Page:The Queens of England.djvu/504

456 THE QUEENS OE ENGLAND. when he saw us the most heated" (the marshal's mission being to demand explanations) "he ran up suddenly, and threw him- self between the king and me, saying, T am come to keep the peace between you two !' ' But the shrewd ambassador at once took off his hat, and thereby thwarted Buckingham's curiosity, thus changing an audience into a private conversa- tion, and reminding the duke of his want of respect in remaining covered before his sovereign. A disparity, also, in tastes, or rather dispositions, between the newly-married pair, became the fertile source of frequent dissension ; for while Henrietta's liveliness of temper rendered her the ready patroness of "pb.ys and pastorals," in which she herself, and her maids of honor, acted the several parts, a proceeding which Prynne severelv censured in his Histrio Mastix, on the other hand, Charles, immediately upon his accession, had reformed the court, and expelled "the fools, buffoons, and other familiars of James." These minor troubles, however, soon happily terminated in the removal of the queen's attendants, who, by artful intrigue, had so fomented connubial strife, as to cause Charles deeply to regret those conditions, which, once weakly conceded, he could not subsequently decline without compunction. For as their own behavior compelled the king to vitiate the contract in assuming a determined attitude of resistance toward his queen's domestics, the fatal result of the crooked policy which allowed such marriage articles exhibited itself in after years, on the accession to the throne of a progeny whose expul- sion was wrought out by the influence of the same tenets. The restoration of the mass at Whitehall roused all the religious opposition of the people. Charles' authority in his own palace was repudiated by the queen's suite, on the ground that he "had nothing to do with them, being a heretic," until after resisting several direct indications of the king's desire for their departure, they were at length forcibly removed from the queen's lodgings in a manner most undignified ; for "while the women howled and lamented, as if they had been going to execution, the yeom'en of the guard thrust them and all their countryfolkes out of the queen's lodgings, and locked the doors after them ; the queen, meantime, grewe very impatient, and brake the glass windows with her fiste." The king appears to have compounded for discourtesy by munificence ; for, not- withstanding their short residence, and his disgust at their conduct, he liberally presented them "with eleven thousand pounds in money, and about twenty thousand pounds worth of