The life of Queen Henrietta Maria (23 page)

Hamilton's mission of pacification to the north had ended in total failure. Charles had been prepared to make large concessions ; but the fighting spirit, once roused, is not easily quelled, and the Covenanters had ceased to be in the mood to accept any moderate terms of compromise. It was becoming plain that, if Scotland was to be reduced to submission, resort must be had to arms. Preparations for war were accordingly carried on with as much speed and vigour as was consistent with the exhausted condition of the Royal Exchequer. The lack of ready money was a serious obstacle, nor were means of raising funds easily to be devised. It might be well for Wentworth, in advocating drastic measures of repression, to assert that the King's servants would be ready, in defence of his rights, to impoverish themselves and their children. In speaking for himself he was sincere. But there were few like him, and men of the nature of the trimmer Holland, soon to show his worthless-ness as a support in times of trouble, or like Hamilton, already anticipating his own ruin should the struggle with his countrymen be carried to extremities, or like the Percy family, high in the Queen's favour as they were—were not inclined to strip themselves of their wealth on the King's behalf; whilst the nation at large would be still less disposed to provide funds to enable a sovereign with whom they themselves were engaged in a struggle to reduce the sister kingdom to submission.

Henrietta exerted herself, in the spring of 1639, to obtain money by means of an appeal to the Catholics of England and Wales, and a certain amount was thus raised ; but the sum was scarcely sufficient to counterbalance the probable detriment to the King's popularity caused by the public advertisement of the fact that the adherents of the discarded religion were ranged on his

side ; whilst the old Catholic families themselves were inclined to resent the interference of the new convert, Walter Montagu, and the Roman envoy, Con, in the matter. A similar appeal made by the Queen to the ladies of England met with little or no response. Notwithstanding these difficulties, preparations were pushed actively forward, and by the spring the King's forces were estimated at some 20,000 men. It was true that they were for the most part raw recruits, a request for assistance in the form of a leavening of seasoned soldiers from Flanders having been met with a refusal by the Spanish Government—the Cardinal Infant, approached later on on the same subject, likewise professing his inability to spare any troops. Meantime, it would appear from a " presumed letter " from one fashionable lady to another, written in January and preserved amongst the state papers, that in social circles the coming war was chiefly regarded as serious by reason of the fear lest all the young gallants should go for soldiers, and the ladies lack escorts to their places of entertainment. The same writer is anxious to learn whether sleeves are still worn to the wrists, the mode introduced by the Duchesse de Chevreuse, who must have competed as a guide in such matters with Lady Carlisle, declared by Sir Toby Matthews to take the less interest in discussing fashions since she knew it was in her power to set them.

Notwithstanding the anxious condition of public affairs, court amusements went forward as usual, and in December Northumberland was writing to Leicester in Paris that the King and Queen had begun to practise their masque. <£ A company of worse faces did I never see assembled," added the Lord High Admiral discontentedly, " than the Queen hath got together upon this occasion ; not one new woman amongst them." Yet he

assured his brother-in-law that their Majesties were not less busy than Leicester had formerly seen them in such matters. " The King," he wrote in January, " is daily so employed about the masque as till that be over we shall think of little else."

Before the month was ended the Queen had more serious subjects of preoccupation. A little daughter had been born, only to die ; and u this child," says a contemporary letter, recording the event, " is said to have gone nearer to the Queen than ever any yet did."

Whilst Henrietta mourned her baby, the King was engrossed by other cares. The Queen's assertion that Richelieu was expending large sums in London, in order to foment sedition, is probably, if not a reflection, no more than an exaggeration of Charles' own suspicions ; and the belief that the power of France was secretly employed against him must have been a heavy addition to his genuine causes for anxiety. It had been decided that he was to go north in order to be nearer to the centre of action. Arrangements had to be made for carrying on the Government during his absence, and the newly recruited levies to be provided with officers. In the choice of the men to be placed in military command, Charles displayed a lack of discrimination not uncharacteristic of him in such matters. Military experience, perhaps, after the long peace, was scarcely to be looked for ; but the characters of those selected for the highest posts in the army were not such as to augur well for the success of a campaign.

