She named herself La malheureuse reine, and mourned for King Charles to the day of her death.
A.D. 1649. Queen Henrietta was not long permitted to enjoy the peaceful retirement of the convent; for her son, the Prince of Wales, determined to return to England, and desired to consult his mother about it. She therefore met him at St. Germains in the summer of 1649, and afterwards returned with him to her former apartments at the Louvre.
In the following autumn, accompanied by his brother James, Duke of York, Charles went to the Isle of Jersey, where he was proclaimed King of Great Britain. Scotland acknowledged him next, and then followed the scenes of blood in Ireland, under the leadership of Cromwell, more horrible than any that had ever been witnessed in the world before.
Charles was absent more than two years; and while he was contesting for his hereditary rights his young brother and sister, who were still prisoners in England, were treated very harshly by the republicans.
A.D. 1650. In the September of 1650 Princess Elizabeth died of a malignant fever.
Cromwell had established a strong military despotism in the British Islands; and when Queen Henrietta demanded of him the payment of her dower, he replied: "That she had never been recognized as Queen-Consort of Great Britain by the people, consequently she had no right to a dower."
This was because she had refused, on account of her religious bigotry, to be crowned with the king.
But the usurper did her a great favor when he allowed the young Duke of Gloucester to return to her. The permit said: "That Henry Stuart, third son of the late Charles I., had leave to transport himself beyond seas."
Queen Henrietta treated her sons most harshly because they refused to become Catholics, and adhered to the Episcopal church; in consequence a great deal of ill-feeling and enmity had grown up between her and them, which at last drove them from her.
The young Duke of Gloucester went to Holland to live with his sister, the Princess of Orange, whose husband had died of small-pox a short time before she offered her brother an asylum.