Alarm of the conspirators at the arrest of the Vendômes--Chalais,
at the instigation of Madame de Chevreuse, urges _Monsieur_ to take
flight and throw himself into a fortress--_Monsieur_ and Chalais
join the Court at Blois--The Comte de Louvigny betrays the latter
to the Cardinal--Chalais is arrested at Nantes--Despicable conduct
of _Monsieur_--Chalais, persuaded by Richelieu that Madame de
Chevreuse is unfaithful to him, makes the gravest accusation
against her, in the hope of saving his life--He is, nevertheless,
condemned to death--He withdraws his accusations against Madame de
Chevreuse--His barbarous execution--Death of the Maréchal
d’Ornano--Marriage of _Monsieur_--Bassompierre declines the post of
_Surintendant_ of _Monsieur’s_ Household--Indignation of Louis XIII
against Anne of Austria--Public humiliation inflicted upon the
Queen--Banishment of Madame de Chevreuse--Bassompierre nominated
Ambassador Extraordinary to England--Differences between Charles I
and Henrietta over the question of the young Queen’s French
attendants--The Tyburn pilgrimage--Expulsion of the French
attendants from England--Resentment of the Court of France.
The news of the arrest of the Vendômes, following upon that of Ornano
and the miscarriage of the Fleury affair, had filled the conspirators
with dismay. They feared the effect of these repeated reverses upon the
timid and vacillating mind of _Monsieur_, who, deprived of both the
marshal and the Grand Prior, the two persons who had exercised the most
influence over him, would be more difficult to decide than ever; and the
less resolute began to entertain serious doubts as to the wisdom of
proceeding with the enterprise. Madame de Chevreuse, however, refused to
be discouraged. She had surprised Chalais’s secret, won him back to the
cause and compelled him to commit himself more deeply than ever, and she
believed that she had, in the influence the young man possessed over
_Monsieur_, a means which, if well employed, might re-establish
everything. She proceeded to exploit it with her usual audacity and
address, and, spurred on by his passion for the beautiful duchess,
Chalais lost no occasion of urging the prince to take flight and to
throw himself into some fortified place. Gaston, however, could not make
up his mind to this course, and, though nearly persuaded, he was still
wavering, when orders came from the King to join him at Blois.
_Monsieur_ left Paris, accompanied by Chalais and two of his young
favourites, Puylaurens and Bois d’Annemetz, the latter of whom has left
us an interesting, though not altogether reliable, account of the
conspiracy in which he was engaged.[36] They united their entreaties to
those of Chalais, and by the time the party reached Blois, _Monsieur_
would appear to have at last decided to follow the counsels which had
been so long tendered to him in vain. It was then agreed that Gaston
should write to d’Épernon inviting him to declare, in his favour, and
that Chalais should despatch one of his friends, named La Loubère, to
the Marquis de la Valette, d’Épernon’s eldest son, who commanded in
Metz, requesting him to receive the prince in that fortress.
While Chalais was labouring thus to merit the favours of Madame de
Chevreuse, whom he had the happiness of seeing again when he joined the
Court at Blois, to lull the suspicions of Richelieu he had continued to
profess the greatest devotion to his interests and gave him sometimes
useful information. It is not surprising that this double game should
have aroused the suspicion of some of his allies, and the author of the
_Mémores d’un favori_ accuses him of desiring to safeguard himself
whichever side was ultimately victorious. There can be no doubt,
however, that Madame de Chevreuse knew the secret of Chalais’s
communications with the Cardinal, and that he was acting with her full
approval.
It was a dangerous game to play for long with a person so vigilant and
penetrating as Richelieu. The reports which daily reached the Cardinal
from his secret agents all tended to show that _Monsieur_ had grossly
violated the solemn pledge that he had given at Fontainebleau, and that
want of courage alone prevented him from throwing aside the mask; and he
found it difficult to reconcile Chalais’s assurances of devotion to
himself with those midnight visits _en robe de chambre_ lasting two or
three hours which his spies informed him the count was in the habit of
paying to Gaston’s apartments. Already he was more than half-convinced
that the young man was playing him false, when an act of shameful
treachery settled the question.
