Henrietta Maria: Piety, Politics and Patronage 0754664201, 9780754664208

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Henrietta Maria

For Denis

Henrietta Maria Piety, Politics and Patronage

Edited by erin Griffey The University of Auckland

ROUTLEDGE

Routledge

Taylor & Francis Group

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2008 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © erin Griffey 2008

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. erin Griffey has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Griffey, erin Henrietta Maria : piety, politics and patronage. – (Women and gender in the early modern world) 1. Henrietta Maria, Queen, consort of Charles i, King of england, 1609–1669 2. Henrietta Maria, Queen, consort of Charles i, King of england, 1609–1669 – art patronage 3. Queens – Great Britain – Biography 4. Great Britain – intellectual life – 17th century 5. Great Britain – Social life and customs – 17th century i. title 941’.062’092 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Henrietta Maria : piety, politics and patronage / [edited] by erin Griffey. p. cm. – (Women and gender in the early modern world) ISBN 978–0–7546–6420–8 (alk. paper) 1. Henrietta Maria, Queen, consort of Charles i, King of england, 1609–1669. 2. Henrietta Maria, Queen, consort of Charles i, King of england, 1609–1669 – art patronage. 3. Great Britain – intellectual life – 17th century. 4. Great Britain – Social life and customs – 17th century. 5. Queens – Great Britain – Biography. i. Griffey, erin. Da396.a5H46 2008 941.06’2092 –dc22 [B] 2007037183 iSBn9780754664208 (hbk)

Contents List of Illustrations Contributors Preface introduction Erin Griffey 1 religion, european Politics and Henrietta Maria’s Circle, 1625–41 Malcolm Smuts 2 The Secretary of Ladies and feminine friendship at the Court of Henrietta Maria Diana Barnes 3 Queen Henrietta Maria’s theatrical Patronage Karen Britland 4 ‘the rare and excellent Partes of Mr. Walter Montague’: Henrietta Maria and her Playwright Sarah Poynting 5 the three Marys: the Virgin; Marie de Médicis; and Henrietta Maria Jessica Bell 6 ‘By Our Direction and for Our Use’: the Queen’s Patronage of artists and artisans seen through her Household accounts Caroline Hibbard

vii ix xi 1 13

39 57

73 89

115

7 Merely Ornamental? Van Dyck’s Portraits of Henrietta Maria Gudrun Raatschen

139

8 Devotional Jewellery in Portraits of Henrietta Maria Erin Griffey

165

9 Sounds of Piety and Devotion: Music in the Queen’s Chapel Jonathan P. Wainwright

195

Select Bibliography Index

215 225

List of illustrations 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9 5.10 5.11 6.1 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6

Unknown artist, Queen Elizabeth I, c.1600 (c.1559?), national Portrait Gallery, London Peter Paul rubens, The Presentation of the Portrait of Marie de Médicis to Henri IV, 1622–25, Musée du Louvre, Paris Peter Paul rubens, The Virgin and Child with Angels. rome, Chiesa nuova (S. Maria in Vallicella), 1608, ©2003 Photo SCaLa, florence Peter Paul rubens, The Birth of Marie de Médicis in Florence 26 April 1573, 1622–25, Musée du Louvre, Paris Abraham van Diepenbeeck and Peter Paul Rubens, The Marriage of the Virgin, 1630s, the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg Peter Paul rubens, Marie de Médicis, Queen of France, 1622–25, Museo del Prado, Madrid Anthony van Dyck, Queen Henrietta Maria with Sir Jeffrey Hudson, 1633, ©2007 Board of trustees, national Gallery of art, Washington Anthony van Dyck, Henrietta Maria, 1632, the royal Collection ©2007, Her Majesty Queen elizabeth ii Anthony van Dyck, Charles I and Henrietta Maria, 1632, Státni Zámek, Kromĕříž frans Pourbus the younger, Marie de Médicis, Queen of France, c.1609–10, Musée du Louvre, Paris Sir Peter Lely, Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland with Her Son, Charles Fitzroy, as Madonna and Child, c.1664, national Portrait Gallery, London Debenture roll for Lady Day Quarter, 1636, the national archives Lr 5/63 Anthony van Dyck, Henrietta Maria (profile to the right), 1637, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, TN, Memphis Park Commission Purchase 43.30 Anthony van Dyck, Henrietta Maria (frontal view), 1638, the royal Collection ©2007, Her Majesty Queen elizabeth ii Anthony van Dyck, Henrietta Maria (profile to the left), 1638, The royal Collection ©2007, Her Majesty Queen elizabeth ii Anthony van Dyck, Henrietta Maria, San Diego Museum of art Anthony van Dyck, Henrietta Maria, 1632, Private Collection. Photograph: Photographic Survey, Courtauld institute of art Anthony van Dyck, Henrietta Maria, c.1635, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden

94 96 98 100 102 104 106 108 110 111 114 121 143 144 145 146 147 148

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7.7

Anthony van Dyck, Henrietta Maria, the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg Anthony van Dyck, Henrietta Maria, 1636, Private Collection, new York Anthony van Dyck, Henrietta Maria, Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Branderburg Anthony van Dyck, The ‘Greate Peece’, 1632, the royal Collection ©2007, Her Majesty Queen elizabeth ii William Jacobsz Delff, Henrietta Maria, 1630, the national Portrait Gallery, London after Daniel Mytens, Henrietta Maria, with kind permission of the Provost and fellows of the Queen’s College, Oxford Henrietta Maria, stained glass, the Presidant and fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford Jan Barra, Henrietta Maria, c.1627, the ashmolean Museum, Oxford Gerrit van Honthorst, Frederik Hendrik and Amalia van Solms, royal Picture Gallery, Mauritshuis, the Hague Hubert Le Seuer, Henrietta Maria, 1636, the President and fellows of St John’s College, Oxford Hubert Le Seuer, Charles I, 1636, the President and fellows of St John’s College, Oxford George Glover, Henrietta Maria, ©the trustees of the British Museum Anthony van Dyck, Henrietta Maria in White, c.1636, the royal Collection ©2007, Her Majesty Queen elizabeth ii Anthony van Dyck, Elizabeth, Countess of Peterborough, c.1638, Private Collection. Photograph: Photographic Survey, Courtauld institute of art Anthony van Dyck, Anna Sophia, Countess of Carnarvon, Sir edmund Verney and the Claydon House trust. Photograph: Photographic Survey, Courtauld institute of art Anthony van Dyck, Thomas Killigrew and William, Lord Crofts (?), 1638, the royal Collection ©2007, Her Majesty Queen elizabeth ii John Hoskins, Henrietta Maria, c.1630–35, Private Collection John Hoskins, Henrietta Maria, c.1635, the Walters art Museum, Baltimore françois Dieussart, Henrietta Maria, 1640, the royal Collections, rosenborg Castle, Copenhagen

7.8 7.9 7.10 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8 8.9 8.10 8.11 8.12 8.13 8.14 8.15

149 150 151 153 169 170 171 172 175 177 178 181 183 185 186 187 189 190 193

Contributors Diana Barnes has a PhD in english Literature from the University of Melbourne entitled Friendship, Love and Political Community: English Familiar letters in Print, 1580–1664. Her research and teaching focus is on early modern print culture. She is currently completing a book on the relationship between epistolary forms and theories of political community in early modern england. She has published on Margaret Cavendish in Meridian and andrew Marvell in Antithesis. Jessica Bell has recently completed a Master of arts in art History with erin Griffey. She became interested in Caroline patronage and french history during her undergraduate years at the University of Auckland. She combined these two interests in her Master’s thesis where she compared the art patronage of Henrietta Maria and her french mother, Marie de Médicis. Karen Britland is Senior Lecturer in renaissance literature at Keele University, and an associate editor on the Cambridge University Press Complete Works of Ben Jonson edition. Her interest in Henrietta Maria began in 1995 with a Master’s dissertation on the queen’s neo-Platonic fashion. this was then developed into a thesis which considered continental influences on the queen’s politics and cultural activity. Karen’s book on the same subject, entitled Drama at the Courts of Queen Henrietta Maria, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2006. Erin Griffey is Senior Lecturer in Art History at the University of Auckland. She edited the interdisciplinary volume of essays, Envisioning Self and Status: SelfRepresentation in the Low Countries, 1400–1700 (University College London, 1999) and has written several articles on early modern visual culture, especially aspects of portraiture, for The British Art Journal, Dutch Crossing, The Burlington Magazine and De Zeventiende Eeuw, including ‘Multum in Parvo: Portraits of Jeffrey Hudson, Court Dwarf to Henrietta Maria’ in The British Art Journal (autumn 2003), pp. 39–53. Caroline Hibbard is Professor of History at the University of illinois at UrbanaChampaign. Selected publications include Charles I and the Popish Plot (University of north Carolina Press, 1983) as well as essays and articles including ‘episcopal Warriors on the British Wars of Religion’ in Mark Charles Fissel, ed., War and Government on Britain, 1598–1650 (Manchester University Press, 1991), pp. 164–92; ‘the role of a Queen Consort: the Household and Court of Henrietta Maria, 1625–1642’ in Ronald Asch and Adolf Birke, eds, Princes, Patronage, and the Nobility (Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 393–414; ‘translating royalty:

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Henrietta Maria and the transition from Princess to Queen’, Court Historian 5, no. 1 (april 2000), pp. 15–28. Sarah Poynting is a research fellow at Keele University, where she is working on a scholarly edition of The Writings of Charles I, to be published in three volumes by Oxford University Press. As a result of this research, she has written on the king’s correspondence in the 1630s, and on the rhetorical strategies employed by him in the 1640s under the pressure of changing relationships with his supporters. She has also published on subjects arising from her doctoral work on Walter Montagu’s The Shepherds’ Paradise, her textual edition of which was printed by the Malone Society in 1998. Gudrun Raatschen studied art History, archaeology and english in trier and Bonn and completed her PhD on Van Dyck’s portraits of Charles I and Henrietta Maria. She served as curatorial intern at the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen in Munich, the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München and the Glyptothek und Antikensammlungen until 2001. Publications include studies on Van Dyck, Bernini and early modern art. Malcolm Smuts is Professor of History, University of Massachusetts, Boston. He is author of Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in Early Stuart England (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), Culture and Power in England, ca.1585–1685 (Macmillan, 1999) and numerous articles on the culture and politics of early modern England. He is also editor of ‘The Whole Royal and Magnificent entertainment of King James through the City of London’ in The Complete Works of Thomas Middleton (Oxford University Press, 2003) and a collection of essays, The Stuart Court and Europe: Essays in Politics and Political Culture (Cambridge University Press, 1996). Jonathan P. Wainwright is Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of York. He has written extensively on early Baroque english and italian music and his books include Musical Patronage in Seventeenth-Century England (1997) and From Renaissance to Baroque (ed. with Peter Holman, 2005). Dr Wainwright is editor of the Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle and is also active as a performer. From 1996 to 2001 he was Assistant Choir Trainer at York Minster where he directed the Girl Choristers. His recent recordings include ‘Queen of Heavenly Virtue – Sacred Music for Queen Henrietta Maria’ and Percy Whitlock’s Organ Symphony and Francis Jackson’s Concerto for Organ, Strings, Timpani and Celeste Op. 64. He has performed a number of times in Warsaw as guest conductor of the Polish choir Sine nomine and the Baroque orchestra Concerto Polacco.

Preface The inspiration for this book happened to coincide with the conception of my daughter. Occupying me for the last three years, the project’s long duration is now mirrored in a tall, talkative little girl. It seems fitting that this project centres on a woman, since my mother, a retired english professor, was such a driving force in my hopes for an academic career. Joanna Woodall made early modern portraiture the most attractive possible subject for postgraduate research, and cultivated me as a young scholar. I do not imagine this book would have been possible without this triumvirate. Others, too, provided the nurturing and teaching that make a scholar’s life possible. as an undergraduate, Michael Mahoney and alden Gordon were inspirational. Michael’s rhapsodic descriptions of paintings, and Alden’s painstaking archival work on inventories have stayed with me. My practical postgraduate experiences, at the National Gallery, Washington with Arthur Wheelock and at Dutch Crossing under Theo Hermans, were career-defining. It is not lost on me now that I must have first come under the spell of Henrietta Maria in the summer of 1996 when I was working under arthur. the fact that theo entrusted me, as a zealous and inexperienced postgraduate, to guest-edit a scholarly journal seems also to have been portentous. the contributors of this collection have also taught and inspired me. as a young scholar, and someone relatively new to Stuart court studies, i might have expected a cautious reception from potential contributors, colleagues and curators, but i have found a field brimming with receptive, lively minds and spirits. Malcolm Smuts kindly steered my course in finding some of the contributors, and gave me tips on courting a publisher. My students deserve a halo, too. i found myself rather preoccupied with Henrietta Maria during a study abroad trip i led in January 2005 in London, and encouraged two students to write essays on portraits of her. Ella Wilson and Lynne Walker approached the subject with alacrity, and helped me sift through some early ideas. another student from the study trip, Jessica Bell, became an M.a. thesis student in 2006, and worked on the related topic of Henrietta Maria’s patronage of painting and its link with Marie de Medici’s taste and collecting. Such was her work ethic and formatting flair, Jessica took on the role of my assistant, helping with editorial, research and formatting work. Karen Britland smoothed all the remaining bumps in the text by proofreading with remarkable efficiency and critical savvy. All the contributors were concerned in the fate of the book, for noble reasons beyond publishing quotas. Similarly, the authors expressed enthusiasm for the other essays written and exchanged ideas in an atmosphere of generosity and shared purpose. the published form you read this in is now has everything to do with the editorial mentoring and encouragement of Erika

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Gaffney at ashgate. She has been a partner in the project since the beginning, and i have appreciated her candour and kindness.

introduction erin Griffey

this ashgate series, Women and Gender in the Early Modern Period, supports the current scholarly insistence on the agency of elite women in early modern cultural, political and religious life, in mutually enriching ways. Whether a nun, widow, queen, princess, queen consort, archduchess or queen mother, women with noble lineage claimed, justified and enhanced their position in a number of regards. Because these elite women usually operated outside traditionally male political spheres, recent literary historians in particular, as well as social and political historians, and to a lesser extent art historians, have recognized the manner in which they achieved their political agenda through cultural and social means. these methods included using dynastic and social networks of women, art patronage, particularly by creating suitable visual personae in portraiture, music and theatre patronage and performance. However, occasionally women even performed valorous acts and influenced official policy – actions usually associated with men. Henrietta Maria (1609–69), though long ignored or belittled by scholars in terms of her political and cultural power, deserves to be examined along these lines. While there has been a surge of scholarly interest in Henrietta Maria in the past 15 years, largely sparked by Erica Veevers’ Images of Love and Religion: Queen Henrietta Maria and court entertainments (1989), the prejudices towards her political and cultural agency linger, particularly among art historians. nonetheless, Veevers’ text has had a significant impact on studies of Caroline masques. In particular, a host of female literary scholars have pushed Henrietta Maria’s historical persona away from the prevailing view of the frivolous, naive young woman whose french Catholic influences proved disastrous for the monarchy (a view popular even in the queen consort’s lifetime among her Conformist and Puritan detractors). Henrietta Maria’s position at court has been re-staged through a sophisticated analysis of Caroline court masques and her participation as both patron and actress. in championing her very active role as a patron, allegorical subject and actress in court masques, Karen Britland, Melinda Gough, Barbara ravelhofer and Sophie tomlinson have recently highlighted the importance of her cultural role.1 in some cases, these female scholars have marshalled the argument that such roles enabled Henrietta Maria to perform 1 Karen Britland, Drama at the Courts of Queen Henrietta Maria (Cambridge, 2006); Barbara ravelhofer, The Early Stuart Masque: Dance, Costume, and Music (New York, 2006); Melinda J. Gough, “‘not as myself’: the Queen’s Voice in tempe restored”, Modern Philology 101, no. 1 (august) 2003: 48–67; Sophie tomlinson, Women on Stage in Stuart Drama (Cambridge, 2005).

