Henrietta Maria of France

“ A year later the Château de Vaux received the widow of Charles I, Henriette of France, Queen of England. She was accompanied by her daughter, Henrietta of England, and the Duc d'Orléans, her son-in-law. Henrietta, or, to give her her title, Madame, was in all the brilliance of her youth, had a genius both for affairs of gallantry and matters of State. She lived as though in haste, consuming in coquetry and in intrigue a life which was not fated to be a lone one. ”

“ Great was the love with which Henrietta was received by the queen-regent and her young sons and all the French people. Anne of Austria gave her distressed sister-in-law 12,000 crowns per month, and inducted her into the royal apartments of the Louvre, the young king leading her to them by the hand. All the money Henrietta received she sent to the king her husband, reserving the smallest modicum for her own use. The fever hanging on her in France, in order that she might be near the baths of Bourbon for its cure, the queen-regent lent her the castle and park of Nevers. ”

“ Anne of Austria, who was then queen-regent, sent her confidential lady-of-honor to Henrietta, with offers of all the assistance it was in the power of France to bestow, and supplied her with liberal sums of money; but Queen Henrietta stripped herself of every farthing she could command to send to her husband, over whose misfortunes she wept constantly. ”

“ When she is in trouble she turns with heart and soul to God. She has little care for the future, trusting altogether in the king. Consequently it is of more importance to gain the ministers of state, of whom she may be the patroness if she likes’ (Conn to Barberini, 13–23 Aug. 1636, Record Office Transcripts) .
Such was Henrietta Maria, light-hearted, joyous, and innocent, but apparently incapable of sustained application when her husband's troubles began. In October 1638 she had the pleasure of once more seeing her mother, who arrived in England as a fugitive. ”

“ Her governess was Mademoiselle de Monglat, whom she used to call Mamanga. She received her education from her brother Gaston's school-master, M. de Bevis: she was the constant companion of Duke Gaston, who was only eighteen months older than herself.
Henriette was the darling of her mother, perhaps her spoiled darling, for Maria de Medicis, queen-regent of France, was neither wise nor judicious. When the queen was deprived of the regency and her liberty, Henriette was permitted to share her royal mother's captivity. ”

“ In the course of 1646 Henrietta Maria recovered her youngest daughter, Henrietta, who was brought from England by Lady Morton in the disguise of a beggar. Her joy did not cause her to forget her anxiety for her husband. Money was before all things needful if the queen's many schemes were to come to anything, and one of her first objects now was to obtain a rich wife for her son. The Dutch marriage treaty having broken down, she urged the young Charles, a boy of fifteen, to make love to ‘La Grande Mademoiselle,’ the daughter and heiress of her brother Gaston. ”

“ A few weeks later arrived the news that the queen's son-in-law, William of Orange, had died of small-pox at The Hague, and in him the family had lost another friend, and a sure refuge in all their troubles. Henrietta Maria's heart ached for her eldest daughter, gay, charming, yet melancholy like all the Stuarts, left a widow at nineteen, with only a baby son to comfort her. Henriette was very much grieved for her mother's distress, but as her sisters were merely names to her, she was soon ready to attend to her lessons again, given to her daily by lady Morton and the good father Cyprian. ”

“ But Queen Henrietta, without even turning toward him who made these hypocritical pretensions, crossed the cabinet, opened the door for herself and passing through the midst of the cardinal's numerous guards, courtiers eager to pay homage, the luxurious show of a competing royalty, she went and took the hand of De Winter, who stood apart in isolation. Poor queen, already fallen! ”

“ About six years after her husband's death, France had become so desolated by the civil wars brought on by unwise government, that the queen-regent was imprisoned at the Castle of Blois, and the boy king of France assumed the power. [148] Princess Henrietta shared her mother's imprisonment for three years. At the expiration of that time she was present at the marriage of her sister Christine to the Duke of Savoy, and this event was succeeded by a reconciliation between Marie de Medicis and the young king. ”

“ Before leaving the convent of the Carmelites, Henrietta had desired her daughter to attend her at the palace, which she had inhabited for a long time and which she had only left because their poverty seemed to them more difficult to bear in gilded chambers. ”

“ The multitude of panegyrics in prose and verse penned in sorrow for her untimely death led Rochester to declare that ‘never was any one so regretted since dying was the fashion.’ Henrietta left two daughters: the elder, Marie Louise, became the queen of Charles II of Spain; the younger, Marie, was married to Victor Amadeus II of Savoy. In the year following Henrietta's death Philippe married her second cousin, Elizabeth Charlotte, daughter of Charles Louis, elector palatine, eldest son of the queen of Bohemia. ”

“ 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 of England, much neglected by her husband, and naturally of a romantic disposition, allowed the young Count to declare his love for her, either by singing pretty romances under her balcony, or by wearing ribbons, bunched together in the form of a hieroglyphic, next his heart. Elegantly dressed, he never failed to attend all the assemblies to which she lent lustre by her presence. He followed her to Saint Germain, to Versailles, to Chambord, to Saint Cloud; he only lived and had his being in the enjoyment of contemplating her charms. ”

“ Henriette cared only for the sovereign, not for the man, who was old enough to be her father. In the glory of youth and insolence of beauty, stealthy, clever, and remorseless, a finished coquette and a reckless intrigante, she allured him into signing a formal contract of marriage, affianced though he was to a powerful princess proposed by the reigning Pontiff, whose good-will it was important to the King, always a cold Catholic, to secure. ”

