Every Girl's Library Part 16

The flames of civil war spread from England to France; and Paris was, before the close of 1647, involved in the war of the Fronde. It was occasioned by quarrels concerning taxation. Anne the queen-regent and her children retired to St. Germains; but the extreme love the citizens of Paris bore to Queen Henrietta made her stay at the Louvre, where she could obtain earlier intelligence of King Charles, who after enduring imprisonment in various places, was soon to be put on what his enemies called a trial.

Meantime winter in its most terrific form had set in. Famine reigned, as it usually does in civil war. Queen Henrietta had sent all her money to her distressed husband. Her officers had none to buy food, and had dispersed themselves in Paris to save her the cost of feeding them.

Fierce battles were fought hourly in the streets. In the broils Queen Henrietta and her little daughter were forgotten. She was then writing to the French amba.s.sador at London concerning the impending fate of her husband. She felt neither hunger nor the freezing atmosphere in this absorbing occupation. Providence guided M. de Retz, who was all-powerful with the Paris Parliament, to visit the hapless queen. She was sitting by the bed side of her little child. "You find me," said the queen, calmly, "keeping company with my Henrietta. I would not let the poor child rise to-day, for we have no fire." De Retz immediately sent the queen relief from his own resources, which she thankfully accepted, and then exerted his eloquence so successfully in the Parliament, by mentioning the distresses of the daughter of Henry the Great and her child, that a bountiful supply was accorded.

We must leave Henrietta for a while in Paris, to follow her hapless husband to the close of his tragic fate. The king had heard, from time to time, of the preparation of a court to try him. Murder he expected.

He was brought prisoner to London, January 15, 1648-9, and taken to St.

James's Palace, where, for the first time, he was deprived of royal attendance, and left alone with his faithful Herbert, who fortunately was sufficiently literary to be the historian of his master's progress to his untimely tomb.

Violent expulsions had taken place from the intimidated House of Commons, until only sixty-nine members remained, who thought themselves fitted for the task of king-killing. Yet some found themselves mistaken as to the hardness of their hearts, when they saw their king face to face, and heard him speak.

This small junta met privately in the Painted Chamber, January 20.

Cromwell's purple face was seen to turn very pale; he ran to the window, where he saw his captive king advancing between two ranks of soldiers from Cotton House. "Here he is! here he is!" exclaimed he, with great animation; "the hour of the great affair approaches. Decide speedily what answer you will give him, for he will immediately ask by what authority you pretend to judge him." The mere sight of the scanty number of the commons, with the army choking every avenue to Westminster, up to the door of the hall, offered forcible answers to the illegality of this arraignment; but brute force is not obliged to be logical. Bradshawe, a serjeant-at-law of no practice, was the president, wearing a high Puritan hat lined inside with iron. The regicidal junta entered the hall, its great gate was set open, and the populace rushed into all the vacant s.p.a.ces. While the king was on his way to Westminster Hall, his anxious people crowded as near to his person as possible, crying, "G.o.d save your majesty!" The soldiers beat them back with their partisans, and some of the men in Colonel Axtel's regiment raised the cry of "Justice--justice! execution!" But as their commander was bestowing on them vigorous canings, the cry was ambiguous. The king entered, conducted under the guard of Colonel Hacker and thirty-two officers. His eyes were bright and powerful; his features calm and composed, yet bearing the traces of care and sorrow, which had scattered early snows on his hair. He regarded the tribunal with a searching look, never moved his hat, but seated himself with calm majesty.

An argument ensued between the royal prisoner and Bradshawe, on the point of whether the monarchy of England was elective or not; and when the man of law was worsted in the dispute, he hastily adjourned the court. The king was taken from the hall amid the irrepressible cries of "G.o.d bless your majesty! G.o.d save you from your enemies!" Such was the only part that the people of England took in the trial of Charles the First.

