Henrietta Maria

tesman, hung wit

dnight fog mov'

ot stay,

ughts-like sad

his

f crying wit

im with o

mole, and lest

under

did clutc

y Va

n guided by the most enlightened self-interest, she would perhaps have chosen a little pamphlet published in London in 1642. It was entitled A collection of Records of the great Mis

e latter-to help on the cause of the King of England. For this she intrigued now with one foreign Prince, now with another, with the King of Denmark, with the Prince of Orange, with the Duke of Lorraine, the admirer of Madame de Chevreuse

she knew that the English Puritans had made it possible for an army of Scots, who at that time were looked upon almost as foreigners, to enter into England and to remain upon its soil. It would have required the brain of an Elizabeth to perceive that a king, by following such precedents, was courting disaster. Henrietta's brain, acute, lively,

ueen spent s

irables

uzaines e

ens vont po

e Bourbon-les

e's kind heart was touched when she saw the sister-in-law from whom she had parted nearly twenty years earlier as a bride returning sad, sick almost to death, and bereft by ill-health and sorrow of the brilliant beauty which had then been hers. Forgetting the girlish unkindness which Henrietta had shown her in the past, remembering nothing but their common friends and enemies-Richelieu, Madame de Chevreuse, Jars, Montagu-the Queen of France took the Queen of England into her arms, and the two women clung together weeping and embracing. Then they climbed up into the royal coach, and Henrietta made the acquaintance of the little King, whose unexpected appearance in the world six years earlier had caused so much excitement, and of the still younger Duke of Anjou, "the real Monsieur" (as he was called in contra

proved surely if slowly. She had the comfort of the presence of faithful servants-Jermyn, who acted as her secretary, Henry Percy and Lady Denbigh, who herself had tasted the full bitterness of civil strife in the death of her husband, who fell fighting for the King, and in the defection of her eldest son to the rebels, which sorrows bound her all the more closely to the Queen, who had shown the tenderest sympathy with her bereavement. Moreover, in Paris Henrietta found many friends. Familiar faces, indeed, were missed. The Bishop of Mende had not been given time to learn wisdom by experience, but had "made an angelical end" at the siege of Rochelle, dying in the same year as his enemy Buckingham. Mad

haw was interesting as a recent convert to Catholicism. "Being a meer scholar and very shiftless,"[313] he was quite destitute in the French capital when he was found by Cowley, and he was delighted to accept Henrietta's hospitality. He dwelt nearly a year at her Court, making many friends by his talents and virtues, of whom the chief was Lady Denbigh. Her he exhorted, not without success, to follow his religious example, and to her he dedicated his book of poems, Carmen Deo Nostro, which was published after he had passed on to the Court of Rome, bearing a letter of introduction written to Innocent X by the Queen's own hand.[314] To the exiled Court of England came also another poet, Sir William D'Avenant, whose

imaginable to procure you assistance, and am as incapable of taking any delight or being pleased with my being here, though I have all kinds of contentments, but as I hop

who could not forget the Earl's ungallant conduct to her. The great need was men and money, and to procure these was the end of Henrietta's unremitting efforts. For this she carried on negotiations with the Prince of Orange, by means of an English Catholic

f Mazarin. Charles himself thought that a little French money and a little French influence would settle everything. His enemies were manifestly cast down, not only by the death of Richelieu, but by the accounts which reached London of the kind reception which had been given to the Queen. But, nevertheless, Henrietta was to find disappointment here as elsewhere. France was in no condition to give such help as would have sufficed for her needs. The country was overtaxed, and though the new reign was brightened by the éclat of the victory of Recroy, at which the young Duke of Enghien, afterwards the great Condé, won his reputation, yet the war with Spain was a terrible burden. Moreover, in spite of the assertions of the Queen-Regent and her advisers that it was the means and not the w

rfect system of espionage, was quite aware. By the time Henrietta reached France the power of the Importants was broken, and Madame de Chevreuse had again left the Court. The exiled Queen desired greatly to see her old friend, and without pausing to consider how imprudent was the appearance of any connection between herself and that factious lady, she asked her sister-in-law's permissio

