THE QUEEN OF THE EXILES
Rememberance sat as portress of this gate.
WILLIAM BROWNE
It was the beginning of the year 1649. France, which four years earlier had
seemed so secure a refuge, was itself torn by civil war. The day of
Barricades had come and gone; Paris was in the hands of the Frondeurs,
deserted by Queen Anne and by the little King who had retired for safety to
S. Germain-en-Laye: Mazarin seemed to the full as unpopular as even
Strafford had been.
Within the city, in the palace of the Louvre, the Queen of England yet
lingered; she would gladly have escaped to her relatives at S. Germain, but
when she attempted to do so she was stopped at the end of the Tuileries
Gardens. However, she had little fear; she knew that she was popular with
the people, who preferred her sprightly ways to those of the _dévote_
Spanish Queen, who thought of nothing but convents and monks, and she was
content to wait upon events. It is true she was exceedingly uncomfortable;
little by little the seemly establishment she had kept up in the early days
of the exile had dwindled as she strained every nerve to send supplies to
her husband, but she had never known need until now, when for six months
her allowance from the King of France had not been paid. However, one day,
when in the bitter cold of January she could not even afford a fire, she
received a visit from the Coadjutor Bishop, who was a man of great
importance among the Frondeurs. Little Princess Henrietta, who had been
smuggled over to France in 1646 and who was now about four years old, was
lying in bed. "You see," said the Queen, indicating the little girl and
speaking with her usual cheerfulness, "the poor child cannot get up, as I
have no means of keeping her warm." De Retz, in spite of his leanings to
liberalism, was so shocked that a daughter of England and still more a
granddaughter of Henry the Great should be in such a plight, that he
prevailed upon the Parliament to send a considerable sum of money to the
Queen of England.
It was never the physical accidents of life that weighed upon
Henrietta--these she could bear so lightly as to shame her attendants into
a like courage; but there was worse than cold or privation, worse even than
the fear lest her native land might be rushing to the same fate as had
overwhelmed the land of her adoption.[367] The real misery was the anxiety
which was gnawing at her heart for her children, and above all for her
husband. During the day she was able in some degree to divert her mind from
it, but in the silent watches of the night it overwhelmed her.
She had begged and entreated the French Government to intervene between
Charles and the foes in whose hands he was; but after her long experience
of Mazarin she was not surprised at the ineffectual character of such
intervention as the French ambassador gave. In Paris people were too much
taken up with their own troubles "to take much notice" or to "care much of
what may happen to the King of England."[368] Lower and lower sank the
Queen's hopes, until at last all that she desired was to be at her
husband's side to uphold him in his trouble. Laying aside in her great love
the pride which prompted her to ask nothing from her enemies, she wrote to
both Houses of Parliament asking for a safe conduct to England. Even this
sorry comfort was denied her: her letters, the purport of which was known,
were left unopened, to be found in that condition more than thirty years
later among the State Papers.
In Paris the days dragged on. The city was so blockaded it was almost
impossible for letters to enter it. There was great uncertainty as to the
fate of the King of England, but sinister rumours, which probably came by
way of Holland, began to be rife. One day Lord Jermyn presented himself
before Henrietta and told her that her husband had been condemned to death
and taken out to execution, but that the people had risen and saved him.
Thus did the faithful servant attempt to prepare the Queen; and even over
this shadow of the merciless truth she wept in recounting it to her
friends.
But at last concealment was impossible. Father Cyprien was at this time in
attendance on the Queen, and one evening as he was leaving her dining-room
at the supper hour he was stopped at the door and asked to remain, as she
would have need of his consolation and support. His wondering looks were
answered by a brief statement of the fate of the King of England, at which
the old man shuddered all over as the messenger passed on. Henrietta was
talking cheerfully with such friends as the state of Paris permitted to
gather round her, but she was awaiting anxiously the return of a gentleman
whom she had sent to S. Germain-en-Laye. Jermyn (for it was he who had
taken upon himself the task of breaking the hard news) said a few words
intended to prepare her; she, with her usual quickness of perception, soon
saw that something was wrong, and preferring certainty to suspense begged
him to tell her plainly what had happened. With many circumlocutions he
replied, until at last the fatal news was told.
"Curae leves loquuntur, graves stupent," is the comment of Father Cyprien,
the spectator of this scene. Henrietta was utterly crushed by so awful a
blow, which deprived her, by no ordinary visitation, but in so unheard-of
and terrible manner, of him who had been at once "a husband, a friend, and
a king"; she sank down in what was not so much a faint as a paralysis of
all power and of all sensation except that of grief; she neither moved nor
spoke nor wept, and so long did this unnatural state continue that her
attendants became alarmed, and, in their fear, sent for the Duchess of
Vendôme,[369] a sweet and charitable lady whose whole life was devoted to
doing good and of whom the Queen was particularly fond; she, by her tears
and her gentle sympathy, was able to bring Henrietta to a more normal
condition in which tears relieved her overcharged heart. All the next day
she remained invisible, weeping over the horror which to her at least was
unexpected, for she had never believed until the last that the English
people would permit such an outrage, and recalling, with bursts of
uncontrollable grief, the happy days she had spent with the husband who had
been her lover to the end. "I wonder I did not die of grief," she said
afterwards, and indeed, at first, death seemed the only thing left to be
desired, but
"Jamas muere un triste
Quando convienne que muera."[370]
On the following day, however, she was sufficiently recovered to receive
Madame de Motteville, who was setting out for S. Germain-en-Laye. The Queen
asked her friend to come and kneel beside the bed on which she was lying,
and then taking her hand she begged of her to carry a message to the
Queen-Regent. "Tell my sister," said Henrietta, "to beware of irritating
her people, unless" (with a flash of the Bourbon spirit) "she has the means
of crushing them utterly." Then she turned her face to the wall and gave
way once more to her uncontrollable sorrow. Only one thing could have
increased her grief, and that was the knowledge, mercifully hidden from
her, of the part which she had played in bringing her husband to his
terrible doom.
