The life of Queen Henrietta Maria (28 page)

The old Queen was probably ready to go. England had proved far from the harbour of shelter and tranquillity she had anticipated when she had forced her way thither; and not a month before her departure Parliament had given an example of the treatment Catholics were to expect when its authority should become paramount, by hanging an aged priest, who met his death in the spirit of a martyr, the Portuguese

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ambassador assisting at the last scene, and bringing with him a painter, so that a portrait of the victim might remain to show the world that heroes still existed. Marie de Medicis and her unpopular suite may well have been glad to leave the country.

CHAPTER XII 1641—1642

The Queen at Oatlands—Henrietta and Parliament—Rumoured plot— The Irish rising—Charles' return—His reception in London—Riots in London—The Remonstrance—Henrietta's unpacific attitude— Rumoured impeachment of the Queen—The five members—King and Queen leave London—Professions of the Prince of Orange—Digby's intercepted letter—The Queen takes the Princess to Holland.

THE King's absence in Scotland lasted three months, a period spent by Henrietta at Oatlands, the dower-house of English queens, destroyed during the civil war. Thither she resorted, when her mother had left England, taking with her her children. Thither, too—or rather, to a house of his own three miles distant —came Sir Edward Nicholas, clerk of the Council and a faithful servant of the King's, charged with the duty of acting as his secretary, and of keeping up constant communication with the Queen. Every day, or every second day, he repaired to Oatlands itself, to receive her orders, to transmit letters from the King, and to take charge of those from herself for which Charles was looking so eagerly during his absence in Scotland.

It was apparently the King's habit to send back the secretary's despatches, answered by marginal notes. In these annotations Henrietta plays an important part. " Advertise my Wife upon every despatch, that she may (if she will) write, and make one when and as often as she will command you," ran the King's initial

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instructions. Henrietta was to be consulted on every point, from the pledging in Holland of Charles' great collar of rubies to important matters of State. There was no fear of conflicting orders. On one occasion, Nicholas, a little uneasy at the Queen's detention of a letter enclosed by the King for the Lord Keeper, expresses a hope that he has done his duty in obeying her. " Ye are very right," is the King's reassuring note. Occasionally Sir Edward is the medium of gentle reproaches for Henrietta's slackness in writing. " This despatch I received this morning, but tell my wife 1 have found fault with you because none of hers was within it." Or, again, Charles expresses his wonder at her silence, " for all this last month every third day at furthest I have written to her." Presently Nicholas reports that he has told the Queen that he has been blamed because in several despatches none from her hand were enclosed, and that she now sent, in recompense, two together. " Tell her," is the King's comment, " that this double amends is abundant satisfaction."

At first the good news of Charles' favourable reception in Edinburgh must have raised Henrietta's spirits, appearing as it did to promise success in the object which had been the motive of his journey—namely, that of enlisting Scottish sympathies on his behalf. As the weeks went by the prospect darkened in the north ; whilst in England public feeling was excited to a high degree by the discovery of a second abortive army plot, concerning which information had reached the ears of Parliament. Holland, in command of the northern troops, and irritated by a refusal on the part of the King to place a barony at his disposal for sale, had returned to London with vague hints of fresh attempts to tamper with the army, and had assumed the attitude of

an avowed partisan of the Parliamentary party, repeating all in his power likely to be disadvantageous to the King. " That busy stateswoman," too—to quote the description given by Warwick of Lady Carlisle—whilst transferring her allegiance to the Puritan leader, Pym, and " become such a she-saint, that she frequented their sermons and took notes," had adroitly contrived to maintain her credit at court, and being in constant communication with the Queen, was not likely to prove reticent as to the hopes entertained by Henrietta with regard to Charles' visit to Scotland.

The atmosphere of suspicion prevailing in the House found expression in an attempt to interfere with the arrangements of the royal household. The Prince of Wales, it was complained, who should more properly have remained under the charge of his present governor, the Marquis of Hertford, at Richmond, was too often with his mother, from whom he would get no good in body or soul, and Lord Holland was commissioned to acquaint the Queen with the views of the House on the subject—receiving, to quote Nicholas' report, a a very wise and discreet answer" from Henrietta. In the Queen's own version of the incident, given to Madame de Motteville, she included all her children in the designs of Parliament, stating that she had received an intimation that they would be better bestowed in its own hands during the absence of the King, since they were learning nothing, and it was also feared that she would make Papists of them. To this message she had replied that the Houses were mistaken, that the Princes had masters and governors, and that, well knowing that such was not the King's will, she should not turn them into Papists.

