Henrietta Maria Part 10

[Footnote 150: "Les religieux et particulierement les Jesuites sont estimes en Angleterre broullons, aux affaires destat et les Prestres seculiers n'ont iammais estes soubsones de ceste faulte."--Archives of See of Westminster.]

[Footnote 151: The Proclamation against the Bishop dates from 1628, but it seems only to have been intended to frighten him; he did not leave England until 1631.]

[Footnote 152: P.R.O. Roman Transcripts.]

[Footnote 153: Archives of See of Westminster. Bishop Smith had compromised his position at Rome by expressing himself willing to resign his See and afterwards refusing to do so.]

[Footnote 154: The details of Douglas' mission are to be found in papers among the Roman Transcripts P.R.O.]

[Footnote 155: Archives of See of Westminster. This unfavourable description occurs in a curious paper, drawn up in 1625, headed: "Que les ecclesiastiques qui seront aupres de la Royne d'Angleterre doivent etre natives d'Angleterre mesme." A later section of the same paper is headed: "Que les ecclesiastiques qui seront aupres de la Royne d'Angleterre doivent pl.u.s.tost estre Prestres seculiers que Religieux." See note 1 on p. 113, which contains an extract from the same paper.]

[Footnote 156: _Vita Mariae Stuartae Scotiae Reginae Dotariae Galliae, Angliae et Hibernis Heredis, scriptore Georgia Conaeo._ MDCXXIV.]

[Footnote 157: P.R.O. Roman Transcripts. Henrietta Maria to Urban VIII, 163-8/9.]

[Footnote 158: P.R.O. Roman Transcripts.]

[Footnote 159: Archives of See of Westminster.]

[Footnote 160: See chapter III.]

[Footnote 161: She never made any great effort to bring up her children as Catholics. She took Prince Charles to Ma.s.s sometimes, but desisted at her husband's request. In the marriage contract all that was said about the religion of the children of the marriage was, that they were to have free exercise of the Catholic religion, but it was provided that they were to be brought up by their mother until they reached the age of thirteen years.]

[Footnote 162: Bib. Nat., Paris, MS. Cinq Cents de Colbert, 356. Greffier to Du Perron, December 9th, 1632.]

[Footnote 163: P.R.O. Roman Transcripts.]

[Footnote 164: There were two oaths which troubled the Catholics, that of supremacy and that of allegiance; the first declared the King "supremo Capo della Chiesa Anglicana," the second was aimed at the deposing power of the Pope, and was drawn up in 1606. A good many Catholics, particularly the Benedictines, believed that the second, or oath of allegiance, could lawfully be taken by Catholics (who suffered commercially from their refusal) notwithstanding its condemnation by Paul V. Panzani's Relazione, Add. MS., 15,389.]

[Footnote 165: Archives of See of Westminster.]

[Footnote 166: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 167: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 168: _Deus, Natura, Gratia_ (1635). The real name of the author was Christopher Davenport; he died in 1680.]

[Footnote 169: Archives of See of Westminster.]

[Footnote 170: "Il Laboru sacerdote secolare m'ha detto che pochi giorni sono il Cantuarieuse diose alia d.u.c.h.essa di Buchingam che presto questo Regno sara reconciliata alia Chiesa Romana. Io non volevo credere questo ma detto Laboru me l'ha giurato. Io manco lo credo e se l'ha detto havra burlato."--Panzani to Barberini, April 9th, 1636. Add. MS., 15,389.]

[Footnote 171: Archives of See of Westminster. Letter of Peter Fitton, agent of English secular clergy in Rome, July, 1636.]

[Footnote 172: Add. MS., 15,389.]

[Footnote 173: P.R.O. Roman Transcripts. Henrietta Maria to Cardinal Barberini, October, 1637.]

[Footnote 174: "Da questo e da altri motivi puotiamo vedere che la quiete che G.o.diamo per la gratia di Dio non e per ragione del Stato come alcuni politici a Roma discorrono, perche tal quiete non e giudicata a proposito da questi ministri di Stato ma piu presto il contrario accio che tanto piu apparisca il zelo constante della Regina alla quale sola in terra si deve tutto."--June, 1639. Add. MS., 15,392, f. 64.]