It was but a few days later that she roused herself to go for a short visit
to her friends, the Carmelite nuns in the Faubourg S. Jacques;[371] but
there fresh agitation awaited her, for thither was brought the last tender
letter which her husband had written for her consolation when he knew that
he must die. As she read it grief once more overcame her and she sank
fainting into the arms of two of the nuns who stood near; but she was
stronger now than when she had met the first shock. Flinging herself on her
knees before the crucifix which hung on the wall and raising her eyes and
hands to heaven, she cried, "Lord, I will not complain, for it is Thou who
hast permitted it." A similar courage upheld her in receiving indifferent
acquaintance and uncongenial relatives who came to pay visits of
condolence. Mademoiselle de Montpensier, indeed, considered that her aunt
was less affected by her husband's death than she should have been, though
she had the grace to add that it was probably self-respect and pride which
forbade the widow to show the depth of her sorrow; this was undoubtedly the
case. Henrietta might open her heart to dear friends such as Madame de
Motteville or the Duchess of Vendôme, but she could not expose the
sacredness of grief to the curious eyes of her niece, who not only had
shown herself very indifferent to the charms of the Prince of Wales, on
which, perhaps, Henrietta had descanted rather too frequently, but was
inclined to regard the Queen of England's tales of the happiness and
prosperity of her married life as somewhat highly coloured.
The execution of Charles I caused an unparalleled sensation throughout
Europe, and indeed the world. Kings shivered on their thrones and despotic
governments trembled. Sovereigns had indeed been murdered with a frequency
which made such tragedies almost commonplace, but it was without precedent
that a king should be put to death after a judicial trial by the hands of
his own subjects. Even in far-away India a king who heard the news from the
crew of an English ship replied that "if any man mentioned such a thing he
should be put to death, or if he could not be found out, they should all dy
for it."[372] In France the horror was specially felt, both on account of
the close ties which bound together the two royal houses and because, owing
to the unforgotten murder of Henry IV, regicide was a crime particularly
odious to all good Frenchmen, who abhorred the views held on this subject
by an advanced school of Catholicism. Moreover, the state of the country
was such as to cause apprehension of a civil war similar to that which had
caused the tragedy. "It is a blow which should make all kings tremble,"
said Queen Anne. Even the rebellious Frondeurs were shocked at the news.
Many a gallant Frenchman would gladly have unsheathed the sword to avenge
the murder of Charles Stuart, and many did take up the pen to exhort
Christian princes to lay aside their differences and to turn their arms
against the English murderers, which, of course, those potentates were not
prepared to do, though they had a just appreciation of the offence offered
to all kingship in this audacious act. Even the name of the much-loved
Pucelle d'Orléans[373] was invoked in the cause, while a living lady, Dame
Isabeau Bernard de Laynes, was so overcome by her feelings that she broke
into verse, beginning--
"Hereux celui qui sur la terre
Vengera du roi d'Angleterre
La mort donnée injustement
Par ses subjects, chose inouye,
De lui avoir osté la vie
Quel horrible dérèglement."[374]
Zealous Catholics shook their heads and said that now the real tendencies
of the impious Reformation were appearing, which theme Bossuet developed
with great effect when he came to preach Henrietta's funeral sermon;[375]
others, more liberal-minded, contended that the two great religions of Rome
and Geneva could live together very well, as was proved in France, but that
the King of England had allowed all kinds of sects and sectaries, a course
which clearly could only lead to disaster; the Sieur de Marsys, the French
tutor of the young Princes of England, translated the story of the trial
into French that all Frenchmen might read and ponder the monstrous
document.[376] It was even said that the little Louis XIV, who was not yet
eleven years old, took to heart in a way hardly to be expected the murder
of his uncle, as if the child saw through the mists of the future another
royal scaffold and the horrors of 1793.
Henrietta received plenty of sympathetic words and visits of condolence,
but she received little else. It was believed that the condition to which
Mazarin was reduced by the Frondeurs had emboldened the rebels in England
to commit their last desperate act, but the instructions which the Cardinal
penned to the French ambassador in London, before the fatal January 30th,
show that his fear of the Spanish was a good deal stronger than his desire
to help the King of England, and after the tragedy he only expressed polite
regrets that France had not been able to follow the good example of
Holland, which had protested against the regicide, and made a great favour
of recalling the ambassador and refusing to recognize the republican agents
in Paris. It was reserved for an old servant of Henrietta to show sympathy
in a more practical manner. Du Perron, who at the request of the Queen of
England had been translated to the See of Evreux, found himself detained by
the Frondeurs, sorely against his will, in his own cathedral city. Ill, and
wounded in his tenderest feelings by a compulsory semblance of disloyalty,
he so took to heart the news of the terrible death of King Charles, to whom
he was greatly attached, that he became rapidly worse and died in a few
days.