Parliamentary party, whose strength he was beginning to appreciate. "I have not found the means of engaging France as forwardly in your interest as I expected," she wrote sadly to Charles. In 1645 she was informed that all the French Government cou

of the most injudicious. The outburst of anti-Catholic rage which she had witnessed in England ought to have taught her prudence; but hers was not a mind to learn by experience. Moreover, she seems from the outbreak of the war

e expected great things from a growing friendship with Emery, the Deputy Treasurer and one of the richest men in France. To complete her satisfaction the clergy showed great s

casion was probably the best that could have been chosen. The Bishop of Angoulême during his sojourn in England had resisted in a really praiseworthy manner those foreign influences which had corrupted some of his fellow-countrymen who resided there, and he was perhaps regarded in Paris with greater

He drew lurid word-pictures of the terrible consequences to the Church throughout Europe should the impious rebels succeed in their object of setting up a Puritan republic in England. Then he turned to the even more powerful argument of self-interest. The Huguenots, he said, who were beaten down but not destroyed, we

itur, paries cum

f he were restored by Catholic help he would repeal every law against the Catholics on the statute book,[324] and the Bishop added that he was at liberty to make this statement, as its purport was already known to the Puritans through the interception of the King's letter. That Charles made this promise there is no reason to doubt; that had cause arisen he would have broken it, as he broke others, is in the highest degree probable.[325] Perhaps the French bishops knew the man with whom they had to deal, perhaps they were instructed by M

en was, she quickly turned

tholics,[327] as the Irish in arms called themselves, certainly hoped something from the Catholic Queen, and in 1642 they presented to her a petition, in which they begged h

and she thought, like her husband, that it might be possible to turn their arms against worse enemies. With this end in view she carried on negotiations with a certain Colonel Fi

ight attention shown to him by Mazarin,[328] that France, which up till now had shown herself very cool to the necessities of the persecuted Irish Catholics, and had even, by the mouth of the Cardinal, lectured them on thei

aressed by the English Catholics in Paris and by Jermyn, who was the more entirely satisfactory to deal with, inasmuch as

news of two deaths arrived, that of Elizabeth, Queen o

0 crowns, which she, or perhaps her husband, acknowledged from Oxford in 1643,[330] yet he had shown himself somewhat callous to her larger claims, and it was perhaps not unknown to her that Cardinal Francesco, in spite of his often-repeated professions of friendship, had been the first foreign prince to contribute to the necessities of the rebellious Confederate Catholics. The new Pope, Innocent X, was believed to

d been the acknowledged mistress of another man. But she ought to have known better than to send him to Rome. Not only was he a vain and undependable person-a teller of strange tales, as even the courteous Evelyn described him-but the religious vacillations and experiments which had made him unwelcome a few years earlier to Urban VIII were not likely to commend him to Innocent X, who would be less attracted by his learning and accomplishments than his scholarly predecessor. The English Catholics in Paris who opposed the appointment were wiser than c

d for help became more pressing than ever, for the

azarin feared to offend the Puritans more than he feared their dominance, and the old weary round of intrigue was pursued with the same lack of result. Even an offer from which the Queen hoped much, made t

ENELM

G AFTER THE PAIN

etta than men or money. Their publication betrayed the schemes in which the Queen had been spending her strength for winning back England by foreign troops or by foreign gold. It revealed how greatly the King was under the influence of his wife, and how deeply she was compromised with the hated Irish. Most disastrous of all, it sh

