The times were troubled. Roundhead and Cavalier still stood at misunderstanding enmity one directly opposed to the other and never the twain might meet. The pendulum swung with bewildering rapidity from harshly somber Cromwellian Puritanism to the excessive dissipation of the Court of the Merry Monarch: the country followed the pendulum.
Charles II., while humane on the whole, and more inclined to ease and pleasure than to troublesome revenge, yet displayed a touch of the savage in his treatment of the body of Oliver Cromwell. He ordered that it be disinterred and the head struck off. This was done; and the ghastly head of the man who had ruled England with a rod of iron for five years, was fastened to the gibbet at Tyburn.
Horrible is the hate which pursues its victim beyond death and wreaks vengeance upon an unresisting mass of putrefaction! All such excesses, no matter by whom committed or under what provocation, are atavistic expressions of the jackal and the tiger in the heart of man.
Truly there is no eye that can foresee the future! Cromwell, passing for the thousandth time through the thoroughfare of Tyburn, saw not there his own head fastened to a gibbet. Charles I., at the stately banquet board of Whitehall Palace, saw not the great end window of the hall opening upon the scaffold. And we, secure in the hour, see not that other hour of fatal import that yet shall be; and—’tis well.
Death of Queen Henrietta.
Queen Henrietta Maria was not present at the scenes of acclamation which welcomed the return of her son, Charles II. She was at that time happily absorbed in the forth-coming marriage of her charming daughter, the Princess Henriette Maria, to Philip, Duke of Orleans, brother of Louis XIV.
Some time later Queen Henrietta Maria went to England. She resided there three years, but her heart’s best interests were in sunny France where her idolized daughter, the Duchess of Orleans, moved amid the gay court of Versailles as its chief honor and ornament. Charles II. and his wife, Catherine, of Braganza, reluctantly bade farewell to the Queen-mother after accompanying her as far as the Nore; but doubtless there was secret joy in the heart of Henrietta Maria as the foggy shores of England receded from view and France arose in expectancy.
Then, too, all seemed calm in England; Charles II. and his wife were high in popular favor. Her second son, James, Duke of York, was happily married and surrounded by a promising family. James’ eldest daughter, the Lady Mary, later Queen Mary II. of England, was a great favorite with the affectionate grandmother, Henrietta Maria. Anne, James’ second daughter, afterward Queen Anne of England, was also attached to the kindly old Queen-mother.
The old-age years of Henrietta Maria rolled on in comparative happiness. Some lives seem to have their sorrows scattered uniformly over the years, a gentle drizzle, never dazzling sunlight; other lives are marked by dynamic contrasts—brilliancy, ecstatic light suddenly blackened by tornado blasts and torn by lurid lightning, and after that, calm again and even the bright light.
Queen Henrietta Maria’s tornado blast and searing lightning flash came full upon her when her husband was beheaded; her later years were calmly happy. In philanthropic labors, in the exercise of all the gentle charities of the Christian heart, in the hopeful fulfilment of religious obligations, the old age years drifted calmly to the great Calm.