Long years after the events occurred, when many happy years had softened the memory of their bitterness, Henrietta Maria confessed to her friend Madame de Motteville that her early married life had not been free from disappointment and vexation. Charles Stuart was not an easy man to live with, as all those who had much to do with him found out. He was moral, conscientious, in many respects admirable; but he was oppressed by a sense of his own importance, he was entirely without humour, and he was convinced that he was always, on all occasions, in the right. He did not, as many royal husbands, break his marriage vow, but he treated his girl-wife with a harshness which fell little short of unkindness, and that though she was ever anxious to do her duty and he was always sincerely a lover.
It is probable that the difficulties began almost immediately. Charles, on his arrival at Dover, did, indeed, greet his beautiful bride with delight, and when she would have knelt at his feet he prevented her by clasping her in his arms instead. But the French visitors soon showed that they were dissatisfied with the Queen's reception. They were ignorant of the more homely character of the English people and Court; and, contrasting the poverty of the festivities and welcome offered by the King of England to his queen with the splendour which the King of France had freely displayed to do honour to his sister, they concluded a lack of respect and affection on the part of Charles which had no foundation in fact. Some of the difficulty was indeed wholly due to national misunderstanding, as, for instance, the ill-feeling caused by the gloomy splendours of Dover Castle, where the young Queen spent her first night in England, and, later, by an antique bed, dating from the reign of Elizabeth, in which she was invited to repose in London. How could the English know that these relics of a glorious past were in the eyes of these visitors, accustomed to the new-fashioned luxuries of the French Court, nothing but relics of barbarism? "None of us, however old, could remember ever having seen such a bed," wrote Tillières,[29] in deep indignation. Nor was the public welcome to London more successful, though the marriage was fairly popular, and there was much kindly feeling towards the bride. The plague was raging in the city, so that, for prudence'sake, festivities had to be curtailed; while, to make matters worse, the entry into the capital took place on one of those drenching summer days which are not of infrequent occurrence in these islands. To the French visitors used to Paris, which, if one of the dirtiest of cities, was, then as now, one of the most beautiful and magnificent, London, at the best, would have looked rather shabby,[30] in these circumstances it appeared ugly and squalid. The English were little more pleased with their guests. "A poor lot, hardly worth looking at," was the comment of one Englishman on the brilliant train of French ladies who accompanied the Queen; and if he made an exception in favour of Madame de Chevreuse, who could hardly have been called plain, it was only to find fault with her for painting her face. It was perhaps not to be expected that this remarkable lady should find favour in Puritan eyes, for during her stay in England, where she remained over the birth of her daughter, the Mademoiselle de Chevreuse of later French history, she exhibited more than her usual eccentricity, indulging in such freaks as swimming across the Thames, an exploit which was celebrated in half-mocking verse by a Court poet.[31] But such petty national jealousies were annoyances of a trivial character. The more serious disagreements which arose between the royal pair may be traced, almost entirely, to two sources: the influence over the Queen of her French attendants, and the influence over the King of the Duke of Buckingham.
Among the articles of the marriage treaty was a stipulation that the Queen's household should be composed of those who were of her own faith and nation. This body consisted of more than a hundred persons, civil and religious, chosen by Mary de' Medici and Richelieu, ranging from such great nobles and ladies as Madame S. Georges, the principal lady-in-waiting, and the Count de Tillières, the lord chamberlain, to the humble servants of the royal kitchen and laundry. Certainly the presence of so many of her own countrymen about the person of the young Queen tended to prevent that assimilation of English ideas and habits which was so desirable. It is not surprising that Charles disliked his wife's French servants as standing between him and his bride, particularly when it is remembered that they looked upon themselves as the servants of the King of France, who provided many of them with pensions.
The object of his special dislike was Madame S. Georges, who, as the daughter of Madame de Montglas, had great influence with Henrietta, and who, though she had had long experience in Courts,[32] was foolish enough to show herself aggrieved at not being permitted to ride in the same coach with the King of England and his bride. Madame de Tillières, who ranked next to her, was more discreet in her conduct, probably owing to her husband's intimate knowledge of England, where he had resided a while as ambassador.
