Saint-Germain, near but not too near Paris, and at some distance from the French court, which was established at the Palais Royal and had one of its country retreats at Fontainebleau. The exiled Queen was in no fit state to handle a relationship with an adolescent son. Distraught herself, she was incapable of spreading happiness and reassurance about her. Her problems ranged from the financial to the emotional. She was paid a small pension of twelve hundred francs a day by the French government, but sent most of it abroad; in the meantime her love and concern for her afflicted husband racked her daily. She corresponded ceaselessly with the King, in codes devised by Cowley, broughtinto her employ by Lord Jermyn. Another poet, Richard Crashaw, a Catholic convert, also formed part of her little entourage, but the presence of these bards, romantic-sounding as it might be, was hardly conducive to an easy establishment. Above all they were poor. Crashaw was described as ‘a mere scholar and very shiftless’. The Queen needed rich and stable men about her, as Julius Caesar had once needed the sleek-headed who slept at night.
The lack of money was already chronic. Jewels and gold and silver objects, souvenirs of a vanished gold and silver age, departed regularly to be sold. The two-year-old Princess Henriette-Anne, smuggled out of the siege of Exeter in yet another dramatic escapade in the history of the Stuart children, was now in Paris, shivering and at times virtually starving with her mother. The spectacle of a foreign queen, who was also a daughter of France, living in such evident penury, enraged the emotional Parisians, who blamed Mazarin. In a rude rhyme the Cardinal was described as robbing the English Queen of her rings: leur reine desolée/De ses bagues par toi volées ….
Officially, Charles himself received no money at all. This was a matter of policy. It was thought to be injurious for the Prince of Wales to appear as a pensioner of a foreign government. Therefore ‘a mean addition’ was made to the sum paid to Henrietta Maria. 1 For funds Charles was expected to apply to her. It was of course a situation which was equally injurious in another way – to the relationship between mother and son.
Perhaps this relationship was doomed even if Henrietta Maria’s agitated hands had not been left clutching the purse-strings. For one thing, the Prince of Wales could hardly be expected to regress into youth without demur. At sixteen he was of an age when many kings took over the reins of power. He had spent nearly four years following the flag of his father, and the last fifteen months in nominal independence fighting in Cornwall and elsewhere. He had presided over his own court at Jersey.
Henrietta Maria had also changed. She still had something in her face so charming that she was ‘beloved of all’, in the loyal words of Madame de Motteville. 2 But she was no longer thegay enchanting creature to whose bright eyes no one could refuse anything. She was a thin, hag-ridden, desperate woman, to whom a great many things had been refused in recent years. Her health had never really picked up after the difficult birth of Henriette-Anne. As for her character, that had never been perfect, but its faults had been exacerbated by suffering. One of Henrietta Maria’s failings was an inordinate possessiveness towards her children, accompanied by a conviction that she had an absolute right to control not only their movements but also their emotions and opinions. These were – anticipating events – the traditional feelings of a widow; if Henrietta Maria had lived out her natural days in England in her sunny court, the beloved wife of a commanding monarch, this disagreeable tendency might never have manifested itself. As it was, she treated her eldest son as a child. But the Prince of Wales indubitably felt himself to be a man.
Nevertheless, the pattern of life which was now imposed upon him was at best adolescent. His
The lack of money was already chronic. Jewels and gold and silver objects, souvenirs of a vanished gold and silver age, departed regularly to be sold. The two-year-old Princess Henriette-Anne, smuggled out of the siege of Exeter in yet another dramatic escapade in the history of the Stuart children, was now in Paris, shivering and at times virtually starving with her mother. The spectacle of a foreign queen, who was also a daughter of France, living in such evident penury, enraged the emotional Parisians, who blamed Mazarin. In a rude rhyme the Cardinal was described as robbing the English Queen of her rings: leur reine desolée/De ses bagues par toi volées ….
Officially, Charles himself received no money at all. This was a matter of policy. It was thought to be injurious for the Prince of Wales to appear as a pensioner of a foreign government. Therefore ‘a mean addition’ was made to the sum paid to Henrietta Maria. 1 For funds Charles was expected to apply to her. It was of course a situation which was equally injurious in another way – to the relationship between mother and son.
Perhaps this relationship was doomed even if Henrietta Maria’s agitated hands had not been left clutching the purse-strings. For one thing, the Prince of Wales could hardly be expected to regress into youth without demur. At sixteen he was of an age when many kings took over the reins of power. He had spent nearly four years following the flag of his father, and the last fifteen months in nominal independence fighting in Cornwall and elsewhere. He had presided over his own court at Jersey.
Henrietta Maria had also changed. She still had something in her face so charming that she was ‘beloved of all’, in the loyal words of Madame de Motteville. 2 But she was no longer thegay enchanting creature to whose bright eyes no one could refuse anything. She was a thin, hag-ridden, desperate woman, to whom a great many things had been refused in recent years. Her health had never really picked up after the difficult birth of Henriette-Anne. As for her character, that had never been perfect, but its faults had been exacerbated by suffering. One of Henrietta Maria’s failings was an inordinate possessiveness towards her children, accompanied by a conviction that she had an absolute right to control not only their movements but also their emotions and opinions. These were – anticipating events – the traditional feelings of a widow; if Henrietta Maria had lived out her natural days in England in her sunny court, the beloved wife of a commanding monarch, this disagreeable tendency might never have manifested itself. As it was, she treated her eldest son as a child. But the Prince of Wales indubitably felt himself to be a man.
Nevertheless, the pattern of life which was now imposed upon him was at best adolescent. His
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