Loyal in Love: Henrietta Maria, Queen of Charles I

AFTER WORCESTER

I was glad that the relationship between Charles and myself had changed and that when he did go we parted as loving parent and devoted son.

Everything seemed to go wrong for us. We had planned that he should go to Ireland and use it as a stepping stone to England; but no sooner had we agreed that this would be the best plan than we heard that Cromwell had gone to Ireland on a punitive expedition, so that put the project out of the question.

Charles decided however that he could not remain in Paris and set out for Jersey with his retinue, which included his mistress Lucy Walter and her few-months’-old son whom they had named James. It was very irregular but I had come to the conclusion that I must not try to interfere too much with Charles.

At least in Jersey he could keep an eye on what was happening in England and be ready to go through Scotland, perhaps, if Ireland remained unsuitable.

Just as my hopes were beginning to rise fate struck me another blow. This one I found very hard to bear. It was a long time since I had seen my two children who were the prisoners of the Roundheads but I thought of them every day and I was constantly turning over in my mind plans to rescue them.

I worried more about Elizabeth than Henry. She was a little older and more able to appreciate sorrow, and I knew how deeply affected she had been by her father’s death for I had news of her from time to time and I had written letters to members of the Parliament imploring them to send my daughter and little son to me. What harm could such children do to any cause?

But those cruel men would not release my children and I continued to fret for them.

I had just had news that Charles had landed in Scotland and that he was promised help. He had had to buy it dearly and had agreed to the Covenant, to renounce treaties with the Irish rebels and to uproot Popery wherever it should be found once he had regained his kingdom. For this the Scots would rally to his cause and provide an army with which to invade England and win his crown for him.

I was furious when I heard that. It seemed like a betrayal of his own family. It could only be directed against me. And there was little Henriette too. She was a Catholic now, even as I was.

I fumed with rage and it was Henry Jermyn who reminded me that my own father had made peace and become King of all France because as he had said, when Paris had refused to surrender to a Huguenot, “Paris is worth a Mass.”

So Charles was in Scotland and there was hope. And now…this fresh blow. If only I could have been with my child, if I could have spoken with her, held her in my arms, I should not have felt so bitter. What sort of men were these to ruin the lives of little children?

My little Elizabeth was only fifteen. What unhappy years they had been for her! She must have been about seven when the troubles started—a sweet, loving child, my own little daughter whom I had scarcely seen while she was growing up.

The Roundheads had put her and her brother in the care of the Countess of Leicester at Penshurst. I knew Penshurst. A delightful castle set on a pleasant incline with woods, fields and hop grounds around it. I remembered well the old banqueting hall lighted by its five Gothic windows and I could picture my children seated at the oak table there. The Parliament had announced that there was no royalty now and that the children were to be treated as those of an ordinary nobleman. They would not have cared about that, I was sure; what would have broken their hearts was the separation from their family. I had heard that the Roundheads suspected the Countess of ignoring orders and showing the children too much respect; they had even sent some of their men to Penshurst to make sure their orders were carried out. How I despised them for their persecution of two helpless children!

Apparently the spies were most dissatisfied by the manner in which the Countess treated the children, swearing that she gave them too much deference. Dear Countess! I had always liked her and it had given me some relief to know that the children were put into her hands for the reports I had heard at that time filled me with dread. The talk of apprenticing Henry to a shoemaker had horrified me for I knew those wicked men were capable of doing that. There was a rumor that they were to be sent to a charity school and were to be known as Bessy and Harry Stuart.

Lady Leicester had brought in a tutor for them—a man named Richard Lovell, who had instructed her own children; but even so this brave and noble lady could not go on defying the Parliament. There were frightening rumors at that time. One was that the children were to be poisoned and I was terrified that they would disappear as long ago two little Princes had vanished in the Tower of London.

When Charles landed in Scotland the Roundheads must have been alarmed and perhaps because they thought an attempt to rescue the children might be made they removed them to Carisbroke Castle.

