Henrietta Maria Part 11

Thence he pa.s.sed on to Turin, where he met with a warm reception from Henrietta's sister Christine, whose acquaintance he had made some years earlier when he was in Savoy as secret agent for the King of England. Now he was able to present to the d.u.c.h.ess a warm letter of introduction from her sister, and it appears that he did her some trifling service which led to a pleasant correspondence between the Courts of England and Savoy.

"Pardon me," wrote Henrietta, "that I have not written to you earlier ...

to thank you ... for the favours which you have shown to Wat Montague. I know that you have done it for my sake, though truly he merits them for his own. He does nothing but praise the honours which you have done him, and I believe that he for his part would gladly lose his life for your service.... I am very glad that Wat has been able to do you some service. I am sure that he has done it with all his heart. As for his melancholy humour, that is perhaps some scruple of conscience which he will lose at Rome. Besides, he is not naturally very gay."[193]

He went to Rome, and whether he lost his scruples there or not he enjoyed himself very much, keeping a household of seven servants, dining at the English College with the prestige of a recent convert, and cultivating the further acquaintance of the Barberini who, when he was in the city before, had shown him distinguished attentions, which they now felt had not been thrown away. The Pope, who "was as much a pretender to be oec.u.menical patron of poets as Head of the Church,"[194] liked a convert who was also a wit, while Cardinal Francesco honoured his visitor with so warm a friends.h.i.+p that henceforth the two men carried on a frequent correspondence.[195] Still, despite these distractions, Montagu's eyes all the time were fixed upon England. His return thither was much desired by the papal party, and particularly by Con, who was aware of his influence over the Queen. She, for her part, used all her power with her husband to win his recall; but Charles, who never got over an affront, was not easily to be persuaded, and it was not until 1636 that the offender was allowed to return to take his place among Henrietta's servants and friends.

At the Court of the Queen he found plenty to occupy him. He was, above all things, a ladies' man--_un pet.i.t fou_, only fit to amuse ladies[196]--as Richelieu rudely wrote of him; and it was to be expected that in the religious struggles of the Court women should take a considerable part.

Such a war always appeals to feminine feelings and logic, and in this case the leader of the army was a woman, and one who, though clever and energetic, was essentially feminine both in heart and mind. The agents of the Papacy were far too acute to neglect so obvious a source of influence.

Not only was the Queen flattered in every way, but skilful efforts were made to win the n.o.ble ladies who surrounded her. The Anglicans were not blind to the danger, as appears from the fact that John Cosin, who spent most of his life in fighting the Catholics and in being accused of Popery by the Puritans, published a little book of Hours of Prayer, which the latter called by the pretty name of "Mr. Cozens his cozening devotions," to counteract the influence of the _Horae_, used by Henrietta's Catholic ladies. But the attacking party had certain advantages to which those of the defence could not aspire. The pictures, the relics, the medals, which Panzani and Con took care to distribute, were greatly valued by their recipients, and pleased even such great ladies as the Marchioness of Hamilton and the Countess of Denbigh. The latter of these ladies had long been unsettled in the established religion. It was indeed for her guidance and at her request that Cosin had written his _Book of Hours_. Many years were to elapse before she finally abandoned the Church of England, but no doubt these fascinating trifles played their part in preparing her spirit for the eventual change.

But there were women at the Court who were not to be won by such methods, but who entered into the th.o.r.n.y path of controversy. Such an one was Lady Newport, a relative of the late Duke of Buckingham. She had Catholic relatives, and, thinking perhaps to reclaim them, she attempted argument with no less a person than Con himself. The result was not very surprising.

Lady Newport was no match for the subtle and insinuating envoy, and the upshot of her discussions with him was that one night, as she was returning home from the play in Drury Lane, she turned aside to Somerset House, where one of the Capuchin Fathers quietly reconciled her to the Church of Rome.

Her feet were caught in the snare from which she had hoped to rescue others.

A storm of indignation arose. The irate husband hurried off to Lambeth to enlist the sympathy of Laud, who, nothing loath, laid the matter before the King and the Council. "I did my duty to the King and State openly in Council,"[197] wrote the Archbishop complacently to Wentworth. The names of Sir Toby Matthew and of Walter Montagu were freely mentioned in connection with the conversion, and though well-informed persons believed that Con alone was to blame, these two gentlemen did not escape a considerable measure of unpopularity. Laud, who, though he was anxious not to offend the Queen, was becoming alarmed at the boldness of the Catholics, went down on his knees to the King, praying for the banishment of Montagu, and for leave to proceed against Sir Toby in the High Commission Court. As for Con, he said bitterly, he knew neither how he came to Court nor what he was doing there, and therefore he would say nothing of him.

