48 CHAP. 1624. Feb. 15. Kensington in Paris. La Vieuville's Ministry. CHAPTER II. BUCKINGHAM'S ASCENDANCY. HENRY RICH, Viscount Kensington, had arrived in Paris on February 15, charged with a confidential mission. Without making any absolute overtures, he was to sound the disposition of the French court towards a marriage between Charles and the Princess Henrietta Maria, the youngest sister of Lewis XIII. Unlike his elder brother the Earl of Warwick, the speculator in buccaneering adventures in the reign of James I. and the pious Lord Admiral of the Commonwealth, Kensington had been fitted by nature for those successes in the drawing-room which were denied him in the senate and the field. Without force of character or intellectual ability, he had early taken his place in that train of flatterers whose ready services were so pleasing to Buckingham, and were of so little value in the hour of trial; and to the satisfaction which he thus gave to his patron he owed his high position at court, his peerage, and at last his selection as the messenger of love to the French Princess. Kensington's journey was extremely well timed. Lewis had at last taken alarm at the position which Spain and the allies of Spain occupied on his frontiers. The golden flag of Philip waved from the Netherlands in the North over an almost uninterrupted series of fortifications, through the Palatinate, Franche Comté, the Milanese Duchy, Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia, to the FRANCE AND SPAIN. 49 II. 1624. Feb. spot where the Pyrenees lower their crests as they CHAP. sink towards the waters of the Atlantic. And behind this martial barrier was now arising once more the shadowy form of the old Empire which had been quickened into life by the success of Spinola and Tilly. Lewis had felt that it was no longer a time to be guided solely by his religious instincts. Devoted Catholic as he was, he was a still more devoted Frenchman, or rather, it would perhaps be more correct to say, he was still more devoted to the maintenance of his own authority, in which, for him, the interests of France were comprehended. Yet though Lewis was by no means a cypher in French politics, he was too sluggish and unfamiliar with business to trouble himself with the actual direction of affairs. A minister he must have who would be content to carry out his ideas, except so far as he might be able to mould his master's plans in accordance with his own. He now announced the change which had come over him by dismissing his former ministers who were on friendly terms with Spain and the Emperor, and by calling to his counsels the Marquis of La Vieuville who was pledged to a contrary course. ton's suc court. With the higher political questions which were Kensinglikely to arise out of this change, Kensington had cess at neither the authority nor the desire to meddle. Easy and graceful in his manners, he had little difficulty in winning his way amongst the ladies and gay gentlemen of the Queen Mother's court. Mary de Medici, at this time under the guidance of the sagacious Richelieu, at once treated the handsome Englishman as a friend. She gladly caught at the idea of making her daughter Princess of Wales, especially as she hoped by this means to obtain a cessation of the persecution of the English Catholics, and thus to do more for her Church CHAP. II. 1624. Feb. than Philip of Spain and his sister had succeeded in accomplishing. This feeling was shared by her son, and Kensington was able to send home the most glowing description of his reception at Paris. Though he was told that no serious negotiations could be opened till his master had openly broken with Spain, nothing was left undone to give him confidence in the eventual success of his mission. With the Queen Mother he was soon at home, chattering gaily in broken French, and whispering airy compliments in the ears of the ladies around her. The day-after his arrival he was able to report The Prin- that he had seen the Princess, a quick, bright-eyed girl etta Maria. in her fifteenth year. "My Lord," he wrote to Buckingham, "she is a lovely sweet young creature. Her growth is not great yet, but her shape is perfect." She had seldom, he had been informed, 'put on a more cheerful countenance than that night.' "There were some," he added, "that told me I might guess the cause of it." cess Henri Kensington's ideas about the alliance. Ill Of soft glances and merry speeches Kensington was an apt reporter. It was not long before he had to turn his attention to more serious work. advised as any marriage with a Roman Catholic would have been in the existing state of English public feeling, both James and Buckingham wished this marriage to be at least the seal of an effectual military alliance, and they expected to proceed simultaneously with the two negotiations. Kensington soon made himself the mouthpiece of the French court in advising the contrary "For I doubt," he wrote, "whether it may not be thought a little dishonourable for this king to give his sister conditionally that, if he will make war upon the King of Spain his brother, we will make the alliance with him. . . . But if we fall speedily upon a treaty and conclusion of a marriage, the which will course. KENSINGTON AT PARIS. find, I am persuaded, no long delays here, neither will they strain us to any unreasonableness in conditions for our Catholics, as far as I can find; then will it be a fit time to conclude a league, the which they will then for certain do when all doubts and fears of falling off are by this conjunction taken away." "1 It was truly a golden prospect. But even to Charles it did not seem quite satisfactory after his experience in Spain. The Prince wished the general league of friendship to precede the negotiation of the marriage treaty.2 Kensington characteristically replied by assuring Charles that all would come right in the end, by praising the Princess, who was for beauty and goodness an angel,' and by recounting how she, having borrowed a miniature of the Prince which hung about his neck, 'opened it with such haste as showed a true picture of her passion, blushing in the instant of her own guilti All this was very delightful to a lover, but it would not go far to help on the political alliance between the two kingdoms. Sir Edward Herbert, who had been for some years the English ambassador in France, and who knew the country too well to be deceived by the gossip of the Queen Mother or the blushes of a girl of fourteen, formed an opinion very different from that of Kensington. The object of the French he thought was to make themselves arbiters between England and the house of Austria; he therefore advised his master to bring them to some real and infallible proofs' of their intention to assist England 'in 1 Kensington to Buckingham, Feb. 16, Feb. 26 (both letters printed without a date). Cabala, 290, 286. Kensington to Conway, March 4. S. P. France. 2 We learn the Prince's opinion from Kensington's answer to Buckingham's letter of March 3. It is dated March 9. S. P. France. 3 Kensington to the Prince, March 9. Cabala, 288. CHAP. II. 1624. April. Was France likely to help in Germany? the recovery of the Palatinate at the same time or before' the marriage treaty was discussed. Otherwise they would want no excuse to keep themselves in peace of neutrality.' Herbert was the more confirmed in this view of the case by his knowledge that Lewis was anxious to send a diplomatic agent to the Elector of Bavaria. So unpalatable was the remonstrance made against this proposal by the English ambassador, that means were taken to induce James to recall him ; and in fact the letter ordering him to return home had been already despatched before his last note of warning reached England.1 Herbert had been guilty of seeing too clearly where the real difficulty lay. Whatever interest Lewis had in the matter lay in opposing Spain, and Spain alone. As a devout Catholic he would naturally wish to confine his operations in Germany within the narrowest possible limits. To send an embassy to the Elector of Bavaria was precisely the step likely to be taken by a man in his position. The victories of Tilly and the League would have been positively gratifying to him if only they could be dissociated from the formidable growth of the Spanish power. To join James in driving out Catholic rule and Catholic worship from the Palatinate might possibly be regarded by Lewis in the light of a political necessity, but it would never be considered by him as desirable in itself. The overtures which had been made to James in vain through Francesco della Rota, were certain to be acceptable to Lewis as placing the education of Frederick's children in Maximilian's hands, and leading almost certainly to a rivalry between him and the house of Austria. Herbert to the 1 Herbert to Calvert, Jan. 26, Feb. 6, March 10. March 30 April 99 |