My novel about Henrietta Stuart is going very very well and has, so far, completely justified my decision to delete the first attempt and start again from scratch. The new version begins in March 1654 and is narrated by Minette herself, which I feel much happier about as I love writing in the first person.
I’m loving the research too – I’m really interested in the lives of the Stuart family and their various hangers on during the Interregnum period when they seemed to be all wandering around Europe. It’s a really fascinating time to read about. I’m not a massive fan of Henrietta Maria (foolish but capable of incredible bravado is my opinion) but I really feel sorry for her as she spent a large amount of that time with her children scattered all over the place. It must have been particularly awful when she was in France and her three youngest children, including the baby Henrietta were left behind in England under the protection of Parliament.
I’m particularly interested right now in Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester who was the youngest son of Henrietta Maria and Charles I. He was born on the 8th of July 1640 and was a toddler of two when the English Civil War broke out. When his parents and elder siblings escaped London and went to Hampton Court in some haste and disorder on the 10th of January 1642, Henry and his elder sister Elizabeth were left behind in St James Palace London with their household and were for a time moved to the White Tower in the Tower of London although they were mostly allowed to live in greater comfort in Chelsea, St James Palace and Syon House.
Henrietta Maria never ceased worrying about her children, who were now in the possession of Parliament. They were treated very well though by all accounts, with Cromwell himself taking an interest in their well being. It must have been odd though – Henry was a toddler when he was separated from his parents and would remain in the hands of Parliament until his early teens with a succession of noble guardians, such as the Earl of Northumberland.
After their father was captured in 1647 (I say ‘captured’ but actually the Scots kind of handed him over to Parliament), Elizabeth and Henry were able to see more of him although they were never permitted to form an actual family group together. When Charles was being held at Hampton Court Palace, his children were housed at nearby Syon House for the summer and were allowed to visit and spend supervised time with him in the gardens.
Visits were much rarer towards the end of Charles’ life but we know that the children, whom he hadn’t seen for over a year, were brought to see him on the evening before his execution so that they could say goodbye. The Princess Elizabeth recalled that her father put the eight year old Henry on his knee and said ‘Sweetheart, now they will cut off thy father’s head, Mark, child, what I say. They will cut off my head, and perhaps make thee a King. But mark what I say, you must not be a King, so long as your brothers, Charles and James do live; for they will cut off your brothers’ heads (when they can catch them) and cut off thy head too at the last; and therefore I charge you, do not be made a King by them.’
With the greatest fervour, Prince Henry replied: ‘I will be torn in pieces first’ and his father was extremely pleased about this.
It was wise advice. There had been discussions within the Parliamentary inner circle for several years about adopting the young Prince Henry, who was young, malleable and, most crucially, completely in their hands, and making him a sort of puppet King with Parliament acting as his regent. It should be noted that Cromwell was, at first at least, very much in favour of this plan.
We know that Cromwell visited Elizabeth and Henry from time to time and it’s said that on one occasion in 1649 he joked with the prince about having him apprenticed to a cobbler or brewer, which strikes a chilling foreshadowing of the fate of the unfortunate young Louis XVII in 1793. Henry, who was eight at the time, apparently responded that it would be better for Parliament to make some of his dead father’s estates over to him than apprentice him out like a slave.
Cromwell is said to have replied: ‘Boy, you must be an apprentice, for all your father’s revenues will not make half satisfaction for the wrong he has done the kingdom.‘
After the execution of their father, the noble guardians were rather less keen about taking on the charge of his children and they were eventually packed off to Penshurst in Kent under the care of the Earl and Countess of Leicester. I went to Penshurst once as a little girl and STILL have dreams about it – it’s a most heavenly place so I like to think that they were both very happy there. At any rate, we know that the Countess was very kind to them.
Unfortunately, in August 1650 they were both moved to Carisbrooke castle on the Isle of Wight, which was a rather less comfortable residence. The Princess Elizabeth, always sickly and probably in the last stages of tuberculosis, died there in September 1650 leaving Henry alone in the care of their final governor, Anthony Mildmay.
The death of fourteen year old Princess Elizabeth caused Parliament rather a lot of embarrassment as it naturally didn’t take long for rumours to start that the princess had either died as a result of ill treatment or had been poisoned by Cromwell. As a result they became rather paranoid about the health of Prince Henry, terrified lest he succumb to some random fever and bring further calumny upon their heads. They were therefore happy to accede to Henry’s request in 1652 that he should be allowed to travel to the continent and rejoin his family. Cromwell even gave the Prince £500 to assist in his journey.
The official line of course was that: ‘Henry Stuart, the son of the late King, should be sent out of this realm, for lessening the charges for his keeping by the Commonwealth.‘ In other words: we’re not paying for you any more!
Prince Henry was not quite thirteen years old when he landed in Holland in March 1653 and was reunited with his eldest sister, Mary, Princess of Orange. He was a tall, handsome, charming boy and she was naturally keen to keep this little brother with her in the Netherlands. However, Henrietta Maria sent angsty letters from Paris demanding to be reunited with her youngest boy and so he duly travelled on to France with his tutor, Richard Lovell.
The good looking, tennis mad young prince was a massive hit in Paris and was fondly known as ‘le petit cavalier’. More than a few of the exiled royalists even considered him a better bet than his older brothers when it came to regaining the throne.
It didn’t take long to go completely wrong though. Henry, who had been separated from his mother for around twelve years had been raised as a staunch Protestant and had no interest in being converted to Catholicism, which she immediately set out to do, seemingly considering that the religion of her youngest children should be well within her remit.