Henrietta Maria

2

on the stage of Stuart politics, as it related to issues of religion (certainly Henrietta Maria’s primary motivation) and associated matters of national and foreign policy. Karen Britland’s discussion of the political aspects in Drama at the Courts of Henrietta Maria (2006) is characteristic of recent literary studies in the field. In fact, Henrietta Maria has become, though this has never been written, a kind of cultural counterpart to her husband, Charles i (r.1625–49), whose connoisseurship of the visual arts has been celebrated from the seventeenth century and remains a primary focus of early modern english art historians today. With Henrietta Maria’s passion for court masques, the royal couple could be interpreted as the ultimate complementary pair, male and female, english and french, Protestant and Catholic, visual arts and dramatic arts. They have become, in scholarship, a kind of embodied ut pictura poesis, although Henrietta Maria’s role is often marginalized.2 The championing of Henrietta Maria as a principal figure in the patronage, performance and content of Stuart masques by recent scholars might suggest that this was the only way the queen consort made religious-political commentary. But this was not the case; she was not just the ‘poesis’ to Charles’s ‘pictura’. art historians have largely ignored Henrietta Maria as a patron and subject of the visual arts because of Charles’ avowed (and very well documented) passion for painting. there have been no focused analyses of the body of her visual representations or studies of her patronage of art, fashion, furniture, tapestries or architecture in the way that art historians like John Peacock have closely considered the remarkable range of visual representations of the king. Van Dyck’s active role in forging a visual persona for Charles i during his years of absolute rule cannot (and has not) been underestimated in meticulous and tremendously insightful research by Oliver Millar among others.3 The figure of Van Dyck has loomed to such a point that art historical interest has been much more on the particularities of his english style and patrons than on the nature of the images he fashioned of the royal couple. On the whole, Henrietta Maria’s position in studies of Stuart art patronage has been conveniently sidelined. yet there have been a handful of art historians, namely Gabriele Finaldi, Arthur Wheelock, Jeremy Wood and Susan Alexander Sykes, who have considered Henrietta Maria’s role in this arena.4 Jerry Brotton also mentions the classic text on the subject is rensselaer W. Lee’s Ut Pictura Poesis, The Humanistic Theory of Painting (New York, 1967). 3 See particularly texts such as Jerry Brotton, The Sale of the Late King’s Goods: Charles I and His Art Collection (London, 2006), thomas n. Corns, The Royal Image: Representations of Charles I (Cambridge, 1999), Oliver Millar, The Tudor, Stuart and Early Georgian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen (London, 1963), r. Malcolm Smuts, “art and the Material Culture of Majesty in early Stuart england”, in The Stuart Court and Europe: Essays in Politics and Political Culture, ed. r. Malcolm Smuts (Cambridge, 1996), arthur K. Wheelock and Susan J. Barnes, eds, Van Dyck 350 (Hanover and London, 1994) and arthur K. Wheelock, Susan J. Barnes and Julius S. Held, eds, Anthony Van Dyck (New York, 1990). 4 See works such as: Andaleeb Badiee Banta, “A ‘Lascivious’ Painting for the Queen of england”, Apollo 159, no. 508 (2004), Karen Britland, “an Under-Stated Mother-in-Law: Marie de Médicis and the Last Caroline Court Masque”, in Women and Culture at the Courts of the Stuart Queens, ed. Clare McManus (Hampshire and New York, 2003), Gabriele Finaldi, ed., Orazio Gentileschi at the Court of Charles I (Bilbao, 1999), albert J. Loomie, “a Lost 2

Introduction

3

Henrietta Maria’s patronage and collecting in his recent exploration of Charles’ collecting: The Sale of the Late King’s Goods: Charles I and His Art Collection. While Brotton focuses primarily upon the male collectors at the Caroline court, he highlights Henrietta Maria’s independence and sophisticated knowledge of the arts and their potential in both religious and political arenas.5 yet despite the allusions made by these scholars, with the exception of Sykes, who has considered Henrietta Maria’s patronage from an iconographic point of view, the interest is largely on the male artists at court that she seems to have favoured and appears to have personally patronized: Orazio Gentileschi (1563–1639) and Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641). One might point to an anxiety in the scholarship in this respect, where Henrietta Maria’s active roles in traditionally perceived male cultural modes (like art patronage) and political influence have been undermined. This anxiety becomes vividly apparent when one compares the gender of the scholars championing her status as a dramatic patron and persona (almost exclusively female) and that of art historians whose focus is Caroline painting and patronage (almost exclusively male). the thrust of much of the literary criticism which discusses Henrietta Maria’s involvement with court masques and other theatricals is that she was part of a female courtly milieu. this view is well accommodated by research on the agency of women at early modern courts, and of specifically female networks, such as the French salon. Marie de Médicis, Lady Carlisle and the Duchesse de Chevreuse were all in Henrietta Maria’s ‘gendered-defined’ socio-cultural orbit in this respect. Through these so-called ‘politics of intimacy’ women achieved political ends through social interactions.6 One might infer from some of the art historical literature that it was quite a different scenario in the land of visual arts, patronage and representation – that this was a male-dominated arena, free from the ‘frivolous’ interests of women more interested in fashion and jewellery.7 But there is evidence, documentary and visual, to suggest that Henrietta Maria played a dynamic role in the construction of her visual persona as well. it must be admitted, though, that the temptation to subsume her role as patron into her husband’s is embedded in the nature of the documentation itself. Since Charles apparently paid for most of the couple’s artworks, the documentation itself seems to favour the male connoisseurial ideal. One published document does provide evidence of the queen’s Crucifixion by Rubens”, Burlington Magazine 138, no. 1124 (1996), Hilary Maddicott, “the Provenance of the ‘Castle Howard’ Version of Orazio Gentileschi’s ‘finding of Moses’”, The Burlington Magazine 140, no. 1139 (1998), Susan Madocks, “‘Trop de beautez decouvertes’ – new Light on Guido reni’s Late ‘Bacchus and ariadne’”, Burlington Magazine 126, no. 978 (1984), Margaret Roland, “Van Dyck’s Holy Family with Partridges: Catholic and Classical imagery at the english Court”, Artibus et Historiae 15, no. 29 (1994), Susan Alexander Sykes, “Henrietta Maria’s ‘House of Delight’: French Influence and Iconography in the Queen’s House, Greenwich”, Apollo 133 (1991). 5 Brotton, particularly pp. 161–6, 180–81 and 346. 6 David Starkey coined it for his analysis of early Tudor politics. 7 Jeremy Wood’s often quoted remark that Henrietta Maria’s ‘seriousness as a connoisseur should not be exaggerated’ supports this inference. See Wood, “Orazio Gentileschi and Some Netherlandish Artists in London: the Patronage of the Duke of Buckingham, Charles I and Henrietta Maria”, Simiolus 28 (2001): 122.

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patronage and this is Van Dyck’s Memoir, which lists paintings for which the artist was owed payment by Charles and his wife.8 This document confirms that by c.1637 at least, Henrietta Maria was meant to pay Van Dyck personally for particular art works. What has perhaps not been highlighted sufficiently is that Henrietta Maria, like other elite women, was participating in cultural conventions that were not necessarily gender-bound. Men, too, relied on complex dynastic and social networks to curry favour and make and enforce policy and they marshalled art to project and broker political power and piety. Charles i himself is an excellent case in point, but so too are Philip iV of Spain and Louis XiV of france. the point need not be stressed here because scholarship by John Peacock, Jonathan Brown and Peter Burke all demonstrate this in relation to the visual arts.9 The relationship between politics and piety is worth addressing briefly here, especially as it is relevant to Henrietta Maria. ‘revisionist’ historians such as Caroline Hibbard, Malcolm Smuts and Kevin Sharpe have discussed the latent fear of Catholicism among many English Protestants which came to breaking point in the 1630s. Hibbard and Sharpe both discuss the home that Henrietta Maria provided for Catholicism at her court and have stressed the impact of religion on the outbreak of the english civil wars.10 Acknowledgement that this was a factor that precipitated the conflict is now a commonplace in historical literature, but the nature and scope of it, and its influence on court politics and culture, has been addressed much less.11 indeed, until Michelle White’s recent rigorous examination of popular broadsheets and news reports in Henrietta Maria and the English Civil Wars, the queen’s public persona during the period was sorely neglected.12 art historical discussion of such popular imagery would be very interesting, especially as a comparison with the visual persona Henrietta Maria herself crafted with artists such as Van Dyck. If literary historians champion her, and art historians largely vilify her, murkier is her position in early modern English history. Quentin Bone defined her as an historical figure in his 1972 Queen of the Cavaliers, and as such asserted the importance of her Catholicism and its role in court politics. it is Bone’s contention that her power in such politics was over-emphasized by both Catholics and Protestants. He suggests that it actually had only a small-scale influence through social networking and had little impact on the course of Charles’ reign. He does, however, provide evidence 8 See William Hookham Carpenter, Pictorial Notices, consisting of a Memoir of Sir Anthony Van Dyck, with a descriptive catalogue of the etchings executed by him (London, 1844). 9 See Jonathan Brown, Kings and Connoisseurs: Collecting Art in Seventeenth-Century Europe (Princeton, 1995), Peter Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV (avon, 1992), John Peacock, “The Visual Image of Charles I”, in The Royal Image: Representations of Charles I, ed. thomas n. Corns (Cambridge, 1999). 10 See Caroline Hibbard, Charles I and the Popish Plot (Chapel Hill, 1983), Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (new Haven and London, 1992). 11 Hibbard and Veevers are notable exceptions to this rule. 12 Michelle a. White, Henrietta Maria and the English Civil Wars (aldershot and Burlington, 2006). See also White’s PhD thesis: “Meddlesome Henrietta Maria: the actual and Perceived Significance of Charles I’s Wife During the English Civil Wars” (York, 2001).

Introduction

5

for the perception of that impact.13 If Henrietta Maria’s political influence was all a public illusion or misunderstanding, historians are given a convenient get-out clause: they can thereby justify their fascination with the personality and reign of King Charles i in the precipitation, fury and aftermath of the locus of so much early modern English scholarship, the English civil wars. White’s book addresses this head-on, supplying strong evidence of the queen’s impact on royal policy from the late 1630s, alongside an investigation of the popular perception of her.14 it is not that the dominant revisionists such as Sharpe have disparaged or completely ignored her, but that, while she has been acknowledged as a figure of political and social importance at court, her influence has largely been seen in terms of seventeenthcentury popular perception and scholarly misunderstanding. Sharpe argues that the couple’s notorious marital harmony has deceived historians into over-stating the queen’s political influence when in fact Charles’ personal authority was not (and should not ever have been, seems to be the thinking) undermined.15 the immediate success of any historical resuscitation seems to have succeeded – at least so far – only in the realm of popular biography, where Henrietta Maria is the face of Caroline court beauty, fidelity and virtue, precisely because of this marital harmony. With her fervent Catholicism at the Protestant court, her possible political influence and her evident devotion to her husband, this French queen consort has understandably been a fascinating study for biographers, most recently alison Plowden. adopting modern ideas of marital morality and ideal femininity (in the face of patriarchy and religious diversity), twentieth-century (female) biographers have embraced her as a heroine for courage and fidelity at a court where so many people had extramarital affairs. it is perhaps because such biographers are largely reliant on male historians that they propagate the idea that Henrietta Maria was intrinsically apolitical, under-educated and frivolous. However, if literary and political historians at least agree that the queen’s politicism was largely determined by her faith, and accept that it was articulated socially and culturally, we can now begin to understand more precisely how this was so. for this emergent understanding, we are largely indebted to Caroline Hibbard’s research and the brilliant literary historical studies of Sophie tomlinson and erica Veevers, which are well informed by historical context and documentation.16 faith was central to Henrietta Maria’s dynastic identity. While religious allegiance might succumb to political expediency in many cases in early modern england, it did not in the case of Charles or Henrietta Maria. neither altered their steadfast positions on matters of religious devotion, even in the face of tremendous pressure from family, courtiers and international leaders who were wealthier and far more 13

1972).

Quentin Bone, Henrietta Maria: Queen of the Cavaliers (Urbana, Chicago and London,

White, Henrietta Maria and the English Civil Wars. Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I, particularly pp. 171–3. 16 See texts such as: Britland, “an Under-Stated Mother-in-Law: Marie de Médicis and the Last Caroline Court Masque”, Caroline Hibbard, Charles I and the Popish Plot, Hibbard, “Henrietta Maria” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, alison Plowden, Henrietta Maria: Charles I’s Indomitable Queen (Stroud, 2001). 14 15

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politically powerful than them. One might conclude, therefore, that it was matters of faith rather than matters of politics that principally motivated them both, and that this was, for strategic reasons, often articulated culturally in political allegory, providing a convenient, generic veneer of state harmony and prosperity. in sum, their politics were related to their piety: Henrietta Maria tried to use her Catholic position to benefit Charles politically through social and dynastic networking; and she announced her Catholicism in cultural forms at a time when it looked most likely to reap political benefits for her husband in the form of assistance from the Pope.17 if this volume insists, then, on Henrietta Maria’s importance as a political figure who attempted to shape court politics through her cultural patronage of and representation in art, drama and music, this is based on the understanding that her piety was, ironically, her principal political tool. Her femininity, too, was marshalled as a political instrument, in the sense that marriage and lineage were so central to early modern ideals of the state. But she also challenged notions of exclusively male political strategies and personae. She was, of course, a woman, but occasionally she performed roles that were traditionally masculine, and, like her male counterparts, she understood the potential of verbal and written manipulation and threats to achieve her ends. if she was just a frivolous woman interested in the theatre, fancy clothes and extravagant jewellery, then why did she sell the bulk of her jewels for her husband’s cause?18 Why did she campaign so vociferously, even in the face of Bourbon family loyalty, for Stuart primacy? and while she was apparently perfectly happy with Van Dyck’s paradigmatic portrayal of her as the ideal court beauty in the 1630s, why did she later model herself as “her she-majesty generalissima” in a private letter written during the civil wars,19 a strikingly vivid assumption of the male, martial role, visually akin to the strident equestrian portraits of Charles?20 She also performed as an amazon in William Davenant’s 1640 masque, Salmacida Spolia. it seems to me that she did all of this with the ultimate goal, not of personal self-preservation, but in the genuine hopes of a Catholic england with Charles at the helm. the essays in this volume all follow a common theme in the early modern ‘dialogue’ among historians, literary scholars and art historians – that culture in early modern England was never truly apolitical. I have been tremendously influenced in the development of this volume by thomas Corns’ admirable collection of essays on Charles i, The Royal Image, Representations of Charles I (1999). i hope Henrietta Maria: Piety, Politics and Patronage offers a similar view of the queen consort’s for instance, she attempted to raise money from various Catholic countries during the english civil wars in order to increase her husband’s fortunes: “all the assistance that i get from france to send you, is from the Catholics, as a sort of bribe to assist the Catholics of england”. Quoted in Hibbard, “Henrietta Maria”, ODNB. 18 See Henrietta Maria’s letters describing her attempts to raise funds in Mary anne everett Green, Letters of Queen Henrietta Maria (London, 1857), pp. 63–5. 19 Henrietta Maria referred to herself by this title in a letter sent on 27 June 1643. Green, Letters of Queen Henrietta Maria, p. 222. 20 She is given quite a different role in rubens’ St George and the Dragon in which she is portrayed as the helpless princess, rescued by her knight in shining armour, Charles. However, she was not involved in commissioning this image. 17

Introduction

7

cultural politics, with a consideration of the visual, dramatic and literary arts, and music, with a strong interdisciplinary dialogue among the contributors. edited interdisciplinary volumes on early modern english culture and female involvement in it so often (and perhaps understandably) foreground drama. The thinking seems to be that if an elite woman is not a political powerhouse or religious figurehead in the traditional monarchical sense, she can be re-fashioned as a cultural icon. Outstanding collections on Stuart women edited by Clare McManus and David Bevington/Peter Holbrook are worth singling out for their sophisticated and sensitive treatment of literature and theatre, yet such collections ignore or perhaps implicitly diminish Stuart queens as vital patrons of other forms of culture, especially visual art and music in the case of Henrietta Maria.21 Modern academic emphasis on interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity is opening up more avenues of enquiry and therefore widening the ways in which we might consider early modern queens. the essays here cast a wider net on Stuart culture, though admittedly not without leaving big gaps to be filled by future scholarship. The organization of the volume reflects this understanding of mutually beneficial dialogue across disciplines, with ‘conversations’ on closely linked methods used to articulate power at court: social networks, dynastic links, visual arts, dramatic arts and music. The sub-title, then, ‘piety, politics, patronage’ is both a reference to Henrietta Maria’s individual contributions to each arena and an assertion of their mutual interdependence. this is done in an effort to avoid the distinction of politics and piety among the players at court, and to affirm the role of patronage and performance in all of it. the collection begins with two essays that address the theme of ‘intimacy’, a term used here to refer to the intimate social networks through which women (as well as men) were often able to negotiate power. Malcolm Smuts revisits Henrietta Maria’s role in the events leading up to the civil wars, especially the years 1637–41. instead of arguing that the queen naturally, and consistently, favoured Catholic alliances throughout this period, Smuts unravels the extremely complex alliances that were forged across confessional boundaries. These intimate networks or political alliances were motivated as much by friendship and familial ties as by religion. Henrietta Maria herself was also a pawn in some of these machinations, particularly by french players such as Cardinal richelieu. Smuts thus presents a political arena where religion could at times be a subject of negotiation, if there were to be substantial gains. His picture of Caroline court politics in this period is, moreover, not a paint-bynumbers scenario with consistent segregation across confessional boundaries. this is not to say that Charles and Henrietta Maria were not steadfast in their religions, just that they could accept others if it meant significant gains from them. If Smuts makes his case through a close study of archival material related to ‘high’ court politics, Diana Barnes considers ierome Hainhofer’s translation of Jacques du Bosque’s The Secretary of Ladies, a collection of letters exchanged between fictional female friends written in a French style. Both Smuts and Barnes recognize the predominance of personal relationships within politics, accepting too Clare McManus, ed., Women and Culture at the Court of the Stuart Queens (New York, 2003), and David Bevington and Peter Holbrook, eds, The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque (Cambridge and New York, 1998). 21

