Henrietta Maria

by Henrietta Haynes

The Queen was new to danger, either for herself or for her friends. She cared a great deal more to avert the wrath of the House of Commons from herself and from Montagu than for the welfare of the English Catholics, or even of Rosetti, who, at this time, was not on good terms with Montagu. She could think of nothing better to do than to send a message to her enemies, humble in tone and dwelling on the great desire which she had "to employ her own power to unite the King and the people"; she apologized for the "great resort to her Chappell at Denmark House," and promised that in the future she would "be carefull not to exceed that which is convenient and necessary for the exercise of her religion." She took upon herself the responsibility of the Catholic contribution, justifying and explaining it by "her dear and tender affection to the King and the example of other of His Majesty's subjects," and pleading her ignorance of the law if inadvertently anything illegal had been done. She completed her submission by promising to remove Rosetti out of the kingdom "within convenient time."[240]

The wrath of the English Catholics, who already looked upon the Queen's proposed journey to France as a threat of desertion, blazed forth at this surrender. They remembered, no doubt, that their mistress was a princess of France, the daughter of the heretic Henry of Navarre. Had she merely permitted the Parliament to wreak its evil will upon the Church of God, it would have been bad enough; but had she not gone far beyond this, showing herself ready to execute its persecuting edicts even before they were promulgated? The House of Commons, on the other hand, was greatly pleased at the Queen's submission, and her gracious message was "very well taken." But had that assembly known the hopes with which the discomfited lady was consoling herself, its satisfaction would hardly have been greater than that of the Catholics.

One day some weeks earlier Henrietta, in the quiet of her own apartments, had taken up her pen and, without the knowledge of husband or friend, had written one of the most remarkable letters ever indited by a Queen of England.

It was addressed to Cardinal Barberini, and it bore neither date nor name of the place whence it was written. In it Henrietta poured out her whole heart. She dwelt upon the sad state of the Catholics, their banishment, the peril of the priests, the fear lest the harshness of the penal laws, "which reach even to blood," should be put in force against them. She emphasized the desperate condition of her husband, which obliged him, who since his accession had shown his goodwill to the Catholics, and who, indeed, was now suffering on account of his tenderness to them, to consent to persecution. After this introduction she came to the gist of her letter, which was nothing less than a request for a sum of 500,000 crowns, to be used in winning over the chiefs of the Puritan faction. It was, she said, the only hope of salvation, "for when the Catholics have once escaped from the present Parliament, there is everything to hope and nothing to fear in the future, and the only means to bring this about is that which I propose."[241] But the greatest secrecy and the greatest promptitude were necessary. "I ask you very humbly to communicate this to His Holiness, whom I entreat to consult with you alone; for if the matter became known I should be lost. I pray him also to send me a reply as quickly as possible."[242] She did not doubt, she added, that if the response were favourable the King, her husband, would show his gratitude by favouring the Catholics even more than he had done in the past. At any rate, whatever the upshot of the affair, she would have shown her zeal for the good of her religion.

The letter was finished; but Henrietta, who knew to some extent with what edged tools she was playing, took up her pen again to add a brief postscript. "There is no one knows of this yet but His Holiness, you, and I." After writing this final warning she sealed up the missive and sent it to the Papal Nuncio in Paris, through whom it reached Rome.

Cardinal Barberini was surprised and somewhat annoyed when he received this letter. He was already a little displeased with Henrietta, and the simple arguments which she used had not the influence which she imagined over the mind of the Protector of England. Moreover, the method of her request was unfortunate. The Cardinal thought it strange that she should have written on her own responsibility, without consulting either the accredited agent of the Papacy, who was at her side, or her own confessor. At first he was almost inclined to consider the letter a forgery, but he dismissed this idea in favour of the supposition that the Queen had been persuaded to this action by some person who sought perhaps to deceive her. He seems to have suspected that Richelieu had some hand in the matter,[243] and he remarked significantly in writing to Rosetti that the Queen's letter had been carried to Paris "by one Forster," an English Catholic believed to be in the pay of the French Government, who, he doubted not, had given his employers an opportunity of reading it. Henrietta meanwhile was awaiting in great anxiety the reply of Barberini, which, when it came at last, was a disappointment. Again it was intimated that only the conversion of the King of England would loosen the purse-strings of the Pope and justify the Holy Father in breaking in on the treasure of the Church stored up in the Castle of S. Angelo. The promise of toleration for the Catholics which would, it seems, have been given,[244] was not enough, for, as the Cardinal justly remarked to Rosetti, that promise had already been made in the secret articles of the Queen's marriage treaty. Moreover, what security could be offered that toleration, even if granted, would be permanent in the face of Parliamentary opposition? Barberini, however, did not wish to be unkind, and he hoped to soften the hard refusal by instructing Rosetti to tell the Queen of England that if matters came to the worst he would be willing to help her to the extent of 15,000 crowns.[245] But neither this promise nor the many pleasing words which accompanied it availed to save Henrietta from bitter disappointment, only less bitter, perhaps, than that which she would have felt had she received the money for which she asked, and had attempted therewith to bribe John Pym.