The King did not grant the Archbishop's modest request, but at the Council table he spoke so bitterly of both the culprits that "the fright made Wat keep his chamber longer than his sickness would have detained him, and Don Tobiah was in such perplexity that I find he will make a very ill man to be a martyr, by now the dog doth again wag his tail."[198]

The storm, indeed, quickly blew over. Lord Newport forgave his wife, who discreetly retired to France for a time. Even the Queen, who had been greatly angered at the treatment of the Catholics, particularly of Montagu, forgave the Archbishop and received him with the modified favour which was all she ever had to bestow upon him. Everything seemed to be as before, only perhaps Laud kept a more watchful eye upon the recusants, and two years later he was able to take a revenge at once upon the Queen and upon her priests by causing "two great Trusses of Popish books,"[199] coming from France for the use of the Capuchins, to be seized by the officers of the Court of High Commission.

But unfortunately the troubles which had been occasioned by the conversion of the Countess of Newport did not deter other susceptible ladies from following in her steps. "The great women fall away every day,"[200] sighed a good Protestant, writing to a friend in May, 1638. That his plaint was not without cause is evident from the following portion of a letter which was written by a foreigner who was then resident in England:--

"The Queen's Majesty has frequented her chapel of Somerset House all Holy Week with great concourse and rejoicing of these Catholics, to the great chagrin of the Puritans. Besides the accustomed ceremonies and devotions of this week, on Holy Sat.u.r.day a score of ladies of the Court, of whom the chief was the d.u.c.h.ess of Buckingham, were seen to receive all the ceremonies of baptism (except the water) at the hands of a Capuchin Father, and afterwards the sacrament of confirmation at those of the Bishop of Angouleme, the Grand Almoner of the Queen. All was done within the chapel in the tribune of Her Majesty ... and in her presence. These ladies desired this kind of second baptism because they received the first at the hands of Protestant ministers, which they hold to be valid in a certain sense, and yet nevertheless mutilated."

The narrator goes on to speak of the anger of the Puritans, who complained bitterly of such proceedings and of the indifference of Charles to their clamour. "They will have to calm themselves," he adds, for "to-day the Queen has greater authority with the King than any one else."[201]

This was in the spring of the year 1638, a few months after the beginning of the Scotch troubles and two years and a half before the meeting of the Long Parliament.

[Footnote 185: "My sute is that if ever you have occasion to speak to the Blessed Queene (Anne) of any ill thing that you express it by naming me, for that's the only way I can hope she should ever heare of me againe."--Walter Montagu to Earl of Carlisle. Egerton MS., 2596.]

[Footnote 186: _Cal. S.P. Dom._, 1635, p. 512.]

[Footnote 187: "Le Pere Surin de la compagnie de Jesus aiant recu une lettre de Mgr. l'archeveque de Tours par laquelle il lui reccommandoit de faire en sorte que le Sieur de Montagu recut edification aux exorcisms."--_Proces-verbal_ of exorcisms printed in _Histoire des Diables de Loudun_, 1693.]

[Footnote 188: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 189: The following is Montagu's own account: "Nous estions ...

presents au sortir du diable qui avoit commandment de tracer le nom de Joseph sur la main pour marque de la sortie. Je tenois la fille par la main quand elle fit le grand cris [sic] et quand le prestre nous nous dit qu'il falloit chercher le signe et ie vis escrire peu a peu les lettres de Joseph sur le dos de la main en pet.i.tes pointes de sang ou elles demeurent gravees."--Montagu to Richelieu, November 30th, 1635. Aff. Etran. Ang., t.

45.