I wondered what my two little ones felt at being sent to the prison where their father had spent some of the last days of his life.

A week after they had arrived at Carisbroke Elizabeth and Henry were playing bowls on that green which had been made for their father when there was a heavy rain shower and the children were wet through. The next day Elizabeth was in a high fever and confined to her bed.

She must have been in a low state and very melancholy to be in her father’s prison and she must have remembered that last interview with him; she had loved him so dearly and had mourned him ever since. The poor child must have wondered from day to day what her own fate would be in the hands of her father’s murderers.

If only Mayerne could have been with her! But they had dismissed him and they were certainly not going to allow any member of the royal family to have the services of the renowned doctor. He was nearly eighty now but still as skillful and it might have been that he could have saved my child’s life.

One of the doctors whom they were obliged to call in—Dr. Bagnall—did send to Mayerne and ask his advice and the good doctor sent back medicines, but it was too late.

My dear child knew she was dying. I tried to imagine the sorrow and desolation of poor little Henry. Elizabeth gave him her pearl necklace and sent a diamond ornament to the Earl and Countess of Leicester. It was all she had to leave.

They were determined that no honor should be paid to her. She was placed in a lead coffin and taken by a borrowed coach to Newport, attended by a few of those who had served her in the past. The coffin was placed in the east part of the chancel in St. Thomas’s Chapel and they put a simple inscription on it.

ELIZABETH SECOND DAUGHTER

OF THE LATE KING CHARLES

DECEASED SEPTEMBER 8TH M.D.C.L.

No stone was erected and the letters E.S. were engraved in the wall above the spot where the coffin had been laid.

So died my daughter, the child I had borne with such joy and loved with such devotion.

It was small wonder that I thought Heaven itself was against me.

Children are both a blessing and an anxiety. I loved mine dearly but we were often in conflict.

There was James. He was growing up very different from his brother; they were unlike in every way except in their impeccably good manners, which I had insisted be instilled in them. James was fair and Charles had those swarthy looks which must have come down from an ancestor of Navarre, so they never looked like brothers. James’s temperament was difficult and it was the easiest thing in the world to quarrel with him whereas it was impossible to quarrel with Charles, who could be serene, evasive and indifferent, and when one thought he had acquiesced he would go away and do exactly what he had planned to do from the first.

I know I was not the easiest person to live with. I had been born with a desire to impose my will on others but it was meant to be for their good, though they so often could not see this.

James was restive, hating, I suppose, to be cooped up in Paris while his brother was in Scotland. I think he rather resented being the younger son and in spite of his undoubted good looks and Charles’s far from handsome ones, he was always overshadowed by his brother.

Well Charles was no longer with us in Paris and James was difficult. I sometimes think he enjoyed quarreling and looked round for trouble. Heaven knew life was hard enough for me to bear. What were his troubles compared with mine?

Some trivial matter flared up one day and James took it seriously. He turned on me and said: “I want to get away. I’m tired of being here. You tutor me in all things. I am old enough to think for myself.”

“You are clearly not,” I retorted. “You talk like a foolish boy and that does not surprise me because you are one.”

In a very short time we were shouting at each other and James was behaving very badly, forgetting entirely the respect due to me, not only as his mother but as Queen of England.

I cried: “Whatever I do, I do for you children. You are my main concern.”

Then he turned on me and said something which I found it very hard to forgive. “Your main concern!” he said almost sneering. “I thought your main concern was Henry Jermyn. You are more fond of him than you are of all your children put together.”

I stopped short to stare at him. Then I cried out: “How dare you!” And I struck him hard across his face with the back of my hand.

He turned quite white and for a moment I thought he was going to return the blow. Then he turned away and strode from the room.

I was very upset. Of course I was fond of Henry Jermyn. He had been beside me, my faithful friend and helper, for many years. Moreover he was a jolly man, a handsome man who raised my spirits; and heaven knew I had need of a few like him around.