On June 27 the Court left Blois for Tours, from which town Chalais
despatched La Loubère to Metz.
“This La Loubère,” writes Bassompierre, “came to take leave of the
Comte de Louvigny,[37] in whose service he had been, and, knowing
him to be an intimate friend of Chalais, did not hesitate to tell
him where he was going and with what object. From Tours the King
journeyed along the River Loire to Saumur, and on the way Louvigny
had some dispute with M. de Candale,[38] with whom he was not on
good terms, owing to some _amourettes_.[39] However, this passed
without any disturbance. On the evening we arrived at Saumur,
Chalais and Bouteville[40] came to dine with me, and begged me to
reprimand Louvigny, which I did in their presence; and the others
told him that he must take care not to have any quarrel with M. de
Candale, if he did not wish to lose their friendship, because they
were bound to M. de Candale by particular obligations. He, on the
contrary, while going on the morrow from Saumur to the Ponts-de-Cé,
picked a quarrel with M. de Candale, and then all those whom he
thought his friends left him to offer their services to M. de
Candale. At which this malicious lad was so enraged, that on the
morrow, when the King arrived at Ancenis,[41] he requested to speak
to him, and informed him that La Loubère had gone to Metz by order
of Chalais, and of several other things which he knew or which he
invented.”[42]
Other writers assert that the real cause of Louvigny’s treachery was
that he had, like Chalais, fallen violently in love with Madame de
Chevreuse and was jealous of the preference which that lady showed for
the Master of the Wardrobe; and it is therefore possible that the affair
of which Bassompierre speaks was only a pretext. Anyway, a few days
later Chalais was arrested at Nantes, where the Court had arrived on
July 3, and imprisoned in a gloomy dungeon in the basement of one of the
towers of the château.
“_Monsieur_ was very astonished at his arrest,” says Bassompierre,
“and his friends also, and they were on the point of taking their
departure. But, at the same time, they received an answer from M.
de la Valette at Metz to the effect that, if M. d’Épernon declared
for him [_Monsieur_], he would declare for him likewise, but not
otherwise. _Monsieur_ wrote to M. d’Épernon, who sent the letter to
the King.”
Gaston knew that the game was up. Richelieu requested the King to send
for his brother, and succeeded in reducing that miserable prince to a
condition of such abject submission that, despicable as had been his
conduct at Fontainebleau a few weeks earlier, he, on this occasion, far
surpassed it and plunged into a veritable abyss of infamy.
Not only did he consent to the marriage against which he had so
indignantly protested, but he furnished the most damning evidence
against the leaders of the conspiracy of which he was the chief. He
revealed all the communications into which Ornano had entered with the
discontented nobles and with foreign princes, undeterred by the
knowledge that the unfortunate marshal, for whom he had professed so
much zeal, was already awaiting his trial on a capital charge. He
declared that it was the Grand Prieur de Vendôme, likewise in
Richelieu’s clutches, who had counselled him to go to Fleury and
assassinate the Cardinal, if he refused to set Ornano at liberty. He
denounced the Comte de Soissons, the Duc de Longueville, Soubise, and
many others, some of whom had but a very remote connection with the
conspiracy. And he gave so circumstantial an account of his relations
with Chalais and of the persistent efforts the latter had made to push
him into revolt, that he rendered it quite futile for that misguided
young man to attempt any defence. Finally, he confessed that Anne of
Austria had several times entreated him to refuse his consent to the
marriage proposed to him, except on the condition that Ornano should be
set at liberty, and declared that, more than two years before, Madame de
Chevreuse had advised him to remain unmarried, promising that, in the
event of the King’s death, he should marry the Queen.