But this was not the only negotiation which she was carrying on with the Holy See. It will be remembered that in her message to the Commons she promised to remove Rosetti, understanding that his presence was "distasteful to the kingdom." She was afraid that most unwillingly she would be obliged to keep her promise. "I cannot sufficiently lament the pass to which we are come," she wrote to Cardinal Barberini. "I have long hoped to be able to keep Count Rosetti here, and I have used all sorts of artifice to do so ... but, at last, there was such an outburst of violence that there was no means of keeping up our communications except by promising to remove him."[246] She referred her correspondent to an accompanying letter written by Montagu to learn the details of a scheme by which she hoped to make of no effect her promises of submission, and in spite of her enemies to keep open the communications between England and Rome.[247] Montagu's letter, which is long and interesting, is less melancholy in tone than that of the Queen, and shows less of the gnawing anxiety which was invading her spirit. He even explained cheerfully that the anti-Catholic promises of the King and Queen had had so good an effect that affairs seemed in train for "an accommodation to get rid of the Scots, which is the principal thing that the King ought to regard."[248] As to the method to be employed for assuring communications, it was similar to that already practised in Rome, where, in place of Sir Kenelm Digby, a private Scotchman, by name Robert Pendrick, formerly Hamilton's secretary and a friend of Con, had been installed as agent. Montagu, however, hoped that, pending the arrival of an humble substitute, the Queen might be able to keep Rosetti in England, and, indeed, that the Count might stay "until the time of her journey to France."

For on this journey she was at last resolved. Her health had not improved, and it was thought that she was suffering from the common English complaint, and was going into a decline. Probably she did not fear a rebuff from France, but she knew that she would have to fight for her departure with the House of Commons. Another, and perhaps an unexpected, obstacle presented itself. Mayerne vindicated his Puritanism by certifying that his royal patient was in no need of change of air, and that her malady was as much of the mind as of the body—a diagnosis which was probably correct but highly inconvenient. In this moment of almost universal reprobation, when even her co-religionists for whom she had done so much looked coldly on her, Henrietta may have found some consolation in the kindness of a number of women of London and Westminster, who, in a petition to Parliament against the proposed journey, not only dwelt upon the loss to commerce which would follow the removal of the Queen's Court, but added kind words of her, praising the encouragement she had given to the calling of Parliament, and saying, with much truth, that since her coming to England "she hath been an instrument of many acts of mercy and grace to multitudes of distressed people."

Richelieu's answer to Henrietta's request for the hospitality of France was another grave disappointment. Never for one moment had the French Cardinal's vigilant eye been turned from England or its Queen. Madame de Chevreuse, Mary de' Medici, the Duke of Valette, the inclinations towards a Spanish alliance, all he had noted, and now was the day of reckoning. Not even in these closing years of triumph would he admit into France one who might scheme against his interests. The refusal was absolute, and in vain did Henrietta send a special agent to press her claims. The Cardinal was inexorable, and the excellent reasons which he gave for his decision —such as the certain ruin of the Catholics by the Queen's absence, and the danger in such desperate circumstances of leaving the country—failed to convince his correspondent that her request was refused solely for her own sake. So great was her mortification that she was unable to hide from her servants the chagrin which she felt that she, a daughter of France, the child of the great Henry, was refused in her sickness and sorrow the shelter of her native land.