The story of the heroic manner in which Charles met his terrible death
wrung tears from many an eye in Paris. Henrietta, who had lived with him
for twenty years, must have known that he would not fail in personal
courage. After all, misfortune was no novelty to the House of Stuart.
Charles' own grandmother had mounted the scaffold of Elizabeth, and of his
remoter ancestors who sat upon the throne of Scotland few had escaped a
violent death; when the moment came he was ready to fulfil the tragic
destiny of his race. To his widow his royal courage was so much a matter of
course that it brought her little consolation; but some real comfort she
might have known could she have foreseen that such ready acceptance of his
fate would not only blot out in the mind of his people the memory of his
many failings, but would throw a glory over his name and career which has
not completely faded even to the present day.
[Illustration: HENRY JERMYN, EARL OF ST. ALBANS
FROM AN ENGRAVING]
No one felt more than Henrietta that the King of England's fate was a
warning to those in authority. She watched with painful interest the course
of rebellion in France, and when at last she was able to see the
Queen-Regent,[377] she gave that obstinate lady some excellent advice,
dwelling particularly on the goodwill of the Parisians to their little
King, and the general dislike which was felt for Cardinal Mazarin. In 1649
the rebellion was repressed, but only that it might break out anew two
years later. During the second war of the Fronde, Henrietta, who thought
that English history was repeating itself in France,[378] sought Queen Anne
at S. Germain-en-Laye. There in an assembly, composed of both Frenchmen and
Englishmen, she pressed upon her sister-in-law counsels of wisdom and
moderation which it had been well had she herself followed in the past. "My
sister," said the haughty Spanish lady, who was weary of advice, specially
perhaps from one who had known so little how to manage her own concerns,
"do you wish to be Queen of France as well as of England?"
Henrietta's reply came promptly, but with a world of sadness in it, "I am
nothing, do you be something!"[379]
* * * * *
Queen Henrietta Maria's position was considerably altered by her husband's
death; on the one hand she became a person of greater importance as the
adviser of her young son, who was hardly of an age to manage his own
affairs; on the other, she was deprived of Charles' powerful support, and
laid more open to the attacks of her opponents, whose fear it was to see
her two sons, Charles and James, who arrived in Paris shortly after their
father's death, fall under her influence.
Party feeling ran high at the exiled Court, which, with the suppression of
the first rebellion of the Fronde, took shape again. Henrietta was
respected by all--"our good Queen," she was affectionately called--but her
religion and her politics were disliked by the Church of England
constitutional party, which was strongly represented in Paris. Sir Edward
Hyde, Sir Edward Nicholas, and their friends, considered with some justice
that her counsels had been fatal to the master whose death had placed him
on a pinnacle, where assuredly he had never been in his lifetime. They
particularly disliked Jermyn, whose great influence with the Queen exposed
him to jealousy, and Lord Culpepper[380] and Henry Percy, his intimate
friends, were little less obnoxious to them. "I may tell you freely," wrote
Ormonde, the late Viceroy of Ireland, who arrived in Paris at the end of
1651, "I believe all these lords go upon as ill principles as may be; for I
doubt there is few of them that would not do anything almost, or advise the
King to do anything, that may probably recover his or their estates."[381]
Shortly after the King's death the Queen's party (or that of the Louvre, as
its enemies called it) was strengthened by the arrival of a recruit of
great importance, Henrietta's old friend Walter Montagu, whom she had never
seen since they parted in Holland in 1643. This gentleman, since his
apprehension at Rochester, had been in the hands of the Roundheads; he had
spent most of his time in the Tower of London, where he varied the monotony
of prison life by a spirited controversy with a fellow-prisoner, Dr. John
Bastwick, of pillory fame, who expressed himself greatly pleased with his
nimble-witted adversary. He also became very devout, and in proof thereof
wrote a volume of spiritual essays, which he published in 1647 with a
charming dedication to the Queen of England, wherein piety and flattery
were delicately blended. In spite of the dislike with which he was
regarded,[382] he was treated with consideration, partly no doubt through
the influence of his brother, the Earl of Manchester, with whom he was
always on good terms and who even supplied him with money, but partly also,
probably, because it was felt that the Queen of France, who pleaded over
and over again for his enlargement, must not be irritated beyond measure.
He was permitted to go to Tunbridge Wells on account of his health, which
suffered from his long confinement, and he was finally released on the
ground that he had never borne arms against the Parliament, which was true
enough, as he had been in prison almost since the beginning of the war.
Nevertheless, together with his friend Sir Kenelm Digby, who had reappeared
in England, he was banished the country under pain of death.[383] He
quickly repaired to Spa to drink the waters there, and thence passed to
Paris, where he was warmly welcomed by the Queens, both of England and
France.
