The life of Queen Henrietta Maria (10 page)

nature to relate. Coming to specific charges, he complained that, if he had any request to make, it was necessary to manage her servants first, otherwise he was sure to be denied. The English language was neglected by her, no less than the nation itself. Of one particular affront—probably the reported visit to Tyburn—he forbore to speak, enough having been already said on that subject, and the author of it being now in France. Omitting much else, the King went on to give a graphic account of a scene between himself and Henrietta, when the nomination of the officers for her revenue was in question.

It was late one night when the Queen took occasion to produce the list of those she desired to have appointed, and Charles, being already in bed, not unnaturally wished to defer its perusal until morning, informing her meantime that the nominations rested, by the French agreement, in his own hands. When it further transpired that countrymen of her own were included in the list, the King lost no time in negativing the possibility of his consent being given to the employment of foreigners in the capacity suggested. Whereupon a fierce quarrel ensued, Henrietta telling him that he could keep his lands (from which her revenue was to be drawn) to himself, if she had no power to appoint whom she would, and he might give her what he thought fit in pension. Charles retorted by desiring his wife to remember to whom she was speaking, telling her that she ought not to use him so ; and the scene was closed with a " passionate discourse" from Henrietta, who declared she was miserable, would not so much as listen to the King, and told him " she was not of that base quality to be used so ill."

If the account thus furnished by Charles himself is to be accepted as a fair picture of the state of

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affairs during his first year of married life, the most long-suffering of men would have found cause enough to question the wisdom of the marriage upon which so many hopes had been based. Already, in November 1625, less than six months after the Queen's arrival in England, Charles' patience had been so far exhausted that he had decided upon the drastic measure of a wholesale dismissal of his wife's French retinue, upon whom he charged the responsibility for her misconduct. It says much for his reluctance to precipitate matters, that his intention was not carried into effect till the following July. Two letters, however, addressed to Buckingham, abroad at the time, and hoping in all probability to be able to carry out his project of proceeding from the Hague to Paris, make it clear that his determination had been taken at the earlier date. They also afford evidence that Charles' action was not in this case the result of pressure from the Duke.

The one letter is plainly intended for the eyes of the favourite himself alone, the other being meant for those of the Queen-Mother. Both bear the date of November 2oth. Charles had already written, he says in the first, to tell the Duke that he expected soon to have to put away " the Monsers," either for attempting to steal away his wife or by reason of their plots. The designs upon Henrietta thus strangely attributed to them had been hindered; the second offence he believed to be still carried on. Under these circumstances he intended to seek no further grounds " to cashier my Monsers," sending the enclosed letter in order that the Duke, should he think fit, might advertise Henrietta's mother—to whom Charles had had many obligations—of the matter in hand, that she might not take it unkindly. He would do nothing further until he heard from Buckingham ; but

would meanwhile think of the best way of proceeding in the business, since he was resolved that it must be done, and that shortly.

The second letter is to the same purpose, though couched in more cautious language. In this document Charles lays stress upon the persuasions of the Duke himself to tolerance and indulgence, designing by this means, doubtless, to smooth the path of his intermediary. He likewise expresses the vain wish that Marie de Medicis could induce Henrietta's train themselves to take the initiative, since their removal has, in any case, been determined upon. It was a natural desire, but unlikely to meet with gratification. Whether or not this letter was shown to the Queen-Mother by Holland when he passed from the Hague into France, the Duke was not the bearer of it ; and upon his return to England he and his master had too much upon their hands to admit of their attention being given at once to the contemplated domestic coup d'etat.

CHAPTER IV

1625—1626

Popular discontent—Charles and Buckingham—Henrietta's refusal to be crowned—A fresh quarrel—Buckingham attacked by Parliament—The Queen's household dismissed—Henrietta's loneliness—Bassompierre's mission—His success—Buckingham forbidden to go to Paris— Preparations for war—The Rochelle expedition—Its failure—Improvement in the relations of King and Queen.

BOTH King and minister must have had much, besides Charles' private affairs, to occupy their attention during the winter of 1625-6. The prevailing distrust of the Duke was gathering volume every day. Not alone his mismanagement of the Cadiz expedition, but the fact that certain merchant vessels lent by the Government to the French King had been employed against the insurgent Rochellese had excited popular indignation to fever-heat, and only opportunity was wanting for that indignation to find open expression. Such an occasion would be afforded by the assembling of a new Parliament—a step, in the present state of the Exchequer, not to be much longer delayed.

