HENRIETTA MARIA

A British historian and journalist takes a fresh look at the famed Bourbon queen.

King Charles I often gets sympathy for losing his head in 1649 after losing the civil war, but his wife, who survived him, remains reviled as a Catholic French interloper and malignant influence. In her latest royal portrait, de Lisle offers an entertaining, convincing reevaluation of her subject. Henrietta Maria (1609-1669) was the youngest sister of France’s Louis XIII, and her 1625 marriage to Britain’s Prince Charles was a strictly political union that, as was often the case, did not accomplish its purpose. A devout Catholic who “spoke French, ate French food, [and] enjoyed French amusements,” she was never popular in a nation whose dislike of foreigners matched their fierce Protestantism. Contemporary America’s bitter divisions over abortion or guns will seem trivial compared to the murderous hatred between 17th-century Protestants and Catholics (and among Protestant sects), which began during the Reformation a century earlier. Urged by her parents and the papacy to return Britain to the “true religion,” she did no such thing but worked with spotty success to ease Catholic persecution. The author emphasizes that Charles felt less threatened by Catholicism than hard-line Puritans, who dominated Parliament and “distrusted the king as anti-parliamentary.” The author adds that poor political skills, an obsession with his divine right to rule, and clumsy efforts to raise money without Parliament infuriated the Puritan-dominated establishment, who combined to restrict his authority and eliminate his supporters, often by execution. The situation ultimately drove Charles to stop dithering, raise an army, and initiate the civil war in 1642. C.V. Wedgewood’s The King’s Peace and The King’s War from the 1950s remain the definitive accounts of what followed, but de Lisle does a fine job, emphasizing Henrietta Maria’s energetic partnership, during which she sold her jewels and art to buy arms abroad, organized their shipment to Britain, and exercised diplomatic skills—undoubtedly superior to her husband’s—in an ultimately futile cause.

A successful rehabilitation.