No one felt more than Henrietta that the King of England's fate was a warning to those in authority. She watched with painful interest the course of rebellion in France, and when at last she was able to see the Queen-Regent,[377] she gave that obstinate lady some excellent advice, dwelling particularly on the goodwill of the Parisians to their little King, and the general dislike which was felt for Cardinal Mazarin. In 1649 the rebellion was repressed, but only that it might break out anew two years later. During the second war of the Fronde, Henrietta, who thought that English history was repeating itself in France,[378] sought Queen Anne at S. Germain-en-Laye. There in an assembly, composed of both Frenchmen and Englishmen, she pressed upon her sister-in-law counsels of wisdom and moderation which it had been well had she herself followed in the past. "My sister," said the haughty Spanish lady, who was weary of advice, specially perhaps from one who had known so little how to manage her own concerns, "do you wish to be Queen of France as well as of England?"
Henrietta's reply came promptly, but with a world of sadness in it, "I am nothing, do you be something!"[379]
* * * * *
Queen Henrietta Maria's position was considerably altered by her husband's death; on the one hand she became a person of greater importance as the adviser of her young son, who was hardly of an age to manage his own affairs; on the other, she was deprived of Charles' powerful support, and laid more open to the attacks of her opponents, whose fear it was to see her two sons, Charles and James, who arrived in Paris shortly after their father's death, fall under her influence.
Party feeling ran high at the exiled Court, which, with the suppression of the first rebellion of the Fronde, took shape again. Henrietta was respected by all—"our good Queen," she was affectionately called—but her religion and her politics were disliked by the Church of England constitutional party, which was strongly represented in Paris. Sir Edward Hyde, Sir Edward Nicholas, and their friends, considered with some justice that her counsels had been fatal to the master whose death had placed him on a pinnacle, where assuredly he had never been in his lifetime. They particularly disliked Jermyn, whose great influence with the Queen exposed him to jealousy, and Lord Culpepper[380] and Henry Percy, his intimate friends, were little less obnoxious to them. "I may tell you freely," wrote Ormonde, the late Viceroy of Ireland, who arrived in Paris at the end of 1651, "I believe all these lords go upon as ill principles as may be; for I doubt there is few of them that would not do anything almost, or advise the King to do anything, that may probably recover his or their estates."[381]
Shortly after the King's death the Queen's party (or that of the Louvre, as its enemies called it) was strengthened by the arrival of a recruit of great importance, Henrietta's old friend Walter Montagu, whom she had never seen since they parted in Holland in 1643. This gentleman, since his apprehension at Rochester, had been in the hands of the Roundheads; he had spent most of his time in the Tower of London, where he varied the monotony of prison life by a spirited controversy with a fellow-prisoner, Dr. John Bastwick, of pillory fame, who expressed himself greatly pleased with his nimble-witted adversary. He also became very devout, and in proof thereof wrote a volume of spiritual essays, which he published in 1647 with a charming dedication to the Queen of England, wherein piety and flattery were delicately blended. In spite of the dislike with which he was regarded,[382] he was treated with consideration, partly no doubt through the influence of his brother, the Earl of Manchester, with whom he was always on good terms and who even supplied him with money, but partly also, probably, because it was felt that the Queen of France, who pleaded over and over again for his enlargement, must not be irritated beyond measure. He was permitted to go to Tunbridge Wells on account of his health, which suffered from his long confinement, and he was finally released on the ground that he had never borne arms against the Parliament, which was true enough, as he had been in prison almost since the beginning of the war. Nevertheless, together with his friend Sir Kenelm Digby, who had reappeared in England, he was banished the country under pain of death.[383] He quickly repaired to Spa to drink the waters there, and thence passed to Paris, where he was warmly welcomed by the Queens, both of England and France.
The appearance of Walter Montagu—a frail worldling, as he calls himself—in the rôle of a spiritual writer probably caused much the same sort of amusement in Parisian circles as was caused in later days in those of London by the publication of Richard Steel's Christian Hero. But it was soon found that the long years of prison and danger had wrought a real change in the whilom courtier, who now became a dévot of the fashionable Parisian type. He lost no time in putting into execution his former project of embracing the ecclesiastical state. "Your old friend, Wat Montagu," wrote Lord Hatton in February, 1650-1, "hath already taken upon him the robe longue and received the first orders and intends before Easter (as I am credibly assured) to take the order of Priesthood."[384] He sang his first Mass at Pontoise in the following April, and in the autumn of the same year received by the favour of Queen Anne the Abbey of Nanteuil, which gave him the title of Abbé and a sufficient income. A few years later the same royal patroness bestowed upon him the richer and more important Abbey of S. Martin at Pontoise,[385] whose ample revenues he expended with such liberality and tact as to win the gratitude of his less fortunate compatriots, Catholics and Protestants alike.
One of the earliest questions which the Queen had to settle after her husband's execution was that of her eldest son's plans. At first a journey to Ireland was contemplated, but finally it was decided that the young King should go to Scotland and try his fortune among those who had betrayed his father. Henrietta herself was inclined to the Presbyterian alliance, in which opinion she was encouraged by the Louvre party. English and French Catholics alike believed that the silly Anglican compromise had met with the fate it deserved, and that henceforward the spoils would be divided between themselves and the Presbyterians. The remnant of Anglicans who showed a gallant faith in their position which later events justified distrusted these latter so deeply that they would almost have preferred the King to remain an exile for ever to seeing him restored by their means, who had sold the Blessed Martyr. As for the Presbyterian alliance with the Catholics, that they considered the most natural thing in the world;[386] for in their opinion both schools of thought aimed at an undue subordination of the civil to the religious power, or as a Royalist rhymester put it:—
"A Scot and Jesuit, join'd in hand, First taught the world to say That subjects ought to have command And princes to obey."[387]