Some happy wind over the ocean blow This tempest yet, which frights our island so. Edmund Waller
On July 23rd, 1637, the new liturgy, which the care of Archbishop Laud had provided for the Scottish Church, was to be read for the first time in the Church of St. Giles in Edinburgh. The clergyman entered the reading-desk and the service began. But before he had read many words a tumult, in which a crowd of women of the lower class took a prominent part, arose. National feeling and religious feeling were alike outraged by the introduction of the new Mass-book from England,[202] and the assembly, which had been called together for public worship, broke up in wild confusion. That local riot, which seemed but an ebullition of temporary fanaticism and discontent, was in reality the symptom of a grave disease in the body politic. It meant for Scotland the beginning of a civil war, which soon was to cross the border and to break up in the sister kingdom the long internal peace which had made her the envied of Europe. It meant for Henrietta Maria and her husband the end of their happy, careless years, and the entering upon a series of misfortunes, the number and bitterness of which are almost unparalleled even in the annals of the House of Stuart.
After the riot events moved quickly, for behind the rioters was the virile force of the Scottish nation. Charles was unwilling to give way, and by November his northern subjects were almost in open revolt.
It was an unfortunate moment. The English Puritans, who were irritated by their own grievances, showed an indecorous satisfaction in the Scottish events, as shrewd observers, such as Salvetti, the Florentine envoy in London, were not slow to observe. The King had no money to meet expenses, and no means of getting any, except the objectionable one of calling a Parliament. Abroad the outlook was no better, and Charles and Henrietta ought to have known, if they did not, that they had no friend upon whom they could rely in such a strait.
They were to find that it was not for nothing that they had scouted the threats and warnings of Richelieu. That old man, sitting in his study in the Palais Cardinal in Paris, held in his frail hands the threads of all the diplomacy of Europe. He had long looked with no favourable eye upon England, for the alliance which he had himself brought about had proved one of his greatest disappointments. The union of the crowns of England and Scotland had deprived France of a warm and constant ally,[203] and it was to counterbalance this loss that Henry IV had planned, and Richelieu had carried out, Henrietta's marriage. The Cardinal had not reckoned upon the indeed somewhat unlikely contingency that a royal marriage should also become a marriage of affection and community of interest. The first step in his defeat was the dismission of the French in 1626, and this insult, which circumstances did not permit him to avenge at once, was never forgiven to its author the King of England, whom he also hated, because, in the words of Madame de Motteville, he believed him to have a Spanish heart, and because Queen Anne was allowed to carry on her Spanish correspondence by way of England. Of Henrietta he had hardly a better opinion. She had fulfilled none of the purposes for which he had sent her into England, and though originally she had unwillingly submitted to her husband's will in the matter of her servants, in later days she had made no great effort to recall them. She had done little to cement an alliance between the two kingdoms, and the English Catholics, whom she had been specially commissioned to win over, remained, for the most part, obstinately attached to the interests of Spain. Their relations had been, moreover, severely strained by the Chateauneuf episode, and they were further embittered by the disgrace and exile of Mary de' Medici, which her daughter rightly attributed to Richelieu, whose conduct in the matter she considered an act of the blackest ingratitude towards the woman who had made his fortune.
Nevertheless, about this time Richelieu made a final attempt to win the personal favour of the Queen of England. He dispatched the Count of Estrades on a special mission to England, of which no inconsiderable part was to discover the sentiments of the Queen, and he told Bellièvre, the French ambassador in London, that he believed her to be friendly towards France, and requested him to treat her with kindness and sympathy. Neither of the envoys met with much success. Estrades found Henrietta so forbidding that he did not dare to deliver the letter which Richelieu had confided to him, and which he had charged him to give or retain, according to the disposition of the royal lady to whom it was addressed.[204] Bellièvre was rather better received, but though the Queen showed herself willing to talk with him and expressed general goodwill towards the Cardinal, the diplomatist soon discovered that all she desired was help in a private matter which he waived aside, but in which Richelieu determined to gratify her, as he saw in it a means of ingratiating himself with her at small cost.
The Chevalier de Jars, since his dramatic reprieve on the scaffold, had languished in the Bastille. He had good friends both in England and in France, but none more persevering and faithful than the Queen of England, who never forgot a friend in trouble. Over and over again she pleaded with Richelieu on his behalf, but for a long while he turned a deaf ear to her appeals, answering her letters on the subject almost rudely. But in the beginning of 1638 his attitude changed, and he intimated that a little more persuasion on the part of Henrietta would result in the fulfilment of her desire.
The matter was conducted with a studied picturesqueness of detail which was carefully arranged by Richelieu to gratify the vanity of the woman he wished to please. It was taken out of the hands of the English ambassador, the Earl of Leicester, and arranged by Walter Montagu, who was at the Queen's side in London, and by his personal friend Sir Kenelm Digby, who was staying in Paris, in a private capacity, enjoying the society of his many learned and scientific friends who resided there. Montagu and Digby exchanged many letters, and the latter had several interviews with Richelieu. During one of these he presented to the Cardinal a letter which the Queen had requested him to deliver. The old man read it with great satisfaction, though he had to request Sir Kenelm to help him in deciphering several words, for Henrietta's writing was always very illegible. When he had finished he laid it down, and looking hard at his visitor, said in a meaning tone, "I am much pleased with the Queen's letter, and you may assure her that she shall soon have cause to be pleased with me."[205]
A few days later, about eight o'clock in the morning, a coach stopped at the door of Sir Kenelm's lodgings, from which descended Chavigny, the Secretary of State, and the Chevalier de Jars. Chavigny, after he had greeted the astonished knight, waved his hand towards his charge and said, in the courtly accents of a French diplomatist, "Monsieur, I have the orders of the King and of M. le Cardinal to place this gentleman in your hands. He is no longer the prisoner of the King of France, but of the Queen of England."[206]
"It is to be hoped," Montagu had written a few weeks earlier to a member of the French Government, "that the end of this affair will be the beginning of that end to which we have always looked, namely, a good understanding between the Queen and M. le Cardinal."[207] This hope was not fulfilled. Henrietta was indeed greatly pleased at her friend's release, and she cannot have failed to admire the graceful manner in which the great man had granted his favour, but a single act of kindness on the one hand and a single sentiment of gratitude on the other could not overcome the mutual distrust of years. Moreover, events were even then occurring which were destroying any good feeling of which the incident may have been productive.