of the disaster, and she turned again cheerfully to

d by heretics, and even, through their influence, to have been in the past "a powerful instrument for the destruction of the Catholics and of the Catholic religion";[334] while Charles was disliked as a heretic, and his failures to keep his word-his persecution of the Catholics in 1626, his desertion of Strafford and the like-were reckoned up against him with pitiless accuracy. As he had been in the past so no doubt would he be in the future. It cannot be said that it was a misreading of Charles' character which led the Pope and his advisers to think that he would have taken the money of the Church and then thrown over the Catholics, if by doing so he could further his own interests. And there were other and better claimants in the case. Hopes at Rome were rising high with regard to Ireland. Urban VIII, in 1628, had thought it would be a nice arrangement for all concerned if that island were handed over to the Holy See. Innocent X's designs were not quite so far-reaching, and he recommended loyalty to the King of England; but he thought that it might be possible to coerce a faithless and he

lm Digby was still fêted in Rome, an envoy on his way from the Pope to the Confederate Catholics appeared in Paris bea

slie, of whom he wrote an edifying biography, which may be considered an early example of religious romance.[337] Clarendon stigmatizes him as a "light-headed envoy," but the epithet is hardly happy as applied to this stern, unbending Churchman, whose unalterable determination it was that the money of the Church should not be squandered to further the i

King, so that Charles, who was wont to feel great indignation at every one's self-seeking and shiftiness except his own, wrote to his wife that the agent was "an arrant knave."[339] Rinuccini's arrival in Paris made matters worse. Henrietta was a Catholic, but she was a queen also, and it was an insult to which she could not tamely submit

ini, seeing her under the influence of Protestants, concluded, not unjustly on his own premises, that the duty of the Holy Father was to turn a deaf ear to her entreaties for aid, and to send such moneys as he could afford to the Confederate Catholics, whose loyalty to the Holy See was not compromised by any inconvenient devotion to a heretic Prince. Out in Rome Sir Kenelm was begging and praying for help, unconscious of the fact that the envoy was warning the Pop

Ireland, where, far from making peace with Ormonde or with any one else, he set everybody by the ears-not a difficult task, it is true, in that island-and ended by excommunicating mo

spite of her subservience, could sometimes assert her will against his. The French Government was becoming more and more afraid to provoke the Puritans, whom Mazarin feared to throw into the arms of Spain. The defeat of Naseby, whose importance the Queen and her friends vainly endeavoured to minimize, was followed by the hardly less disastrous day of Philiphaugh, when Montrose was overwhelmed by an army of

s presence with an intimation that he was never to enter it again. Mazarin at this time seems to have desired the King's restoration by means of an accommodation, though, owing to the ever-present fear of Spain, he would not openly assist him. He could not repress his scorn for the man who could throw away his crown for such a bagatelle as the Church of England. In fact, he frankly owned that he could not understand Charles. The latter had granted concessions which compromised his kingly dignity; why make a fuss about a trifl

e reformers who had begun the battle. The Independents, to whom in large measure the victories of Marston Moor and Naseby were due, had control of the army, and the great figure of Cromwell, which soon was to bestride England like a Colossus, was coming to th

between Charles and the Independents; one of them, Sir John Denham, the bearer of a name which is still remembered in English literature, had improved a sojourn in prison by making friends with that worthy army chaplain Hugh Peters, who was closely connected with the Independent leaders; the other, Sir Edward Ford, was Ireton's brother-in-law. These two slipped across the Channel, and

s on the death of the Prince of Orange. He was almost unknown to Henrietta personally, but she was aware of his reputation for loyalty and good sense, and she knew also perhaps that he w

, Sir John," said the latter; "the Qu

ustly remarked, it was a pity to send over too many of the King's servants to share in the places and preferments which those worthies hoped to keep for themselves

y, against his better judgment, set off to add another

ersonal and even more

h he had drawn up in Rome and which had been provisionally accepted by the Pope, though a copy had been sent to Rinuccini for such emendations as he might think fit. By these articles Innocent agreed, in return for the abolition of the Penal Laws in England and the public establishment of Catholicism in Ireland

enny of the coveted money. Perhaps the King was indignant with Sir Kenelm for suggesting such terms, for it was probably against his wishes that the knight, after the failure of his negotiations, was a