The king's conduct caused perplexing discussions among his destroyers; they sat in council during the intervening day of his trial, devising petty schemes for breaking his moral courage, and impairing that innate majesty which is beyond the power of brute force to depose. Some base spirits among them proposed that his hat should be pulled off, and that two men should hold his head between them; and that he should be dressed up in his robes and crown, meaning to divest him ignominiously of them.

As far as mere bodily means went, Charles was utterly helpless, yet the calm power of his demeanour preserved him from the personal obloquy their malice had contrived: they butchered him, but could not succeed in degrading him.

Seven agitated days pa.s.sed away, during which the king had appeared thrice before his self-const.i.tuted judges, when, on the 27th of January, alarmed by the defection of their numbers, the regicides resolved to doom their victim without farther mockery of justice. The king, for the fourth time, was brought before the remnant of the regicidal junta.

Bradshawe was robed in red, a circ.u.mstance from which the king drew an intimation of the conclusion. When the list of the members was read over, few of them answered: but they proceeded with the miserable remnant. As the clerk p.r.o.nounced the name of Fairfax, a voice cried out, "Not such a fool as to come here to-day." When the name of Cromwell was called, the voice exclaimed, "Oliver Cromwell is a rogue and a traitor."

When Bradshawe mentioned "The Commons of England a.s.sembled in Parliament," "It is false," again responded the voice; "not one-half quarter of them." The voice was a female one, and issued from amid some masked ladies. The oaths and execrations of the ruffian commander Axtel were heard above an uproar raised by the populace, commanding his soldiers, "Fire--fire into the box where she sits!" A lady arose and quitted the gallery. She was Lady Fairfax. Her husband was still in power: the ruffian Axtel dared not harm her. This lofty protest against a public falsehood will remain as an instance of moral and personal female courage, till history shall be no more. The earnest letter the queen had written, entreating the Parliament and army to permit her to share her royal husband's prison, may be remembered. It is known that she wrote to Fairfax on the same subject. The conduct of the general's wife was probably the result of Henrietta's tender appeal.

Bradshawe was proceeding to pa.s.s sentence on the king, who demanded the whole of the members of the House of Commons, and the lords who were in England, to be a.s.sembled to hear it, when one of the regicides, Colonel Downes, rose in tears, exclaiming, "Have we hearts of stone? are we men?"--"You will ruin us, and yourself too," whispered Mr. Cawley, one of the members, pulling him down on one side, while his friend Colonel Walton held him down on the other. "If I die for it," said Colonel Downes, "no matter,"--"Colonel!" exclaimed Cromwell, who sat just beneath him, turning suddenly round, "are you mad? Can't you sit still?"--"No," answered Downes, "I cannot, and will not sit still." Then rising, he declared that his conscience would not permit him to refuse the king's request. "I move that we adjourn to deliberate." Bradshawe complied, probably lest Downes's pa.s.sionate remorse should become infectious, and the junta retired. Cromwell angrily exclaimed, in reference to Downes, "He wants to save his old master; but make an end of it, and return to your duty." Colonel Harvey supported Downes's endeavours, but all they obtained was one-half hour added to the king's agony. The dark conclave returned amid a tumult of piteous prayers of the people, of "G.o.d save the king! G.o.d keep you from your enemies!" The sentence was pa.s.sed in the midst of confusion; the king, who in vain endeavoured to remonstrate, was dragged away by the soldiers who surrounded him. As he was forced down the stairs, the grossest personal insults were offered him. Some of the troopers blew tobacco-smoke in his face; some spat on him; all yelled in his ears "Justice--execution!" The real bitterness of death to a man of Charles the First's exquisite sensitiveness occurred in that transit; the block, the axe, the scaffold, and all their ghastly adjuncts, could be met, and were met, with calmness; the spittings and buffetings of the brutal mob were harder to be borne.

