to my subjects. And I should like to make it clear from the outset that this is not unintentional. In my experience – and I approach the allotted biblical span of human years – the world has always thrived on gossip, and provided contemporary gossip is presented with appropriate explanation and is properly sourced, then it can have a place even in serious biography.

  When I first conceived this book I had in mind a record of the whole family, from the 1st Duke onwards, but the Churchills are a prolific and multitalented lot, and I soon saw that this was beyond the scope of one volume. Winston Spencer Churchill’s father, Lord Randolph, was one of the eight children of the 7th Duke of Marlborough who survived to marry and have children. From the marriages of his paternal uncles and aunts alone, Winston had thirty Churchill first cousins. And then there were seven maternal cousins, the Leslies and the Frewens, in Ireland. In his children’s generation there were over eighty Churchills, Guests, Felloweses, Leslies, Sheridans, Frewens and others. And in the following generation there were over a hundred. So in order to keep this book to a manageable size, I quickly revised my brief to include only extraordinary deeds, behaviour, achievement in the Churchill family during the last 150 years. Even then, for reasons of space I have had to cull hard – for example, the Guest family had many fascinating adventures in East Africa in the Thirties that would make a book on its own.

  Winston Churchill did not become a leader by accident. He set out quite deliberately as a very young man to reach the top in British politics, and he dominated world politics in a way that any British politician would find impossible to do now. He always believed he was bound for greatness, and because of this sense of destiny, from his childhood onwards he and his family kept every scrap of paper – from important letters and other documents to ephemera such as theatre programmes and invitation cards. Partly as a result of this, Churchill’s life, his daily activities, his successes and his failures, his loves and dislikes have been pored over, forensically dissected and, recently, often criticised. I freely admit that Winston Spencer Churchill was a hero to me as a child growing up in a heavily blitzed Liverpool during and after the Second World War. I well recall the sense of leadership and confidence he exuded through his radio talks – ‘Winnie’s on tonight!’ – to which we all listened avidly on a crackly wireless that had to be constantly tuned in, becoming fainter and fainter as the acid batteries wore down.

  Nothing I have read or discovered about Churchill since then has essentially changed my opinion of him. He was undeniably impulsive and impatient at times, and not all his strategies, conceived under stress, were thought out as thoroughly as they might have been; these characteristics were with him from childhood. But his failings were more than balanced by his boldness, the use he made of his experience of fighting in the field, his sound understanding of government and of the political system, his sense of dedication and duty to his country and his utter honesty, and – at the last – his absolute refusal to give in to Britain’s enemies. Unquestionably he made mistakes, some major ones, but so did every other commander throughout history. And in any case, the occasional error makes him more human, more engaging. When I have felt it necessary within the terms of this family history I have – with the benefit of hindsight that Churchill did not possess, of course – discussed such errors. But irrefutably, Churchill’s achievements far outweighed his failings; a recent BBC poll showed that the great mass of British people still regard him as ‘the greatest Briton’.

  One of the problems I experienced while writing this book was how to refer to Sir Winston. One clearly cannot refer to a baby or child as ‘Churchill’. However, at the point in the story where he became a man, and a fighting soldier, it seemed over-familiar to call him ‘Winston’ so I took my problem to his daughter Mary (Lady Soames) and asked her advice. She told me to use my biographer’s instinct and refer to him in whatever way felt comfortable. In the political arena, for example, ‘Churchill’ was preferable. In a family setting, featuring Clementine or his children, ‘Winston’ was the obvious choice.

  Mary S. Lovell

  Brockenhurst, Hampshire

  June 2010

  www.marylovell.com

  THE CHURCHILLS

  1

  1650–1750

  ‘Thou art a rascal, John Churchill’

  The surname Churchill is an honoured one, legendary in our time, owing to the vision and achievements of one of history’s greatest men, who sprang from a ducal line and, though born without a title, was always conscious of his aristocratic heritage.

