Part 15 (2/2)
[Footnote 259: George Lord Digby, eldest son of the Earl of Bristol.]
[Footnote 260: The narrow majority by which the Grand Remonstrance pa.s.sed the House of Commons marked the formation of the const.i.tutional Royalist party.]
[Footnote 261: This version is a corruption of the real prophecy of Grebner, which was contained in a book given by him to Elizabeth and by Elizabeth to Trinity College, Cambridge. See ”Monarchy or no Monarchy in England: Grebner his prophecy by William Lilly, student in Astrology”
(1651).]
CHAPTER VIII
THE QUEEN AND THE WAR
I
'Tis time to leave the books in dust, And oil the unused armour's rust, Removing from the wall The corselet of the hall.
ANDREW MARVELL
It would be impossible, within the limits of these studies, to give even a brief outline of the events of that momentous period of our history known as the Civil War. All that can be attempted is to indicate the various activities of Henrietta Maria in connection with it.
With the knowledge that a struggle was inevitable a change came over the Queen's spirit. As long as an accommodation seemed possible she had shown, certainly from time to time, some moderation and some desire to propitiate her enemies, but it seemed to her that the demands of Parliament were unreasonable, and that, in fact, when she spoke of peace her foes made them ready for battle. There was no way through the impa.s.se, for they, on their side, were of just the same opinion. Thenceforward her tactics were different. As she had opposed an ignominious peace with the Scotch rebels, so now she was an advocate of no compromise. Throwing herself with all the energy of her nature--she could never do anything by halves, said one who knew her well[262]--into her husband's cause, she took her place among the most active members of the royalist party. Gone was the Queen of love and beauty, the gentle lady whose interests were those of the drawing-room, the nursery, and the chapel. Gone even was the Queen of tears, who sat cowering in London on the eve of the war. Instead is seen a woman stern and determined, brus.h.i.+ng aside concessions and half-measures with undisguised scorn, leaving without a sigh the luxuries in which from her cradle she had been lapped, and in which she had shown an artistic and sensuous delight, posting over land and sea, regardless of comfort, of health, of life itself, to bring succour to her husband. The daughter of Henry IV had risen to the measure of her likeness to her great father.
Henrietta set out for Holland in February, 1642. The ostensible reason of her journey was to escort her daughter Mary, who was only ten years old, to her husband, the Prince of Orange. The real reason was to raise such sums of money and to collect such quant.i.ties of arms and ammunition as she could obtain on the security of the treasures which she took with her, her own jewels and those of the Crown of England.
After a stormy crossing, which resulted in the loss of the chapel vessels and of the servants' clothes, Henrietta was able to gather round her on the soil of Holland her small household. It included Lord Goring, Lady Denbigh, Lady Roxburgh, who had been the little princesses' governess, and Father Philip, who was accompanied by one of his old rivals of the Capuchin Order.
The storm-tossed exiles were met at the coast by Henry, Prince of Orange, who, anxious to give due honour to his son's bride and mother-in-law, welcomed the sorrowful Queen with a ”brief and succinct speech,” running to a length of three and a half closely printed quarto pages, and couched in a style of inflated flattery[263] which, sad as she was, must have taxed Henrietta's gravity to listen to. She replied, however, with great decorum that the Prince appeared to her ”the G.o.d of eloquence,” after which she and her little daughter were royally feasted in the palace at The Hague.
Nevertheless, a welcome which savoured of absurdity was better than ”greetings where no kindness is.” In the Dutch capital Henrietta found her husband's sister, Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, who was living there in exile. This lady, who had taken an accurate measure of her sister-in-law's influence over her brother, held her in the cool esteem with which relatives by marriage are frequently regarded, and had no real cordiality to show to the woman who was beginning to tread the Via Dolorosa her own feet had trodden so long. It happened, besides, that just at this time parties in Holland reproduced in miniature those of England. The House of Orange clung to the alliance with the House of Stuart, but the wealthy burgesses of Amsterdam and The Hague, who were democratic and republican in their views, had more sympathy with those who were fighting the battle of liberty across the waters of the North Sea. They showed Henrietta little kindness and scant courtesy. They gave her hints, which she refused to take, that they would be glad to see the last of her. They treated her with none of the deference due to her rank. A st.u.r.dy Dutch burgher would stride into her presence without removing his hat, sit down beside her and enter into conversation with her as if she were a fellow-townsman whom he had met in the street; or, perhaps, if he could not think of anything to say, would turn on his heel and go away without stopping to salute the Queen of England, all which amazing manners Henrietta, whose sense of humour never deserted her, carefully noted and described years afterward to Madame de Motteville.[264]
But in spite of hostility the Queen's work prospered. She kept her daughter with her, while the boy-husband pursued the studies suitable to his age and rank; but she devoted her chief energies to raising money, a task in which she experienced some difficulty, as reports were circulated that she had carried off the crown jewels without the King's consent. She was, moreover, carefully watched, both by her unwilling hosts and by spies of the Parliament; but, nevertheless, she managed to sell or p.a.w.n some of her store, though at exorbitant rates, for, as she wrote to her husband, no sooner was it known that the King of England was in need of money than the usurers and merchants ”keep their foot on our throat.” Parliament issued a proclamation forbidding any of the ”traitors” to approach the person of the Queen; but, nevertheless, her friends came not without the connivance of the Prince of Orange, who allowed two of them to lie at his own lodgings.
