Henrietta Maria has undoubtedly had a bad press in English History – in the past she has either been fitted into the pattern of she-wolf or interfering wife. And yet prior to arrival in England in 1625 and in the weeks afterwards she was praised for her youth and her beauty. Her arrival was, after all, the beginning of an Anglo-French partnership. Not that every was wildly happy about a French Catholic becoming queen.
The power of a consort was very indirect so far as most Stuart kings of England are concerned. Henrietta is the best known of the Stuart wives and she undoubtedly arrived with an agenda. Pope Urban VIII had made her a member of the order of the Golden Rose prior to her departure for England. She wrote to her brother, Louis XIII, saying that she would improve the lot of Catholics in England. She made no secret of the fact that she was a good Catholic princess. Her pilgrimage to Marble Arch and Tyburn where Catholics had been executed caused consternation amongst her Protestant subjects. Yet, she was also supposed to engineer a firm Anglo-French alliance. She was fifteen and it was a very tall order.
Griffey explains that her presence in England quickly became a political liability so far as Buckingham was concerned. In the first instance she was French and Catholic so did nothing to enhance Buckingham’s popularity at home given that he brokered the match and secondly Charles was predisposed to love his bride. In terms of the first Buckingham broke the escrit secret that he had agreed promising to suspend the recusancy laws, declaring it was nothing but a trick to get the French to agree to the marriage and in the second he sought to impose his various female relations upon Henrietta not to mention the female relatives of men who owed their ascent at court to him so that he could control who had access to her. The effect of both was to leave her feeling embattled and isolated – which in turn made her more determinedly Catholic in her outlook. She refused to be crowned because it was a Protestant ceremony. The same applied to Garter events and other events. It did nothing for the royal marriage either as Charles became ever more resentful of her lack of obedience to his husbandly requests – though apparently the fact that her sixteenth birthday passed unremarked was neither here nor there as indeed was the fact that he was flagrantly breaking the promises that he made prior to their marriage.
Charles came to believe that her household was keeping her too French and too intransigent. In part her relationship with her confessors did have that effect and whilst there were few English women in her household she had no need to speak the language – indeed I imagine that girls around the country were being tutored in French in the hopes that they might get a place in her household. Charles came most of all, it would appear, to blame Jeanne St George. Madame St George or Mamie as she was known had been with Henrietta since the princess was a child. She had unintentionally caused a diplomatic incident when Charles and Buckingham insisted on travelling in Henrietta’s coach to Canterbury from Dover along with Buckingham’s mother and wife. There had been no space for Mamie which was a serious breach of French etiquette. The whole affair was repeated when the royal couple fled the plague that summer. Buckingham was offended at the suggestion that his family should not travel with the queen.
Gradually the household of four hundred was eroded. Henrietta took up the lute. Her lutist was arrested as a spy and packed off to the Tower, some other household members were arrested under the recusancy laws which were very much in force. Matters came to a head for Henrietta when her entire household was sent back to France in 1626 – Charles having forcibly separated his wife from their company. It was a total breach of the marriage treaty. It left her hysterical and a virtual prisoner. She was unable to write any letters unless an English lady-in-waiting supervised its content.
Henrietta who still did not speak English now found herself surrounded by the Duke of Buckingham’s female relatives including his niece Susan who slept in her bedchamber. Lucy Hay, Countess of Carlisle was imposed on her. Lucy was beautiful and witty and Buckingham’s sometime mistress. There is evidence to suggest that Buckingham was planning to set Lucy up as Charles I’s mistress but the king was a loyal husband – not that Henrietta would have initially known that. Instead she might have thought of her own father with his more than forty mistresses as well as the court of her brother. No wonder she was hostile to Lucy – and her rather colourful reputation.
Ultimately the two women became friends and allies whilst it suited them both. Lucy was older than Henrietta and she was able to fulfil a role as mentor – which was as alarming to most Puritans as the thought of Mamie St George. Their relationship sums up the informal nature of female Stuart politics. It was based on personal relationships and favour. Interestingly Lady Carlisle only fell from favour when her husband became Pro-Spanish in sympathy.
The reorganisation of Henrietta’s household structure in 1627 at Charles’ behest meant that access to the bedchamber and personal spaces of the queen were more limited than they had been under previous monarch and consorts. A distinction was drawn between the bedchamber and the privy chamber in a way that it hadn’t been before. The extended hierarchy was Charles I’s preference. He disliked the free and easy way that Henrietta associated with her French ladies and wanted to impose more regulation upon the whole proceeding so that it mirrored his own household.
She was angered that he had imposed his will on her independence. She pointed out, quite reasonably, that his mother had ordered her own affairs but Charles said that was a different matter entirely. At which point Henrietta lost her temper and proclaimed that she was a daughter of France whilst Charles’ mother was only from Denmark. It wasn’t tactful but it’s hard not to feel some sympathy for Henrietta at this point.
