Part 2 (1/2)
A good Wif was ther of byside Bath
Sche was a worthy womman al hire lyfe Housbondes atte chirche dore hadde sche fyfe.]
[Footnote 18: George Goring, Baron Goring, 1628, Earl of Norwich, 1644; d.
1663.]
[Footnote 19: At some point in the ceremony Henrietta Maria renounced all her rights to the throne and dominions of France, as had been stipulated in the marriage treaty.]
[Footnote 20: The dispensation is dated December, 1625.]
[Footnote 21: They are smaller, part of them having been built over.]
[Footnote 22: MS. Francais, 23,600.]
[Footnote 23: L'Entree superbe magnifique faite a la Royne de la grande Bretagne dans la Ville d'Amiens, le Samedy septisme de Juin, 1625. Sur les fideles relations d'un seigneur de qualite. A. Paris, MDCXXV.]
[Footnote 24: _Ibid._]
[Footnote 25: On the question of the authors.h.i.+p of this letter see Avenal: _Lettres de Richelieu_, VIII., p. 27. There seems no doubt that it was written by Berulle. Among the Berulle papers (Archives Nationales, M. 232) is an authenticated copy, whose note of authentication states that ”ce discours a este compose par nostre tres reverend pere” (i.e. Berulle), as the copyist was informed in 1660. Berulle in 1627 wrote another letter for Mary de' Medici to send to her daughter. See chap. IV.]
[Footnote 26: Sir Tobie Matthew. Tanner MS., LXXII.]
[Footnote 27: _Ibid._]
[Footnote 28: Tanner MS., LXXII, 40.]
CHAPTER II
THE BRIDE OF ENGLAND
Parents lawes must beare no weight When they happinesse prevent.
And our sea is not so streight, But it room hath for content.
WILLIAM HABINGTON
Long years after the events occurred, when many happy years had softened the memory of their bitterness, Henrietta Maria confessed to her friend Madame de Motteville that her early married life had not been free from disappointment and vexation. Charles Stuart was not an easy man to live with, as all those who had much to do with him found out. He was moral, conscientious, in many respects admirable; but he was oppressed by a sense of his own importance, he was entirely without humour, and he was convinced that he was always, on all occasions, in the right. He did not, as many royal husbands, break his marriage vow, but he treated his girl-wife with a harshness which fell little short of unkindness, and that though she was ever anxious to do her duty and he was always sincerely a lover.
It is probable that the difficulties began almost immediately. Charles, on his arrival at Dover, did, indeed, greet his beautiful bride with delight, and when she would have knelt at his feet he prevented her by clasping her in his arms instead. But the French visitors soon showed that they were dissatisfied with the Queen's reception. They were ignorant of the more homely character of the English people and Court; and, contrasting the poverty of the festivities and welcome offered by the King of England to his queen with the splendour which the King of France had freely displayed to do honour to his sister, they concluded a lack of respect and affection on the part of Charles which had no foundation in fact. Some of the difficulty was indeed wholly due to national misunderstanding, as, for instance, the ill-feeling caused by the gloomy splendours of Dover Castle, where the young Queen spent her first night in England, and, later, by an antique bed, dating from the reign of Elizabeth, in which she was invited to repose in London. How could the English know that these relics of a glorious past were in the eyes of these visitors, accustomed to the new-fas.h.i.+oned luxuries of the French Court, nothing but relics of barbarism? ”None of us, however old, could remember ever having seen such a bed,” wrote Tillieres,[29] in deep indignation. Nor was the public welcome to London more successful, though the marriage was fairly popular, and there was much kindly feeling towards the bride. The plague was raging in the city, so that, for prudence'sake, festivities had to be curtailed; while, to make matters worse, the entry into the capital took place on one of those drenching summer days which are not of infrequent occurrence in these islands. To the French visitors used to Paris, which, if one of the dirtiest of cities, was, then as now, one of the most beautiful and magnificent, London, at the best, would have looked rather shabby,[30] in these circ.u.mstances it appeared ugly and squalid. The English were little more pleased with their guests. ”A poor lot, hardly worth looking at,” was the comment of one Englishman on the brilliant train of French ladies who accompanied the Queen; and if he made an exception in favour of Madame de Chevreuse, who could hardly have been called plain, it was only to find fault with her for painting her face. It was perhaps not to be expected that this remarkable lady should find favour in Puritan eyes, for during her stay in England, where she remained over the birth of her daughter, the Mademoiselle de Chevreuse of later French history, she exhibited more than her usual eccentricity, indulging in such freaks as swimming across the Thames, an exploit which was celebrated in half-mocking verse by a Court poet.[31] But such petty national jealousies were annoyances of a trivial character. The more serious disagreements which arose between the royal pair may be traced, almost entirely, to two sources: the influence over the Queen of her French attendants, and the influence over the King of the Duke of Buckingham.
