The life of Queen Henrietta Maria (11 page)

Bassompierre's complaints, as set forth in his first note, were chiefly confined to two heads,—the breach of the articles of the marriage contract involved in the dismissal of Henrietta's household, lay and ecclesiastic ; and furthermore, the non-observance of Charles' promises with regard to English Catholics.

The envoy had undertaken the mission with reluctance, but he did his best to bring it to a successful conclusion. The chances of his doing this had not been improved by the fact that de Sancy, the priest for whom Charles cherished a special aversion, had been, against his own judgment, attached to his suite ; and at first the King went so far as to refuse to receive him until the objectionable ecclesiastic should have left the kingdom. When at last the Marshal was admitted to a public audience, it was arranged beforehand that no business should be then discussed, lest, as Buckingham explained, Charles should give way to passion, " which would not be decent in the Chair of State," and the Queen to tears— a curious testimony to the excitement prevailing at court. An opportunity was afterwards taken for the practical discussion of grievances on either side, when Charles— being free from the obligations imposed by the Chair of State—did in truth " put himself into a great passion," making many complaints of the members of his wife's household. The same charges were repeated with greater formality by the English commissioners appointed to deal with the subject. Dissensions between Catholics and Protestants in England had been fomented. Mass had been said at illegal assemblies. The Queen's house had been made a rendezvous for Catholics and Jaw-breakers. Interference had been practised between King and Queen, and " the gentle mind of the Queen " had been turned against her husband's orders or wishes. She had also been inspired with a contempt for the English nation, a dislike for English habits, and had been led to neglect the English language. These offences, with some others, had led to the dismissal of her servants. That such a dismissal had been a violation of the marriage treaty was denied, the conduct of the persons in question having

rendered it necessary. The lengthy document concluded with a tribute to Bassompierre, the statement that " his visit and deportment had made him very agreeable to his Majesty" furnishing striking testimony to the Marshal's fitness for the difficult office he had filled.

To his strong good sense and plain dealing his own diary bears witness, as well as to the fact that he was not unduly biassed in Henrietta's favour.

" Went to see the Queen, where the King was, with whom she picked a quarrel," he records drily on one occasion ; adding that Charles had afterwards taken him to his own chamber and talked much with him, making complaints of his wife.

On the morrow a grand reconciliation took place. The Marshal conducted Buckingham to the Queen, and peace was made between the two, " which I had brought about with infinite trouble. The King afterwards came in, and he also was reconciled with her, and caressed her very much ; thanked me for having reconciled the Duke and his wife, then took me to his chamber, where he showed me his jewels."

The very day after this armistice had been proclaimed the envoy himself fell out with the Queen, no doubt not without good reason. His patience was becoming exhausted, as it is easy to perceive from his account of a scene taking place a little later, when his bearing was rather that of the man who had been the friend of Henrietta's father and had known her from babyhood than of a courtier.

On this occasion the King and Queen had once more quarrelled, " and I afterwards," adds the Marshal, " with the Queen on that account ; and told her that I should next day take leave of the King and return to France

HENRIETTA MARIA

without finishing the business, and should tell the King (Louis) and the Queen, her mother, it was her fault." " I would not go to the Queen's," he records next day, " who had commanded me to do so."

Though Charles remained firm in his refusal to consent to the recall of the banished domestics, Bassom-pierre was justified in congratulating himself upon the final results of his diplomacy, summarised in a letter of his own. He had found Henrietta "on very bad terms with the King, her husband, and ourselves upon the point of entering upon open warfare in order to compel him to observe that which he had promised and sworn." Hampered by the presence of the priest, de Sancy, he had likewise had not only to contend with the condition of the Queen's own mind, but with her new English household, all hostile, on the one hand, and with the English Catholics, desirous of a war between England and France, upon the other. Added to all these difficulties there was the attitude of Charles himself to be overcome. Having enumerated the obstacles in the way of his mission of peace, he registered, with pardonable pride, its success. Rendered content and grateful, the Queen was living in perfect amity with her husband. She was to have a resident bishop, ten priests, a confessor, a coadjutor, and ten choristers. The chapel at St. James' was to be completed, and she had leave to build a second at Somerset House. Two ladies of the bedchamber were to be allowed her, three bedchamber women, a lingere^ and a clear starcher, all of her own nationality, besides divers male, officers of the household, making some fifty persons in all, lay and clerical.