8

Henrietta Maria

that men negotiate power in comparable ways, and Barnes highlights letter-writing as one of the best mechanisms through which men and women could express their political positions during the seventeenth century. as Barnes points out, letter-writing was the closest form of written expression to informal speech. Making speeches was synonymous with politics and participation in the public arena, so letters provided a means for the writer to become involved in the vita activa. above all, Barnes’ essay highlights that the discourse fostered by letter-writing was intrinsically political. as women were largely excluded from forms of public political address, letters were the only real means through which they could affect court politics. Within letters, women could escape familial obligations and fully express their own positions. thus, letter-writing was attractive to elite seventeenth-century women because it allowed them greater freedom of expression. interestingly, if a woman was to convert to Catholicism, she was more likely to be able to take on a more active role in the roman Church than was possible if she had remained with the Church of england. The Secretary of Ladies, as Barnes examines in her essay, provided a model for conversions. as it was published at a time when conversions to Catholicism were at an all-time high and generating considerable controversy, Barnes views the volume as addressing these events. at a time when female authority was often feared, this book, which promoted conversions to a banned religion and facilitated greater expression of feminine views, would not have been well received by all. So yet again, the interconnections between religion, female authority and the arts are made apparent in this chapter. Karen Britland’s essay also emphasizes the relationship between gender and politics, in its focus on Henrietta Maria’s patronage of court theatricals, especially during the 1633–34 and the 1634–35 seasons. Britland suggests, for instance, that when Shakespeare’s Richard III was performed for Henrietta Maria’s twenty-fourth birthday it was used to warn the young queen consort against becoming involved in her french family’s political intrigues. in its connections to the Henry VI plays, Richard III acknowledges that women could be influential political figures, but concludes, through the juxtaposition of the dispossessed Margaret of anjou with the youthful Princess elizabeth, that the most appropriate role for a young queen consort to take up is that of a mother and dynastic peace-maker. Despite what Richard III – organized by Charles – might suggest, Britland acknowledges that women, particularly Henrietta Maria, could have a more substantial impact on politics. Moreover, her discussion reveals that Henrietta Maria’s male contemporaries were aware of her influence. Her French associates, including richelieu and Louis Xiii, her brother, were in fact so aware of this that they attempted to use and abuse her position at the english court, as is made evident by their involvement in her theatrical patronage. floridor, one of the players discussed in Britland’s text, was probably explicitly sent to england by Henrietta Maria’s french relatives to encourage the queen consort to turn from her pro-Spanish agenda and instead support the French. Britland makes it clear that Henrietta Maria knew of these attempts by her countrymen, but that she was equally happy to manipulate the dramatic arts to promote her own agenda.

Introduction

9

the next essay also examines the manner in which the theatrical arts provided an outlet for the expression of political ideas and values. Sarah Poynting analyses Walter Montagu’s play, The Shepherds’ Paradise, which was performed by the queen and some of her female companions in 1633, and which was one of the first plays known to have been performed by a royal woman in England. The play explores the dynamics of female political power and the subtle relationship between gender and authority in a pastoral community in the forest, a place ruled by a queen who was elected by other women. However, when the queen falls in love and rejects her vows of celibacy, the balance of power is altered and it is only restored when a new queen is elected. alongside most plays performed at the Caroline court, love, beauty, power and gender are discussed as though they were all part of the same continuum. Poynting reveals that Montagu’s play can be seen as recognition of the power that women had at court, but she also explains the limitations placed on them by men. as is discussed in Barnes’ contribution to this volume, women were most likely to make a moral contribution to court life and politics. thus while Poynting examines a literary genre, she reaches similar conclusions to other authors here: women could be influential figures at court, but they operated through different means – usually the visual and theatrical arts. Jessica Bell’s essay considers another all-important relationship among elite women: dynastic connections. the dynastic continuity of the male blood line was central to the assumption and transferral of power in the early modern period. This dynastic model was taken on by historians with history centred on the male Stuarts, Bourbons and Habsburgs, where queen consorts and their former familial ties were largely subsumed into the dynastic identity of their husband-king. While their dynastic ties could be invoked for prestige or be manipulated for economical and political purposes, these displaced queens were often forced to assimilate or temper their former dynastic ties. If scholars (and kings themselves) have long showcased this male dynastic model, very little attention has been paid to dynastic ties on the maternal line and a queen’s desire to transport her culture to her adoptive court.22 Bell’s essay considers the cultural-dynastic connections between Henrietta Maria and her mother, Marie de Médicis (1573–1642). a study of Henrietta Maria’s daughter, Henrietta anne, would also be a welcome contribution to this study. it may perhaps be significant that both Henrietta Maria and Henrietta Anne were the youngest daughters and grew up without knowing their fathers, and both children were instilled with their mothers’ great hopes for the ‘true religion’. Bell explores this maternal connection in a discussion of Marie’s immense impact on Henrietta Maria’s faith and religious observance and how this shaped the younger queen consort’s collecting and patronage. Her discussion focuses on Marian imagery as the Virgin was the most important Catholic heroine. in particular, 22 See particularly Mara R. Wade, “The Queen’s Courts: Anna of Denmark and her Royal Sisters – Cultural agency at four northern european Courts in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries”, in Women and Culture at the Courts of the Stuart Queens, ed. Clare McManus (New York, 2003), as well as Magdalena S. Sánchez, The Empress, the Queen and the Nun: Women and Power at the Court of Philip III of Spain (Baltimore and London, 1998).

10

Henrietta Maria

it explores how Henrietta Maria used her french Catholic heritage to create a visual persona in england that would emphasize her personal identity, but at the same time would conform to the environment of her adoptive court. in foregrounding the visual arts in this assertion of matrilineage in the early modern period, it can be concluded that women were able to draw on the specifically female familial connections in order to pursue a cultural programme in their adoptive courts. Patronage is also at the heart of Caroline Hibbard’s important study of Henrietta Maria’s patronage of the visual arts. Hibbard’s essay, which is based on a scrupulous study of financial records, provides further evidence of the hierarchy of material goods at the court, with textiles being at the top, and painting awarded much lower sums far below. She foregrounds the problems inherent in trying to distinguish the queen’s and king’s patronage, arguing, ‘In the work of dynastic patronage, as in the dynastic enterprise generally, individuals are seldom wholly dominant or wholly submerged.’ in documenting the queen’s sponsorship and payment of a fantastic array of artists and artisans, Hibbard is therefore careful not to submerge the traditional prominence of Charles as patron. instead she insists on the queen’s role as patron as well. With much of the materials of magnificence destroyed, worn out, or subsumed anonymously into the public domain, the importance of such a ‘paper trail’ is highlighted as a fundamental tool for the historian. as Hibbard highlights, the study of Stuart court culture would be well rewarded by careful study of jewellery and dress in surviving documents, rather than relying solely on what can be gleaned from paintings. the potential for paintings as visual documents of Henrietta Maria’s patronage and visual personae is showcased in Gudrun raatschen’s essay. Concluding that Henrietta Maria’s role in portraits was not ‘merely ornamental’, raatchen argues that the portraits provided a medium in which the queen consort’s virtues, such as her Platonic beauty, successful marriage and fertility, could be celebrated. Moreover, they also subtly suggested her Catholicism. all of these qualities were an integral part of Henrietta Maria’s courtly personae, as well as her political role. erin Griffey’s essay is also concerned with the examination of the visual persona of Henrietta Maria. Her argument hinges on the potential significance of the appearance (or absence) of devotional jewellery in her portraits from 1625 to 1641. Her analysis reveals that portraits featuring devotional jewellery congregate around 1636, the year of the opening of her spectacular chapel at Somerset House. She considers the patronage and display of these images, and the extent to which they may have participated in or responded to historical events of the period. Griffey’s essay, like Hibbard’s, calls into question recent conjecture that the queen was neither a connoisseur nor a patron in her own right, and indicates that the queen understood the power of portraiture, in this case as an arena to promote (or downplay, where necessary) a religious agenda that was still closely tied to politics. finally, Jonathan Wainwright’s examination of music manuscripts, court records and book payments further enhances our understanding of the queen’s versatile interests as patron. Beyond showing her keen interest in music (akin to her husband), Wainwright also suggests how her taste for sacred music was informed by her piety. Just as the queen staged her Catholicism in some visual portraits, especially from c.1636, so too does she appear to have showcased her allegiance to the Virgin in the

Introduction

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sacred music performed in her chapels. Jonathan Wainwright suggests that the queen patronized progressive sacred music for her chapel at St James, under the aegis of her organist richard Hering. Wainwright provides a compelling theory, based on surviving music manuscripts and details of their patron and scribe, that contemporary italian sacred music may well have been performed at her Somerset House Chapel after Hering’s death in 1630. the conclusion that up-to-date roman Catholic music – particularly in honour of the Virgin, her patron saint – was probably performed in the Queen’s Chapel may seem self-evident, but with scarce evidence about the nature of music performed there, Wainwright provides very fruitful speculation that accords well both with what we know about the queen’s piety, and with efforts to stage it in her portraits around the same time as the opening of the Somerset House Chapel. if these essays all insist on a dialogue across piety, politics and patronage, both in historical events and in the art works that participate in and inform these events, they also question the nature of this dialogue for an elite woman, and more specifically, the Catholic Queen Henrietta Maria at the court of Charles i. the years of the 1630s were the heydays of the queen’s dialogue in this respect, the period in which she had the most power to influence the status of English Catholics and to curry international financial support. Other areas that could be fruitfully explored include the queen’s patronage of architecture and involvement with the decorative arts from the 1630s, and also after 1641. indeed, the period following her dramatic departure to Holland on 23 february 1642 is largely untouched by scholars and would form a fascinating comparison with material patronage and religious and political machinations at the english court in the 1630s. research examining the shared iconographic features of elite women at early modern courts would also be particularly welcome, such as visual and cultural connections among the archduchess isabella, Marie de Médicis, Henrietta Maria and Anne of Denmark, or even the cross-fertilization of visual imagery from Henrietta Maria to portraits of elite women across broad confessional lines. Moreover, the tendency to focus on a single historical figure like Henrietta Maria in comparison with male political-cultural leaders proves limiting to studies of early modern women. the dynastic, cultural, political, social and religious dialogue among women is indebted to the template of male power yet distinct from it. Henrietta Maria, the historical figure, the visual subject, the allegorical figure in masques, should not be treated by scholars as a passive observer in the dramatically related political, religious and cultural events of her day. She actively performed on a multitude of powerful public stages, including intimate alliances, written letters, performed plays, canvas paintings, marble sculptures and played music. Such performances were motivated to a large extent by the ability of women to participate in politics and piety through intimacy and material culture. Being a woman influenced her historical position and reputation, and traditionally it has informed the scholarship on Caroline court material culture, which largely attributes the magnificence and machinations to Charles. the authors here do not down-play Charles, but they bring his queen consort back on stage, and thus return to the symmetry of Van Dyck’s famous portraits of the royal couple.

Chapter 1

religion, european Politics and Henrietta Maria’s Circle, 1625–41 Malcolm Smuts

this chapter re-examines the story of Henrietta Maria’s ‘faction’ within the court of Charles i, incorporating new research in french and english archives.1 in doing so, it attempts to connect a political narrative to wider aspects of cultural and religious history, in ways that illuminate the highly cosmopolitan character of seventeenthcentury court societies and the consequent tendency for affairs in one country to become entangled with those in others. Court poets and artists of the 1630s crafted an image of Henrietta Maria as a symbol of chaste beauty, monogamous love and harmony. in the partisan political cultures of the 1640s she became by turns a cavalier heroine and malignant villain, the reputed patron of a Papist and libertine faction blamed for all the grievances Parliament’s supporters lodged against Charles i. We might interpret these images as rhetorical constructs that tell us more about seventeenth-century propaganda than about how politics really worked. But I will argue that we can tease out connections between the imagery that developed around Henrietta Maria and the way she conducted herself as a french Catholic queen within england’s Protestant court. Her story opens an illuminating window onto the complex relations between court culture, dynastic squabbles, secular political interests and religion in Britain and europe during the era of the thirty years War. it shows why religion was so divisive but also why this divisiveness depended at least as much on specific connections between confessional alignments and secular politics as on religious belief in itself. 1 from the time of her arrival in Dover in 1625, aged 15, Henrietta Maria found her position complicated by divergent priorities rooted in the conditions of her marriage. Like all royal matches, hers had been concluded to serve the strategic objectives of two dynastic states. for the Stuarts, a french marriage represented a less attractive alternative to the preferred option of a Spanish Match, which they had pursued unsuccessfully from 1618 to 1623. The Spanish alliance had, in turn, become linked to James I’s efforts to broker a negotiated settlement of the Thirty Years War and 1 Thereby revisiting the subject of my first article, R. Malcolm Smuts, “The Puritan followers of Henrietta Maria in the 1630s”, English Historical Review (1978): 26–45.

Henrietta Maria

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the peaceful restitution of the lands of his son-in-law, Frederick V, Elector Palatine, which Catholic armies had overrun between 1620 and 1622. James’ negotiations with Spain limited the military assistance he could provide Frederick, much to the disgust of many Protestant Britons. to please Spain, James also eased restrictions on english Catholics, while suppressing critical Puritan sermons and pamphlets. Since these measures were disliked not only by a large segment of the English population, but by several of James’ own privy councillors, they had significant ramifications in domestic politics. they effectively scuttled what little hope remained of paying the king’s debts by a large parliamentary grant, thereby magnifying the importance of a large Spanish dowry. Within the royal court, they led to the eclipse of staunchly antiSpanish figures, like the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbot, and the rise of others with very different views, like Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, a nobleman sympathetic to Catholicism who had enjoyed a Spanish pension since 1614.2 Prince Charles’ entourage changed as well, with the replacement of his Scottish secretary, thomas Murray, who opposed the Match, by francis Cottington, who had represented the english court in Madrid for much of the previous decade.3 The greatest odium for these changes fell on the royal favourite, Buckingham, whose support for the Spanish alliance compounded resentment caused by his sudden rise to power and the riches James had heaped upon him and his family. The support of Spain and Hispanophiles on the Council provided Buckingham with his only shield, apart from the king’s affection, against the manoeuvres of court rivals and popular hatred. The French ambassador in London thought Buckingham so exposed that he had little choice but to attempt to destroy the political strength of ‘puritans’, who had become his irreconcilable enemies, by supporting a rival faction of Catholics and Spanish pensioners.4 and yet in 1623, after travelling to Madrid to negotiate the Match in person, Buckingham and Charles reversed their position by advocating a breach with Spain and war to restore the Palatinate. this decision alienated many of their former allies on the Council, but made possible an alliance with anti-Spanish groups that had recently been the duke’s bitter enemies.5 Unfortunately, Buckingham and Charles still had to reckon with James, who dreaded a general european war of religion and made it clear that he would contemplate for the pension see the online catalogue entry for real Biblioteca (Madrid) mss. ii/2185, doc.29 (http://realbiblioteca.patrimonionacional.es). 3 for Murray, see my article in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004). 4 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale [hereafter Bn], fonds français [fo. fr.] 15989, fo. 29: ‘Les puritains ont rendu le seigneur Monsieur de Buckingham espagnol car voyant qu’ils lui faisaient la guerre il a cru ne pouvoir prendre un appui assuré contre eux sinon dans le mariage d’espagne. L’affaire est hasardeuse mais non pas sans apparence de raison.’ 5 The Spanish ambassador thought that by March 1624 Buckingham’s inner circle included two peers – Southampton and Oxford – previously imprisoned for their vigorous opposition to the Match, and the Earl of Warwick, a patron of Puritan clergy and owner of a fleet of privateers, in addition to Bridgewater, Rochefort, Andover and Baron Cromwell. Online catalogue of the real Biblioteca, Madrid, description of ii2172, doc. 60 (Colona dispatch of 8 March 1624). the best account of the policy reversal is thomas Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution: Politics and the Coming of War 1623–1624 (Cambridge, 1989). 2