In Henrietta's narrative an occurrence belonging to

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this period is described, which, though probably exaggerated in importance, can scarcely have failed to be founded upon fact. Reports had reached her ears that it was intended to carry her off, these rumours being corroborated by warnings conveyed to her by a gentleman in the neighbourhood. According to her informant, he had received orders from Parliament to call together a number of the militia (paysans armes\ and, thus accompanied, to meet at midnight in Oatlands Park a body of cavalry and officers, from whom he would receive further directions. The person to whom these orders had been given chancing to be Royalist in his sympathies, applied to the Queen herself for instructions ; whereupon Henrietta, having sent post-haste to London for those of her servants and friends upon whom she could rely—Lord Digby, in particular, collecting a body of a hundred gentlemen to act as her personal guard—awaited the event. Nothing appears to have come of the affair. The Queen received, on the contrary, apologies for the directions issued to the militia, each member of Parliament disclaiming complicity in the matter. In the existing condition of public feeling, designs upon the person of the Queen may have been formed without the connivance of the responsible leaders of the popular party, and the precautionary measures taken may have availed to render them futile. Her assertion that she had directed Goring, who had by this time returned to his allegiance, to hold himself in readiness to receive her at Portsmouth should she be compelled to take refuge there, is corroborated by a letter read in the House of Commons, to the effect that communications were constantly passing between Oatlands and that seaport. It is clear that though its governor, called to account, stoutly denied the charges against him, he was, VOL. i. 16

as before, playing a double game. It was difficult for the Queen to know in whom to confide. " I am so ill provided with persons that I dare trust," she wrote to Nicholas with regard to a letter to be sent to the King, " that at this instant I have no living creature that I dare send "—a lonely position for the woman who, but two or three years ago, had been surrounded by courtiers vying with each other to do her pleasure.

Party spirit was rising higher and higher, in Parliament and outside it. Religious extravagance had taken strange and rapid developments, the line marking the separation of the upholders of Church government from the Puritan sects becoming more sharply defined every day. The House of Commons, after a short recess, was once more busy, and the Grand Remonstrance was in preparation. On November ist news reached London well calculated to inflame popular feeling to a yet further extent. This was the intelligence that the Irish peasantry were in arms, on behalf of neither King nor Parliament, but with the object of vindicating their right to their own country, and of driving out the English settlers who had robbed them of their inheritance.

Into the ghastly details of their vengeance it is not necessary to enter. Grossly as they were exaggerated, the actual facts were amply sufficient to create a condition of panic and to excite public sentiment still more against the Catholic Queen, and to prove fatal to any remnants of toleration accorded to her English coreligionists. Already, in September, Nicholas had pressed upon his master the wisdom of taking the initiative in the dismissal of the Queen's Capuchins, before Parliament should proceed in the matter ; but though Charles would have been willing enough to act upon his secretary's advice, there were difficulties in the way. " I know not

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what to say," he replied to the suggestion, " if it be not to advertise my wife of the Parliament's intentions concerning her Capuchins, and so first to hear what she will say." Nothing had been done, and it can scarcely be doubted that the monks were now in imminent danger. Other priests had been apprehended, to be proceeded against according to the law ; and before much longer those belonging to the Queen's household, their chapel closed, were prisoners in their own house.

Yet the very extremes to which party spirit had carried the promoters of reform gave rise to hope. Men who would have been ready to throw in their lot with the adherents of moderate measures found themselves in a way to be driven back, as they saw all ancient landmarks in danger of obliteration ; and the reception given to Charles by the city of London on his return from Scotland indicated a reaction in his favour.

On November 2Oth the Queen, in her broken English, wrote to acquaint Nicholas with the King's movements. The letter, as a curious proof of how imperfect was her mastery of the language, may be given verbatim : " Maistre Nicholas, I did desire you not to acquaint mi lord of essex of what the King commanded you touching is commin : now you may do it, and tell him that the King will be at Tibols [Theobalds] vendnesday and shall lye there and upond thursday he shall dine at my lord Maiors and lye at Whitthall onlye for one nitgh and upon friday will go to hampton-court where he maenes to stay this vinter : the King commanded me to tell this to my lord of essex but you may doe it, for there Lords ships are to great prinses now to receaved anye directions from mee."

