Marie de Medicis was a woman of weak judgment, and proved a troublesome visitor. Charles and Henrietta, whose affairs were in a very difficult position, had great cause to regret her visit, which lasted nearly two years.
The queen-mother, Marie de Medicis, was given forty grand apartments in St. James's Palace. She brought a great number of priests with her, which added to the rage of the people; and the king's affairs went from bad to worse. Charles was compelled to give up his great minister Strafford to the axe, who was condemned by Parliament for having served him too faithfully. Henrietta exerted herself to support him; she often wanted judgment, but her courage never failed.
In the midst of the awful scenes of Strafford's impeachment, trial, and death, the princess-royal was espoused to the young Prince of Orange; he was but eleven, and the bride ten years old. Henrietta made no opposition to this Protestant alliance. She had hoped that the proof of the king's attachment to the Protestants would silence the cries of popery against him; but those cries were got up for party purposes by those intent on plunder, to whom all creeds were indifferent. After her mother had quitted England, and the king had departed, with the attempt to pacify Scotland, the royal family assembled round her were of tender ages. They were soon separated, some of them never to meet again. Charles, Prince of Wales, was eleven years of age, Mary the young bride of Orange, ten, James, Duke of York, seven, Elizabeth six, and Henry, Duke of Gloucester, a babe in arms. When alarms occurred at night, the queen more than once armed her household, and herself headed their patrole about Oatlands Park; thus personally guarding her slumbering little ones.
The king had received such proofs in Scotland of Richelieu's bribery of the five members of Parliament, that he went to arrest Mr. Pym and his colleagues in person. Unfortunately, he had confided to the queen his intent, and told her at such an hour all his regal perplexities would cease. The queen put misplaced confidence in one of her attendants, Lady Carlisle, a spy leagued with the agitators; to this treacherous person she told her royal husband's intentions. Lady Carlisle sent instantly word to the factious members, who escaped. As Whitehall was close to the House of Commons, the affair was easy, the king being delayed awhile by poor persons' petitions on the way. Long after, Henrietta related this event to her biographer with the most passionate penitence. "Not a reproach," she said, "did Charles give me when I threw myself into his arms, and confessed my fault of tattling."
Such was the state of affairs when Henrietta proposed to escort her young daughter, the bride of Orange, to Holland. Her real object was to sell some valuable jewels, and obtain arms for defence there. The king attended his wife and daughter to Dover, where they embarked, February 24, 1642.
As the wind was favourable for coasting, the king rode many miles, following the vessel along the winding of the shores, his tearful eyes gazing after those dear ones he feared he never should behold again. The royal standard was raised at Nottingham, and civil war occurred as soon as the queen departed.
Henrietta met her mother again in Holland, and stayed nearly twelve months, during which time her business was performed with no little skill and sagacity. The Dutch mynheers, grateful both to the King of England, and to the exiled queen-mother of France for their political existence, did not send Henrietta empty away. She embarked for return February 2, 1643, in a fine ship called the Princess Royal; but fierce tempests arose, and the northeast gales, after many days, threw the queen back from whence she came on the wild Scheveling coast. Henrietta bore the terrors of the storm with high courage, replying to her ladies, when they were screaming and lamenting round her, "Queens of England are never drowned."
After a few days' rest and refreshment the undaunted Henrietta again set sail, followed by Admiral Van Tromp's Dutch fleet, which kept out of sight of the English shores, when she and her armed transports arrived in Burlington Bay, Yorkshire. A troop of two hundred cavaliers appeared on the hills, and under that protection the queen's transports safely landed their ammunition and stores.
The sleep of the queen was broken at dawn next day by the parliamentary Admiral Batten bombarding the town of Burlington. The queen had been voted guilty of high treason; so this hero was trying to take her life. She fled as soon as dressed; but directly she was in a place of shelter, remembering that an old dog named Mitte, which had guarded her chamber for years, was left at the mercy of the parliamentary admiral, despite of her attendants, she ran back through Burlington to her sleeping-chamber, caught up Mitte in her arms, and fled back to the dry ditch where she could crouch while the balls flew over her head. Van Tromp came up with the tide to the rescue, but his ships were too big to enter Burlington quay. Nevertheless, he mauled Batten in the rear. Meantime the queen, with Mitte and her ladies, obtained hospitality at Boynton Hall, close by, the seat of Sir William Strickland.