“ In August he told the French ambassador—“The Duchess of Orleans passionately desires an alliance between me and France; and as I love her tenderly, I shall be happy to let her see what power her entreaties have over me.” Henrietta, probably, did not consider that by thus bringing her brother into alliance with France she was betraying her native country. She no doubt thought rather of augmenting the greatness of Charles than of benefiting England. The sea should be given up to England; the territory of Continental Europe to France. ”

“ Every now and then, however, queen Anne begged leave for Henriette to come to a ball at the Louvre, or to a specially brilliant fête such as that given by Séguier, where Mademoiselle, with her accustomed rudeness, tried to take precedence of Henriette, which the queen of France would by no means allow. During the spring of 1658 cardinal Mazarin invited the royal families of France and England, Monsieur, the king's uncle, and his daughter 149 Mademoiselle to be present at a supper and small dance held in his private apartments. ”

“ Those who had been the father's bitterest enemies now bowed before the son. They called him the "King of Hearts". From his people he would receive a "crown of hearts", they said; "the duty of all men would be to make him forget the past; he was to be the most glorious king of the happiest people. Such was his welcome!"
All this was reported to his mother, still living at the Louvre, waiting for her summons to go home, and the whole of that summer passed in joy and laughter. Princess Henrietta was courted by foreign potentates and even by kings, but the queen would not part with her. ”

“ She was an abject suppliant where she had reigned a Queen. Nor did her pleadings fall on deaf ears. Her Royal lover's hand was given, against his will, to his new Queen, but his heart, he vowed, was all Henriette's—so much so that he soon installed her in sumptuous rooms in his palace adjoining those of the Queen herself.
Was ever man placed in a more delicate position than this King of France, between the rival claims of his wife and mistress, who were occupying adjacent apartments, and who, moreover, were both about to become mothers? ”

“ The young Princess Henrietta, upon whom the sun of prosperity was now shining in all its effulgence, seemed like a new being, radiantly lovely and self reliant. Philip fell desperately in love with her. With a form of exquisite symmetry, with the fairest complexion and lovely features, she suddenly found herself the sister of a monarch, transformed into the principal ornament, almost the central attraction, of the court. She went to England to attend the coronation of her brother. She then returned to Paris. ”

“ Charles, who was then waiting for her at Canterbury, replied, that if Henrietta did not instantly proceed, he would return alone to London. Henrietta doubtless sighed for the Pope and the penance, but she set off the day she received the king's letter. The king, either by his wisdom or his impatience, detected the aim of the Roman pontiff, who, had he been permitted to arrest the progress of a Queen of England for sixteen days in the face of all Europe, would thus have obtained a tacit supremacy over a British monarch. ”

“ Confident in your love, I can live in solitude, and devote myself to your memory, I———
O Ferdinand! kneel to your father, kneel to your kind mother; tell them all, tell them how I love you, how I will love them; tell them your Henrietta will have no thought but for their happiness; tell them she will be as dutiful to them as she is devoted to you. Ask not for our union, ask them only to permit you to cherish our acquaintance. Let them return to Armine; let them cultivate our friendship; let them know papa ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fred’s calling her affected was enough to make her consent, and bring her mamma to consent to anything; for so little is it really the nature of woman to exercise power, that if she domineers, it is sure to be compensated by some subjection in some other manner: and if Henrietta ruled her mother, she was completely under the dominion of Fred and Beatrice. Themistocles’ wife might rule Athens, but she was governed by her son.
After this conversation they went in, and found Aunt Roger very busy, recommending servants to Aunt Mary, and grandmamma enforcing all she said. ”

“ The new subject of quarrel was the king's refusal to permit more than three chaplains for the performance of the Catholic service in the palace. Henrietta was too young to reason sensibly about her husband's affairs, and she was such a fervent Catholic that she could bear no opposition concerning her religion from her Protestant husband. ”

“ In these statements there is probably a confusion between the diamond of Henrietta Maria, known later as that of Mary, Queen of Scots, and a diamond signet of Charles I, for such a signet is said to have been given to Bishop Juxon by Charles just before his execution. We have every reason to believe that Henrietta Maria bore her own signet with her when she left England. ”

“ As to Henrietta Maria at dinner, an anecdote is reported by Jesse: “Notwithstanding her conciliating manners on her first arrival in [Pg 52] England, it soon became evident that the spirit of Henry IV. was not entirely dormant in the bosom of his daughter. A singular scene, which took place at Court, shortly after her marriage, is thus described by an eye-witness. ‘The Queen, howsoever very little of stature, is yet of a pleasing countenance, if she be pleased, but full of spirit and vigour, and seems of a more than ordinary resolution. ”

“ MARTHA. (Flotow.) CHAPTER I.
The Lady Henrietta—no, I will not divulge her surname—the Lady Henrietta was ennuyed and bored—though she lived in the sixteenth century. Furthermore, the honest fact is, that being bored, Henrietta was far from agreeable, as two persons knew, to wit, Nancy, her ladyship’s sharp waiting maid, and Lord Tristram, who was old and a fool.
A fool decidedly—for courting a young and handsome woman. Hence, by inference, you see that the Lady Henrietta was young and handsome. Yes, young, handsome, rich, noble, healthy, and miserable! ”