---- such radiant eyes,
Such lovely motion, and such sharp replies.
In a MS. letter of the times, the writer describes the queen as "nimble
and quick, black-eyed, brown-haired, and a brave lady."[203] In the MS.
journal of Sir Symonds D'Ewes, who saw the queen on her first arrival in
London, cold and puritanic as was that antiquary, he notices with some
warmth "the features of her face, which were much enlivened by her
radiant and sparkling black eye."[204] She appears to have possessed
French vivacity both in her manners and her conversation: in the history
of a queen, an accurate conception of her person enters for something.
Her talents were not of that order which could influence the revolutions
of a people. Her natural dispositions might have allowed her to become a
politician of the toilet, and she might have practised those slighter
artifices, which may be considered as so many political coquetries. But
Machiavelian principles, and involved intrigues, of which she has been
so freely accused, could never have entered into her character. At first
she tried all the fertile inventions of a woman to persuade the king
that she was his humblest creature, and the good people of England that
she was quite in love with them. Now that we know that no female was
ever more deeply tainted with Catholic bigotry, and that, haughty as she
was, this princess suffered the most insulting superstitions, inflicted
as penances by her priests, for this very marriage with a Protestant
prince, the following new facts relating to her first arrival in England
curiously contrast with the mortified feelings she must have endured by
the violent suppression of her real ones.
We must first bring forward a remarkable and unnoticed document in the
Embassies of Marshal Bassompierre.[205] It is nothing less than a most
solemn obligation contracted with the Pope and her brother the King of
France, to educate her children as Catholics, and only to choose
Catholics to attend them. Had this been known either to Charles or to
the English nation, Henrietta could never have been permitted to ascend
the English throne. The fate of both her sons shows how faithfully she
performed this treasonable contract. This piece of secret history opens
the concealed cause of those deep impressions of that faith which both
monarchs sucked in with their milk; that triumph of the cradle over the
grave which most men experience; Charles the Second died a Catholic,
James the Second lived as one.
When Henrietta was on her way to England, a legate from Rome arrested
her at Amiens, requiring the princess to undergo a penance, which was to
last sixteen days, for marrying Charles without the papal dispensation.
The queen stopped her journey, and wrote to inform the king of the
occasion. Charles, who was then waiting for her at Canterbury, replied,
that if Henrietta did not instantly proceed, he would return alone to
London. Henrietta doubtless sighed for the Pope and the penance, but she
set off the day she received the king's letter. The king, either by his
wisdom or his impatience, detected the aim of the Roman pontiff, who,
had he been permitted to arrest the progress of a Queen of England for
sixteen days in the face of all Europe, would thus have obtained a tacit
supremacy over a British monarch.
When the king arrived at Canterbury, although not at the moment prepared
to receive him, Henrietta flew to meet him, and with all her spontaneous
grace and native vivacity, kneeling at his feet, she kissed his hand,
while the king, bending over her, wrapped her in his arms, and kissed
her with many kisses. This royal and youthful pair, unusual with those
of their rank, met with the eagerness of lovers, and the first words of
Henrietta were those of devotion; _Sire! je suis venue en ce pays de
votre majesté pour être usée et commandée de vous._[206] It had been
rumoured that she was of a very short stature, but, reaching to the
king's shoulder, his eyes were cast down to her feet, seemingly
observing whether she used art to increase her height. Anticipating his
thoughts, and playfully showing her feet, she declared, that "she stood
upon her own feet, for thus high I am, and neither higher nor lower."
After an hour's conversation in privacy, Henrietta took her dinner
surrounded by the court; and the king, who had already dined, performing
the office of her carver, cut a pheasant and some venison. By the side
of the queen stood her ghostly confessor, solemnly reminding her that
this was the eve of John the Baptist, and was to be fasted, exhorting
her to be cautious that she set no scandalous example on her first
arrival. But Charles and his court were now to be gained over, as well
as John the Baptist. She affected to eat very heartily of the forbidden
meat, which gave great comfort, it seems, to several of her new
heretical subjects then present: but we may conceive the pangs of so
confirmed a devotee. She carried her dissimulation so far, that being
asked about this time whether she could abide a Huguenot? she replied,
"Why not? was not my father one?" Her ready smiles, the graceful wave of
her hand, the many "good signs of hope," as a contemporary in a
manuscript letter expresses it, induced many of the English to believe
that Henrietta might even become one of themselves! Sir Symonds D'Ewes,
as appears by his manuscript diary, was struck by "her deportment to her
women, and her looks to her servants, which were so sweet and
humble!"[207] However, this was in the first days of her arrival, and
these "sweet and humble looks" were not constant ones; for a courier at
Whitehall, writing to a friend, observes that "the queen, however little
of stature, yet is of a pleasing countenance, if she be pleased,
otherwise full of spirit and vigour, and seems of more than ordinary
resolution;" and he adds an incident of one of her "frowns." The room in
which the queen was at dinner, being somewhat over-heated with the fire
and company, "she drove us all out of the chamber. I suppose none but a
queen could have cast such a scowl."[208] We may already detect the fair
waxen mask melting away on the features it covered, even in one short
month!