Religion, European Politics and Henrietta Maria’s Circle, 1625–41

15

war with Spain only if he had an alliance with Spain’s traditional Catholic enemy, France. Two Buckingham protégés – James Hay, Viscount Doncaster (later Earl of Carlisle), and Henry rich, Lord Kensington (created earl of Holland during the negotiations), were therefore dispatched to Paris to negotiate a match with Henrietta Maria, the youngest sister of Louis Xiii. the french politics surrounding the marriage were almost equally convoluted. Some figures in Paris, including the rising minister Richelieu, wanted an English alliance against Spain and saw Buckingham as a natural ally. They also hoped the marriage alliance would not only deter english support for Huguenot rebellions but win english help in suppressing Huguenot privateers, commanded by the Duc de Soubise. Buckingham agreed to help, arranging to lend Louis XIII eight large warships and at one point offering the use of the full British fleet’s might to scour the french coast.6 By contrast, a powerful dévot group sympathetic to Spain at the french court, backed by the queen mother, Marie de Médicis, supported the match primarily for religious reasons, seeing it as an opportunity to obtain more lenient treatment for english Catholics and a step toward england’s reconciliation with rome.7 Before leaving Paris, Henrietta Maria was exhorted by her mother, her confessor and Pope Urban Viii to demonstrate her commitment to her faith and proselytize on its behalf. To obtain a papal dispensation and show that they had not sacrificed religion for political expediency, the french demanded the same concessions of toleration for english Catholics that Spain had obtained before its negotiations with the Stuart court broke down. Although the English agreed only in secret articles, the French believed they had obtained the suspension of penal laws and sought to use this victory to win credit in rome and among english Catholics.8 But, as rumours of these concessions spread in england, they antagonized the very groups Charles and Buckingham needed to cultivate in order to win support for war against Spain.9 The adolescent princess therefore found herself thrust into the tricky position of fostering a military alliance with British Protestants, while simultaneously acting 6 archive du Ministère des affaires etrangères, Paris (hereafter aae), Correspondance Politique Angleterre (CPA), v. 32, fos 316r, 341r, v. 33, fo. 29v, 70, 92 (Effiat to Richelieu, 30 March 1625: ‘Cette grande flotte [anglaise] essuyant nos cottes nous pouvons [illegible] jusques dan le canal de La rochelle et en tous les iles et endroits où monsieur de Soubise pourrait à voir retraite ou, s’ils le rencontrent en mer, ils lui bruleront tous ses vaisseaux, les mettront au fonds, et le pourraient lui même prendre prisonnier et [je] ne crains point de dire à vous la chant que cela ne passera pas plus loin que Buckingham m’a donné parole qu’il fera ce qu’il pourra pour le faire trouver bon au roi d’angleterre et qu’il serait fort aisé de faire cette galanterie en arrivant en france.’) 7 françoise Hildesheimer, Richelieu (Paris, 2004), p. 130. 8 aae CPav. 33, fo. 18; cf. v. 32, fos 19v, 24, 29r–v, 30, 70r 112r–v. the french also gained the concession of the appointment of a Catholic bishop in the queen’s household. 9 a good discussion of this dilemma can be found in Conrad russell, Parliaments and English Politics, 1621–1629 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 206–16. for an example of anxieties aroused by the dispensation, see British Library Trumbull Mss. 7 (old classification), fo. 174. The French ambassador, Effiat, wanted the marriage consummated before Parliament convened, since he anticipated attacks on the religious articles. Since members no longer feared a Spanish match they felt free to attack concessions to France (AAE CPA34, fo. 189).

Henrietta Maria

16

as a champion of Catholicism in London. not surprisingly she failed to meet this challenge. the problem was not simply that her french household, which included Oratorian priests who saw themselves as Counter reformation missionaries, persuaded her to engage in provocative actions, allegedly including taking her ladies on a pilgrimage to honour priests executed at tyburn as martyrs.10 although this behaviour certainly antagonized Protestants, including Charles, the fundamental difficulty was that Buckingham soon came to regard the marriage as a political liability that he needed to neutralize through punitive acts against Catholics. a french manuscript collection not previously used by historians of england sheds fresh light on the story from the perspective of the queen’s entourage and the government in Paris. In late August 1625, the earls of Pembroke and Arundel privately told the queen’s almoner, richelieu’s nephew the Bishop of Mende, that the leaders of the recently convened session of Parliament were determined to attack Buckingham by investigating his mishandling of funds appropriated for the royal fleet. A few days later Mende reported that Buckingham attempted to ‘appease the mutiny’ by meeting privately with parliamentary leaders and offering to ‘chase the french [out of england] and renew persecution of Catholics’.11 the rejection of this offer merely strengthened the favourite’s conviction that the french marriage had damaged him politically, causing him to turn on the queen’s household with vindictive fury.12 In an effort to appease Parliament, Buckingham and the king repudiated the secret articles of the marriage treaty – saying they had been granted merely to obtain a dispensation from the Pope, without any intention of being put into effect – and stepped up enforcement of the laws against recusancy.13 Buckingham had also begun sparring with the queen and the French government as he attempted to insert his own female relatives and the wives of his clients into her bedchamber. The French initially agreed to consider admitting the duke’s Catholic mother-in-law and wife but firmly resisted the intrusion of his Protestant sister, Susan, Countess of Denbigh. In retaliation Buckingham provoked a quarrel with one of the queen’s french attendants and accused Mende of fomenting court

The French denied that this incident ever took place (AAE CPA39, fos 209v–210r). On this subject generally, see Caroline Hibbard, “translating royalty: Henrietta Maria and the transition from Princess to Queen”, The Court Historian 5 (2000): 15–29. 11 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale Dupuy 403, 22 and 37. ‘nous apprenons des comtes d’Arundel et de Pembroke, personnes puissantes dans le Parlement et intelligents aux affaires d’angleterre que ledit Parlement est résolu avant que de donner les subsides de demander compte de l’argent qui a été levé devant pour trouver dans le mauvaise employ.’ the letter is undated but was written in August 1625, evidently after August 15. At this time, the king and duke still hoped for supply; Arundel and Pembroke were, in effect, warning Mende that it was unlikely to be forthcoming. 12 ibid., fo. 37v. 13 Ibid., fos 42, 261, 264. ‘Il y a six jours que le Parlement est assemblé Buckingham n’a rien oublié pour en apaiser leur mutiné, ayant offert secrètement aux principaux députés de chasser les français pour les contenter et renouveler les persécutions contre les Catholiques … [néanmoins] le Parlement est résolu de ne le pas prendre [ces offres] et de poursuivre sa ruine, quelques députés de la Chambre Basse déclarer ouvertement contre lui …’. 10

Religion, European Politics and Henrietta Maria’s Circle, 1625–41

17

intrigues against him.14 ‘We have no worse enemy’, Mende concluded.15 Henrietta Maria dispatched one of her servants to Paris to report on the worsening situation and seek fresh instructions. But at virtually the same moment, Richelieu wrote to a ministerial colleague about the need to send an ambassador to London quickly, to give Buckingham secret offers of assistance ‘both from the King [of France] and the Queen of england’ before Charles dissolved Parliament. a few days later Louis Xiii himself wrote to Mende that ‘one of the principle affairs is to consider by what means one can oblige the Duke.’16 the divergent goals that different groups in the french court hoped to promote through Henrietta Maria’s marriage had collided, putting her in an impossible position.17 For another year, Buckingham and Charles continued their attacks on the queen’s Catholic household, while she tried to fight back, in part by forming alliances with the duke’s English enemies. As England’s relations with France worsened markedly during the winter and Buckingham threatened to go to war in support of the Huguenots,18 the french government gradually became more supportive of her efforts to weaken the duke. In December of 1625, John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, secretly passed information to Mende about english assistance to Soubise and advised him on diplomatic strategy.19 the following month, the french ambassador in London, Blainville, reported that ‘some englishmen’ had begun investigating Buckingham’s mistreatment of the queen and her household, with the intention of compiling ‘mémoires contre lui’.20 although he does not say so, the queen and her servants probably cooperated with these efforts. When a parliament convened in March and showed itself sympathetic to France and hostile to Buckingham, Blainville suggested that the queen should assist its leaders, specifically by cooperating with ‘the Earl of Arundel [and] the houses of Lennox and Pembroke’, which had joined forces to bring down the duke. These English aristocrats, in turn, wanted to confer with the french government on how to conduct their campaign.21 a few days later the Earl and Countess of Arundel and the Countess of Lennox provoked Charles by 14

241v.

aae CPa33, fos 204r, 212r, 212v, 214r, 220r, 223r, 274, 275; CPa35, fo. 45r–v, 231,

Bn Dupuy 403, fo. 37v. Bn Dupuy 403, fo. 25 (richelieu to Villeneuve, 21 august 1625) and 70 (Louis Xiii to Mende, 3 September 1625); cf. aae CPa33, fo. 278r; Cf. aae CPa36, fos 29v–32 on the efforts of the Paris government to patch up relations with Buckingham in August 1625 and 61v, 62v and 65v for the continuation of these efforts in October. 17 Compare the very different account of the Oxford session of the 1625 Parliament in Conrad russell, Parliament and English Politics, 1621–1629 (Oxford, 1979). russell concluded that by the autumn, at the very latest, the duke believed that Pembroke and Arundel had encouraged the Commons to refuse grants of supply as a way of attacking him. But he found no ‘independent’ evidence to verify these suspicions and concluded they were ill founded. Mende’s letters indicate that, at the very least, the two earls anticipated a difficult session, whether or not they actively encouraged the Commons leaders. 18 aae CPa36, fos 339v, 340 (Blainville to Louis Xiii, 31 January 1626). 19 aae CPa36, 245v. 20 aae CPa36, fo. 328. 21 ibid., 369v–370. 15 16

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permitting a marriage between their children without his knowledge or consent. The queen tried to intercede on their behalf but succeeded only in further aggravating her husband. although he initially showed only mild annoyance over the marriage, Blainville reported, after the queen’s intercession the king ordered Arundel imprisoned in the Tower and the two countesses confined to house arrest.22 this suggests that the ostensible reason for arundel’s punishment may have mattered less to Charles than his growing awareness that two great aristocratic dynasties and his own wife had joined forces against his favourite. Mende had meanwhile gone to Paris to receive secret verbal instructions.23 In working with Buckingham’s enemies to encourage his impeachment, Henrietta Maria and her household were therefore almost certainly pursuing the policy of richelieu and Louis Xiii.24 Her behaviour must have reinforced the conviction Charles and Buckingham had already formed that the french wanted to erect a ‘cabal’ in england, much as Spain had done a few years before. this can only have strengthened their determination to get rid of her meddlesome servants and replace them with english courtiers loyal to themselves.25 for several more months Henrietta Maria resisted her husband’s efforts to bully her into accepting the Protestant wives of Buckingham and his allies as ladies of her bedchamber, in express violation of the marriage treaty.26 in august, Charles gave up arguing, ordered Buckingham to drive his wife’s French servants from the country, and reordered her bedchamber without her consent. following this defeat she finally tried to mend fences with the duke, whose own hostility had softened once he realized that attacks on her household had not appeased his ‘puritan’ enemies.27 as Mende told the french ministry, and as everyone else must have realized, the queen’s enmity represented a serious threat to Buckingham.28 to counter this threat 22 AAE CPA36, 377v. Blainville reported that, although the king seemed only slightly offended at first, after his wife’s pleas he clapped the earl in the Tower and placed the two countesses under house arrest. 23 ibid., fos 382v–383. 24 TNA PRO 31/3/63, fos 24, 40. In April 1626, Mende reported that, although the king was threatening parliamentary sanctions against the queen’s french servants, Parliament had actually ‘defended us’ (ibid., fo. 58). russell believed not only that the queen’s household was the chief source of the conspiracy against him (Parliaments and Politics, p. 268). this appears to be an exaggeration. 25 Bn Dupuy 403, fo. 123, Blainville to Villemarcher, 25 October 1625: ‘Vous saurez donc qu’on vous tient dans cette court pour un trompeur, un home sans foi, et faiseur de cabales dans les états d’autrui.’ 26 although she did agree to accept the (Catholic) Countess of arundel and the Countess of Lennox. tna PrO31/3/63, fo. 63; Bn Dupuy 403, fos 121 and 310 and Calendar of State Papers Venetian v. 19, p. 434. for the queen’s sullen reaction to the expulsion, see tna SP16/33/30. 27 TNA SP16/67/105 (Goring to Buckingham, 25 June 1627) and SP16/75/83 E. Ashburnham to Buckingham, August? 1627; BL Harleian Mss. 6988, fo. 34 (Charles to Buckingham, 13 August 1627). As early as January, Buckingham had offered to serve as a political mentor to the queen, a proposal Mende advised her to decline (Bn Dupuy, fo. 351). 28 BN Dupuy 403, fo. 351. Mende claimed that the duke’s enemies were keeping track of all his offenses against the queen ‘pour en faire des mémoires contre lui’.

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he filled her household with his own dependants, so that her political network largely overlapped his own. the strategy succeeded: most of Henrietta Maria’s english allies and associates for the remainder of the reign were former Buckingham protégés or younger men connected to those protégés. they included her Chamberlain, the earl of Dorset, her Master of the Horse, George Goring, and her Mistress of the Robes, Susan, Countess of Denbigh, who finally succeeded in joining the queen’s household,29 along with several Buckingham clients who had helped negotiate her marriage, notably Holland, Walter Montagu and Henry Jermyn.30 Karen Britland has recently shown that Buckingham also managed to co-opt some of the queen’s french attendants, named Madame de Vantelet and Madame Coignet, who escaped the 1626 purge.31 the queen formed a relationship as well with a young frenchman, the Chevalier de Jars, who had sought refuge in england after a failed conspiracy at the french court, becoming a companion and tennis partner of Charles i. During early 1627, she worked closely with Jars in unsuccessful efforts to prevent war between Britain and france.32 in the spring of the same year, Henrietta Maria also formed a friendship with one of her new Protestant bedchamber servants: Buckingham’s mistress, Lucy, Countess of Carlisle. Lady Carlisle gained the queen’s friendship by taking her to private suppers with aristocratic women who were not part of the favourite’s network, while excluding the duke’s own wife and sister, who were furious at the snub.33 One gossip predicted in early 1628 that Carlisle would soon be banished from court, ‘for both the Duke’s mother, his lady and his sister do hate her even to death, not only for my Lord Duke’s lying with her but also for that she has the queen’s heart above them all, so as in comparison she valueth them at nothing’.34 But Carlisle remained in such high favour that when she contracted smallpox it proved difficult to restrain Henrietta Maria from endangering her own health by visiting her bedside.35 the young queen no doubt felt grateful to the countess for rescuing her from her isolation and loneliness after the expulsion of her french household. But she probably also regarded Carlisle as a sophisticated older friend and mentor. a daughter of the ‘wizard’ earl of northumberland who had married a Scottish courtier-diplomat, Lady Carlisle had a formidable reputation for her beauty, sharp wit and skill in collecting male admirers through whom she wielded political influence. Even sober politicians respected her astuteness. ‘i judge her to be very considerable’, thomas Wentworth 29 On this point, see Caroline Hibbard, “the role of a Queen Consort: the Household of the Court of Henrietta Maria, 1625–1642”, in Princes, Patronage and the Nobility: The Court at the Beginning of the Modern Age, c. 1450–1650, ed. Ronald Asch and Adolf M. Birke (Oxford, 1991), pp. 409–13. 30 She did not generally get along well with former Buckingham clients friendly to Spain, however, such as William Laud and richard Weston. 31 Karen Britland, Drama at the Courts of Queen Henrietta Maria (Cambridge, 2006), p. 55. 32 tna PrO31/3/65, fos 11, 22, 57, 60, 175 and 66, fos 165, 280. for Jars’ tennis matches with the king see Thomas Birch, ed., Court and Times of Charles I, v. 1, p. 123. 33 tna PrO31/3/65. 34 tna SP16/101/43 John Hope to ? 20 april 1628. 35 tna SP16/116/4, John Hay to the earl of Carlisle, 1 September 1628.

