The first occasion on which Prince Charles beheld his future consort was during this romantic expedition, in 1623, to Madrid to obtain the hand of the Infanta; the prince, after the example of his father and grandfather, and at the instigation of Buckingham, being desirous that an interview with his future bride should cement, by personal affection, that bond of political union which King James was eager to institute, both from the emergency of his own pecuniary distresses, and an opinion peculiar to himself, that any alliance below that with France or Spain was unworthy a Prince of Wales." This Quixotic expedition, besides Charles and the king's "humble slave and doge, Steenie," as Buckingham was styled, consisted of Sir Francis Cottington, Sir Richard Greham, and Master Endymion Porter, and upon reaching Paris, the party, "by mere accident," as we are told by Sir Henry Wotton, obtained a first view of Henrietta, each errant knight "shadowed under a bushy peruke," and concealing his title by a plebeian name, though the two of greatest dignity amongst them attracted marked attention by their superior grace and deportment.

The Spanish match was soon broken off by the impetuous attempts of the clergy to proselytize Charles, the exasperation of Olivarez with Buckingham, and the refusal to include the restitution of the palatinate in the marriage portion of the Infanta—a circumstance which induced King James to exclaim, "that he would never marry his son with a portion of his only sister's tears ;" and he hastily recalled the prince from Madrid, his paternal anxiety being painfully increased by the remark of Archie, his jester, who first offered to "change caps" with James for allowing the Prince of Wales to depart; and upon the king's inquiring what he would say when he saw him come back again, replied, "Marry, I will take off the fool's cap, which I now put upon thy head for sending him thither, and put it upon the king of Spain's for letting him return." Anxious, however, for the fulfilment of his dearest wish, James, almost before the conclusion of the Spanish negociation had been notified in England, privately despatched Lord Kensington to Paris, with offers for the hand of Henrietta, where, notwithstanding the threat of Olivarez, "that if the pope ever granted a dispensation for the match with France, the king of Spain would march to Rome with an army, and sack it," the ambassador and his message were well received by the queen. In fact, the princess herself appears to have been favourably impressed by the report of his "gallantry" during the incognito visit of the prince; since she not only intimated that "if he went to Spain for a wife, he might have

had one nearer hand, and saved himself a great part of the labour;" but we find her at the outset of the negociation "perusing his picture a whole hour together," which she had ingeniously contrived to obtain from Lord Kensington, and testifying the greatest delight when the letter containing the proposal itself was submitted to her.

The joy of Henrietta at the prospect of becoming Queen of England, might, however, have been damped, had she looked back to the last alliance of the kind. This was no other than that of Margaret of Anjou, the queen of Henry the Sixth, whose misfortunes had so operated on the minds of French princesses, that though the English princes had made various offers, no marriage for two centuries had been ventured upon. Henrietta's was doomed to be still more

disastrous.

After much delay, caused by the reluctance of the pope to grant a dispensation for a union which he foresaw would be infelicitous, and by the death of James the First, thirty public and three private marriage articles were agreed upon, after the model of the Spanish contract. By the nineteenth of these articles, the education of the royal offspring, until their thirteenth year, was strictly reserved to the queen. The ceremony took place "on a theatre erected in front of Notre Dame," May 21, 1625, the Duc de Chevreuse acting as the representative of Charles, who had already despatched Buckingham to conduct his bride to England. Her arrival there was, however, delayed some little time, ostensibly by a sudden and severe indisposition of the queen-mother at Amiens-a procrastination which gave rise to various surmises. The pope, on the one hand, is represented to have enjoined a penance; Buckingham, on the other, to have arranged an opportunity, of which it is certain he availed himself, for a farewell interview with Anne of Austria, the idol of his insane devotion at Paris. Charles, who had meanwhile waited at Dover, removed to Canterbury, whence, on Monday, June 24, he was hastily summoned to receive the queen, who had arrived late the evening before. king rode from Canterbury, and came to Dover after ten of the clock, and she then being at meat, he stayed in the presence till she had done, which she advertised of, made short work, rose, went unto him, kneeled down at his feet, took and kissed his hand. The king took her up in his arms, kissed her, and talking with her, cast down his eyes toward her feet (she seeming higher than report was, reaching to his shoulders), which she soon perceiving, discovered and showed him her shoes, saying to this effect, Sir, I stand upon mine own feet-I have no helps by

"The

art; thus high I am, and am neither higher nor lower.'" Again, we read from another letter of the same date, and from the same writer, "So soon as she heard he was come, she hasted down a pair of stairs to meet him, and, offering to kneel down and to kiss his hand, he wrapped her up in his arms, and kissed her with many kisses."