But what was James suggesting? That he was my lover!

I had never been a sensual woman. What I called “that side of marriage” had never greatly appealed to me. It was my duty to produce children and that I had done in full measure. I had loved my husband completely and still did. But to take a lover now that he was dead…I could never do that. It would seem like disloyalty to him.

And yet…had I taken a lover? Not in the physical sense, but the truth was that I did love Henry Jermyn and if I lost him my life would be empty indeed.

I was terribly shaken and was expecting James to come to me with apologies, but he did not.

He had left Court.

It was heartbreaking that he should have gone like that before I had had a chance to talk to him. I wondered where he had gone and speculated that he had joined his brother in Scotland. But no. It turned out that he had gone to Brussels where he had been made very welcome.

This was most embarrassing. Not only had James left me after making that devastating statement but in Brussels he was on territory which belonged to Spain, and Spain was at war with France.

I made up my mind that I would send him no money and as he could not exist without it he would have to return to me.

Then there was Mary. She had always been a good daughter and the marriage to William of Orange had turned out to be advantageous in the end, although at first we had all thought it was a little degrading for the daughter of the King of England to marry a mere Prince of Orange and we should never have allowed it to happen but for the fact that we had wanted to placate the Parliament by a Protestant match. Yet Holland had been our good friend and it was largely due to Mary and her husband.

I had always thought of Mary as a good daughter. She had extended help to Charles—of whom she was very fond—and her Court had provided a refuge for many of our supporters.

And now for the first time she was pregnant. I was delighted at the thought of a child and I wrote to her telling her that if it were a boy she must name him Charles after her father and brother.

There came sad news. The Prince of Orange had been struck down with small pox and within a few days of contracting the disease had died. The Dowager Princess Amelia who took a great pride in forcing her will on others and whom I had never liked, gave orders that Mary was not to be told of her husband’s death until after the confinement.

The news, however, leaked out, but Mary was determined to give birth to a healthy child, and she did. I was delighted when I heard the news. “Our little Charles,” I called the baby.

My chagrin was great when I heard that the Dowager Princess had insisted that the child be named William after his father, and to my disappointment Mary agreed with her.

It was wonderful news that we had the child but his father’s death was a tragedy for us all. When I heard it I said it seemed as though God wished to show me that I should detach myself from the world, by taking from me all those who would lead me to think of it. The loss of my son-in-law made me see this very clearly, for my hopes of Charles’s restoration to the crown were based largely on William of Orange. And my daughter obeyed the wishes of her mother-in-law rather than those of her own mother!

Wherever I looked for comfort there was none.

The Queen of France however was very good to me. She commiserated with me over the deaths of Elizabeth and my son-in-law.

“Life is very cruel,” she said. “One can be happy for a time and then it strikes…and does not always strike singly but many times as though to stress the fact that we are all at the mercy of our fate.”

I told her then how anxious I was on her behalf.

“Believe me,” I said, “I have experience of the people. They are like savages when aroused. I shall never forget Charles standing at my coach door when I came out of the Louvre. They were all around me. I am sure it would not have taken them long to tear me to pieces.”

Anne looked a little impatient. She was easygoing and I was sure she believed that Mazarin was so shrewd and clever that he could do anything. She did not like me to warn her. My criticism of Anne—and Heaven knew I should not be critical of one who had been so good to me in my need—was that she liked to pretend that what was not pleasant was not there.

After all I had suffered I saw the folly of this. One must be aware all the time. Think the worse…and face up to it as a possibility. If only Charles and I had done a little more of that I might not be in the position I found myself in at this time.

But because I felt it was my duty to warn her, her frowns did not stop me, and I went on to give her advice until finally she said in exasperation: “Sister, do you wish to be the Queen of France as well as the Queen of England?”

I looked at her sadly and did not take offense at the rebuke. I merely said gently: “I am nothing. Do you be something.”