The Earl of Arundel was made General of the army ; Essex, by no means to his own contentment, exchanged his post of General of the Horse for that of Lieutenant-General under Arundel, the office he vacated being bestowed—by means, it was believed, of the Queen's

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influence, supplemented by that of Hamilton—on Lord Holland, more fitted to fill his former position of groom of the stole and gentleman of the bedchamber. Of these men, Arundel, says Clarendon, was thought to owe his appointment chiefly to his negative qualities. He did not love the Scots ; he did not love the Puritans : but then, too, he did not much love anybody else. He had also attaching to him the suspicion of Catholic proclivities. If Holland, for his part, had as yet given no indication of bad faith, and was deeply indebted to the Queen, " who vouchsafed to own a particular trust in him," neither his life in palaces and courts, nor anything in his character, would have pointed him out for high military command. There remained Hamilton, who was to take a fleet, with troops on board, to the Forth ; and Essex, the most popular man, according to Clarendon, in kingdom and army, but whose zeal in the royal cause, judging by subsequent events, can have been but halfhearted.

If the Queen had a voice in the selection of those entrusted with chief command, she doubtless exercised a like influence, and a disastrous one, upon the choice of men to fill its subordinate posts. Her friends were not at this time such as to furnish the material out of which capable officers are fashioned. Wilmot, afterwards Earl of Rochester, and Goring the younger, to whom much of her confidence was subsequently given, are described by Warwick as u merry • lads," and the description would probably apply to many others whom Henrietta, herself still under thirty, would desire to befriend. That Went-worth, with all his over-weening reverence for her position, should have been firm in the refusal to defer to her wishes in these respects, is proof of his own fitness for authority. A letter of April, 1639, though marked

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by the courtesy he never failed to show her, is expressed after a fashion contrasting sharply with the subservience of the courtiers by whom she was surrounded.

The question at issue was the appointment of the Earl of Desmond to the command of a troop of Irish Horse. When the King had written to the Lord Deputy to desire that the post should be bestowed upon the young man it had been already promised elsewhere ; and understanding that Charles' directions had been sent at the Queen's instance, Wentworth addressed his explanation to her secretary, Wintour, begging him to let his mistress know that he "would receive it as a gracious and singular favour if she would move no more in the matter." The interference was a bad precedent and productive of disorder. " Be you judge," he adds, " whether I ought to be sensible of having young, inexperienced noblemen to be put under me in command," when the need of men of a different stamp was so great. He trusted that Henrietta would approve his action, and that he would be sustained and not thus disabled by her. " If I may by you understand her Majesty's good pleasure," he goes on, " it will be a mighty quietness unto me ; for if once these places of command in the army become suits at court, looked upon as preferments and portions for younger children, the honour of this government and consequently the prosperity of these affairs are lost."

The remonstrance was plain and manly ; and the answer returned by Henrietta furnishes evidence that she bore Wentworth no grudge for his refusal to accede to her wishes. She was by this time beginning to appreciate the value of his perfect loyalty and zealous service, and she was prompt to relieve any anxiety he might have felt as to the consequences of his refusal.

" Monsieur," she wrote, " believe that I shall be glad

on every occasion to show by my actions my desire to oblige you ; it not being my nature to be ungrateful towards those who serve me, as I have always recognised that you have done in regard to my requests." In the Desmond affair she takes the opportunity of showing that, in spite of her engagements, entered into in ignorance, she acts as Wentworth desires, leaving him to do what he can for the young Earl ; since she knows him to be a person of too much honour to wish that, for love of him, she should break the pledges she had already given.

Matters were gathering to a crisis. By the last day of March Charles was at York. The morning of his departure from London he had brought Henrietta to the Lord Admiral, Northumberland, who was to remain behind, " had said she was his jewel, and had committed her to his protection." It was the first long separation of husband and wife, the earnest of many in the future. Whether or not Henrietta had sufficiently grasped the position of affairs as to regard the Scotch difficulty as more than a passing cloud, she must, left behind with her band of little children, have passed many anxious hours. A fast was, by her orders, to be observed amongst the Catholics who frequented her chapel on every Saturday during the King's absence ; whilst prayers were said in the Protestant churches for his good success.

