HENRIETTA MARIA OF FRANCE.

QUEEN OF CHARLES THE FIRST.

BY MRS. OCTAVIUS FREIRE OWEN.

THE observation of Rousseau, that "les faits changent de forme dans la tête de l'historien, ils se moulent sur ses intérêts, ils prennent la teinte de ses préjugés," is especially true as applied to those historical characters which have had (as it were) dissension born with them-have been through life the objects of extreme partiality, or the reverse, to large conflicting parties; hence their excellence must be decided rather upon the admission of hostile, than the pre-possession of friendly testimony; nor can justice reprehend their failings until it is clear that they derive no extenuation from the errors of early habit, the excitement of fortune, or the pressure of extraordinary trial. The powerful light of striking events falling upon the human portrait, displays at once with vividness the traits of virtue and the harsh lines of vice; should the features of the original be strongly marked, the detection in the copy is more harsh than in vitality itself: it is for the candid judgment, therefore, to exercise caution that the finer tints of colouring be not, from these circumstances, overpowered.

The fair and ill-fated consort of one of England's most unfortunate sovereigns is entitled, for the above reasons, to the utmost lenity. Not sixteen when called upon (in the onerous position of queen) to sway the agitation of parties already influenced by violent prejudice against each other, she found religion employed as a subterfuge for republicanism, and herself, from the nature of her creed, re

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garded, upon her arrival in England, with a suspicious dislike, which incensed the bigotry she had perhaps otherwise never evinced. Her education, also, had been calculated to pervert the accuracy of her judgment. A beautiful and spoiled child, nursed amidst court intrigue, descended from a king whose dazzling qualities threw a false lustre over his many and inexcusable faults, she was early taught to view truth through a distorted medium; so that, in the retrospect, it is conceivable. that even the horror of her father's assassination, after escape from "fifty conspiracies," partook less of tragic reality than of exciting romance. At his death, under the influence of her haughty mother, she necessarily imbibed much of the latter's bigotry and pride; an effect maintained for some period after her marriage by continued correspondence with the French court, and the pernicious and interested counsels of priests and dependants.

Henrietta Maria was born at the Louvre, November 25, 1609, being the youngest child of Henri the Fourth of France and Marie de Medicis, his second wife. Her birth was heralded by the king's concession to his consort's reiterated desire that her coronation should be celebrated without further delay; Henri's previous reluctance to that ceremony having been excited by the jealousy of the Marchioness de Verneuil (who possessed at the time a written promise of marriage from the king), by various appeals to his superstitious fears, and by an innate foreboding of imminent peril to himself.

At length, after every representation, though urged for "three entire days" by Sully, in behalf of his beloved master's misgivings, had failed to induce the queen to forego her wishes, it was agreed that the enthronement should take place on the 13th of the following May.

In the dark consummation of the fatal tragedy we cannot wonder that the previous and subsequent conduct of Marie should have caused her to be regarded as implicated; for,

beside ill terms subsisting between the royal pair, the queen is said to have been "ni assez surprise, ni assez affligée" at the intelligence. The Duc d'Epernon, previously almost paralyzed by infirmity, at once manifested a revival of energy which enabled him to secure the regency to the politic widow of the murdered monarch; in fact, it is too evident that every preparation had been made to remove those obstacles which an uncrowned queen during the lifetime of her divorced predecessor (Margaret de Valois) might otherwise have experienced.

The years of infancy even of illustrious personages, as being anterior to their future greatness, present little of interest in detail. Cardinal Maffeo Barbarini (afterwards Pope Urban the Eighth) named the princess after both her parents, and the two earliest occasions of her appearance in public were the contrasting and rapidly successive spectacles of her mother's coronation and her father's funeral. For some time the monotony of her life was unbroken, except by the festivities attendant upon the accession of her young brother, Louis the Thirteenth; the companionship of Gaston, afterwards Duke of Orleans, and the nuptials of her two sisters (Elizabeth to Philip the Fourth of Spain, and Christine to Amadée Victorio the Tenth, Duke of Savoy). Her attachment ́to her mother, which was ardently returned, amounted to a species of idolatry, and she early evinced sympathetic inclinations to music and painting; while a religious education, enthusiastically conducted by a Carmelite religieuse, rendered her faith in the tenets of her church strict and decided. At this time the little princess gave promising tokens of that extreme fascination of manner and sweetness of disposition which, added to rare beauty, and a voice of the most thrilling melody, constantly elicited the admiration of her countrymen, before whom it was the policy of those in power to present her, in order to diminish their own unpopularity.

Alternate fêtes and civil feuds, involving much personal vicissitude-by flight and participation of the queen-mother's imprisonment-formed, however, a most unfit discipline for her character; in fact, the records of the time are replete with the quarrels and reconciliations of Marie and the king her son, and the elevation and depression of the favourites of each.

The first occasion on which Prince Charles beheld his future consort was during the romantic expedition of the former (1623) to Madrid to obtain the hand of the Infanta; the prince, after the example of his father and grandfather, and at the instigation of Buckingham, being desirous that an interview with his future bride should cement, by personal affection, that bond of political union which King James was eager to institute, both from the emergency of his own pecuniary distresses, and an opinion peculiar to himself, that "any alliance below that with France or Spain was unworthy a Prince of Wales."1 This Quixotic expedition, besides Charles and the king's "humble slave and doge, Steenie "2 (as Buckingham styled himself), consisted of Sir Francis Cottington, Sir Richard Greham, and Master Endymion Porter, and upon reaching Paris, the party, "by mere accident," as we are told by Sir Henry Wotton, obtained a first view of Henrietta, each errant knight "shadowed under a bushy peruke," and concealing his title by a plebeian name, though the two of greatest dignity amongst them attracted marked attention by their superior grace and deportment.

The Spanish match was soon broken off by the impetuous attempts of the clergy to proselytize Charles, the exasperation of Olivarez with Buckingham, and the refusal to include

Life and Death of the Duke of Buckingham. Reliquiæ Wottonianæ, 12mo. London 1651, p. 81.

2 Letter from the prince to James the First, dated Paris, Feb. 22, 1622-3. 3 Rushworth.