I think she saw my meaning and at that moment faced the truth and saw herself possibly in my position—a queen without a kingdom. Perhaps she was realizing what an empty title it was when one had lost one’s throne.

She was immediately sorry for her harsh tone, remembering all I had suffered and most of all the recent death of my daughter, for she was a devoted mother, living for her children, so she could understand the terrible sorrow a child’s death could bring.

She put her hands over mine and said: “Oh, my poor sister, I know your sadness and I know that sometimes you wish to leave it all and go to the Faubourg St. Jacques and stay there with the nuns. Is that what you wish?”

“How well you know me! If I had a choice I would go there and pass the rest of my days in peace. But how could I do that? I have my sons…my little Henriette….”

“I know,” said Anne. “You could not rest there. I have been thinking of you and there is something which I believe could bring you great cheer.”

“It is difficult to think of what could do that. Only my son’s restoration could make me happier and even then there would be so much sadness to look back on.”

“You are indeed the unhappy Queen, my sister. But I know you have always wished to found an order of your own.”

I looked at her in amazement and she smiled at me.

“I was thinking that to found your own convent would bring great ease to your mind and spirits. Am I right?”

“To found my own convent! Oh, what a dream! But how could I? All the money I have from the sale of my jewels must go to the battle for the throne.”

“I would help you with the convent,” said Anne.

I could not speak. I fell into her arms and hugged her.

At length I said: “I bless that long ago day, dear sister, when they brought you to Paris to be my brother’s wife.”

“You did not like me very much at first.”

“True affection is that which grows with the years,” I answered and added, “I shall never be able to show you my gratitude or to tell you what your friendship has meant to me in my adversity.”

“It is in adversity that true friendship is seen,” she answered. “Now let us plan. First we must find a suitable site. Do you know the country house on the hill at Chaillot?”

“I do,” I cried. “It is a fine house. The Maréchal de Bassompierre used to live there. My father gave the house to him. It has been empty since his death.”

“That is why I thought of it. I have asked the price. It is six thousand pistoles.”

“Dear Anne, would you indeed do this?”

“Guessing that you would like it, I had already decided on it.”

I felt happier than I had for a long time and the Queen and I forgot our troubles in planning our convent. We should both use it as a retreat, and then I looked over the place with her and chose the apartments we should have when we came to the convent. The windows overlooked the Seine and the Avenue of the Cours La Reine.

I think Anne was as happy as I was planning it.

It was nearly two years since Charles had left France, and I was dreadfully worried. Rumors were coming across the Channel. Some reported that he was sick; others that he was dead. I refused to believe them. Something within me told me that Charles would survive. He had had to swear what the Scots wished him to and this he had done in order to gain their support, and for this he had been crowned at Scone but if ever he was victorious over the Parliamentarians he would be a Presbyterian King on both sides of the border.

Cromwell was marching to Scotland and soon we had news of the royalist defeat at Dunbar and the capture of Edinburgh by the Roundheads.

Charles then marched south into England. It was a desperate move but I could see it was the only one to take in the circumstances. I hoped and prayed that there were some loyal Englishmen left in England to join him. Alas, he was disappointed in this and few came to augment the ten thousand men who constituted his army. Charles had impressed all with his bravery and his excellence in the field. He was always calm and serene and seemed not in the least perturbed by danger and disaster. It was a wonderful gift to have. I could admire it although it certainly had not come through me.

Battle took place at Worcester and when the news came to us it was the old story. Disaster for the royalists. Success for Cromwell. And what had happened to Charles? He had disappeared. It was then that the rumors started to come, thick and fast.

Most people thought he was dead.

My nights were haunted by evil dreams. Where was my son? What other and greater evils had Fate in store for me?

I was seated in my apartments in the Louvre sunk in the deepest despair when a man burst unceremoniously in. I stared at him, a little alarmed and then incensed by the intrusion. He was well over six feet tall, gaunt, and his hair was cut in the manner I loathed—that of the Roundheads.

