Page:The Queens of England.djvu/498

HENRIETTA MARIA OF FRANCE, QUEEN OE CHARLES THE FIRST. The fair and ill-fated consort of one of England's most unfortunate sovereigns is entitled, from the peculiar circum- stances in which she was placed, to the utmost lenity. Not sixteen when called upon, in the onerous position of queen, to sway the agitation of parties already influenced by violent prejudice against each other, she found religion employed as a subterfuge for republicanism, and herself, from the nature of her creed, regarded, upon her arrival in England, with a suspicious dislike, which incensed the bigotry she had perhaps otherwise never evinced. Her education, also, had been cal- culated to pervert the accuracy of her judgment. A beautiful and spoiled child, nursed amid court intrigue, descended from a king whose dazzling qualities threw a false luster over his many and inexcusable faults., she was early taught to view truth through a distorted medium ; so that, in the retrospect, it is conceivable that even the horror of her father's assassination, after escape from "fifty conspiracies." partoook less of tragic reality than of exciting romance. After his death, left under the influence of her haughty mother, she necessarily imbibed much of her bigotry and pride ; an effect maintained for some period after her marriage by continued correspondence with the French court, and the pernicious and interested counsels of priests and dependents. Henrietta Maria was born at the Louvre, November 25, 1609, being the youngest child of Henri the Fourth of France and Marie de Medicis, his second wife. Her birth was her- alded by the king's concession to his consort's reiterated desire that her coronation should be celebrated without further delay ; Henri's previous reluctance to that ceremony having been excited by the jealousy of his artful mistress, the Marchioness de Vernenil, and by her employment of fortune-tellers to prog- 450