These were some of the darkest days of Henrietta's life. She was fully aroused from the levity of her youth, but at this first touch of adversity she had not learned the courage and resignation of later times. Strafford had no truer mourner than she, unless, indeed, it were her husband. Then there were griefs more personal to herself. Some of those whom she had most trusted, such as Lady Carlisle and the Earl of Holland, turned against her, and she still believed that her enemies meant to humiliate her by an impeachment. She had to see the Catholics hated and persecuted as they had not been since the days of the Powder Plot, finding only a sorry consolation in the heroism which kept most of the priests at their post of danger. It added to her misery that she had to bear it alone. Even the Bishop of Angoulême left his royal mistress, for somewhat characteristically he discovered the urgent need of his presence in Paris. One of a braver spirit remained as ever faithful, but Father Philip, who was specially obnoxious to the Puritans, because being a subject of the King of England he came within the scope of the recusancy laws, found his constancy rewarded by a severe interrogation before the House of Commons and a short sojourn in the Tower. It was, however, no doubt a satisfaction, both to him and to the Queen, that Richelieu, whose name had been freely mentioned in the examination, expressed himself much annoyed at the liberty which the leaders of Parliament had taken.[255] And in July Henrietta lost another friend. Rosetti had stayed, with admirable courage and almost beyond the limit of safety, but now the condition of affairs was such that the Queen would not even permit Piombini, the humble agent who had been sent to replace him, to remain in England. She and her husband, with desperation in their hearts, held a last interview with the papal envoy. Charles, who in Rosetti's words spoke of the injuries which religion was receiving, "not as a heretic king, but as a Catholic,"[256] was by this time ready to promise, in return for help from the Pope, even liberty of conscience in the three kingdoms, together with the extirpation of Puritanism, thus leaving the field to the Catholics and the Protestants. He was, moreover, willing to forgo any help from Rome until the free exercise of the Catholic religion had been granted in Ireland. These terms, countersigned by his own royal hand, were to be carried across the sea by Mary de' Medici, who was on the point of leaving England, and delivered to Rosetti, who, by that time, would be on the way to Rome.