Charles had done his best to propitiate public opinion. He had furthered a policy of conciliation between Louis and his Huguenot subjects; and he had thrown the English Catholics to the wolves, steps being taken in the autumn to enforce the penal laws against them. But he must, nevertheless, have felt that the situation, especially as regarded Buckingham, was one to cause disquiet.

The steadfast affection with which, through good report and ill, Charles clung to the man he had chosen for his friend, is one of the most attractive features of his early life, tending also to discredit the view that the Duke was little more than a brilliant libertine. His beauty, his fascination, the phenomenal rapidity of his rise, and his position as favourite to father and son in succession, have caused him to be included in a class to which, by nature and talents, he did not belong. He was, says a competent judge, a minister, though an incapable minister, rather than a favourite, and he also possessed that quality of personal gallantry not always the accompaniment of a life of luxury. If his schemes were marked by a rashness coming near to being criminal, he did not leave it to others to carry them out. Ostentatious, vain, and extravagant, he was always brave, masking, to quote Clarendon, under his effeminate exterior " so terrible a courage as would safely protect all his sweetnesses." Such was the man whose fall every Englishman, broadly speaking, would have hailed with satisfaction, and at whom the first blow was soon to be struck.

The coronation was to take place on February 2nd, and Parliament had been summoned for four days later. The first was a somewhat melancholy solemnity, shorn of its usual magnificence, and partaking rather of the nature of a private formality than of a great public pageant. Economy was doubtless one explanation of this. The royal finances were not in a condition to encourage profuseness in expenditure. But the absence of the Queen will also have tended to lend to the function a certain incompleteness, and Henrietta had not only refused to be crowned by non-Catholic ecclesiastics or with Protestant rites, but had declined so much as to

assist as a spectator at the ceremony. It was in vain that a latticed place apart in the church was made ready for her. It remained untenanted. The English people are said never to have forgiven her absence; whilst the consequent refusal of the French ambassador to be present at a ceremonial from which his master's sister had elected to exclude herself was a blow dealt at the cordiality between the two courts.

Laud, soon to be supreme in the English Church, crowned the King. The late Lord Keeper, Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, would, in his capacity of Dean of Westminster, have been the proper person to officiate ; but being out of favour with Buckingham, his claims.

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though not without protest on his part, were disallowed.

{< I never yet was brought into the presence of a king by any saint except yourself," he wrote to the Duke in a strain of adulation which must have fallen strangely upon the favourite's ears ; a turn me not over to offer my prayers at other altars."

The Duke remained obdurate, and Laud occupied the Dean's place. The day was marked, in the eyes of the superstitious, by not a few ominous circumstances. Charles having made a false step upon entering the church, the Duke would have given him his hand.

"I have as much need to help you as you to assist me," answered the King lightly. The words were remembered afterwards. So were other incidents of the day. The fact that Charles, discarding the customary purple, was dressed in white, seemed to some spectators emblematic of a loss of sovereignty ; whilst the text of the preacher, "I will give thee a crown of life," was, somewhat strangely, considered a sinister choice.

And all this time the Queen was standing, a foreigner in a foreign land, at the window of the Gate-house at

Palace Yard to watch the procession come and go. A news-letter of the time records that her ladies spent the time in dancing before her, but there is no mention of her taking part in their proceedings. It is not unlikely that, having made her protest and carried her point, she was sad enough at heart as she waited wearily for the long service within the Abbey to end. Conscience, assisted by temper, may have been strong enough to induce her to forego her place in the pageant—no light sacrifice at sixteen—but scarcely to forego it cheerfully ; and the conduct of her attendants may have been an ill-considered attempt to drive away her regrets.

It was the eve of the conflict. On February 6th Parliament was opened. Four days later it met for business. Yet, during that brief interval, another quarrel had rendered yet more strained the relations of husband and wife. In this case, at least, it would seem that Charles was principally in fault.

Henrietta, according to the arrangements which had been made, was to view the procession to the Houses of Parliament from Whitehall. On the King, however, expressing a desire that she should witness it instead from the house of the Duke's mother, she had prepared, with unusual docility, to act upon his wishes, when, perceiving that it was raining, and apprehensive of possible damage to the arrangement of her hair, she requested permission to adhere to her original intention. Charles, after making some demur on the grounds of a mistaken belief that no rain was falling, acknowledged that she was right and conceded the point. There the matter would have ended, had not Buckingham and Carlisle taken upon themselves to taunt their master with his failure to enforce obedience, producing in him thereby such a degree of indignation that Blainville,

the French ambassador, called into council, advised that his original command should be carried out. All might have been supposed to be thus satisfactorily settled : but the King, unfortunately, far from being appeased, only took fresh umbrage at the deference shown by Henrietta to her countryman's opinion ; sent forthwith to desire his wife's instant return to Whitehall ; and, further, refused to see her until such time as his pardon had been duly craved.

