The life of Queen Henrietta Maria (8 page)

1 The Comte de Brienne, also included in Henrietta's train, took, it is fair to say, a much more favourable view. He mentions the magnificence of the banquet prepared, and also the fact that the Crown furniture was in use.

FIRST MEETING WITH CHARLES 57

should leave her kindred and cleave to her husband, and he himself would be no longer master than whilst he was her servant.

It was gracefully said, and Henrietta appears to have recovered her self-command quickly. Charles, taking stock of the wife provided for him, had glanced down at her feet. Although she only reached as high as his shoulder, so much stress had been laid by the ambassadors upon her lowness of stature, that he had probably formed an exaggerated idea of it, since he seemed surprised to find her no shorter. Henrietta's quick wit divined what was passing in his mind.

" Sire," she said gaily, displaying her shoes, " I stand upon mine own feet. I have no help from art. Thus high am I, neither higher nor lower."

The interview tends to show that the King's method of seeking his bride, and the absence of state ceremonial, had answered the purpose of setting her at her ease. De Tillieres, nevertheless, as court functionary, was strong in his disapproval. Charles, he complains, had come badly dressed and worse accompanied; he had " une mine triste," and in her chamberlain's opinion the Queen, after a little conversation, had been no less disappointed in his intelligence than in his appearance.

No record remains to tell whether de Tillieres was right. Charles, at any rate, was fully satisfied with the result of the interview. "At my first meeting her at Dover," he wrote to Henrietta's mother at a later date, sadly contrasting her behaviour on her arrival with her subsequent conduct, " I could not expect more testimony of love and respect than she showed me. To give you one instance, her first request to me in private was that, she being young and coming to a strange country, both by her years and ignorance of

the customs might commit many errors ; therefore she entreated that I would not be angry with her for her faults of ignorance, before I had with my instructions learned her to avoid them, and desired me, in these cases, to employ no third person, but to tell her myself when I found she did anything amiss. I both granted her request and thanked her for it, but desired she would treat me as she asked me to treat her."

So far, in spite of de Tillieres, it may be concluded that all had gone well. But it was not long before the elements of future discord became apparent. Their private conversation over and Henrietta's tears dried, she proceeded to present to the King the several members of her household. What Charles' opinion of them became later on is well known, and for Madame de Saint-George in particular, the daughter of Henrietta's gouvernante and her own personal attendant and friend, he unfortunately conceived from the first a marked aversion.

To another member of the young Queen's train, Madame de Chevreuse, he might have objected with more justice. It was hinted that her presence in England served the double object of relieving the French court from her gay intrigues, and of affording her with the opportunity of renewing relations with Lord Holland. It may likewise have come to Charles' ears that she had done her best to further Buckingham's suit with Anne of Austria ; and he may excusably have suspected her of a readiness to turn her attention towards providing Henrietta with similar pastimes. " Never had woman," says the Cardinal de Retz, " a greater contempt for what is called scruple and duty ; she knew no other duty but that of pleasing her lover." It is obvious that a less desirable companion could scarcely have been pro-

vided for a bride of fifteen. But whatever may have been Charles' knowledge or suspicions, the Duchesse was too distinguished a guest not to command a welcome, and it was accordingly duly offered her.

When the time came to set out for Canterbury, where the night was to be spent, an incident occurred suggestive of disturbing possibilities in the future. Whatever may have been the rights of the case, it was ill-judged on Charles' part to provoke an altercation on the very first day of his meeting with his bride, by insisting that Madame de Saint-George should yield her place in the Queen's carriage to Englishwomen no better born than herself. Henrietta promptly indicated her temper of mind, as also the precise value of the professions of submission she had just made, by an emphatic refusal to assent to the arrangement. It was, however, not in deference to her protest, but only through the intervention of the French ambassadors, that the lady of the bedchamber was permitted to retain her place ; Henrietta's display of resentment being, even in de Tillieres' partial eyes, " un peu trop vif." The first disagreement between her and her husband had taken place.

