Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 25.djvu/435

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Henrietta Maria
429
Henrietta Maria

multitude of panegyrics in prose and verse penned in sorrow for her untimely death led Rochester to declare that ‘never was any one so regretted since dying was the fashion.’ Henrietta left two daughters: the elder, Marie Louise, became the queen of Charles II of Spain; the younger, Marie, was married to Victor Amadeus II of Savoy. In the year following Henrietta's death Philippe married her second cousin, Elizabeth Charlotte, daughter of Charles Louis, elector palatine, eldest son of the queen of Bohemia.

Her portrait was drawn and engraved by Claude Mellan, of which a copy by Van der Werff was engraved by J. Audran for Larrey's ‘History.’ Another engraved portrait of her, by Peter Williamson, is dated 1661; a third was executed by Nicolas de Larmessin. In the National Portrait Gallery there is a portrait by Mignard, engraved by Cooper in ‘Monarchy Revived.’ Another by the same artist is in the possession of the Duke of Grafton. Granger mentions a portrait at Dunham, Cheshire, the seat of the Earl of Stamford, by Largillière; another at Amesbury, Wiltshire; and a third, by Petitot at Strawberry Hill, Middlesex (Biog. Hist. of England, 2nd edit., pp. 180–1). The Earl of Hume possesses a portrait by Largillière, and the Earl of Crawford one by Sir P. Lely. There are two portraits at Versailles; one at St. Cloud, by H. Rigaud, was burnt in 1870 (Cat. Stuart Exhibition, 1849; Scharf, Cat. National Portrait Gallery). Platt and Turner severally engraved the picture in the possession of Earl Poulett.

[Mrs. Everett Green's Princesses of England, vi. 399–584, 586–90; Burnet's Own Time; Macaulay's Hist.; Ludlow's Memoirs, iii. 227; Gent. Mag., July 1773, pp. 324–5; Evans's Cat. of Engraved Portraits, i. 256.]

G. G.

HENRIETTA MARIA (1609–1669), queen consort of Charles I, king of Great Britain and Ireland, the youngest daughter of Henry IV of France and of his second wife, Mary de Medicis, was born at the Louvre on 15–25 Nov. 1609. As early as 1620, when the French court was anxious to draw England away from the Spanish alliance, a proposal to marry her to Charles, prince of Wales, was made by a French agent to James I, and the offer was repeated to Sir Edward Herbert, James's ambassador at Paris. The child, hearing her religion talked of as likely to raise difficulties, said that ‘a wife ought to have no will but that of her husband’ (Herbert's Despatch, 14 Aug. 1620, in Harl. MS. 1581, fol. 15; Tillière's Memoirs, p. 25). The proposal was allowed to drop, and when Charles saw her on his way through Paris on his journey to Madrid in 1623, either his thoughts were too full of the infanta, or Henrietta Maria, a child of thirteen, was too young to attract his attention. It was not till 1624, when the Spanish match had been discarded, that there was any serious thought of a French marriage in England.

On 15–25 Feb. 1624 Viscount Kensington arrived at Paris to sound the disposition of Louis XIII and his mother. He described the princess, then in her fifteenth year, as ‘a lovely, sweet young creature,’ who welcomed him with smiles. The proposed match was acceptable to the French court, and in May the Earl of Carlisle was sent to join Kensington in making arrangements for the marriage. There were many political and other difficulties to be got over, but on 12–22 Dec. the marriage treaty was sworn to at Cambridge. On 1–11 May 1625 the marriage itself was celebrated at Paris, the Duke of Chevreuse acting as proxy for the bridegroom, who was now, by his father's death, Charles I.

Henrietta Maria landed at Dover on 12–22 June, and first saw her husband on the following day. The early part of her married life was unhappy. She was only in her sixteenth year, and she had heard from her mother that her marriage was to bring relief to the English catholics, as Charles had engaged in a document, signed together with the marriage treaty, to dispense with the penal laws from which they suffered. Charles, however, in his desire to conciliate his first parliament, broke his word. Naturally the young bride felt herself cheated, and her dissatisfaction seems to have been increased by her numerous French attendants, male and female, who were almost her sole companions, and whom Charles had, by the marriage articles, bound himself to keep about her. In August, when the young couple were at Titchfield, Charles urged his wife in vain to allow him to add English ladies to her household. Early in 1626 she was supported by her brother in refusing to be crowned by a protestant bishop. Charles seems to have been eager to bring the queen into close relations with Buckingham and his family, a design which she heartily resented, and Buckingham, on the other hand, used all his influence with Charles against her; and it is even said that he reminded her on one occasion that former queens had lost their heads.

In June 1626 there was a fresh quarrel about the arrangements relating to the queen's jointure, and on 26 June–6 July, after a day spent in devotion, Henrietta Maria, walking in Hyde Park, approached Tyburn, where so many catholics had been executed, and uttered some kind of prayer, probably for the