The appearance of Walter Montagu--a frail worldling, as he calls
himself--in the rôle of a spiritual writer probably caused much the same
sort of amusement in Parisian circles as was caused in later days in those
of London by the publication of Richard Steel's _Christian Hero_. But it
was soon found that the long years of prison and danger had wrought a real
change in the whilom courtier, who now became a _dévot_ of the fashionable
Parisian type. He lost no time in putting into execution his former project
of embracing the ecclesiastical state. "Your old friend, Wat Montagu,"
wrote Lord Hatton in February, 1650-1, "hath already taken upon him the
_robe longue_ and received the first orders and intends before Easter (as I
am credibly assured) to take the order of Priesthood."[384] He sang his
first Mass at Pontoise in the following April, and in the autumn of the
same year received by the favour of Queen Anne the Abbey of Nanteuil, which
gave him the title of Abbé and a sufficient income. A few years later the
same royal patroness bestowed upon him the richer and more important Abbey
of S. Martin at Pontoise,[385] whose ample revenues he expended with such
liberality and tact as to win the gratitude of his less fortunate
compatriots, Catholics and Protestants alike.
One of the earliest questions which the Queen had to settle after her
husband's execution was that of her eldest son's plans. At first a journey
to Ireland was contemplated, but finally it was decided that the young King
should go to Scotland and try his fortune among those who had betrayed his
father. Henrietta herself was inclined to the Presbyterian alliance, in
which opinion she was encouraged by the Louvre party. English and French
Catholics alike believed that the silly Anglican compromise had met with
the fate it deserved, and that henceforward the spoils would be divided
between themselves and the Presbyterians. The remnant of Anglicans who
showed a gallant faith in their position which later events justified
distrusted these latter so deeply that they would almost have preferred the
King to remain an exile for ever to seeing him restored by their means, who
had sold the Blessed Martyr. As for the Presbyterian alliance with the
Catholics, that they considered the most natural thing in the world;[386]
for in their opinion both schools of thought aimed at an undue
subordination of the civil to the religious power, or as a Royalist
rhymester put it:--
"A Scot and Jesuit, join'd in hand,
First taught the world to say
That subjects ought to have command
And princes to obey."[387]
Nevertheless, in spite of opposition, Charles went off to Scotland, and
there, to the deep disgust of his Anglican friends, who had to learn that
he was a very different man from his father, he was persuaded to take the
Covenant, a step which they believed would not only alienate his best
friends, but prejudice his chances with Providence.[388] Even the Queen was
annoyed, unless, as her opponents hinted, she feigned her chagrin. But
annoyance soon gave place to anxiety. First came the news of the defeat of
Dunbar, then of the "crowning mercy" of Worcester; at last, after weeks of
suspense, Henrietta was able to welcome her son once more, safe indeed, but
worn out by almost incredible adventures and escapes, and cured for life by
his sojourn among them of any liking for the Presbyterians. It was no
wonder that the lad was depressed and irritable and unwilling to talk to
his mother or any one else, though she had still considerable influence
over him, so that it was complained that the King's secret council were his
mother, "Lord Jermyn, and Watt. Montagu, for that of greatest business he
consults with them only, without the knowledge of Marquis of Ormonde or Sir
Ed. Hyde."[389] She was able to persuade him (the more easily, no doubt,
from his Scotch experiences) to refrain from attending the Huguenot worship
at Charenton, which she thought might compromise him with his relatives of
France.
And, indeed, under the pressure of her many misfortunes, Henrietta was
becoming more of a bigot than she had ever been before.[390] In 1647 Father
Philip died.[391] The loss of this worthy old man, who was well aware of
the caution necessary to a Catholic queen living among heretics, exposed
her to the influence of other and less judicious counsellors, specially
after the death of her Grand Almoner,[392] which deprived her of another
moderating influence. When in 1650 the Anglican service, which had been
held at the Louvre since the first days of the exile, was suppressed,
Protestant gossip pointed out Walter Montagu as the author of this deed;
but that gentleman would reply nothing, even to so weighty an interrogator
as Sir Edward Hyde, except that the Queen of France was at liberty to give
what orders she pleased in her own house. Henrietta may have regretted this
sudden outburst of zeal on the part of her sister-in-law, but she found no
answer to make when that lady came to visit her and told her, with the
solemnity of a Spaniard and a _dévote_, that she thought the recent
troubles of her son the King of France must have been due to his mother's
weak toleration of heretical worship at the Louvre. History does not record
whether she changed her mind when this act of reparation was not followed
by an abatement of the rebellion; but henceforth the Anglican service was
held nowhere but in the chapel of Sir Richard Browne, the father-in-law of
John Evelyn, whose house was protected by his position as resident of the
King of England. There John Cosin, the exiled Dean of Durham, who still
kept up his impartial warfare against Rome on the one side and Geneva on
the other, struck heavy blows in the cause of the Church of England, not,
it was reported, without success. Religious feeling ran as high as ever it
had years before in London,[393] and the good Dean's controversial acerbity
was not sweetened when his only son went over to the enemy, by the
instrumentality, it was said, of Walter Montagu. Nor did the alert Abbé's
victories end there. Thomas Hobbes was still living among his learned
friends in the French capital. His religion, or lack of it, made him
suspect to Catholics and Protestants alike, and the Anglicans were
considerably chagrined when they heard that this dangerous person, on the
recommendation of Montagu, had been removed from the English Court, where
the young King had shown an unfortunate liking for his company. They would
fain have had the credit themselves of this judicious act, though perhaps
in later days, when they saw the "father of atheists" a welcome guest at
Whitehall, some of them may have been glad to be able to say that they had
had nothing to do with the odious persecution which he had suffered from
the bigots in Paris.