The limiting of access with its heightened powers of influence initially seemed to work to Buckingham’s advantage as the key jobs were given to his people but after his death in 1629 it meant that access to Henrietta was still limited. The difference was that Henrietta who had rushed to console her husband on Buckingham’s death had much more influence than anyone could have anticipated. The lack of range of voices and opinions surrounding Henrietta and Charles would be one of the factors that led husband and wife down a dangerous path.
Men have always blamed evil councillors when they revolt against their monarchs. The death of Buckingham removed a hated advisor so it was perhaps only to be expected that Parliament began blaming Henrietta Maria for Charles’ actions – she was after all a foreigner ( a French one at that), a Catholic…and a woman!
Erin Griffey (ed) Henrietta Maria: Piety, Politics and Patronage
Wolfson, Sara J. The Female Bedchamber of Queen Henrietta Maria: Politics, Familial Networks and Policy, 1626–40 in The Politics of Female Households: Ladies-in-waiting across Early Modern Europe
Henrietta Maria was fifteen when she married King Charles I – she didn’t speak any English. When she set sail for her new home Marie de Medici, gave her a letter to keep with her. It was a manual for how a good queen and Catholic should behave. Essentially she was to ensure protocol was maintained, not displease her husband and labour ensure he became a good Catholic in order to care most effectively for her new subjects.
Charles I believed in the Divine Right of Kings – that is to say the absolute power of the monarch based on the so-called Great Chain of Being which essentially placed the king at the top of the food chain, next only to God – who had, after all, placed the king in the position and everyone else in their allotted place as well. The concept of Divine Right was written about by James I of England VI of Scotland in a book entitled The True Law of Free Monarchies in 1598 (before he became King of England). In the book James who clearly saw himself as something of a political theorist stated:
Sir John was born in 1577 to a Norfolk family with a colourful pedigree – the Heveninghams claimed to be descended from one of the men who guarded Christ’s tomb. More realistically they originated from Suffolk.
Heveningham died in 1633. He was succeeded by his son William who was returned to Parliament in 1640. He served on the committee of the Eastern Association during the English Civil War so was in all respects a parliament man until it came to signing the death warrant of Charles I – which he refused to do in his capacity of commissioner to the high court. Despite this William did agree the execution of the king in his role as member of parliament which was sufficient to make him a regicide.
Walter Erle is the second of the five knights who found themselves incarcerated in 1627. There were only four men in Dorset who didn’t pay the forced loan demanded by Charles I in order to pay for his wars against the Spanish and the French. The other three were Sir John Strangeways, William Savidge and a man called Tregonwell. All four were arrested but none were put on trial as Charles I did not want the controversy of a judge disagreeing with his right to arrest people because they refused to lend him money. Savidge was sent to Clerkenwell Prison whilst the other three, inclusion Erle, were sent to the Fleet Prison.
Charles I dismissed Parliament in 1626 because it was rather keen on the idea of impeaching the Duke of Buckingham for his incompetence in the handling of foreign policy not to mention his influence over Charles I. The king, on the other hand, wished to preserve his favourite so dissolved Parliament and its radically minded members. Unfortunately Buckingham had dragged Charles into a war against both the Spanish and the French which was a costly exercise and which Charles could not afford – hence the need to call Parliament to raise the cash.
On August 22nd1642 King Charles I raised his standard at Nottingham Castle. Whilst times had been increasingly discordant this act effectively marked the start of the First English Civil War which lasted until 1646.
Meanwhile in Colchester the house of ‘Mad Madge’ Cavendish’s parents’ was sacked by Puritans on the 22nd August 1642. Mad Madge had not yet acquired that name nor had she yet entered the service of Queen Henrietta Maria or married the royalist Duke of Newcastle. She was still the youngest of eight children sired by Sir John Lucas. Madge’s father was a prominent royalist in the area. The relationship between him and the citizens of Colchester had deteriorated over the years. It probably didn’t help that East Anglia had strong Puritan sympathies and Lucas was suspected of being a Papist. This event was not a one off though. The Stour valley had become increasingly restless during 1642. Unemployment was high. Rumours became wilder and anti-popery became more rife. The Countess of Rivers, for instance, found herself under siege by the people of Melford. Melford Hall was partially destroyed as a consequence. Parliament did not condone the harassment of the widowed countess – though how they may have felt when she spent her wealth on supporting the Crown is another matter entirely. She would eventually find herself in a debtor’s prison as a consequence of her loyalty.
