Loyal in Love: Henrietta Maria, Queen of Charles I

by Jean Plaidy

  Grains! I thought. That means opium. I had never taken opium and I was not going to now.

  They came to my bedside and I said: “I am not taking your grains.”

  “Your Majesty,” said M. Valot, “they will do you no harm, only great good. They will bring you sleep.”

  “Sir Theodore Mayerne said I was never to take any such things.”

  “He was old and out of date, Your Majesty. Medicine has improved since then.”

  They were all talking to me, including Henriette.

  “Dear Mam, you will take it. You will feel so much better….”

  “I do not promise,” I said. “I shall try to sleep without it.”

  It has been a good day. I have worked a little, prayed a good deal and conversed with my friends.

  At supper we were quite merry and Henry amused us all with some scandalous stories he had gleaned about people at Court.

  I had had a good meal and could not help laughing at him. I am so tired. If I could only sleep, but however tired I am when I am in bed thoughts come between me and sleep.

  I was prepared for bed as usual and the nearer the time came to say goodnight to my friends the more wide awake I became.

  I am very thoughtful tonight. More than ever the past comes back—haunting me, robbing me of peace. I can see everything in especial clarity tonight—my coming to England, my quarrels with Charles. Oh what a foolish girl I was then! And then our great joy in each other…but the troubles came too quickly. I am very uneasy tonight. Something is telling me that everything might have been so different and I cannot stop myself wondering what would have happened to Charles if he had had a different Queen. How much had I contributed to that murder in Whitehall?

  What has happened to me in the last years? I have become more myself than I ever was before. Had I in the past been living other people’s lives? I had constantly told them what they should do. I had been estranged from my son Henry and he had died without a reconciliation. Mary and I had not been good friends. I had quarreled with James and should have done so with Charles if he had been of a nature to quarrel.

  I cannot endure this feeling of doubt which envelops me. I had always felt before that I knew, that I was right in everything I did.

  Now I am haunted by fears. Perhaps I was not right. Perhaps I was tragically wrong.

  These thoughts are tormenting me. They have completely chased away sleep. I am frightened. In the last years I have seen events more clearly than I did when they were happening and a fearful sense of guilt is settling on me. I had been so sure of my place in Heaven. I had loved my husband deeply; I had loved my children. But what had I done to them?

  I must sleep. I will call in one of my attendants and tell her that I give in. I will take M. Valot’s grains for I must sleep. I cannot endure this burden of guilt. I will take the grains…and sleep.

  Now I will lay down my pen and call the attendant.

  EPILOGUE

  On that August night of the year 1669 Henriette Maria sent one of her ladies to M. d’Aquin to tell him that as she could not sleep she would take the medicine which the doctors had prescribed and it was brought to her in the white of an egg.

  After she had drunk it she was soon fast asleep.

  When her lady-in-waiting came to her bedside the next morning to ask how she had slept, there was no answer.

  Henriette Maria was dead.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Aubrey, William Hickman Smith, The National and Domestic History of England

  Birch, Thomas, The Court and Times of Charles I

  Bone, Quentin, Henrietta Maria

  Burnet, Gilbert (Bishop of Salisbury), Bishop Burnet’s History of his Own Time

  Cartwright, Julia, Madame: Memoirs of Henrietta Duchess of Orleans

  Clarendon, Edward Earl of (edited by W. Dunn Macray), The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England

  Davies, Godfrey, England under the Early Stuarts

  Diary of John Evelyn (edited by William Bray, Prefatory Notes by George W. E. Russell)

  Firth, C. H., Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England

  Fraser, Antonia, Cromwell, Our Chief of Men

  Gardiner, Samuel Rawson, History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War

  Green, Mary Anne Everett, Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies

  Green, Mary Anne Everett, Lives of the Princesses of England

  Guizot, M. (edited by Robert Black), History of France

  Hexter, J. H., King Pym

  Hume, David, History of England

  Jackson, Lady Catherine Charlotte, Old Paris: Its Court and Literary Salons

  Kenyon, J. P., The Stuarts

  Letters of Charles I to Henrietta Maria (edited by John Bruce)

  Macaulay, Lord, History of England

  Mann, Heinrich, The Last Days of Henri Quatre

  The Trial of Charles I Memoirs of Sir Thomas Herbert and John Rush-worth (edited by Roger Lockyer, with Introduction by C. V. Wedgwood)

  Patmore, Katherine Alexandra, The Court of Louis XIII

  Pepys, Samuel, Diary and Correspondence of

  Quennell, Marjorie and Peter, A History of Everyday Things in England 1500–1799

  Roots, Ivan, The Great Rebellion

  Sir Leslie Stevens and Sir Sydney Lee (editors), The Dictionary of National Biography

  Timbs, John and Gunn, Alexander, Abbeys, Castles and Ancient Halls of England and Wales

  Trevelyan, George Macaulay, England under the Stuarts

  Wade, John, British History

  Wedgwood, C.V., The King’s Peace

  Wedgwood, C.V., The King’s War

  Wingfield-Stratford, Esmé, King Charles and the Conspirators

  A READER’S GUIDE

  LOYAL IN LOVE

  JEAN PLAIDY

  This guide is a starting point for discussion of Loyal in Love, Jean Plaidy’s classic tale of a woman’s lasting loyalty.