Three years after the suppression of the Anglican service at the Louvre,
other events occurred which did not tend to Henrietta's popularity with
some of her son's best friends. Henry, Duke of Gloucester, the youngest son
of Charles I, is now chiefly remembered as an actor in that most pathetic
of all farewell scenes, when he and his sister Elizabeth took leave of
their dying father. The little girl never recovered the shock of her
father's death, and died without seeing again the mother who longed for
her. Henry was too young to suffer thus, and at one time a rumour was about
which reached the ears of Sir Edward Nicholas that Cromwell intended to
make the child king; but in 1653 the authorities in England, touched by
compassion for his youth, or perhaps finding him more trouble than he was
worth, sent him over to his sister in Holland, whence, much against that
lady's will, he was fetched to Paris to his mother's side. Henrietta was
charmed with the little fellow, whom she had not seen since he was quite a
child. Though small and thin he was "beautiful as a little angel" and,
while resembling his aunt Christine in face, possessed the fascinating
manners of his father's family and was remarkably forward in book-learning.
The boy was made much of, not only by his mother, but by the whole French
Court. "You know they always like anything new,"[394] wrote the Queen of
England to her sister, and she goes on to relate with some amusement the
innumerable visits she received on account of this _petit chevalier_. She
was, no doubt, glad that he had made so good an impression upon his French
relatives, for she had schemes for his advancement which depended largely
on their favour.
The only one of her children whom Henrietta had been able to bring up in
her own faith was the dearest of all, the youngest little daughter, whom
she was wont to call her child of benediction. It is probable that during
her husband's lifetime she felt a scruple in trying to turn his children
from the religion which their father professed, particularly as he showed a
generous confidence in her in the matter; but now that he was gone she felt
her obligation to be over, and she gave much time and attention to
influencing the minds of her two elder sons, of whom she had good hopes.
She even, unmindful of the lessons of the past, entered anew into
negotiations with the Pope and, by means of the Duchess of Aiguillon, a
niece of Richelieu, held out, in the name of her son, hopes of untold
benefits to the Catholics of the British Isles if the Holy Father would
only assist the young and importunate monarch, who would certainly repay
his paternal kindness with interest.[395] But, nevertheless, the Queen knew
well enough the grave difficulties in the way of Charles' profession of the
Catholic faith, and she turned with relief to the little Henry in whose
youth she saw an easy prey. She had other arguments than those of religion
to bring forward. All sensible people, she told the boy, were now agreed
that the King, his brother, would not regain his throne. He knew the
extreme poverty to which the revolution had reduced his family; how as a
Protestant did he propose to live in a manner suitable to his rank as a
Prince of England? Whereas, if he would become a Catholic and take orders,
his aunt, the Queen of France, would make everything easy by procuring for
him a cardinal's hat, and by bestowing upon him such rich benefices as
would afford him a fitting provision.
Henry was a boy, little more than a child, but the circumstances of his
life had been such as early to teach him the necessity of self-interest.
His father's last counsels, given at a supreme moment, may have weighed
with him, for his well-known answer, "I will be torn to pieces ere they
make me a king while my brothers live," prove him to have been, at that
time, an unusually precocious child. Be this as it may, he showed an
unexpected reluctance to follow his mother's advice and an unaccountable
dislike of the Abbé Montagu, whom she appointed to be his governor. Perhaps
he remembered his father's distrust of that fascinating person; certainly
he knew that by following his teaching he would offend irrevocably the
brother on whom, in case of a restoration to their native land, his future
must depend. Henrietta herself was not blind to this aspect of the case,
and she tried to propitiate her eldest son, to whom she had given a promise
that she would not tamper with his brother's religion. "Henry has too many
acquaintances among the idle little boys of Paris," she wrote to Charles,
who was away from the city, "so I am sending him to Pontoise with the Abbé
Montagu, where he will have more quiet to mind his book."
To Pontoise accordingly Henry went, where Montagu attempted in vain to win
his confidence. After a while the boy was allowed to return to Paris, but
he showed himself so obstinately indocile that at night-time he and his
page (a lad who had been in the service of the Earl of Manchester, and who
doubtless enjoyed thwarting the renegade Abbé), "like Penelope's web ...
unspun" (as well as they two little young things, some few years above
thirty between them) whatever had passed in public.[396] The poor little
Prince owned, indeed, that he was called upon to deal with matters above
his years. His relatives at the French Court assured him that his first
duty was to his mother now that his father was dead. His Anglican friends
told him that a sovereign came before a mother, and that his obedience was
due to his eldest brother. That brother, moreover, took this view strongly
and wrote to him, saying in brief and pithy terms that, should he become a
Catholic, he would never see him again. It is not surprising that between
all these conflicting opinions Henry's young head was a little confused. He
was further perplexed when to other arguments in his mother's favour was
added the curious one that his conversion would make amends to her for the
breach of her marriage contract, by which she should have had control of
her children up to the age of twelve.
