Favourite

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(Redirected from
Royal favourite
)
For the 2018 film, see The Favourite. For other uses of "favourite" or "favorite", see Favorite (disambiguation).
Equestrian portrait of the Count-Duke of Olivares by Diego Velázquez
.

A favourite was the intimate companion of a ruler or other important person. In

post-classical and early-modern Europe, among other times and places, the term was used of individuals delegated significant political power by a ruler. It was especially a phenomenon of the 16th and 17th centuries, when government had become too complex for many hereditary rulers with no great interest in or talent for it, and political institutions were still evolving. From 1600 to 1660 there were particular successions of all-powerful minister-favourites in much of Europe, particularly in Spain, England, France and Sweden.[1]

The term is also sometimes employed by writers who want to avoid terms such as "royal mistress", "friend", "companion", or "lover" (of either sex). Some favourites had sexual relations with their monarch (or the monarch's spouse), but this was far from universal. Many were favoured for their skill as administrators, while others were close friends of the monarch.

The term has an inbuilt element of disapproval and is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "One who stands unduly high in the favour of a prince",[2] citing Shakespeare: "Like favourites/ Made proud by Princes" (Much Ado about Nothing, 3.1.9[3]).

Rises and falls of favourites

Rubens

Favourites inevitably tended to incur the envy and loathing of the rest of the

excrement. The King's favourite Piers Gaveston is a "night-grown mushrump" (mushroom) to his enemies in Christopher Marlowe's Edward II.[4]

Their falls could be even more sudden, but after about 1650, executions tended to give way to quiet retirement. Favourites who came from the higher nobility, such as

Lerma, Olivares, and Oxenstierna, were often less resented and lasted longer. Successful minister-favourites also usually needed networks of their own favourites and relatives to help them carry out the work of government – Richelieu had his "créatures" and Olivares his "hechuras".[5] Oxenstierna and William Cecil
, who both died in office, successfully trained their sons to succeed them.

The favourite can often not be easily distinguished from the successful royal administrator, who at the top of the tree certainly needed the favour of the monarch, but the term is generally used of those who first came into contact with the monarch through the social life of the court, rather than the business of politics or administration. Figures like William Cecil and

Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who was also a leading politician.[6] Only in her last decade was the position of the Cecils, father and son, challenged, by Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, when he fatally attempted a coup against the younger Cecil
.

Cardinal Wolsey was one figure who rose through the administrative hierarchy, lived extremely ostentatiously, then fell suddenly from power. In the Middle Ages in particular, many royal favourites were promoted in the church, English examples including Saints Dunstan and Thomas Becket; Bishops William Waynflete, Robert Burnell and Walter Reynolds. Cardinal Granvelle
, like his father, was a trusted Habsburg minister who lived grandly, but he was not really a favourite, partly because most of his career was spent away from the monarch.

Cardinal Richelieu, one of the most successful from the golden age of the favourite

Some favourites came from very humble backgrounds:

Louis XI, acquired a title and important military commands before he was executed on vague charges brought by nobles shortly after his master died, without the knowledge of the new king. It has been claimed that le Daim's career was the origin of the term, as favori (the French word) first appeared around the time of his death in 1484. Privado in Spanish was older, but was later partly replaced by the term valido; in Spanish, both terms were less derogatory than in French and English.[7] Spain had a succession of validos during the reigns of Philip II, Philip III, and Philip IV.[8]

Such rises from menial positions became progressively harder as the centuries progressed; one of the last families able to jump the widening chasm between servants and nobility was that of

Louis XIV's valet, Alexandre Bontemps, whose descendants, holding the office for a further three generations, married into many great families, even eventually including the extended royal family itself. Queen Victoria's John Brown
came much too late; the devotion of the monarch and ability to terrorise her household led to hardly any rise in social or economic position.

