Henrietta Maria

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religious feeling were alike outraged by the introduction of the new Mass-book from England,[202] and the assembly, which had been called together for public worship, broke up in wild confusion. That local riot, which seemed but an ebullition of temporary fanaticism and discontent, was in reality the symptom of a grave disease in the body politic. It meant for Scotland the beginning

virile force of the Scottish nation. Charles was unwilling to give w

as Salvetti, the Florentine envoy in London, were not slow to observe. The King had no money to meet expenses, and no means of getting any, except the objectionable one of callin

kely contingency that a royal marriage should also become a marriage of affection and community of interest. The first step in his defeat was the dismission of the French in 1626, and this insult, which circumstances did not permit him to avenge at once, was never forgiven to its author the King of England, whom he also hated, because, in the words of Madame de Motteville, he believed him to have a Spanish heart, and because Queen Anne was allowed to carry on her Spanish correspondence by way of England. Of Henrietta he had hardly a better opinion. She had fulfilled none of the purposes for which he had sent her into England, and though originally she had unwillingly sub

e, and requested him to treat her with kindness and sympathy. Neither of the envoys met with much success. Estrades found Henrietta so forbidding that he did not dare to deliver the letter which Richelieu had confided to him, and which he had charged him to give or retain, according to the disposition of the royal lady to whom it was addressed.[204] Bellièvre wa

Queen of England, who never forgot a friend in trouble. Over and over again she pleaded with Richelieu on his behalf, but for a long while he turned a deaf ear to her appeals, answering her letters

o was staying in Paris, in a private capacity, enjoying the society of his many learned and scientific friends who resided there. Montagu and Digby exchanged many letters, and the latter had several interviews with Richelieu. During one of these he presented to the Cardinal a letter which the Queen had requested him to deliver. The old man read it with great s

valier de Jars. Chavigny, after he had greeted the astonished knight, waved his hand towards his charge and said, in the courtly accents of a French diplomatist, "Monsieur, I

M. le Cardinal."[207] This hope was not fulfilled. Henrietta was indeed greatly pleased at her friend's release, and she cannot have failed to admire the graceful manner in which the great man had granted his favour, but a single act of kindne

lways felt for her. Her presence was not desired in England; she was considered, with some justice, a quarrelsome and mischief-making old lady, and her bigoted religious attitude, joined with the favours which she showed to Spain, were sufficient to make her unpopular among the people. Charles, however much he might pity her as the victim of Richelieu, dreaded, short of money as he was, so expensive and incon

ESS OF C

MOREELSE ONCE IN THE

their common political sympathy with the Spanish, and the Queen, in the past, had regarded her with much affection. Her intention was quickly acted upon. She set sail from Corunna in May, 1638, and after a successful voyage landed in England. She had not deceived herself. The reception given to her by her royal hosts was worthy of her rank as the wife of a kinsman of the King of England and of her position as a personal friend of his Queen. Charles and Henrietta, who were never

le it seemed unlikely that her plans would succeed, owing to the opposition of the King and the whole nation, yet such was the effect of her skill and persistency that, a few months after her own arrival, she witnessed the entry into London of that unfortunate royal lady, in

as too true a gentleman and Henrietta too affectionate a daughter not to receive her with all honour. The King rode out into the country to meet her, and escorted her through London amid official rejoicings, described by a French gentleman in an elaborate account which reflects his satisfaction.[2

sands of Scots were signing the National Covenant. A few months later the General Assembly of the Kirk sitting at Glasgow abolished episcopacy, and followed up this act of defiance b

and his wife set themselves against the will and sentiment of their people, and thus prepared the way for their own final ruin, though, in t

Catholics were loyal. They felt much gratitude towards the Queen, on whom their prosperity depended, and when the Scotch rebellion broke out they would have liked to bear arms in the King's service. Con, who believed that Charles would willingly have employed them, assured him that few of his subjects would fight for him as loyally as those of the ancient faith. The King possibly belie

of all, the ill-feeling between the secular and regular clergy made any cooperation between the two bodies a matter of great difficulty. From meetings lasting many hours, at which he had attempted to weld together these discordant elements, and from still more fatiguing private audiences, Con, ill and suffering as

e sent Montagu and Father Philip to attend the meetings on her behalf, and to bring her news of an undertaking in w

the ingenious Montagu and the fantastic Sir Kenelm Digby, who was always pleased to adventure himself in any new enterprise. These two gentlemen now issued a joint appeal to the Catholics of England, asking, in the Queen's name, for liberal contributions, and to this appeal she herself prefixed a dignified letter urging her co-religionists to contribute liberally to the King's expenses in the norther

n were great, and though individuals, such as the Dowager Countess of Rutland, who cheerfully gave ￡500, were generous, the general response was not hearty. The Queen, whose sanguine disposition often caused her to be disappointed, was distressed at the smallness of the sum which she would be able to offer to the King, and her fertile brain devised another expedient by which she hoped to increase the ￡30,000[216] she had received from the Catholics to ￡50,000; ￡1