It was decided to bring Chalais to trial before one of those special
commissions to which Richelieu henceforth assigned most State
prosecutions, for greater certainty of result. It assembled at Nantes,
under the presidency of the new Chancellor, Michel de Marillac, and no
one doubted that Richelieu intended to make a terrible example of the
Master of the Wardrobe.
The unfortunate young man comprehended this, and his courage failed him.
He would have led the most forlorn of hopes or faced the most
redoubtable of _bretteurs_ cheerfully enough, but he shrank in terror
from the shadow of the headsman’s axe. With the scaffold before his
eyes, he revealed himself as the most cowardly of poltroons and
rivalled in baseness even _Monsieur_ himself.
But, while denouncing his accomplices, he, to the mortification of
Richelieu, kept faith with Madame de Chevreuse, and neither before the
commission, nor in the private examinations to which he was subjected,
could anything compromising to the duchess be extracted from him. His
passion for this woman who had lured him to his destruction was as
potent as ever, and from his gloomy dungeon he addressed to her letters
filled with extravagant expressions of adoration, which the lovers of
those days were wont to employ, but which come strangely from a man
menaced by a traitor’s death.[43] Madame de Chevreuse, not unnaturally,
refused to incriminate herself in writing, and though she sent, on more
than one occasion, verbal messages to the prisoner, these do not appear
to have reached him. Anyway, Richelieu, who was particularly anxious to
secure evidence against the duchess, whom he knew to be one of his most
dangerous enemies, contrived to persuade Chalais that she had forgotten
her hapless admirer and was occupied with other love-affairs, and that
she had not scrupled to save herself at his expense. Exasperated to the
last degree against the woman who, he believed, had repaid his devotion
by such base ingratitude, and in the delusive hope that further
important revelations might induce the Cardinal to spare his life, the
wretched Chalais was gradually led to make the gravest accusations
against the duchess. It was all useless. So soon as Richelieu judged
that he had extracted from the prisoner all the information he could
hope, the proceedings were hurried on, and on August 18 the court
pronounced the inevitable sentence, and “declared Henri de Talleyrand,
Sieur de Chalais, attainted and convicted of the crime of
_lèse-majesté_”; for reparation whereof it condemned him to be taken by
the executioner of the High Justice, and conducted, with bare head, to
the Place de Bouffay of Nantes, and there, on a scaffold which should be
erected for that purpose, to have his head struck off and placed on a
pike on the Porte de Sauvetour, his body to be quartered and fastened to
gibbets at the four principal avenues of the said town, and that, before
execution, he should be subjected to torture for the revelation of his
accomplices. The court further declared all his property forfeited to
the King, his posterity ignoble and _roturière_ and deprived of all the
privileges of the nobility, and ordered his residences to be demolished
and his woods cut down to within a man’s height of the ground.
This barbarous sentence was modified by the King, who, “yielding to the
very humble prayer of the Dame de Chalais, mother of the said Chalais,
and to several of his faithful and affectionate subjects, to whom the
said Chalais was related,” remitted all that was uselessly cruel, and
directed that, after decapitation, the body should be given to his
mother for burial in holy ground. His Majesty also annulled the
attainder.
Before going to execution, the condemned man withdrew all the
accusations he had made against Madame de Chevreuse, declaring that
“what he had written, he had written in the extremity of rage and by
reason of an erroneous belief which he entertained that she had deceived
him,” and, after signing the recantation, he sent for his confessor and
charged him to inform the King that everything he had said against the
Queen and Madame de Chevreuse was false.
In the hope that the intercession of _Monsieur_, who had been shamed
into making some belated efforts to induce the King to spare Chalais’s
life, and that the gain of a few days might mean his salvation, the
friends of the condemned had bribed the executioner of Nantes to leave
the town. Their intervention merely served to make the unhappy man’s end
the more cruel, for, instead of postponing the execution until the
headsman of Nantes could be fetched, Richelieu sent for a criminal then
lying under sentence of death in the prison of Nantes, who, on the
promise that he should be accorded his life, undertook to replace him.
