July 11. Meaning of the promise to execute the penal CHAPTER LIII. PENNINGTON'S FLEET. THE promise made at the adjournment that the penal laws should be put in execution, was a symptom of a change which was coming over the minds of the King and his minister. It was easy to suppose that, because the Commons cared a great deal about represslaws. ing the Catholics, they cared for very little else, and that if only the penal laws were put in execution the House, at its next meeting, would make no more difficulty about supply. Nor was Charles, in consenting to this course, doing any violence to his own wishes. Ever since Buckingham had reported the failure of his mission in France, there had been growing up at Court a carelessness about the value of the French alliance, and an increasing belief that England was being sacrified to the separate interests of Louis. June. Charles's domestic troubles. To these political grievances was added a personal grievance still more irritating. The dream of domestic happiness which had floated before Charles, in after life the most uxorious of husbands, was vanishing away. The dispute about the precedence of Madame St. Georges had embittered the early days of his married life. Other troubles were not long in coming. Henrietta Maria was impetuous and indiscreet. "The Queen," wrote one who had seen her, "howsoever little of stature, is of spirit and vigour, and seems of more than ordinary resolution. With one frown, divers of us being at Whitehall to see her, being at dinner, and the room somewhat overheated with the fire and company, she drove us all out of the chamber. I suppose none but a Queen could have cast such a scowl." 1 It was a scowl which her husband sometimes experienced as well as her courtiers. He did not pay much respect to her priestly attendants. When she heard mass he directed that no Englishman should be present.2 After the Royal pair had been a few days at Hampton Court, a deputation from the Privy Council was sent to instruct the Queen about the regulations which the King wished to be observed in her household. "I hope," she replied, pettishly, "I shall have leave to order my house as I list myself." Charles attempted to argue the point with her in private, but the answer which she returned was so rude that he did not venture to repeat it to her own mother. She regarded herself as in a foreign land, in which everyone was at war with her. Even the exhortations of Richelieu's kinsman, the Bishop of Mende, who had accompanied her as the head of her train of ecclesiastics, could not induce her to treat the highest personages of the English nobility with common civility.4 May. 3 Such a misunderstanding between a spirited child and a punctilious young husband ten years older than herself, is only too easy to explain. Nor was the Queen without The English reason for complaint. She had come to England in Catholics. the full persuasion that her presence would alleviate the lot of the English Catholics. She had scarcely set foot in the island when she learned that the orders which were to have saved them from the penalties of the law had been countermanded. Is it not probable that if the secrets of those early days of married life could be rendered up, we should hear of the young wife's stormy upbraidings of the man who had beguiled 1 Meade to Stuteville, July 2, Court and Times, i. 39. to Meade, June 24, ibid. i. 33. 2 Instructions to Carleton, July 12, 16, 26, Ludlow's Memoirs, iii. 305. "Il seroit apropos que la Reine traita le Roi et les grandes de l'état avec plus de courtoisie, n'ayant personne de quelque qualité que ce soit à qui elle fasse aucun compliment, c'est ce que nous ne pouvons gaigner sur elle, et que peut-être les lettres de la Reine Mère gaigneront.' Deciphered paper from the Bishop of Mende, enclosed in a letter from Villeaux-Clercs, Aug. King's MSS. 137, fol. 52 15 25' 1625 CHARLES AND THE CATHOLICS. 377 her into taking upon herself the marriage vow by promises which he now found it convenient to repudiate? satisfying the French ambassadors. At all events the French ambassadors, Chevreuse and Villeaux-Clercs, who were in England on special business, protested Difficulty of loudly. At first they received nothing but evasive answers. A few days after Parliament met, they were asked to allow the King to hold out hopes to his subjects that he would put the laws in execution, and to shut their eyes if sentence were passed on one or two Jesuits, on the express understanding that the sentence would not be carried into execution. At last the time was come when the fulfilment of Charles's contradictory promises was demanded of him. He would soon find that he must either break his word to his Parliament or his word to the King of France. For the present a way was found by which the difficulty might be postponed for a little time. Effiat was about to return to France, as well as Chevreuse and Ville-aux-Clercs. James July 12. Liberation of had been in the habit of allowing foreign ambassadors priests. who took leave of him to carry with them large numbers of priests on the understanding that they would not return to England. In imitation of his father's practice, Charles now directed the Lord Keeper to seal pardons for the priests in confinement at the time. Williams, however, objected, and it was only by