An end was put to the childish squabble by a statement on Henrietta's part that she only needed to know her fault to beg forgiveness ; and when the King, finding it difficult to discover a plausible cause of offence, replied that she had said it was raining when he had asserted that it did not, the little Queen returned the answer, with commendable gentleness, that, though her conduct in that respect would not have appeared to her offensive, yet, since he thought it had been, she would think so likewise, and begged him to forget it. Charles, upon this, kissed her, and a reconciliation took place.

It is fair to remember, in the King's excuse, that not only was the dispute no isolated incident, but that it occurred at a moment of great nervous strain. Though nothing had as yet passed in the House to give open expression to its temper, he must have been well aware of what he had to expect. By February loth the first move had been made. Sir John Eliot, the popular leader, had arraigned the conduct of the Cadiz expedition, and had demanded an inquiry into the causes of its failure. The Duke had not as yet been mentioned by name ; but it was abundantly clear that it was at the King's favourite that the blow was directed. Charles was quick to accept the challenge.

" I see you aim at the Duke of Buckingham," he VOL. i. 6

wrote to the House—letting it further know that none of his servants, least of all those near to him, would he permit to be called in question.

The Commons held their ground, the King's wrath notwithstanding. By May the Duke's impeachment had been carried to the House of Lords. It was a time when menaces were freely employed. Not long before, Buckingham, in one of his quarrels with the Queen, had told her she should repent her conduct, adding that " there had been queens in England who had lost their heads." Now, as from his place in the Upper House, a brilliant figure in his magnificent dress, he himself listened with a laugh to the twelve charges preferred against him, Sir Dudley Digges, the spokesman of the Commons, turned fiercely upon the scoffer. " My Lord, do you jeer ?" he asked. " I can show you when a man of a greater blood than your lordship, as high as you in place and power, and as deep in the favour of the King, hath been hanged for as small a crime as the least of these articles contain."

Two days later Eliot followed, with a passionate and powerful invective, and the articles of impeachment were laid upon the table of the Lords.

By the next morning the King had made his answer. With the Duke standing at his side, he declared that he himself was a witness to clear him from every charge. His were the actions of which his minister stood accused ; his was also the responsibility. When, in ten days more, the Commons had prepared their remonstrance, including in it the request that the Duke should receive a permanent dismissal, a dissolution was Charles' reply.

The proceedings of Parliament will not have been conducive to a calm and judicial temper on Charles' part. Yet comparative peace seems to have prevailed in

the royal household during the session. Buckingham, according to de Tillieres, had made overtures to Madame de Saint-George, going so far as to suggest that the two should combine in an endeavour to produce greater harmony at Whitehall; and the King and Henrietta had appeared for a time to be upon more friendly terms. It was impossible, however, for the Queen's chamberlain to give the Duke credit for good intentions, and he prefers against him the charge of having at this date made love to Henrietta herself " en termes aussi libres que la difference de leurs conditions le pouvait souffrir."

The accusation contains its own refutation. Buckingham had made it abundantly clear that, in his eyes, difference of station presented no bar in such matters ; and de Tillieres, in whose opinion the Duke was capable of every villainy, would have been ready to place the worst interpretation upon any show of friendliness. What is more probable is the further accusation that, desiring to increase the King's hostility to the Queen's foreign retinue, he had first urged Madame de Saint-George to advise her to show herself more demonstrative towards her husband, and had then cited Henrietta's obedience as a proof of the dangerously strong influence exercised over her by her lady-in-waiting.

So, occupied in petty bickerings, the months passed by. On June 26th, or thereabouts, occurred the pilgrimage to Tyburn, or the incident thus construed ; and there can be little doubt that this finally determined the King to postpone no longer the ejectment of the Queen's French servants. A letter of July ist gives an account of the manner in which the business was carried out.

At three o'clock on the previous Monday Charles had gone to Henrietta's apartments at Whitehall, where

dancing was going on, and, taking her hand, led her into his own, locking the door after him and shutting out all but the Queen herself. Henrietta was probably ignorant at first of what was intended. Her retinue were soon acquainted with the truth. Dealing first with the clergy attached to the household, Lord Conway called them out into St. James' Park, and there told them that it was the King's pleasure that all her Majesty's domestics, young and old, should leave the kingdom. When the Bishop made an indignant protest, in his character of ambassador, against his own expulsion, he was told roughly that if he were unwilling to go, force enough would be forthcoming to make him.