The improvised executioner bungled the business in the most shocking
manner, and, according to one contemporary account, more than thirty
blows were required before the head at last fell. Chalais’s body was
given to his mother, who caused it to be buried beneath the high altar
in the Church of the Franciscans at Nantes.[44]
Such was the end of Chalais and of the conspiracy which is sometimes
known by his name, though it might with far more justice be called by
that of Madame de Chevreuse, since it was she who had pulled the strings
by which her luckless puppet of a lover danced to the scaffold. If it
had succeeded, it would have changed the face of the realm, but its
complete failure, which placed all its leaders, with the exception of
the Comte de Soissons who had prudently taken to flight, in the power of
Richelieu, immensely strengthened the government it was intended to
overthrow. On September 2 the Maréchal d’Ornano anticipated the
executioner by dying in prison,[45] and, two and a half years later,
the Grand Prior followed him to the grave. The Duc de Vendôme remained
in captivity until 1630, when he was set at liberty, though his
government of Brittany, which had made him so great a power for
mischief, was never restored to him.
As for _Monsieur_, he was discharged in order that he might marry Mlle.
de Montpensier. The marriage contract was signed on August 5, and the
wedding celebrated the following day by the triumphant Richelieu.
At the conclusion of the betrothal ceremony, the King, addressing
_Monsieur_ before Bassompierre, said: “Brother, I tell you before the
Maréchal de Bassompierre, who loves you well, and who is my good and
faithful servant, that I have never in my life accomplished anything
which has pleased me so much as your marriage.” _Monsieur_ then invited
Bassompierre to walk with him in the garden which is on the bastion [of
Nantes] and said to him: “Betstein,[46] you will see me now without
fear, since I stand well with the King.” He then proposed to
Bassompierre that he should enter his service as _Surintendant_ of his
Household and chief of his council, as Ornano had been, and begged him
to speak to the King and obtain his consent. The marshal, however,
begged to be excused, foreseeing that such a position, though very
honourable and lucrative, was likely to prove extremely embarrassing. “I
answered,” says he, “that if the King were to offer me 100,000 crowns a
year to enter his service, I should decline, not because I should not
deem it a great honour and that I have not an ardent desire to serve
you, but because it would be necessary for me to deceive one or the
other of you, and I am not skilful in that.”
Mlle. de Montpensier brought her husband a revenue of 350,000 livres and
immense estates, amongst which was the sovereign principality of Dombes,
and Louis XIII, on the advice of Richelieu, gave _Monsieur_, as the
price of his honour and the lives of his friends, a rich appanage. He
exchanged the duchy of Anjou for those of Orléans and Chartres and the
county of Blois, with a revenue of 100,000 livres and pensions amounting
to more than six times that sum.[47] Little wonder, then, that he should
have received the news of the unfortunate Chalais’s death with
equanimity![48]
The brother was pardoned, but the wife had transgressed beyond
forgiveness. The King, already violently irritated against the Queen by
her coquetry with Buckingham, was exasperated beyond measure at the part
which she was reported to have played in this miserable affair. His
jealous and suspicious nature easily persuaded him that there was some
intrigue between her and _Monsieur_, not perhaps to hasten his demise,
but to marry whenever that event should take place; and such remained
his settled conviction until the end of his life.[49] In the first
transports of his wrath, he summoned his consort to appear before a
special council, at which Richelieu and the Queen-Mother assisted.
Instead of being accommodated with the _fauteuil_ due to her royalty,
Anne suffered the indignity of having to sit upon a folding-seat, as
though she had been a criminal, the while the King upbraided her with
having conspired against his life, in order to have another husband.
“The Queen,” writes Madame de Motteville, “to whom innocence gave
strength, incensed by the cruelty of the accusation, spoke with firmness
and a generous boldness, and told him, as I have heard from her own
lips, that she had too little to gain by the change to blacken her soul
for so small a profit. Then, with the imperiousness of a princess of her
birth, she reproached the Queen-Mother with the persecutions which she
and the Cardinal de Richelieu were inflicting upon her.”
