Charles the King

Charles the King

Evelyn Anthony

Historical novels by Evelyn Anthony available from Coronet:

Imperial Highness

Curse Not The King

Far Fly The Eagles

Valentina

Victoria

Anne Boleyn

Elizabeth

Evelyn Anthony's bestselling spy thrillers include:

No Enemy But Time

The Silver Falcon

The Persian Ransom

The House of Van De Kar

The Scarlet Thread

The Relic

The Doll's House

Author's Foreword

This is the story of a glorious failure. Charles I was the last absolute monarch to reign over England and one of the most ill-fated Kings of the tragic, splendid dynasty of the Royal Stuarts. It is the story of the public and personal life of a strange man, who came to an ingnominious end and turned it into a triumph of courage and faith which still has the power to touch and exalt the human heart after the passage of three centuries.

I have tried hard to give the reader a true picture of the King and the woman he married and lived with in shining fidelity for over twenty years, and of the circumstances which ended his reign after a savage and bloody Civil War. It is a love story because the passionate, abiding love Charles and Henrietta Maria bore each other influenced so much of his life and the history of his country. I have used documents and letters wherever these were available, and I have based the King's letter to the Queen at Berwick on his known opinions and words used in a different context at the time. I have shortened the account of war with Scotland and the tortuous negotiations with Parliament during his captivity at Carisbrooke, and given an account of his meeting with Cromwell which is not substantiated. But Cromwell was the principal negotiator of the Army treaty, and he was present when the King saw his children at Caversham, not Hampton Court as stated.

The Countess of Carlisle was the reputed mistress of Strafford and Pym, and she was and still is accused of betraying the King and Queen as I have described, though no definite proof has been found.

All other events, personalities, times and incidents in this book are true.

E
VELYN
A
NTHONY
London, 1961

Chapter 1

The King of England was waiting for his bride; he was twenty-five and also the sovereign of Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and she was fifteen, the daughter of a King of France who had been assassinated a few weeks after she was born. They had been married a month, but they had never met.

He had seen her once when he was still Charles, Prince of Wales, but he had been on his way to Spain to arrange a match with someone else and the little French Princess dancing in a court Masque in Paris had made no impression on him—he could not remember anything about her. Like his father's favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, who was travelling with him, Charles had spent his evening watching the stately red-headed Queen of France whose beauty and dignity eclipsed all the other ladies and Princesses of the Blood. They had then left Paris and gone to Spain, where the Spanish Infanta delighted the young prince, who was inexperienced enough and lonely enough to fall in love with anyone, but quite unprepared for the Spanish custom of courtship in the presence of the lady's household. He was also unprepared to reverse the Anti-Catholic laws of England on which his dynasty depended and to forswear his own Protestant religion; these were the conditions Spain asked in return for the hand of her Princess.

Charles and the Duke of Buckingham had abandoned the negotiations in an atmosphere of hostility which owed a good deal to Buckingham's efforts to seduce some of the impeccable Spanish ladies. They returned to England without a treaty or a bride, and Charles's father, King James, threw his arms round his son and hugged him in his undignified way and promised to find him someone else.

Charles accordingly retired to his apartments at St. James's Palace, and resumed his self-effacing life of study, without friends or intimates of either sex except the boisterous, bumptious, splendid man whom he had come to like against his will, Buckingham, the son of a poor country squire, who was a millionaire and a Privy Councillor and a Duke because he had taken the old King's fancy.

Charles and his father had nothing in common and there was no tinge of the unnatural in the Prince's response to Buckingham's friendship. Charles was lonely and shy and in his soul the Court and the King disgusted him and increased his isolation. He stammered when he was excited or nervous; he was small and slightly built and too modest to appreciate his own refined and sensitive good looks. He had the features and the bearing of a King and the mentality of a knight of the Middle Ages. It amused the cynical, amoral Steenie Buckingham to force himself upon the younger man and to make him the unwilling victim of his charm. For Buckingham possessed charm in an extraordinary degree. He was witty, he was generous, he was an acknowledged bravo who could suddenly laugh at himself; he radiated confidence, and in spite of everything Charles was flattered that such a man should seek him out. Though he was lonely and disappointed after his return, he now loved Buckingham more blindly and trusted him further than the crafty old King had ever done. And the King had kept his promise. He had found another bride for his son, the Princess Henrietta Maria of France, and then, two months before the proxy wedding, James sickened and died and Charles was king of all three kingdoms.

Charles turned away from the window and began to walk up and down the room. He wished there had been a mirror, or time to change from his riding clothes which were covered in dust. He wondered whether his wife had been impressed by the massive walls and fortress guns of Dover Castle, and then thought anxiously that perhaps the Castle was a depressing place in which to meet for the first time. Buckingham had gone to France to bring the new Queen back, and he had written to Charles telling him that she was gay and pleasing and pretty and well enough developed for her age. And though she was a Papist, the terms of the marriage treaty had been reasonable. She must have freedom for herself and her retinue to practise their faith, and also her husband must promise to alleviate the hardships suffered by her co-religionists in England. They had been married by proxy, and then she had gone on a long, stately progress through France accompanied by the King and Queen of France, the Queen Mother, Marie de Medici, and all their attendants.