He cried out: “Mam. It is I.”

Then I flew to him, tears streaming down my face. “It is you. Am I dreaming…” I stammered.

“No, Mam. I am indeed here…and the first thing I did was to come to you.”

“Oh Charles…Charles my son. You are safe then. Oh thanks be to God.”

“I come to you defeated, Mam. But it will not always be thus.”

“No…no. Oh, Charles, I have had such fears…such dreams. I will send for your sister. She has been sunk in melancholy. First she must know that you are here. Then you can tell me all that happened.”

I shouted for attendants and sent them running to the Princess Henriette.

While I waited I took his hands…I kissed them. I pressed him to me. He smiled in his rather sardonic way, but there was tenderness in him.

My little seven-year-old daughter ran into the room and into his arms. He picked her up and danced round the room with her.

“I knew you would come. I knew you would come,” she kept chanting. “They couldn’t kill you… not even wicked Old Cromwell.”

“No,” he said, “not even wicked Old Cromwell. I am indestructible, Minette. You will see.”

“And when you have won the crown you will take me to England with you. We shall be together forever and ever….”

“When I win the crown miracles will happen.”

I loved to see them together and wished fleetingly that Charles had the same affection for me that he had for his sister. But of course she was a child and children showed only adoration. I had a duty to perform and that sometimes made one displease those whom one loved most.

He must tell us of his adventures, I said. I could not wait to hear.

“You have been away a long time,” Henriette accused him.

“The absence was forced on me. I would rather have been in Paris than in Scotland with those Presbyterians. They are a grim crowd, dear Minette. You would not like them. It is a sin, they consider, to laugh on a Sunday.”

“Do they save up their jokes for other days?”

“Why, bless you, jokes are sin too. Think of the things you like doing best and I’ll be ready to wager that all would be a sin in the eyes of the Presbyterians.”

“Then I am glad you are back. Will it be like that in England?”

“Not while I am King. For that life is not for a gentleman of my tastes.”

He talked of his escape after Worcester and the terrible defeat his forces had suffered there. He had his faithful friends though and chief among them were Derby, Lauderdale, Wilmot and Buckingham. Yes, the son of that evil genius of my youth was one of Charles’s closest associates. He was about three years older than Charles and I hoped he was not going to exert a similar influence over my son as that which his father had held over my husband. But I fancied my son was not the sort to be influenced. I was eager to hear more. Charles had escaped from Worcester—a man with a price on his head. He told us how the Earl of Derby had produced a certain gentleman—a Catholic at that—Charles Giffard, to guide him through unknown country to Whiteladies and Boscobel; how he, the King of England, had paused at an inn for food and afraid to stay there and eat it had ridden away with bread and meat in his hands.

I had never seen Charles so moved as he was when he told us of his first glimpse of Whiteladies, the farmhouse which had once been a convent. It was the place he had come to for shelter, and the two brothers who were living there—the Penderels—were staunch royalists.

“There was I,” said Charles, “seated in this humble farmhouse surrounded by my friends, Derby, Shrewsbury, Cleveland, Wilmot and Buckingham with Giffard and the Penderels…planning what we should do next. The Penderels sent a message to Boscobel where more Penderels lived. You should have seen the clothes they gave me! A green jerkin and doublet of doeskin and a hat with a steeple crown. I looked like a country yokel. You would never have recognized me.”

“I think I should have recognized you anywhere,” I told him fondly.

“Wilmot had sheared my hair to this offensive cut. You know Wilmot. He made a joke of it—and a bad job, I must say. The Penderels trimmed me up afterward, for as they wisely said, it must not look like a job that had been hastily done. I had to try to walk as a yokel would, and to talk like one. They were hard lessons, Mam.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” I told him. “But you managed well enough I have no doubt.”