  The first Churchill to come to the notice of modern history was John Churchill, born in 1650 during the turbulent years of the Civil War. He was the elder son of Mr Winston Churchill of Ashe House* near Axminster in Devon,1 although this family of minor West Country gentry hailed originally from the village of Churchill in the neighbouring county of Somerset.† Royalist to the core, they were heavily penalised under
Cromwell’s administration, but even before the Civil War they were never rich. By 1660, when the monarchy was restored, money was tight and there were twelve Churchill children to bring up. Matters improved marginally when Winston Churchill became Member of Parliament for Weymouth, in what is now known as the Cavalier Parliament, and was later given a minor government job in recognition of his loyalty. Even so, young John Churchill had to surrender his entitlement to the entailed family property, to allow his father to raise a mortgage on it.

  Approaching manhood, John always knew he would have to make his own fortune, and that his only assets towards achieving this goal were his brains and singular good looks. Tall, with an excellent physique, he had fair hair, blue eyes and classically handsome features. His enemies (of whom there would eventually be many) would say that he began the process of advancement on the coat-tails of his older sister Arabella, a beauty by the standards of the day. At the age of sixteen Arabella became a maid-of-honour to the Duchess of York, and subsequently mistress to her employer’s husband, James, Duke of York and heir to the throne, to whom Arabella bore a son.* It was said that her influence provided her brother John with his first position in the entourage of the Duke and, in 1667, a commission in the footguards.† The Duke’s friendly patronage would not have proved unhelpful, though there is some historical evidence that John’s father (who was knighted in 1664 to become Sir Winston Churchill) had written to an important friend at court to secure John’s first appointment as a page to the Duke; and it is equally possible that a few years later Sir Winston somehow raised the money to buy the lowly commission for his eldest son. What is certain, and somehow endearing at such a distance, is that John made his public debut by cuckolding his King.

  Twenty-nine-year-old Barbara Villiers, the voluptuous, tempestuous and sexually insatiable Lady Castlemaine, was still maîtresse en titre to King Charles II in 1670 when twenty-year-old John Churchill first appeared at court wearing his ensign’s uniform. By then he had spent a few years in service in the Mediterranean, probably at Tangiers, one of the many parcels of land that the Queen, Catherine of Braganza, had brought to her marriage.2 John Churchill and Barbara Villiers (who had been newly created Duchess of St Albans) were second cousins,‡ and before long the new Duchess and the handsome ensign were also lovers. One afternoon the King, having heard that he had acquired a youthful rival, decided to pay an unscheduled visit to his mistress, whose apartments on King Street faced Whitehall.

  There are two contemporary accounts of the event. In one, John escaped through a window and shinned down a drainpipe clutching his clothes, in full view of interested members of the court who were strolling below. In another version (favoured by the Marlborough family), on hearing his monarch approaching, John dived into a wardrobe, where he was discovered and sent packing. Both versions, however, agree that the following day when the two men met, Churchill bowed apologetically and the King is reputed to have quipped magnanimously, ‘Thou art a rascal, John Churchill, but I forgive thee for I know ’tis how you earn your daily bread.’

  The King did not quite forgive John Churchill: he banished his young rival from court, although the affair with Barbara lasted for some time afterwards. But it is an appealing image – young John making his entrance into history naked and in flight – and some elements of the story are probably factual. Within a short time the penniless young man mysteriously acquired the large sum of £5000.* Not being brought up to squander money he used this sensibly to purchase an annuity of £500, a sum that would be paid to him annually for the remainder of his life. Most people at court believed that this money was a douceur from the amorous Duchess,† and her last child, born in 1672 – at about the same time as John Churchill received his windfall – was generally accepted as Churchill’s daughter.3 Ever resourceful, after the safe delivery of the baby the Duchess sent a messenger to the King to tell him of the birth of yet another royal bastard. The King, not himself renowned for constancy, replied with characteristic nonchalance: ‘You may tell my lady that I know the child is not mine, yet I will acknowledge it for old times’ sake.’4 The little girl bore the name Barbara Fitzroy and was sent to board in a convent in France. As an adult she became a nun and was known as Sister Benedicta.5

  John subsequently served aboard HMS Prince, the Duke of York’s flagship, which lost a third of her company in the first naval battle of the Third Anglo-Dutch War at Solebay in June 1672. For this service John Churchill was promoted to captain in what we would now call the Marines. His next posting took him to Maastricht, where in hand-to-hand fighting he acquitted himself so bravely that on his return to London he was introduced to Charles II (who had, surely, not forgotten him?) by the Duke of Monmouth* as ‘the brave man who saved my life’. As a result, John was given command of an English battalion and posted to allied France to fight for King Louis XIV. With this responsibility came a French colonelcy, but the position was no sinecure, for in one battle, at Enzheim, Churchill lost half of his twenty-two officers. The English cavalry fared even worse; half of all their troops were killed or wounded. ‘No one in the world,’ the dispatch to London reported, ‘could possibly have done more than Colonel Churchill.’