[Footnote 175: P.R.O. Roman Transcripts. In 1629 she had accepted the dedication of the English translation of Richeome's _Pilgrime of Loretto_.]

[Footnote 176: Add. MS., 15,389.]

[Footnote 177: MS. Francais, 23,597.]

[Footnote 178: Rous: _Diary_, Camden Soc. (1856), p. 12.]

[Footnote 179: Cf. Prynne: _Popish Royal Favourite_ (1643). "By all these our whole 3 Kingdomes ... must of necessity now see and acknowledge that there is and hath bin all his Majesties Reigne till this instant a most strong cunning desperate confederacie prosecuted (wherein the Queens Majestie hath been chiefe) to set up Popery in perfection and extirpate the Protestant party and religion in all his Majesties dominions" (p. 35).]

[Footnote 180: 150,000 is the number given by a Catholic reporter in 1635 (Westminster Archives), and Panzani gives the same number. Add. MS., 15,389.]

[Footnote 181: The population of England and Wales was probably about 5,000,000.]

[Footnote 182: Archives of See of Westminster.]

[Footnote 183: Du Perron: _Proces Verbal de l'a.s.semblee du clerge_, 1645.]

[Footnote 184: It can hardly be doubted that when the marriage dispensation was given it was hoped that Charles' successor would be a Catholic. The English Catholics resident abroad shared to some extent the continental opinion of the King and Queen of England.]

CHAPTER V

THE QUEEN'S CONVERTS

Now for my converts who, you say, unfed, Have follow'd me for miracles of bread, Judge not by hearsay, but observe at least, If since their change their loaves have been increas'd.

J. DRYDEN

Considering the activity of the Catholics at the Court of Charles I and his Queen, it is not surprising that from time to time some one, man or woman, abjured the national faith to enter what it was so confidently a.s.serted was the one true fold. When this occurred Protestant feeling was apt to run high, and the King, to whose indulgence the trouble was certainly in some measure due, usually expressed himself greatly shocked and indignant, and for a time, at least, withdrew his favour from the offender.

Perhaps the most remarkable of these cases was that of the Queen's friend, Walter Montagu. This gentleman, who had improved his natural talents by travels which led him to Madrid, to Paris and to Rome, was also much noticed by the King, to whom he was recommended by the fact that he had been a friend of Buckingham, and had actually been with the Duke when he was a.s.sa.s.sinated at Portsmouth. He was employed a good deal on secret service, and once he was able to render an important service, destined to influence both their lives, to Queen Anne of Austria. He had been sent by his own sovereign to stir up Savoy and Lorraine against France, and not even his position as envoy of England could save him or his dispatches from the emissaries of Richelieu or from the Bastille. Anne was implicated in these intrigues against her husband's country, and in an agony of terror, haunted by visions of the ignominious return to Spain with which she had several times been threatened, she sent to Montagu to learn the extent of her danger. The young Englishman, who had long worshipped the beautiful Queen,[185] gladly seized the opportunity of proving his devotion. Let the Queen have no fear, came back his chivalrous answer; she was not mentioned in the dispatches, and rather than that she should come to harm he would lay down his life. This sacrifice was not required, but Anne escaped detection and Montagu earned her lifelong grat.i.tude. On his return to England after his enlargement, he made rapid progress in the favour of Henrietta Maria in spite of the connection with Buckingham, which can hardly have been a recommendation to her. So great was the kindness with which she regarded him, that no courtier seemed to have before him a more prosperous career, when towards the end of 1635 the Court was startled by the news that he had joined the Church of Rome. "Sure the Devil rides him,"[186] was the pithy comment of one of his acquaintance, John Ashburnham.

Walter, who at this time was living in Paris, defended his action in a highly argumentative letter which he addressed to his father, but which he took care to have distributed among his friends in many copies. The Earl of Manchester, who was said to be the best-tempered man in England, does not seem to have been able to support this vexation with equanimity, and he sent a somewhat acrid reply to his son, whose apologetics were also refuted by Lucius, Lord Falkland. Montagu had often enjoyed the intellectual hospitality of Great Tew, where men of wit and learning were accustomed to gather round this accomplished young n.o.bleman, who was the more fitted for his task of controversy, inasmuch as his mother, his brothers and his sisters were among the "revolters to Rome," while his own fidelity to the Church of England had been for a while gravely in question.