“No, indeed not. I made a poor rustic. Wilmot said his lord the King kept peering out from under my Roundhead haircut. I walked so far that my feet were bleeding and Joan Penderel, the wife of one of the brothers, washed my feet and put pads of paper between my toes where the skin was rubbed. I can tell you I was in a sorry state. Then news came that the neighborhood was full of Roundhead soldiers…all bent on one thing. To find me and put me where they had put my father.”

I shivered and touched his hand gently.

“I’m sorry, Mam,” he murmured.

I nodded and he went on: “A very good friend came to Boscobel to warn me. He was Colonel Carlis, a man I greatly trusted. He told me I was most unsafe. The soldiers were searching every house and could not fail to come to Boscobel. What could we do? He went out of the house and saw nearby an enormous oak tree in full leaf. The Colonel said ‘That is our only hope.’ So he and I climbed the tree and hid ourselves among the leaves. The Penderels said we were quite invisible and unless the soldiers decided to climb the tree, they would never see us. And, Mam, there is my little miracle. From the tree we could see the soldiers searching the wood and the houses…and they never thought to look up into the oak tree.”

So we were back where we were. He was alive and well; he had had great adventures; and, as I had come to expect, all had ended in defeat.

He had become very cynical. I sometimes thought he had given up all hope of winning the crown and had decided to live where he could enjoy life. He liked his friends, good conversation—and women, of course. I was glad to see that he was rid of that brazen Lucy Walter, who had been blatantly unfaithful to him during his absence. I suppose two years was too long for a woman of that kind to wait. But she had the boy. What a pity that was! Charles seemed to have an affection for the child. From what I saw of the infant he was strikingly handsome.

I could not rid myself of the thought of the Grande Mademoiselle’s money lying idle when it might have been equipping an army. I still hoped for the match.

She was in exile from the Court at this time because she had openly helped the Fronde. Her father, Gaston, was a supporter of them too, which was disgraceful as he was going against his own family. Always flamboyant, Mademoiselle had on one occasion gone into battle and it was significant that she had done this at the town of Orléans when the Fronde had taken it by storm.

What was she trying to be? Another Jeanne d’Arc!

She did show a certain interest in Charles. He had become something of a hero since his adventures after Worcester and I had never seen him talk as much as he did about them, for usually he was inclined to silence about his exploits. But these adventures seemed to have a fascination for him and he was ready to talk of them to any who asked him.

Mademoiselle gave a series of what she called “Assemblies.” She was still not able to attend Court but she snapped her fingers at that and made sure that she invited the most interesting people and that the food she gave them was far more delicious than that served at Court.

Charles was always invited to these occasions and I really believed she was considering him as a husband. She must be getting a little anxious now. She was twenty-five, no young girl, and the Emperor had married his third wife and again declined my ambitious niece.

On one of these occasions when I was present she made a point of talking to me. I think she took a malicious delight in raising my hopes that she might take Charles as a husband.

“He has changed since his adventures,” she told me. “He has become more mature…more serious…more mellowed shall we say? It is wonderful what hiding in an oak tree can do for a personality.”

“You too have changed, niece,” I reminded her. “You have also become more…mature. After all it must have been a great adventure to play the Maid of Orléans.”

“It was…indeed it was. I heard that the King of England is too fond of many women to be faithful to one.”

“You speak of women…not of wives.”

“Do you believe then that a man who has been promiscuous in his youth will in marriage become a model husband?”

“It is possible.”

“It would be something of a miracle. Think of your father, dear aunt.”

“I often do, and he was your grandfather, remember. We should both be proud of him. He was the greatest King France has ever known.”

“I trust my little husband will be as great.”

“Your…little husband!”

“Well,” she looked at me maliciously, “there is not much difference in our ages…eleven years and a few months. Louis is already fourteen.”

“He does not seem to be enamored of the prospect since he banished you from Court,” I said sharply.

“Little Louis banish me! Oh no, that was old Mazarin and his Mamma.”

“Nevertheless I doubt…”

She smiled at me sardonically and I dropped the subject for I was afraid my anger would explode.