Loyal in Love: Henrietta Maria, Queen of Charles I

by Jean Plaidy

  “The Duke could easily be weaned from Spain,” said Mazarin. “He likes a cause and I am sure yours would appeal to his chivalry and feeling for the nobility.”

  I could not afford to lose any opportunity so I at once sent an agent to Lorraine. At the same time I put out feelers at the Court of Holland. My son Charles was growing up and would need a wife. Why should she not be the eldest daughter of the Prince of Orange? I made it clear that the Princess would need a very large dowry if she was to marry the Prince of Wales.

  News from home filtered through to me. It was worrying. My old friend the Earl of Newcastle, on whose loyalty I would have staked my life, had decided that he could no longer live in a country which suited him so ill and had given up his command and gone to Holland where he proposed to settle down. I guessed that he had been heartbroken by the decimation of his Whitecoats at Marston Moor.

  He was not the only royalist who left the country. It was significant. Those men must have made up their minds that Charles had little chance of keeping his crown.

  But Charles had determined to fight on. I worried constantly about him. I dreamed of him in fearful situations. Men like Fairfax, Essex and Oliver Cromwell haunted my dreams.

  “Take more care of yourself,” I wrote to Charles. “You risk yourself too much and it almost kills me when I hear of it. If not for your sake then for mine, look after yourself.”

  There was a rumor that he was suing for peace. This terrified me and I wrote to him to take care of his honor and begging him to be true to the resolutions he had made. He was the King—anointed in the eyes of God. He must never forget that.

  His reply put new heart into me. Nothing…no fear of death or misery would make him do anything unworthy of my love.

  I think our love for each other was greater than it had ever been. Adversity had strengthened it. We lived only for the day when we should be together; and it was that hope which kept us both going when disaster stared us in the face.

  There was a new ray of hope when the Duke of Lorraine sent word that he would let us have ten thousand men, and the Prince of Orange offered transport. I was delighted. I was getting somewhere; but just as I was about to write off to Charles and tell him the good news, the States General decided that to allow these men to pass through their territory would be considered an act of war by the Parliamentarians and they could not permit it.

  How I raged and stormed! Why should it not be an act of war! Why were they afraid of those miserable Roundheads!

  I knew the answer. Our enemies were gaining ground and many people believed that Charles was already defeated.

  I turned to Mazarin but he, too, impressed by the Roundhead ascendancy, found that he also could not allow us to bring our men and arms through France.

  Disaster on all sides! if it had not been for the hope of seeing Charles one day, I would have asked nothing more than to retire from the world, to enter a convent and there wait for death; but while he lived, I wanted to live. I must be ready if ever we should be free to be together again.

  His letters comforted me. I read them again and again.

  “I love thee above all earthly things,” he wrote, “and my happiness is inseparably conjoined with thine. If thou knew the life I lead…even in point of conversation which in my mind is the chief joy or vexation in life, I daresay thou would pity me, for some are too wise, others too foolish, some are too busy, others too reserved. I confess thy company hath perhaps made me hard to please but not the least to be pitied by thee who are the only cure for the disease….”

  It was not until the end of that July that I received news of the crushing defeat at Naseby. The general view was that this was the beginning of the end but I would not allow myself to believe that. While Charles was alive and I was alive I should go on hoping and working.

  Why had it happened? Why was Fate against us? I raged. I stormed. I shouted. I wept. But what was the use? It would have seemed at the start of the battle that we had a fair chance; but as usual everything went against us. Charles had chosen his position on the raised land called Dust Hill about two miles north of the village of Naseby and we had been stronger in cavalry than the enemy, but the skill of Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell decided the issue. Prince Rupert who had had some initial success and thought he had won the battle went off to attack the Parliamentary baggage and came back to the heart of the battle too late to save it. Fortunately both Charles and Rupert managed to escape. The Roundheads lost two hundred men and the Royalists one thousand, but that was not the whole sad story. Five thousand men were taken prisoner with all our guns and baggage, as well as Charles’s private correspondence.

  It was disaster…the greatest we had had.

  Queen Anne very kindly offered me the Château of St. Germain for the summer and I was grateful for that, and there in the beautiful castle I brooded on what was happening at home.

  There was worse to come. Rupert had surrendered Bristol to the Roundheads. Bristol…that loyal city! Charles said he would never forgive Rupert for giving it up. Poor Rupert! Poor Charles! How wretched they must have been! Charles, after Naseby, had lost half his army. What hope had he against Cromwell’s trained men? Cromwell! That name was on every lip. How I hated him and yet there was a tinge of admiration in my venom. If only he had been for us instead of against us. He had trained men to an excellence which could compare with the regular army and at the same time he had imbued them with religious fervor. He was the greatest leader in the country and he was against us. None more fervently so. His aim was to destroy the Monarchy, and after Naseby and the loss of Bristol it looked as though he were going to do it.

  My anxiety was intense. Charles was more or less a fugitive and my children, with the exception of the Prince of Wales, were in the enemy’s hands. They were treated as commoners, all royal rank denied them; and there was a rumor that my little Henry, the Duke of Gloucester, was to be apprenticed to a trade. Shoemaking was being considered.

