Con's dispatches are written in much the same strain as those of Panzani. They tell of kindness, of religious sympathy, of even greater royal favour, of the King's evident sympathy with Catholicism—how on one occasion he said, "I, too, am a Catholic," how on another his talk with the Queen on religious subjects was such that it would hardly be credited at Rome; of the success which attended the distribution among the ladies of the Court of the pretty religious trifles such as rosaries and pictures, which the care of Cardinal Barberini had sent over; of the Queen's delight in a cross sent to her by the Pope—how she always wore it, and how she said that it was the most precious thing she possessed; of the favour shown to Father Sancta Clara at Court, and by Windbank—how it had even been proposed that he should preach a sermon in the Queen's chapel about the anniversary of the Powder Plot, "to exculpate the Catholics from treason against Princes"; how even the Jesuits acknowledged that never since the days of the negotiation for the Spanish match had the Catholics enjoyed such peace. Nevertheless, Con was too sagacious not to be able to read in some measure the signs of the times. "God only knows how long this calm will last," he wrote.[176]
It was unfortunate that a person who seemed so admirably fitted for his post should have been obliged to relinquish his task half done. But the rigours of the northern climate told so severely on a constitution long accustomed to the suns of Italy that in 1639 Con was obliged to think of turning his steps southward, for not even the distinguished attentions he received in his sickness from the King, the Queen, and the nobility availed to cure him. He reached Rome, but he only recrossed the Alps to die before he could place on his head the Cardinal's hat, which had been so much striven for. On his death-bed he thought of Henrietta, and begged Cardinal Barberini, who was by his side, to send her a little picture of the Virgin as a recognition of his gratitude for her kindness, and as a memorial of their friendship.
But already the shadows of the Civil War were beginning to close about the Queen. The bright hopes which had marked the days of Con's sojourn in England were becoming haunting fears, which, in their turn, were to give place to feelings as like despair as such natures as Henrietta's can know.
It was probably a sad surprise to the Queen when, on the eve of the war, she discovered the intensity of the hatred with which her faith was regarded by a large section of her husband's subjects. Sagacious foreigners knew something of it. "The Puritans hate the Catholics as much as the Devil,"[177] wrote Tillières frankly as early as 1624. But in the Queen's Court all mention of such ill-bred persons and factions was avoided, unless some wit cracked a joke at their expense. It is true that a few of the great nobles were Puritans, but during the years of Charles' triumph their opinions were expressed with moderation, and most of the courtiers appeared rather inclined to the fashionable Protestant variety of faith which the King, the Ministers, and the higher clergy professed. The real strength of Puritanism was in the lower middle-class, a section of the community with which the Queen was not likely to come in personal contact, and which, partly perhaps for this very reason, she was never able to conquer. Her refusal to be crowned with her husband gave bitter offence, and was to cost her dear in the future. Discontented spirits muttered to themselves that the King might be murdered as Henry IV had been, "and then the Queen might mar all."[178] When in 1629 prayers were offered in the Church for the birth of an heir to the throne, scarcely a man could be found to answer Amen; and even after the birth of a Prince there were mutterings that God had already provided for the nation in the hopeful issue of the Queen of Bohemia. Ill-bred Puritan ministers, in the outspoken theological language of the day, prayed for the conversion of the Popish Queen; and as the Catholic revival developed, to dislike and disapproval was added the more potent force of fear.