Even amongst the court officials a reflection was not wanting of the widespread disaffection abroad in the country. Lord Ker, son of Lord Roxburgh, having been the bearer of letters from Henrietta to the camp, and proceeding from thence to make a further expedition into Scotland, had come back so deeply imbued with the spirit of the Covenanters that his father, though assured by the King that he acquitted him of personal guilt,

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was consigned to prison as an example to others. Writing to Wentworth in May, Garrard, the Master of the Charterhouse, reports the occurrence, adding that Lady Roxburgh, " governess here of some of the King's children, laments, keeps her bed, cannot be comforted to hear how her only son hath played the fool in turning Covenanter ; and to know her Lord, now in his old age, to be in the King's displeasure, and cast into prison." Charles' own Scotch grooms appear to have betrayed his secrets to the insurgent leaders, and it must have been difficult to feel any certainty as to the trustworthiness of individual dependants.

From York Charles had, against the advice of some of his counsellors, proceeded further north. It was at Berwick that he was driven to recognise the impossibility of forcing submission at the point of the sword, or of successfully carrying the war into Scotland and opposing an army of raw recruits, for whom he had no prospect of obtaining means of maintenance, to the organised forces led by the veteran Leslie, and supported by a whole people described by Verney as " strangely united." Even now it is probable that the King had arrived at no adequate comprehension of the fact to which he had obstinately blinded himself, that it was with a nation, not with a faction, that he had to deal. For the present he had no choice but to bow to necessity. On June i8th the Treaty of Berwick was signed, virtually conceding to the insurgents the whole of their demands. The war, for the time, was at an end.

Whatever may have been the view taken by sagacious and serious politicians of the result of the first actual trial of strength between Charles and his people, Henrietta must have rejoiced that personal risk to the King was for the present at an end. In her anxiety

for his safety, and at the suggestion of the Duchesse de Chevreuse, always ready for adventure, she had proposed to join her husband in the camp, in the hope that she might exert her influence to enforce prudence upon him. But though the alternative of welcoming him back to London must have been joyfully hailed by her—Con, the papal agent, reported the brightness of her face—it appears clear from Madame de Motteville's narrative that, as a matter of policy, she regretted the peace. " La Reine d'Angleterre n'etait point d'avis de cette paix." Neither, it is added, was the Archbishop of Canterbury, nor the Lord Deputy of Ireland.

The King had been detained at Berwick for some weeks after the treaty had been signed. But by August 3rd he was in London, having travelled by post with extraordinary speed and ridden two hundred and sixty miles in four days. Once before, on his return from his Scotch coronation, he had hurried home so rapidly as to take his wife by surprise. But on this second occasion the gladness of the meeting must have been marred by the circumstances attending it. In the short time that had elapsed since the treaty had been signed the horizon had become once again overcast ; and the irritation existing in the King's mind towards the Scottish leaders found expression on the very day after his arrival in London. A paper had been circulated in England purporting to contain an account of certain conversations between themselves and the King when they had visited him at Berwick. In this document Charles conceived that he had been grossly misrepresented, and he took the extreme step of showing his displeasure by directing that it should be burnt by the hands of the common hangman.

That Marie de Medicis and her train were increasing

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his financial and political difficulties by their continued presence at St. James' must have yet further contributed to alloy Charles' satisfaction in returning home. Jermyn, the Queen's favourite, had been sent to Paris, to carry on the negotiations with regard to her mother's return which the French ambassador had declined to conduct. But Richelieu had proved inexorable; and in reply to a letter addressed to her brother by Henrietta, Louis had answered that, though he had never been wanting in good feeling towards the Queen-Mother, her intriguing propensities were such that he could arrive at no determination concerning her until a solid peace should be established between himself and other European powers. It was an explicit refusal. Henrietta, nevertheless, refusing to be discouraged, persevered in her attempts to move her brother from his determination. Availing herself of the pretext of some delicacy of health left by her late confinement, she craved permission to pay a visit to the French court, in order to try the effect of her native air. Richelieu had no intention of permitting her the opportunity of mediating in person, and Louis delayed his reply till he was in a position to say that, as he was on the point of leaving Paris, it was impossible for him to have the happiness of offering her a welcome there. On Charles' return from the north he will, therefore, have found the self-invited guest as firmly established as ever in London, and the chances of her departure thence in no wise increased.