The life of Queen Henrietta Maria (3 page)

Marguerite de Valois, his father's divorced wife, was the godmother chosen for Monsieur, whilst Henrietta's sponsors were her own eldest sister and the Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld.

Marie de Medicis—the fat banker, as she was called by her insolent rival, Madame de Verneuil, in allusion to her Medicean origin—was a devoted mother, and accustomed to bestow her personal supervision upon the training of her sons and daughters. It was her endeavour to inspire them from the first with a high conception of their own importance, causing them early to receive the visits of ambassadors and other personages of rank, and only allowing access to her son, even

whilst he was still Dauphin, to those prepared to pay due respect to his position and prospects.

Such a system was not calculated to lighten the labours of the officials entrusted with the education of the children, and to judge by Heroard's account of the relations of the little Dauphin with the gouvernante, Madame de Monglat, collisions of the child's will with lawful authority were not infrequent. It is said, nevertheless, that her charges remained much attached to this lady ; and to her daughter, Madame de Saint-George, Henrietta clung in after life with characteristic tenacity of affection. It is to the gouvernante that the first letter from her pen, preserved at St. Petersburg, is addressed, containing an affectionate apology for some childish outbreak.

" Mamangat," wrote the penitent Princess, " I pray you to excuse me if you perceived the little verttngo which had possession of me this morning. I cannot be good all at once, but I will do all I can to content you ; and I pray you to be no longer angry with me, who am and will be all my life, Mamangat, your affectionate friend, Henriette."

Of her relations with the preceptor, M. de Breves, by whom her education, with that of her brother, Gaston, was superintended, less is known. It is certain that, to her lasting regret in after years, she profited but little by his instructions. Had she displayed more ardour in the pursuit of knowledge than was the case, it would have been no easy matter, under the circumstances, to acquire it. The spoilt child of her mother, and doubtless of her mother's court, lessons must have been constantly subject to interruptions from the state ceremonials in which she continued to take her part. At six years old she was present at Bordeaux when her sister Elisabeth

was handed over to her boy-bridegroom, Philip of Spain, and the Infanta, Anne of Austria, became Queen of France ; and she also assisted at the grand entry into Paris in honour of the reconciliation between Marie de Medicis and the princes of the blood. The prominence given to the child upon these occasions has been considered to demand an explanation ; and it has been suggested that her mother sought to make capital out of her youngest daughter's popularity to counterbalance the dislike entertained by the French people for herself.

Marie's pre-eminence in the State was not of long duration. When Henrietta was no more than eight it was terminated by her open breach with the young King, and her banishment to Blois.

To the Queen-Mother the blow was crushing. Concini, to whom, in spite of all opposition, she had remained obstinately faithful for close upon twenty years, had been murdered in the streets of Paris. His wife, her foster-sister and constant companion, was publicly executed two] months later. The reins of government were violently wrested from her hands, to be transferred to those of her son's upstart favourite, de Luynes ; and she herself, ambitious and power-loving, was reduced, after seven years of supremacy, to watch, in helpless inaction, the course of events.

The change, so far as the Queen-Mother was concerned, was startlingly complete. It must also have taken effect upon her little daughter. During the period when Henrietta was keeping her mother company in her forced retreat, the two cannot have failed to be more intimately associated than was possible whilst the Regent had been absorbed by affairs of State. In those earlier days the younger children had for the most part remained at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, paying only occasional visits to Paris ;

From a contemporary picture by an unknown painter.

HENRIETTA MARIA AND HER SISTER.

but mother and daughter must now have been thrown constantly together, and whilst the affection of the child was thereby concentrated and developed, Marie will have enjoyed exceptional opportunities of impressing upon her the lessons she conceived it well that she should learn, and of laying the foundations of an influence maintained and strengthened in later years. If, in the purity of her after-life, Henrietta presented a singular contrast to the standard of morals prevailing at the French court, the effect of Marie de Medicis' tutelage was nevertheless markedly and unhappily apparent in the future. Unlike her mother in much, the two were united by a bond of love unaffected by time or separation ; and to it may be traced, not too fancifully, many of the articles of those creeds, political and religious, which contributed so materially to wreck the cause of monarchy in her adopted country.

The period spent by Henrietta in comparative retirement at Blois was not unduly prolonged ; yet, in a century when womanhood was apt to be lamentably ante-dated, it may be assumed that, with her strain of Italian blood and the training received in the hothouse atmosphere of the French court, she had already begun to leave her childhood behind her when she next emerges into sight. This was in Paris, at the marriage of her sister Christine with the Duke of Savoy. It is said that Saint Francis de Sales, watching the child on this occasion and noting her pleasure at the sight of the bridal pageant, took the opportunity of pointing a moral. A more solid glory, he told her, would one day be hers, hazarding the further prediction that she was destined by God to uphold in the future the glory of His Church.

Whether the saint or the biographer was responsible VOL. i. 2

for the prophecy, the thoughts of the little Princess appear to have been occupied at the moment with more mundane matters. The marriages at which she had successively assisted, when the chief actors had been little older than herself, may naturally have directed her speculations to her own matrimonial prospects; and it is recorded in an early biography that, after this marriage, " she durst not follow her mother to the displeasure of her brother, lest she might injure her own." It is possible that she was given no choice in the matter. As the sole remaining marriageable daughter of France she had materially gained in importance, and Louis and his advisers may have preferred to withdraw her from the hostile influence of the Queen-Mother. It is certain that not until a final reconciliation took place in the following year between Marie de Medicis and her son was Henrietta restored to her care.