Henrietta was, indeed, steeling her heart to greater sternness than she had
ever used to any of her children, to whom she had always shown herself an
indulgent mother. It may be that, as men said, she was under the influence
of Montagu, who, however, was not wont to be very severe, and who did his
best to win over his pupil by kindness and by pointing out to him the
worldly advantages which a change of faith would bring--a lesson which the
luxuries of Pontoise, contrasting as they did with the poverty in which
many of Henry's Anglican friends were obliged to live, illustrated in a
practical manner. It may be that the Queen thought that a boy of her son's
age could not resist severity, and that she was determined to hold out
until she conquered the child for what she believed to be his good in this
world and the next; but she was to be defeated. While reports were being
industriously circulated through the city that Henry was on the point of
coming to a better mind, while in some churches thanksgivings were even
being offered for his conversion, his continued obstinacy was in reality
wearing out his mother's patience. She sent for her son, and after
receiving him with her usual affection she said that she required him to
hear the Abbé Montagu once again, and that then he must give her his final
answer. Montagu pleaded for an hour, expending upon this lad of fourteen
all those powers of persuasion and eloquence which enabled him to excel as
a popular preacher. But Henry's mind was made up, he was determined to cast
in his lot with his brother and England rather than with his mother and
France. He communicated his decision to the Queen, and at the fatal words
she turned away, saying that she wished to see his face no more. She left
the room without any sign of relenting, and her son discovered a little
later that her anger even cast his horses out of her stable. He was sobered
by the depth of her displeasure, but he reserved his chief wrath for
Montagu, to whom he attributed a harshness very far indeed from his
mother's natural character. Turning on his late tutor, he upbraided him
angrily: "Such as it is I may thank you for it, sir; and 'tis but reason
what my mother sayes to me I say to you: I pray be sure I see you no
more."[397] Then, turning on his heel, he showed his independence by
marching on to the English chapel at Sir Richard Browne's house (for it was
a Sunday morning), where he was received with such rejoicings as befitted
so signal a triumph over the rival religion. He could not, of course,
return to the Palais Royal, and he asked the hospitality of Lord Hatton,
who, both as Royalist and Anglican, was delighted to welcome his "little
great guest." His satisfaction was the greater because of the piquant
circumstance that he was himself a relative by marriage of the discomfited
Abbé. Henry, who was considered to have "most heroically runne through this
great worke beyond his yeres,"[398] made further proof of his unflinching
Protestantism by receiving a distinguished minister of Charenton, to whom
he gravely discoursed of his father's religious views. But he did not
remain long in Paris. Lord Ormonde arrived with letters and messages from
the King of England and bore the lad off to Cologne, where his eldest
brother was at that time keeping his Court.
* * * * *
The years of the exile wore on not too cheerfully. Little by little
Henrietta lost the influence she had had over her eldest son, who came to
distrust Jermyn, perhaps because he saw the favourite rich and prosperous,
while others of his faithful servants were almost in need. Probably the
Queen was annoyed at the ill success of Charles in her own country, for it
is remarkable that the young man who possessed the French temperament, and
who was, in many respects, like his grandfather Henry IV, was never popular
in Paris, while James was greatly liked and admired. It is true that the
latter was a singularly gallant youth, and that he spoke the French
language much better than his brother, which accomplishment was in itself
enough to win Parisian hearts. "There is nothing, in my opinion, that
disfigures a person so much as not being able to speak," said that true
Frenchwoman Mademoiselle de Montpensier. As for Princess Henrietta, she was
looked upon quite as a French girl, and she was admired, not only for her
beauty, but for her exquisite dancing, a talent which she inherited from
her mother. It was on account of this beloved child that the widowed Queen
of England, in the last years of the exile, came out again a little into
the world and held receptions at the Palais Royal, which proved so
fascinating as to be serious rivals to those of the grave Spanish Queen of
France. At them she was always pleased to welcome Englishmen, for she loved
the land of her happy married life in spite of the treatment she had
received there. "The English were led away by fanatics," she was wont to
say; "the real genius of the nation is very different." So jealous was she
of the good name of her son's subjects in critical Paris that once when an
English gentleman came to her Court in a smart dress, tied up with red and
yellow ribbons, she begged the friend who had introduced him to advise him
"to mend his fancy," lest he should be ridiculed by the French.
But ere this another blow had fallen upon Henrietta, and this time she was
wounded, indeed, in the house of her friends. As early as 1652 France
recognized the Government of the Commonwealth, but in 1657 the Queen
learned that her nephew, acting under the advice of Cardinal Mazarin, who
was impelled by his usual dread of Spain, had even made a treaty with
Cromwell, "_ce scélérat_," as she was accustomed to call him. By the terms
of this treaty her three sons were banished from France, and she herself
was only permitted to remain with her young daughter because public opinion
would not have tolerated the expulsion of a daughter of Henry IV. The
Princes went off to Bruges, where Charles fixed his Court, and to mark
their displeasure they took service under the Spaniard. Henrietta had to
bear the insults as best she could. She had nowhere to go; for when a year
earlier she had thought of a journey to Spain, it had been intimated to her
that his Catholic Majesty would prefer her to remain on the French side of
the Pyrenees.
