Immediately on the death of the Princess Royal, the queen-mother suddenly announced to her son James that she withdrew her opposition to his marriage. It is just possible that the loss of her daughter may have exercised a softening influence, but it is more probable that this change of front was owing to a warning from Mazarin, who sent her a peremptory message to keep on good terms alike with her sons and the English Ministers of State, and the impoverished Queen could not afford to disregard the powerful adviser of Anne of Austria.[[139]] Whatever the motive, the result was plain. Three days after the funeral of Mary, her mother so far did violence to her own strong and bitter prejudice as to consent to receive not only her son, but the hated daughter-in-law. On 1st January Pepys records the fact: “Mr Moore and I went to Mr Pierce’s, in our way seeing the Duke of York bring his lady to wait upon the Queen, the first time that ever she did since that business, and the Queen is said to receive her with much respect and love.”
[139]. “Life of Henrietta Maria.” J. A. Taylor.
Hyde was informed of this communication by that industrious go-between Walter Montague, who was in England at this time.
This latter statement may be taken with a grain of salt, but Henrietta did control her feelings sufficiently to behave with dignity and self-restraint. As she passed to dinner, her ladies following her, through the corridor of St James’s Palace, Anne was waiting, white and trembling, with a thickly beating heart, and she fell on her knees as “Mary the Queen Mother” swept by in her mourning robes. With the stately gesture the latter could assume at will, she turned, and raising the girl, she kissed her, and leading her to the table placed her at her side.[[140]]
[140]. “Calendar of Domestic State Papers.” 3rd January 1661.—Secretary Nicholas to Bennet: “The Duke and Duchess then came to Court. The Queen received them very affectionately.”
On the same day, the Queen made a still further concession. She consented to see Hyde himself, receiving him graciously and speaking at length of the matter in hand. “He could not,” she said, “wonder, much less take it ill, that she had been offended with the Duke, and had no inclination to give her consent to his marriage, and if she had in the Passion that could not be condemned in her, spoke anything of him that he had taken ill, he ought to impute it to the Provocation she had received though not from him. She was now informed by the King, and well-assured that he had no hand in contriving that Friendship, but was offended with that Passion that really was worthy of him. That she could not but confess that his Fidelity to the King her husband was very eminent and that he had served the King her son with equal fidelity and extraordinary success. And therefore she had received his daughter as her Daughter and heartily forgave the Duke and her and was resolved ever after to live with all the affection of a Mother towards them. So she resolved to make a Friendship with him, and hereafter to expect all the offices from him which her kindness should deserve.”[[141]]
[141]. “Continuation of the Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon,” by himself.
Hyde, as might be expected, showed himself equal to the occasion, though he must have felt that the Queen did him no more than justice when she thus acknowledged his services to her husband and son.
“She could not,” answered the courtier, “show too much anger and aversion, and had too much forgotten her own honour and dignity if she had been less offended.”
But nevertheless the wounds which Henrietta’s unbridled tongue had inflicted in time past were not so easily healed. Clarendon himself remarks bitterly: “From that time there did never appear any want of kindness in the Queen towards him, whilst he stood in no need of it, nor until it might have done him some good.”[[142]]