Anne’s boldness, and particularly the disdainful answer which she had
given him, served only to exasperate the angry monarch still further,
and he resolved to punish her by a public humiliation. Accordingly, an
order was issued, signed by Louis and countersigned by the Cardinal,
forbidding entry to the Queen’s apartments to all nobles and gentlemen
other than those attached to her Household, unless they paid their
respects to her Majesty in the King’s presence and entered and quitted
her apartments in his suite. He also forbade the Queen to grant any
private audience without informing the Queen-Mother or the Cardinal, and
naming the person whom she proposed to receive and the object of the
interview.
Madame de Chevreuse remained to be dealt with, and for a time it looked
as though matters were likely to go hardly with her. Her husband,
however, who was in high favour with Louis XIII, intervened and
persuaded the King to be content with her banishment from the Court,
promising to be answerable for her future conduct. She accordingly
retired to the duke’s château of Dampierre, near Rambouillet, where she
was kept under close surveillance, all communication with the Queen
being strictly forbidden her. She would appear, however, to have been so
imprudent as to disobey this command; anyway, six months later she
received orders to leave France. Her request that she might be
permitted to retire to England was refused, and she was obliged to seek
an asylum at Nancy, with her husband’s kinsman, Charles IV of Lorraine.
* * * * *
At the end of September of that year, Bassompierre was despatched on
another important diplomatic mission, this time to England, where the
differences between Charles I and Henrietta Maria over the thorny
question of the Queen’s French attendants had reached a crisis.
In the marriage treaty, signed on November 24, 1624, the French
Government had succeeded in obtaining practically all that it had
demanded, though when one reads the articles of this astonishing
document, it is impossible to believe that James I, or Charles, when
after his accession he confirmed them, ever intended that they should be
carried out, or that they conceived it possible to do so.
The treaty stipulated that the free exercise of the Catholic religion
should be permitted to Henrietta, and likewise to all the children who
should be born of the marriage, who were to be brought up by their
mother until they reached the age of thirteen. The Queen was to have a
chapel in all the royal palaces, “and in every place of the King of
Great Britain’s dominions where he or she should reside.” She was to
have in her house twenty-eight priests and ecclesiastics, almoners and
chaplains included, to serve in her chapel, and if there were any
regular clergy amongst them, they should wear the habit of their Order.
Her domestic establishment was to consist exclusively of French
Catholics, chosen by the Very Christian King.
These terms, if decidedly obnoxious to British prejudice, were, with the
exception of the exclusively French composition of the Queen’s
Household--a most startling innovation and one which was bound to lead
to trouble--only what might have been expected if the King of England
chose for his wife a Catholic princess. But the treaty contained in
addition private or secret articles, which, admitting as they did the
right of a foreign power to meddle in domestic affairs, were unlikely to
be tolerated for a moment by a self-respecting people. These secret
articles stipulated:--
1. That the Catholics, as well ecclesiastical as temporal, imprisoned
since the last proclamation which followed the breach with Spain, should
all be set at liberty.
2. That the English Catholics should be no more searched after nor
molested for their religion.
3. That the goods of the Catholics, as well ecclesiastical as temporal,
that were seized since the aforementioned proclamation, should be
restored.
The insertion of these secret articles in the marriage treaty is the
more extraordinary, since, on his return from Spain, Charles had pledged
his word, in response to a petition from the Commons, that, in the event
of his marrying a Catholic princess, “no advantage to the recusants at
home” should accrue from the match. He had therefore to choose between
breaking faith either with Parliament and the nation or with France.
