“It was this match,” adds Dr. Kennet, “that began to corrupt our nation with French modes and vanities; which gave occasion to Mr. Prynne to write that severe invective, called Histriomastix, against stage plays; to betray our councils to the French court; to weaken the poor Protestants in France, by rendering ineffectual the relief of Rochelle; nay, and to lessen our own trade and navigation. These ill effects, beyond the king’s intention, raised such a jealousy, and spread such a damp upon the English subjects, that it was unhappily turned into one of the unjust occasions of civil war, which indeed began more out of hatred to that party, than out of any disaffection to the king. The people thought themselves too much under French counsels, and a French ministry, or else, they could never have been drawn aside into that great rebellion. This interest when suspected to prevail, brought the king into urgent difficulties; and in the midst of them the aid and assistance, which that interest offered him, did but the more effectually weaken him. On this side the water the French services betrayed him; and on the other side, the French policies were at work to betray him.”
And, indeed, as queen Henrietta had a mighty, if not a supreme sway over King Charles’s councils, so did her mother, Mary de Medicis, who came over by her invitation, administer great cause of jealousy to this nation. “The people,” says L’Estrange, “were generally malecontent at her coming, and wished her farther off. For they did not like her train and followers, which had often been observed to be the sword of pestilence, so that she was beheld as some meteor of evil signification. Nor was one of these calamities thought more the effect of her fortune than inclination; for her restless and unconstant spirit was prone to embroil all wheresoever she came. And besides, as queen Henrietta was extraordinary active in raising money among the Roman Catholics of this kingdom, to enable King Charles to make war against his subjects of Scotland, so was she extreme busy in fomenting the unhappy differences between his Majesty and his English Parliament.”
Sir John Reresby, in his Memoirs, asserts that queen Henrietta Maria was married after the king’s death to Lord St. Alban’s. “The abbess of an English college in Paris, whither the queen used to retire, would tell me,” says Sir John, “that Lord Jermyn, since St. Alban’s, had the queen greatly in awe of him, and indeed it was obvious that he had great interest with her concerns; but that he was married to her, or had children by her, as some have reported, I did not then believe, though the thing was certainly so.”
Madame Baviere, in her letters, says, “Charles the First’s widow made a clandestine marriage, with her Chevalier d’ Honneur, Lord St. Alban’s, who treated her extremely ill, so that whilst she had not a faggot to warm herself, he had in his apartment a good fire, and a sumptuous table. He never gave the queen a kind word, and when she spoke to him, he used to say, Que me veut cette femme?”
To what a miserable state the queen was reduced may be seen in the following extract from De Retz’s Memoirs, (vol. 1. p. 261.) “Four or five days before the king removed from Paris, I went to visit the queen of England, whom I found in her daughter’s chamber, who hath been since Duchess of Orleans. At my coming in she said, ‘You see I am come to keep Henrietta company. The poor child could not rise to-day for want of a fire.’ The truth is, that the cardinal for six months together had not ordered her any money towards her pension; that no trades-people would trust her for any thing; and that there was not at her lodgings in the Louvre one single billet. You will do me the justice to suppose that the princess of England did not keep her bed the next day for want of a faggot; but it was not this which the Princess of Conde meant in her letter. What she spoke about was, that some days after my visiting the queen of England, I remembered the condition I had found her in, and had strongly represented the shame of abandoning her in that manner, which caused the Parliament to send 40,000 livres to her Majesty. Posterity will hardly believe that a Princess of England, grand-daughter of Henry the Great, hath wanted a faggot in the month of January, to get out of bed in the Louvre, and in the eyes of a French court. We read in histories, with horror, of baseness less monstrous than this; and the little concern I have met with about it in most people’s minds, has obliged me to make, I believe, a thousand times this reflection—that examples of times past move men beyond comparison more than those of their own times. We accustom ourselves to what we see; and I have sometimes told you, that I doubted whether Caligula’s horse being made a consul would have surprized us so much as we imagine.”
As for the relative situations of the king (Charles II.) and Lord Jermyn, (afterwards St. Alban’s) Lord Clarendon (Hist. of the Rebellion, vol. 3. p. 2) says that the “Marquis of Ormond was compelled to put himself in prison, with other gentlemen, at a pistole a week for his diet, and to walk the streets a-foot, which was no honourable custom in Paris, whilst the Lord Jermyn kept an excellent table for those who courted him, and had a coach of his own, and all other accommodations incident to the most full fortune; and if the king had the most urgent occasion for the use but of twenty pistoles, as sometimes he had, he could not find credit to borrow it, which he often had experiment of.”
The Lord St. Alban’s above mentioned was Henry Jermyn, second son of Thomas Jermyn, of Rushbrooke, near Bury St. Edmund’s, in Suffolk. In 1644 he was created Lord Jermyn, with limitation of the honour to the heirs male of his elder brother Thomas. In 1660 he was further advanced to the dignity of Earl of St. Alban’s, and Baron of St. Edmund’s Bury, but on his death in 1683, the earldom became extinct. The barony of Jermyn devolved on Thomas (son of his elder brother Thomas) who became second Lord Jermyn: he died unmarried in 1703.—Lord St. Alban’s was master of the horse to Queen Henrietta Maria, and one of the privy council to Charles the second. In July 1660 he was sent ambassador to the court of France, and in 1671 was made Lord Chamberlain of his majesty’s household.—“He was a man of no great genius,” says Grammont, “he raised himself a considerable fortune from nothing, and by losing at play, and keeping a great table, made it appear greater than it was.” “It is well known what a table the good man kept at Paris, while the king his master was starving at Brussels, and the queen dowager his mistress, lived not over well in France.”
This earl lived in London at Jermyn house, which stood at the head of St. Alban’s-street, Pallmall, which street and Jermyn-street had their names from him.
LAST MOMENTS OF PHILIP MELANCTHON.[[34]]
The nineteenth of April, 1560, was the last day of the mortal existence of this great reformer and pious christian. After the usual medical inquiries of the morning, he adverted to the calamitous state of the church of Christ, but intimated his hope that the genuine doctrine of the gospel would ultimately prevail, exclaiming, “If God be for us who can be against us.” After this he presented fervent supplications to heaven for the welfare of the church, and in the intervals of sleep conversed principally upon this subject with several of his visiting friends.