On the road to Canterbury Henrietta held her first drawing-room. "A goodly train of ladies," Howell records, u attended her coming upon the bowling-green of Barram Downs, who divided themselves into two rows," and thus offered a welcome to the bride. " Me-thought," adds the chronicler of the scene, " the country ladies outshined the courtiers." By the time Canterbury was reached the Queen had evidently forgotten her late cause of offence, and peace had been restored, since at the banquet there provided she insisted, in spite of the admonitions of her chaplain, who stood at her elbow and

reminded her that it was a fast-day, upon partaking of the venison and pheasant carved for her by Charles himself. It may be, nevertheless, that the presence of the priest, as well as the trifling trial of strength, served the King as an object-lesson of the probability of future battles.

That evening, in the great hall of St. Augustine, the English marriage was celebrated, after which Henrietta retired to rest, attended by Madame de Chevreuse ; and, as one may believe, so thoroughly tired out by the events of the long day as to take no exception to the bed grudgingly admitted by her chamberlain to be " moins infame" than that prepared for her at Dover.

The following day the royal party proceeded to Gravesend, resting that night at a house belonging to the Duchess of Lennox. Henrietta, it was observed, was very melancholy on the journey. Possibly she had drawn disquieting conclusions from the early masterfulness displayed by Charles. Or it may well be that, the first excitement of her arrival over, a realisation of her own practical loneliness may have been gaining on the poor foreign child.

The royal entry into London was made by water, for which an inspection of the fleet lying at anchor served as an excuse, the true reason being the desirability of avoiding, so far as was possible, the infection of the plague then raging in the city. The weather had changed from unseasonable cold to the thunder-heat of a London June, and rain was falling heavily as the royal barge passed up the river. Again the impressions received by the foreign visitors were unfavourable. In spite of the hundreds of vessels forming part of the procession, of the salutes of cannons, of pealing bells and blazing bonfires, all, to French eyes, was melancholy; nor were any gentillesses

or galanteries displayed. To an English eyewitness the progress wore a different aspect, and the King had never looked so merrily as when he stood, his bride at his side and her head just reaching to his shoulder. " She is young enough to grow taller," added the spectator hopefully.

Returning to de Tillieres' lugubrious narrative, on the arrival of the Queen at the palace, where at least she might have looked to find the a lits de parade" denied her in the country, it was discovered that she was expected to make use of a bed which, having belonged to Queen Elizabeth, was made after so antique a fashion that the oldest person living could not recall the time when it had been the mode.

Amongst matters more important than the shape of a bed, the religious difficulty was already, thus early, beginning to loom large. It is true that Henrietta— Queen Mary, as she was called at this time and for long after *—besides her promising display of insubordination on the matter of fasting, had replied with spirit, when asked if she could endure a Huguenot, by inquiring why not, since her father had belonged to that religion—a solitary instance, as it has been observed, of a token of religious toleration on her part. But the priests in her train, with the young Bishop of Mendes, not yet thirty, at their head, were already making ready for battle ; nor was the King meeting them in a pacific spirit. So early as June 25th a news-letter states that the new Queen's priests were importunate to have the chapel at St. James' completed, but that the King was said to have replied that if the Queen's closet was not large enough they could have mass in the great chamber ; that were it not wide enough, they might use the garden ; if that would

1 She was thus prayed for in English churches after the Restoration.

not serve their turn, then the park was the fittest place. " So," added the detailer of the news complacently, " they wish themselves at home again."

It must be confessed that, if the young Queen's ecclesiastical advisers showed themselves unwisely impatient, proceedings in England had not been calculated to allay any suspicions they may have conceived that the provisions of the marriage treaty were to be evaded. So far from these stipulations having been as yet put into force, on the very day of Henrietta's arrival certain members of the religion she professed had been thrown into prison. Such a sign boded ill.for the future ; and the general aspect of affairs suggests the speculation whether, now that Charles was in actual possession of his bride, he may not have begun to entertain doubts as to the wisdom of his choice. In any case, it was too late to indulge in such questionings. The marriage was an accomplished fact. It remained to render it a success.