The first words addressed to Charles by his young bride expressed a similar sentiment to that of her mother when introduced to Henry the Fourth, "Sire, je suis venue en ce pays de vostre majesté pour estre commandée de vous." She requested that "he would inform her of her faults of ignorance." The king replied, tenderly kissing away her tears, "that he would be no longer master of himself than while he was servant to her." There was much in the personal demeanour and character of Charles, as developed at this period, which was calculated not merely to re-assure a timid girl, but to attract the lasting regards of an affectionate woman. He is said to have been "a prince of comely presence; of a sweet, grave, but melancholy aspect; his face was regular, handsome, and well-complexioned; his body strong, healthy, and well-made, and though of a low stature, was capable to endure the greatest fatigue. He had a good taste of learning, and more than an ordinary skill in the liberal arts, especially painting, sculpture, architecture, and medals. He acquired the noblest collections of any prince in his time, and more than all the kings of England before him. He spoke several languages very well, and with a singular good grace, though now and then, when he was warm in discourse, he was inclinable to stammer. He writ a tolerable hand for a king; but his sense was strong, and his style laconic." From Canterbury, where the marriage ceremony was repeated, they proceeded to Gravesend, and thence to London; and here, notwithstanding the ravages of the plague, "whereof, in this year, not less than thirty-five thousand four hundred and seventeen persons died," and the revival of the stringent proclamation against building, of Queen Elizabeth, every endeavour was made to grace her arrival. The vessels in the river gave her a volley of fifteen hundred shot; and as she approached Whitehall, the fascination of her appearance and manners, added to fresh rumours of her kindly sentiments towards Protestantism, every moment increased the popular enthusiasm.

Yet notwithstanding this auspicious commencement, causes were soon originated of public dissatisfaction and conjugal disquiet. The first arose from the queen's absolute refusal to be even present at the coronation; which, from some forgetfulness or want of judgment upon

the part of those in power, had been fixed for Candlemas Day, a season of high festival in the Romish calendar, sufficient to preclude a votary of that faith from attendance at a ceremonial of the reformed church, even had she been willing to receive the crown at the ministration of priests whose authority she repudiated. This gave the death-blow to her popularity with the nation, which was aggravated by her subsequent refusal to join in the coronation of the king in Scotland. The queen's example encouraged her suite to give further umbrage to the English people, by "dancing," and appearing to mock the august procession, "as they viewed its progress from a window." Nor was the horizon of domestic life long unclouded. From the first period of her marriage, Henrietta had discovered that Buckingham, the intimate associate of the king, was a true friend to neither his sovereign nor herself; and while he used her influence to forward his professions to her sister-in-law, his manner evinced so little of either courtesy or prudence, that, as she afterwards confessed, "she began to be out of conceit with the king her husband; and Buckingham heightened her disgust into aversion, by telling her frankly that, if he pleased, he could set them together by the ears. And, indeed, so he did to such a degree, that she grew melancholy, and longed to return to France." So completely, however, did the duke's influence with her husband prevail, that it was only through his interference, and with a promise that he should accompany her, that she obtained permission to depart, though she was ultimately obliged to forego the voyage, in consequence of the queen-mother's refusal to admit the duke at the French court. To Charles himself his favourite adopted a behaviour the freedom of which could not be excused even by intimacy. "I witnessed," writes Bassompierre himself, "an instance of great boldness, not to say impertinence, of the Duke of Buckingham, which was, when he saw us the most heated" (the marshal's mission being to demand explanations) "he ran up suddenly, and threw himself between the king and me, saying, 'I am come to keep the peace between you two!" But the shrewd ambassador at once took off his hat, and thereby thwarted Buckingham's curiosity, thus changing an audience into a private conversation, and reminding the duke of his want of respect in remaining covered before his sovereign. A disparity, also, in tastes, or rather dispositions, between the newly-married pair, became the fertile source of frequent dissension; for while Henrietta's liveliness of temper rendered her the ready patroness of "plays and pastorals," in which she herself, and her maids of honour, acted the several parts, a pro

ceeding which Prynne severely censured in his Histrio Mastix, on the other hand, Charles, immediately upon his accession, had reformed the court, and expelled "the fools, buffoons, and other familiars of James." These minor troubles, however, soon happily terminated in the removal of the queen's attendants, who, by artful intrigue, had so fomented connubial strife, as to cause Charles deeply to regret those conditions, which, once weakly conceded, he could not subsequently decline without compunction. For as their own behaviour compelled the king to vitiate the contract in assuming a determined attitude of resistance towards his queen's domestics, the fatal result of the crooked policy which allowed such marriage articles exhibited itself in afteryears, on the accession to the throne of a progeny whose expulsion was wrought out by the influence of the same tenets. The restoration of the mass at Whitehall roused all the religious opposition of the people. Charles's authority in his own palace was repudiated by the queen's suite, on the ground that he "had nothing to do with them being a heretic," until after resisting several direct indications of the king's desire for their departure, they were at length forcibly removed from the queen's lodgings in a manner most undignified; for "while the women howled and lamented, as if they had been going to execution, the yeomen of the guard thrust them and all their countryfolkes out of the queen's lodgings, and locked the doors after them; the queen, meantime, grewe very impatient, and brake the glass windows with her fiste." The king appears to have compounded for discourtesy by munificence; for, notwithstanding their short residence, and his disgust at their conduct, he liberally presented them "with eleven thousand pounds in money, and about twenty thousand pounds worth of jewels." The immediate effects of this expulsion were temporary: a deep despondency on the queen's part, notwithstanding the politic advice of her mother, "to accede in all things to her husband, except in religious points;" and a declaration of war by France; Buckingham, who was its chief instigator, being commissioned to conduct the latter, and the former evil alleviated in a measure by the embassy of Bassompierre. The official duties, and their issues, of these two noblemen, were as opposite as their conduct of them. The duke managed the war "more with the gaieties of a courtier than the arts of a soldier," which accounts for its ill success; but the marshal evinced no less integrity than perception in availing himself of the absence of Buckingham to bring the royal couple to a better understanding of each other's mutual disposition, so as to deduce from the king himself a confession as to