The life of Queen Henrietta Maria (27 page)

blackening her name, and it was said that love for Jermyn was the motive of a desire to follow him abroad. Before the day was over it had become known that Goring was in the service of the popular leaders, and that Portsmouth had ceased to be a possible place of retreat.

It was no wonder that the court was struck with terror. The Houses had been attended by an armed mob when they had come to demand Charles' signature to the Bill of Attainder. The Catholics about the Queen made their confessions, as if expecting instant death. And still the King hesitated. How that hesitation ended all men know. There has been but one opinion upon the act by which he abandoned his devoted servant to the will of his enemies. Yet, in condemning him, the circumstances should be taken into account. He may well have argued that it was no question of saving the victim, but only of perishing with him. With or without his formal consent, Strafford was to die. An attack on the palace seemed imminent, surrounded as it was by a raging mob. And it was above all on Henrietta, a woman and weak and the object of his passionate affection, that the vengeance of that furious rabble would first be wreaked. " If my own person were only in danger," he said with tears, when at length he yielded to the pressure brought to bear upon him, " I would gladly venture it to save Lord Strafford's life ; but seeing my wife, children, and all my kingdom are concerned in it, I am forced to give way." There is no reason to question his motives. If, nevertheless, he sinned, as doubtless he did sin, he atoned for it. For the rest, to quote an historian who will not be suspected of undue partiality, " let him who has seen wife and child, and all he holds dear, exposed to imminent peril, and has

refused to save them by an act of baseness, cast the first stone at Charles." l

The final scene in the tragedy took place on May 12th. Gallantly as he had lived, StrafFord died, leaving to his master an inextinguishable regret and a bitter remorse. " The King suffered much grief," said Henrietta ; * f the Queen shed many tears. Both alike felt that this death would one day cost the one his life, the other her tranquillity."

The position must have been one of humiliation as well as of grief. The sacrifice had been offered ; it remained to be seen whether it would avail to stay the course of events. Looking around them, the glance of King and Queen can have lighted upon few whom it was possible to trust. StrafFord, with his whole-hearted allegiance and his loyal service, was dead. Laud, faithful too, if narrow and shortsighted, was in the Tower. Jermyn and Percy were fled beyond seas, to join Windebank and the Lord Keeper, Finch. Holland, the Queen's first English friend, was wavering, until such time as he should determine with which party self-interest would cause him to throw in his lot. Northumberland was already half-hearted in his adhesion to the royal cause. His sister, Lady Carlisle, Henrietta's chosen associate, was scarcely to wait till Straffbrd was in his grave to transfer her devotion to Pym, the man to whom his destruction was chiefly due. Hard indeed must it have been for King or Queen to know upon whom their confidence might be bestowed.

From their place of safety beyond seas the English

1 Gardiner's Fall of the Monarchy, vol. 2, p. 175. Bishop Burnet, on the authority of Holies, brother-in-law to Strafford, accuses Henrietta of so meddling in the affair as to ruin a scheme by which Strafford might have been saved. But the story seems confused and doubtful, and the Bishop was biassed against the Queen.

From the picture by I/an Dyck, by permission of the Earl of Home. THOMAS WENTWORTH, FIRST EARL OF STRAFFORD.

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knot of refugees kept anxious watch upon the course of events. But the sympathy of those at a distance is apt to be of a different quality to that of men who are sharers in the stress of the battle ; and the fact is curiously illustrated in a letter sent from Paris during the summer. The writer, one Robert Reade, addressing his cousin, Thomas Windebank, son of the late secretary, after retailing business and Parisian gossip, complains that no news of the latter sort is included in his cousin's communications. " These pretty passages of the court," he says, " serve for diversion and sweeten the sour apprehension of misery. You deal very hardly with us that you mingle them not among your serious relations." The reproach implies a strangely inadequate conception of the situation in London. There was little attention to spare there for such " pretty passages." Upon the same day that the Bill of Attainder had been passed, Parliament had secured leisure to complete its work by a second measure providing against dissolution, save by its own consent. The perilous remedy so often before employed by the King was to be put out of his power. By Charles' assent to the bill sovereignty was practically vested in Parliament. A royal autocracy had become a parliamentary one. Day by day the House of Commons was extending its jurisdiction and its authority. A paper belonging to the month of June, and supplying the heads of subjects under discussion at a conference between the Lords and Commons, is evidence of the tone adopted at this comparatively early stage by the representatives of the people towards the man who was nominally their sovereign. All suspected persons, according to this document, should be removed from their Majesties—the term doubtless including all such persons as the King and Queen might count amongst

their friends. No English Papist should be admitted to their service. Certain " fit noblemen" should be appointed to attend upon the Queen—in a character, one imagines, compounded of the jailor and the spy— as well as upon the Prince and the other royal children ; whilst during Charles' expected absence it was further proposed to appoint a guard to secure Henrietta's person against Papists—in other words, to prevent her friends from obtaining access to her. That such proposals were under discussion indicates sufficiently the authority arrogated to itself by Parliament at this time.