In the meantime, her transference from Blois to the Louvre was a change not likely, in spite of the separation involved, to prove altogether distasteful to the gay little girl. Judging by the woman she afterwards became, she will have been, at eleven, an eager and interested spectator of all that was going forward and of the vivid life of the day—a time when a sentiment took rank as an affair of State, and the fate of a nation might be determined by a love-affair.

Of amusement and entertainment there would have been no lack. If Anne of Austria, in religious matters, was a congenial companion to the pupil of the saintly Carmelite, Mere Madeleine, to whom Henrietta had been taught to refer the solution of spiritual problems, she was also gay, fond of innocent diversion, and one of the most beautiful women of a day when beauty, in men and women alike, was a force to be reckoned with. At

this time, too, peace and harmony prevailed at the palace. Anne, it was true, had begun her married life with a robust hatred of her husband's favourite, the Due de Luynes ; but she had afterwards conceived so strong an affection for his wife, better known by her later title as the Duchesse de Chevreuse, that, not altogether to her own advantage or profit, she had adopted her as her chosen companion and friend, thus sealing a treaty of amity in which the Duke was included. To a court, therefore, that, " if lacking in prudence, was not lacking in joy, since youth and beauty reigned there supreme," Henrietta, after her three years of partial seclusion, was introduced.

Until the question of her marriage brought her into prominence it is left chiefly to the imagination to form a conception of the child destined to play so important a part in English history. But it was not long before that question was raised. In the year 1619, gravely weighing the risk to her prospects should she give offence to her brother, Henrietta is represented as electing to remain at Paris rather than return to share her mother's retirement. By the following year the selection of her husband was under practical consideration.

A singular unanimity prevailed in France as to the desirability of cementing an .alliance with England by means of a marriage between Henri-Quatre's youngest daughter and the heir to the British throne. The Due de Luynes, still all-powerful with the King, had set his heart upon the plan ; the Prince de Conde concurred in his views ; and the Queen-Mother, on the recovery of her position and authority, likewise pronounced herself in favour of the design, the line adopted by her being doubtless dictated by Richelieu,

HENRIETTA MARIA

then rising to paramount power in the State. Three hostile forces were ranged against him: the great nobles to whom, as an upstart adventurer, he was scarcely less obnoxious than his early patron, Concini; the Huguenots, always a threatening and disturbing element in the country ; and the House of Austria. With a view to securing an ally in the event of a struggle with the last, and of weakening the hands of the Protestant party at home, the great ecclesiastic was ready, in spite of opposition from Rome, to effect an alliance with the most powerful anti-Catholic power in Europe.

But if it was mainly through his influence that the marriage eventually took place, Richelieu was not responsible for the abortive attempts to arrange the matter set on foot by the Due de Luynes in 1620. These preliminary proceedings were, indeed, conducted after a fashion calculated to rouse the contempt of so consummate a diplomatist. It was well known that James was bent upon an alliance with Spain, hoping by that means to regain for his son-in-law, the Elector Palatine, the dominions of which he had been deprived by the House of Austria. The negotiations had gone so far as to render it practically impossible, even had such been his desire, to withdraw. Yet it was at this juncture that an envoy of no great weight or rank, named Du Buisson, was despatched to England to sound the King on the question of the French marriage. The enterprise was not likely to be attended with success.

The Comte de Tillieres, ambassador then accredited to the court of St. James, has recorded, with the animus of an official passed over in a matter of importance, the history of Du Buisson's mission, and its result.

A purchase of horses for the Prince de Conde's

stables had served as a pretext for the envoy's visit to England, and the ambassador, though not without suspicions of the fictitious nature of the errand, obeyed his instructions by facilitating the business in hand, and deputed his secretary to conduct the interloper to the King. The event must have gone far to console de Tillieres for his scurvy treatment. Du Buisson was indeed received with courtesy at court ; but when he had introduced, after a blundering fashion totally inconsistent with diplomatic adroitness, the proposals with which he had come charged, the King replied that, whilst sensible of the honour done him by an offer he would gladly have accepted under other circumstances, he was too far pledged to Spain to enter at present upon fresh negotiations. The reply was a practical refusal.

When James, out hunting, communicated the matter to de Tillieres, the Count did his best to save the dignity of France. Du Buisson's proposal, he assured the King, was quite unauthorised. It was not the custom, he added loftily, to seek husbands for the daughters of France. It was for any prince who desired to wed them to make the first advances, and de Tillieres had no doubt that he would be charged with his master's disavowal of what had taken place.

The disavowal was promptly authorised, and there the matter might have ended. But de Luynes was not to be so easily discouraged. Throwing the blame of the miscarriage upon his agent, he determined upon another attempt, his own brother, the Marechal de Cadenet, being now charged with the delicate mission. Though proceeding with more caution than Du Buisson, de Cadenet met with no better success. Buckingham and his subordinate, Doncaster, showed themselves so unfavourably

disposed towards a re-opening of the question that the envoy did not so much as dare to broach it to the King, and took his departure, having failed in his object, and, moreover, offended all the susceptibilities of the Comte de Tillieres by the arrogance of an upstart, coupled with a determination to learn nothing from the lessons in manners and diplomacy which the ambassador was desirous of giving him.

On de Tillieres' return to London, after speeding the unwelcome guest on his homeward journey, the good effects of the mission, he observes ironically, were apparent. Friends of France were in disgrace for having lent a favourable ear to the marriage project ; James, instigated by the Spanish ambassador, had taken umbrage at de Cadenet's proceedings, and the Spanish negotiations were more advanced than before. Fate and diplomacy appeared to have joined hands to keep the crown of England from Henrietta's head. It might have been to her advantage had they succeeded.