By the marriage-contract, Henrietta was to be allowed a household
establishment, composed of her own people; and this had been contrived
to be not less than a small French colony, exceeding three hundred
persons. It composed, in fact, a French faction, and looks like a covert
project of Richelieu's to further his intrigues here, by opening a
perpetual correspondence with the discontented Catholics of England. In
the instructions of Bassompierre, one of the alleged objects of the
marriage is the general good of the Catholic religion, by affording some
relief to those English who professed it. If, however, that great
statesman ever entertained this political design, the simplicity and
pride of the Roman priests here completely overturned it; for in their
blind zeal they dared to extend their domestic tyranny over majesty
itself.
The French party had not long resided here ere the mutual jealousies
between the two nations broke out. All the English who were not
Catholics were soon dismissed from their attendance on the queen, by
herself; while Charles was compelled, by the popular cry, to forbid any
English Catholics to serve the queen, or to be present at the
celebration of her mass. The king was even obliged to employ pursuivants
or king's messengers, to stand at the door of her chapel to seize on any
of the English who entered there, while on these occasions the French
would draw their swords to defend these concealed Catholics. "The queen
and hers" became an odious distinction in the nation. Such were the
indecent scenes exhibited in public; they were not less reserved in
private. The following anecdote of saying a grace before the king, at
his own table, in a most indecorous race run between the catholic priest
and the king's chaplain, is given in a manuscript letter of the times.
"The king and queen dining together in the presence,[209] Mr. Hacket
(chaplain to the Lord Keeper Williams)[210] being then to say grace, the
confessor would have prevented him, but that Hacket shoved him away;
whereupon the confessor went to the queen's side, and was about to say
grace again, but that the king pulling the dishes unto him, and the
carvers falling to their business, hindered. When dinner was done, the
confessor thought, standing by the queen, to have been before Mr.
Hacket, but Mr. Hacket again got the start. The confessor, nevertheless,
begins his grace as loud as Mr. Hacket, with such a confusion, that the
king in great passion instantly rose from the table, and, taking the
queen by the hand, retired into the bedchamber."[211] It is with
difficulty we conceive how such a scene of priestly indiscretion should
have been suffered at the table of an English sovereign.
Such are the domestic accounts I have gleaned from MS. letters of the
times; but particulars of a deeper nature may be discovered in the
answer of the king's council to Marshal Bassompierre, preserved in the
history of his embassy; this marshal had been hastily despatched as an
extraordinary ambassador when the French party were dismissed. This
state-document, rather a remonstrance than a reply, states that the
French household had formed a little republic within themselves,
combining with the French resident ambassador, and inciting the
opposition members in parliament; a practice usual with that intriguing
court, even from the days of Elizabeth, as the original letters of the
French ambassador of the time, which will be found in the third volume,
amply show; and those of La Boderie in James the First's time, who
raised a French party about Prince Henry; and the correspondence of
Barillon in Charles the Second's reign, so fully exposed in his entire
correspondence published by Fox. The French domestics of the queen were
engaged in lower intrigues; they lent their names to hire houses in the
suburbs of London, where, under their protection, the English Catholics
found a secure retreat to hold their illegal assemblies, and where the
youth of both sexes were educated and prepared to be sent abroad to
Catholic seminaries. But the queen's priests, by those well-known means
which the Catholic religion sanctions, were drawing from the queen the
minutest circumstances which passed in privacy between her and the king;
indisposed her mind towards her royal consort, impressed on her a
contempt of the English nation, and a disgust of our customs, and
particularly, as has been usual with the French, made her neglect the
English language, as if the queen of England held no common interest
with the nation. They had made her residence a place of security for the
persons and papers of the discontented. Yet all this was hardly more
offensive than the humiliating state to which they had reduced an
English queen by their monastic obedience: inflicting the most degrading
penances. One of the most flagrant is alluded to in our history. This
was a barefoot pilgrimage to Tyburn, where, one morning, under the
gallows on which so many Jesuits had been executed as traitors to
Elizabeth and James the First, she knelt and prayed to them as martyrs
and saints who had shed their blood in defence of the Catholic
cause.[212] A manuscript letter of the times mentions that "the priests
had also made her dabble in the dirt in a foul morning from
Somerset-house to St. James's, her Luciferian confessor riding along by
her in his coach! They have made her to go barefoot, to spin, to eat her
meat out of dishes, to wait at the table of servants, with many other
ridiculous and absurd penances. And if they dare thus insult (adds the
writer) over the daughter, sister, and wife of so great kings, what
slavery would they not make us, the people, to undergo!"[213]
One of the articles in the contract of marriage was, that the queen
should have a chapel at St. James's, to be built and consecrated by her
French bishop; the priests became very importunate, declaring that
without a chapel mass could not be performed with the state it ought
before a queen. The king's answer is not that of a man inclined to
popery. "If the queen's closet, where they now say mass, is not large
enough, let them have it in the great chamber; and, if the great chamber
is not wide enough, they might use the garden; and, if the garden would
not serve their turn, then was the park the fittest place."
