Nor even within the walls of Oxford was there freedom from jealousy and strife. Henrietta could not bring herself to look cordially upon Holland[297] when he came to ask pardon of the King for his rebellion, even though he used Jermyn as his intermediary, and there were others who, though faithful to the cause, stood between her and that complete ascendancy over her husband at which she aimed. Perhaps it was hardly to be expected that she should like Rupert of the Rhine, the son of the Queen of Bohemia, who had great influence over his uncle in military matters. Never at any time during the war did the affairs of the King promise better than during Henrietta's stay at Oxford. She and her advisers, among whom were prominent the Earl of Bristol and his son, that same George Digby who had been with her in Holland, with their usual leaning to the bold and enterprising course, wished Charles to march on London, and end the war by a grand coup. It was a sore disappointment to her when, on the advice of Rupert, he turned aside to the siege of Gloucester. She believed (and she kept the belief to the end of her days[298]) that had he pushed on to the capital at this favourable moment, he would have been able to overcome his enemies.
But, in spite of all these accumulated worries, Henrietta's stay in Oxford was probably the happiest time she had known since the opening of the Long Parliament. After her long absence she was restored to "the dearest thing in the world to her, after God, the presence of the King her husband and the Princes her children."[299] After the troubles and dangers of her sojourn in Holland and her campaign in the north she was in peace and safety, though the city was strongly fortified and cannon were to be seen both at "Newparkes and S. Giles his fields." Nor, in spite of these warlike preparations, was the mimic Court without its diversions, for each college and hall was turned into a dwelling for gay royalist ladies and gentlemen, so that as Henrietta took her airing in Trinity Grove, the Hyde Park of Oxford, she saw many of the faces she had been accustomed to see in the real Hyde Park in London.
Absurd reports were rife among the enemy of the condition of the city; how it swarmed with Irish rebels, how Mass was said in every street; while the more sober-minded descanted upon the condition of the colleges, which "look as they did in Queen Elizabeth's daies on the street side, but if you go in you will find Henry the 8 his reformation in the Chappell."[300] It is probable that the Queen paid little attention to the flights of the Puritan fancy, but she took some pains to conciliate her husband's Protestant friends; and when a sermon which was used to be preached in Merton College chapel on Sundays was discontinued as a compliment to her, she was much annoyed, and gave orders that it should be resumed.
But even Oxford could be no permanent resting-place for the Queen. Her foes were gathering round it, and unless she wished to run the risk of seeing the horrors of a siege, it was time to be gone. She had, moreover, to care for another life, for she was about again to become a mother. The King could not, of course, leave his headquarters, and the husband and wife prepared to part once more, and this time for ever.
Henrietta left Oxford on April 17th, 1644. The parting between her and her husband, which took place at Abingdon, was sufficiently sad, even though the knowledge that it was final was hidden from her. Then, escorted by Jermyn, whose loyalty had been rewarded by a barony, and whose presence at her side excited scurrilous comments which she scornfully ignored, she turned to the south-west. By the 21st of April she was in Bath. She pushed on by the great city of Bristol, which formed part of her dowry, and thence to Exeter, where she arrived in a condition so serious that it seemed likely her troubles would soon find their surest consolation. "Mayerne, for the love of me, go to my wife,"[301] wrote Charles, and Henrietta herself penned a short, piteous note to her old physician. "My disease will invite you more strongly, I hope, than many lines would do."[302] The faithful Swiss needed no further summons. He was at the Queen's side when, on June 16th, the child, whose short life and tragic death were to be in keeping with the circumstances of her birth, was born at Bedford House, in the city of Exeter. The little princess was an unusually pretty baby, and the father she was never to see wrote expressing great pleasure at the reports of her beauty, and requesting that she might be christened in the cathedral of her birthplace, an injunction which aroused the wrath of the Puritans all the more because Charles had just attempted to silence the unpleasant rumours current on the subject of his religion by issuing a declaration of his unalterable attachment to the Protestant faith.[303]