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later confided to Archbishop Laud, ‘for she is often in place and is extremely well skilled how to speak with advantage and spirit for those friends she professeth unto, which will not be many.’36 She would have been the ideal person to teach the young queen how women might attain power and influence in English court society. 2 Even before Buckingham’s assassination, Henrietta Maria had therefore begun to recover from the disasters of her first 18 months in England and gather her own circle of male and female courtiers. But she remained a political neophyte, unable to speak English fluently and frightened of asserting herself after the bruising battles of 1625 and 1626. Several new developments gradually gave her the confidence to assume a more active role. Charles turned to her for consolation after Buckingham’s assassination in June 1628 and she responded warmly. a string of pregnancies followed, fulfilling her primary duty as queen. Her wifely devotion and fecundity became standard tropes not only in court art and literature but naive prints sold by London stationers. The king’s devotion and the prestige her children brought her increased her potential influence, especially as a broker for others seeking royal access and favour. Buckingham’s sudden death had meanwhile touched off a scramble within the court for the power he had previously wielded, in which several courtiers sought her aid. as this happened, a relatively senior french minister, the Marquis de Châteauneuf, arrived in London as extraordinary ambassador, following a peace treaty between france and england. He forged an alliance with several of her associates, Holland, Wat Montagu, Henry Jermyn, Jars and Vantelet, to push for a renewal of the anglo-french alliance, in opposition to a rival group more sympathetic to Spain.37 together this coterie set about instructing the queen on how to use her personal relationship with Charles to further their purposes.38 What is striking about the queen’s following, however, is not only its predictable sympathy for france, but its distinctive style and tone. the opposing pro-Spanish group included experienced royal servants like Bishop William Laud, the Treasurer, richard Weston, and the seasoned diplomats Carlisle and francis Cottington. Nottingham Library, Wentworth Woodhouse Muniments, StrP7, 57v (on microfilm); letter of 18 October 1637. 37 Vantelet and Jars were apparently especially important in helping Châteauneuf persuade the queen to use her influence with Charles for political purposes. See TNA PRO31/3/66, fo. 122. 38 Châteauneuf informed richelieu that this was his intention in July of 1629 (tna PRO31/3/65). The Venetian ambassador commented on the need for a skilled French ambassador to teach the queen how to wield political influence (CSPV v. 22, p. 169). for the personal ambition of Holland, in particular, at this time, see tna SP16/116/4; BL add. Mss. 27,962 f, fo. 40; Historical Manuscripts Commission Bucclegh and Queensbury Manuscripts, v. 3 (London, 1926), p. 347; Birch, Court and Times of Charles I, v. 1, p. 52; for Châteauneuf’s own assessment of the french and Spanish parties on the Council, see tna PrO31/3/66, fo. 137. the Venetian ambassador, Soranzo, credited Châteauneuf and the Jars with being the prime architects of the queen’s party, consisting of Holland, Montagu ‘and others of inferior rank’ (CSPV v. 22, p. 527). 36

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By contrast, the queen presided over an entourage of mostly younger men and women, whose influence stemmed from their courtly skills, their previous links to Buckingham and their personal relations with the king rather than long diplomatic or administrative service. Holland – ‘a very handsome man, of a lovely and winning presence and gentle conversation’ – as Clarendon later described him,39 had first attracted attention by his skill in jousts and dancing during court masques, winning the ceremonial office of Master of the King’s Guards. The Florentine ambassador described Montagu as ‘a man of spirit and talent, though as factious as possible and not to be trusted’.40 Buckingham had sent him as a personal envoy to Richelieu in 162541 and, two years later, Charles selected him for the sensitive mission of contacting dissident French noblemen, along with the dukes of Savoy and Lorraine, to encourage a coordinated rebellion against Richelieu at the time of the English attack on the isle of ré. Montagu excelled at this sort of secret diplomacy and espionage: we will later find him playing a role as unaccredited agent of the queen, Richelieu and others in the court politics of the 1630s, and in 1642 he participated in the intrigues at the french court that brought Mazarin to power. Jars and Jermyn were also athletic men and consummate courtiers. All these figures had strong previous ties to France and probably spoke French fluently. The papal representative Gregorio Panzani summed up the tone of Henrietta Maria’s court a few years later by commenting that ‘as a young woman’ she enjoyed ‘beautiful clothes, good deportment [di veder ben portari la vita] and witty conversation [discorsi allegri]’. He added that although the english were scandalized by any hint of sexual impropriety, they nevertheless conducted much business through women, whose mutual jealousies made the task of cultivating their favour extremely difficult.42 these characteristics found expression through cultural fashions, especially Henrietta Maria’s fondness for lyric poetry and pastoral dramas. She acted in french pastorals from her earliest years in London, offending english prejudices against actresses. in 1632, Montagu wrote her a long english pastoral called The Shepherds’ Paradise, which she and her ladies performed after taking lessons from ‘Mr. Taylor, the prime actor at the Globe’. the results pleased Charles so much that he gave Montagu £2,000 and Taylor the right to sell a knighthood.43 Montagu later assured Henrietta Maria that the pastorals at her court were better than ones he saw in richelieu’s palace. in court masques and panegyrics Henrietta Maria is consistently represented as a heroine who inspires but also controls male ardour, directing it into properly monogamous channels mirroring her own devotion to Charles: all her affections are to one inclined, Her bounty and compassion to mankind, 39

i.138.

edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, History of the Great Rebellion (numerous editions),

40 British Library Mss 27962 G, 27 ‘e’huomo di spirito et di bello ingegno, ma fazioso al possibile et da non fidarsene.’ 41 aae CPa33, fos 62, 93. 42 tna PrO 31/9/7B, Panzani dispatches of 10/20 June and 22 august 1635. 43 tna C115/M35/8411 and 8416 (John Porry newsletters dated September 15 and november 3).

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to whom, while she so far extends her grace, She makes but good the promise of her face; for Mercy has, could Mercy’s self be seen No sweeter look than this propitious queen.44

erica Veevers has plausibly connected these tropes to discussions by french Catholic writers of the period who urged young noblewomen at court to use their charms to encourage moral and spiritual reform. Montagu translated one of these tracts into English. But a cult of beauty and chaste love also justified the relatively free social relations between men and women in her entourage, which involved Protestants as well as Catholics. By the late 1630s the emphasis on chastity was being celebrated – but also wittily mocked – by English poets close to the queen like William Davenant and John Suckling. Twentieth-century scholars denigrated this literary culture as artificial and decadent, in contrast to the allegedly sterner outlook of Puritans like John Milton.45 But this dismissive view, which echoes a long tradition of misogynist attacks on court women who involved themselves in politics, really misses the point. Seventeenthcentury women were ineligible for political office and strongly discouraged from taking an open role in public life. But royal and aristocratic women frequently became involved in politics, if only because their roles as wives, mothers and sisters required them to take an interest in the affairs of powerful men. To be effective they needed to form social networks that included both other women and men who might perform tasks from which women were barred. Concepts of love, and service ostensibly inspired by love, provided a set of social conventions and a language that allowed these networks to operate, particularly in the case of younger women. Those conventions were heavily influenced by French models, not only because the queen herself was french but because the french court had traditionally accorded women greater opportunities for wielding political influence than most others in Europe.46 french artists and poets had responded by creating an iconography and a literary language of feminine power and authority, not least around Henrietta Maria’s mother, Marie de Médicis.47 the queen naturally sought to import these traditions to London, where they interacted with english forms of lyric poetry and pastoral romance to create a distinctive literary culture around her court. Suggestively, Holland’s mother, Penelope Rich (née Devereux), was herself a key figure in these English traditions, ‘Of the Queen’. See, e.g., Barbara K. Lewalski, “Milton’s Comus and the Politics of Masquing”, in The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque, ed. David Bevington and Peter Holbrook (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 296–320. 46 These traditions went back to the reign of Francis I, who deliberately expanded the number of women at the french court, and were then reinforced by the power wielded by both royal mistresses (Diane de Poitiers and several women connected with Henry iV), by queen regents (Catherine and Marie de Médicis), and other court ladies these regents drew into french politics. for a general treatment, see Jean françois Solnon, La Cour de France (Paris, 1987). 47 On this subject, see, for example, the special issue of The Court Historian 10.1 (2005). 44 45

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as the formidable sister of the second earl of essex and the Stella of Sidney’s famous sonnet sequence. This maternal example helps to explain Holland’s marked penchant for cultivating women as allies in court politics, including not only Henrietta Maria but Lady Carlisle and the Duchess of Chevreuse. 3 after 1629, the queen’s entourage always included both Catholics and committed Protestants, who collaborated readily with each other in pursuit of secular goals like a new anglo-french alliance. the tensions so evident in 1625 dissipated as she learned to uphold her faith with more tact, while the absence of parliaments removed the pressure on court politicians to demonstrate their hostility to popery. But as Caroline Hibbard has pointed out, Henrietta Maria’s ties to france were ultimately dynastic and personal rather than national, and, after 1630, the Bourbon dynasty fractured when Louis Xiii expelled his mother from france, following the collapse of her attempt to destroy richelieu in ‘the Day of the Dupes’.48 Louis’ younger brother and heir, Gaston d’Orléans, also grew disaffected. these Bourbon family quarrels soon affected the queen and her english entourage. although Châteauneuf had come to england as a richelieu ally and had criticized the queen mother during his stay in London,49 after returning to france he and Jars joined a conspiracy against the Cardinal, whose protagonists included the queen’s childhood friend and Holland’s former mistress, the Duchess of Chevreuse. Vantelet, Holland, Montagu, Jermyn and the queen herself were soon drawn into this intrigue, which they linked to a parallel attempt at toppling Charles i’s leading minister, richard Weston, earl of Portland.50 in addition to Henrietta Maria’s personal and dynastic ties to richelieu’s french enemies, she and her followers appear to have been motivated by friction over her own household. now that a peace had been signed, richelieu wished to re-establish French influence over her affairs, by appointing a French bishop to replace the Scottish Oratorian priest, robert Philip, who had become her confessor after the 1626 expulsions. But Henrietta Maria had become attached to Philip and refused to cooperate. Since Philip enjoyed good relations with Vantelet, Montagu and other english courtiers, they warmly supported him, as did Châteauneuf and Jars from france.51 the queen’s followers may also have been worried by signs of Portland’s Caroline Hibbard, “Henrietta Maria”, in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004). 49 Bn fo. fr. 15989, fo. 597. 50 Smuts, “Puritan followers”, pp. 34–5; Bn fo. fr. 15989 fos 589–98. 51 aae CPa44, fos 1 (Henrietta Maria refuses the french government’s request that she send back the remaining Oratorians at her court), 88 (the French acknowledge that she is opposed to receiving a bishop to head her religious household and blame Vantelet, Jars and Châteauneuf for stiffening her resolution), 271 (Jars and Vantelet obstruct french efforts to remodel the queen’s religious establishment), 277 (Vantelet, Montagu and Holland support Philip). On 1 June 1632 an English Catholic reported: ‘When the French k[ing] was at Calais he sent over Monsieur Chaumont as ambassador extraordinary to pass a complement with the k[ing] and qu[een] and (as some think) to endeavour to bring the present ambass[ador] 48

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warming relations with the french government and Henrietta Maria herself, even though Montagu and Holland seem initially to have promoted this reconciliation. in December of 1630, one of thomas Wentworth’s correspondents reported that the treasurer had become ‘a Monsieur gracious with the Queen and much frequented by my Lord of Holland, dinner and supper and other hours … together with his brother [Warwick?] … They talked of peace and war.’52 But whereas the treasurer’s relations with Châteauneuf’s successor, fontenay Mareuil, remained friendly, his alliance with Holland soon fell apart.53 Holland and his allies needed to prevent fontenay Mareuil from creating an understanding between the queen and Portland that would have left them isolated and exposed and this may well explain their efforts to turn Henrietta Maria against both men. in various ways, french efforts to re-assert control over the queen’s affairs threatened the interests of the polyglot french and english, Catholic and Protestant entourage that had developed around her since 1626. In 1631, a significant group within that entourage responded by developing its own independent international network – having ‘intercourse by cipher with the ministers of other princes … without his Majesty’s allowance or knowledge’, concerning not only ‘private friendship and participation but for the most part matter of court and state’.54 When the conspiracy unravelled and Châteauneuf’s papers were seized in february 1633 they were found to contain 20 coded letters from Holland, 32 from Montagu and 31 from Henrietta Maria herself, along with a poem thought to be in her hand.55 Weston’s son Jerome, while on a diplomatic mission to Paris, intercepted additional compromising documents.56 Holland promptly challenged Jerome Weston to a duel, provoking the king into placing him under house arrest and threatening a Star Chamber prosecution.57 a dismayed Henrietta Maria faced the prospect of seeing ‘her principal servant ruined and, what is worse, herself greatly discredited, Monsieur de fontany into grace with the queen and consequently to get the Capucins to be in Fa[ther Philips place. But what he hath attempted or effected therin I know not. I heare only that he took his leave of the king privately, which sheweth that he was not so welcome.’ (Michael Questier, ed., Newsletters from the Caroline Court, 1631–1638: Catholicism and the Politics of the Personal Rule Camden Society, 5th series, 26 (Cambridge, 2005), p. 191. On 13 July the same writer reported that the Jesuits were animating the Capuchins against Philip but that this did only ‘avert the Queen from them more’ (ibid., p. 107). Philip seems to have been well connected among english Catholics opposed to the Jesuits (ibid., pp. 24, 113, 115). 52 Sheffield City Archives, Wentworth Woodhouse Muniments StrP12, fo. 181 (Charles Mainwaring to Wentworth, 19 December 1630). 53 for the growing rapport between Weston and french diplomats, see, e.g., aae CPa35 fo. 111; tna PrO31/3/67; British Library add Mss. 27962 f, fo. 328. 54 TNA SP78/92, fo. 271 (Secretary John Coke commenting on intercepted correspondence between Jars, Châteauneuf and the queen’s associates). 55 Victor Cousin, Madame de Chevreuse (Paris, 2nd edn, 1862) p. 406. Copies of these letters still existed in the nineteenth century in the archives of the Duc de Luynes, where Cousin consulted them. i have not been able to trace them. 56 these are summarized in tna SP78/92, fos 271–3. Cf. Victor Cousin, Madame de Chevreuse (Paris, 2nd edn, 1862), p. 397 (quoting a memoir of richelieu). 57 AAE CPA v. 45, fo. 229v. Charles was so angry that even the risk of upsetting the queen during a pregnancy did not deter him from proceeding against Holland.