  I wept until I could not see. I thrust aside the comfort my friends had to offer. I would not listen—even to Henry Jermyn and Madame de Motteville.

  But after a while I began to bestir myself. Everything was not lost. Charles had gone to Scotland; he was going to see if he could persuade the Scots to help him against the Roundheads. They would settle their religious differences; he would promise them almost anything in return for their help.

  It was a desperate situation but just as my spirits had sunk to their very nadir, I was hoping again and beginning to make plans.

  My hopes were on my eldest son. He had escaped to Jersey and I wanted him to come to France to me. He was fifteen years old and if I could get him advantageously married it might be possible to raise a fresh army which I could send to England. The suggestion of a Dutch marriage had not been received with any great enthusiasm by the Prince and Princess of Orange. This meant that they were beginning to suspect that the Roundheads had almost won the day and that the heir to a throne which might not be there was not a very good match. I wanted him with me. I did not want to be separated from all my family. I longed for my baby more than any of the other children; I worried about her constantly. She was just over a year old and I wondered what would become of her. I knew that when Exeter had fallen to the Roundheads she had been removed to Oatlands and was still in the care of Lady Dalkeith.

  I wrote to that good and faithful woman and begged her to do all she could to bring my daughter to me, although before, when she had been in Exeter with her at the time of the siege, I had abused her for not leaving the city with my child.

  Many royalists had come to me in France, which was another indication of how badly everything was going at home. Some of them did not like the idea of the Prince of Wales’s coming to France because they thought that I would endeavor to make a Catholic of him and if he became one that would put an end to his ever succeeding to the throne. I had other ideas. I wanted a good marriage for him.

  Lord Digby was one of those who was against my send
ing for the Prince and I knew it was because of religion, but I managed to persuade him of the necessity to get arms so that the King might fight again, and finally I won their agreement, and they went off to Jersey to tell the Prince that I wished him to come to Paris.

  They were a long time gone and in due course I had a communication from Digby to the effect that the Prince was very reluctant to leave Jersey because he had become enamored of the Governor’s daughter. This was the first of Charles’s countless love affairs which were to be talked of all over Europe. He was only fifteen but he was already showing the way he would go. That he could dally in such a way when so much was at stake angered me. I sent urgent messages to Digby, but still Charles would not leave the Governor’s daughter.

  Meanwhile there was news from the King. He was going to Scotland. I was frantic. I wrote to him asking him to command our son to come to me at once.

  While I was waiting for his arrival, which could not now be long delayed, I turned my attention to my niece, Mademoiselle de Montpensier or the Grande Mademoiselle as she was often called—the richest heiress in France. She was in fact Anne-Marie-Louise d’Orléans—a royal Princess, daughter of my brother Gaston and therefore worthy to mate with the Prince of Wales on account of her birth and doubly so on account of the money she had inherited through her mother. I did not greatly care for her. She was a haughty, arrogant creature and being fully aware of my unfortunate position she was not going to let me forget it. She flaunted her superiority. Her clothes were always so much richer than those of others; she scintillated with precious jewels as though to say, “Look at me. The richest heiress in France! The most desirable wife for some lucky man. He shall be of my choice though.” She had been spoiled all her life and now it was too late to correct that. She was very fair, which made her outstanding in our dark-haired almost black-eyed family. Her large blue eyes were slightly prominent and although she had not inherited our darkness she certainly had the big nose of the family. She glowed with health and I rather spitefully noticed that her teeth were discolored and spoilt her looks. She had visited me now and then, having been prevailed on to do so by kindhearted Queen Anne, and she would sit with me superciliously noting, I was sure, my clothes, which if they were a little worn were more elegant than hers. I thought her somewhat vulgar and if it had not been for her immense fortune I would not have considered her for one moment as a suitable bride for Charles.

  Ah, but that fortune! I must set myself out to win it.

  “You have never been to England,” I said to her. “Oh, what pleasures you have missed.”

  “There is not much pleasure to be found there now, Madame.”

  “The green fields are there…those little rivers all sparkling in the sun. There is no country quite so beautiful. I confess I long for a glimpse of those white cliffs once more.”

  “Let us hope the King is able to keep a hold on the crown.”

  “Can anyone doubt it? This is nothing…a rebellion of a few wicked men. Rest assured the King will recover all very shortly.”

  “He has been rather long in doing so, dear aunt.”

  “Victory is within his grasp.”

  She was looking at me cynically. I knew she was thinking: Naseby. Bristol. The King in Scotland feebly trying to win the help of an ancient enemy. The family scattered.

  “The Prince is growing up,” I said. “He will be there to stand with his father.”

  “He if fifteen, I believe. I am seventeen.”

  “I know it well,” I said. “But you are much of an age. I have a feeling that when he comes here you are going to be very good friends.”

  “I do not greatly care for the society of young boys,” she answered slyly.

