Arabella Churchill was the mistress of the Duke of York for about ten years as well as being one of Anne Hyde’s ladies-in-waiting. Arabella had four children by James.

Henrietta was the eldest of the siblings. She married Henry Waldegrave, the son of a cavalier in 1683. He was the Comptroller of James’ household. Unlike her legitimate half-siblings Henrietta was raised as a Catholic and accompanied her father into exile along with Henry Waldegrave who died the following year. She eventually married for a second time to Piers Butler, Viscount Galmoye but not before she’d had a fling with one of Ireland’s wild geese. Through her first marriage she is an ancestor of Princess Diana.

Henrietta’s brother James, the most famous of Arabella’s FitzJames children, was raised in France and entered the service of Louis XIV. He returned to England where he became an officer in the Blues at his father’s instigation. In fact he was due to replace the protestant Earl of Oxford – an example of James’ strategy of giving key roles to Catholics – a strategy which helped to trigger the Glorious Revolution of 1688. When men like John Churchill deserted James at Salisbury and went over to William of Orange, James remained loyal to his father and went to Ireland where the fight for the Crown continued before going into exile in France where he rejoined Louis XIV’s army. His was a complicated life given that he found himself on the opposite side to his uncle, John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough. Henry became a marshal in the french army and counselled his father not to trust John Churchill. At one point he was captured by another his Churchill uncles and only released when exchanged with a French prisoner. He became the Duke of Berwick but its a Jacobite title rather than one recognised by the English peerage. He was killed in 1733, aged 63, by a passing cannon ball having refused to take part in the Jacobite rising of 1715. The Dukedom of Alba continued as a Spanish title.

A second Fitzjames boy, Henry, died in 1702 in France whilst the youngest FitzJames sibling, called Arabella born in 1674 opted to become a nun in Pontoise. She took the name Ignatia.

Arabella Churchill married Charles Godfrey circa 1674. She went on to have forty years of happy married life and three more children. Godfrey was a colonel and a Whig – so anti-Jacobite. In an already complicated family it is perhaps not surprising to learn that the FitzJames’ stepfather was one of the first men to join with William of Orange. He would serve in various positions within the royal household as well as becoming an MP. Arabella outlived him by some sixteen years dying at the age of eighty in 1730.

Churchill, Arabella“. In Stephen, Leslie. Dictionary of National Biography. 10. London: Smith, Elder & Co.