Poland’s Last King and English Culture

‘In the Greatest Wildness of my Youth’: Sir Charles Hanbury Williams and Mid‐Eighteenth‐Century Libertinism

“…80 In St Petersburg Sir Charles was able to take Stanisław's education several stages further. 81 With a benign eye Sir Charles facilitated Stanisław's first serious love affairwith the Grand Duchess Catherine. The three shared a taste for racy literature; Poniatowski read Voltaire's Pucelle d'Orléans to Catherine.…”

“…Working with Catherine to procure Stanisław's return to Russia as a Saxon envoy, he told her that he would receive him as his son, although they now found themselves on opposite sides in the Seven Years War and could not talk politics. 83 Williams had no son of his own, and spent most of his adult life far from his two daughters: Frances, who married the earl of Essex in 1754, and Charlotte, who married long after her father's death. Long before his recall from Russia he had had enough of the diplomatic life and longed to divide his time between three more congenial roles: squire of Coldbrook, friend of the Foxes at Holland House and grandfather to the children of the earl and countess of Essex at Cassiobury in Hertfordshire.…”