The case of the nuns of Loudun has never been satisfactorily explained; the "possessions" and exorcisms were witnessed by a large number of persons, none of whom were able to convict the nuns of fraud. Urbain Grandier, the priest who was believed to have bewitched them, was burned in 1634. The following account of Mother des Anges is taken from a biography, written towards the end of the seventeenth century, of Mother Louise Eugenie de la Fontaine of the Order of the Visitation: "Mere des Anges etoit une ame dont les conduites extraordinaires de Dieu sur elle donnoient beaucoup d'admiration. Chacun scait que dans les fameuses possessions de Loudun ces saintes filles eprouverent cet effroyable fleau. La mere des Anges (que le feu Pere Surin conduisit et admiroit) en etoit une; il cha.s.sa de son corps quatre demons dont le premier ecrivit en sortant en gros ses lettres sur la main droite Jesus, le second en moindre caractere Marie, et le troisieme Joseph en plus pet.i.t, et le quatrieme encore moindre Francois de Sales; ces noms etoient gravez sous le peau, ils paroissoient comme de coleur de rose seches mais ils prenoient un vermeil miraculeux au moment de la sainte communion."]

[Footnote 190: Montagu to Richelieu, November 30th, 1635. Aff. Etran. Ang., t. 45.]

[Footnote 191: See Killigrew's own account of the _affaire_ printed in _European Magazine_, 1803, Vol. 43, p. 102.]

[Footnote 192: "The coppy of a letter sent from France by Mr. Walter Montagu to his father the Lord Privie Seale with his answere thereunto.

Also a second answer to the same letter by the Lord Falkland" (1641), p.

20.]

[Footnote 193: Ferrero: _Lettres de Henriette Marie de France reine d'Angleterre a sa soeur Christine d.u.c.h.esse de Savoie_ (1881), p. 45.]

[Footnote 194: _Lignea Ligenda_ (1653), p. 169.]

[Footnote 195: Copies of Montagu's letters to Barberini, extending over many years, are among the Roman Transcripts in the P.R.O.]

[Footnote 196: P.R.O. Roman Transcripts.]

[Footnote 197: Laud wrote to Wentworth November 1st, 1637. Laud's Works, Vol. VII, p. 379. See the account of the matter from Laud's point of view in Heylin: _Cyprians Anglians_, Bk. IV, p. 359 (1668).]

[Footnote 198: Conway to Strafford. _The Earl of Stafford's Letters and Dispatches_, II, 125.]

[Footnote 199: Turner MS., LXVII.]

[Footnote 200: _The Earl of Stafford's Letters and Dispatches_, II, 165.]

[Footnote 201: Salvetti. Add. MS., 27,962, H., f. 125.]

CHAPTER VI

THE EVE OF THE WAR

I

Some happy wind over the ocean blow This tempest yet, which frights our island so.

EDMUND WALLER

On July 23rd, 1637, the new liturgy, which the care of Archbishop Laud had provided for the Scottish Church, was to be read for the first time in the Church of St. Giles in Edinburgh. The clergyman entered the reading-desk and the service began. But before he had read many words a tumult, in which a crowd of women of the lower cla.s.s took a prominent part, arose. National feeling and religious feeling were alike outraged by the introduction of the new Ma.s.s-book from England,[202] and the a.s.sembly, which had been called together for public wors.h.i.+p, broke up in wild confusion. That local riot, which seemed but an ebullition of temporary fanaticism and discontent, was in reality the symptom of a grave disease in the body politic. It meant for Scotland the beginning of a civil war, which soon was to cross the border and to break up in the sister kingdom the long internal peace which had made her the envied of Europe. It meant for Henrietta Maria and her husband the end of their happy, careless years, and the entering upon a series of misfortunes, the number and bitterness of which are almost unparalleled even in the annals of the House of Stuart.

After the riot events moved quickly, for behind the rioters was the virile force of the Scottish nation. Charles was unwilling to give way, and by November his northern subjects were almost in open revolt.

It was an unfortunate moment. The English Puritans, who were irritated by their own grievances, showed an indecorous satisfaction in the Scottish events, as shrewd observers, such as Salvetti, the Florentine envoy in London, were not slow to observe. The King had no money to meet expenses, and no means of getting any, except the objectionable one of calling a Parliament. Abroad the outlook was no better, and Charles and Henrietta ought to have known, if they did not, that they had no friend upon whom they could rely in such a strait.