To aggravate the difficulty of the situation, Henrietta had been sent to
England as though she were a missionary of the Propaganda going forth to
fight her battle for God and the Church. Urban VIII had exhorted her to
prove the guardian angel of the English Catholics and told her that the
eyes of both worlds, earthly and spiritual, were upon her; while, on
taking leave of her, Marie de’ Medici had placed in her hands a lengthy
epistle, purporting to contain her own final counsels and admonitions,
though in all probability it was the work of her confessor Bérulle, in
which she was enjoined to model her conduct upon that of her ancestor
Saint-Louis, and, like him, to fight a good fight for the Christian
[_i.e._, Roman Catholic] religion, in defence of which he exposed his
life, dying faithful amongst infidels. The sequel leaves no doubt that
the child--she was but fifteen--took to heart the lessons which she had
received.
Charles I’s dream of domestic happiness speedily vanished. On the road
to London there was a warm dispute between the royal pair on the
question of the precedence to be enjoyed by Madame de Saint-George,
Henrietta’s lady of the bedchamber, to whom the young Queen was tenderly
attached; and this affair appears to have embittered the early days of
their married life. Other troubles were not long in arriving, for
Henrietta was impetuous and indiscreet, Charles punctilious and
tactless.
After a very short stay in London, their Majesties, to escape the plague
which was devastating the capital, removed to Hampton Court. A few days
later, a deputation from the Privy Council waited upon the Queen to
acquaint her with the regulations which the King desired should be
observed in his Household, which were substantially the same as those
which had been in force during the lifetime of his mother, Anne of
Denmark.
Henrietta took umbrage at once. “I hope,” she replied pettishly, “I
shall have leave to order my house as I list myself.” Charles attempted
to argue the point with her in private, but the answer he received was
so rude that he did not venture to transcribe it when a year later he
sent a long account of his consort’s misdoings to his ambassador in
France, with the intention that it should be submitted to Marie de’
Medici.
As time went on, matters grew worse. The Queen obstinately declined to
make any attempt to learn the English language or to understand English
customs, and appeared to regard herself as in a foreign land, where
everyone was hostile to her. Even her almoner, the Bishop of Mende, a
prelate in no way inclined to be over-conciliatory, was forced to admit
that “it would be _à propos_ should the Queen show a greater degree of
courtesy towards the King and the great dignitaries of State; adding
that to none, of what rank soever, did she pay so much as a compliment.”
Unfortunate as was the attitude adopted by Henrietta, it must be allowed
that she was not without cause for complaint. She had come to England in
the full persuasion that her arrival was to inaugurate an era of
liberation for the English Catholics, but scarcely had she set foot in
the country than Charles proceeded to evade his engagements. Faced with
the alternative of breaking his promise to his subjects or to the King
of France, he attempted to find a way out of the difficulty by steering
a middle course. He pardoned and set at liberty the priests who lay in
prison, and allowed them to leave the country in the train of the French
Ambassadors Extraordinary, Chevreuse and Ville-aux-Clercs, on the
understanding that they would not attempt to return, which done, he
announced to the Parliament that henceforth the laws against the
Catholics would be put into execution.
This compromise satisfied neither party. The English, seeing so many
priests suddenly emerge from prison, not unnaturally asked themselves
whether the King was really sincere when he declared that the Penal Laws
were to be enforced; while the Queen and her ecclesiastical guides and
counsellors were indignant that he should thus attempt to evade his
pre-nuptial pledges, although, had they had the slightest acquaintance
with the state of public feeling, they would have known that to execute
them in full was impossible.
The difficulties of the religious situation were accentuated by the
lamentable want of tact and patience displayed by both sides. The
priests in Henrietta’s suite, with the Bishop of Mende at their head,
seemed to be eager for battle, nor was Charles inclined to meet them in
a conciliatory spirit. The ecclesiastics were importunate to have the
Queen’s chapel at St. James’s completed; but the King, according to a
news-letter of the time, replied that, if her Majesty’s closet were not
large enough, they could say Mass in the great chamber; that were it not
wide enough, they might use the garden; if that would not serve their
turn, then the park was the fittest place. “So,” adds the writer, “they
wished themselves at home again.” On one occasion, when their Majesties
were dining together, there was an unseemly dispute between Henrietta’s
chaplain and the King’s as to which of them should say grace. The
Frenchman stole a march on his rival, upon which Charles rose, and
taking the Queen by the hand, left the table, refusing to partake of
meat thus irregularly blessed. On another, while they were staying at a
country-house, Henrietta and some of her ladies passed, talking and
laughing, through the hall where divine service was being held, and, to
make matters worse, returned shortly afterwards and caused a fresh
interruption.