Henrietta, who was always brave in illness, had hoped that the physical miseries from which she suffered would disappear with her confinement. Instead, she found herself rather worse than better. "The most miserable creature in the world, who can write no more"[304]—thus she describes herself in a letter to her husband written from her bed, and containing an account of her ailments. To crown all, she found that it was impossible for her to remain at Exeter. Essex was on her track, and to all the entreaties for a safe conduct to Bath, which she addressed to him by means of a French agent named Sabran who happened to be with her, he returned answers which in the circumstances were brutal. The Queen was no concern of his, he said. Henrietta, fearing above all things in her weak state the noise of firing which a siege would involve, dragged herself from her bed a few days after the birth of her baby, whose helpless life she confided to one of her attendants, the Countess of Morton. Accompanied by Jermyn and by her devoted confessor, Father Philip, she fled still farther into the western peninsula, down to that strange land beyond Truro which was then hardly considered a part of England, and where still lingered the accents of the Cornish tongue. There in the castle of Pendennis, which guarded the village of Penycomequick,[305] she found a refuge. She was indeed in a sad plight. Mayerne himself believed "that her days would not be many," and a compassionate Cornish gentleman wrote to his wife that "here is the woefullest spectacle my eyes yet ever looked on, the most worne and weake pitifull creature in ye world, the poore Queen shifting for an hour's liffe longer."[306]
From Pendennis Henrietta found means to put to sea; but not even when she left English soil did the hatred of her enemies leave her. Ships of the Parliament were on the watch, and the boat which she was aboard was not only chased, but pursued by rounds of shot, as the Roundheads wished her to have "no other courtesy from England, but cannon balls to convey her into France."[307] Then at last the Queen's brave spirit, which had not faltered in sorrow, danger, or pain, gave way. She did not fear death, but she shuddered at the idea of falling into the hands of her foes, and it seemed as if capture were to be her fate. In her agony she called upon the captain to fire the powder on board, and to let her die with her friends, rather than that those impious hands should touch her. When the danger was passed she reproached herself for having thought of suicide, and happily so desperate a remedy was not needed. She escaped her enemies once more, and after a long tossing on the Channel the travellers saw with joy the rocky coast of Brittany. At the little village of Conquest, near Brest, the landing was effected, and the daughter of France, returning to her native land, retired to a whitewashed cottage to rest from her fatigues. But the news soon spread that the daughter of Henry IV had arrived, and the nobility of the country-side, who, like all good Frenchmen, honoured the memory of the great King, flocked to do her service, and to make up by their generosity the deficiencies of her poverty. Her first care was to dispatch Jermyn to announce her arrival to the Court of France and to Mazarin, and to beg the medical assistance which her condition so urgently required. Meanwhile she was content. The country in which she found herself was indeed wild and rough as the Cornwall she had left, but at least she was safe and among friends. In later days she retained no unpleasant memory of the rocky coast, the desolate moorland, and the brave, simple-hearted folk of La Basse Bretagne.
[ [262]Walter Montagu. Aff. Etran. Ang., t. 47.
[ [263]The following is a specimen of it: "You are the abstracted Quintessence of artificiall Nature: your glorious countenance is crowned with Majestie, your brow interwoven with occasionall Lenity and discreet austerity, your eye (like mounted Phoebus in his meridian pride) shoots such reflective beams of radiant brightnesse that it captivates the dazled beholder; your Cupidinean cheeks are clothed with intermixed Lillies and Roses; your purpureous lips (like a Nectarean current) do redound with expressed Oratory; your Murcurian tongue is gilded with such admirable Rhetorick that the Muses themselves seem to inhabit there and make it their Helicon: your Aromatick smelling-breath is so oderiferous that it exceeds the Arabian Odours, and seems rather celestial than breathed from a mortal creature, your melodious voice is so harmonious that Apollo may lay down his Harpe, and the Sphears themselves become astonished."—The Prince of Orange, his Royall Entertainment to the Queen of England (1641).