The concessions seem large, but, even if they hac been carried into effect, an immense reduction wouk have been made in the number of French by whom th«

Queen had been surrounded. In matter of fact, the provisions of the arrangement were probably largely inoperative. Louis XIII., after much delay, refused to accept the conditions obtained by his ambassador, taking his stand upon the exact terms of the original marriage treaty ; whilst the ten Capuchins who had been selected as the priests to be attached to the household did not arrive in England till some four years later. War with France was already imminent when Bassompierre concluded his mission, and neither Government was inclined to be over-conciliatory. The danger, however, of an open rupture between the King and Queen had been averted, and the Marshal had earned the gratitude of both. When he took leave, magnificent entertainments were given in his honour, splendid gifts were presented, and a number of priests, released from captivity, were permitted to accompany him to France. After this crowning grace, it was hard upon Buckingham that, when it transpired that he was expecting shortly to follow, not only did the Marshal earnestly deprecate the step, but wrote from Paris to inform the impatient Duke that his coming would not be agreeable to the Queen, and to request him to desist from it. If Bassompierre's mission had been successful in arranging terms of pacification between King and Queen, the message he transmitted was calculated to operate in an opposite direction. When King Louis, soon after, not only disavowed the engagements entered into by his envoy, but went on to deal with an additional question of French and English vessels retained as prizes, the Duke's answer was scarcely adapted to promote peace. The King his master, he said, considered himself released by Louis' action from all obligations with regard to the Queen's household. Respecting the further question raised,

France, having taken the initiative in making prizes, must be the first to offer reparation. It will thus be seen that the minister's attitude was the reverse of conciliatory. The direct connection between his reply to Louis' communication and the repulse he had personally received must remain uncertain. That, having failed in achieving his object by peaceful methods, it was solely or chiefly in order to force his way to Paris that he threw his previous policy to the winds, and involved both nations in the miseries of a conflict, may seem scarcely credible ; yet this view is adopted by many authorities, and some such motive was widely attributed to him at the time.

" At court," says Gardiner, " it was believed that the only object of his embassy was to enable him once more to make love to the Queen of France." Deprived of the opportunity of paying a pacific visit to Paris, it has been imagined that he conceived the idea of placing himself in a position enabling him to dictate his own terms.

Whether or not this was the case, graver motives probably contributed to make him anxious for war ; and the venture may have represented a last chance of retrieving his own position at home. Fatal as was a rupture with France to the wider interests of Protestantism in Europe—interests only to be safeguarded by a coalition of sufficient strength to stand against the House of Austria and its allies—an expedition undertaken with the ostensible object of calling Louis to account for his broken promises to his Huguenot subjects was well adapted to appeal to the more short-sighted of the British public. Such an appeal was at the moment of the last importance to the Duke. His unpopularity was at its height. The strenuous endeavours of the King to raise money without the assistance of Parliament had been

met by a resistance as strenuous and as determined. In vain the Church seconded the King in his attempts to override opposition. Men were prepared to suffer every penalty rather than give what was required without constitutional authority. Hampden, with hundreds of lesser men, was earning his great fame in prison at the time when the Duke's intention of sailing for Rochelle was announced. But if the situation was desperate, the remedy, one would imagine, must have been recognised as little less so, and words spoken by Charles as, with his friend, he inspected at Deptford some of the ships made ready to take part in the expedition, seem to prove that he had become to some extent aware of the gravity of the struggle in progress.