Much against Prince Henry’s will, his mother began an unwise and rather aggressive campaign to try and force him to convert to Catholicism. His eldest brother, Charles II, who was by then living in Cologne, was apparently so angry when he heard about it that he was rendered speechless and immediately fired off a letter to his mother telling her to desist and pointing out that should his brother convert to Catholicism, he might as well kiss goodbye to any hope of ever being allowed to take back his rightful throne, so hated as Catholicism was in England.
He also sent a remarkable letter to Prince Henry, which he entrusted to the Marquis of Ormonde, who was sent post haste to Paris to assess the situation and, if necessary, rescue the young Prince from his mother’s clutches:
‘Cologne, 10th November 1654
Dear Brother,
I have received yours without a date, in which you tell me that Mr Montagu, the Abbot of Pontoise, has endeavoured to pervert you from your religion. I do not doubt but you remember very well, the commands I left with you at my going away concerning that point. I am confident that you will observe them; yet your letters that come from Paris say, that it is the Queen’s purpose to do all that she can to change your religion, in which, if you hearken to her, or to anybody else in the matter, you must never think to see England or me again; and whatsoever mischief shall fall upon me or my affairs from this time, I must lay all upon you as being the cause of it. Therefore consider well what it is to be, not only the cause of ruining a brother who loves you so well, but also your king and country. Do not let them persuade you either by force or fair promises; the first they never dare not will use, and for the second, as soon as they have perverted you, they will have their end, and then they will care no more for you.
I am also informed there is a purpose to put you to the Jesuits’ college which I command you, on the same grounds never to consent unto; and whensoever anybody goes to dispute with you in religion, do not answer them at all; for though you have reason on your side yet they, being prepared, will have the advantage of anybody that is not upon the same familiarity with argument as they are. If you do not consider what I say unto you, remember the last words of your dead father, which were, to be constant in your religion, and never to be shaken in it; which if you do not observe this shall be the last time you hear from,
Dear Brother, your most affectionate brother, Charles II.‘
When Ormonde arrived in Paris on the 20th of November he found all in uproar. The Prince’s tutor had been summarily dismissed and Henry himself had been unwillingly packed off to the Abbey at Pontoise where his mother’s creature, Walter Montagu was busy making plans to have him turned over to the Jesuit College at Clermont for instruction and conversion.
In vain did Ormonde attempt to make Henrietta Maria see reason but she remained obstinate – she had not agreed to not convert Henry, just to not use violence in the attempt; Charles was ill advised and actually no ill harm would come of Henry’s conversion and above all she saw it as her duty as a mother to restore her son to the true faith and cure him of the errors he had fallen into during their separation. She also tried to lie to Ormonde, claiming that Henry’s tutor had left of his own free will, which everyone knew was completely false.
She tried to dissuade Ormonde from going to Pontoise to talk to Henry himself but he was acting on Charles’ orders and like all true staunch Royalists completely terrified that anything could further turn England against their cause. He went to the Abbey the next day and was saddened to find Henry upset, frightened but, thankfully, resolute about his determination not to be turned away from Protestantism.
Undaunted by the threats and machinations of Henrietta Maria, Montagu and the Dowager Queen Anne of France who were all in it together, Ormonde whisked Henry back to Paris and lent him his support as they did their best to persuade the boy to go to the Jesuits. In the end, there was one last interview with his mother on the 28th of November when she asked him for the last time if he would be converted. Henry remained adamant and she fell into a rage, shouted at him to get out of her sight and that she never wanted to see him again. The Prince knelt to ask her for a final blessing but she refused to give it and walked past him without saying another word. They were never to see each other again.
Henry, distraught about his mother’s treatment, went to his rooms to find that his servants had already been dismissed, his things packed and his horses turned out of the stables. He was left penniless and alone. His last goodbye was to his sister, Henrietta, who wept terribly at their final parting.
Henry and his mother remained estranged for the rest of his life. He went off to join Charles in Cologne and from then on became another wandering Stuart prince. Later on he would become a soldier, fighting alongside his brothers, Charles and James for Spain and distinguishing himself for his bravery and tactical brilliance. He caught the eye of the Grande Condé, another avowed enemy of the Catholic faith who was, unusually for the times, an agnostic, who took the boy under his wing – letting him live at Chantilly away from his mother and even suggesting a match with his niece.
When Charles II was restored to the English throne in 1660, Henry travelled back with him and went to live in Whitehall where he took a chief part in the celebrations. Sadly, he was not to enjoy the good fortune of his family for very long and fell dangerously ill with the dreaded smallpox in autumn 1660 before dying on the 18th of September after his physicians initially predicted a full recovery. He was just twenty one years old.
Hyde described Henry as ‘in truth the finest youth and of the most manly understanding that I have ever known’ and his death was rightly considered to be a tragedy by Charles and all of his supporters as not only had he been a most promising young Prince but his demise also meant that until Charles married and managed to produce some legitimate offspring, James, who was suspected to have converted to Catholicism during his exile, was left as the heir to the throne, which didn’t please very many people at all.
I’d agree with Antonia Fraser who suggests that the death of Prince Henry was one of the greatest tragedies to befall the Stuart dynasty if not the monarchy as a whole as he may well have made a superb King had he only lived to succeed his brothers.
Suggested further reading:
My Dearest Minette: Letters Between Charles II and His Sister Henrietta, Duchesse d’Orleans
