Duchess Josiana

Duchess Josiana is both a person of formidable self-possession and the hinge of a royal arrangement: her title, prospective marriage, and access to the Clancharlie inheritance are all tied together. The narrative presents her as someone who understands the difference between being legally promised and personally willing, and who delays the marriage required of her for as long as she can.

Identity and Inherited Position

King James II established Lord David Dirry-Moir as the heir to the titles and rights of Linnæus, Lord Clancharlie, on the condition that David marry Josiana once she reached marriageable age. At the time of the arrangement, she was an infant only a few months old. The king had already created her a duchess, though the narrative says the reason was known to everyone without stating it directly.

Josiana’s place in the succession was unusual. The king granted her the Clancharlie peerage, making her a peeress until there should be a peer; the peer, by the terms of the arrangement, would be her husband. The estate was also attached to the title: the lands and associated rights of Clancharlie-Hunkerville belonged provisionally to Josiana, while David was to become Baron Clancharlie once married to her. Her rank was therefore not merely ornamental. It positioned her at the center of an inheritance, while making the transfer of its lasting title dependent on marriage.

The narrative also describes Josiana as knowing herself to be illegitimate while nevertheless feeling herself a princess. That contrast captures the doubleness of her status: her authority is real within the court’s hierarchy, but it is shaped by royal decisions and a marriage contract arranged before she could have any say in it.

Character and Self-Presentation

The portrait of Josiana emphasizes confidence, wit, and an imposing presence. She is described as very tall, with red-gold hair, and as strong, fresh, and bold. Her eyes are said to be unusually expressive. The narrator presents her as proud and difficult to approach, someone who wants distinction and glory more than protection of her reputation. She disdains ordinary intrigue, yet would not object to being associated with exceptional exploits proportionate to her rank.

Josiana’s learning and social polish are part of this portrait. She is polite, discusses Locke, and is suspected of knowing Arabic. These details sit alongside her interest in fashionable appearances and courtly position: the character is drawn as a participant in the world of status, but not as a merely passive ornament within it.

At the same time, the narrative frames her through a strongly bodily metaphor, calling her “the flesh,” and contrasts this with the conventional idea of womanhood as vulnerable to pity. It does not simply call her unfeeling: rather, it says that she is not readily moved through the susceptibility that turns pity into love. That distinction matters to the portrait. Josiana’s pride and reserve are presented as barriers to a familiar pattern of emotional appeal, even as the narrator’s language repeatedly interprets her through the contrast between material presence and inward feeling.

Engagement with Lord David Dirry-Moir

By about 1705, Josiana was twenty-three and Lord David Dirry-Moir was forty-four, yet they had not married. The delay is presented as deliberate rather than as the result of mutual hatred. Josiana wished to remain free; David wished to preserve his sense of youth. Each had reason to enjoy the engagement without bringing it to its legally binding conclusion.

Their relationship is described as a flirtation in which each pleased the other, but neither hastened the final step. Josiana liked David and considered him fashionable; his good looks were an additional attraction, not the whole of his appeal. She admired the signs of his fashionable life, including his horses, dogs, gambling losses, and mistresses. David, in turn, was captivated by Josiana’s pride, boldness, and apparent inaccessibility. He wrote sonnets to her and represented possession of her as an elevation, while repeatedly postponing the ascent.

Josiana could openly express the contradiction in their arrangement: she was required to marry David, yet said she would prefer to be in love with him. The remark makes her position more complicated than simple refusal. She appreciates him and is willing to display him, but the obligation imposed by the king does not itself create the desire she says she wants. The court admires their delay, treating the suspended engagement as a fashionable performance rather than a crisis.

Marriage, Authority, and Narrative Significance

Josiana’s reluctance is also framed through the gender conventions of the period. The narrative invokes an old English notion in which a maiden is sovereign while a wife becomes a subject, and presents her postponement of marriage as an effort to defer that loss of authority. She is expected eventually to marry David because the king has commanded it, but she resists allowing the royal arrangement to determine the timing of her private life any sooner than necessary.

The lovers’ pattern is described as moving one step forward and two steps back: they neither conclude nor formally break their engagement. The comparison to the minuet and gavotte turns delay into a social choreography, with attraction and avoidance repeating in measured alternation. The narrative’s critique of marriage is broader than Josiana’s individual case: it portrays legal marriage as fixing a relation that courtship leaves open, and as changing the balance of choice and authority between the sexes. Josiana’s conduct gives that argument a concrete form. Her rank makes her powerful, but the conditions attached to that rank also prescribe whom she must marry. Her story, in these episodes, rests on the tension between a title assigned to her and a freedom she tries to retain.