The life of Queen Henrietta Maria (15 page)

most in its promotion, was sent to expiate her hostility to her former favourite in confinement. In the following July, escaping from her place of captivity, she fled across the frontier, and took refuge in the Spanish Netherlands, from whence she brought what pressure she could to bear upon Charles, to induce him to join with Spain in interfering upon her behalf. Her endeavours were not successful. Disinclined in any case to complicate his relations with France by entering the lists in defence of his mother-in-law, her cause was further injured in Charles' eyes by the means employed to advance it in England. A disagreeable incident occurring in the summer of 1631 would have tended to open the eyes of a less suspicious man to the inconveniences likely to result, should he allow his kingdom to be made by this professional schemer a centre of foreign intrigue.

In the spring of the preceding year the ambassador, Chateauneuf, had been recalled, being replaced by the Marquis de Fontenoy-Mareuil, with whom Henrietta had fallen out, by reason of some dispute concerning her confessor. Her quarrel with the accredited envoy may have led her to look with the more favour upon a certain Chevalier de Jars, then in London and on friendly terms with the King and herself. In Charles' eyes de Jars was no more than a casual visitor, and an agreeable countryman of his wife's ; he had no suspicion that the Chevalier privately filled a post of his own, and was acting as agent in London of the ex-ambassador, Chateauneuf.

The facts were these. Chateauneuf, on his return to France, had been won over—owing, it is said, to the wiles of the French Circe, Madame de Chevreuse—to attach himself to the party opposed to the Cardinal. In

the eyes of this faction, Charles' Lord Treasurer, Weston, soon to become Earl of Portland, presented one of the principal obstacles, on economic and other grounds, to English interference in French affairs. To remove him from power, or to weaken his influence, was therefore, in the eyes of the adherents of Marie de Medicis, an object .of the first importance. It was with this view that de Jars had been sent to London ; and affection for her mother, together with her dislike for the Lord Treasurer, may have combined to render Henrietta not averse to co-operation in the intrigue. The affair, unfortunately, came to the ears of Fontenoy-Mareuil, who, whatever may be thought of his manner of dealing with it, showed himself to be a man of determination and promptitude. Engaging the services of a housebreaker, he caused the Chevalier's lodgings to be entered ; the cabinet containing his compromising correspondence with Chateauneuf was carried off, and was placed forthwith in the hands of the ambassador.

The sentiments evoked at court by this summary mode of procedure may be imagined. The Queen, as was natural, ranged herself on the side of de Jars, representing not only her mother's partisans but the opponents of the obnoxious Fontenoy-Mareuil. The ambassador, on the other hand, boldly maintained his right to make use of whatever means he found necessary in order to unveil the machinations of his master's subjects. In the end he carried the day ; Charles took no steps to vindicate the majesty of the law against the ambassadorial house-breaker, and the whole matter was probably of importance chiefly by reason of its effect in strengthening the King's determination to exclude the lady who was a chief promoter of affairs of the kind from English soil. A news-letter of December,

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1632, quotes with malicious satisfaction reports from Brussels that the French there, with the Queen-Mother and Monsieur, had " made account to have kept a brave Christmas in London, and for that purpose had trussed up their trinkets half top-mast high. But it seemeth they reckoned without their host that should have been, King Charles," and the visit remained unpaid.

That he was determined that, so far as he had power to prevent it, his wife should not be entangled in the network of political intrigue, was shown by a brief imprisonment inflicted upon Lord Chaworth, in consequence of his having become the bearer, without permission from Charles, of a message to the Queen. Henrietta is not likely to have proved altogether submissive. That no fresh domestic dissensions were the result of Charles' display of authority bears witness to the terms of good fellowship now established in the royal household ; but she continued to owe Fontenoy-Mareuil a grudge, and an envoy despatched by her brother, in 1633, with the object, amongst others, of making peace between the resident ambassador and the Queen, failed to effect the desired reconciliation. The Marquis, Henrietta allowed, had done her no injury, but she did not like him. If it was a woman's argument, it was none the less unanswerable.

