ensure her against any annoyance. Madame de Chevreuse was gone, and at an opportune moment; but the evil effects of her sojourn remained, and manifested themselves specially in a matter to which the Queen gave considerable attention, and which, like everything else she touched at this moment, turned to her misfortune. When death had settled the question of Con's candidature she was not diverted from her attempt to procure a cardinal's hat for one of her husband's subjects. Her choice was not a happy one. Walter Montagu, since his conversion to the Catholic Church, may, as Henrietta claimed, have lived an exemplary life; but he could hardly be considered suitable for high ecclesiastical preferment. He was, moreover, a man of many enemies. Charles disliked him so much that, when Sir Robert Ayton died in 1638, he told his wife that she might have a Catholic for her secretary provided she did not choose Walter Montagu.[224] Richelieu's opinion of him was such that he made him the text of his sweeping generalization: "all Englishmen are untrustworthy." The Cardinal, indeed, wished to see no subject of the King of England attain to the coveted honour, and he suggested that the Bishop of Angoulême, who had the supreme merit of being a subject of the King of France, was the only suitable candidate; but he would have preferred almost any one to Montagu, for did he not know that that shifty person, through the mouth of Madame Chevreuse, was promising complete devotion to the King of Spain in return for support at Rome? The Queen's persistence in this matter annoyed the Roman authorities. Cardinal Barberini, in spite of his personal liking for Montagu, never entertained for a moment the idea of acceding to her request; indeed, he instructed Rosetti, who had replaced Con as envoy in England, to tell her frankly that the thing was impossible. It was an unfortunate moment for the question to have arisen, for not only was it of great importance to avoid friction with Richelieu, but the time was coming when Henrietta would have other and more important requests to make to Cardinal Barberini. That observant politician had his eyes attentively fixed upon the English troubles, as to whose progress he was kept well informed by Rosetti. The courtly young envoy--he was barely thirty and of a noble Ferrarese family--had been charmed on his arrival not only by the kindness of the King and Queen, but by the liberty which the Catholics enjoyed. It seemed that permanent communications between the Court of Rome and the Court of England had been established, "the King approving and the heretics themselves not objecting";[225] but stern facts soon forced him to correct his first impressions. The feeling of the nation was rising against the Catholics, and the flame was fanned by the injudicious conduct of the Queen-Mother, who greatly patronized Rosetti as she had Con before him. When, in the Short Parliament, Pym voiced the