The secret history of Charles the First, and his queen Henrietta of
France, opens a different scene from the one exhibited in the passionate
drama of our history.
The king is accused of the most spiritless uxoriousness; and the chaste
fondness of a husband is placed among his political errors. Even Hume
conceives that his queen "precipitated him into hasty and imprudent
counsels," and Bishop Kennet had alluded to "the influence of a stately
queen over an affectionate husband." The uxoriousness of Charles is
re-echoed by all the writers of a certain party. This is an odium which
the king's enemies first threw out to make him contemptible; while his
apologists imagined that, in perpetuating this accusation, they had
discovered, in a weakness which has at least something amiable, some
palliation for his own political misconduct. The factious, too, by this
aspersion, promoted the alarm they spread in the nation, of the king's
inclination to popery; yet, on the contrary, Charles was then making a
determined stand, and at length triumphed over a Catholic faction, which
was ruling his queen; and this at the risk and menace of a war with
France. Yet this firmness too has been denied him, even by his apologist
Hume: that historian, on his preconceived system, imagined that every
action of Charles originated in the Duke of Buckingham, and that the
duke pursued his personal quarrel with Richelieu, and taking advantage
of these domestic quarrels, had persuaded Charles to dismiss the French
attendants of the queen.[201]
There are, fortunately, two letters from Charles the First to
Buckingham, preserved in the State-papers of Lord Hardwicke, which set
this point at rest: these decisively prove that the whole matter
originated with the king himself, and that Buckingham had tried every
effort to persuade him to the contrary; for the king complains that he
had been too long overcome by his persuasions, but that he was now
"resolved it must be done, and that shortly!"[202]
It is remarkable, that the character of a queen, who is imagined to have
performed so active a part in our history, scarcely ever appears in it;
when abroad, and when she returned to England, in the midst of a winter
storm, bringing all the aid she could to her unfortunate consort, those
who witnessed this appearance of energy imagined that her character was
equally powerful in the cabinet. Yet Henrietta, after all, was nothing
more than a volatile woman; one who had never studied, never reflected,
and whom nature had formed to be charming and haughty, but whose
vivacity could not retain even a state-secret for an hour, and whose
talents were quite opposite to those of deep political intrigue.
Henrietta viewed even the characters of great men with all the
sensations of a woman. Describing the Earl of Strafford to a
confidential friend, and having observed that he was a great man, she
dwelt with far more interest on his person: "Though not handsome," said
she, "he was agreeable enough, and he had the finest hands of any man in
the world." Landing at Burlington-bay in Yorkshire, she lodged on the
quay; the parliament's admiral barbarously pointed his cannon at the
house; and several shots reaching it, her favourite, Jermyn, requested
her to fly: she safely reached a cavern in the fields, but, recollecting
that she had left a lap-dog asleep in its bed, she flew back, and amidst
the cannon-shot returned with this other favourite. The queen related
this incident of the lap-dog to her friend Madame Motteville; these
ladies considered it as a complete woman's victory. It is in these
memoirs we find, that when Charles went down to the house, to seize on
the five leading members of the opposition, the queen could not
restrain her lively temper, and impatiently babbled the plot; so that
one of the ladies in attendance despatched a hasty note to the parties,
who, as the king entered the house, had just time to leave it. Some have
dated the ruin of his cause to the failure of that impolitic step, which
alarmed every one zealous for that spirit of political freedom which had
now grown up in the Commons. Incidents like these mark the feminine
dispositions of Henrietta. But when at sea, in danger of being taken by
a parliamentarian, the queen commanded the captain not to strike, but to
prepare at the extremity to blow up the ship, resisting the shrieks of
her females and domestics. We perceive how, on every trying occasion,
Henrietta never forgot that she was the daughter of Henry the Fourth;
that glorious affinity was inherited by her with all the sexual pride;
and hence, at times, that energy in her actions which was so far above
her intellectual capacity.
And, indeed, when the awful events she had witnessed were one by one
registered in her melancholy mind, the sensibility of the woman subdued
the natural haughtiness of her character; but, true woman! the feeling
creature of circumstances, at the Restoration she resumed it, and when
the new court of Charles the Second would not endure her obsolete
haughtiness, the dowager-queen left it in all the full bitterness of her
spirit. An habitual gloom, and the meagreness of grief, during the
commonwealth, had changed a countenance once the most lively; and her
eyes, whose dark and dazzling lustre was ever celebrated, then only
shone in tears. When she told her physician, Sir Theodore Mayerne, that
she found her understanding was failing her, and seemed terrified lest
it was approaching to madness, the court physician, hardly courtly to
fallen majesty, replied, "Madam, fear not that; for you are already
mad." Henrietta had lived to contemplate the awful changes of her reign,
without comprehending them.
Waller, in the profusion of poetical decoration, makes Henrietta so
beautiful, that her beauty would affect every lover "more than his
private loves." She was "the whole world's mistress." A portrait in
crayons of Henrietta at Hampton-court sadly reduces all his poetry, for
the miraculous was only in the fancy of the court-poet. But there may be
some truth in what he says of the eyes of Henrietta:--
Such eyes as yours, on Jove himself, had thrown
As bright and fierce a lightning as his own.