The king recovered his serenity before he arrived at the place where his sedan stood. How could it be otherwise? The voices of his affectionate people, in earnest prayers for his deliverance, rose high. One, and a soldier, close to him, echoed the cry of the people--"G.o.d help and save your majesty!" His commander struck him to the earth. "Poor fellow!"

said the king; "it is a heavy blow for a small offence." As the royal victim approached his chair, his bearers pulled off their hats, and stood in reverential att.i.tudes to receive him. This unbought homage again roused the wrath of Axtel, who, with blows of his indefatigable cudgel, vainly endeavoured to prevail on the poor men to cover their heads.

He bade Herbert refuse admittance to his friends if they came. The night of his condemnation he was deprived of rest by the knocking of the workmen, who were commencing the scaffold for his execution. In the restless watches of that perturbed night, Charles finished his best devotional verses.

The king was removed from Whitehall, Sunday, January 28, to St. James's Palace, where he heard Bishop Juxon preach in the private chapel. "I wanted to preach to the poor wretch," said the zealous fanatic, Hugh Peters, in great indignation, "but the poor wretch would not hear me."

When Bishop Juxon entered the presence of his captive sovereign, he gave way to the most violent burst of sorrow. "Compose yourself, my lord,"

said the king, "we have no time to waste on grief; let us, rather, think of the great matter. I must prepare to appear before G.o.d, to whom, in a few hours, I have to render my account. I hope to meet death with calmness. Do not let us speak of the men in whose hands I have fallen.

They thirst for my blood--they shall have it. G.o.d's will be done; I give him thanks. I forgive them all sincerely; but let us say no more about them." It was with the greatest difficulty that the two sentinels appointed by the regicidal junta could be kept on the other side of the door while his majesty was engaged in his devotions.

The next day the royal children arrived from Sion House to see their parent for the last time. He had not been indulged with a sight of them since his captivity to the army, and on the morrow he was to die! The Princess Elizabeth burst into a pa.s.sion of tears at the sight of her father, and her brother, the little Duke of Gloucester, wept as fast for company. The royal father consoled and soothed them, and, when he had solemnly blessed them, drew them to his bosom. The young princess, who was but twelve, has left her reminiscences of this touching interview in ma.n.u.script: "He told me that he was glad I was come, for, though he had not time to say much, yet somewhat he wished to say to me which he could not to another, and he feared 'the cruelty' was too great to permit his writing. 'But, sweetheart,' he added, 'thou wilt forget what I tell thee.' Then, shedding abundance of tears," continues the princess, "I told him that I would write down all he said to me. 'He wished me,' he said, 'not to grieve and torment myself for him, for it was a glorious death he should die, it being for the laws and religion of the land.' He told me what books to read against popery. He said 'that he had forgiven all his enemies, and he hoped G.o.d would forgive them also; and he commanded us, and all the rest of my brothers and sisters, to forgive them also.' Above all, he bade me tell my mother, 'that his thoughts had never strayed from her, and that his love for her would be the same to the last;' withal he commanded me (and my brother) to love her, and be obedient to her. He desired me 'not to grieve for him, for he should die a martyr, and that he doubted not but G.o.d would restore the throne to his son; and that then we should be all happier than we could possibly have been if he had lived.' Then, taking my brother Gloucester on his knee, he said, 'Sweetheart, now will they cut off thy father's head.'

Upon which the child looked very steadfastly upon him. 'Heed, my child, what I say: they will cut off my head, and perhaps make thee a king. But mark what I say: you must not be a king as long as your brothers Charles and James live; therefore, I charge you, do not be made a king by them.'

At which the child, sighing deeply, replied, 'I will be torn in pieces first.' And these words, coming so unexpectedly from so young a child, rejoiced my father exceedingly. And his majesty spoke to him of the welfare of his soul, and to keep his religion, commanding him to fear G.o.d, and he would provide for him. All which the young child earnestly promised." The king fervently kissed and blessed his children, and called to Bishop Juxon to take them away: they sobbed aloud. The king leaned his head against the window, trying to repress his tears, when, catching a view of them as they went through the door, he hastily came from the window, s.n.a.t.c.hed them again to his breast, kissed and blessed them once more; then, tearing himself from their tears and caresses, he fell on his knees, and strove to calm, by prayer, the agony of that parting.

