Henrietta Maria

by Henrietta Haynes

On April 13th, 1640, the Short Parliament met. Charles, for the first time for eleven years, stood face to face with the representatives of his people, representatives for the most part hostile, for the elections had gone badly, and few of his or the Queen's friends had been returned. Nevertheless, he was hopeful, for he held what he and perhaps what his advisers believed to be a trump card. He had probably throughout his reign been aware that France had not forgotten her ancient alliance with Scotland. He had recently been reminded in a sufficiently startling manner that Scotland on her side had an equally long memory. He possessed evidence of a letter written by the rebellious Scots to the King of France, evidence on which he acted while Parliament was sitting by sending Lord Loudon and others of the Scotch Commissioners to the Tower. It was not yet forty years since the union of the two Crowns. The Scotch were unpopular in England, and the favour shown to them by the King and Queen was resented. Scotland and France, whose alliance had more than once embarrassed England, were both old enemies. It argues no special lack of insight in either Charles or his wife that they thought the discovery of these practices would lead to a great revulsion of feeling against the Scots in the minds of the English Puritans. That it did not do so is a remarkable proof of the enlightened self-interest of the latter, and of their power of setting a religious and political bond of union above an antiquated national prejudice.

Meanwhile, in this moment of crisis, what were the special interests and influences surrounding the Queen? It is hardly too much to say that not one of them did not contribute in some measure to the final catastrophe. Henrietta had not desired the presence of Mary de' Medici, but when the poor old lady arrived, wearied by troubles and journeyings, her filial heart could not refuse her a warm welcome, and, little by little, the sense of home and kindred, to which she had been a stranger for so many years, overcame the reluctancy of independence and expediency. Some of her happiest hours in these troubled days were spent in her mother's pleasant rooms at St. James's, chatting about her children and her domestic concerns. It would have been well had this been all, but the exiled Queen was not a lady to content herself with the rôle of a devoted grandmother. She felt that she had an opportunity of recapturing the daughter who had escaped from her influence, and she used it to the full. Henrietta came to her for advice in many matters, specially those which concerned religion, and she even allowed herself to be weaned from the fascinating Madame de Chevreuse.

That restless lady began to feel herself less comfortable in England soon after the arrival of the Queen-Mother, for whose coming she had wished, but who, indeed, had never liked the confidante of Anne of Austria. She tried her hand first at one scheme then at another, now intriguing for Montagu at Rome, now aiming higher and attempting to render a striking service to Spain by bringing about an alliance between Strafford and the Marquis of Velada; but all the while she had an uncomfortable conviction that her power over the Queen of England, which at the beginning of her visit had been considerable, was decreasing. Perhaps Henrietta discovered the duplicity of the woman "who said much good of Spain, and yet to the Queen called herself a good Frenchwoman."[223] Certainly she was not very sorry when, in May, 1640, a rumour that the Duke of Chevreuse was coming to England frightened his wife, who had no wish to meet him, across the Channel to Flanders. The Duchess, at her departure, still boasted of the favour of the English Court, and assured her friends that the Queen had pressed her to return whenever she felt inclined to do so, an invitation which Henrietta, who had marked her attitude by giving her a costly jewel as the pledge of a long farewell, somewhat warmly denied. With more truth she might have boasted of the brilliancy of the escort which set out with her from London. At her side were the Marquis of Velada, the Duke of Valette, another victim of Richelieu, whom Charles, against his better judgment, had been persuaded to receive at his Court, and, as might have been expected, the faithful Montagu. These gentlemen left her when eight miles of the road was traversed, but, by the orders of the King himself, she was accompanied to the shores of Flanders by the Earl of Newport to ensure her against any annoyance.

Madame de Chevreuse was gone, and at an opportune moment; but the evil effects of her sojourn remained, and manifested themselves specially in a matter to which the Queen gave considerable attention, and which, like everything else she touched at this moment, turned to her misfortune.