" George," he said, " there are some that wish both these and thou might perish together. But care not for them. We will both perish together if thou dost."

The enterprise ended in absolute failure. The Duke gave proof both of his personal courage and of his incompetence to act as general. And his master gave proof no less striking of the loyalty of his affection. As news came home of defeat and disaster, and England, to quote Clarendon's description of the state of public feeling a little later, was " totally taken up with the thought of revenge upon the person who they thought had been the cause of their distress," the King never swerved from his attitude of love and trust.

" With whatsomever success ye shall come home," he wrote to the Duke, u ye shall be ever welcome, one of my greatest griefs being that I have not been with you in this time of suffering, for I know we should have much eased each other's griefs. . . . Every day I find new reasons to confirm me in being your loving, faithful friend, Charles R."

It is singular that it was at this juncture, when a war had been forced upon her brother by the husband with whom she had so persistently quarrelled, that Henrietta seems to have first assumed the character of a comforter in the midst !of stress and anxiety. " I cannot omit to tell you," Charles wrote to Buckingham, " that my wife and I were never on better terms ; she, upon this action of yours, showing herself so loving to me by her discretion on all occasions, that it makes us all wonder at and esteem her."

It was well that Charles could find comfort at home, for the time was rapidly approaching when he would find little elsewhere.

CHAPTER V

1627—1630

The Duke's return—Harmony in the royal household—The new Parliament—Petition of Right—Wentworth's change of front—The Duke murdered—The Queen's future position—Birth and death of her first child—Domestic happiness—Ecclesiastical arrangements at Court— Birth of Charles II.—Henrietta's description of him.

BY the middle of November the Duke was at home again, to be met with unchanged affection on the part of his master, and with hatred and detestation by the mass of the English people. So violent was the feeling against him that his life was considered to be in danger ; and as he rode to London from Plymouth, where his landing had taken place, his nephew, young Fielding, riding with him, would have exchanged cloaks, so as to attract any meditated vengeance upon himself. Buckingham was no coward, and put the offer aside. It was, besides, an attack of a different nature to the blow of an assassin which will have seemed most menacing at the time. He must have been aware that the hour of reckoning with the representatives of the people was not far off. But the list of the sins to be laid to his charge was approaching completeness. Before another year had passed away, one of the chief actors in this early stage of Charles' reign was to be summoned to render his account elsewhere.

In the meantime, turning to the condition of the royal household, the removal of the mischief-makers by

whom the young Queen had been surrounded, together with the wholesome admonitions administered by Bassompierre, had borne lasting fruit, and the amity described by Charles continued, in spite of the Duke's return, unbroken. In a letter from Lady Strange, afterwards Lady Derby, to her mother, incidental evidence of a condition of harmony is found. Discussing the chances of peace or war, she says that nothing is spoken of except the misfortune which had happened to the Duke ; but that he was not blamed for it, the fault being laid upon the delay of the intended succours.

" As for the Queen," Lady Strange adds, " she interferes with nothing, and thinks only of how to kill time. The King and she live very happily together."

Though it might be true that Henrietta, at seventeen, had no desire to intermeddle in matters belonging to the field of politics, she had unconsciously exercised a certain influence upon the relations of the two countries at war. Notwithstanding the refusal of Louis to endorse the arrangements of his ambassador, he had testified good feeling and a desire to promote amicable terms between his sister and her husband by the unconditional release of the English prisoners taken at Rochelle, sent home by him as a present to Henrietta. The olive-branch was accepted in London as it was intended, and M. de Meaux, entrusted with the charge of the better-born amongst the captives, with orders to deliver them into the Queen's hands, was received with cordiality and " feasted by the greatest." One entertainment in his honour did not, it is true, prove altogether successful, it being " taken unkindly at his hands that after his Grace [the Duke] had proffered and drank to him the King of France's health, he would not return the like respect to the King our master, but