But before this, before even the service at S. Denys, the most famous of Henrietta Maria's funeral sermons had been preached. The filial piety of the Duchess of Orleans could not permit that her cousin the King of France should be the only person to do honour to her mother's memory. Her thoughts naturally turned to the convent at Chaillot, which her mother had loved so dearly, and where so much of her own youth had been spent. There the Queen had already been mourned by the good nuns; there Masses were offered for her soul. It was but fitting that there also should be celebrated the solemn service offered by her daughter's devotion.
On November 12th the chapel of the convent, which the care of the religious had caused to be hung with mourning, was crowded by those who had come at the invitation of the Duchess of Orleans to do honour to her mother's memory. These were no royal obsequies due to Henrietta's quality as a daughter of France, but an offering of domestic love, and, as was befitting, the celebrant of the Mass was the late Queen's faithful, lifelong friend, Walter Montagu. But for the preacher was found one who has caused this simple service to be remembered while S. Denys and Notre-Dame are forgotten. The Abbé Bossuet was already Bishop-elect of Condom, but when he stood in the pulpit of Chaillot he still wore the dress of a simple priest. The discourse was pronounced "with much applause of the audience,"[436] wrote dryly the official chronicler of these events. It will be remembered as long as the French tongue. To one heart it spoke with something more than the charms of oratory, for from this day Henrietta of Orleans dated her friendship with the good Bishop. She did not know that in less than a year the same eloquent voice would be raised over her own dead body, and that her young life would have become, like her mother's, nothing but a text for a sermon.[437]
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There was some difficulty about the Queen's property, as she died intestate. By the law of England everything she died possessed of passed to her eldest son; by the law of France her property would be equally divided among her children or their representatives. The property was not large, and Ralph Montagu believed that when the debts were paid there would be little left "but her two houses at Colombes, which would sell for ten or twelve thousand pistols, and were always, if she had made a will, intended to be given Madame." The person most inclined to dispute the claim of the King of England was the Duke of Orleans, who, perhaps knowing his mother-in-law's intentions, proposed that his wife should take the property in France as her share, leaving to her two brothers their mother's jointure, which had been granted for two further years. But another claimant appeared in the person of Henrietta's grandson, the Prince of Orange, who said that if Monsieur took a share he should advance a claim, otherwise he would submit to the pleasure of the King of England. Madame finally persuaded her husband to desist, which was esteemed a great service to her brother, as by the terms of the late Queen's marriage contract it would have been very difficult to parry his claims. Thus the whole of Henrietta's slender fortune fell to her son Charles II of England. But since he had always had a kindness for the nuns of Chaillot, he gave to them the furniture of his mother's apartments there. Some of it was too fine for them, and this portion they sold for the benefit of the house. They had no use for Flanders tapestry, for state beds or arm-chairs; but they kept, among other things, two feather beds, all the linen and pottery, and three very beautiful pictures. The proceeds of the sale enabled the nuns to build ten new cells, as well as to lay aside a sum of money for the expenses of the yearly commemoration of their royal foundress.[438]
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Of those who mourned for Henrietta Maria it remains to say a few words. The future history of her two sons and of her nephew, Louis XIV, is too well known to need remark, except that it may be mentioned that James, in the tardy repentance of exile, found much comfort and edification among the nuns of Chaillot. The tragic fate of her daughter has already been referred to. Henrietta of Orleans, in the bloom of a beauty which recalled that of her mother, died at S. Cloud in the autumn of 1670, not without suspicion of poison. The Earl of St. Albans[439] returned to London, where he spent a drinking and card-playing old age, of which the most notable achievement was the foundation of St. James's Square, by which means he may almost claim the title of founder of modern West London, where Jermyn Street yet preserves his name. Walter Montagu, his friend of many years, had a very different fate. After the death of his three patronesses, the Queen of France, the Queen of England, and the Duchess of Orleans, he was made to resign the Abbey of S. Martin's, Pontoise. He returned to Paris and entered the Hospital of the Incurables in the Rue de Sève.[440] "My lord," said an English priest[441] of remarkable piety, who was waiting there for death, as he saw the Abbé enter, "you are come to teach me how to die." "No, Mr. Clifford," replied Montagu, "I have come to learn from you how to live."
In this calm retreat his last years flowed quietly away. He "only occupied himself with the eternal years and with the practice of all the vertues,"[442] said the chronicler of S. Martin's; but incidentally he was able to render many services to the English colony in Paris, though his cousin Ralph complained that he had grown "very ignorant and out of fashion."[443] He died peacefully at the Incurables in February, 1677, and his body was carried to S. Martin's, at Pontoise, of which he had been a princely benefactor, to be buried in the chapel[444] of S. Walter, the first Abbot of the house and his patron saint, which he had beautified at great expense. Mother Jeanne, who still ruled over the Carmelites of Pontoise, caused a Mass to be sung for his soul, and equal honour was paid to his memory by the English Benedictine nuns of the same town. In Paris another old friend was doubtless thinking of him, for in a retirement almost monastical Madame de Chevreuse yet lived, one of the last of those who had gathered at the brilliant Court of Charles I and Henrietta Maria.
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Thus Henrietta Maria, Queen of England,
"Left love and life and slept in endless rest."[445]