  1. At the beginning of Loyal in Love, Henriette takes responsibility for her husband’s death, saying it was her many mistakes that led to his execution. Considering her actions throughout the novel, how much blame for Charles’s troubles can be laid at her feet?

  2. Through the course of the novel, who is revealed to be Henriette’s greatest enemy?

  3. What kind of child was Henriette? How does her behavior as a Princess of France affect the rest of her life? Do you think that she changes as the novel progresses?

  4. What role does the nursemaid Mamie play in Henriette’s life? How does that role evolve over time?

  5. What is Henriette’s first impression of England? What does she think of Charles? How does the incident involving Mamie and the Royal Coach on Discord in the Royal Apartments set the stage for the tumultuous early years of their life together?

  6. What is the cause of the rift between Charles’s friend and adviser Buckingham and the Queen? How does his death change her relationship with her husband? What brings Henriette and Charles closer? Did the king make the right decision when he sent her French retinue home?

  7. Religion is a constant source of strife between Henriette and Charles, and each hopes the other will convert. What do the English people think about Charles’s Catholic Queen and her influence over him? Do you think Henriette should have converted to help Charles? Do you think it would have mattered if she had? In a similar situation, would you consider religious conversion?

  8. Do you think Charles was a good husband? Do you think he was a good King? Why might these two things be mutually exclusive? How does his desire to please Henriette contribute to their downfall?

  9. Why does Parliament make the Earl of Strafford an example in its war with the King? What do Charles and Henriette do in an attempt to save him? Why do they fail? Having promised him that he would not be executed, why does Charles eventually sign Strafford’s death warrant? Does this have the effect he hoped?

  10. Henriette’s lady, Lucy Hay, reveals Charles’s p
lan to arrest key members of the faction against him to Parliament, thwarting his attempt to regain control. Did you suspect Lucy Hay of treachery? Why didn’t Henriette suspect something when she learned that Lucy was under the influence of John Pym?

  11. Is Henriette successful in her trip to find help from the Dutch King? What is the state of affairs in England when she returns?

  12. Discuss the poignant scene on Despair in which Elizabeth and Henry visit their father just before he is executed.

  13. How does Henriette take the news of Charles’s death? How is she treated upon her return to France? Aside from the loss of Charles, what do you think is the hardest part of living in exile in her old homeland?

  14. From the moment of his birth, Henriette’s son Charles seems different from other children: stronger, bolder, and more alert to the world around him. Do you think he was more suited to be King than his ill-fated father?

  15. Is Henriette’s return to England once Charles has reclaimed the throne as glorious as she hoped it would be? What mars it for her? How does she find life as the Queen Mother? How do Charles and her other children feel about the Catholic faith that is so important to their mother?

  16. By the end of the novel, what lesson has Henriette learned about herself?

  AN EXCERPT FROM

  THE MERRY

  MONARCH’S WIFE

  COMING TO BOOKSTORES IN

  JANUARY 2008

  PRELUDE

  My life will end where it began, for in the year 1692 I left England where I had gone some thirty years before as a bride to the most romantic prince in Europe.

  I smile now to consider how ill-equipped I was for such a position, and when I look back I say to myself, “If I had done this…,” “If I had not done that…how much happier my life would have been.” But then, although I was not very young—I was twenty-four, which is a mature age for a princess to embark on marriage—I was quite innocent of the world and had hardly ever strayed from the walls of the convent where I had received my education, or the precincts of the royal palace. I had been brought up between the nuns and my mother with the strictest rules on moral rectitude, to be plunged into what was known as one of the most licentious courts in Europe. Naturally there was much which I could not understand and could not accept. I was lost and bewildered and desperately unhappy.

  But when I came back to Portugal and my brother, Don Pedro, the King, gave me the Quinta de Alcantara, one of his summer palaces, where I lived in comfort, his wife, Queen Maria Sophia, became my good friend, and I was fêted by the people wherever I went. They could not forget that, by my alliance with England, I had helped to free them from the Spanish yoke.

  Everywhere I went, I was assured of their gratitude and that was heartwarming.

  When my health worsened, my brother sent me to the palace of Santa Martha and then to Belem where I have stayed. He and his Queen show great concern for me.

  It was a great joy to visit the Villa Viçosa, called by some the Paradise of Portugal, where I was born and spent the first two years of my life in those idyllic surroundings. And as I wandered through those leafy glades, I thought of that day—my second birthday—which could be said to be the beginning of all that followed, for if my father had taken a different decision on that day, it is unlikely that I should have gone to England.

  It is interesting to contemplate what my fate would have been; and there, in the Villa Viçosa, I decided to look back on it all, to ask myself how much my actions had played their part in that drama—which was sometimes a comedy, as I suppose all life is. I want to see it all clearly—the hopes, the dreams, the eager expectations and, after the bitter revelation, the joys, the pleasure, the pain and the passion: I want to live it all again in my thoughts.