The French priests and the whole party feeling themselves slighted, and
sometimes worse treated, were breeding perpetual quarrels among
themselves, grew weary of England, and wished themselves away: but many
having purchased their places with all their fortune, would have been
ruined by the breaking up of the establishment. Bassompierre alludes to
the broils and clamours of these French strangers, which exposed them to
the laughter of the English court; and we cannot but smile in observing,
in one of the despatches of this great mediator between two kings and a
queen, addressed to the minister, that one of the greatest obstacles
which he had found in this difficult negotiation arose from the
bedchamber women! The French king being desirous of having two
additional women to attend the English queen his sister, the ambassador
declares, that "it would be more expedient rather to diminish than to
increase the number; for they all live so ill together, with such
rancorous jealousies and enmities, that I have more trouble to make them
agree than I shall find to accommodate the differences between the two
kings. Their continual bickerings, and often their vituperative
language, occasion the English to entertain the most contemptible and
ridiculous opinions of our nation. I shall not, therefore, insist on
this point, unless it shall please his majesty to renew it."
The French bishop was under the age of thirty, and his authority was
imagined to have been but irreverently treated by two beautiful viragos
in that civil war of words which was raging; one of whom, Madame St.
George, was in high favour, and most intolerably hated by the English.
Yet such was English gallantry, that the king presented this lady on her
dismission with several thousand pounds and jewels. There was something
inconceivably ludicrous in the notions of the English, of a bishop
hardly of age, and the gravity of whose character was probably tarnished
by French gesture and vivacity. This French establishment was daily
growing in expense and number; a manuscript letter of the times states
that it cost the king £240 a day, and had increased from threescore
persons to four hundred and forty, besides children!
It was one evening that the king suddenly appeared, and, summoning the
French household, commanded them to take their instant departure--the
carriages were prepared for their removal. In doing this, Charles had to
resist the warmest entreaties, and even the vehement anger of the queen,
who is said in her rage to have broken several panes of the window of
the apartment to which the king dragged her, and confined her from
them.[214]
The scene which took place among the French people, at the sudden
announcement of the king's determination, was remarkably indecorous.
They instantly flew to take possession of all the queen's wardrobe and
jewels; they did not leave her, it appears, a change of linen, since it
was with difficulty she procured one as a favour, according to some
manuscript letters of the times. One of their extraordinary expedients
was that of inventing bills, for which they pretended they had engaged
themselves on account of the queen, to the amount of £10,000, which the
queen at first owned to, but afterwards acknowledged the debts were
fictitious ones. Among these items was one of £400 for necessaries for
her majesty; an apothecary's bill for drugs of £800; and another of
£150 for "the bishop's unholy water," as the writer expresses it. The
young French bishop attempted by all sorts of delays to avoid this
ignominious expulsion; till the king was forced to send his yeomen of
the guards to turn them out from Somerset-house, where the juvenile
French bishop, at once protesting against it, and mounting the steps of
the coach, took his departure "head and shoulders."[215] It appears that
to pay the debts and the pensions, besides sending the French troops
free home, cost £50,000.