They were to find that it was not for nothing that they had scouted the threats and warnings of Richelieu. That old man, sitting in his study in the Palais Cardinal in Paris, held in his frail hands the threads of all the diplomacy of Europe. He had long looked with no favourable eye upon England, for the alliance which he had himself brought about had proved one of his greatest disappointments. The union of the crowns of England and Scotland had deprived France of a warm and constant ally,[203] and it was to counterbalance this loss that Henry IV had planned, and Richelieu had carried out, Henrietta's marriage. The Cardinal had not reckoned upon the indeed somewhat unlikely contingency that a royal marriage should also become a marriage of affection and community of interest. The first step in his defeat was the dismission of the French in 1626, and this insult, which circ.u.mstances did not permit him to avenge at once, was never forgiven to its author the King of England, whom he also hated, because, in the words of Madame de Motteville, he believed him to have a Spanish heart, and because Queen Anne was allowed to carry on her Spanish correspondence by way of England. Of Henrietta he had hardly a better opinion. She had fulfilled none of the purposes for which he had sent her into England, and though originally she had unwillingly submitted to her husband's will in the matter of her servants, in later days she had made no great effort to recall them. She had done little to cement an alliance between the two kingdoms, and the English Catholics, whom she had been specially commissioned to win over, remained, for the most part, obstinately attached to the interests of Spain. Their relations had been, moreover, severely strained by the Chateauneuf episode, and they were further embittered by the disgrace and exile of Mary de' Medici, which her daughter rightly attributed to Richelieu, whose conduct in the matter she considered an act of the blackest ingrat.i.tude towards the woman who had made his fortune.

Nevertheless, about this time Richelieu made a final attempt to win the personal favour of the Queen of England. He dispatched the Count of Estrades on a special mission to England, of which no inconsiderable part was to discover the sentiments of the Queen, and he told Bellievre, the French amba.s.sador in London, that he believed her to be friendly towards France, and requested him to treat her with kindness and sympathy. Neither of the envoys met with much success. Estrades found Henrietta so forbidding that he did not dare to deliver the letter which Richelieu had confided to him, and which he had charged him to give or retain, according to the disposition of the royal lady to whom it was addressed.[204] Bellievre was rather better received, but though the Queen showed herself willing to talk with him and expressed general goodwill towards the Cardinal, the diplomatist soon discovered that all she desired was help in a private matter which he waived aside, but in which Richelieu determined to gratify her, as he saw in it a means of ingratiating himself with her at small cost.

The Chevalier de Jars, since his dramatic reprieve on the scaffold, had languished in the Bastille. He had good friends both in England and in France, but none more persevering and faithful than the Queen of England, who never forgot a friend in trouble. Over and over again she pleaded with Richelieu on his behalf, but for a long while he turned a deaf ear to her appeals, answering her letters on the subject almost rudely. But in the beginning of 1638 his att.i.tude changed, and he intimated that a little more persuasion on the part of Henrietta would result in the fulfilment of her desire.

The matter was conducted with a studied picturesqueness of detail which was carefully arranged by Richelieu to gratify the vanity of the woman he wished to please. It was taken out of the hands of the English amba.s.sador, the Earl of Leicester, and arranged by Walter Montagu, who was at the Queen's side in London, and by his personal friend Sir Kenelm Digby, who was staying in Paris, in a private capacity, enjoying the society of his many learned and scientific friends who resided there. Montagu and Digby exchanged many letters, and the latter had several interviews with Richelieu. During one of these he presented to the Cardinal a letter which the Queen had requested him to deliver. The old man read it with great satisfaction, though he had to request Sir Kenelm to help him in deciphering several words, for Henrietta's writing was always very illegible. When he had finished he laid it down, and looking hard at his visitor, said in a meaning tone, "I am much pleased with the Queen's letter, and you may a.s.sure her that she shall soon have cause to be pleased with me."[205]

A few days later, about eight o'clock in the morning, a coach stopped at the door of Sir Kenelm's lodgings, from which descended Chavigny, the Secretary of State, and the Chevalier de Jars. Chavigny, after he had greeted the astonished knight, waved his hand towards his charge and said, in the courtly accents of a French diplomatist, "Monsieur, I have the orders of the King and of M. le Cardinal to place this gentleman in your hands. He is no longer the prisoner of the King of France, but of the Queen of England."[206]

"It is to be hoped," Montagu had written a few weeks earlier to a member of the French Government, "that the end of this affair will be the beginning of that end to which we have always looked, namely, a good understanding between the Queen and M. le Cardinal."[207] This hope was not fulfilled.