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from which she will have difficulty recovering’.58 She had to make a humiliating submission, in which she offered to put all her affairs into Portland’s hands. the conspirators’ ultimate goals remain obscure, in part because historians have not succeeded in tracing their secret correspondence. But their plans certainly involved more than a change of ministers in London and Paris. they had encouraged Gaston d’Orléans to seek refuge in London, where Charles agreed to receive him.59 Since the childless Louis Xiii was in poor health and many people did not expect him to live much longer, this would have established a reversionary interest to the french throne in London. Henrietta Maria sent an envoy to her mother during the conspiracy and attempted to arrange for her to come to england as well.60 The Duke of Savoy’s ambassador in London, the abbé Scaliger, was actively involved in these plots,61 while Holland and Montagu had concocted a plan to visit the Duke of Lorraine.62 Since Henrietta Maria’s sister was Duchess of Savoy, while Gaston was attempting to contract a marriage with the Duke of Lorraine’s daughter, dynastic connections reinforced these contacts. this pattern also suggests that the queen’s followers had somehow become involved in plans being canvassed during 1631 and 1632, with Marie de Médicis’ encouragement, to supply Gaston d’Orléans with a small army with which to attack his brother’s kingdom, in coordination with additional assaults from Savoy, Lorraine, the austrian army in Germany and possibly england. although Spain and austria regarded this scheme as retaliation for richelieu’s support of Gustavus adolphus, it had the support of Soubise and other Huguenots, who had not forgiven Richelieu for his attack on La Rochelle a few years before.63 it was therefore an affair in which patterns of confessional allegiance had become thoroughly confused. the international intrigues of Henrietta Maria’s servants are also reminiscent of those Buckingham had pursued in 1626. In that year, Scaliger had also participated in English plots against Richelieu, and Buckingham’s agents had communicated

aae CPa v. 45, 230v. Bn fo. fr. 15989 fo. 597: ‘l’envoie de Monsieur [Gaston] fut extrêmement bien reçue et écouter par la reine d’angleterre qui sollicita ces affaires vers le roi D’angleterre et lors fontenay [the french ambassador] lui voulu parler contre cette négociation il témoigna considérer fort peu le roi disant que lui et Monsieur étaient égaux et quelle ne peuvent rien faire entre l’un pour favoriser l’autre, et le Seigneur le faire (?) allant demander permission de la reine d’angleterre de loger le dit envoie il lui permet, ajoutant qu’il n’obligerait pas seulement Monsieur mais la reine d’angleterre même Jars et Hollande avaient été averti de son arrivée et le favorisèrent a tout ce qu’ils peuvent.’ Cf. Cousin, Chevreuse, p. 354. 60 Bn fo. fr. 15989, fo. 598; Quentin Bone, Henrietta Maria: Queen of the Cavaliers (Urbana, 1972), p. 81. 61 BN fo. fr. 15989, fo. 589v; Holland had also written to the duke’s ambassador in London (tna SP78/92, fo. 273). 62 ibid., 599v; tna SP78/92, fo. 273. 63 there is an abundance of intelligence on these plots, including intercepted Spanish correspondence and a report that appears to have come from one of richelieu’s double agents, in aae CPa 44, fos 304–451. for references to english involvement see esp. fos 332v, 336v– 337, 339v, 350, 351 and 353. 58 59

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with Gaston d’Orléans and the Duke of Lorraine.64 the french believed that the Duchess of Chevreuse was also cooperating with Buckingham in that year, by seeking to develop a system of regular communications between ‘the ladies and gallants’ of Henrietta Maria’s court and french malcontents. the friction between Henrietta Maria and her husband, Chevreuse believed, provided an ideal pretext for sending envoys back and forth across the channel on secret missions, ostensibly to consult the queen mother on her daughter’s affairs.65 Both the french and tuscan ambassadors in London thought that Puritans beyond the court had also participated in the english conspiracy.66 Circumstantial evidence lends some credibility to this view. Henrietta Maria’s entourage had especially close connections to the Providence island Company, an enterprise run by an elite group of Puritan aristocrats who wanted to establish english colonies in the Caribbean. Holland was the company’s governor while its directors included his older brother Warwick (the company’s leading spirit) and Montagu’s father, the earl of Manchester.67 in January of 1632, George Goring had presented the queen with a masque in which Warwick danced the lead role.68 Goring himself had once been part of the militantly Protestant circle around Prince Henry, and his son, George Goring the younger, had recently enlisted as an officer in the Dutch army. During Holland’s imprisonment he received visits from a stream of prominent figures that, according to the Tuscan ambassador, included ‘two puritan barons’.69 it is by no means implausible that aristocratic patrons of Puritan causes might have regarded Goring, Holland and Montagu as court allies, or that they would have welcomed a plot against richelieu, whom many european Calvinists deeply mistrusted.70 they would certainly have wanted to topple Weston, who had come under attack in the Parliament of 1629 as a popishly affected minister. Henrietta Maria may have inherited not only a segment of Buckingham’s court following but the duke’s strategy of forging ties with ‘puritan’ grandees, Huguenots and assorted french malcontents in pursuit of grandiose schemes. Whatever happened in 1632, the queen, her followers and the Providence island group certainly found themselves working together a few years later. This time, however, richelieu had become their ally. although Henrietta Maria’s anger against the Cardinal persisted into 1634,71 by the following year she had begun to promote his interests. the responsibility for this change in attitude lay with Montagu, 64 Gaston later confessed to having especially strong links to the Earl of Carlisle (Cousin, Chevreuse, p. 371). 65 for these earlier contacts, see the evidence cited and quoted by Cousin, esp. pp. 354, 367–8, 371, 372, 375, 383 and 385. for Chevreuse’s scheme see aae CPa40, 209v. 66 tna PrO31/3/67, fos 80 and 86; British Library additional Manuscripts 27962 G, 26–7. 67 for the company, see Karen Kupperman, “errand to the indies: Puritan Colonization from Providence island through the Western Design”, William and Mary Quarterly 3, no. 45 (1988): 70–99. 68 tna C115/M35/8390. 69 BL add Mss 27962f, 420; tna PrO31/3/67, 86. 70 for an example see Gilles Banderier, “L’advis au roy de la Grande Bretagne: un texte inédit d’agrippa d’aubigné”, Bibliothèque d’humanisme et renaissance 61 (1999): 509–14. 71 tna PrO31/3/68 fo. 109.

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who had left for france and italy in 1633, in disfavour with both monarchs,72 and converted to Catholicism after visiting rome. He also reached an accommodation with richelieu who rewarded him with a pension of 1,000 écus a year.73 returning to London in february 1635, he received a cold reception from Charles but a warm one from Henrietta Maria. in May, she wrote richelieu a letter; in June she coyly instructed the french ambassador to tell his master ‘that it was not her fault they weren’t good friends, since it was up to cavaliers to pursue ladies incessantly’.74 She was saying, in effect, that she would assist the Cardinal if he provided sufficient incentives. richelieu responded by restoring the pensions of Vantelet and Cognet, which had been cut off after Châteauneuf’s conspiracy, and holding out hopes that Louis XIII might free Jars from the Bastille. Henrietta Maria valued these benefits because they demonstrated her ability to protect and reward her clients, a critical matter for any woman hoping to maintain a political following.75 By the summer of 1635, the French felt confident of her support.76 At this period Henrietta Maria’s influence had grown even stronger because of the warmth of her relationship with Charles and the desire for her friendship of all the leading ministers at court as they jockeyed for position in the aftermath of Portland’s death in March 1635. recognizing this fact, the french set out to use the queen’s support to enlarge their party at Whitehall. they dangled a pension in front of the normally pro-Spanish Cottington, who seemed willing to become a french client,77 and laid plans to win over archbishop Laud and the pro-Spanish Secretary of State, Francis Windebank.78 in addition to french inducements, these ministers were probably influenced by Charles’ growing frustration with Spain and austria, after years of futile attempts to gain the restoration of the Palatinate through negotiations. in addition to cultivating normal Spanish allies within the court, the French ambassador, Senneterre, spent several weeks in September hunting with a prominent member of the Providence island Company, the earl of Bedford, at one of his country houses. Shortly thereafter, the tuscan ambassador reported that the French ambassador, the queen and ‘puritan’ officials were attempting to ‘persuade the king … that it would be wise to convene a parliament’ to ‘regain the affection of his subjects and obtain a great sum of money’.79 Sheffield Public Library Wentworth Woodhouse Muniments, StrP8, 1. Bn Mss. fr. 15993 fo. 49v. for Montagu’s and Henrietta Maria’s warmth toward france, see fos 8, 15 and 32. 74 Bn fo. fr. 15993, fo. 15; tna PrO 31/3/68: ‘elle m’a commandé de vous baiser les mains de sa part et de vous assurer qu’il ne tiendra pas à elle que vous ne soyez bons amis, pour conclure que c’est aux chevaliers à rechercher les dames incessamment.’ 75 ibid., fos 52 (Vantelet) and 182, 184v, 188 (Jars). 76 ibid., fo. 52. 77 ibid., 98v, 99v, 159, 188v; Mss. fr. 15915 9v. the french suspected Cottington of playing a double game in hopes of obtaining pensions from both Paris and Madrid. the queen’s confessor told Panzani in august 1635 that she was trying to win Cottington to the french faction by promising her support for his ambition to succeed Portland as treasurer (tna PrO31/9/17B, dispatch of 29 august 1635). 78 ibid., fo. 9. 79 Smuts, “Puritan followers”, p. 37. 72 73

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a failed embassy by the earl of arundel to the empire, which turned that normally pro-Spanish figure into an angry critic of the Habsburgs, seemed to tip the balance decisively in favour of a french alliance in early 1637.80 in early March of that year Warwick presented the French ambassador Senneterre with a ‘long letter’ to Richelieu and a ‘much longer memoir’ containing some kind of ‘proposition’, evidently for a privateering campaign against Spanish commerce in the Caribbean.81 Such plans were now being actively canvassed. Cottington told Senneterre on 19 March that the king had agreed to lend the Providence Island Company ships to make ‘a stronger war in the Indies’.82 in Paris, Charles’ ambassador, the earl of Leicester, negotiated a draft treaty pledging him to employ his fleet to cut Spanish supply routes, while the french sent land forces into Germany. the french wanted english warships to disrupt maritime communications throughout the Spanish empire. to this end they had agreed with Leicester that Charles would furnish 14 ships – including four of at least 400 tons – toward a fleet of privateers under the nominal command of the elector Palatine to raid Spanish commerce in the indies. the Providence island group, the immensely wealthy earl of Craven and several London merchants agreed to contribute additional ships and money to this project that promised to revive a partnership between the royal navy and privateers that had flourished during the Armada war.83 that summer, the anti-Spanish diplomat, thomas roe, presented the earl of northumberland, who had recently become Lord admiral with the queen’s support, with a plan to separate Spain from its american colonies by establishing english control of the Caribbean and forcing ‘their great viceroys to cantonize and set up principalities for themselves’ and ‘trade with the strongest’ maritime power.84 roe proposed a national subscription to raise £200,000 a year for five years to support the settlement of 10,000 english in the region. after this initial investment, he claimed, the colony would become self-sustaining, while draining Spain of its life-blood. northumberland approved of the plan as ‘doubtless the most helpful and feasible design we can fall upon if it could be followed as it ought to be’, although he doubted that the country had the ‘industry and patience’ to sustain ‘a great expense for some years without expecting a present profit’.85 In September 1637, when Warwick and other peers again urged the king to call a Parliament, they reportedly received the support of the Lord treasurer, William Juxon, Bishop of London.86

80 For the background, see Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (new Haven, 1992), pp. 507–36 (on diplomacy) and 537–41 (on the role of the queen and her followers). 81 tna PrO 31/3/69, fo. 27: ‘une longue letter à monseigneur le Cardinal’ with ‘un mémoire bien plus longue pour une proposition’; cf. ibid., 33. 82 tna PrO 31/3/69, fo. 33. 83 the proposed treaty terms are laid out in Bn Mss. fr. 15993, fos 226–32. 84 Alnwick Castle Mss, Letters and Papers, v. 14, fo. 78. 85 tna SP16/365/28. 86 Caroline Hibbard, Charles I and the Popish Plot (Chapel Hill, 1983), p. 74 and n. 11.

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4 these developments show that, contrary to what historians have often asserted, a Catholic queen was capable of promoting links between the court and ‘country’ Puritan magnates who wanted a sharp reversal of Caroline policies. But the following 18 months revealed the fragility of this alliance between french Catholics and militant english Protestants, and the potential for the queen’s religion to play a far more divisive role in British politics. Henrietta Maria’s willingness to ally with reputed Puritans had always struck some Catholic observers as unfortunate. Even Richelieu’s associate, Père Joseph, regretted the need to work through ‘puritans who are everywhere enemies of all order’ and hoped instead to cultivate archbishop Laud.87 Although courtiers like Holland not only tolerated the queen’s religion but quietly helped her gain pardons for arrested priests,88 her support for the roman Church always represented a potential obstacle to cooperation with english Puritans. in July 1636, a new and more effective papal emissary named George Conn arrived at her court. Under his influence, reinforced by that of the recently converted Montagu, the queen began to play a more aggressive role in promoting her faith. as he told the Vatican, Conn sought to promote Catholicism ‘by means of women’. ‘the truth is’, he confessed, ‘when I go to visit them [court ladies] I never ask for their husbands, so as not to arouse suspicions.’89 a number of provocative conversions followed, creating a cohort of female Catholic courtiers enjoying the queen’s friendship and protection that Pope Urban Viii later praised as ‘amazons … who do day and night employ their utmost endeavours for the dignity of the apostolic see’.90 they included the wives of two influential courtiers normally sympathetic to Spain: the gentleman of the bedchamber, endymion Porter, and the earl of arundel.91 By 1638, negotiations over the anglo-french alliance became bogged down as Charles had second thoughts and resumed negotiations with Spain.92 Cottington, Windebank and Laud thereupon reverted to their normal Spanish allegiances. Despite these setbacks Henrietta Maria continued to demand favours from Richelieu. She became furious over delays in releasing Jars and finally wrote Richelieu a sharp Bn fo. fr. 15915, fo. 213 (coded letter signed with the cipher for Père Joseph). Smuts, “Puritan followers”, p. 33. 89 tna 31/9/124, p. 203. for Conn’s mission and the queen’s activities in promoting Catholicism in this period, see Hibbard, Popish Plot. a briefer account is my biography of Conn in ODNB. 90 Historical Manuscripts Commission, Various Collections V (1909), pp. 121–2. 91 the latter had always been a Catholic but began to advocate her faith more aggressively in this period, much to her husband’s embarrassment. 92 it is not entirely clear exactly when or why the momentum toward a french and Protestant alliance stalled, although there is some evidence that things were already starting to go wrong by the summer of 1637. Charles’ reluctance to strengthen a group within his court favourable to the recall of Parliament may have played a role, although the french also seem to have had some hesitations (Hibbard, Popish Plot, pp. 75–6). Charles’ annoyance with the Dutch for disputing his right to collect licensing fees for use of the North Sea fisheries, over which he claimed sovereignty, and his reluctance to see an increase in french and Dutch power may also have played a role. 87 88

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letter, apparently threatening reprisals if he did not comply with her demands.93 although this annoyed the Cardinal, it did secure Jars’ freedom in January 1638. Unfortunately the queen had by then conceived the much more ambitious project of reconciling her mother to Louis Xiii. in november 1637, Gaston d’Orléan’s secretary, Monsigot, had travelled to London to coordinate strategy.94 a few months later Henrietta Maria wrote to Louis asking him to readmit their mother to France. although he promptly rejected her pleas, she persisted, proposing to send Montagu to Paris as her personal emissary – until the french made it clear he would not be welcome – and finally dispatching Henry Jermyn instead.95 When Jermyn received polite but evasive replies, she proposed to go to france herself, ostensibly for reasons of health.96 Louis Xiii made it clear that unless she was suffering from consumption he did not want her in Paris.97 the protracted disagreement over Marie de Médicis, which dragged on into 1640, deeply angered Henrietta Maria just as she fell under the influence of an old friend who was among the Cardinal’s most determined enemies. ever since the 1620s, the Duchess of Chevreuse had conspired against richelieu. She had also established extensive contacts with the queen’s english entourage, as Holland’s mistress in 1625, an active leader of Châteauneuf’s conspiracy and the hostess of Montagu and another English courtier, William Croft, during several weeks in 1634. in December 1637, fearing that richelieu planned to have her tried and executed for plotting against him once too often, she disguised herself as a young man and fled south across the Pyrenees to Madrid, where Philip iV and his french queen warmly received her. in april, she sailed for england, carrying a proposal for a new angloSpanish marriage alliance and schemes for stirring up trouble for the Cardinal by working through discontented French nobles living in London.98 Henrietta Maria organized a spectacular welcoming party consisting of 25 coaches bearing ladies and gallants of the english court, headed by Montagu, Goring and Holland. Upon entering the queen’s apartments Chevreuse was immediately offered a tabouret or upholstered stool, an honour denied to the french ambassador’s wife, whose husband protested so furiously at the slight that he damaged his relations with Charles. The duchess went to work not only on the queen but members of her circle, starting with Holland, whom she attempted to convert to Catholicism Bn. Mss. fr. 15915 fos 62–5, 70, 89, 93. the letter itself seems not to have survived. Henri Lonchay and Joseph Cuvelier, eds, Corrspondance de la Cour d’Espagne sur les affaires des Pays-Bas, v. iii (Brussels, 1930), p. 173, summarizing archives du royaume Belgique, Secrétaire d’etat et de Guerre, reg. 217, 28. the queen’s goal of healing the breach between her mother and elder brother apparently dated from at least 1634, when the Cardinalenfant wrote to Philip iV that ‘la reine d’angleterre n’a d’autre intention que de réconcilier sa mere avec Louis Xiii’, and probably from the time of the original quarrel (ibid., p. 27). Cf. the comment of the Venetian ambassador in September 1637 that Henrietta Maria’s ‘great affection for her mother transports her to violent passion which prejudices her health’ (Calendar of State Papers Venetian v. 24, p. 264). 95 ibid., fos 167, 175, 183v; 191, 198. 96 ibid., 305, 318v (Jermyn’s mission). 97 ibid., fo. 275. 98 Cousin, p. 466; Alnwick Castle Mss. 15, fo. 29v.; Sharp, p. 830. 93 94