  “Charles is a man. He is older than his years. Why, in Jersey…”

  But no. I was being impulsive again. It would be unwise to tell her of his philandering with the Governor’s daughter.

  She went on: “My aunt died recently, as you know.”

  “I still mourn my dear sister,” I said.

  “The King of Spain will be looking for a wife, I daresay. His period of mourning will soon be over.”

  The minx! I thought. She is teasing me. The King of Spain! Her aunt’s widower who is now in the marriage market. And he has a crown to offer her…not the promise of one.

  Those protuberant blue eyes were laughing at me. She was saying: I see right through you, dear Aunt Henriette. Do you imagine that I do not know how eager you are to find a rich wife for your son?

  Perhaps I had meddled again. Perhaps it would have been better to let Charles do his own wooing. If the affair in Jersey was an example he would be able to do that very well indeed.

  It was June when my son arrived in Paris. He could not defy his father’s orders even for the sake of the Jersey charmer. He arrived a little resentful but he was soon on the look-out for fresh conquests.

  I was delighted to see him and for a few moments we just clung together. He had always been a strong boy. He had grown very tall and had an air of dignity which pleased me. He looked every inch a King. He still had the swarthy looks he had been born with; his features were too big for good looks and indeed if one studied his face he was really quite ugly; but he was possessed of such charm—his smile, his voice, his manner—that in any company he would be distinguished, and his royal bearing was apparent. I was proud of him.

  When he arrived the Court was at Fontainebleau and kind Queen Anne immediately sent an invitation for us to join her there.

  Charles and I rode together and when we were within a few miles of the palace we were met by the Queen in her coach with little King Louis. She expressed her pleasure to see Charles, and when we alighted at the palace she gave him her arm to conduct him in while I was left to the care of the little King.

  It was not long before Charles was engaged in a flirtation with his cousin La Grande Mademoiselle, as she liked to be called, but it was soon clear to me that she was only amusing herself and there could be no official ceremony until England was once more in the hands of its King.

  In the meantime the King was in Scotland and I trembled for what was going on.

  Life could not be all sorrow—even mine. What a wonderful day it was when Lady Dalkeith—Lady Morton now that her father-in-law had died—arrived in France with my little Henriette. I could scarcely believe this good fortune, so accustomed was I to bad.

  Madame de Motteville brought me the news and I ran down to find them there. I snatched up my baby. She did not know me, of course, for she had been only fifteen days old when I had left her and now she was two years. She could chatter a little and she looked at me gravely. I thought how beautiful she was—the most beautiful of all my children and the most beloved—and always would be.

  It was a wonderful reunion. I could almost believe that my fortunes had changed. From despair I allowed myself to revel in absolute happiness…for a short while.

  Dear Lady Morton—to whom I had not always been kind, for I am afraid I had the common fault of blaming others when misfortune struck me. Who could have been kinder, more loyal, more loving than this good woman! Henriette loved her and would not be separated from her and I welcomed her with all my heart and asked forgiveness for my unjust criticisms of the past, at which she fell on her knees and said she only wished to serve me and the Princess for the rest of her life.

  Ah, I thought, if only we had more faithful servants like this dear lady!

  I settled down to hear of their adventures, because the clever woman had actually escaped from Oatlands.

  “The Commons had decided that the Princess Henriette should be placed with her brother and sister at St. James’s Palace where her retinue would be dismissed and that would have meant me,” Lady Morton told me. “I had promised both you, Madam, and the King that I would never leave the Princess except on your orders so I decided that the only way was to escape to you.”

  “Oh, my clever, clever Anne!” I cried.

  “We should never have
been allowed to leave,” she went on, “so I decided on disguise. I had with me a Frenchman, Gaston, who had been in the household and he posed as a valet and it was arranged that I should travel as his wife and the Princess was to be our child—a little boy. I thought that best in case we should be suspected. I left letters behind with people whom I could trust, asking them to keep our departure secret for three days, which would give us time to get well on our way. And then we left.”

  I listened intently. It was the sort of plan I would have worked out myself.

  “I told the Princess that she was not a princess anymore. She was a little boy and her name was Pierre, which I thought in her childish chatter sounded a little like Princess if she should let it be known who she really was. She did not like it at all, nor the ragged clothes in which we had to dress her. We had some scares along the road…not the least those resulting from the Princess herself, who was eager to tell everyone she met that she was not really Peter or Pierre but the Princess. I cannot tell you, Madam, what a joy it was to be on that boat.”

  “I cannot tell you what joy you have brought me!” I replied.

  My little daughter’s coming lightened my days considerably. I had two of my children with me now: Charles and Henriette, my eldest and my youngest. It was a comfort to see how those two loved each other. Charles, whose main interest, I had to admit, was in young ladies, still had time to spare for that very small one, his own sister. He bestowed on her the pet name of Minette; as for her, her eyes would light up every time they fell on her big brother.

  But naturally we could not be happy for long. How foolish Charles had been to put his hopes on the Scots. I could not believe my ears when I heard that they had sold him to the English. The price had been four hundred thousand pounds.