  John was still only twenty-four when he returned in some triumph to the English court, and among his personal possessions were two packing cases full of silver taken in prizes. Probably the last thing on his mind was marriage – until he met sixteen-year-old Sarah Jennings. Sarah and her elder sister Frances were ladies-in-waiting to the Duchess of York, but unlike Arabella Churchill the Jennings sisters were virtuous girls and there was no pillow talk to aid their advancement. Sarah, tall, fair-complexioned, clear-eyed and with an abundance of red-gold hair, was also an attendant to the teenage Princess Anne, who was a stepdaughter of the Duchess of York.*

  John first noticed Sarah Jennings dancing a saraband at a ball, and at their subsequent meeting he found her so bright and intelligent, so vital, that he was instantly smitten – a state of being that would prevail until the day he died. But Sarah was not a good catch for a young man making his way in the world by any means he could find. She had no dowry, no splendid connections, and though striking she lacked the outstanding beauty of her elder sister. Furthermore, at the age of sixteen this unusually independent young woman was in no particular hurry to settle down. John was in a torment, sending her flurries of letters expressing his devotion to her:

  I beg you will let me see you…which I am sure you ought to do if you care for my love, since every time I see you I still find new charms in you…when I am not with you the only joy I have is hearing from you…give me leave to do what I cannot help, which is to adore you as long as I live…I take joy in nothing but yourself…I love you with all my heart and soul.6

  It was a stormy courtship, Sarah professing to doubt his protestations of love perhaps because initially John felt he could not afford a wife so early in his career. ‘If it were true you would find out some way to make yourself happy – it is in your power,’ Sarah retorted. ‘I find all you say is only to amuse me and make me think you have a passion for me. As for seeing you I am resolved I never will, in private.’7 When they quarrelled at an assembly ball he wrote telling her how, after she had pointedly walked away from him in full view of onlookers, ‘I stood near quarter of an hour, I believe, without knowing what to do.’ Instead of taking advantage of the sedan chair he had reserved, he had walked home in order to be able to stand under her window, ‘to see the light in your chamber, but I saw none’ and since then he had twice gone to Whitehall to see her attend the Duchess of York, though Sarah had ordered him not to.

  Believing that John could now make his choice from a number of heiresses and that when he married it should be for money, his parents were opposed to the relationship with Sarah and dangled other girls before him. He was not interested. Sarah teased him for eighteen months – then they were married, secretly and without fuss. At first the young couple were so short of money that they had to live with John’s parents
, but Sarah never regretted the marriage, for theirs was that enviable partnership, a genuine love match, though Sarah’s fiery temperament ensured that their years together were never humdrum. John was a devoted husband and father, and the couple had seven children, five of whom survived infancy, but the major sorrow in their lives was the death of their only son at the age of seven. Their devotion to each other survived all problems, however, and, perhaps partly because of his frequent military absences, remained always passionate. Sarah on one occasion in middle age wrote to confide to a friend that on her husband’s return from an overseas campaign he had ‘pleasured’ her before removing his boots.

  When the Duke of York ascended the throne as King James II in 1685, he created John a baron – Baron Churchill of Sandridge – and sent him as Ambassador to the French court. It was probably at Versailles that John conceived a desire for a house as grand as that of Louis XIV. Despite his indebtedness to James II, Churchill could not accept the Roman Catholicism that James was attempting to impose on the kingdom, and he switched loyalties to support the invasion of the Protestant William of Orange.* Since Churchill took most of the army with him to participate in the ‘Glorious Revolution’, James (the last Stuart King) had little option but to flee the country. Parliament declared that he had abdicated by deserting his kingdom, and in 1689 invited his son-in-law William of Orange, along with William’s wife the Princess Mary who was James’s elder daughter, to take the throne as joint monarchs. Queen Mary died a few years later, in December 1694, of smallpox, leaving William sole ruler of England, Scotland and Ireland.