Henrietta Maria, Queen, consort of Charles I, King of England, 1609-1669
This episode did not decrease Henrietta's hatred for Cromwell. It was even
said by one of her women, who played the part of spy, that she was
overheard plotting his murder with Lord Jermyn. But she had not long to
endure his usurpation of the seat of her husband, whose regal title she
believed him to have refused solely from fear of the army. On September
3rd, 1658, the anniversary of Dunbar and Worcester, Oliver Cromwell died
amid a tumult of storm, sympathetic with the passing of that mighty spirit.
"It is the Devil come to carry old Noll off to Hell" was the comment of the
Royalists, who kept high revel in Paris and elsewhere at the news of his
death, though the Queen, whom long sorrow was at last making slow to hope,
did not join in the jubilation. "Whether it be because my heart is so
wrapped up in melancholy as to be incapable of receiving any [joy]," she
wrote to Madame de Motteville, "or that I do not as yet perceive any good
advantages likely to accrue to us from it, I will confess to you that I
have not felt myself any very great rejoicing, my greatest being to witness
that of my friends."[400]
It was not, indeed, until the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659 that there
seemed to be solid hope for the King of England. Then Charles left his
Court at Bruges, and traversing all France, had an interview with Don Louis
de Haro, the powerful minister of Spain, who received him with all ceremony
as a sovereign prince. Mazarin still obstinately refused to receive him,
but he had an interview with his uncle, the Duke of Orleans, at Blois, and
afterwards passed a few days with his mother at Colombes, on the outskirts
of Paris, where she had a small country house. Both mother and son may have
been to some extent hopeful, but neither knew how near the day was when the
prophecy of a French rhymester after Worcester would be fulfilled, and
"la fortune
N'ayant plus pour luy de rancune
Le mettra plus haut qu'il n'est bas."[401]
[Footnote 367: "Amyd the Arrests lately made one is for the seazure of the
King's revenue to the use of the Parliament and in other things they doe
soe imitate the late proceedings of England that it plainly appears in what
schoole some of their members have been bred who make them believe they are
able to instruct them how to make a rebellion w^{th} out breaking their
allegiance."--Dispatch of Sir R. Browne, January 22nd, 1649. Add. MS.,
12,186, f. 9.]
[Footnote 368: "Letters from Paris received January 15th, 1648," p. 6.]
[Footnote 369: "Une sainte et la mère des pauvres."--Mme de Motteville.]
[Footnote 370: Quoted by Mme. de Motteville with reference to this
occasion.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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