The only satisfactory aspect of the matter was that now the Queen felt it
possible to press for the payment of her dowry. Her relatives of France,
particularly Queen Anne, were liberal, but Henrietta was made to feel now
and then
"how salt his food who fares
Upon another's bread--how steep his path
Who treadeth up and down another's stairs,"[399]
and, besides, hers was too proud a nature to relish dependence. She knew
that any scheme likely to spare the coffers of France would be grateful to
Mazarin, whose immense riches, splendid palace, and magnificent collection
of pictures and curios, the fruit of an unbounded avarice, were the talk of
Paris. The request was proffered. The reply came, and Mazarin carried it
himself to the Queen. Speaking with the Italian accent, which his long
years of residence in France had not been able to eradicate, he explained
to her that the Protector refused to give her that for which she asked,
because, as he alleged, she had never been recognized as Queen of England.
The refusal was bad enough, but the gross insult with which it was
accompanied could not fail to cut Henrietta to the heart, but she did not
love Mazarin and she had too much spirit to betray her chagrin. "This
outrage does not reflect on me," she said proudly, "but on the King, my
nephew, who ought not to permit a daughter of France to be treated _de
concubine_. I was abundantly satisfied with the late King, my lord, and
with all England; these affronts are more shameful to France than to me."
This episode did not decrease Henrietta's hatred for Cromwell. It was even
said by one of her women, who played the part of spy, that she was
overheard plotting his murder with Lord Jermyn. But she had not long to
endure his usurpation of the seat of her husband, whose regal title she
believed him to have refused solely from fear of the army. On September
3rd, 1658, the anniversary of Dunbar and Worcester, Oliver Cromwell died
amid a tumult of storm, sympathetic with the passing of that mighty spirit.
"It is the Devil come to carry old Noll off to Hell" was the comment of the
Royalists, who kept high revel in Paris and elsewhere at the news of his
death, though the Queen, whom long sorrow was at last making slow to hope,
did not join in the jubilation. "Whether it be because my heart is so
wrapped up in melancholy as to be incapable of receiving any [joy]," she
wrote to Madame de Motteville, "or that I do not as yet perceive any good
advantages likely to accrue to us from it, I will confess to you that I
have not felt myself any very great rejoicing, my greatest being to witness
that of my friends."[400]
It was not, indeed, until the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659 that there
seemed to be solid hope for the King of England. Then Charles left his
Court at Bruges, and traversing all France, had an interview with Don Louis
de Haro, the powerful minister of Spain, who received him with all ceremony
as a sovereign prince. Mazarin still obstinately refused to receive him,
but he had an interview with his uncle, the Duke of Orleans, at Blois, and
afterwards passed a few days with his mother at Colombes, on the outskirts
of Paris, where she had a small country house. Both mother and son may have
been to some extent hopeful, but neither knew how near the day was when the
prophecy of a French rhymester after Worcester would be fulfilled, and
"la fortune
N'ayant plus pour luy de rancune
Le mettra plus haut qu'il n'est bas."[401]
[Footnote 367: "Amyd the Arrests lately made one is for the seazure of the
King's revenue to the use of the Parliament and in other things they doe
soe imitate the late proceedings of England that it plainly appears in what
schoole some of their members have been bred who make them believe they are
able to instruct them how to make a rebellion w^{th} out breaking their
allegiance."--Dispatch of Sir R. Browne, January 22nd, 1649. Add. MS.,
12,186, f. 9.]
[Footnote 368: "Letters from Paris received January 15th, 1648," p. 6.]
[Footnote 369: "Une sainte et la mère des pauvres."--Mme de Motteville.]
[Footnote 370: Quoted by Mme. de Motteville with reference to this
occasion.]
[Footnote 371: The Chaillot tradition, which is found in the MS. _Histoire
chronologique de tout l'ordre de la Visitation_, 1693 (Bib. Mazarine, MS.
2436), and in _La Vie de la très haute et très puissante Princesse
Henrietta Marie de France, reine de la Grande Bretagne_, of Cotolendi, who
derived much of his information from the Chaillot nuns, places the scene of
Henrietta's reception of the news of her husband's death in the Carmelite
convent, and Cotolendi represents the King's letter as delivered on that
occasion; but, Father Cyprien, in his account, says that the Queen was at
the Louvre when she heard of her husband's fate, and though he is not
always accurate, it seems probable that the scene of such an event would
remain in his mind. Moreover, Madame de Motteville says no word of the
Carmelite convent in this connection. It seems likely that the nuns of
Chaillot confused the Queen's account of the reception of the news of her
husband's death with that of his last letter. The above account has been
written on this hypothesis; the letter which Cotolendi quotes was no doubt
preserved with other memorials of the Queen among the Chaillot archives.]
[Footnote 372: John Ward: _Diary_, 1648-79 (1839), p. 161.]
[Footnote 373: "Exhortation de la Pucelle d'Orléans à tous les princes de
la terre de faire une Paix générale tous ensemble pour venger la mort du
roy d'Angleterre par une guerre toute particulière. A Paris. MDCXLIX."]