When death had settled the question of Con's candidature she was not diverted from her attempt to procure a cardinal's hat for one of her husband's subjects. Her choice was not a happy one. Walter Montagu, since his conversion to the Catholic Church, may, as Henrietta claimed, have lived an exemplary life; but he could hardly be considered suitable for high ecclesiastical preferment. He was, moreover, a man of many enemies. Charles disliked him so much that, when Sir Robert Ayton died in 1638, he told his wife that she might have a Catholic for her secretary provided she did not choose Walter Montagu.[224] Richelieu's opinion of him was such that he made him the text of his sweeping generalization: "all Englishmen are untrustworthy." The Cardinal, indeed, wished to see no subject of the King of England attain to the coveted honour, and he suggested that the Bishop of Angoulême, who had the supreme merit of being a subject of the King of France, was the only suitable candidate; but he would have preferred almost any one to Montagu, for did he not know that that shifty person, through the mouth of Madame Chevreuse, was promising complete devotion to the King of Spain in return for support at Rome? The Queen's persistence in this matter annoyed the Roman authorities. Cardinal Barberini, in spite of his personal liking for Montagu, never entertained for a moment the idea of acceding to her request; indeed, he instructed Rosetti, who had replaced Con as envoy in England, to tell her frankly that the thing was impossible. It was an unfortunate moment for the question to have arisen, for not only was it of great importance to avoid friction with Richelieu, but the time was coming when Henrietta would have other and more important requests to make to Cardinal Barberini. That observant politician had his eyes attentively fixed upon the English troubles, as to whose progress he was kept well informed by Rosetti. The courtly young envoy—he was barely thirty and of a noble Ferrarese family—had been charmed on his arrival not only by the kindness of the King and Queen, but by the liberty which the Catholics enjoyed. It seemed that permanent communications between the Court of Rome and the Court of England had been established, "the King approving and the heretics themselves not objecting";[225] but stern facts soon forced him to correct his first impressions. The feeling of the nation was rising against the Catholics, and the flame was fanned by the injudicious conduct of the Queen-Mother, who greatly patronized Rosetti as she had Con before him. When, in the Short Parliament, Pym voiced the religious indignation of the people, the "divinity which hedges a King" was still strong enough to restrain him in some measure when referring to the Queen of England. No such scruple deterred him in speaking of a foreign ecclesiastic and of a foreign Queen, the latter of whom was hated, not only on religious grounds, but as the recipient of large sums of money—as much £100 per day—which the country could ill afford.

Henrietta was becoming more and more busy with matters of high politics. It was evident that the Parliament was a failure, but one gleam of brightness cheered the darkness of its last days. Strafford, exerting to the utmost his unrivalled powers, was able to win over in some degree the Upper House, and the Lords by a considerable majority voted that the relief of the King's necessities should have precedence of the redress of grievances. It seemed a great victory, and Henrietta, dazzled by this unexpected success, recognized at last what the man was whom she had slighted. "My Lord Strafford is the most faithful and capable of my husband's servants,"[226] she said publicly, with the generosity of praise from which she never shrank. Nevertheless, there were those, justified by the event, who doubted the real value of such a service; the spirit of the Commons was not thus to be broken, and on May 5th the King dissolved the assembly which is known, from its twenty-three days of existence, as the Short Parliament.

After the breaking of Parliament the deep discontent of the nation burst forth in riots and in a flood of scandalous pamphlets directed against unpopular characters. Henrietta, who was believed to have counselled the dissolution, lost much of the limited popularity she had hitherto enjoyed, and behind her again the populace saw the sinister figure of her mother stirring up strife in England as she had in France. Rosetti, who, as the symbol of the dreaded approximation to popery, was particularly odious, was thought to be in such danger of personal violence that Mary de' Medici offered him the shelter of her apartments. He refused, perhaps wisely; for a few days later a letter was brought to the King threatening to "chase the Pope and the Devil from St. James, where is lodged the Queene, Mother of the Queene." Mary, when she heard of this letter, was so frightened that she refused to go to bed at all the following night, though she was protected by a guard, captained by the Earl of Holland and Lord Goring, which had nothing to do, as the threat proved to be one of those empty insults of which the times were prolific.

Henrietta, who was not by nature easily alarmed, began to appreciate the seriousness of the pass to which her husband's affairs had come. She was in bad health, and she seems already to have thought of retiring to her native land for her confinement, which was imminent;[227] but weakness of body could not impair the activity of her brain, and at this time she definitely entered upon that course of action which, perhaps more than any other, has brought upon her the adverse judgment of posterity, and which, though its details were unknown to her enemies, injured the very cause which it was designed to aid. In an evil hour she opened negotiations with the Papacy, with a view to obtaining money to be used against her husband's subjects.

Since her marriage she had carried on a somewhat frequent correspondence with the Pope and with Cardinal Barberini, whose kind letters led her to believe that she was an object of greater importance in their eyes than was actually the case. She was further drawn to them by the kindness they had shown to Montagu, who himself was a little led astray by flattering words. It is significant that he appears at this time as the Queen's chief adviser. He executed many of the duties of the secretaryship he was not allowed to hold, and he was delaying a long-meditated journey to Rome, where he intended to become a Father of the Oratory, to help his royal mistress in her troubles and perplexities. Even the fidelity of her servants turned to the Queen's destruction, for a more injudicious adviser than Montagu could hardly have been found.