ry bitterness which both he and his friends displayed towards their opponents, among whom were the powerful religious Orders, was not in his favour; his position was further injured by his intimacy with Thomas White, a learned but eccentric priest then in Rome, who, afterward the elaborator of a theory of government which, like that of Hobbes, was believed to be a bid for the favour of Cromwell,[347] was already regarded with suspicion by the orthodox as unsound both in theology and philosophy; finally, the envoy suffered by the absence of Francesco Barberini, who had withdrawn from Rome. The Cardinal had not, it is true, been a very faithful friend[348] to the Queen of England, but in spite of occasional lapses he felt a certain interest in English affairs which might have counteracted in some measure the Irish influence brought to bear upon the Pope. Nor was it only Sir Kenelm who was out of favour; his cousin George Digby, through whose hands passed t

od in Rome at th

when the Catholics would be able to hold the balance between the King, the Presbyterians, and the Independents, and with the favour of the latter to win the long-hoped-for liberty of conscience, carrying with it the repeal of the penal laws. Never, it was thought, had the Catholics had such a chance since the days of Mary. Charles, characteristically, wished to keep out of sight in the negotiations. "You must know," wrote an English Catholic to Sir Kenelm Digby in August, 1647, "at last not only

ty that Three Propositions were drawn up by the Catholics "importing that the Pope and Church had no power to absolve from obedience to civil government or dispense with word or oath made to heretics or authorize to injure other men upon pretence of them

dents, but to the King, who had always been suspicious of it; a large number of Catholics came forward to sign the negative of the Three Propositions,[356] among whom were members of the religious Orders, even of the Society of Jesus, a

July, even before the Three Propositions were drawn up, she put further pressure upon Rome for aid; there were men, there were munitions, all that was nee

s believed to be pending. He descanted upon the hopes raised by the unexpected revolt of the Independents, who wished to destroy the Presbyterians and to favour the Catholics. The latter were exhausted by years of war and persecution, but if the Holy Father would only show a timely liberality they could so intervene as to bring about not only their own salvation, but that of thei

ts. Moreover, the Queen herself was little trusted, particularly in Irish affairs, for she was believed to put the interests of her husband above those of religion, and to favour unduly Lord Ormonde, to whom (in the vain hope of bringing about an accommodation between him and th

couraging letters to his co-religionists in England, assuring them that their attitude on the questions raised by the Three Propositions was that of all the learned and judicious men of France. It is true that some of the more timid English Catholics, notwithstanding such encouragement, became alarmed, and wrote an exculpatory letter to the Holy Father, in which they informed him that the denial they had given to the Three Propositions was "in, the negative to theyr affirmative who presented them unto us, not absolutely in theyr negative, for that had indeed intruded further upon the Pope's authority than the subscribers were willing to doe."[359] But even such refinements could not save the conduct of the English Catholics from condemnation at Rome, where the deposing power was not so lightly to be parted with. Thus it is not surp

e at last in March, 1648, and it was cold and decisive. The Holy Father would have liked to help the Queen of England, but seeing no hope of the success of the Catholics, he felt that he could not indulge his inclination.[363] Sir Kenelm shook the dust of Rome off his feet and left it more convinced than ever of what he had written a year previously, that no one could succeed at the Papal Court without money and influence, and that "piety, honour, generosity, devotion, zeal for the Catholic faith and for the service of God, with all other vertues, heroic and theological,"[364] were banished thence. Henrietta would perhaps hardly have endorsed this comprehensive indictment; but she was bitterly disappointed, and she was incapable of perceiving that from his own point of view Innocent was right in refusing money, of which such Catholics as Sir Kenelm Digby[365] and his friends would have had the spending. On larger principles also the papal policy was justified. The idea of founding a solid toleration for Catholics upon the basis of a unio