the King's special command that the pardons were issued. That command was given at the Council held on July 10 to decide upon the adjournment of the Houses. The way was thus cleared for the announcement made the next day, that the laws would be put in execution. Though there was no real contradiction between the issue of pardon for past offences and the intention to carry out the law in the future, the sight of so many priests coming out of confinement, without any word of explanation being given, was likely to throw doubt on the honesty of the governing powers, The impossibility of reconciling engagements made in opposite directions weighed no less heavily on Charles in the 1 Chevreuse and Ville-aux-Clercs to Louis XIII., June 23, 27 Hacket, ii. 14. April. The ships for Rochelle. matter of the squadron which had been fitted out for the service of the King of France. As early as April 11 the 'Vanguard' and her seven consorts had been ready for sea,' but delays had supervened. As soon as the captains and owners of the merchant vessels discovered that they were to be employed against Rochelle, they One hung back and did their best to find excuses. tains to take of the captains, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, who was to go as Pennington's Vice-Admiral, kept away from the rendezvous till the end of May, and was only compelled by threats of imprisonment to take his place with the others.2 May. Reluctance of the cap part in the enterprise. Part taken by Charles and Buck May 18. Pennington told that he would not have to fight ants. The exact part taken by Charles and Buckingham in the affair must always be matter for conjecture. It is probably true that when the contract was signed by which the merchant ships were offered to Louis for service against ingham. anyone excepting the King of England, the owners had been quieted by assurances that they would not have to fight against the French Protestants.3 At all events, on May 18 Sir John Coke was employed to write to Pennington to that effect, and this letter of Coke's may be fairly taken as embodying the sentiments of the Lord the Protest Admiral, who was already in France with the object of inducing the French Government to make peace with the Rochellese, and whose habit it was to regard as absolutely certain anything which he had strong reasons for desiring. That it would be to his interest that there should be no fighting at Rochelle there could be no doubt whatever. He was still looking hopefully for French cooperation, if not in his projected attack on the Flemish ports, at all events in some way or other in the Continental war. His original plan had been to lend the ships for the purpose of an attack upon Genoa, and nothing would now please him better than to see the original project reverted to. Still the • Effiat to Ville-aux-Clercs, April, Harl. MSS. 4579, fol. 57. 2 Conway to Coke, May 21 (?), S. P. France. Council Register, May 29, 31. This was stated by Glanville in his speech at the impeachment of Buckingham. 1525 THE FLEET AT DIEPPE. 379 fleet had been offered to the French to be used against all enemies, and Charles found himself, as he had found himself in the matter of the English Catholics, in a strait between two engagements. May 20. Charles's double dealing. To find an issue from this entanglement Charles had recourse to that double-dealing which was characteristic of him whenever he was driven into a difficulty. Through Conway he conveyed orders to the fleet to get ready instantly for sea. Through Coke he intimated to Pennington that he was not to give his ships up to the French till he had used them to convoy the Queen to England.' His intention was doubtless merely to delay the delivery of the vessels till he heard what turn Buckingham's negotiation had taken. June 9. The ships under Pen nington sail for Dieppe. When Buckingham learned in France, that, though Louis would not join England openly in the war with Spain, he had despatched a messenger to offer peace to the Huguenots, there seemed no longer any reason for delay. On June 9 Pennington sailed with his eight ships. On the 13th he was at Dieppe. Pennington was an honest sailor, sympathising doubtless with the unwillingness of the captains to fight against Protestants, but anxious, instructions above all things, to carry out his instructions. His ligible. main difficulty was to know what his instructions were. He knew that by the contract he was bound to serve against the Huguenots if the French Government ordered him to do so. He knew that by Coke's letter he was prohibited from doing anything of the sort. When he arrived at Dieppe June 13. He finds his unintel "His Majesty hath been much moved at the delays of Sir F. Gorges, and because it will be the utter overthrow of the voyage if it be not gone away presently, his Majesty hath commanded me to will and require you by all means to hasten it away, or else show the impossibility of it." Conway to Coke, undated, but written on May 20 or 21, S. P. France. "Nevertheless, having received a command from his Majesty by Sir J. Coke to detract the time as much as I could for the wafting over of the Queen, for which service I was appointed, though with privacy, I could not depart without a discharge of that command." Pennington to Conway, May 22, S. P. Dom. ii. 83. |