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and pro-Spanish politics.99 By refusing to change his religion, Holland damaged his relations with Henrietta Maria. Chevreuse had more success in winning over Montagu, whom the french began to treat with suspicion.100 She also formed a warm friendship with the Countess of Carlisle.101 the french faction at Whitehall slowly disintegrated, causing Louis Xiii’s secretary of state for foreign affairs, Chavigny, to complain in December 1638 that the pensions distributed to the Queen of england’s household had not produced better results.102 By then an even greater opponent of richelieu entered english court politics, as Marie de Médicis and her train of 600 French exiles took up residence in St James’ Palace, supported by a hefty subsidy of £100 a day from the exchequer. although the queen mother’s impact on english politics is difficult to pin down, in March 1639 the French ambassador reported that her influence and that of her ministers ‘everyday engaged the King and Queen of Great Britain more and more in her interests’, to a point at which it might become necessary to ‘foment the war in Scotland’, as a way of preventing Charles from aiding france’s enemies.103 That war was another significant development sharpening religious divisions. the Scottish troubles initially split the Council along lines more or less coinciding with disagreements over foreign policy: advocates of a french alliance wanted to negotiate, whereas pro-Spanish councillors wanted a show of force. the second group prevailed and, as military preparations advanced, a strong backlash against reputed Puritans developed within court. in addition to its english and french members, the queen’s household had always included Scottish Catholics, including her confessor Robert Philip, who are likely to have been especially fierce opponents of the Presbyterian rebellion.104 Conn was another Scot who had published a book commemorating Catholic martyrs of the Scottish reformation. the Covenanter’s rebellion struck him as an opportunity to convince the king that Catholics made better subjects than ‘puritans’ and therefore deserved more generous treatment. to that end, he collaborated with the queen’s secretary, John Winter, and another Catholic courtier, Sir Kenelm Digby, to organize a voluntary contribution by recusants to the war against Scotland.105 in late 1639, after the inconclusive military confrontation known as the First Bishop’s War, the Venetian ambassador in London picked up rumours of an imminent purge of ‘puritans’ at court and their replacement by figures dependent on the king and queen. The rumoured victims included Holland

CSPV v. 24, p. 417. these suspicions seem to have begun around June of 1638 and grew stronger with the passage of time, until by 1640 the french regarded Montagu as an adversary (Bn fo. fr. 15915 fos 124, 277). among other inducements, Chevreuse persuaded the Spanish to promise their support for Montagu’s ambition to become a Cardinal (tna PrO31/3/72, fo. 35). He and Chevreuse seem to have become mixed up, at least peripherally, in the conspiracy of Cinq Mars (Cousin, Chevreuse, pp. 421 and 427). 101 Bn fo. fr. 15915, fos 183v–184; tna PrO31/3/70, fo. 205. 102 ibid., fo. 243. 103 ibid., fo. 283. 104 Hibbard, Popish Plot, pp. 92–3. 105 Smuts, “George Conn”, in ODNB. 99

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and the Lord Chamberlain, Pembroke.106 Although both men kept their offices for the moment, they were becoming increasingly isolated. even at this juncture, Henrietta Maria continued to extend her favour to Protestant courtiers, including old associates like Henry Jermyn and George Goring and more recently acquired favourites, like the Earl of Northumberland and Sir Henry Vane, who became Secretary of State through her support in early 1640. But she now also favoured men who detested Puritanism and supported Spain, especially thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford, after he joined the Council in London in the fall of 1639. Chevreuse and Lady Carlisle also became Strafford supporters and Carlisle began encouraging her brothers, Henry Percy and northumberland, and brother-inlaw, Leicester, to support him.107 a new confessional alignment had emerged, uniting french, english and Scottish Catholics close to the queen with anti-Scottish and proSpanish Privy Councillors. even before Strafford’s arrival in england, Henrietta Maria had become involved in secret negotiations to procure Spanish assistance against the Scots’ rebellion, possibly in the form of a loan of 10,000 veteran troops from the army of flanders. the Spanish ambassador had suggested that those troops might also be used to intimidate an english Parliament to repeal the recusancy laws. Schemes were also discussed for procuring a papal loan to finance the war against Scotland, in return for greater freedom of worship for english and irish Catholics. although none of these plans reached fruition, the king and queen and Catholics associated with them continued to pursue them throughout 1639 and early 1640.108 the Scots responded by sending emissaries to France, Denmark and Sweden asking for assistance. The french instructed their ambassador in London to remain aloof from these pleas unless Charles openly allied himself with Spain. But the Dutch and especially the Swedes were less scrupulous: although remaining officially neutral they not only released thousands of Scottish veterans in their own army to return home but furnished them with significant quantities of arms and ammunition.109 British politics were becoming ominously linked to the larger conflict taking place on the Continent, in ways that identified Charles and his wife with Spanish interest. 5 in august of 1640, the political landscape was again transformed when the Scots inflicted a decisive defeat on Charles’ forces. The summoning of the Long Parliament 106 CSPV v. 24, p.581. the fact that the list of ‘puritan’ ministers being purged included two bishops – Williams and Juxon – indicates how elastic the definition of a Puritan had become. Williams was an opponent of Laud, which may have earned him the stigma. 107 tna PrO31/3/,72 fos 46 and 49. 108 Hibbard, Popish Plot, pp. 104–9. for the efforts to obtain Spanish troops, see O. Ogle and W.H. Bliss, eds, Calendar of the Clarendon State Papers (Oxford, 1876), pp. 167, 171, 188, 198. For the diplomatic background, see Sharpe, pp. 825–34. 109 Sweden’s active support for the rebellion has recently been documented by a Swedish scholar: alexia Grosjean, An Unofficial Alliance: Scotland and Sweden, 1569–1654 (Brill, 2003), ch. 6.

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in november, the impeachment of Strafford and Laud on charges of treason and the flight of Windebank to Paris to escape a similar fate gravely disrupted the anti-Puritan coalition that had dominated the court in the previous year. Chevreuse returned to france and Conn also left england. as this happened, disagreements developed within the queen’s entourage over how to respond to the deepening crisis. Her own immediate instinct was to try to threaten Parliament. Madrid now had little to offer because Catalonia and Portugal had revolted in 1640, paralysing the Habsburg monarchy. The king and queen therefore concluded a marital alliance with the Protestant House of Orange, in hopes of gaining Dutch assistance.110 When this did not materialize, the queen knowingly spread false rumours of French intervention;111 when this ploy also failed, she again began to talk of leaving England for Paris.112 english and Scottish Catholics in her household, including Montagu, encouraged this behaviour because they knew that Parliament wanted them purged from the court. Montagu, Winter and a few others also feared impeachment for acts committed in the 1630s. They therefore had every reason to work against a negotiated settlement in which their own interests would have been sacrificed, even if it meant following their mistress into exile.113 By contrast, Holland, northumberland, Leicester and Henry Vane cooperated openly with the parliamentary leadership, hoping to impose a settlement on both monarchs. Holland also cooperated with the french, who shared Parliament’s dislike of the pro-Spanish English and Scottish Catholics in the queen’s household and of pro-Spanish ministers like Laud and Strafford. The strategy of the french government was to restore Holland to the queen’s favour, while also effectively reversing the 1626 purge by replacing the British Catholics around Henrietta Maria with a new french household selected by Louis Xiii and richelieu; they hoped in return that Holland and his associates among the parliamentary leadership would rein in the virulent anti-Catholicism of some MPs.114 a third group vacillated between these two strategies. Henry Jermyn joined Montagu in urging the queen to adopt an intransigent position in early february because he feared a parliamentary enquiry into his abuses of monopolies in the previous decade.115 But he also saw a chance to salvage his career by acting as a that, at least, is what the french ambassador and the earl of Holland both concluded. See tna PrO 31/3/72 fo. 379. in early february, Holland told the french ambassador that the king, having concluded that he could not obtain military assistance from the Dutch, was looking for ways of backing out of his alliance with them (ibid., fo. 416). 111 Ibid., fo. 386. The French ambassador, who knew his government had no intention of aiding Charles, thought her behaviour provocative and foolish. 112 ibid., fos 416, 423. 113 this may also explain, as the french believed, why Montagu tried to stiffen Henrietta Maria’s resolve to defend Strafford at all costs; so long as she refused to abandon Strafford, she was unlikely to abandon him. 114 tna PrO 31/3/72 365, 366, 400, 413 and passim. the french agent Montreul thought Holland might help in obtaining Parliament’s permission for the entry of a new papal envoy to the queen’s household once these changes were effected. He commented to his home government on the irony of ‘using one of the most puritan [lords] of england to establish there a minister of His Holiness’ (ibid., 400). 115 ibid., fo. 416. 110

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broker between the queen and the parliamentary leadership. He worked in tandem with the Marquis of Hamilton, who was playing a similar role with the king, and with Henry Percy, who provided a valuable link to his brother, Northumberland, his sister, Lady Carlisle, and his brother-in-law, Leicester. The poets, Sir John Suckling and Sir William Davenant, also sought to promote a brokered settlement through the queen’s agency. these men realized that the failed war against Scotland had produced a collapse of royal authority, which left Henrietta Maria particularly exposed. the way to recover from this disaster, they calculated, was for the queen to become a forceful advocate of royal concessions and an intermediary between her husband and Parliament’s aristocratic grandees. in effect, they wanted to revive the old alliance between Henrietta Maria and the Providence island group, which now formed the core of the parliamentary leadership. The earliest anticipations of this strategy may stretch back even before the Scots’ victory in September. if so, it would help to explain the tone of moderation that critics like Martin Butler have detected in dramatic literature produced by Suckling, Davenant and William Habington, another poet close to Henrietta Maria, during the late 1630s.116 It was spelled out much more clearly in a letter attributed to Suckling and addressed to Jermyn, published in early 1641. the authenticity of this letter is now impossible to prove, although Suckling’s modern editors and recent historians, including Conrad russell, have accepted it as genuine.117 another undoubtedly genuine document is a verse epistle to the queen by Davenant that must date from the winter or early spring of 1641. It refers to the ‘extreme obdurateness’ of kings, whose authority is hard and brilliant like a diamond and so incapable of being ‘pierced or altered’ except by another diamond: ‘for this purpose queens were made.’ Others have prov’d to be convenient things To find the suddenest way to ruin kings, Whilst you (whose virtues make your counsels thrive) Look’t on that mystic word, prerogative, as if you saw long-hid uncurrent gold; Which must (though it prove good) be tried Because it long has lain aside; and rather too, because the stamp is old.

She must now bring this gold ‘to a yieldingness / That shews it fine but makes it not weigh less’, by acting as ‘the judge’s judge and people’s advocate’. In a final passage that must gesture toward Strafford, Davenant hints that her intervention will prove lethal to some unnamed figure: these are your triumphs which (perhaps) may be (yet triumphs have been tax’d for cruelty) esteem’d both just and mercifully good: though what you gain with tears cost others blood.

Martin Butler, Theatre and Crisis 1632–1642 (Cambridge, 1984). A coppy of a letter found in the privy lodgeings at White-Hall (London, 1641); Conrad russell, “the first army Plot of 1641”, TRHS 5, no. 38: 85–106. 116 117

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for a brief period this policy appeared to have some prospect of success. in april, the french representative in London, Montreul, reported that a motion from the Commons to banish the queen’s Catholic servants was defeated in the House of Lords after Holland sprang to her defence and was supported not only by her Chamberlain, Dorset, but by the earls of Bedford and Bristol. But an alliance between the queen and the parliamentary leadership was extraordinarily difficult to maintain, given the level of mistrust on both sides, the continuing pressure of her Catholic associates and her own fears of popular antipopery. as the impeachment of Strafford moved forward, the effort to rebuild her ties with Parliament’s leaders disintegrated. Jermyn, Davenant, Henry Percy and Suckling thereupon reversed course again by devising the First Army Plot. Although there would be a few further attempts to involve her in a negotiated settlement over the summer, from this time forward she was usually identified with royalist swordsmen and attempts to procure foreign Catholic assistance for her husband. the story told here has uncovered elements of truth in the critical picture of the queen first developed by parliamentary publicists. But it also shows that the queen’s divisive role had less to do with her long-standing commitment to Catholicism than with the breakdown, in particular circumstances, of alliances that had once mediated between the confessional poles of English politics. The significance of the queen’s religion as an irritant in British politics ultimately had less to do with reflexive antipopery than with the role she had adopted between 1638 and 1641. to be sure, there were always some Puritans, of whom William Prynne is a good example, so prejudiced they would have despised the queen no matter what she did. But the more sophisticated political leaders of English Puritanism adopted a more flexible position. They knew that the real threat came not from Catholic belief, but from the efforts of the Habsburgs and a few other Catholic dynasties to destroy Protestantism by force. Catholic states threatened by the Habsburgs might therefore become allies, even if they were never completely trusted. Similarly, within domestic politics, the presence of a few conspicuous Catholics at court, although no doubt irritating, did not in itself threaten the survival of the english and British reformation. the real danger lay in the possibility that open Catholics might combine with secret Catholics like Portland, anti-Calvinist Protestants like Laud and Wentworth and secular politicians behind a campaign to break the power of reformed Protestantism within the British Isles. it was this prospect that had so alarmed people at the time of the Spanish Match. Buckingham’s identification with an authoritarian pro-Spanish policy in the early 1620s continued to excite mistrust even after he turned against Spain in 1623. the fact that Charles continued to surround himself with men like Weston, Cottington, arundel and endymion Porter – who had belonged to the pro-Spanish wing of the duke’s following in the early 1620s, and remained sympathetic to the Habsburgs and unsympathetic to reformed principles thereafter – kept these fears alive even after the duke’s assassination. But until 1638 the queen was never particularly close to any of these figures and was often their most prominent adversary. She not only supported french and Protestant alliances abroad; she also collaborated with parliamentary politicians in the 1620s, with Protestant courtiers like Holland and Goring and, at least indirectly, with disaffected peers like Warwick, against the very ministers Puritans most feared and detested. in 1637, she even appears to have supported the

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summoning of a new Parliament. these actions considerably diminished the political importance of her strong Catholic beliefs. But between 1638 and 1640 all of this changed, as the queen identified herself with a pro-Spanish foreign policy, the rigorous prosecution of wars against Scottish Presbyterianism, more aggressive Catholic proselytizing at court and the political interests of anti-Puritan ministers like Strafford. The possibility that Charles might try to use Spanish or Irish Catholic troops further darkened the political landscape. So did his willingness to fight the Scots without parliamentary support and the queen’s willingness to sponsor a voluntary levy among english Catholics to help fund the war effort. a situation had arisen ominously reminiscent of that in the early 1620s, in which foreign and domestic developments seemed to be working in tandem, to threaten the survival of reformed religion both in the British isles and on the Continent. and although france had now openly joined Sweden and the Dutch in fighting against Spanish ‘tyranny’, Henrietta Maria’s rift with her brother and his chief minister meant that she had effectively become an opponent of french policies. although a french queen, she had become a supporter of Spanish interests. Since the 1960s, historians have known that, in provincial politics, the impact of national issues often depended on peculiar local circumstances. in John Morrill’s phrase, local conditions ‘refracted’ national questions, giving them different and sometimes unpredictable meanings at the parish and county level. i have been arguing that this holds equally true for the royal court, except that here petty ‘local’ circumstances were often connected to international and trans-oceanic strategic interests. Intensely personal matters, like the queen’s chequered relationship with richelieu or the machinations of Wat Montagu and the Duchess of Chevreuse, interacted with the progress of the thirty years War and the desire of Puritan grandees to engage in legalized piracy in the Caribbean, to produce surprising alignments. this complexity has never been fully recognized because the royal court remains less thoroughly studied than many english counties, so that historians still tend to portray its politics in overly general terms. Henrietta Maria’s position has been especially hard to appreciate because a number of deeply rooted nineteenth-century prejudices have stood in the way. She was not only a foreign Catholic but a woman who, like all powerful queen consorts, wielded power through court networks that largely circumvented established institutions such as the Privy Council. Hers was a form of the ‘politics of intimacy’ described by David Starkey, dependent on access and informal contacts rather than formal decision making in the proper forums. But, unlike the privy chamber politics investigated by Starkey, that of the queen’s entourage involved intrigues between men and women that sometimes had a sexual, as well as political dimension. for all these reasons nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century historians normally regarded it as irresponsible and morally suspect. It was precisely the kind of thing that needed to be left behind to permit the emergence of a modern liberal state and society, with its robust sense of nationality, its (overwhelmingly male) public sphere, its (entirely male) representative institutions, its (strongly masculine) sense of professionalism and its firm distinction between women’s domestic responsibilities. But, in the seventeenth century, national boundaries were rendered permeable by dynastic marriages, the highly cosmopolitan nature of aristocratic society,

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confessional allegiances that united people across frontiers while dividing them within national territories, and the practice of large-scale recruitment of foreign troops into virtually every major army of the period. Within the setting of royal courts and other great households – the normal arenas of high politics – access, intimate personal contacts, cultural fashions and codes of deportment deeply structured how power worked. This was a world in which women as well as men wielded significant power through their skill in managing human relationships and their ability to call into play affinities that sometimes extended across national frontiers. Until we make a sufficient imaginative effort to understand how it worked – and how people like Wat Montagu, Marie de rohan, Duchess of Chevreuse, and Lucy, Countess of Carlisle, flourished within it – we will never fully understand the religious politics of the early seventeenth century.