Meantime, all eyes were turned with interest upon the newcomer, and her subjects were busily forming their conclusions with regard to the King's French wife. Opinions, as was natural, differed. D'Ewes, for instance,, was so much struck by her sweet and humble deportment to her women-servants, that he " could not refrain from deep-fetched sighs to consider that she wanted the knowledge of the true religion." Whilst one Mordaunt, sending his impressions of the new Queen to a correspondent, draws a different picture. " However little in stature," he wrote, " [she] is of a most charming countenance when pleased, but full of spirit, and seems to be of more than ordinary resolution. With one frown, divers of us being at Whitehall to see her, she drove us all out of the chamber, the room being somewhat over-heated with fire and company. I suppose none but a queen

could have cast such a scowl." The court was to have no limited experience of the frowns of its mistress. On one point, however, most authorities were agreed— namely, on her beauty and grace. " A beautiful little creature," says Carlyle, " if Ritter Van Dyke lie not to us, beautiful and sprightly, with her bright hazel eyes, with her long white fingers, and dainty looks and ways." She was, wrote Howell enthusiastically, " of a lovely and lasting complexion, a dark brown ; she hath eyes that sparkle like stars ; and for her physiognomy, she may be said to be a mirror of perfection."

Men commonly find what they expect to find. Notwithstanding the distrust felt from the first of Henrietta's foreign train, the full difficulties of the situation were but dimly apprehended, and London had been prepared to give a warm welcome to its Queen.

On June 29th, immediately after her arrival, she was present at the opening of Parliament, assisting for the first time at a great public function in the land of her adoption. Many whose names, had she but known it, were to become painfully familiar to her ears in days to come, stood before her on that occasion, listening to the King's speech and making their observations upon his young wife. Pym, Hampden, and Eliot, Charles' great opponents in the coming struggle, were there, with many another of their comrades. Amongst the peers her eyes will have lighted upon at least two or three familiar faces—those of the Earls of Holland and Carlisle, with her husband's friend, the Duke of Buckingham. " In a place below the corner of the seats " was her own countrywoman, the Duchesse de Chevreuse, with her husband, who already, at a banquet at Whitehall of * unspeakable bravery," had eclipsed by his magnificence ill the Englishmen present.

Charles addressed the Houses briefly and to the point, paying a tribute to their religious zeal, and likewise to that matchless fidelity to their King which was the ancient honour of the nation. The speech was received with approval. Parliament, as well as the nation at large, were still indulging the hope that Charles would indeed prove the sovereign for whom they had waited and prayed. Nevertheless, before the close of the very first sitting, a shadow had crept over the gladness of its welcome, when the fact transpired that the principal object for which it had been called together was to vote supplies. Two days later, the dawning discontent was accentuated by the intimation that the Houses were not to be impatient as to the question of priests, Jesuits, and recusants, but were to leave it wholly to his Majesty's direction for matter, manner, and time.

The proceedings of that Parliament belong to history. They must have made it clear to Charles that, in spite of the recent outburst of loyalty, the nation had no intention of allowing itself to be browbeaten. By August the perilous remedy of a dissolution had been applied by Charles and his favourite to its discontents.

If the political horizon was not without its clouds, domestic dissensions had already supplied another element of discomfort in the royal household. It is not necesse to follow de Tillieres through his detailed account of th( incidents belonging to the months succeeding Henrietta's arrival in England. The fact is that the situation at the moment came near to being an impossible one.

In order to appreciate to the full its difficulties, th( condition of religious feeling, not only in England but throughout the whole of Europe, must be borne ii mind. The broad sundering line separating nation froi nation was that of faith. The Continent was dividec

into two camps. On the one side stood the Catholic Church, with the peoples owing it allegiance; on the other the combined forces of Protestantism. In England itself the fires of Smithfield and the Marian persecution on the one hand, and on the other the roll-call of the many priests who, more recently, had suffered torture and death under Elizabeth, were well remembered, and served to accentuate the differences severing the partisans of the rival creeds. Looking back across not more than three-score years, men were under no temptation to minimise the diversities of faith for which Englishmen had been willing to die. Further, the enthusiasm hailing Charles' accession had been in no small measure due to the fact that to him was attributed the breach with Spain, chief representative of Catholicism in Europe; and, apart from his own personal dislike to Rome, Charles must have been aware that he would do well to avoid any act calculated to offend the spirit of Protestantism abroad, or liable to be construed into an indication of sympathy with his wife's religion.