The delay had irritated Charles; in spite of his quiet manner he had inherited the volcanic temper of his Stuart ancestors with the dark red hair of his grandmother, the unhappy, controversial Mary, Queen of Scots. He had been hurt by the reports that Henrietta was in no hurry to leave France and join him. He had been extremely angry when he received a message from her when she arrived at Dover, begging him to wait before presenting himself as she had been sea-sick and needed time to prepare. He had ridden back to Canterbury, very pale and silent and obviously furious, and left her until ten o'clock the next morning before he presented himself.

Now he was not angry any more, only nervous and excited, and glad that he had sent everyone away, even Buckingham, because he must not let anyone see how much this meeting and this marriage meant to him, even before it had begun. Princes were not expected to be in love with their wives; they were not supposed to need support or companionship, and if they did they sought it outside marriage. But Charles had never had a mistress. He had seen the women at his father's Court, painted, immoral and loose in conversation. Some of the highest born could only be described as drunken whores. He had seen mothers leading their handsome sons up to King James, hoping to advance them by way of the King's bedchamber, and he had known that for himself there could be no happiness or self-respect in such a mode of life. He had been laughed at as a prude, and a ribald verse was circulating, offering condolences to the new Queen for a marriage bed as clumsy as the tossing ship which carried her across the Channel. He knew and he pretended ignorance. The Court would change; already conversation was more guarded and two gentlemen had been dismissed from their posts for coming into the King's presence tipsy, forgetting that their master was no longer the bibulous King James. The new King had a very cold eye when he looked at something or someone he disliked, if he stammered at some moments, he could express himself only too clearly when he was annoyed.

He had been King for three months, and already it was understood that he would not tolerate an open scandal. At the same time the Duke of Buckingham, freed of the vigilance of the dead King, seduced and philandered to his heart's content, while his censorious young master behaved as if he were blind to the conduct of the most infamous relic of the disreputable past. Within three months Charles had established his authority over his Court; it was taken for granted that the fifteen-year-old French Princess would do exactly as her husband wished.

He was standing in front of the fireplace, kicking nervously at the smoking coals with his boot, when the door suddenly opened. Charles' first sight of his wife was somehow confused because of the crowd of women who were pushing behind her through the open door. When they separated, a small, very slight figure advanced towards him. He had a fleeting impression of a pointed face and enormous brown eyes, and then the new Queen of England sank down in a curtsy in front of him. She was much smaller and much more childish than he had imagined. He ignored the curtsying group of women round them and lifted the little Queen to her feet and kissed her before he had even really seen her face. She did not return the kiss. She stared at him with her extraordinary eyes, fringed with long black lashes and looked over her shoulder with an expression of panic. A tall, angular lady, her cheeks bright red with rouge, moved a step nearer and said encouragingly, “Sire, I am come …”

Henrietta Maria turned back to the King and began to make her formal speech. She had been rehearsed very carefully for her entry into England; she had been strictly brought up in a Court where etiquette bound every word and action of the Blood Royal, and she was accustomed to protocol. She had expected a formal reception which would take place before their attendants, when her husband the King would meet her suitably dressed and accompanied and she would come forward with dignity, wearing one of her magnificent trousseau dresses and her jewels. She stared at the handsome young man in his dusty clothes and muddy riding boots, waiting in the ante room like a common courier without even a gentleman in attendance, and she forgot every word of her speech. It was not what she expected. She was married and she was a Queen and she had landed after a wretched journey and found only a representative to meet her and been lodged in an appalling Castle which was only fit for prisoners, without proper apartments, heating or light, and with a disgusting antiquated bed left over from the reign of Elizabeth Tudor. Her suite had been grumbling. Madame de St. George, who had tried to prompt her a moment ago, had been outraged by the inadequacy, the shabbiness of the reception of a Princess of France, and with the words fleeing her memory and the young man who was her husband standing there looking at her in surprise, the Queen of England covered her face with her hands and burst into tears. They were not tears of fright as Charles supposed; he put his arms round his wife and this time he kissed her ceremoniously on both her wet cheeks, and taking his handkerchief, wiped her tears away.

“If your Majesty will permit me …” He looked up and the same Frenchwoman, obviously the principal lady-in-waiting, was standing with her hand on the Queen's shoulder.

“I will attend to Madam,” she said firmly. “You must forgive her, Sire. She has had a long journey and her reception here was not one which made her feel at ease.”

For a moment Charles looked into the woman's eyes; they were brown and they were bright with hostility. He was outraging every custom known to Madame de St. George and every self-respecting member of the French nobility. He was embracing his wife in public and fumbling with his handkerchief instead of retiring tactfully and leaving her to recover her composure with her women. She did not like the King of England. She did not like men with red hair and she detested the contemptuous expression in his eyes. When Charles answered his voice was very curt.

“Thank you, but the Queen will recover her spirits sooner with me than with you; it would be a poor omen for our marriage if her husband failed to comfort her.”

He looked down at Henrietta and his rather stern face softened in a very warm smile. It was the first time she had seen on his face a look of anything but surprise or anxiety and then the unpleasant glare which had sent Madame de St. George to the other side of the room. Henrietta gave him her hand and he kissed it. He was really very handsome, as handsome as the portrait sent to her before their marriage. He had very fine eyes of a deep blue which at first appeared as if they were hazel, and she liked the little pointed beard he wore. She was proud and spoilt and she had cried with pure rage because she felt she had been slighted from the moment she landed at Dover Harbour, but she was also entirely feminine and innocently vain.