*

but to such knowledge she could not reach. Her schemes, with all their ingenuity, failed one after another because she was unable to grasp the conditions in which she worked, or to read the motives and characters of the people with whom she had to deal. She lived in a world of unreality built up of the love which she bore to her husband, which made her as unable

se Historique (18

ad attended several members of the royal family; he was t

rs of Queen Henri

hristian Moderat

ng Heart, or the Life of the Glorious S. Teresa, published

asti Oxonienses (

e Appen

rs of Queen Henri

egotiations,

is found in exten

Bristol and Geo

d, and the discontented French on the other, are mentioned in t

vres prestées à la reyne d'Angleterre des occasions où elle étoit re

Tanner MS., LX); this present is not mentioned in the official account of the assembly of clergy, and it is possi

(with comments) in pamphlet form, entitled: "A warning to the Parliament of England. A discovery of the ends and designs of the Popish party both abroad and at home in the raising and fomenting our late war and still continuing troubles.

the Parliament of England," etc.; but it was apparently ge

to refer to the negotiations between

to thou hast had. It is that I give thee power to promise in my name to whom thou thinkest most fit that I will take away all the penal laws against the Roman Catholics in England as soon as God shall enable me to do it,

shall be) the queene has obliged herselff solemnlie that the King shall establishe frie liberty of conscience in all his three kingdomes, and sha

he recovery or increase of the Catholic religion and so to no end to advance monies unless to exasperate and bring ruin upon those of the Roman religion there, have agreed to give

hree parties in Ireland, the Confederate Catholics, the Protestants-whose army was commanded by Ormonde, the King's V

, "His Holiness, His Nuntius," and other ambassadors, were unable to obtain an audience even after many days' solicitation. Mazarin's re

ponded with Elizabeth for ten years, as the latter sai

ee App

till alive, was opposed to Sir Kenelm Digby'

pondence, much of which concerned the intrigues of the King and Queen, fell into the hands of the enemy, and was afterwards rea

ourni, de la promesse qu'elle m'a donné d'une nouvelle assistance d'argent et de la restitution

Embassy in Ire

under of S. Isidor

agent by name Scarampi to Ireland at the

eventeenth century it was translated into French, Spanish,

net Opened. She replied, "That troubles me much, for I fear that you have no intention of making a peace with them [th

's Cabine

liae gratia nec minore quam Cardinalis Mazarinus apud Reg

lling to cede to France the Channel Islands, the last remain

I to Henrietta Maria in 1646

s. Clarendon's is very different, and says that Berkeley

anner

p. 573; among the Roman Transcripts P.R.O. are very similar articles endorsed "in the handwriting

receive communications from unauthorized persons who approached

d 'to my most honoured and best friend Sir Kenelm Digby.'" White knew Hobbes, but his pol

ntleman who was in Rome in 1650 complained of his discourtesy, "who was the English (I

published in 1679, consists of a collection of letters which throw

à charger le gouvernement et combien cela regarde la France; que les chefs de cette faction sont le Comte de Northumberland My lord Saye et les deux Vaines qui font agir auprès de notre Roy et au dela auprès de notre Reyne par My lord Percy et autres qui ont toutes leurs confid

overed, p. 21; the sugges

ook of Common Prayer, and imposing any penalties for neglect thereof; as also of all Acts or clauses of any Act imposing any penalty for not coming to Church or for meetings elsewhere for prayer or other religious duties, exercises or ordina

ntroversie concerning the pretended temporal a

4]I

uggested oath of allegiance) in Blacklo's Cabal Discovered. There are several MS. copies among the archives of the See of Westminster, at the

the opinions objected to, and which the Cathol

the Queen, having been her chaplain before the war; he had been a friend of F

f his letters from England, write

te nature; it is printed in Jouvency: "Receuil de pièces touchant l'histoire de l

doe much, all he can is promised for Ireland," occurs in a letter of the begin

y 14th, July 26th, August 3rd, August 12th, and October 20th, 1647. Of the latter there is a duplicate dated 1648 amon

emorials of Englis

. Roman Tr

i, April 28th, 1647. P

nto a letter written from Paris, may be believed) grew suspicious at last of the man she had trusted so long; one of his friends was telling her of his arrival in Paris, "but she suddenly interrupted him as h

s the second Earl of Bristol; he became a Catholic in later days, but Rinucc