As the months passed, it became daily more apparent that, so long as
Henrietta’s French attendants remained in England, there could be no
hope of a good understanding between husband and wife. The Queen’s
ladies taught her to look upon the English of both sexes with distrust
and dislike. Her priests fomented by every means in their power the
indignation with which Charles’s broken promises in regard to his
Catholic subjects had inspired her, and encouraged her to make an
ostentatious display of her devotion to the observances of her Church.
When, on February 2, 1626, Charles’s coronation took place, they
persuaded her, not only to refuse to be crowned with him, but even to
decline to assist at the ceremony, though a latticed place in the church
had been made ready for her. Her absence involved that of Blainville,
the French Ambassador, which was regarded as a serious affront to the
sovereign to whom he was accredited, and did not serve to increase the
cordiality between the two Courts.
When Henrietta was with her ladies she was as gay and light-hearted as
might have been expected from one of her age and nation. Her ill-humour
was reserved for her husband, in whose presence she gave herself the
airs of a martyr. Charles’s patience was rapidly becoming exhausted;
more than once he thought of “cashiering his Monsers,” as he expressed
it, of packing the whole company back to France; but the marriage treaty
protected them, and for a time he held his hand.
Fresh disputes soon arose. The Queen desired to nominate some of her
French attendants to take charge of her jointure, to which Charles
refused to consent. One night, after the royal pair were in bed, high
words passed between them. “Take your lands to yourself,” exclaimed the
angry wife. “If I have no power to put whom I will into those places, I
will have neither lands nor houses of you. Give me what you think fit by
way of pension.” Charles took refuge in his dignity. “Remember,” said
he, “to whom you speak. You ought not to use me so.” The Queen declared
that she was miserable; she had no power to place servants, and business
succeeded the worse for her recommendation. She would have him to know
that she was not of that quality to be used so ill. She continued in
this strain for some time, refusing to listen to her husband’s
explanations. “Then,” wrote Charles afterwards, in giving an account of
the scene to Carleton, for the information of the French Government, “I
made her both hear me and end this discourse.”
An incident which occurred at the end of June, 1626, brought matters to
a climax.
One evening, after spending the greater part of the day in devotions in
her chapel at St. James’s, the Queen, with some of her French
attendants, amongst whom appear to have been several priests, strolled
out to breathe the fresh air in St. James’s Park. From there they made
their way into Hyde Park, and, by accident or design, directed their
steps towards Tyburn,[50] where stood the gallows on which so many of
their co-religionists had died. What happened then is uncertain.
Henrietta afterwards denied that she approached within fifty paces of
the gallows-tree, but it is possible, as Bassompierre admitted in his
speech before the Royal Commissioners appointed to discuss with him the
question of the dismissal of the Queen’s French attendants, that some
words of prayer for the souls of the Catholics who had suffered there
may have risen to her lips.
A week or two passed before the story of that evening walk reached
Charles’s ears, much exaggerated, as one may suppose, in its passage,
through the mouths of men. The Queen of England, he was told, had been
conducted on a pilgrimage to offer prayers to dead traitors who had
suffered the just reward of their crimes.[51] The King’s indignation
knew no bounds, and, without apparently troubling to inquire into the
truth of the matter, he forthwith resolved that whatever the
marriage-treaty might say, those who were responsible for this scandal
should no longer remain in England.