St John the Evangelist in Leeds is a seventeenth century church built between 1632-34. To put that in context this is during the later part of the twelve years when Charles I ruled without Parliament. In 1638 John Hampden was sent to trial for refusing to pay ship tax (traditionally paid in coastal communities but not by the whole country) and John Lilburne was flogged for selling un-licensed Puritan books. Between the Elizabethan religious settlement of 1559 and the onset of the English Civil War there were an increasing number of strands of protestant belief. Many of these branches of Puritanism did not want to be part of the Church of England because they saw it as too ritualistic and too hierarchical. In 1639 Charles I went to war with his Scottish subjects in the so-called Bishops War about the prescriptive content of the prayer book. During this period of increasing religious turbulence, just prior to the English Civil War, very few new churches were built in England. During the Commonwealth period new churches harked back to the past – the Crown and to superstitious times. To build a new church would have been an act of defiance against Parliament. Prior to the Commonwealth Period there were new chapels built during the reign of Charles I, notably by Inigo Jones in 1627 – the Queen’s Chapel at St James. However, the queen in question was Henrietta Maria who was, of course, a Catholic. Consequentially if you had enough money for a new-fangled architect designed place of worship you ran the risk of being associated with European ideas, the Court, Laudianism and at worst Catholicism. In 1636 a new chapel was built in Somerset House – it was a Catholic Chapel.
Parliament believed that Harrison was a Royalist and there is a tale that when the king was in Leeds as a prisoner that Harrison took him a lidded tankard of ale, except rather than ale the contents of the pot were gold coins – whether this was to support the king during his captivity or facilitate his escape is a matter for speculation. The moment is commemorated in the Harrison Memorial Window but this was not created until the nineteenth century. And it would have to be said that Harrison didn’t get on with all of Leeds’ inhabitants. There were a number of scurrilous songs about him – we know about this because there was a court case with Harrison taking twenty-two people to court for libel.
The problem for Harrison was that he lived in difficult times and despite his generosity he was insufficiently Puritan for some tastes. In time he found himself being fined by Parliament – which must have been somewhat irritating given that he had loaned them money in 1642. As a result of his ultimate loyalty to Charles I and also as a result of his religious faith which although not described as Laudian was not as austere as Puritan taste demanded much of his wealth was confiscated and his is, described by an article from the Yorkshire Evening Post (29 Oct 2005), as spending his final years in comparative poverty.
Staunton Harold in Leicestershire, just a stone’s throw from Ashby de la Zouche. It’s seventeenth century church reflects the principles of Laudianism.
Bess of Hardwick disowned her eldest son Henry but he had still inherited Chatsworth despite the fact that Bess entailed what she could to William and his heirs. Due to his debts Henry sold Chatsworth to his brother William.
In 1605 thanks to the auspices of his niece Arbella Stuart he became a baronet. In 1618 with the aid of £10,000 paid to James I he became an earl. In addition to his land holdings in Derbyshire he was also investing in foreign trade – the East India Company, the Muscovy Company, the Bermuda Company and also in the settlements in Virginia.
By the time he was in his twenties young William was a polished courtier (pictured left). He also had a reputation of brawling, drinking and womanising. He also spent money as though it was water. This Cavendish was behaving as though he was a member of the aristocracy.
Which brings us to the English Civil War. Christian Bruce was a friend of Henrietta Maria. The Cavendishs were Royalists. In 1642 the 3rd Earl presented himself in York with his younger brother Charles who joined with Prince Rupert and his cavalry, took part in the Battle of Edgehill and ultimately became the Royalist commander for Derbyshire and Lincolnshire prior to his death at the Battle of Gainsborough. Meanwhile the earl, no doubt on his mother’s advice, took himself off to Europe until 1645 when he compounded for his Royalist sympathies – paid a fine of £5000 and returned to live in England at Leicester Abbey where his mother had her residence (it had been purchased by the first earl in 1613) and from there he went to Latimer Place in Buckinghamshire until the Restoration when he returned to Chatsworth.
Born in 1641, yet another William became the fourth earl upon his father’s death in 1684. There had been an older brother but he died in his infancy. The third earl had preserved the Cavendish estates largely by keeping his head down and letting his cousin (William Earl, Marquis and the Duke of Newcastle) of and younger brother get on with Royalist soldiering. The fourth earl was described by Bishop Burnet as being of “nice honour in everything except the paying of his tradesmen.” Like his father he had been sent on the Grand Tour and like his Uncle William (Newcastle) he fancied himself as a bit of a poet. It is easy to see how this particular Cavendish fitted into the court of King Charles II who was also known for his late payments. Like his monarch Cavendish also had a reputation for womanising. He had several children by a mistress called Mrs Heneage. Apparently Charles II had told Nell Gwynn not to have anything to do with him – re-arrange the words pot, kettle and black into a sentence of your choice. It could be that Charles took against William Cavendish because he publicly snubbed the Duke of York (James) at Newmarket on account of his catholicism. Aside from seduction the fourth earl also seems to have spent a lot of time picking fights and duelling.