The life of Queen Henrietta Maria (31 page)

Occasionally her letters are couched in a lighter strain : " I must confess the truth concerning my weakness. It is that though I entertain no doubt of your affection for me, I am nevertheless not sorry to see in your letters the flattery you have placed there regarding the little services that I render you where I am. That they are acceptable to you gives me such great contentment that I cannot express it ; and if anything could increase my affection and my zeal for your service it would be this, for you know that I love flattery. But it is not possible."

There is no space to multiply quotations. The few that have been given will serve as examples of the letters received by Charles—letters of admonition and advice, of blame, of love, and of devotion—during the year of separation. They form a singular commentary upon sneers such as that contained in a letter from Lady Sussex to Sir R. Verney. " The Queen," she wrote, " is pleased if she have so many favourites with her. I doubt we shall all fare the worse for it."

It was true that Henrietta had served, in spite of Dutch prohibitions, as a rallying-point for many of the " pauvres traistres," as she terms the fugitive Royalists. Her original train had consisted only of Lord Arundel, Lord Goring —whose son was still holding Portsmouth for the King— the Duchess of Richmond, Lady Denbigh, and Lady

Roxburgh, with some few others. But to these had been added Lord Digby, Jermyn, Henry Percy, Finch, and it would seem Windebank, all busily engaged in the same endeavour to obtain money and arms and to convey them in safety to England.

This last was no easy matter. The Prince of Orange was favourable to the royal cause, and had exerted himself to induce the States to interpose in the quarrel. But the latter, says Clarendon, " were so far from being inclined to the King that they did him all the mischief they could." Spies were as plentiful at the Hague as before at Whitehall, and the Queen's movements were carefully watched ; whilst a fleet, placed under the command of the Earl of Warwick, was ready at hand to do its best to prevent letters or assistance from reaching the royal quarters. At the same time, the fact that Henrietta was permitted to remain at the Hague, to raise large sums of money with the manifest view of placing them at the King's disposal, and to despatch supplies of arms and ammunition to England, tends to throw some doubt upon the sincerity of the " affections to the Parliament" with which Clarendon credits the Dutch authorities ; nor does it appear that the agent, Walter Strickland, sent to the Hague with the object of stirring them to more active opposition to Henrietta's schemes, met with any great success. In spite of all precautions, communication, though sometimes intermitted, was frequent between King and Queen, the channel being now some trusty cavalier, now one of the " favourites " credited by Lady Sussex with contributing to Henrietta's pleasures abroad.

On August 2jrd the royal standard was set up at Nottingham, and civil war was formally proclaimed. The ceremony took place at six o'clock on a stormy and

tempestuous evening. Melancholy men, says Clarendon, observed many ill presages. The royal force was small, a general sadness covered the town, whilst the standard was blown down the same night, nor could it be set up again until the storm had subsided.

One source of comfort the King must have had in the arrival of his nephew, Rupert. The Prince Palatine had been with his uncle during the earlier part of the year, but had prudently returned to the Hague, where Parliament presently sent to thank him for having quitted England. " A cette heure," writes the Queen, " il ne luy a pas respondu." The language suggests a suspicion on her part that a polite answer might yet be made ; and in communicating to the King a suggestion of the Prince's that he should visit Denmark on his uncle's behalf, Henrietta adds her own doubts whether Charles would wish to avail himself of the offer, and whether those about his nephew would be likely to prove trustworthy, " car vous saves quelle est la personne qu'il est par luy-mesme."

Rupert was of quite another temper ; and almost at the moment that his brother was leaving England, was on his way to join the King. Already appointed General of the royal Horse, he would have been at his post still earlier had he not been detained by contrary winds, the store-ship with its cargo of supplies accompanying him having been driven ashore. The Stadtholder subsequently furnished a frigate, with a galliot for stores ; and, with his brother Maurice and Lord Digby, he had now succeeded in making his way to Charles. In announcing the departure of his nephew from Holland, Henrietta gives the King a word of warning :

" It is not necessary that I should commend him to you ; for he goes with a great desire to serve you.

Only, a counsellor must be placed at his side ; for, believe me, he is still very young and wild \_estourdy~\. I have had experience of it ; wherefore I have thought it well to advertise you thereof."

Two or three mentions of the Prince occurring about this time in letters of the Roundhead Nehemiah Wharton, show him inaugurating his campaign. As early as September I3th, it seems that he had earned the epithet of " Prince Rupert, that diabolical Cavalier " ; whilst a graphic picture is given of his entry into Worcester at the head of his troops, " most of the citizens crying, 'Welcome, welcome,' but principally the Mayor, who desired to entertain him. But he answered, ' God damn him, he would not stay, but would go wash his hands in the blood of Roundheads.'' The King had one hot-headed partisan of his own blood at his side.

As autumn advanced, the Royalist prospects, at first menacing enough, improved ; yet there were those fighting on the King's side whose gloom remained un-cheered. To Lord Spencer, for instance—afterwards Earl of Sunderland—it was, in his own words, a lightening before death. Forced into the struggle by circumstances, his discontent with the conditions of the conflict supplied, " were it not for grinning honour," a daily handsome occasion to retire. Yet, being determined not to fight upon the opposite side—which he would rather be hanged than do—it would be said he was afraid. Such was the explanation of his conduct he sent to his wife in the September of this year. The King, he added, was averse to peace and was believed to be resolved against making it till the Queen's return. Honest men sought accommodation. Charles had also desired it, but was prevented from making offers by expectation of the Queen and fear of the Papists. Spencer's attitude probably represented

the dull hopelessness of many others engaged in the quarrel from chivalry rather than from conviction.