Taking into account the attitude of resistance to his prerogative assumed by the northern portion of the kingdom, it appears strange that Charles' eyes should have been turning to Scotland as a place from whence possible succour might be looked for. Yet so it was. Disagreements between the Scottish leaders, as well as the defection of Montrose from the popular party, appeared to make help from that quarter possible ; and it was not a juncture when any chance, however small, of obtaining support could be disregarded. Whilst the King was meditating a personal appeal to the sympathies of the north, Henrietta was clinging to her vainer hope of enlisting the influence of the Vatican on Charles' behalf. Reverting to her fatal habit of soliciting aid from the court regarded with the most abhorrence by the English people, she had rashly added in the King's name conditional promises of freedom of worship and other privileges, to be granted to his Catholic subjects so soon as he should be in a position to accord them. In the face of the opposition of Parliament to the presence in London of an accredited papal agent, it had become necessary, before the end of June, to dismiss Rossetti ; but Charles himself, using language in a parting interview, reported the envoy,

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" more like that of a Catholic than a heretic," endorsed the Queen's pledges. When the King had withdrawn, the question of his conversion was discussed between Henrietta and the Italian, the Queen rinding grounds for hope in the attention she described him as lending to certain stories of miracles she had recounted. She admitted, however, that he was timid and irresolute, and that the change she desired would take time.

By the middle of July Henrietta had formed fresh plans for her own movements, and on the I3th a discussion took place in the House of Commons touching a report that she intended to repair to Spa during the King's absence in Scotland. The ostensible motive for the journey was her health, which she declared to be much impaired " by discontents of mind, and false rumours and libels spread concerning her." A debate ensued, resulting in a conference between the two Houses, when it was resolved that the King should be requested to dissuade her from carrying out her project. With this object a committee of Lords and Commons waited upon Charles at Whitehall, and enumerated the causes making it desirable that the proposed journey should be abandoned. There was reason, it was said, to suspect that the Papists had designs upon the Queen's person. The refugee English now in foreign parts would have access to her Majesty and infuse evil counsels, to trouble the peace of the kingdom. Treasure was said to have been packed ready to be conveyed out of the country ; and, moreover, the state demanded by her dignity on an occasion of the kind would be a serious expense. Henrietta's physician, Dr. Mayerne, had been consulted by Parliament as to her condition of health, and the deputation proceeded to deal with his report. After stating that his patient was sick in body and mind, that she herself

thought she could not recover, and had a great opinion of Spa water, he added, " To cure her body she must have her mind quieted and out of reach of employments that may disturb her. Her faith hath great power over her." In view of this medical opinion the deputation pledged themselves that, understanding the cause of her sickness to be discontent of mind, if anything within the power of Parliament might give her contentment, so tender of her health were they, both for the King's sake and her own, that they would be ready to further her satisfaction in all things, so far as might stand with the public good.

Henrietta might be pardoned if protestations of devotion to her person on the part of Parliament did not carry conviction to her mind, and her message in return was touched with sarcasm.

To a proud and high-spirited woman, unused to discipline or control, the situation must have come near to being intolerable. " I am ready," she once told the Venetian ambassador, " to obey the King, but not to obey four hundred of his subjects." For the present, obedience was no matter of choice. She was not to be permitted to leave the kingdom, and the journey to Spa was perforce abandoned.

The report of the royal physician of Henrietta's state of mind and spirits at this time is supplemented by the letter to her sister already quoted. In it she further proceeds to describe the situation. The King is deprived of his power. Catholics are persecuted, priests hanged. Those remaining faithful to her are driven away. She herself is, as it were, a captive, not even permitted to accompany the King to Scotland. Added

to all, there is no one in the world to whom she can speak of her griefs, or so much as show that she is sensible of them. Christine has also, it is true, had troubles, but she at least has been able to struggle against them. In England it is necessary to watch the course of events helplessly—" les bras croyses."

Parliament had succeeded in keeping the Queen in London. For once the King was the less pliable of the two. He had shown that he did not intend to be deterred from visiting Scotland, and the date of his departure was fixed for the second week in August. If Parliament had opposed obstacles in the way of his being accompanied by his wife, he himself had declined the companionship of another member of his family. His eldest' nephew wrote to his mother that the King had refused to take him. " What reason he hath for it, God knows," added the young man. It is possible that Charles had divined the tendency to make terms with the enemy afterwards apparent in Charles Lewis's line of conduct. He may also have had too many cares of his own to desire the presence of the Prince, always, as may be inferred from his letters, inclined to survey the situation from the single point of view of his own interests. " I fear this violence," he told his mother in May—the month of Strafford's death—" will bring some trouble, and by consequence will keep back my business." And again, " The King saith he will seek to get money for my brother Maurice .... I want it very much myself, and it is hard to come by in these times."

He was shortly to show himself an adept in the art of obtaining it, if not from the King, from the King's enemies. For the present he was to be left in the south. Up to two days before Charles' departure

it would seem to have been uncertain whether or not the King would be permitted to leave the capital, and Henrietta was writing to her sister that he was to start " apres demain," if Parliament did not use force, as had been threatened, to prevent it. Unless the popular leaders were prepared to resort to actual violence, he was not to be turned from his purpose. He would make any repent, he said, who laid hands on his horse's reins to stop him—ironically telling the crowd collected to beg him to remain in London that they might console themselves for his absence ; his Scottish subjects had as much need of him as they. Before the middle of August he had started on his journey.

He had been gone many days when Henrietta had to undergo another parting, and in this case a final one. Her mother's more prolonged stay in the country had become impossible. During Strafford's trial menacing mobs had gathered before St. James' Palace, and though Parliament had not refused its protection to the royal guest, it had added the suggestion that she should be requested to betake herself elsewhere. Had Henrietta been permitted to carry out her intention of visiting Spa, the two were to have travelled together. As it was, it was arranged that the Queen-Mother's departure should follow upon the King's, her daughter accompanying her as far as the coast.