Feb. 15. CHAPTER XLVIII. BUCKINGHAM'S ASCENDENCY. HENRY RICH, Viscount Kensington, had arrived in Paris on February 15, charged with a confidential mission. Without making any absolute overtures, he was to sound the Kensington disposition of the French Court towards a marriage in Paris. between Charles and the Princess Henrietta Maria, the youngest sister of Louis XIII. Unlike his elder brother, the Earl of Warwick, the speculator in buccaneering adventures in the reign of James and the pious Lord Admiral of the Commonwealth, Kensington had been fitted by nature to gain in the drawing-room the success which was denied him in the senate and the field. Without force of character or intellectual ability, he had early taken his place in that train of flatterers whose ready services were so pleasing to Buckingham, and were of so little value in the hour of trial; and it was to the satisfaction which he had thus given to his patron that he owed his high position at Court, his peerage, and at last his selection as messenger of love to the French Princess. Kensington's journey was extremely well-timed. Louis had at last taken alarm at the position which Spain and the allies of Spain occupied on his frontiers. The proud La Vieuville's flag of Philip waved from the Netherlands in the ministry. north, over an almost uninterrupted series of fortifications, through the Palatinate, Franche Comté, the Milanese Duchy, Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia, to the spot where the Pyrenees lower their crests as they sink towards the waters of the Atlantic. Behind this martial barrier was now arising once more the shadowy form of the old Empire which had been. quickened into life by the successes of Spinola and Tilly, and which was now in close alliance with the Spanish monarchy. Louis had felt that it was no longer a time to be guided solely by his religious instincts. Devoted Catholic as he was, he was a still more devoted Frenchman, or rather, it would perhaps be more correct to say, he was still more devoted to the maintenance of his own authority, in which, for him, the interests of France were comprehended. Yet though Louis was by no means a cypher in French politics, he was too sluggish and unfamiliar with business to trouble himself with the actual direction of affairs. A minister he must have who would be content to carry out his master's plans, except so far as he might be able to mould them in accordance with his own. He now announced the change which had come over him by dismissing his former ministers who were on friendly terms with Spain and the Emperor, and by calling to his councils the Marquis of La Vieuville, who was pledged to pursue a different course. Kensington's success at With the higher political questions which were likely to arise out of this change, Kensington had neither the authority nor the desire to meddle. Easy and graceful in his manners, he had little difficulty in winning his way Court. amongst the ladies and gay gentlemen of the Queen Mother's court. Mary de Medicis, at this time under the guidance of the sagacious Richelieu, at once treated the handsome Englishman as a friend. She gladly caught at the idea of making her daughter Princess of Wales, especially as she hoped by this means to obtain a cessation of the persecution of the English Catholics, and thus to do more for her Church than Philip of Spain and his sister had succeeded in accomplishing. Her feeling was shared by her son, and Kensington was able to send home the most glowing description of his reception at Paris. Though he was told that there could be no serious negotiation till his master had openly broken with Spain, nothing was left undone to give him confidence in the eventual success of his mission. With the Queen Mother he was soon at home, chatterring gaily in broken French, and whispering airy compliments in the ears of the ladies around her. The day after his arrival he was able to report that he had scen the Princess, a quick, 1624 The Princess HENRIETTA MARIA. 217 bright-eyed girl in her fifteenth year. "My Lord," he wrote to Buckingham, "she is a lovely sweet young creature. Her growth is not great yet, but her shape is perfect." Henrietta She had seldom, he had been informed, 'put on a more cheerful countenance than that night.' "There were some," he added, "that told me I might guess the cause of it." Maria. Kensington's ideas about the alliance. Of soft glances and merry speeches Kensington was an apt reporter. It was not long before he had to turn his attention to more serious work. Ill-advised as any marriage with a Roman Catholic could not fail to be, in the existing state of English public feeling, both James and Buckingham wished this marriage to be at least the seal of an effectual military alliance, and they expected to proceed simultaneously with the two negotiations. Kensington soon made himself the mouthpiece of the French court in advising the contrary course. "For I doubt," he wrote, "whether it may not be thought a little dishonourable for this king to give his sister conditionally that, if he will make war upon the King of Spain his brother, we will make the alliance with him. . But if we fall speedily upon a treaty and conclusion of a marriage, the which will find, I am persuaded, no long delays here, neither will they strain us to any unreasonableness in conditions for our Catholics, as far as I can find ; then will it be a fit time to conclude a league, the which they will then for certain do when all doubts and fears of falling off are by this conjunction taken away. It was truly a golden prospect, but even to Charles it did not seem quite satisfactory after his experience in Spain. The Prince wished the general league of friendship to Dissent of precede the negotiation of the marriage treaty.2 KenCharles. sington characteristically replied by assuring Charles that all would come right in the end, by praising the Princess, March 3. 