[Footnote 374: Fonds Français MS., 12,159. _Remonstrances aux
Parlementaires de la mort ignominieuse de leur roy dédiées a la Reyne
d'Angleterre._]
[Footnote 375: The same argument is developed in a curious tract, which
shows the rather cool attitude of some of the English Catholics to Charles,
entitled, _Nuntius a Mortuis, hoc est, stupendum ... ac tremendum
colloquium inter Manes Henrici VIII et Caroli I Angliae Regum_ (1649).]
[Footnote 376: MS. Français, 12,159.]
[Footnote 377: Henrietta, even before the lesson of her husband's death,
urged the Queen-Regent to show moderation. She prevailed upon her to
receive the members of the rebellious Parliament on the day of Barricades.]
[Footnote 378: "Vous diriés que Dieu veut humilier les Roys et les princes.
Il a commencé par nous en Engleterre; je le prie que la France ne nous
suive pas, les affairs ysy alant tout le mesme chemin que les
nostres."--_Lettres de Henriette Marie à sa soeur Christine_, p. 100.]
[Footnote 379: "Le veritable entretien de la Reyne d'Angleterre avec le roy
et la Reyne à S. Germain-en-Laye en presence de plusieurs Seigneurs de la
Cour et autres personnes de consideration (1652)."]
[Footnote 380: It was this nobleman of whom Charles I said that he had no
religion at all.]
[Footnote 381: _Nicholas Papers_, I, 293.]
[Footnote 382: To which the following extract from a Roundhead newspaper
bears witness: "Onely one thing we have notice of that she [the Queen] hath
begged of his Holiness a Cardinalls Hat for Wat Montaue. Then (boyes) for
sixpence a peece you may see a fine sight in the Tower if the Axe prevent
not and send him after the Cardinall (would have been) of Canterbury, who
went before to take up lodging for the rest of the Queen's favourites in
Purgatory."--_Mercurius Britannicus_, February, 1645.]
[Footnote 383: In March, 1649, he was given permission to go abroad. The
sentence of banishment is dated August 31st, 1649; he was on the Continent
considerably before the latter date.]
[Footnote 384: _Nicholas Papers_, I, 220.]
[Footnote 385: He was appointed Abbot Commendatory in 1654, succeeding
Gondi, the first Archbishop of Paris, but "sur certaines difficultes
survenues sur ses Bulles en leur fulmination," he did not take possession
of the Abbey until 1657. See _Histoire de l'Abbaye de S. Martin de Pontoise
Bibliothèque Mazarine_. MS. 3368. Pontoise ... Auttore, D. Roberto Racine
(1769).]
[Footnote 386: "I do not at all marvel that any man who can side with the
Presbyterians, or that is Presbyterian cloth, turn Papist, I would as soon
be the one as the other."--Sir E. Nicholas to Lord Hatton, _Nicholas
Papers_, I, 297.]
[Footnote 387: _Mercurius Pragmaticus_, October 12-20, 1647. This newspaper
(a feature of which was four topical verses prefixed to each number) was
written by Nedham, a journalist who had formerly written the parliamentary
newspaper _Mercurius Britannicus_, and who afterwards returned to the
Roundheads. He was pardoned after the Restoration. In 1661 he collected and
published the verses of _Mercurius Pragmaticus_ under the title of _A Short
History of the English Rebellion_.]
[Footnote 388: "If the King ... take the covenant, God will never prosper
him nor the world value him."--_Nicholas Papers_, I, 165.]
[Footnote 389: _Nicholas Papers_, I, p. 298.]
[Footnote 390: In 1651 she dismissed her servants "that will not turn
papists, or cannot live of themselves without wages."--_Nicholas Papers_,
I, p. 237.]
[Footnote 391: Henrietta was so much attached to him that she went to see
him in his sickness at the Oratorians' House in the Rue S. Honoré. See
_Histoire des troubles de la Grande Bretagne_, by Robert Monteith
(Salmonet), 1659.]
[Footnote 392: Walter Montagu became Henrietta's Grand Almoner about this
time; probably he succeeded Du Perron.]
[Footnote 393: The Church of England party was extremely annoyed at the
publication of a book entitled _La Chaine du Hercule Gaulois_, in which it
was asserted that Charles I died a Catholic. Add. MS., 12,186.]
[Footnote 394: _Lettres de Henriette Marie à sa soeur Christine_, p. 104.]
[Footnote 395: The letter of the Duchess is among the Roman Transcripts
P.R.O.]
[Footnote 396: _An exact narrative of the attempts made upon the Duke of
Gloucester_ (1654), p. 15.]
[Footnote 397: _An exact narrative of the attempts made upon the Duke of
Gloucester_ (1654), p. 13.]
[Footnote 398: Lord Hatton. _Nicholas Papers_, II, p. 143.]
[Footnote 399: Dante: _Paradiso_, XVII.]
[Footnote 400: Green: _Letters of Queen Henrietta Maria_, p. 388. Madame de
Motteville: _Mémoires_ (1783), V, p. 276.]
[Footnote 401: Lovel: _La Muse Historique_ (1857), t. I, p. 174.]