It ought not to be forgotten that the king had previously waited several days before that appointed for his execution, and had had the satisfaction of receiving a letter from his son Charles, by Mr. Seymour, a special messenger, enclosing a _carte blanche_ with his signature, to be filled up at pleasure. In this paper the prince bound himself to any terms, if his royal father's life might be spared. It must have proved a cordial to the king's heart to find, in that dire hour, how far family affection prevailed over ambition. The king carefully burnt the _carte blanche_, lest an evil use might be made of it, and did not attempt to bargain for his life by means of concession from his heir.

On the night preceding the awful day, Charles I. was blessed with calm and refreshing sleep. He awoke before daybreak, undrew his curtain, and said to Herbert, "I will rise; I have a great work to do this day."

Herbert's hands trembled while combing the king's hair. Charles, observing that it was not arranged so well as usual, said, "Nay, though my head be not to stand long on my shoulders, take the same pains with it that you were wont to do. Herbert, this is my second marriage-day; I would be as trim to-day as may be." The cold was intense at that season, and the king desired to have a warm additional shirt. "For," continued he, "the weather is sharp, and probably may make me shake. I would have no imputation of fear, for death is not terrible to me. I bless my G.o.d I am prepared. Let the rogues come whenever they please." He observed that he was glad he had slept at St. James's, for the walk through the park would circulate his blood, and counteract the numbness of the cold.

Bishop Juxon arrived by the dawn of day. He prayed with the king, and read to him the twenty-seventh chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew.

At ten o'clock the summons came to conduct the king to Whitehall, and he went down into the park, through which he was to pa.s.s. Ten companies of infantry formed a double line on each side of his path. The detachment of halberdiers preceded him, with banners flying and drums beating. On the king's right hand was the bishop; on the left, with head uncovered, walked Colonel Tomlinson. The king walked through the park, as was his wont, at a quick, lively pace. He wondered at the slowness of his guard, and called out pleasantly, "Come, my good fellows, step on apace." One of the officers asked him, "If it was true that he had concurred with the Duke of Buckingham in causing his father's death?" "My friend,"

replied Charles, with gentle contempt, "if I had no other sin than that, as G.o.d knows, I should have little need to beg his forgiveness at this hour." The question has been cited as an instance of premeditated cruelty and audacity on the part of the officer. But this was the falsehood that had injured him most among the common people.

As the king drew near Whitehall Palace, he pointed to a tree in the park, and said to either Juxon or Tomlinson, "That tree was planted by my brother Henry." There was a broad flight of stairs from the park, by which access was gained to the ancient palace of Whitehall. The king entered the palace that way; he ascended the stairs with a light step, pa.s.sed through the long gallery, and gained his own bedroom, where he was left with Bishop Juxon, who administered the sacrament to him. Nye and G.o.dwin, two Independent ministers, knocked at the door, and tendered their spiritual a.s.sistance. "Say to them frankly," said the king, "that they have so often prayed against me, that they shall not pray with me in mine agony. But if they will pray _for_ me now, tell them that I shall be thankful." Dinner had been prepared for the king at Whitehall; he refused to eat. "Sir," said Juxon, "you have fasted long to-day; the weather is so cold, that faintness may occur." "You are right," replied the king. He therefore took a piece of bread and a gla.s.s of wine. "Now,"

said the king, cheerfully, "let the rascals come. I have forgiven them, and am quite ready." But "the rascals" were not ready.

A series of contests had taken place regarding the executioner and the warrant. Moreover, the military commanders, Huncks and Phayer, appointed to superintend the b.l.o.o.d.y work, resisted alike the scoffings, the jests, and threats of Cromwell, and had their names scratched out of the warrant; as to Huncks, he refused to write or sign the order to the executioner. This dispute occurred just before the execution took place.