De Jars' name occurs a little later on, once more in connection with intercepted correspondence. Jerome Weston, son to the Lord Treasurer, returning from a mission abroad, chanced to encounter a messenger charged with a packet addressed in Holland's handwriting to a French minister of State ; and Holland being known to be high in the Queen's favour and to belong to her household, the fact that he was corresponding, after an irregular

fashion, with the French court, appears at once to have awakened young Weston's suspicions. Conceiving himself justified, in his character of envoy, in making himself acquainted with the contents of the packet, he forthwith opened it, and found it to contain a letter in cipher from Holland himself, as well as one from the Queen, which he did her the grace to leave unread. Henrietta's object is believed to have been simply to make intercession for de Jars and his principal, Chateauneuf, both consigned to prison by Richelieu, and the discovery in itself was of little importance. That communication of any kind had been attempted with the French court, save through the authorised channels, was, however, held by the King to be full justification for the action taken by Weston. It was an ambassador's duty, Charles declared, to intercept and at his discretion to open any packet, not having allowance from King or secretary, sent beyond seas. It is scarcely to be wondered at that this view of the incident was unshared by Holland, and that both he and the Queen should have "taken it ill." The sequel presents a graphic picture of the court and of the manners of the day.

The first step was taken by Holland. Henry Jermyn—his own friend and the Queen's favourite —was sent to tell Weston that, believing himself to be injured, he desired to meet him sword in hand. Hampered by a prohibition of the King's, forbidding him to fight, Weston returned a vague answer by young Henry Percy, Lady Carlisle's brother, to the effect that he knew of no injury done to the Earl, Percy adding that, should his principal be questioned as to what had occurred abroad, he would be unable to reply. Upon this Holland answered that he was left to take his own satisfaction. At this stage Weston's obedience to the

King appears to have become exhausted, for he sent word that, whithersoever he walked, he would wear his sword by his side. When Holland had rejoined that he would walk on the following morning in the Spring Garden, Percy returned with yet another equivocal message, to which his opponent replied by reiterating that he would be found in the gardens, near the Earl of Portland's house.

At his subsequent examination in the council-chamber, one of the charges brought against Holland was that he had appointed the King's own garden to be the scene of an unlawful combat. Had he ever, he was asked, known of the like insolency offered by another ? Though Holland's defence that the Spring Garden had merely been chosen as a place where the two could meet with least notice, and that they would have gone elsewhere to fight, does not seem to have been found convincing, it was impossible to refute it; for Weston, at this point in the negotiations, had taken the course open to him from the first, and told Jermyn plainly that he had been forbidden to accept the challenge. In the end the matter was settled by the submission of all the parties concerned. It may have been owing to the fact that three out of the four involved in the dispute—not to mention Lord Goring and young Fielding, who had had a quarrel of their own arising out of it—were friends of the Queen, that Holland and Jermyn escaped, to everybody's surprise, with no severer chastisement than a short imprisonment.

Not long afterwards the Queen's favour again availed to shield Jermyn from the consequences of a worse misdeed. Shortly before he had taken part in the dispute between Holland and Weston, he had ruined a niece of the late Duke of Buckingham and a maid-of-honour to the Queen, declaring that he had been precluded from

marriage by his lack of fortune. When the scandal became public, the King, on the demand of the Villiers family, offered Jermyn the alternative of fulfilling the promise of marriage which Charles declared himself satisfied had been given, or of perpetual banishment from court. But though no marriage took place—the victim herself admitting that she had loved Jermyn too well to make conditions, and that he had given her no pledge—it was not long before the culprit regained his old footing at Somerset House, the Queen finding herself apparently unable to dispense with his services.

The episode in which de Jars had been concerned had not been without a sequel. Amongst the papers seized by Richelieu upon the arrest of the Chevalier, letters had been found affording the Cardinal a convenient means of embittering the relations, already strained, between Henrietta and the Lord Treasurer. By placing in Portland's hands documents making it clear that there were those about the Queen actively engaged in intrigues against the minister, the* Cardinal could rest satisfied that he had made it the interest of the Treasurer to use his endeavours to counterbalance Henrietta's influence, always liable to be employed on behalf of her mother, and consequently in opposition to Richelieu himself.