'Kensington to Buckingham, Feb. 16, Feb. 26 (both letters printed without a date), Cabala, 290, 286. Kensington to Conway, March 4, S. P. France. 2 We learn the Prince's opinion from Kensington's answer to Buckingham's letter of March 3. It is dated March 9, S. P. France. who was 'for beauty and goodness an angel,' and by recounting how she, having borrowed a miniature of the Prince which hung about his neck, 'opened it with such haste as showed a true picture of her passion, blushing in the instant of her own guiltiness.' 1 April 13. Herbert's opinion on the policy of France. All this was very delightful to a lover, but it would not go far to help on the political alliance between the two kingdoms. Sir Edward Herbert, who had returned to France as ambassador after the death of Luynes, and who knew the country too well to be deceived by the gossip of the Queen Mother or the blushes of a girl of fourteen, formed an opinion very different from that of Kensington. The object of the French, as he thought, was to make themselves arbiters between England and the House of Austria; he therefore advised his master to bring them 'to some real and infallible proofs' of their intention to assist England 'in the recovery of the Palatinate, at the same time or before' the marriage treaty was discussed. Otherwise they would want no excuse to keep themselves in peace of neutrality.' Herbert was the more confirmed in this view of the case by his knowledge that Louis was anxious to send a diplomatic agent named Marescot to the Elector of Bavaria. So unpalatable to the French King was the remonstrance made against this proposal by the ambassador, that means were taken to induce James to recall him; and, in fact, the letter ordering him to return home had been already despatched before his last note of warning reached England.2 Was France Herbert had been guilty of seeing too clearly where the real difficulty lay. Whatever interest Louis had in the matter lay in opposing Spain, and Spain alone. As a devout likely to help Catholic he would naturally wish to confine his operain Germany? tions in Germany within the narrowest possible limits. To send an embassy to the Elector of Bavaria was precisely the step likely to be taken by a man in his position. The victories of Tilly and the League would have been positively gratifying to him if they had merely resulted in the depression of Pro'Kensington to the Prince, March 9, Cabala, 288. Herbert to the 2 Herbert to Calvert, Jan. 26, Feb. 6, March 10. King, April 13, S. P. France. Tillières to Ville-aux-Clercs, Harl. MSS. 4593, fol. 194 b. ༣༠, 1624 THE PALATINATE AND THE VALTELLINE. 219 testantism and could have been dissociated from the formidable growth of the Spanish power. To join James in driving out Catholic rule and Catholic worship from the Palatinate might possibly be regarded by Louis in the light of a political necessity, but it would never be considered by him as desirable in itself. The overtures which had been made to James in vain through Francesco della Rota, were certain to be acceptable to Louis, as by placing the education of Frederick's children in Maximilian's hands, they would, if adopted, almost inevitably lead to a rivalry between the Bavarian and the Austrian families. about the Nor was the divergence of the views of the two kings about the Palatinate the only difficulty in the way of a cordial coThe French operation between France and England. Louis had anxious a Palatinate of his own in the Valtelline, that long Valtelline. and narrow valley which, stretching from the Lake of Como to the Tyrolese mountains, offered the only way of communication by which Spanish armies could pass from Italy into Germany without encroaching upon the possessions of states more or less openly hostile. This territory was now in the grasp of Spain by a very questionable title. The Roman Catholics, who formed almost the entire population, had been treated with extreme harshness by the Protestant Grison Leagues, the masters of the whole valley. In 1620 the people of the Valtelline rose against their oppressors, massacred the few Protestants upon whom they could lay their hands, and called the Spanish governor of Milan to their help. In spite of the remonstrances of France, the Spaniards took the aggressive and carried fire and sword into the heart of the Grison mountains. At last a league of resistance was formed between France, Venice, and Savoy, and in the spring of 1623, Spain nominally relinquished its authority over the Valtelline and entrusted the valley to the Pope. Spanish garrisons, however, still occupied the principal fortified posts, and the King of Spain refused to withdraw them unless the right of passage through the Valtelline were secured to his soldiers by treaty. In 1624 matters were still unchanged, and French politicians were looking forward to a war for the recovery of the Valtelline as eagerly as English politicians were looking forward to a war for the recovery of the Palatinate. |