On November 25th the King and Queen, with the Prince, made their entry into London. The loyal

welcome accorded them may well have sent a thrill of hope to their hearts. The Lord Mayor was a Royalist; many of the leading citizens disliked the frequent mob disturbances ; and Charles was ready to bid high for the support of London's stronghold. Yet, with an honesty commanding respect, he distinctly excluded matters of religion from his concessions. He had already desired Nicholas to acquaint his friends amongst the Lords that what he had permitted in Scotland was no earnest of a like attitude in the south—that he was constant to the discipline and doctrine of the Church of England, and resolved by the grace of God to die in the maintenance of it. This declaration he publicly repeated, adding that to it he would prove true " to the hazard of his life, if need be, and of all he held dear." For the moment this uncompromising utterance produced no diminution of enthusiasm ; and after a banquet and procession the royal party returned to Whitehall, accompanied by loyal shouts for King Charles and Queen Mary.

It was not strange that such a reception should have been taken as a presage of better fortune; but the hopes it had raised were quickly overcast. Whatever might be the attitude of the wealthier and more substantial citizens, of mayor and aldermen, the sympathies of the irresponsible majority were vehemently enlisted on the side of the popular leaders. Riots around Westminster and Whitehall, to which, after a visit to Hampton Court, the King and Queen had returned, were of frequent occurrence, nor was the House of Commons to be turned from its course by the Guildhall demonstration. The Remonstrance prepared and presented to the King, containing an indictment against the whole course of his government, with a recapitulation of popular grievances, was circulated throughout the

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country, in spite of Charles' expressed desire that its publication should be deferred until his answer had been made. That he was ready to maintain the acts already law, to grant besides as much liberty as could justly be required, and to maintain true religion as established, he declared. But the Commons might reasonably suspect that the King's interpretation of these pledges was likely to differ from their own, and they mistrusted the counsellor nearest him at home.

The situation was further complicated by Irish affairs. It was whispered that the Queen was not free from complicity in the scenes taking place across the Channel ; and though in this instance she was guiltless, her attitude in general was not such as to rebut suspicion. Whitehall was furnished with spies, and it must have been well known that her influence was ever exerted in favour of resistance, where resistance was possible, to the popular demands. Again and again the fact is deplored by her sister-in-law, the Queen of Bohemia, echoing the opinions of her eldest son. " The Queen doth all," she wrote a little later to Sir Thomas Roe. " My son advised [the King] to a reconcilement with the Parliament ; but the Queen would not hear of it, under pretence that the Parliament would ask dishonourable conditions."

The sequel shows that Charles' own views and his nephew's on the question of honour may have differed ; but it was naturally upon her sister-in-law that Elizabeth would throw the blame for the rejection of the young man's counsels of prudence. It was also true that the concessions wrested from Charles had touched Henrietta too closely in the matter of religion to render her easily accessible to the conviction that it only remained to stem, by what constitutional resistance was

possible, the course of revolution. " The truth is," wrote Sir Thomas Smith to Pennington in discreet generalities, " there is such fashions at court that, if some might be hearkened to, the King should lose all the best friends and servants he hath." Personal rancour mingled with Henrietta's opposition to those she suspected of popular sympathies. If Holland, she declared with the bitterness of estranged affection, retained his places at court, she would never live there.

Yet for the present the King kept his head, and acted with caution and prudence. Vane had been dismissed from the secretaryship, to be replaced soon after by Viscount Falkland, a moderate Royalist. Culpepper was made Chancellor. Both appointments were of men not liable to be suspected of extreme opinions, and if, as her sister-in-law asserted, Henrietta was responsible for Vane's dismissal—as she had unfortunately been for his appointment—it could scarcely have been expected that the services of a man so halfhearted in the royal cause should have been retained. But the very fact that the Queen's hand had been traceable in the step was sufficient to discredit its wisdom. " The Queen doth govern all the King's affairs," grumbled his sister again to her confidant, Roe ; " then you can guess the rest, and this is the cause of Vane losing his secretary's place."

All through December matters were going from bad to worse. The Irish news was increasingly threatening. The Catholic Lords and the Irish Parliament had opened communications with the revolted peasantry ; and the Catholic Lords, as was known or suspected, had been also in communication with the King. Lord Dillon, come to London with an offer from the Dublin malcontents to maintain the royal authority on condition

of the concession of religious liberty and parliamentary independence, was arrested and examined before a committee of the House of Commons ; when part, at least, of the scheme he was to propose transpired.