Among the articles of the marriage treaty was a stipulation that the Queen's household should be composed of those who were of her own faith and nation. This body consisted of more than a hundred persons, civil and religious, chosen by Mary de' Medici and Richelieu, ranging from such great n.o.bles and ladies as Madame S. Georges, the princ.i.p.al lady-in-waiting, and the Count de Tillieres, the lord chamberlain, to the humble servants of the royal kitchen and laundry. Certainly the presence of so many of her own countrymen about the person of the young Queen tended to prevent that a.s.similation of English ideas and habits which was so desirable. It is not surprising that Charles disliked his wife's French servants as standing between him and his bride, particularly when it is remembered that they looked upon themselves as the servants of the King of France, who provided many of them with pensions.
The object of his special dislike was Madame S. Georges, who, as the daughter of Madame de Montglas, had great influence with Henrietta, and who, though she had had long experience in Courts,[32] was foolish enough to show herself aggrieved at not being permitted to ride in the same coach with the King of England and his bride. Madame de Tillieres, who ranked next to her, was more discreet in her conduct, probably owing to her husband's intimate knowledge of England, where he had resided a while as amba.s.sador.
But if the secular part of the Queen's household was objectionable, still more so was the ecclesiastical establishment, of which the leading spirits were her confessor, Father Berulle, who had brought over with him twelve fathers of the French Oratory,[33] whose long habit, worn on all occasions, startled the eyes of sober Londoners, and her Grand Almoner, Daniel de la Motte du Plessis Houdancourt, who had under him four sub-almoners, one of whom was said to have openly defended at Court the doctrine of tyrannicide which Ravaillac put into practice. Berulle, who lived to wear the Cardinal's purple, left behind him when he died a few years later the reputation almost of a saint.[34] He was also a very intellectual man, being one of the early admirers of the genius of Descartes; but he was not suited either in mind or character for the position which the partiality of Mary de' Medici had called him to fill; a man of stern and narrow piety, neither a Fenelon nor even a Bossuet, he knew not how to deal sympathetically with those whose religion and manners differed from his own; and the scorn which, as a Catholic ecclesiastic, he felt for ”the ministers,” at whom, in his letters, he loses no opportunity of sneering, as an abstemious Frenchman he felt no less for the gluttonous English. He recognized Charles' affection for his bride; but when the artistic King thought to please her by giving her a beautiful picture of the Nativity, all that the priest found to say on seeing it was that it was older than the religion of its donor. His very virtues were unfortunate. Though practised in Courts, he was too sincere to be a successful diplomat, and he showed a singular lack of enlightened self-interest, both in the just reproaches with which he overwhelmed Buckingham on the subject of the Catholics, and also in the friends.h.i.+p which he extended to Bishop Williams, whose sun was setting before that of the younger favourite. Nor was he altogether successful in his dealings with the Queen. He did indeed win Henrietta's respect, and to his teaching may be attributed, in some degree, the lifelong conduct which distinguishes her so honourably from others of her rank and day. But a Catholic Puritan himself--it is significant that the French Oratory a few years later was believed to be infected with Jansenism--and looking upon all Courts, specially Protestant ones, as chosen haunts of the devil, he was wont to rebuke his royal penitent for such natural sentiments as pleasure in her pretty dresses and jewels, and, forgetting that she was not a Carmelite nun in the Faubourg S. Jacques, he attempted to force upon her a strictness of manners and observance suited neither to her nature nor to her position. Charles' complaints of the cold and unloving conduct of the wife with whom, even by the testimony of his enemies, he was deeply in love; Buckingham's gibes at a queen who lived ”en pet.i.te Mademoiselle,” had their foundation in facts, facts for which Berulle was largely responsible.
[Ill.u.s.tration: CARDINAL PIERRE DE BeRULLE
FROM AN ENGRAVING]
The Bishop of Mende was a very different person from the austere Oratorian.