In a long procession of nearly forty coaches, after four days' tedious
travelling, they reached Dover; but the spectacle of these impatient
foreigners so reluctantly quitting England, gesticulating their sorrows
or their quarrels, exposed them to the derision, and stirred up the
prejudices of the common people. As Madame George, whose vivacity is
always described as extravagantly French, was stepping into the boat,
one of the mob could not resist the satisfaction of flinging a stone at
her French cap; an English courtier, who was conducting her, instantly
quitted his charge, ran the fellow through the body, and quietly
returned to the boat. The man died on the spot; but no farther notice
appears to have been taken of the inconsiderate gallantry of this
English courtier.
But Charles did not show his kingly firmness only on this occasion: it
did not forsake him when the French Marshal Bassompierre was instantly
sent over to awe the king; Charles sternly offered the alternative of
war, rather than permit a French faction to trouble an English court.
Bassompierre makes a curious observation in a letter to the French
Bishop of Mende, he who had been just sent away from England; and which
serves as the most positive evidence of the firm refusal of Charles the
First. The French marshal, after stating the total failure of his
mission, exclaims, "See, sir, to what we are reduced! and imagine my
grief, that the Queen of Great Britain has the pain of viewing my
departure without being of any service to her; but if you consider that
I was sent here to _make a contract of marriage observed, and to
maintain the Catholic religion in a country from which they formerly
banished it to make a contract of marriage_, you will assist in excusing
me of this failure." The French marshal has also preserved the same
distinctive feature of the nation, as well as of the monarch, who,
surely to his honour as King of England, felt and acted on this occasion
as a true Briton. "I have found," says the Gaul, "humility among
Spaniards, civility and courtesy among the Swiss, in the embassies I had
the honour to perform for the king; but the English would not in the
least abate of their natural pride and arrogance. The king is so
resolute not to re-establish any French about the queen, his consort,
and was so stern (_rude_) in speaking to me, that it is impossible to
have been more so." In a word, the French marshal, with all his vaunts
and his threats, discovered that Charles the First was the true
representative of his subjects, and that the king had the same feelings
with the people: this indeed was not always the case! This transaction
took place in 1626, and when, four years afterwards, it was attempted
again to introduce certain French persons, a bishop and a physician,
about the queen, the king absolutely refused even a French physician,
who had come over with the intention of being chosen the queen's, under
the sanction of the queen mother. This little circumstance appears in a
manuscript letter from Lord Dorchester to M. de Vic, one of the king's
agents at Paris. After an account of the arrival of this French
physician, his lordship proceeds to notice the former determinations of
the king; "yet this man," he adds, "hath been addressed to the
ambassador to introduce him into the court, and the queen persuaded in
cleare and plaine terms to speak to the king to admit him as domestique.
His majesty expressed his dislike of this proceeding, but contented
himself to let the ambassador know that this doctor may return as he is
come, with intimation that he should do it speedily; the French
ambassador, willing to help the matter, spake to the king that the said
doctor might be admitted to kiss the queen's hand, and to carrie the
news into France of her safe delivery: which the king excused by a civil
answer, and has since commanded me to let the ambassador understand,
that he had heard him as Monsieur de Fontenay in this particular, but,
if he should persist and press him as ambassador, he should be forced to
say that which would displease him." Lord Dorchester adds, that he
informs M. de Vic of these particulars, that he should not want for the
information should the matter be revived by the French court, otherwise
he need not notice it.[216]
By this narrative of secret history, Charles the First does not appear
so weak a slave to his queen as our writers echo from each other; and
those who make Henrietta so important a personage in the cabinet, appear
to have been imperfectly acquainted with her real talents. Charles,
indeed, was deeply enamoured of the queen, for he was inclined to strong
personal attachments;[217] and "the temperance of his youth, by which he
had lived so free from personal vice," as May, the parliamentary
historian expresses it, even the gay levity of Buckingham seems never,
in approaching the king, to have violated. Charles admired in Henrietta
all those personal graces which he himself wanted; her vivacity in
conversation enlivened his own seriousness, and her gay volubility the
defective utterance of his own; while the versatility of her manners
relieved his own formal habits. Doubtless the queen exercised the same
power over this monarch which vivacious females are privileged by nature
to possess over their husbands; she was often listened to, and her
suggestions were sometimes approved; but the fixed and systematic
principles of the character and the government of this monarch must not
be imputed to the intrigues of a mere lively and volatile woman; we must
trace them to a higher source; to his own inherited conceptions of the
regal rights, if we would seek for truth, and read the history of human
nature in the history of Charles the First.
Long after this article was published, the subject has been more
critically developed in my "Commentaries on the Life and Reign of
Charles the First."