Meantime, with the amendment in the Royalist fortunes, Henrietta's eyes turned more and more longingly towards England. The question of a visit to France had been raised ; but whilst ready to go there should it be deemed desirable, her own wish was to rejoin her husband unless a pacification were to take place. Should that occur, she said, writing when no Royalist successes had warranted the hope of a peace upon favourable terms, it would be her wish to resort for the present to France, not feeling strength to look on at the disastrous results she anticipated from a like step. If, on the other hand, the war was to be prosecuted, she begged to be permitted to return to her place at the King's side : u I desire to share your fortunes and participate in your troubles as I have done in your joys, provided they are incurred with honour and in your own defence. For to perish from a consumption of royalty is a death that I could not endure, having found the malady by experience too insupportable."

To Paris she would have come as a stranger, her treasure and her heart being elsewhere. The days were long since past when she had yearned to return to her old home, and the last link binding her to it in any true sense had been lately severed by the death of her mother at Cologne. It had been Henrietta's intention to visit her in this her latest place of refuge, but opinion at the Hague had been so adverse to the journey that she had relinquished it, rather than by persistence endanger her husband's interests. The language in which she communicated her loss to Charles is a melancholy proof of the extent to which the relative importance of the greatest events of life is changed, when

body, mind, and spirit are absorbed in one engrossing preoccupation. " Excuse it if my letter is ill-written," she says, concluding one dealing with other subjects ; "I am grieved at the loss of the Queen my mother, who died a week ago. I only had the news of it this morning." Charles, as well as the children and his suite, must wear mourning.

Care for her children themselves was merged in practical work ; and at the end of a communication concerned with barrels of gunpowder, pistols, carabines, and other munitions of war, a postscript is to be found curiously significant of the small space to be accorded to domestic anxieties : " I wish," she adds, " that you would send to fetch the children who are in London ; for if matters should come to extremities, it would not be well for them to be there."

Meantime, some of the objects she had had in view in coming to Holland had been accomplished. Large sums of money—amounting, according to the doubtful statement of an early biography, to two million sterling—had been raised ; arms and ammunition had been bought, some of these stores having been already despatched to England, whilst the rest were to be taken there by the Queen herself; and cordial relations with the Prince of Orange had been maintained : " I know by letters from the Prince of Orange," she wrote, "who is all we could wish, that he had written these same words, 'The impossible must be done for the King and Queen. The possible is too little.' I assure you that I believe he will do all that could be desired."

But notwithstanding her success it is plain that by November a longer absence was becoming unendurable. " Farewell, my dear heart," ends one of her letters, " I

from a contemporary engraving.

MARIE DE MEDICIS.

await life or death in the first news that I shall have from you ; for if it happened that I could not go, it would be my death, since I can no longer live without seeing you." " This country," she writes a few weeks later, " puts the patience of those who, like me, have but little, too greatly to the proof." Rumours of disaster were abroad. The King was reported to be dead, the Prince of Wales a prisoner. There were men at the Hague said to have seen and touched the corpses of Rupert and his brother Maurice. No day passed without bringing tales of lost battles. " Such are the pastimes and the news of this country ! " And, in conclusion, Henrietta herself has a bad cold, and nothing but English air, or at least the air breathed by Charles, will cure it.

By January she was actually ready for embarkation, and a note of joyous expectation makes itself felt. It was not necessary, she tells the King, to hasten her. Contrary winds alone had deferred her departure— winds over which, as she once wrote, she had as little power as Charles over his Parliament. She now hopes to be with him so shortly that she waits to answer his letter in person. " I only beg you," she adds gaily, to tell the King that all his commands shall be obeyed " —a profession of unusual docility on his wife's part.

The meeting did not take place so soon as she expected. Starting under the escort of the Dutch admiral, Van Tromp, the winds, her rebels, set themselves vigorously to frustrate her intention of reaching England; and after beating about in imminent peril for no less than nine days, she and the little fleet accompanying her were forced to return to Holland, two out of the eleven vessels laden with military stores being lost. Of her experiences during the time she was tempest-tossed, Henrietta's narrative gives a vivid account. VOL. i. 18

Tied in her berth, her ladies in the same condition around her, she endured the terror of an ever-present death, the Catholics on board making their confessions to the priests who had accompanied the expedition, and fear of death surmounting shame, reciting aloud the catalogue of their faults and failings for the benefit of all within hearing. Henrietta recovered her spirits after the first, and, becoming accustomed to danger, set herself to administer consolation to her train. " Comfort yourselves, mes chores," she said. " Queens of England are never drowned." The boast was justified. The Dutch coast was reached and a landing safely effected.

The letter announcing the disaster to Charles is characteristic of her spirit and courage. She was hoping, she told him, to start afresh so soon as the winds would permit, "although a tempest of nine days is a very terrible thing. Nevertheless, when your service is concerned, I fear nothing. . . . God be praised that He has spared me still to serve you, but I confess that I did not think to see you again. My sole regret in dying was that in this accident your enemies might find encouragement and your friends the reverse. This consideration, I own, tormented me ; for, save as it concerns you, life is not a thing of which I fear the loss."

The King's reply is the earliest extant of that series of letters to his wife which perhaps show Charles in his most winning light.