"Charles:—I am sorry that I must begin my first letter with chiding you, because I hear that you will not take physic. I hope it was only for this day, and that tomorrow you will do it; for if you will not, I must come to you and make you take it; for it is for your health. I have given orders to my Lord of Newcastle to send me word tonight whether you will or not; therefore I hope you will not give me the pains to go. And so I rest your affectionate mother, Henrietta Marie."
"To my dear son, the prince, 1638."
The young prince, who was then only eight years old, felt the propriety of submitting to the maternal command, and swallowed the dose; but amused himself with writing this sprightly little billet to his governor, dryly stating the reason of his declining the potion:
Charles, Prince Of Wales, To His Governor, Lord Newcastle.
"MY LORD:—I would not have you take too much physic, for it doth always make me worse; and I think it will do the like with you. I ride every day, and am ready to follow any other directions from you. Make haste back to him that loves you.
"CHARLES P."
This letter is written between double-ruled lines in a round text hand.
Some months after this the Princess Anne, the youngest daughter of Charles I. and Queen Henrietta, a sweet, well-trained infant of four years old, was stricken with mortal sickness; and being required to say her prayers, as the hour of death was at hand, said, "she did not think she could repeat her long prayer," meaning the Lord's Prayer, "then; but she would say her short prayer;" and then lisped out, "Lighten mine eyes, O Lord, that I sleep not the sleep of death," and expired with these words on her innocent lips.
It is possible that Charles I. might have contended successfully with the inimical party that was arraying itself against him, if he and his queen had not incurred the enmity of Cardinal Richelieu by granting an asylum in England to the queen-dowager of France, Marie de Medicis, Henrietta's mother, the object of that vindictive ecclesiastic's malice, whom he had exiled from France, and pursued with unappeasable hatred from every place in Europe where she sought shelter in her adversity. Charles not only received her with unbounded courtesy and respect, but travelled to meet the royal fugitive at Harwich, where she landed, and conducted her in state to London. When the royal carriage in which Charles and his guest were seated arrived at the great quadrangle of St. James's Palace, Queen Henrietta, accompanied by her children, Charles, Prince of Wales, the little Duke of York, and the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, descended the stairs to receive her royal mother. She even attempted to open the carriage door with her own hands; and the moment her mother alighted she sunk on her knees to receive her blessing, and her example was followed by her children, who all knelt round her.