The queen-regent of France sent Madame de Motteville to her afflicted sister of England. The sympathy felt for the afflicted daughter of their great Henry, induced the Frondoneers to let this lady pass their lines. "I was," she says, "admitted to her bedside. The queen, Henrietta, gave me her hand while sobs choked her speech. 'I have lost a crown,' she cried, 'but that I have long ceased to regret; it is the husband for whom I grieve; good, just, wise, virtuous as he was, most worthy of my love and that of his subjects; the future time must be for me but one succession of torture.'" Henrietta then sent important messages of advice to her sister-queen on her affairs, implored her to seek and hear the truth before it was too late, which, if her Charles or herself had ever been told, affairs needed not have taken the fatal turn that she should ever mourn. Queen Henrietta then asked that her newly-arrived son, the Duke of York, might be given the same allowance as his brother, now called by all her exiled court Charles II.
Before the violence of grief was abated, it became needful that Queen Henrietta should leave Paris for St. Germains, where the court of France then was. The transit was dangerous, but it is from the superabundant spite of the English republican news-letters the fact is revealed that the young King of England, in his deep mourning for his father, rode by the side of his mother's carriage, guarding her from the infuriated rabble. The queen-regent of France and her sons were waiting at Chatou to comfort them by every kindness after this terrible journey. Henrietta's next trouble was parting from her son Charles II. for his adventurous attempts in Scotland and England. After the failure of the royal cause at the hard-fought battle of Worcester, the young king retired into exile at Cologne. Queen Henrietta had to weep alone over the sad death of her beautiful daughter Elizabeth, who died broken-hearted in her cruel imprisonment, at Carisbrook Castle. The indignation of all Europe obliged the English republicans to send the young Duke of Gloucester to Paris. The last interview of Charles I. with these children had made every feeling heart sympathize with them. It must be owned that the worst action Queen Henrietta ever committed was the persecution she raised against her son Henry, Duke of Gloucester, to make him change his religion. Not out of fanatic bigotry, which though troublesome may possibly be sincere, but from the sordid motive of providing for him as a Roman Catholic ecclesiastic. The boy, at the tender age of eight years, had earnestly promised his sire, as he sat on his knee, never to forsake the faith of the Church of England, or to supersede his elder brothers, and now he kept his word as sturdily as if he had been thirty.[3] Charles II. stopped his mother's tampering with the faith of his younger brother, ordering, as their sovereign, that Gloucester should be sent to his loving sister Mary, Princess of Orange, then at Breda.
[3] For the details of this event, see "Lives of the Queens of England," vol. v.
In another attempt to mend adverse fortune Henrietta was signally disappointed; she tried in vain to induce her rich and beautiful niece, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, the second lady in France, to accept the hand of her eldest son, the expatriated Charles II. To her subsequent regret, the princess scorned the young king for his poverty.
Time and death at last did their work, and the royal family was restored, not by foreign force, but by acclamation. England, having for twenty years experienced anarchy, was glad to welcome her king home again, all people know, with his two brothers York and Gloucester, at Dover, on his birthday, May 29, 1660.
The queen-mother, as Henrietta was now called, did not witness the delirious joy of the Restoration. She was busy with the marriage-treaty of her beautiful darling, the Princess Henrietta, with her youngest nephew, Philippe, Duke d'Orleans, brother of Louis XIV. About five months after she came with the princess to obtain her dowry from the now loving Parliament of England, likewise her own arrears, which had been scornfully refused by the republic, with the remark "that she had not been crowned, therefore they ignored her as queen." Surely she deserved no great pity on that point, considering her perverse conduct to her husband concerning it.
Of her three sons who had returned to England, Henrietta was destined to meet but two. The small-pox, so fatal in that country, deprived her of young Gloucester, whom she had never met since endeavouring to force him into the Roman Catholic faith. The marriage that the Duke of York had avowed with Anne Hyde, Clarendon's daughter, not only enraged but grieved her more than the early death of poor Gloucester. She wrote to her daughter, the Princess of Orange, then visiting Charles II. in England, that she came to break the disgraceful marriage of James; but before Christmas was turned Henrietta had mourned over the death-bed of her beloved eldest daughter, who had been the greatest benefactress to her and her exiled family when in Holland. Moreover Queen Henrietta found that neither her own dower or her young princess's marriage-portion would be very quick in coming to hand, without the assistance of Clarendon; so she did exactly contrary to her avowed intentions, and acknowledged Anne Hyde as her second son's wife, which she certainly was, by every law of God and man. On New Year's Day, 1661, the Duke of York brought his wife in state to Whitehall. As the queen passed to dine in public, the Duchess of York knelt to her; the queen raised her, kissed her, and placed her at table. The Earl of Clarendon and the queen came to an understanding on business that same evening. There was the utmost difficulty regarding the lands she held as queen-dowager; but the parliament gave her 30,000l. compensation and a large annuity. But as the English law did not allow queen-dowagers to be absentees, her establishment was settled at Somerset House, which she altered with great taste. As London was infected with the small-pox, the queen was desirous of withdrawing her lovely Henrietta from its dangers before her beauty was injured.
Charles II. attended his mother to Portsmouth, where she embarked with her young princess, who was seized with eruptive illness next day, supposed to be the small-pox. The captain ran the ship aground; and all had to disembark at Portsmouth, where the princess remained till convalescent. At last they arrived safely at Havre, February 26, 1661, and were escorted in great triumph by the French nobility to Paris, where the marriage of the young princess with Philippe, Duke of Orleans, took place, at the chapel of the Palais Royal. The marriage was not happy; the bridegroom was odd-tempered and totally uneducated.
When Somerset House was repaired and beautified, the queen came to take up her residence in England, where she first was introduced to the bride of Charles II., Catharine of Braganza. And in England she lived three years, her health gradually giving way before the climate—always inimical to her. She saw her second son and his duchess, Anne Hyde, with promising children about them. The Lady Mary, afterward queen-regnant, was born while Henrietta was in England.