The language of the Grand Remonstrance and of many other contemporary documents leaves no doubt that there was a widespread belief in the existence of a plot managed by the "engineers and factors of Rome," of whom the Queen was one of the chief,[179] to capture the country and the Church of England. The signs in the national establishment which raised the hopes of the Catholics became a terror to the Puritans. It was no wonder. As Du Perron said from the other point of view, it was but a century since the schism, and the Anglican Church had not yet the stability which comes from time, so that the idea of its reconciliation to Rome was less chimerical than in later times. Nor had the attempts to make Protestantism co-extensive with the nation been altogether successful. It is probable that Richelieu overrated the importance of the English Catholics, but, nevertheless, the trouble he took to conciliate them bears witness to the light in which they were regarded in the best-informed circles on the Continent. Not a few of them were men of position and wealth, and their number was certainly considerable; it probably reached at least 150,000,[180] or three in every hundred,[181] and one Catholic reporter says that in Lancashire and Yorkshire as many as a third of the population adhered to the old faith.[182] The Archbishop of Embrun, who was in England in the latter days of James, is said to have confirmed in London as many as 10,000 persons. Another witness,[183] who had some opportunities for forming a judgment, believed that a third of the nation was either openly or secretly Catholic, and that another third, the Protestant part of the Church of England, only remained in schism from fear of the recusancy laws, and though this estimate is of course grossly exaggerated, it is significant as showing the opinions which were prevalent. The loudly expressed hopes of the Catholics reacted upon the fears of the Puritans, who saw in them not only the proof of the power of their open foes, but a confirmation of their worst suspicions regarding their more secret enemies in the Church of England. Laud, the most loyal of Anglican Churchmen, did not recognize his mistake until it was too late. Charles, who was always a good Protestant, or in modern parlance a High Churchman, perhaps never recognized his even when it led him to the scaffold.
The recklessness with which the King gave colour to the suspicions of the Puritans is indeed remarkable. The husband of a Catholic Queen, the son of a lady whose Protestantism was far from unimpeachable, he had recognized in early life the necessity of caution; he had no belief in the claims of the Church of Rome, and probably felt its attraction less strongly than his father, whose grandiose imagination was struck by its great claims and long history. Yet he showed marked favour to Roman ecclesiastics such as Du Perron, he allowed the triumphant ceremonies of Somerset House, and he sanctioned the almost open exercise of Catholic worship, only from time to time showing a feeble concession to the feeling of the country by such measures as forbidding the English Catholics to frequent the chapels of the ambassadors, and by issuing a proclamation which at the Queen's prayers he deprived of most of its force. There is, of course, only one sufficient explanation of his conduct. He was, it is true, like others of his family, a believer in a certain kind of toleration. He thought it a base thing for a man to change his religion, and he considered that any Christian might be saved. He was also, except when actuated by feelings of revenge, a merciful man to whom persecution was distasteful, and there were probably moods in which he imagined himself a second Henry IV, under whose paternal sway the rival religions could live at peace; but the real reason of his tenderness to the Catholics was his love for his wife. As in the old days Buckingham could make him do anything, so in later times could Henrietta Maria. Her tears, her smiles, her caresses won boon after boon for her co-religionists, until she wrung from him the last, the most disastrous concession of all. No single act was more fatal to his throne or more prejudicial to the ultimate interests of the Catholics than the establishment of the agency which brought into England Panzani, Con, and later Rosetti; as these worthy men rolled about London in their fine carriages, secure in the royal favour, and none daring to make them afraid, they believed that they were helping forward the conversion of England. In reality, they were riveting for more than a century longer the chains of the English Catholics.
As for Henrietta herself, she was unfortunate in religious as in other matters. It is hardly too much to say that she pulled down her husband's throne to help her co-religionists, and yet in the light of future events it must be gravely questioned whether the progress of Catholicism under her protection was not too dearly bought by the terror and hatred which it inspired in the English mind, and whether in the end the Church was advanced by her coming into England. On the other hand, she had just sufficient moderation (which showed itself particularly in her recognition of the impossibility of bringing up her children in her own faith) to render her slightly suspect to the more fanatical Catholics in Rome and elsewhere. When the hour of need came the English Catholics, recalling her benefits and dreading above all things the domination of the Puritans, did indeed for the most part rally loyally round her; but on the Continent it was chiefly remembered that she was the devoted wife of a heretic King, whose qualified mercy so prized at home seemed abroad but a mockery of the hopes of the royal marriage.[184]
[ [104]Continuation of Weekly Newes, No. 43, 1624.