Five small ships of war, belonging to the Parliament, had entered the bay during the night, unobserved by van Tromp, whose large ship drew too much water to follow them into the bay. It seems absurd that they should have been out of shot of the Dutch guns; but the cannon of that time did not carry far. As the Parliament had voted the Queen guilty of high treason for sending supplies from abroad to the King’s army, Batten, the Parliamentary Admiral, thought this a good opportunity of taking either her person or her life. She wrote to King Charles:[57] “One of these ships had done me the honour to flank my house, which fronted the pier, and before I could get out of bed, the balls were whistling upon me in such style that you may easily believe I loved not such music. Everybody came to force me to go out, the balls beating so on all the houses, that, dressed just as it happened, I went on foot to some distance from the village to the shelter of a ditch like that at Newmarket;[58] but, before we could reach it, the balls were singing round us in fine style and a serjeant was killed within twenty paces of me.” This must have been trying work for a lady, at between five and six o’clock on a February morning, more than an hour before sunrise, on the bleak coast of Yorkshire.
[57] Letters of Henrietta Maria, ed. Mrs. Everett Green, p. 166.
[58] As all racing men know, the Ditch at Newmarket is a long mound.
When the Parliamentary ships sailed out of the bay into deep water, on the ebbing of the tide, van Tromp had a word or two with them; but, strange to say, he failed to capture them.
The captain of one of the Parliamentary ships, however, had imprudently ventured on shore, where he was taken prisoner by some of Newcastle’s soldiers. Having been tried by court-martial and condemned to be hanged, he happened to be met by the Queen on his way to execution. She asked what the procession meant and, on being informed, she ordered him to be liberated, when he went over at once to the King’s service. This incident is mentioned in Bossuet’s famous funeral oration after the death of Henrietta Maria.
CHAPTER VIII.
According to a Yorkshire tradition, recorded by Miss Strickland in her Queens of England (viii. 98), while the Queen’s stores were being laden and put in order of march, she stayed at Boynton Hall, a place some two miles to the west of Burlington or Bridlington, belonging to Sir William Strickland who, although he had received a baronetcy from Charles I was now on the side of the Parliament. Sir William happened to be away from home, but—probably owing to the presence of Newcastle’s troops—the Queen was received as a guest, if only as an enforced guest, by either Lady Strickland, or by whatever person may have been in charge of the house. Among other efforts of hospitality for the benefit of Her Majesty, a great display was made of gold and silver plate.
When the Queen went away, she expressed her excessive gratitude for the excellent entertainment which had been provided for herself and her train, adding that, as the Parliament was granting no subsidies to the King, she regretted to be under the painful necessity of carrying away with her the plate of which there had been such a magnificent display. She said that she should look upon it only as a loan—in fact its temporary removal would be a mere matter of form—and she left a portrait of herself as a pledge for its repayment. There never was any return or repayment; but the portrait is stated to have become, in course of time, at least as valuable as the plate for which it was pledged. So says Miss Strickland who, as one of the family, should have been able to judge; but, in making this calculation, we doubt whether she sufficiently considered the increase in the value of the plate during the same course of time. Silver plate of the reign of Charles I has been sold for as much as £40 an ounce. The writer of these pages has a silver box, given to an ancestress of his own by Charles II, and it was lately valued for insurance, by a professional expert, at £30 an ounce.