Huncks was one of the officers who guarded the king on his trial, and had been chosen for that purpose as the most furious of his foes; he had, like Tomlinson, become wholly altered from the result of his personal observations. Colonel Axtel and Colonel Hewson had, the preceding night, convened a meeting of thirty-eight stout sergeants of the army, to whom they proposed, that whosoever among them would aid the hangman in disguise, should have 100_l._ and rapid promotion in the army. Each one refused, with disgust. Late in the morning of the execution, Colonel Hewson prevailed on a sergeant in his regiment, one Hulet, to undertake the detestable office; and while this business was in progress, Elisha Axtel, brother of the colonel, went by water to Rosemary Lane, beyond the Tower, and dragged from thence the reluctant hangman, Gregory Brandon, who was, by threats and the promise of 30_l._ in half-crowns, induced to strike the blow. The disguises of the executioners were hideous, and must have been imposed for the purpose of trying the firmness of the royal victim. They were coa.r.s.e woollen garbs b.u.t.toned close to the body, which was the costume of butchers at that era. Hulet added a long grey peruke, and a black mask, with a large grey beard affixed to it. Gregory Brandon wore a black mask, a black peruke, and a large flapped black hat, looped up in front.

It was past one o'clock before the grisly attendants and apparatus of the scaffold were ready. Colonel Hacker led the king through his former banqueting-hall, one of the windows of which had originally been contrived to support stands for public pageantries; it had been taken out, and led to the platform raised in the street. The n.o.ble bearing of the king as he stepped on the scaffold, his beaming eyes and high expression, were noticed by all who saw him. He looked on all sides for his people, but dense ma.s.ses of soldiery only presented themselves far and near. He was out of hearing of any persons but Juxon and Herbert, save those who were interested in his destruction. The soldiers preserved a dead silence; this time they did not insult him. The distant populace wept, and occasionally raised mournful cries in blessings and prayers for him. The king uttered a short speech, to point out that every inst.i.tute of the original const.i.tution of England had been subverted with the sovereign power. While he was speaking, some one touched the axe, which laid enveloped in black c.r.a.pe on the block. The king turned round hastily, and exclaimed, "Have a care of the axe. If the edge is spoiled, it will be the worse for me." The executioner, Gregory Brandon, drew near, and kneeling before him, entreated his forgiveness. "No!" said the king; "I forgive no subject of mine who comes deliberately to shed my blood." The king spoke as became his duty as chief magistrate and the source of the laws, which were violated in his murder.

The king put up his flowing hair under a cap; then, turning to the executioner, asked, "Is any of my hair in the way?"--"I beg your majesty to push it more under your cap," replied the man, bowing. The bishop a.s.sisted his royal master to do so, and observed to him, "There is but one stage more, which, though turbulent and troublesome, is yet a very short one. Consider, it will carry you a great way--even from earth to heaven."--"I go," replied the king, "from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown." He unfastened his cloak, and took off the medallion of the order of the Garter. The latter he gave to Juxon, saying, with emphasis, "Remember!" Beneath the medallion of St. George was a secret spring which removed a plate ornamented with lilies, under which was a beautiful miniature of his Henrietta. The warning word, which has caused many historical surmises, evidently referred to the fact that he only had parted with the portrait of his beloved wife at the last moment of his existence. He then took off his coat, and put on his cloak; and pointing to the block, said to the executioner, "Place it so that it will not shake."--"It is firm, sir," replied the man. "I shall say a short prayer," said the king; "and when I hold out my hand thus, strike." The king stood in profound meditation, said a few words to himself, looked upward on the heavens, then knelt, and laid his head on the block. In about a minute he stretched out his hands, and his head was severed at one blow.