But if the secular part of the Queen's household was objectionable, still more so was the ecclesiastical establishment, of which the leading spirits were her confessor, Father Bérulle, who had brought over with him twelve fathers of the French Oratory,[33] whose long habit, worn on all occasions, startled the eyes of sober Londoners, and her Grand Almoner, Daniel de la Motte du Plessis Houdancourt, who had under him four sub-almoners, one of whom was said to have openly defended at Court the doctrine of tyrannicide which Ravaillac put into practice. Bérulle, who lived to wear the Cardinal's purple, left behind him when he died a few years later the reputation almost of a saint.[34] He was also a very intellectual man, being one of the early admirers of the genius of Descartes; but he was not suited either in mind or character for the position which the partiality of Mary de' Medici had called him to fill; a man of stern and narrow piety, neither a Fénelon nor even a Bossuet, he knew not how to deal sympathetically with those whose religion and manners differed from his own; and the scorn which, as a Catholic ecclesiastic, he felt for "the ministers," at whom, in his letters, he loses no opportunity of sneering, as an abstemious Frenchman he felt no less for the gluttonous English. He recognized Charles' affection for his bride; but when the artistic King thought to please her by giving her a beautiful picture of the Nativity, all that the priest found to say on seeing it was that it was older than the religion of its donor. His very virtues were unfortunate. Though practised in Courts, he was too sincere to be a successful diplomat, and he showed a singular lack of enlightened self-interest, both in the just reproaches with which he overwhelmed Buckingham on the subject of the Catholics, and also in the friendship which he extended to Bishop Williams, whose sun was setting before that of the younger favourite. Nor was he altogether successful in his dealings with the Queen. He did indeed win Henrietta's respect, and to his teaching may be attributed, in some degree, the lifelong conduct which distinguishes her so honourably from others of her rank and day. But a Catholic Puritan himself—it is significant that the French Oratory a few years later was believed to be infected with Jansenism—and looking upon all Courts, specially Protestant ones, as chosen haunts of the devil, he was wont to rebuke his royal penitent for such natural sentiments as pleasure in her pretty dresses and jewels, and, forgetting that she was not a Carmelite nun in the Faubourg S. Jacques, he attempted to force upon her a strictness of manners and observance suited neither to her nature nor to her position. Charles' complaints of the cold and unloving conduct of the wife with whom, even by the testimony of his enemies, he was deeply in love; Buckingham's gibes at a queen who lived "en petite Mademoiselle," had their foundation in facts, facts for which Bérulle was largely responsible.
CARDINAL PIERRE DE BéRULLE
FROM AN ENGRAVING
The Bishop of Mende was a very different person from the austere Oratorian. A member of one of the noblest houses in France, high-spirited, cultured, and fascinating, he owed a position to which his twenty and odd years would not have entitled him to the fact that he was a relative and intimate friend of Richelieu. He knew how to win the affection of the Queen, who on one occasion warmly recommended him to the Pope,[35] and who, when he left her to pay a visit of a few weeks to his native land, wrote requesting his return, as she could not get on without him; but the King frankly detested him, and years later, when the Bishop was in his grave, remembered angrily the arrogance with which the latter was wont to enter his wife's private apartments at any hour that pleased him. That the charges of indiscretion brought against him by the English were not unfounded may be gathered not only from the amazing audacity of his proposal to place the crown on the Queen's head in Westminster Abbey—a proposal which led to her never being crowned at all[36]—but also from the reluctant admission of his friend Tillières that he was too young for his post, and from an admonitory letter addressed to him by his masters in Paris, urging him to moderate his zeal and to bridle his fiery tongue.
But there were reasons other than personal, of which Charles and his subjects were certainly in some degree aware, for disliking and distrusting Henrietta's household.
One of the causes of the extraordinary success of Richelieu's policy is no doubt to be sought in the accuracy and range of the information at his command, which was furnished by persons in every country, who, though a prettier name might be given to them, were, to speak plainly, his spies. Some of them were French subjects abroad, others were subjects and often even servants of the King in whose land they lived, who were persuaded by the powerful argument of a pension to engage in this traffic in news.[37] By this means the Cardinal found out most things that it was to his interest to know, and often, while he was professing goodwill and affection to some hapless wight who was in his power, he was, at the same time, collecting information to be used against him.