occasion to encourage her discontent, and stimulate her to opposition. Her favourite, Madame St. George, seems to have been especially active in this mischievous style; and Charles became excessively incensed against them. Particularly on the subject of the queen's chapel and the open display of her religion, the priests stirred up the queen to importune the king. These foolish bigots could not see that Charles was placed in a most awkward situation by the toleration of that religion at all. He had set apart one of the most retired chambers in Whitehall for her chapel, and had forbidden any English people, men or women, to attend the service there. But this did not satisfy the priests: they tugged the queen perpetually to demand from the king the chapel at St. James's, and to have it fitted up with all the embellishments and apparatus of a royal open chapel. Charles angrily replied that if the queen's closet was not large enough, they could have the great chamber; if that would not hold them, they might go into the garden; and if the garden were too contracted, then the park was the fittest place. One change he made, which was done with his usual want of tact. The name of Henriette, as the French called it, and its French pronunciation, was so unaccustomed to English ears, that she was prayed for in the royal chapel by the name of "queen Henry," and he, therefore, ordered her second name, Maria, to be anglicised into Mary, in the public service. This was most ominous and hateful to the ears of his subjects, who were thereby reminded that they had again a queen Mary, and papist queen too.
Charles found her confessor. Father Sancy, a most troublesome, impertinent fellow, who exercised the worst influence over the queen; and he insisted on his being at once sent home, but did not succeed without much trouble. Then Madame St. George took unease offence at the king's not following her to ride in the same coach with himself and the Queen, as though she had the right to do that irrespective of the king's will, because she had thus accompanied the princess in France as her governess. Spite of the king's command, she persisted in thrusting herself in, and he was obliged to prevent her forcibly. In her anger at this, she worked the queen into a most offensive humour. "From that hour" wrote Charles to Henrietta's mother, "no man can say that my wife has behaved two days together with the respect that I have deserved of her." To settle these matters, Charles sent to the queen by the count de Tilliers, one of the heads of her establishment, the regulations which had been kept in the court of the queen, his own mother, and desired the count to see that they were kept. To this Henrietta sent back the reply, "I hope I shall be allowed to order my own house as I think best."
Charles complained grievously, and most justly, to Mary de Medici, of this; observing that if she had spoken to him privately about it, he would have done all he could to please her, but he could not have imagined her offending him in that public manner. "After this answer," he continued, "I took my time, when I thought we had leisure to dispute it out by ourselves, to tell her both her fault in the publicity of such answers, and her mistakes in the business itself. She, instead of acknowledging her mistakes, gave me so in an answer that I omit to repeat it. When I have anything to say to her, I must manage her servants first, else I am sure to be denied. Likewise I have to complain of her neglect of the English tongue, and of the nation in general."
It was clear that the crew of insolent foreigners must be packed off before there could be any domestic peace; but this might have been long delayed had Buckingham been permitted to visit Paris. He wrote to the favourite whilst in the Netherlands his complaints on this head, telling him that he was tempted to send away the monsers (monsieurs), because it was told him that they were actually intending to steal away his wife, and were plotting amongst his own subjects. He says that he cannot find positive proof of their scheme for carrying off the queen to France on the plea of ill-usage; but as to the plotting, he has good grounds to believe it. In another letter to Buckingham, he says, "As for news, my wife begins to mend her manners. I know not how long it will continue: they say she does so by advice." Probably her mother, Mary de Medici, had given her that sensible advice; at all events, the catastrophe of the French exodus was delayed till Buckingham came home, fuming against the whole French court.
Meantime Charles, who was in straits with his parliament and subjects, which needed not the humour of a froward wife to aggravate them, was compelled to try again the more than dubious resort to parliament for money. All that Buckingham had raised on the plate and jewels, was but as a mite in the great gulf of his necessities. To prepare the way for any success with the commons, he was obliged to do that which must certainly embroil him with his French allies, and add fresh fuel to the fire of domestic discord which consumed him. Certainly never had any man a more difficult part to play, except such a man as had acted with such absolute want of prudence in his measures; for nothing is easier than for men, by their folly or absurd resentments, to knit themselves up into a web of difficulties. He now resolved to break his marriage oath to France, and persecute the catholics to conciliate the protestants.
Orders were accordingly issued to all magistrates to put the penal laws in force; and a commission was appointed to levy the fines on the recusants. All catholic priests and missionaries were warned to quit the kingdom immediately, and all parents and guardians to recall their children from catholic schools, and young men from catholic colleges on the Continent. But worse than all, because personally insulting and irritating to the higher classes, who constituted the house of peers, and who hitherto had exhibited much forbearance, he conceded to the advice of his council, that the catholic aristocracy should be disarmed. The effect of this order may be imagined, from a scene which took place at a seat of lord Vaux, in Northamptonshire. The deputy-lieutenant, accompanied by two knights, and a Mr. Knightly, a magistrate, proceeded to make a search. They found there lord Vaux, his mother, and a younger brother of lord Vaux. In conducting the search Mr. Vaux, the younger brother, became excited by the indignity of the process, and observed that he thought the inspectors had now done everything they could except cutting the throats of the recusants, and swearing that he wished it would come to that. Knightly told the young man that he was mistaken: there were various clauses of the statutes which they had not put in
