[142]. “Life of Henrietta Maria.” J. A. Taylor.
Yet a truce was signed as it were, and peace was in a fair way to be established. But still the Chancellor was never entirely reconciled to his daughter’s lofty alliance, on which he looked with doubt and misgiving to the end.
Some ten days before this momentous interview Evelyn speaks of the marriage as fully acknowledged. Under the date of 22nd December he writes:
“The marriage of the Chancellor’s daughter being now newly owned, I went to see her, she being Sir Richard Browne’s intimate acquaintance, when she waited on the Princess of Orange. She was now at her father’s at Worcester House in the Strand. We all kissed her hand as did also my Lord Chamberlain Manchester, and the Countess of Northumberland. This was a strange change. Can it succeed well?”[[143]]
[143]. “Diary of John Evelyn,” ed. Edw. Bray, 1850.
Strange indeed, and no one can wonder that a mind so thoughtful, uplifted, and restrained as that of John Evelyn, who had known the father through good and evil days, who remembered from her childhood the girl, now a princess of England, should doubt the final issue of such a turn of fortune.
Two days after Anne’s reception at Court her child was baptized at Worcester House by the name of Charles, the King and Monk, now Duke of Albemarle, being godfathers, while the queen-mother sealed her reconciliation by undertaking the office of godmother, the other being Lady Ormonde, and the boy was created Duke of Cambridge.
During this same month of January, Henrietta closed her first visit to England after the Restoration. It had not been a happy one. It had been clouded with heavy grief and bereavement, besides reviving poignant recollections, and she had moreover sustained the vexation and disappointment which her second son’s marriage had inflicted on her, from which she had by no means recovered, in spite of her altered attitude towards the offenders.
JOHN EVELYN