The world of 'The Mistaken Wife'

St Catharine’s College, Cambridge was founded in 1473 by Robert Woodlark, the provost of neighbouring King’s College.  Named in honour of the patron saint of learning and scholarship, it was initially known as Katharine (and later Catherine) Hall.  The current name and spelling were adopted in 1860, and members of the College have become jealous of the second ‘a’ in Catharine, which inter alia distinguishes their institution from the much younger foundation at Oxford.  Lowther Yates, the Master whom Mary Finch did not meet when invited to the College to consult ancient manuscripts, held that post from 1779-1799.  His election was controversial and appears to have been the result of the Fellows’ wish to avoid an election by the Crown, which would have resulted if they could not resolve the matter themselves.  Their success on this occasion is rendered more noteworthy by the fact that, from 1790 the Fellowship was embroiled in a series of disputes involving vacancies and elections, some of which went on for nearly 20 years.  Yates was known for the humorous couplet, shouted from a window as he walked to the University Church in what was considered insufficiently formal dress: ‘Gadzoons, Gadzoons, Lowther Yates in pantaloons', so it is perhaps just as well that Mary did not make his acquaintance.

It has been suggested that Evan Nepean’s (1752-1822) period of service in the Royal Navy may have included intelligence work, which would account for his unusual appointment as under-secretary of state in the Home Office in 1782.  There he had responsibility for departmental funds paid to foreign agents and oversaw the programme to monitor suspect aliens and nationals in London.  He continued his intelligence work when he moved to the department of War and the Colonies in 1794 and then to the Admiralty in 1795.  In 1797 the king wanted Nepean to take a leading role in planning a secret invasion of Spanish settlements in South America.  In 1804 he became chief secretary to the lord lieutenant of Ireland, but the appointment was not a success and he returned to the Admiralty as a junior lord.  He left government service in 1806, but continued a member of Parliament until 1812; he had entered the legislature in 1796 but rarely spoke in the House.  His last official post was as governor of Bombay – an appointment with the East India Company.  Throughout his career he was known as a thoroughly efficient, capable man of business.

In the last quarter of the eighteenth century a new type of eating establishment emerged in France – the restaurant.  Previously, the public had to make do with taverns or caterers’ shops.  Caterers (traiteurs) sold cooked meats, ragouts, and pastries to take away, while taverns provided set meals at set times at set prices.  The innovation of the restaurant was vastly to expand choice.  Patrons could choose from a long menu of dishes, each of them individually priced and served at any time of day.  Thus the table d’hôte gave way to ordering à la carte.  When the Revolution broke up aristocratic households across France, many of the chefs fled to other parts of Europe, particularly England.  Some remained and became restaurateurs, however, and their expertise helped to elevate the range and quality of the food provided at these establishments.  Certainly English travellers were astounded by what was on offer.  Accounts of famous restaurants such as Beauvilliers and Robert’s mention menus the size of a newspaper requiring at least half an hour to study their contents, while the verdict on price and quality was generally very favourable.  The better Paris restaurants, too, were elegantly appointed and served a discriminating clientele.  The fact that women dined at these establishments also gave them a certain je ne sais quoi.  

By any measure, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754-1838) had an astonishing career.  The eldest son in an aristocratic family, his deformed foot disqualified him from the Army so he was intended for the Church.  He was ordained in 1779 and became bishop of Autun ten years later through family influence, although he regarded his vocation with considerable cynicism.  His extremist conduct during the first stage of the Revolution resulted in excommunication, while his secret royalist sympathies caused the National Convention to issue a warrant for his arrest.  Fortunately, he was in England on an unofficial commission when this happened.  He was expelled from Britain in 1794 and went to America, where he remained until the fall of Robespierre.  Then, through the intervention of friends, he succeeded in having his name removed from the émigré list and returned to France in 1796.  The following year he became Foreign Minister.  Having cultivated the friendship of Napoleon Bonaparte, Talleyrand was instrumental in the coup d’état that brought the general to power in 1799, securing his own position in the process.  (The sentence of excommunication was also lifted in 1802.)  He continued as Foreign Minister until 1807, and thereafter provided confidential information to Austria and Russia, with an eye to protecting France (and himself) in the event of Bonaparte’s death or defeat.  When the latter occurred in 1814, Talleyrand helped to restore the Bourbon monarchy and served as chief French negotiator at the Congress of Vienna.  Bonaparte’s return and second defeat undermined the settlement Talleyrand had helped to bring about, and he resigned in 1815.  For the next fifteen years he was out of office, but in 1830 he was appointed ambassador to the United Kingdom.  On his deathbed he received the last rites of the Catholic Church, and instructed his confessor to anoint the backs rather than the palms of his hands, stating, ‘Remember – I am a bishop.’