Lady Carlisle was content to play her part in the comparative obscurity of the British Isles; but a restless love of power and domination, which expressed itself in a determined effort to influence by womanly charms those who by force of intellect or by accident of birth were making the history of the time, was common to both, as also was a real talent for intrigue, which enabled these society ladies so far to conquer the disadvantages of their sex as to become of considerable importance in affairs. Of such teachers Henrietta was a willing learner and in some sense an apt pupil. She, too, learned to plot and to scheme, to play off enemy against enemy, and to attempt to win over a chivalrous foe by honeyed words. But she never became in any real sense a diplomatist. Her brain, quick to seize a point of detail and sometimes sagacious in weighing the claims of alternate courses of action, had not sufficient grasp to take in the broad outlines of a complicated situation, nor the judicial faculty which can calmly apprai

tell the story of the disastrous Scotch expedition; it suffices to say that Charles returned nominally a conqueror,[217] but in reality defeated, an

n from her anxieties. It bore the name of Salmacida Spolia,[218] and was written by Sir William D'Avenant, the reputed son of Shakespeare, who had succeeded Ben Jonson as laureate, and who was specially devoted to Henrietta's service. The scenery and decorations, so important to the success of a masque, were supplied by Inigo Jones, who had before now co-operated with D'Avenant, while for the musical part of the entertainment Lewis Richard, Master of His Majesty's Musick, was responsible. Henrietta had considerable difficulty with her troupe,[219] which included not only the King but a number of ladies and gentlemen of the Court, and great annoyance was caused by Lady Carnarvon, who showed symptoms of the invading Puritan spirit in refusing to take part in the masque unless she were assured that the representation would not take place on a Sunday. However, all difficulties were smoothed over by t

iscord, which, "a malicious Fury, appears in a storme, and by the Invocation of malignant spirits proper to her evill use, having alre

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nious that hath been done heere in that kind." When, in future days, some of the company looked back upon that eveni

blem before him. The country was rushing on to meet its fate: the topic of the hour was that of the Parliament, to the holding of which the King was fi

r spirits of heaven and hell. Neither Charles nor Henrietta had ever truly loved him. Greatness disturbs and frightens smaller minds, and the Queen had other reasons to regard him coldly. He was not handsome (though she noted and remembered years after his death that he had the most beautiful hands in the world), he was unversed in the courtier-like

e had recently been reminded in a sufficiently startling manner that Scotland on her side had an equally long memory. He possessed evidence of a letter written by the rebellious Scots to the King of France, evidence on which he acted while Parliament was sitting by sending Lord Loudon and others of the Scotch Commissioners to the Tower. It was not yet forty years since the union of the two Crowns. The Scotch were unpopular in England, and the favour shown to them by the King and Queen was resented. Scotla

warm welcome, and, little by little, the sense of home and kindred, to which she had been a stranger for so many years, overcame the reluctancy of independence and expediency. Some of her happiest hours in these troubled days were spent in her mother's pleasant rooms at St. James's, chatting about her children and her domestic concerns. It would have been well had this been all, but the

easing. Perhaps Henrietta discovered the duplicity of the woman "who said much good of Spain, and yet to the Queen called herself a good Frenchwoman."[223] Certainly she was not very sorry when, in May, 1640, a rumour that the Duke of Chevreuse was coming to England frightened his wife, who had no wish to meet him, across the Channel to Flanders. The Duchess, at her departure, still boasted of the favour of the English Court, and assured her friends that the Queen had pressed her to return whenever she felt inclined to do so, an invitation which Henrietta, who had marked her attitude by giving her a costly j

emained, and manifested themselves specially in a matter to which the Queen gave considerable a