A simultaneous groan of agony arose from the a.s.sembled mult.i.tude at the moment when the fatal blow fell on the neck of Charles I. It was the protest of an outraged people, suffering, equally with their monarch, under military tyranny, and those who heard that cry remembered it with horror to their deaths. When the king's head fell, Hulet, the gray-beard mask, came forward to earn his bribe and subsequent promotion. He held up the bleeding head, and vociferated, "This is the head of a traitor!"

A deep and angry murmur from the people followed the announcement. Two troops of horse, advancing in different directions, dispersed the indignant crowd. Hulet, in his anxiety to gain his stipulated reward, did more than was required, for he dashed down the dissevered head of the king, yet warm with life, and bruised one cheek grievously--an outrage noted with sorrow. The king was buried in St. George's Chapel, Windsor; the burial service was not permitted. The body was, when it was conveyed for interment to Windsor, followed by Bishop Juxon and the six attached gentlemen who had attended on the king in all his wanderings.

The king had expressed a wish to be interred by his father in the royal chapel in Westminster Abbey, but Cromwell forbade it, having, from an absurd species of ambition, reserved that place for himself.

The trial, death, and burial of Charles I. had taken place before Queen Henrietta, besieged as Paris was from without, and her place of abode, the Louvre, beset from within, could receive the least intelligence concerning him. Meantime, her second son James, the young Duke of York, who had escaped from the custody of the republican English, was brought to her through the beleaguering lines of Paris. His arrival raised her spirits very high, too soon to be crushed. Whispers of the dire events in England had transpired through her circle at the Louvre; her English household gazed aghast on the unconscious widow, marveling how the tidings were to be told her. Such awe-struck looks caused her inquiries, but the answers she received almost stopped the springs of her life; when at last the queen comprehended her loss with all its frightful facts, she stood motionless as a statue, without words and without tears. "To all we could say our queen was deaf--frozen in her grief,"

writes Pere Gamache, "at last, awed by her appalling grief, we became silent, with tearful looks bent on her. So pa.s.sed the time till night-fall. When her aunt, the d.u.c.h.ess de Vendome, whom she loved much and we had sent to in fear for the queen's life, came, she gently took the hand of the royal widow, kissed it, remained silent, and wept. Then Henrietta felt the relief of tears. She was able to sigh and weep when her little daughter, then four years old, was brought to her; and though she felt it hard to part with her, yet she longed to retire to some quiet place where she might, as she said, 'weep at will.'" The convent of the Carmelites, St. Jacques, was the place to which she retreated, with one or two of her ladies.

The queen-regent of France sent Madame de Motteville to her afflicted sister of England. The sympathy felt for the afflicted daughter of their great Henry, induced the Frondoneers to let this lady pa.s.s their lines.

"I was," she says, "admitted to her bedside. The queen, Henrietta, gave me her hand while sobs choked her speech. 'I have lost a crown,' she cried, 'but that I have long ceased to regret; it is the husband for whom I grieve; good, just, wise, virtuous as he was, most worthy of my love and that of his subjects; the future time must be for me but one succession of torture.'" Henrietta then sent important messages of advice to her sister-queen on her affairs, implored her to seek and hear the truth before it was too late, which, if her Charles or herself had ever been told, affairs needed not have taken the fatal turn that she should ever mourn. Queen Henrietta then asked that her newly-arrived son, the Duke of York, might be given the same allowance as his brother, now called by all her exiled court Charles II.

Before the violence of grief was abated, it became needful that Queen Henrietta should leave Paris for St. Germains, where the court of France then was. The transit was dangerous, but it is from the superabundant spite of the English republican news-letters the fact is revealed that the young King of England, in his deep mourning for his father, rode by the side of his mother's carriage, guarding her from the infuriated rabble. The queen-regent of France and her sons were waiting at Chatou to comfort them by every kindness after this terrible journey.