But before Montagu received the remonstrances and arguments of his friends (which, as usually happens in such cases, proved quite unavailing), he had met with an adventure which connects his change of faith with one of the most curious episodes in the religious history of the period.

At this time all France was talking of the terrible fate of the Ursuline nuns at Loudun, who were manifestly possessed by the devil, and of the wonderful exorcisms whereby certain holy men were able to overcome his wiles and machinations. It was quite a fashionable amus.e.m.e.nt to ride out to Loudun, visit the "possessed," and witness the ceremonies of exorcism; and one day at the end of November, 1635, Montagu, accompanied by Thomas Killigrew, a literary friend whom he had met in Paris, set off and arrived in due course at the convent of which Satan had made his stronghold. There the two Englishmen, who were provided with a letter of introduction from the Archbishop of Tours, saw some of the marvels which are recorded in the _Histoire des Diables de Loudun_. The poor possessed nuns crawled about before them gnawing and bellowing like wild beasts and uttering fearful blasphemies, until the devil was forced to relinquish his prey by the application of various relics and the recitation of appropriate prayers.

Strangers were always welcome at these spectacles, though sometimes they came away calling the poor nuns "impostorious," an epithet applied to them by honest John Evelyn, who knew them but by repute; but Montagu, as an Englishman of n.o.ble birth high in the favour of the Queen of France, was treated with special distinction, Father Surin, the exorcist, who had been told by the Archbishop of Tours "so to manage matters that the English lord might receive edification,"[187] even permitting him to hold the hand of one of the most distinguished of the patients, Mother des Anges, from whom eventually four demons were chased. On this occasion she was possessed by an evil spirit named Balaam, who had boasted that on his exit he would print his name upon his victim's hand. But the good Father, "judging it more proper that a religious person should bear on her hand the name of a saint than that of a devil,"[188] forced him to another course of action.

As Montagu gazed upon the poor struggling woman, who required several persons to hold her in her paroxysm, he beheld, as he had been led to expect, the name of Joseph write itself on the back of her hand in small red dots. This strange occurrence, which seemed to him explicable on no natural ground, impressed his mind as much as it was intended that it should,[189] and he convert returned to Paris with an increased appreciation of the advantages of belonging to a Church which held in her hand the power of such marvels. He hastened to communicate his impressions to Richelieu, who took an interest in the nuns, and who was wont to extend a condescending patronage to the Englishman, whom in his heart he despised and distrusted. "I have seen at Loudun," wrote the new convert after relating his experiences, "proofs so miraculous of the power of the Church that above my belief I owe to G.o.d perpetual grat.i.tude"; nor, he added, was he alone in his admiration. Several Englishmen "who were possessed by a spirit of falsehood and contradiction"[190] had come away confessing with him that the matter was miraculous. His friend Killigrew was not, it seems, one of these convicted gainsayers. The poet left Loudun quite unconvinced and rather sceptical about the whole affair, though he confessed that he could not account for the print on the nun's hand.[191]

Montagu's prospects of a great career in the service of the King were over.

He loudly a.s.serted his loyalty, but probably he hardly needed his father's stern reminder that though "the King's benignitie and goodnesse is always to interpret the best," yet "his Majestie hath a better opinion of those that are bred such [i.e. Catholics] than of those who become such by relapse."[192]

In effect, the King from that moment turned his back upon his servant, whom, it seems, he had never personally much liked. Not even the memory of Buckingham could cover such a failure of loyalty and patriotism.

But Walter was not to suffer by a change of faith, which some people, and among them Cardinal Richelieu (whom the convert's account of his experiences left untouched), were not slow to attribute to self-interest rather than to religious feeling. The Queen had always been fond of him on account of his singular charm of manner, which often fascinated even his enemies, and after his conversion she admitted him to a degree of intimacy and confidence which more than made up for the coldness of the King. It was felt, indeed, that for a while he had better remain upon the Continent, and he spent a pleasant time in Paris, where he showed his zeal for his new-found faith by professing himself ready to die for it, and by accompanying the King of France to Ma.s.s with a rosary hung round his neck.