  There are days when I must take to my bed. I am plagued with illness and at such times my great solace is to escape into memory, to see again that glittering court; the elegant costumes of the men; the curled periwigs, the lace-edged breeches; the cloaks trimmed with gold cord; the feather hats; all proclaiming the joy to escape from Cromwellian puritan rule to royal splendor. And at the center of it all, the King himself: merry, witty, gracious, rarely roused to anger and with a charm that exceeded handsome looks. It was small wonder that he fitted my dreams of him.

  I had been quite young when I had heard that there was a possibility of his becoming my husband, and in the years that followed, in my thoughts, he became a romantic ideal. I wanted to hear all about him: his exile, his valiant attempts to regain the crown snatched from his murdered father. I loved him in the beginning, and for a time I believed he loved me too. He did in a way, but I had to learn that he was capable of loving many women at the same time. In fact, there were two deep abiding passions in his life: women, and, as I had heard him say, “never to go wandering again.”

  I was feeling emotional after my visit to the Villa Viçosa. Donna Inez Antonia de Tavora, one of my favorite ladies-in-waiting, was with me. She said I was tired and she would prepare me for my bed.

  My thoughts were far away in the past and I did not speak for a moment.

  “I am tired, yes,” I said, “but not in the mood for sleep. I wish to amuse myself by writing. Bring my materials to me, Inez, please.”

  If she were surprised she gave no sign.

  She did as I commanded and I began.

  THE LONG BETROTHAL

  I remember the day clearly, for it was the beginning. It was then that I realized that the dream which had haunted me so long could come true.

  We were working on an altar cloth—my ladies and I—and it was a task which had occupied us for weeks; the work was detailed and delicate and while we stitched one of us would play some musical instrument and we would sometimes sing together; at other times, one of the party would read aloud from some holy book. A great deal of our time was spent thus.

  Presiding over us were those two ladies who were never far from me, for they had been specially selected by my mother to guard me. One was Donna Maria de Portugal, the Countess of Penalva; the other Donna Elvira de Vilpena, the Countess of Pontevel. They were much aware of their dignity and determined to do their duty by watching over me.

  I was often exasperated by this, but I was generally of a docile disposition. I had led a very sheltered life and had scarcely been outside the palace walls or those of the convent where I had been educated; and I was inclined to accept my fate with a certain placidity.

  Donna Maria was the senior of the two. She was the sister of Don Francisco de Mello, of whom my mother thought very highly. He was not only my godfather but he held a very important post, Ambassador to England.

  England had always been held in great respect by my mother, even when the English murdered their King and set up a Commonwealth. Strong-minded, practical woman though she was, she had a strange premonition about that country, which was alien to her nature, for she was in all other matters firmly realistic; but where England was concerned she allowed her wishes to get the better of her usually logical reasoning.

  As we sat there on that sunny afternoon, she came into the room. I knew at once that something important had happened. She rarely visited us unexpectedly. If she wished to speak to us she would send for us, and anything concerning us was generally of small consequence compared with matters of state with which she was usually concerned.

  She was Regent of Portugal because my brother Alfonso was not suitable to be King. She had been in that position since my father’s death four years before, and though Alfonso was no longer a boy—he must have been seventeen at this time—she still considered him unfit to take on the burden of state; and she continued to rule.

  None in royal circles questioned my mother—not even my father had done that; she had always been actively involved in state matters, so we knew something of great moment must have brought her to us on this afternoon.

  We all rose and curtsied as she entered, and my mother turned to the ladies, which was a sign that meant they were to leave us.


  “Donna Maria, Donna Elvira, you may remain,” she said.

  A smile of satisfaction spread over Donna Maria’s face. She was delighted when her special place in the household was acknowledged. She immediately placed her chair for my mother and took another herself.

  My mother acknowledged the service with a nod and, sitting, said: “I have news. The best of news. Dispatches have arrived from England.”

  Donna Maria nodded her head to remind us all that they would have come from her shrewd and clever brother Don Francisco.

  My mother’s eyes were on me. “The King of England has been recalled to his country. I have had several accounts of the scenes there in the English capital. It would seem that they are a good augury for the future.”

  Donna Maria said: “I believe, Your Highness, the people there must have been heartily tired of the Puritan rule.”

  “It would appear so,” said my mother, smiling. I, who knew her so well, could see that she was so delighted by the turn of events that she had dispensed with some of her dignity and was not averse to a little light conversation.

  “My envoys tell me that the bells are ringing all over the capital and the people are in the streets dancing and making merry, as they did in the old days before Oliver Cromwell came to put a stop to their gaiety.”

  My mother paused. I could imagine she was thinking that that much merriment was not entirely to be praised, and that the people would be better engaged in attending church to give thanks to God for the return of the King.

  “How glad they must be to have him back!” I said.

  “Not more than he is to be there, I’ll swear,” said Donna Elvira.

  “It is certain that the King is pleased to come back to his country,” said my mother. “He is now a king not merely in name. England will return to its greatness.”