Henrietta's next trouble was parting from her son Charles II. for his adventurous attempts in Scotland and England. After the failure of the royal cause at the hard-fought battle of Worcester, the young king retired into exile at Cologne. Queen Henrietta had to weep alone over the sad death of her beautiful daughter Elizabeth, who died broken-hearted in her cruel imprisonment, at Carisbrook Castle. The indignation of all Europe obliged the English republicans to send the young Duke of Gloucester to Paris. The last interview of Charles I. with these children had made every feeling heart sympathize with them. It must be owned that the worst action Queen Henrietta ever committed was the persecution she raised against her son Henry, Duke of Gloucester, to make him change his religion. Not out of fanatic bigotry, which though troublesome may possibly be sincere, but from the sordid motive of providing for him as a Roman Catholic ecclesiastic. The boy, at the tender age of eight years, had earnestly promised his sire, as he sat on his knee, never to forsake the faith of the Church of England, or to supersede his elder brothers, and now he kept his word as st.u.r.dily as if he had been thirty.[3] Charles II. stopped his mother's tampering with the faith of his younger brother, ordering, as their sovereign, that Gloucester should be sent to his loving sister Mary, Princess of Orange, then at Breda.

[Footnote 3: For the details of this event, see "Lives of the Queens of England," vol. v.]

In another attempt to mend adverse fortune Henrietta was signally disappointed; she tried in vain to induce her rich and beautiful niece, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, the second lady in France, to accept the hand of her eldest son, the expatriated Charles II. To her subsequent regret, the princess scorned the young king for his poverty.

Time and death at last did their work, and the royal family was restored, not by foreign force, but by acclamation. England, having for twenty years experienced anarchy, was glad to welcome her king home again, all people know, with his two brothers York and Gloucester, at Dover, on his birthday, May 29, 1660.

The queen-mother, as Henrietta was now called, did not witness the delirious joy of the Restoration. She was busy with the marriage-treaty of her beautiful darling, the Princess Henrietta, with her youngest nephew, Philippe, Duke d'Orleans, brother of Louis XIV. About five months after she came with the princess to obtain her dowry from the now loving Parliament of England, likewise her own arrears, which had been scornfully refused by the republic, with the remark "that she had not been crowned, therefore they ignored her as queen." Surely she deserved no great pity on that point, considering her perverse conduct to her husband concerning it.

Of her three sons who had returned to England, Henrietta was destined to meet but two. The small-pox, so fatal in that country, deprived her of young Gloucester, whom she had never met since endeavouring to force him into the Roman Catholic faith. The marriage that the Duke of York had avowed with Anne Hyde, Clarendon's daughter, not only enraged but grieved her more than the early death of poor Gloucester. She wrote to her daughter, the Princess of Orange, then visiting Charles II. in England, that she came to break the disgraceful marriage of James; but before Christmas was turned Henrietta had mourned over the death-bed of her beloved eldest daughter, who had been the greatest benefactress to her and her exiled family when in Holland. Moreover Queen Henrietta found that neither her own dower or her young princess's marriage-portion would be very quick in coming to hand, without the a.s.sistance of Clarendon; so she did exactly contrary to her avowed intentions, and acknowledged Anne Hyde as her second son's wife, which she certainly was, by every law of G.o.d and man. On New Year's Day, 1661, the Duke of York brought his wife in state to Whitehall. As the queen pa.s.sed to dine in public, the d.u.c.h.ess of York knelt to her; the queen raised her, kissed her, and placed her at table. The Earl of Clarendon and the queen came to an understanding on business that same evening.

There was the utmost difficulty regarding the lands she held as queen-dowager; but the parliament gave her 30,000_l._ compensation and a large annuity. But as the English law did not allow queen-dowagers to be absentees, her establishment was settled at Somerset House, which she altered with great taste. As London was infected with the small-pox, the queen was desirous of withdrawing her lovely Henrietta from its dangers before her beauty was injured.