At the present moment the Queen was probably occupied with interests of a different nature to those implied by the attempt to intervene in public affairs. In November, 1631, her eldest daughter had been born ; whilst not two years later another addition to the royal nursery was made, in the person of the future James II. It was some weeks before this last event that Charles' coronation took place in Edinburgh, Henrietta being, as before, firm in her refusal to share in the ceremony.

Religious feeling ran high in Scotland. Episcopacy,

formally abolished in 1592, though restored by James after his accession to the English throne, had never regained its hold on the mass of the people ; and any attempt to impose upon them rites and ceremonies savouring of the Church thrown down in the preceding century was certain to rouse indignation even more fierce than in England. But neither tact nor forbearance was to be expected from Charles or from his adviser in matters ecclesiastical, the Bishop of London, soon to become Primate. As if blindly determined to run counter to the most cherished prejudices of his subjects in every part of his kingdom, he threw down the gauntlet on this first occasion of his meeting with his Scottish subjects. Laud, by whom he was accompanied, not only delivered a sermon from Knox's pulpit in favour of conformity and ceremonial, but treated the Archbishop of Glasgow, who entertained conscientious scruples as to the use of vestments, with arrogant insolence. a Are you a churchman, and want the coat of your order ? " he is reported to have said, thrusting him back, and replacing him with a more compliant prelate.

In the Scottish Parliament, notwithstanding the loyal enthusiasm greeting Charles' visit to the kingdom, there had not been lacking signs of the presence of the same spirit displayed at Westminster; and though Charles succeeded for the moment in overriding opposition, he must have felt that the display of independence boded ill for the future. All things considered, he was probably not sorry to leave the ancient city where his forefathers had borne sway, and to turn his face once more southwards. He was also impatient to reach home. The latter part of his journey was hurriedly performed ; and, avoiding the delay belonging to a public entry into London, he crossed the river at Blackwall, took the VOL. i. 9

Queen by surprise, and presented himself, before she had expected him, at Greenwich. There is no doubt that he was joyfully received. The weather had been sad, wrote a correspondent to the Queen of Bohemia, his sister, since the King's absence, and the Queen a perfect mourning turtle.

Henrietta had not been without business to settle during his absence, Lord Goring in this case having become involved in the dispute.

When the King was already on his way to Scotland, the English agent of his sister, one Sir Francis Nethersole, had applied to him for leave to raise money by an appeal for voluntary contributions to assist the Queen of Bohemia, now a widow, in the recovery of her son's inheritance. Obtaining the permission he sought, he proceeded at once to negotiate the matter with more zeal than prudence ; and growing alarmed at the discovery that, though intended to be kept secret, the business had become public property, he taxed Goring with betrayal of confidence. Goring, as a member of the Queen's household, referred the accusation to his mistress, and Henrietta ranged herself on the side of her servant. In the end the King, thinking better of the permission he had accorded for the levying of money, decided to cancel it, and furthermore ordered Nethersole to make due apology to Goring. Thus the affair was concluded, though not without sufficient tedious correspondence to warrant a wiser adviser than Nethersole, Sir Thomas Roe, in telling the Queen of Bohemia that he feared the fashion after which the business had been conducted might reflect upon her Majesty. Too much pragmatique and brouillerie might turn to her disservice. When weariness begins, affection ceases. One cannot but believe that Sir Thomas was right, and further that, where

Nethersole had the management of affairs, weariness was not far off.

When, after the King's return, Henrietta's confinement took place, the usual struggle was carried on over the cradle. The nurse was a Catholic, and, offered the oath of allegiance, refused to take it, " whereupon there grew a great noise both in the town and court, and the Queen afflicted herself with extreme passion upon knowledge of a resolution to change the woman. Yet, after much tampering with the nurse to convert her, she was let alone to quiet the Queen."