Between the King and Parliament, and within Parliament itself, the struggle became more violent. That the impeachment of the popular leaders had been the subject of discussion at Whitehall was known ; and it must have been clear to Pym, Hampden, and the rest that they were fighting, not for the liberties of the country alone, but for their own lives. The mob was daily growing more uncontrolled around Westminster and Whitehall, and frays had taken place between Roundheads and Cavaliers—terms now coming into use—in which blood had been shed. The religious question, and in especial the exclusion of the bishops from Parliament, was vehemently debated ; and by the end of December the protest of eleven of the bench, to the effect that, being unable safely to attend in their places in the House of Lords, the proceedings there were rendered invalid, had resulted in the impeachment and imprisonment of the signatories.

But the event finally determining the King upon the adoption of extreme measures did not occur until the beginning of the new year. This was the spread of a report, true or false, better calculated than any other to rouse him both to fear and to indignation. It was said that it was the intention of Parliament to impeach the Queen herself, on the double charge of having conspired against the public liberties and of having held intelligence with the Irish rebels.

The intention thus imputed to them was afterwards explicitly denied by the House of Commons, a message being sent to desire the Queen to vindicate them from

the aspersion and to make known the authors of the report. Henrietta, in reply, whilst admitting that such a rumour had reached her ears, added that, having no certain author, she had given little credit thereunto ; and she accepted as conclusive the assurance of the House that it was unfounded. She could do no less ; but it is unlikely that her disclaimer was true. According to Clarendon, a distinct endeavour had been made by certain of the popular party, by playing on her nervous fears—her " extreme apprehension " of danger—to drive her to some act which might turn to their own advantage. It has been shown that, as the same authority observes, there were those amongst the party opposed to the court—such as Holland and Lady Carlisle—" who exactly knew her nature, passions, and infirmities," and knew, too, how to make use of their acquaintance with them.

Nor was there anything antecedently 'impossible in the impeachment of the unpopular Queen, following upon that of Charles' most faithful servant; whilst it has been suggested that Henrietta must have been only too well aware of the multitude of charges which, should the whole truth transpire, might be preferred against her—charges of secret practices carried on with the Vatican, of endeavours to stir the King to violent measures, of intrigues with the army and with foreign powers. It was no wonder if, weakened by the strain and stress of the past months, her courage gave way, and she shrank from what the future might hold. Charles, for his part, was no coward, but danger to the Queen was his vulnerable point. The mere possibility of her conduct being called in question was sufficient to influence his line of action to a dangerous extent ; nor was it strange that, under the circumstances, he should

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lose the coolness essential at the present juncture. Henrietta would have given him her version of what had taken place at Oatlands during his absence in Scotland. To the evidence thus afforded of designs against her more was added. According to a petition of Parliament dealing with the subject, a gathering at Kensington was reported to have taken place, when Lord Newport had answered, in reference to an alleged plot of the King's own, " If there be such a plot, yet here are his wife and children." Questioned by Charles, Newport had denied that he had ever heard of a design for seizing the Queen and her children ; but if the account of his interview with the King furnished by him to Parliament was true, Charles had not believed him. " He was sorry," his master had said,

Digby, too, was at hand—rash, imprudent, zealous, devoted to the Queen's person and to the royal cause,

and with no popularity of his own to hazard. It is this counsellor who has been generally credited with the suggestion, disastrously acted upon, that Charles should take the initiative by dealing a counter-stroke in the impeachment of the five members chiefly responsible for recent events. On January 3rd, Pym, Hampden, Holies, Haslerigg, and Strode—with Lord Kimbolton in the upper House—were charged by the King's orders with high treason. On the following day he took the more fatal step of invading the privileges of Parliament by going in person to the House of Commons to arrest them.

Upon Henrietta's share in this episode her own narrative, in spite of its usual inaccuracies, throws most light. She did not attempt to screen herself from the blame attaching to her imprudence. To that imprudence there seems no reason to doubt that it was owing in part that the King's blow missed its aim. The details of the scenes taking place in the interior of Whitehall may be inexact, but a comparison of the different accounts probably supplies a picture sufficiently near the truth. It is said that in the morning Charles had hesitated as to the wisdom of the course decided upon the previous night in consultation with Digby and the Queen ; but that Henrietta was firm in holding him to his purpose.