Samuel Cooper 1608-1672

National Portrait Gallery, London, Samuel Cooper and his Contemporaries, 1974, no. 103.

‘He had the greatest and longest share in the King’s secret confidence of any man in that time.’ So wrote the Bishop Burnet of Baptist May, probably Charles II’s most trusted courtier. His great success in keeping the King’s favour seems to have been at least partly the result of his ability to distance himself so far as possible from politics, and also his skill at amusing and entertaining his master.

The youngest son of Sir Humphrey May and his wife Judith, daughter of Sir William Poley, Baptist May took his first name from Baptist Hicks, 1^st Viscount Campden, who was his uncle. He was brought up in Court circles, his father having been a privy councellor, and by 1648 at the age of twenty he was page to the Duke of York. His mother’s cousin, Henry Lord Jermyn, later Earl of St Albans, probably helped him to prosper in the royal service, and between 1662 and 1665 he was groom in the Duke of York’s bedchamber. In 1665 he became a partner with Jermyn and the poet Abraham Cowley in a scheme to develop St James’s Square, and a street close to the square was names Babmaes Mews, an allusion to his nickname ‘Bab’.

On the death of Charles Berkeley, Earl of Falmouth in 1665, May was appointed to the influential post of Keeper of the King’s Privy Purse, at least partly as a result of his favour with the King’s mistress, Barbara Villiers, Countess of Castlemain. His duty was to manage the King’s personal finances and this gave him privileged access to the monarch. He was also often the centre of Court intrigue and conspired against both Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, and Henry Benet, Lord Arlington. He had the ability to both entertain the King and occasionally to shock him as when he was reported to have welcomed the Great Fire because it would make the City easier to control. His few attempts to meddle in politics were however unsuccessful. He was elected M.P. for Midhurst in 1670, but incurred Royal displeasure when he interfered too much in the matter of the King’s marriage and the Duke of York’s possible exclusion from the throne. When James II succeeded his brother, May was replaced in his post by James Graham, though he continued to live at the Great Lodge (later Cumberland Lodge) and kept his post as Ranger of Windsor Great Park. He died shortly before his seventieth birthday and was buried at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor.

May did not have an exclusive control of Charles II’s personal finances, as the King also used the services of William Chiffinch and Sir Stephen Fox. However he successfully kept the King’s favour and trust throughout his reign. This important portrait miniature of him, passed from the sitter to the descendents of Dorothy Broke, his mistress.