Page:The Queens of England.djvu/509

HENRIETTA MARIA OF FRANCE. 461 ceal herself in the caves near the village. The whole country was "now rilled with gossip" respecting her courage and perils. Lord Newcastle, with a body of troops, conducted her to York — the Roman Catholics came from all quarters to enlist in her ranks — Batten's disloyalty was loudly censured, as having designedly pointed his cannon at Burlington at the very house in which she lodged — and the romantic enthusiasm which hailed her escape caused her escort soon to find himself at the head of a considerable force. The queen, eagerly taking advan- tage of their zeal, drew partisans over to the royal cause so universally that even Sir Hugh Cholmondley, the governor of Scarborough, who had already defeated the royalists, promised to deliver up the town, and Sir John Hotham was ready to open the gates of Hull, which he had rudely shut against the king. It must not be forgotten, too, that this display of mental energy followed closely upon a period of deep personal affliction. When in Holland, Henrietta had learned of the death of her mother in the midst of hardships and alone, the sorrowing daughter not having been permitted to console the last hours of her persecuted parent. It has been pathetically remarked that this princess, who had "brought a marriage portion of six hundred thousand crowns, and diamonds and jewels worth three millions more, who had. founded two hospitals and sev- eral charitable institutions, was dying in a foreign land in a state of indigence, though mother of the king of France and though three of her daughters had married kings." Charles had dreaded that her expulsion from the kingdom by his own subjects "would occasion a further alienation of the mind of his wife" from that religion "which," he writes, "is the only thing wherein we differ ;" yet again, upon her return, his ene- mies evinced but slight sincerity in the promise which they had given "that they would do all in their power to make her happy if she would continue in England ;" nor was it until when, upon her march to Oxford, the king met her at Edge Hill, that a gleam of transitory sunshine irradiated her path amidst the revelry of the then triumphant court, arid that hope — falla- cious ! — whispered a renewal of the happier years of her life. Short respite was allowed from care and peril. Upon the eve of the battle of Newbury it was clear that Oxford was no safe asylum, and Charles, anxious for the queen, whose health, impaired by vicissitude, excited his tenderest precaution, inso- much as to elicit the taunt of Sir Philip Warwick that "he was always more chary of her person than of his business," escorted