Eventually Henrietta escaped and married – for love – George Berkeley, a charming man with whom she enjoyed 11 years of happiness before lapsing into a long and busy widowhood. Disponible ahora en - ISBN: 9780099549178 - Paperback - Vintage Publishing, London - 2010 - Condicin: new - Paperback. Orphaned at twelve and dragged into poverty by her brutal husband, Henrietta used her own ingenuity and determination to secure a role at the very heart of the royal court. The powerful Queen Caroline was, understandably enough, pretty nasty to her (she insisted, for example, that Henrietta knelt to hold the basin while Her Majesty's vast person was washed) yet she retained her services for fear that the King might find a less manageable concubine to replace her. Henrietta Howard, later Countess of Suffolk, was the long-term mistress and confidante of George II. Besides, as she was also his wife's Woman of the Bedchamber, she was handily available. By all accounts, and there are many, this most uxorious of monarchs selected her not as the result of grand passion but because she was discreet – and because he felt that he really ought to have a mistress "as an appurtenance to his grandeur".
Henrietta Howard enjoyed the dubious honour of being his mistress for 16 years.
Short, stout, vain, pernickety and very irascible, he was not an attractive man. Henrietta Howard, later Countess of Suffolk, was the long-term mistress and confidante of King George. When George II was cross – which was often – his face turned crimson, his eyes bulged and he began to stamp, snatching off his wig and kicking it around the room.
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