Charles II. attended his mother to Portsmouth, where she embarked with her young princess, who was seized with eruptive illness next day, supposed to be the small-pox. The captain ran the ship aground; and all had to disembark at Portsmouth, where the princess remained till convalescent. At last they arrived safely at Havre, February 26, 1661, and were escorted in great triumph by the French n.o.bility to Paris, where the marriage of the young princess with Philippe, Duke of Orleans, took place, at the chapel of the Palais Royal. The marriage was not happy; the bridegroom was odd-tempered and totally uneducated.

When Somerset House was repaired and beautified, the queen came to take up her residence in England, where she first was introduced to the bride of Charles II., Catharine of Braganza. And in England she lived three years, her health gradually giving way before the climate--always inimical to her. She saw her second son and his d.u.c.h.ess, Anne Hyde, with promising children about them. The Lady Mary, afterward queen-regnant, was born while Henrietta was in England.

Charles II. and his queen accompanied the invalid queen-mother to the Nore, when she returned to France, where she went direct to her favourite chateau of Colombe, on the river Seine, between Paris and St.

Germain-en-Laye. Its park and groups of trees are still visible from the railway. The chateau was destroyed at the revolution of France.

Henrietta lived a sweet, easy life in her pleasant chateau, troubled only by the fluctuations of the asthmatic cough she had never lost since her Yorkshire campaign. Her charity was very extensive; in England she had distributed from her chapel at Somerset House thousands of pounds among the poor suffering from the plague, in the year 1666.

She paid visits to the baths of Bourbon, for increasing illness, during the three next years. Toward the close of 1669, she had been agitated with impending war between France and England, which she strove to avert. M. Valot, the first physician to Louis XIV., held a consultation at Colombe with her own medical man. The new remedy of opium was then the fashionable medicine. It was vain her own physician declared it was most inimical to Queen Henrietta. M. Valot left the prescription, positively a.s.serting that it would allay her tearing cough. On the evening of August 30, she was better than usual, sat up later, and chatted pleasantly with her ladies. That night she was sleeping sweetly, when the lady in waiting awoke her, to administer the sleeping-draught.

Could any thing be more absurd than to wake a patient to administer a sleeping-potion? At dawn, the lady came with another draught, but the first had been fatal; Henrietta was cold and speechless, and never woke again, though she respired for some time. A messenger hurried to St.

Germains, and her son-in-law, the Duke of Orleans, came directly; but Henrietta had ceased to breathe, August 31, 1669. Her little grand-daughter, afterward our queen-regnant, Anne, was staying at Colombe for her health at that time.

Queen Henrietta was embalmed, and buried at St. Denis, in the royal vault of the Kings of France, her ancestors. Her daughter, the d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans, was too ill and utterly cast down with grief to follow her mother to the grave; but her niece, Mademoiselle Montpensier, attended as chief mourner. Forty days after, a much grander service was performed to her memory, by the nuns of the Visitation, at Chaillot, whose convent she had founded. There her daughter and her husband, the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans, attended, in the deepest grief and mourning; and there Bossuet preached that beautiful biographical oration, which has deservedly taken place among the cla.s.sics of France. Our limits in this edition will not permit more than one pa.s.sage, which is ill.u.s.trative of the true character of the queen, though not of that set forth in general English history. "Batten, the captain who cannonaded her at Burlington, was taken prisoner afterward, and condemned to death, without the queen's knowledge; but, seeing him led to execution past her window, full of horror at his impending fate, the queen cried out she had pardoned him long ago, and insisted on his liberation. Batten was not ungrateful, for he helped in the revolt of part of the English fleet to the young king." Pepys, in his diary, often names him as in favour with the Duke of York, when lord admiral, after the Restoration.

Henrietta Maria had been the mother of four sons and four daughters; she outlived all her children but Charles II., who left no legitimate offspring; James, Duke of York, afterward the unfortunate James II., and Henrietta, d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans, who survived her some months.