On 5 October 1793 the French National Convention adopted a new calendar.  It was regarded as having begun on 22 September 1792 – the proclamation of the Republic – and so this became the first day of Year I.  Each year was further divided into 12 months, each comprising three décades of ten days.  Every tenth day, or décadi, was a day of rest.  In addition to being known by their respective numbers, each date was given a name relating to animals, plants, or agricultural tools.  New words were coined to designate the months, which evoked seasonal changes and agricultural practices.  The month of Vendémiaire, for example, was taken from the Latin, vindemia, or ‘grape harvest’; the month of Brumaire came from the French for ‘fog’ - brume.  There were a further five supplementary days at the end of the year, which were proclaimed holidays, and a sixth in leap years.  The new calendar was unpopular, both because it was complicated and unfamiliar, and because it provided for a longer working week.  In 1801 Napoleon Bonaparte negotiated a concordat with Pope Pius VII that included, among other things, a return to the Gregorian calendar.  This was not achieved, however, until 31 December 1805 (10 Nivôse, Year XIV).

Captain Robert Holland serves on the staff of the Royal Artillery regiment. The regimental headquarters was the Warren, the arsenal at Woolwich, which was then a village approximately nine miles from London.

Unlike the rest of the Army, the artillery was part of a separate branch of government – the Ordnance department – which bore responsibility for armaments and the men who employed them. It was fitting, therefore, that the arsenal should reflect both functions. Beginning with a purchase of some 30 acres by the Crown in 1671, the arsenal grew gradually to serve four related purposes: manufacture and storage of weaponry, research into new weapons and equipment, accommodation of the officers and men of the regiment, and practical instruction for artillery and engineer cadets.

The last, laudable aim of insuring that commissioned officers were competent in such subjects as mining, gunnery, sapping, and bridge-building sometimes had to give way to necessity. When the French war began in 1793, the demand for officers was so keen that the public passing-out exams were dispensed with in favour of an internal exam, and even this was stopped in 1795.

Captain Holland, of course, would have been subject to the more rigorous process of qualification.

Middle Temple and Inner Temple are two of the four ‘inns of court’ (the others are Lincoln’s Inn and Gray’s Inn) responsible for the training and regulation of English barristers.  While the other Inns probably began life as private residences, ‘The Temple’ had been the headquarters of the Knights Templar in England until the Order was dissolved in 1312.   The former Templar lands were given to the Knights Hospitaller, and they leased the Temple to groups of lawyers and judges.  The Temple Church remained in the possession of the Hospitallers until 1540, and when James I granted charters to the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple and the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, respectively, their shared use of the church was also granted in perpetuity.  The Temple Church is a Peculiar, meaning that it is exempt from the bishop’s jurisdiction.  In most peculiars this exemption is relevant in respect of marriages, probate, and ecclesiastical discipline, but only the latter seems to have been exercised by the Templars or Hospitallers.  Marriages were celebrated in the church, however, from 1628 – often without the necessary formalities.  These ‘lawless’ marriages were prohibited in 1754 by Lord Hardwicke’s Act, which required either the publication of banns or a special licence from the archbishop of Canterbury.  The register records one marriage by special licence in 1755, another in 1760, and then none until 1865.  As Mary Finch’s marriage was founded upon a forged special licence, it is no wonder that no record of it remains.