Decline

In England, the scope for giving political power to a favourite was reduced by the growing importance of Parliament. After the "mushroom" Buckingham was assassinated by John Felton in 1628, Charles I turned to Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, who had been a leader of Parliamentary opposition to Buckingham and the King, but had become his supporter after Charles made concessions. Strafford can therefore hardly be called a favourite in the usual sense, although his relationship with Charles became very close. He was also from a well-established family, with powerful relations. After several years in power, Strafford was impeached by a Parliament now very hostile to him. When that process failed, it passed a bill of attainder for his execution without trial, and it put enough pressure on Charles that, to his subsequent regret, Charles signed it, and Strafford was executed in 1641. There were later minister-favourites in England, but they knew that the favour of the monarch alone was not sufficient to rule, and most also had careers in Parliament. In 1721, the new office of Prime Minister was created, replacing informal favourites of the monarch with a political head of government dependent on the House of Commons.

Prince Grigory Potemkin

In France, the movement was in the opposite direction. On the death of Cardinal Mazarin in 1661, the 23-year-old Louis XIV determined that he would rule himself, and he did not allow the delegation of power to ministers that had happened during the previous 40 years. The absolute monarchy pioneered by Cardinal Richelieu, Mazarin's predecessor, was to be led by the monarch himself. Louis had many powerful ministers, notably Jean-Baptiste Colbert, in finances, and François-Michel le Tellier, Marquis de Louvois, the army, but the overall direction was never delegated, and no subsequent French minister ever equalled the power of the two cardinals.

In Spain under the

Habsburgs, when Olivares was succeeded by his nephew Luis Méndez de Haro
, the last real valido, the control of government into a single pair of hands had already been weakened.

In literature

Favourites were the subject of much contemporary debate, some of it involving a certain amount of danger for the participants. There were many English plays on the subject; amongst the best known are Marlowe's Edward II, in which Piers Gaveston is a leading character, and

Falstaff, badly disappointed in his hopes of becoming a favourite, and Cardinal Wolsey in Henry VIII, he gives no major parts to favourites.[10]

National Archaeological Museum of Athens
)

Francis Bacon, almost a favourite himself, devoted much of his essay On Friendship to the subject, writing as a rising politician under Elizabeth I:

It is a strange thing to observe, how high a rate great kings and monarchs do set upon this fruit of friendship, whereof we speak: So great, as they purchase it, many times, at the hazard of their own safety and greatness. For princes, in regard of the distance of their fortune from that of their subjects and servants, cannot gather this fruit, except (to make themselves capable thereof) they raise some persons to be, as it were, companions and almost equals to themselves, which many times sorteth to inconvenience. The modern languages give unto such persons the name of favourites, or privadoes ... . And we see plainly that this hath been done, not by weak and passionate princes only, but by the wisest and most politic that ever reigned; who have oftentimes joined to themselves some of their servants; whom both themselves have called friends, and allowed other likewise to call them in the same manner; using the word which is received between private men.[12]

Prime Minister: "He was a favourite, and favourites have always been odious in this country. No mere favourite had been at the head of the government since the dagger of Felton had reached the heart of the Duke of Buckingham".[13]

Study of the subject

In 1974

J.H. Elliott and Laurence Brockliss's work (that resulted in the collection of essays The World of the Favourite), undertaken to explore the matter put forward by Bérenger, became the most important comparative treatment of this subject.[14]

Notable favourites

a manuscript of Froissart
Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough wearing the symbol of her office and authority: the gold key. Sir Godfrey Kneller, 1702[15]
Goya
.

Mistresses

See also: Royal mistress, Maîtresse-en-titre, and Mistress (lover)

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Elliott:5, summarising the work of French historian Jean Bérenger
  2. ^ "favourite". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. Retrieved 23 January 2019. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
  3. ^ "Much Ado About Nothing 3.1". www.shakespeare-online.com. Retrieved 2019-01-23.
  4. ^ s:Edward the Second
  5. ^ Elliott:6
  6. ^ Adams pp. 17–18
  7. ^ Elliott:1
  8. ^ some blog
  9. ^ Elliott:2-3
  10. ^ Blair Worden in Elliott:171
  11. ^ Bacon, Francis (1597). "On Friendship". authorama.com.
  12. OED, who give the Shakespeare use quoted above, perhaps written in 1598.[11]
  13. ^ Essay on "The Earl of Chatham", quoted Elliott:1
  14. ^
    ISBN 9781317034353
    .
  15. National Portrait Gallery (United Kingdom)
    . Retrieved on 7 August 2007.

References
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