George Digby and Henry Jermyn hastened to her side, and she was cheered by the arrival from France of another old friend from whom she had parted the year before in fear and distress.
Walter Montagu, after his hasty flight from England, had been received with rather unexpected kindness by Richelieu. He spent, however, most of his exile at Pontoise, where he made friends with Mother Jeanne Seguier,[265] a lady who combined the professions of a Carmelite nun and of a political intriguer, and to whom he probably owed an acquaintance with the rising Mazarin, which was rapidly ripening into friends.h.i.+p. But, in spite of the seduction of French affairs, he did not forget the lady to whom his allegiance was pledged; and in the late spring of 1642 he hurried to Holland to give advice in matters where his intimate knowledge of the French Court was invaluable.
For Henrietta's eyes were turning to her native land as a possible refuge in case of the worst. She had wished to go to Cologne, where her poor old mother lay sick to death; but her masters in Holland forbade her. Ireland, which had been suggested, seemed ”a strange place”; so sometimes she thought she would go to her beloved nuns in the Faubourg S. Jacques, and there, where she had been so happy, hide her humiliated head in case of her husband's discomfiture. She knew that Richelieu hated her, and she deeply resented the att.i.tude taken up by the French amba.s.sador in London; but she thought, and thought justly, that Louis XIII, or rather the Cardinal, would not, for very shame, refuse her, a daughter of France, an asylum in the extremity to which her affairs had come. Her Grand Almoner, Du Perron, who had not felt it necessary to risk himself in England again, wrote from Paris that she would be given entertainment in France in case of need. He also gave the welcome news that he was coming to see her on behalf of her brother the King, on receiving which intelligence her elastic spirits rose high with hope, so that she wrote friendly letters both to the great Cardinal himself and to Mazarin, with whom Montagu had smoothed her way.
It was a comfort to feel that she had an a.s.sured retreat, for the news from England became more and more exciting. The setting up of the King's standard at Nottingham on August 22nd, 1642, made the war a reality. The first blood shed in civil strife since the battle of Bosworth was drawn at Powick Bridge on September 23rd, 1642. On October 23rd the first regular engagement between the rival armies took place at Edgehill.
The Queen watched the course of events with painful and unremitting anxiety. Nor was she a mere spectator. There yet exists the remarkable series of letters[266] which she addressed from Holland, some written by her own hand, some by that of a secretary, probably Henry Jermyn, to her husband. In them, more clearly than anywhere else, we see the working of Henrietta's fierce and determined mind at this crisis. How she urged Charles on, against the advice of more moderate counsellors, to take Hull by force, though Parliament had not begun hostilities. ”Is it not beginning to put persons into it against your will?”[267] How she wished she were in the place of her son James, who was in that town. ”I would have flung the rascal over the walls, or he should have done the same thing to me.”[268]
How she entreated and almost commanded the King to make no accommodation which would abate by one jot or t.i.ttle his royal power,[269] and how she threatened, in case he did not take her advice, to go to France instead of returning to England, ”for to die of consumption of royalty is a death which I cannot endure, having found by experience the malady to be too insupportable.”[270] How she exhorted him to take good heed that their children did not fall into the hands of the enemy, and to be faithful to the few friends whom she really trusted. It is evident that she was no wise guide for her unhappy husband, whose vacillations, born of a glimmering perception of the position of a const.i.tutional King, roused her to scorn and almost to fury. She cannot be acquitted of having done all that lay in her power (which was much) to widen the breach between the King and his subjects in these early and critical days. Hers was the stronger spirit, and she knew it. The tone of her letters to ”le roy monseigneur,” if always loving is often peremptory, and sometimes even dictatorial, while she does not hesitate to show her contempt for his lack of decision and prompt.i.tude.
She is ever exhorting him to courage, to energy, to vengeance. The day of mercy is gone, and it is time to give place to justice. Even her benedictions end in curses such as the Puritans excelled in heaping on the heads of their enemies and those of the Lord.[271] She had not for nothing sat at the feet of Richelieu. ”Charles, be a King,” is the burden of all her advice.
In these letters to her struggling husband Henrietta seldom allows herself to give way; but the softer side of her nature, though often obscured by sterner elements, never wholly disappeared. ”Pray to G.o.d for me,” she wrote in her pain to Madame S. Georges; ”for be a.s.sured there is not a more wretched creature in this world than I, separated from the King my lord, from my children, out of my country, and without hope of returning thence, except at imminent peril, abandoned by all the world, unless G.o.d a.s.sist me, and the good prayers of my friends, among whom I number you.”[272]
But such temporary despondency was drowned in work. Henrietta had too much to do, raising money, not only in Holland but in Denmark, sending arms and accoutrements into England, and keeping the Prince of Orange in a good temper, to have much time for low spirits. Towards the end of 1642 she had raised such sums of money as the amount of her resources and the caution of her customers permitted.[273] The state of affairs in England was not very promising, but nothing could keep her from her husband when she could be at his side with honour to herself and advantage to him. For danger she cared little, but various delays occurred, and it was not until the end of the following January, when she had been almost a year in the land where she had intended but a short stay, that she set sail for England.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE QUEEN'S DEPARTURE FROM HOLLAND
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