As, however, he felt that it would be advisable to do something to
lessen the indignation with which the news of the expulsion of his
wife’s French attendants would certainly be received in France, he found
a pretext for sending Carleton on a special mission to Louis XIII, in
order that he might be at hand to explain matters; but no sooner did he
learn that his Ambassador had crossed the Channel than he proceeded to
carry out his intentions.
On July 31 the King and Queen dined together at Whitehall. When they
rose from table, Charles conducted his wife into his private apartments,
where, having locked the door, he informed her that her attendants must
return to France. Meanwhile, Lord Conway was informing the members of
the Queen’s Household that it was the King’s command that they should
remove forthwith to Somerset House--Henrietta’s dower-palace--where they
would learn his Majesty’s pleasure. The Bishop of Mende expostulated,
and the women “howled and lamented as if they had been going to
execution.” But the Yeomen of the Guard intervened, thrust them all out
and locked the doors after them.
Charles’s task was not so easy. No sooner did the Queen realise what was
being done than she rushed to the window, in order to bid farewell to
her departing attendants. The King attempted to draw her away, bidding
her “to be satisfied, since it must be so.” But Henrietta, who was in a
violent passion, broke away from him, and since he prevented her from
opening the window, contrived to dash the glass to pieces, in her
determination to make her voice heard. Charles, it is said, dragged her
back, with her hands bleeding from the energy with which she clung to
the bars.
The next day Conway went to Somerset House and informed the indignant
attendants of Henrietta that they must leave the country, with two or
three exceptions, which had been made at the Queen’s earnest entreaty.
Presents to the amount of £22,000 were offered them, and they were told
that if anything were owing to them, it should be discharged out of the
Queen’s dowry, which had not yet been paid, owing to a misunderstanding
between the two Courts. On various pretexts, however, they delayed
their departure for several days, until at last Charles, thoroughly
exasperated, wrote to Buckingham from Oaking as follows:
“Steenie,--I have received your letter by Dick Graeme. This is my
answer: I command you to send all the French away to-morrow out of
the town--if you can, by fair means, but stick not long in
disputing; otherwise, force them away, driving them away like so
many wild beasts, until you have shipped them, and so the devil go
with them. Let me hear of no answer, but of the performance of my
command.
“And so I rest your faithful, constant, loving friend,
“C. R.”[52]
The duke proceeded to give effect to his Majesty’s orders, and next day
despatched to Somerset House a number of coaches, carts, and barges for
the conveyance of the Queen’s retinue and their baggage. But the French
with one voice declared their determination not to depart, saying that
“they had not been discharged with the proper punctilios.” Thereupon a
body of heralds and trumpeters, accompanied by a strong detachment of
the Yeomen of the Guard, were marched down to Somerset House. The
heralds and trumpeters formally proclaimed the King’s pleasure at the
gates, after which the Yeomen advanced to execute it, their orders
being, if the French continued refractory, “to thrust them all out head
and shoulders.” These drastic measures, however, were not resorted to,
as, recognising that further resistance was useless, they departed that
same tide, and were conducted to Dover, where they embarked for France
so soon as the wind served.
Charles’s high-handed action was, as might have been expected, deeply
resented by the Court of France. “The King of England,” says
Bassompierre, “sent the millord Carleton to make the King and the
Queen-Mother agree to what he had done. He was very badly received.”
Louis XIII told Carleton that his sister had been treated cruelly, and
that he proposed to send an Ambassador of his own to England, in the
person of the Maréchal de Bassompierre, to investigate the affair. When
he had received his report, he would decide what action he would take in
the matter; and from this resolution Carleton was unable to move him.
On August 24 the Court left Nantes to return to Paris. Shortly after its
arrival in the capital, Charles sent Walter Montague to France to offer
his felicitations to the Royal family on the marriage of _Monsieur_.
Louis XIII, however, refused to receive him, and sent orders to him “to
make the best of his way back,” and, at the same time, pressed
Bassompierre to set out for England with as little delay as possible.