rred almost any one to Montagu, for did he not know that that shifty person, through the mouth of Madame Chevreuse, was promising complete devotion to the King of Spain in return for support at Rome? The Queen's persistence in this matter annoyed the Roman authorities. Cardinal Barberini, in spite of his personal liking for Montagu, never entertained for a moment the idea of acceding to her request; indeed, he instructed Rosetti, who had replaced Con as envoy in England, to tell her frankly that the thing was impossible. It was an unfortunate moment for the question to have arisen, for not only was it of great importance to avoid friction with Richelieu, but the time was coming when Henrietta would have other and more important requests to make to Cardinal Barberini. That observant politician had his eyes attentively fixed upon the English troubles, as to whose progress he was kept well informed by Rosetti. The courtly young envoy-he was barely thirty and of a noble Ferrarese family-had been charmed

voted that the relief of the King's necessities should have precedence of the redress of grievances. It seemed a great victory, and Henrietta, dazzled by this unexpected success, recognized at last what the man was whom she had slighted. "My Lord Strafford is the most faithful and capable of my husband's servants,"[226] she said publicly,

trife in England as she had in France. Rosetti, who, as the symbol of the dreaded approximation to popery, was particularly odious, was thought to be in such danger of personal violence that Mary de' Medici offered him the shelter of her apartments. He refused, perhaps wisely; for a few days later a letter was brought to the King threatening to "chase the Pope and the Devil

nt, which was imminent;[227] but weakness of body could not impair the activity of her brain, and at this time she definitely entered upon that course of action which, perhaps more than any other, has brought upon her the adverse judgment of poste

indness they had shown to Montagu, who himself was a little led astray by flattering words. It is significant that he appears at this time as the Queen's chief adviser. He executed many of the duties of the secretaryship he was not allowed to hold, and he was delaying a long-med

ries of State, who may almost certainly be identified with Windbank, assuring him that the Pope had expressed himself anxious to contribute money for the Scotch war if there were need of it. Charles, to whose knowledge this letter came, was exceedingly angry, as well he may have been, and threatened to remove Hamilton from his post if he ever lent ear again to such discourse.[228] But Windbank was no whit abashed. A few months later he held a remarkable conversation with Con, w

unjustly in the light of future events) was considered an indifferent Catholic, to take the place of Sir William Hamilton, was a further disservice both to her and to Montagu, who supported Digby's candidature, and who had written warmly in his favour to the Roman authorities; but of the Cardinal's feeling towards her Henrietta was probably quite unaware. It is not known what part, if any, she took in Windbank's application, but it is likely that she was both grieved

sband depart. The state of public feeling was growing worse and worse, and the King's own servants were not faithful to him, so that one of the most acute observer

fore setting out from London, paid a visit to Henrietta. They knew well her power, and they begged that her influence with her husband might be used for the calling together of the estates of the realm. Mary de' Medici was present at this interview, and it is said that she put in

rliament, without imposing intolerable conditions, would vote sufficient money to enable the King to deal with the menacing Scots. She was mistaken, as she so often was. If the English Puritans had not called the

the terror of the Protestants, who attempted to propitiate the people by persecution of the common enemy. Several priests were thrown into prison, and even the courtier Sir Tobie Matthew, who, though he posed as a layman, was generally believed to be in holy orders,[232] was arrested on suspicion. The houses of Catholics were searched, an

nd, and with a pledge that its expenses should be paid. On November 3rd he ope

les brought the new Scotch liturgy to her, asking her to read i

gent in Scotland; one reason given is "to keep the Scotch nobility in their devotion towards the cause of France."-Aff. Etran. Ang., t. 43. The gre

t d'avoir refusé les offres que vous leur aves faites de la part du roy."-Richelie

, March 5th, 1638. Af

., March

y, February 14th, 1638.

e a Knight of the Garter at the time of

ttres de Richel

y très-chrestien dans la Grande Bretaigne. Par l

by, June, 1638. Aff

(Add. MS., 27,962) says that the King asked for the m

MS., 15,

rs of Queen Henri

hire, among the collectors' names appear those of members of such well-kno

Death of that matchless mirror of Magnanimity and

se from making peace with the Scotch, but whether n

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Bayou arrive at us we must think of another way of safetie and resolve (in any case) to passe the sea and go and dwell in that region of peace and that happie climate where your divine Pr

arl of Strafford J

Etran. A

th the post, but the Queen's choice fell upon Sir John Winter, a

to Barberini: P.R.O

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enry was born

tober 22nd, 1638.

MS., 15,39

30th, 1640, and Rosetti's answer, August l0th, 1640. "... de peró quando S. Mta dichiaresse ta

mber, 1640. Add. MS.

See of Westminster is a certificate of his sa

t., MS. Fran