Proceeding next to the Queen's apartments, Lord Conway announced to those gathered together there the King's commands that they should betake themselves to Somerset House and await his orders. The scene has often been described, the " howling and lamenting " of the women being ended by the interposition of the yeomen of the guard, who thrust them out and locked the doors behind them.

Charles' own task had been a more difficult one. Henrietta received his explanation with sobs and tears, and entreaties that some of her friends might remain near her. Then, wild with grief, and determined at least to bid them farewell, she dashed her hands against the window-panes, shivering the glass in the endeavour to communicate with her departing servants.

It was a painful scene. The King, observes an early biographer,

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of the incident, " her rage is appeased, and the King and she, since they went together to Nonsuch, have been very jocund together."

That Henrietta's spirits recovered with so much rapidity may well be questioned ; but the sequel proves that, if an action is justified by its success, Charles could plead such justification. The dismissal of his wife's attendants had been an ungracious task, roughly performed. It was undoubtedly a breach of the marriage treaty. Yet it can scarcely be denied that the presence of the French colony was incompatible with domestic peace, and that its banishment would, sooner or later, have been a necessity.

The work effected remained incomplete so long as the Queen's late domestics remained on English soil. It was difficult to enforce their immediate departure, and not until some weeks later was this finally accomplished. One pretext or another served to delay the exodus. Money was wanting for the journey ; wages were unpaid ; debts incurred on behalf of the Queen had not been settled. It is unnecessary to enter into the petty recriminations, the accusations and counter-accusations, made by one party and the other. The King's patience was at last exhausted, and on August yth he sent his final instructions to the Duke.

" I command you," he wrote, <{ to send all the French away to-morrow out of the town, if you can by fair means (but stick not long in disputing) ; otherways 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 no answer, but of the performance of my command. Your faithful, constant, loving friend, Charles R."

A show of resistance was made on the following day ;

but when it was seen that, in case of necessity, force would be employed, the occupants of Somerset House thought it well to submit, and suffered themselves to be dislodged, their departure being witnessed by a large and demonstrative crowd collected outside.

The condition of the Queen, meanwhile, was little better than that of a homesick and desolate child. The King had so far relaxed his severity as to permit her to retain the services of her nurse, her dresser, and some few other servants ; but the French ladies of her bedchamber were replaced by Englishwomen, and their mistress was very sad and solitary. She was passionately anxious to return to France, and to her mother. Failing that, she was desirous at the least to recover her chamberlain. The English, she wrote to Marie de Medicis, were very much afraid of the Count, and she was always treated better when an envoy from Paris was in the country. " I know not to whom to address myself," added the poor child, "if not to your Majesty, who will take pity on a poor wretched creature like myself, and will permit me again to beseech that I may have the honour of seeing you; for without that I cannot be happy." To Madame de Tillieres she also wrote freely of her sorrows. It was not necessary to describe them—her correspondent knew them well. But since her friend had left England it had fared far worse with her. She had no longer any hope, save in God and in the Queen her mother. If only she could see the latter she would think herself the happiest person in the world ; otherwise she was the most wretched. And she would love Madame de Tillieres until she died. " Adieu, je ne saurois finir."

Marie de Medicis was wise enough to perceive that the last thing to be thought of, at the present juncture,

was the return of her daughter to France. She sent instead de Tillieres' brother-in-law, the Marshal de Bassompierre, to England, that he might inquire into the causes of dissension, and, if possible, put the relationship of husband and wife upon a better footing.

The mediator was well chosen. The brother-in-arms of Henrietta's father, he was at once soldier and courtier, ready to withstand the King to his face when he conceived that the dignity of his office was threatened, yet equally prepared to point out her faults to the self-willed Queen. In no wise disposed to flatter her, he was as well adapted to act as peace-maker as the chamberlain, however well-intentioned, had been to foster strife. It is clear that he thought ill of the affair. The King, he told de Tillieres, giving him an account of his reception in England, had expressed himself so resolutely with regard to the question of re-instating the French household, that, had he had permission to do so, he should have taken leave at once. He was also profoundly sorry for the daughter of his old friend. " I am so shocked and so grieved to see this little Queen, so good and so pretty, in danger of losing her religion, that I am in despair about it." The letter was written soon after the envoy's arrival in London. It may be doubted whether his compassion for the " little Queen " remained equally great after he had had personal experience of the difficulties to be encountered in dealing with her in her present temper.