Chapter 2

The Secretary of Ladies and feminine friendship at the Court of Henrietta Maria Diana Barnes

ierome Hainhofer’s english translation of Jacques du Bosque’s The Secretary of Ladies, Or a New Collection of Letters and Answers Composed by Moderne Ladies and Gentlewomen (originally published in french in 1635) was entered in the Stationers’ register on 2 august 1638.1 the word ‘secretary’ in the title signals generic continuity with angel Day’s The English Secretary (1586; tenth edition 1635). By contrast, this is a collection of letters exchanged between female friends and not a letter-writing manual. Du Bosque claims that the collection will ‘make it appear that Letters are not the particular heritage of one sex; and that men are out, when they vant themselves sole Monarchs in the Empire of the sciences’.2 to level the challenge represented by women’s writing at the government of ‘the empire of the sciences’ has implications beyond the sphere of printed books. Like Day’s letter-writing manual, The Secretary of Ladies uses epistolary discourse to claim discursive citizenship but it does so through the familiar letter, or the genre of community. in the english translation, the challenge which feminine discourse presents to the singular privileges of men generates specific local connections between monarchy, empire, sovereignty and governance. this is an encrypted text whose meaning is embedded in multiple layers of authorship, translation and collection. the translator’s dedication to Mary Sackville, Countess of Dorset, a prominent courtier, associates the displacement of popular english letters by aristocratic feminine letters with the court of the Queen Consort Henrietta Maria. The Secretary of Ladies takes the weaker term from a set of commonplace binaries – feminine/masculine, popish/anglican and foreign/english – to create a rhetoric for a political minority. in the political climate of the 1630s, the volume’s implicit claim for the sovereignty of an autonomous community of ‘Moderne ladies and Gentlewomen’ threatens the natural, patriarchal familial order of the english state. By contrast to the ‘democratic’ representation of different classes in earlyseventeenth-century english letter collections, french printed letters were courtly [Jacques] du Bosque (du Bosc, du Bosqu), The Secretary of Ladies, Or A new collection of letters and answers composed by Moderne Ladies and Gentlewomen, Collected by Mr Du Bosque, trans. i[erome] H[ainhofer] (1638). Hereafter abbreviated to Du Bosque. 2 Du Bosque, ‘the authors epistle to Madam de Pisieux’ a5. 1

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and often feminine.3 Letter-writing manuals, such as Jean Puget de la Serre’s Le Sécretaire de la cour ou méthode facile d’écrire selon le temps divers Lettres de Compliments Amoureuses & Morales (1623), were more or less handbooks for courtiers modelled upon Baldassare Castiglione’s The Courtier (1528).4 femaledominated salon culture provided an institutional context for the publication of women’s writing absent in england.5 Salon letters made coded reference to roles played in an autonomous self-authenticating community. french collections were reprinted in cheap editions for popular readerships but they remained stamped with an aristocratic mould. following translations of Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac (1634, 1637 and 1638) and Puget de la Serre (1640), volumes imitating the french complimenting style proliferated, such as The Academy of Complements (1639) by ‘Philomusus’.6 french epistolary discourse was particularly well-suited to the claims for feminine autonomy being made at the Caroline court. Charles i’s marriage to the french princess Henrietta Maria was designed to give england a political alliance with roman Catholic europe, but her frenchness proved problematic from the outset. this was primarily due to her public displays of roman Catholicism.7 Her refusal to attend Charles i’s coronation (2 february 1626) or the opening of parliament (5 february 1626) because they were overseen by William Laud (who became archbishop of Canterbury in 1633) fuelled public unease. this climaxed when she was seen praying for the Catholic martyrs at tyburn. While Catholicism was tolerated at court, the english public was less sympathetic. When france refused to support england in its defence of the Palatinate, anti-french and anti-Roman Catholic sentiment peaked. It was clear that the royal marriage had not achieved its political function. Under these pressures Charles i sent the queen’s Katherine Gee Hornbeak, “The Complete Letter Writer in English 1568–1800”, Smith College Studies in Modern Languages 15, nos 3–4 (april–July 1934): 1, 33; Jean robertson, The Art of Letter Writing: An Essay on the Handbooks Published in England during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Liverpool and London, 1942), p. 39; Janet Gerkin Altman, “The Letter Book as a Literary Institution 1539–1789: Toward a Cultural History of Published Correspondences in france”, Yale French Studies 71 (1986): 34. 4 altman, p. 24. 5 french women’s letters were published as early as 1539 (Hélisenne de Crenne, Epistres familieres et invectives) and the letters of Mesdames de roches, mother and daughter Poitiers salonières were published in 1586 (altman, p. 26). 6 Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac, New Epistles of Monsieur de Balzac, trans. Sir richard Baker (1637) p. 65; W.H. Irving, The Providence of Wit in the English Letter Writers (Durham, nC, 1955), pp. 62–8. english translations of french letters include: The Letters of Mounsieur de Balzac: Translated into English, according to the last Edition, trans. W[illiam] t[irwhyt] (1634), (1637, 1638 trans. Sir Richard Baker), and Jean Puget de la Serre, The Secretary in Fashion, trans. John Massinger (1640). Suzanne W. Hull, Chaste and Obedient: English Books for Women 1475–1640 (San Marino, 1982), p. 194. 7 Martin J. Havran, The Catholics in Caroline England (Stanford, 1962), pp. 39–60; Caroline M. Hibbard, “the role of a Queen Consort: the Household and Court of Henrietta Maria, 1625–1642”, Princes, Patronage, and the Nobility: The Court at the Beginning of the Modern Age c. 1450–1650, ed. Ronald G. Asch and Adolf M. Burke (London, 1991), p. 406; erica Veevers, Images of Love and Religion: Queen Henrietta Maria and Court Entertainments (Cambridge, 1989), p. 76. 3

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French entourage back to France.8 efforts to force Henrietta Maria to accommodate to english ways were not successful and french culture became more entrenched as the queen’s position strengthened after the death of the king’s favourite, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, in 1628. By the mid 1630s, the papal envoy Gregorio Panzani observed that french was ‘almost a second vulgar tongue’.9 Hainhofer, the translator of The Secretary of Ladies, eulogizes his dedicatee, Mary Sackville, Countess of Dorset, in crypto-religious terms. His language associates the volume with the roman Catholic culture sustained at the english court under the protection of the queen. it would be a ‘sinne’ or ‘my obliquity, should i offer at any other Alter these first fruits of my poore endeavours’, he claims.10 the term ‘obliquity’ suggests both a moral deviation and an indirect or coded discourse. He describes himself as a ‘Casuist’ who resolves cases of conscience when vows have been breached. Competing altars, conflicts of conscience and deceptive appearances connote religious schism. the dedication is saturated with thinly disguised references to Mary Sackville’s protection of Catholics.11 Mary Sackville and her husband, Edward Sackville, Earl of Dorset, were Protestants known for their tolerance.12 they were appointed to the queen’s household after the dismissal of the french courtiers: he was Lord Chamberlain to the queen’s household from July 1628 and she was appointed governess to the heir in June 1629 replacing the roman Catholic Countess of roxburgh.13 in order to mediate between the queen’s roman Catholicism, the king’s Anglicanism and the strident anti-Catholicism being expressed by both the English people and the Puritans, the Sackvilles had to be sympathetic to Roman Catholicism and yet unswerving in their anglicanism.14 Hainhofer presents his authorship as a cover for those who ‘more directly kindle the flame of piety’, in other Havran, pp. 41–5. Gregorio Panzani cited in Malcolm Smuts, Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in Early Stuart England (Philadelphia, 1987), p. 186; Kevin Sharpe, Criticism and Compliment: The Politics of Literature in the England of Charles I (Cambridge, 1987), p. 18. 10 Du Bosque a2–a2 verso. 11 Havran, pp. 56–8. 12 Veevers holds that Edward Sackville, Earl of Dorset was Protestant (Images 79) whereas Gordon albion claims he was roman Catholic (Charles I and the Court of Rome: A Study in Seventeenth-Century Diplomacy (London, 1935), p. 357. although a number of roman Catholic courtiers held positions in the Queen’s household: thomas, Viscount Savage (chancellor), Sir John Winter (secretary), Dr David eccling (Queen’s physician) (Hibbard, “Role”, p. 405); Lake, pp. 72–3, 79–82, 87; Smuts, Court Culture, pp. 219–25, 238; nicholas Tyacke, “Puritanism, Arminianism and Counter-Reformation”, The Origins of the English Civil War, ed. Conrad russell (London, 1973) pp. 121–43; non-Catholic courtiers were also associated with the Queen, see Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (new Haven, 1992), p. 140; Hugh trevor roper, Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans (London, 1987), pp. 117–18. 13 Havran, pp. 56–8; Hibbard, “role”, p. 412; frances e. Dolan, Whores of Babylon: Catholicism, Gender and Seventeenth-Century Print Culture (ithaca, 1999) pp. 97–8. 14 alliances with Protestants were advantageous to roman Catholics at court, see Malcolm Smuts, “the Puritan followers of Henrietta Maria in the 1630s”, English Historical Review 93 (January 1978): 33. 8 9

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words for Roman Catholics. Then he describes the book as a foreigner in need of ‘a passport’ to ‘helpe [it] travel the Brittish world with out affront, or enemy’. Mary Sackville ensures safe passage for pious foreigners.15 Hainhofer is confident that in England ‘there does not breath such a schismatick to civility, [who] will not wave his opinion to one that governes his hopes’. even schismatics or roman Catholics in spirit or belief but not practice (or church-Papists) are indebted to Sackville as she governs the heir.16 This ‘testemony of a thankfull heart’ is dedicated to her as the conduit for implicitly roman Catholic imported values which he hopes will shape the future of the nation. Stressing foreignness, disguise and counterfeit, Hainhofer writes that ‘this english habit, made by a stranger to the tongue, more to the Courtly dress, may much blemish their native beauty.’ His conventional apology for the inadequacy of the translation of the original reinscribes the volume’s foreignness as a positive attribute in spite of the overt hostility towards foreigners in London at this time.17 Whether or not english Catholicism is understood as survivalism or conversion, its continuation depended upon foreign support, in the form of books printed on Continental presses, trained priests, the protection of english Catholics overseas and the toleration of english Catholic schools in Louvain and Douai.18 By introducing du Bosque as ‘the french collector (so he styles himself)’, Hainhofer implies that du Bosque may have counterfeited feminine authorship.19 Counterfeit identity was a condition of life for english roman Catholics. recusants beyond the court depended upon water-tight disguises to avoid the law.20 Considerable ‘obliquity’ surrounds the volume. the french collector claims that the letters were written by two french ladies yet the foreigner who translates it into english insinuates that the collector is the real author. Hainhofer positions the ladies’ letters, and du Bosque’s claims for them, within the roman Catholic imagery associated with Henrietta Maria’s court. the Frenchness of the volume and the dedication to Mary Sackville situate it politically. these connections are reinforced by the genre of the familiar letter. Central to medieval and early-modern education, the letter is a vehicle for ars rhetorica modelled upon the rules for oratory. rhetorical educational programmes viewed letter-writing as the closest form of writing to speech, and as a mode of civic action, vita activa, or participation in the public sphere. as a rhetorical practice letter-writing is concerned with civility or the reasoned behaviour underpinning Edward Sackville had already been thanked in similar terms for bringing the Roman Catholic, The Holy Court (1631) ‘into the fruition of english ayre’, in the translator, Sir Thomas Hawkins’ dedication (Veevers, Images, pp. 79, 109). 16 Du Bosque A3. John Gerard, SJ characterizes Sir Frances Fortesque as ‘a schismatick (that is, a Catholic by conviction), but there was no hope of converting him’ (The Autobiography of an Elizabethan, ed. P. Caramon (London, 1951) cited in Christopher Haigh, “the Continuity of Catholicism in the english reformation”, Past and Present 93 (november 1981): 56). 17 Smuts, Court Culture, p. 287; Lake, “Anti-popery”, pp. 79, 88. 18 John Bossy, “the Character of elizabethan Catholicism”, Past and Present 21 (1962): 44–48; Haigh, pp. 37–69. 19 altman, p. 35. 20 Bossy, “Character”, pp. 51–2. 15

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citizenship. The Secretary of Ladies is a volume of friendship letters exchanged between two aristocratic women after one of them retires from the court to the country.21 as such it participates in what forrest tyler Stevens describes as the ‘cult of friendship’ spawned by imitation of the ‘ornate, intense and passionate manner’ of Cicero’s familiar letters.22 not only is Ciceronian epistolary discourse a location for idiosyncratic personality and affect, it is also a site for the naturalization of ars rhetorica. Accordingly, letters of friendship typically display rhetorical skill through passion and argument. Cicero turns to atticus for sympathy he receives from nobody else, not even his wife; his passion is fuelled by the uniqueness of their intimate understanding.23 following this tradition, the ladies passionately express pain at being physically separated. it is a discourse necessitated by absence, or as they explain ‘a Letter is but a copy … which augments the desire to see the person represented.’24 although the familiar epistle typically provides a location and language for the expression of self, all reference to individuated personality is absent from the ladies’ emotional letters. By contrast to the Ciceronian precedent and many of the imitations it spawned, both correspondents are referred to impersonally as ‘Madam’;25 they are generic types produced by the rhetorical devices of a particular discursive form. Whether the letters were originally written by women, or by du Bosque as Hainhofer implies, matters little to the discursive effect of the letters. Each letter of reply reworks the tropes of the letter to which it responds; the ladies are differentiated as positions in arguments pro et contra.26 following Stanley fish’s concept of ‘interpretive community’, the ladies’ exchange can be described as ‘intellection’. according to this model, community is formed through ‘objective and shared’ rather than ‘subjective and idiosyncratic’ reasoning. interpretation, or ‘the passing of judgement’, fosters divergent opinion within a social field. Contrary to richard Strier’s criticism, that the absence of individual volition in fish’s theory makes resistance (both of the text to criticism and the author to historico-political forces) ‘unthinkable’, the omission of individualized traits makes reason, volition

21 towards the end of the volume a few letters are addressed to ‘My deare Brother’ (du Bosque, §L 254–7); ‘an abbesse’ (§XLi 228–9); and ‘Sir’ (§XL 227–8). 22 forrest tyler Stevens, “erasmus’ ‘tygress’: the Language of friendship, Pleasure, and the renaissance Letter”, Queering the Renaissance, ed. Jonathan Goldberg (Durham, 1994) p. 128; see also annabel Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation: The Conditions of Writing and Reading in Early Modern England (Madison, 1984), pp. 211ff; Carol everhart Quillen, Rereading the Renaissance: Petrarch, Augustine, and the Language of Humanism (ann arbor, 1998), pp. 106ff. 23 Cicero, Ad Atticum, trans. e.O. Winstedt, Loeb (Cambridge, 1912) i, 17 (65–75), 18 (75–83); i, 5 (13–17). 24 Du Bosque, §21 145. 25 the letters reference others by initials or Christian names but Louis Xiii is mentioned specifically. 26 the titles of the third pair of letters demonstrate this: ‘Shee complaines that men doe sometimes fall in love with those that deserve it least, and that the deformed are very often more happy than the faire’ and ‘Shee shewes that this Marriage will be more happy then is thought. And sends her a parallel to the news she had received.’

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and resistance more broadly political in The Secretary of Ladies.27 any reader can learn the art of rhetoric through letter writing. anonymity not only permits women’s participation in rhetorical reasoning, it is crucial to the form’s capacity to imagine political community. to describe the letters as copies of a real person not only suggests that epistolary discourse imitates life, it implies a process in which the letters themselves are imitated. The final letter in the volume elaborates this idea in closing. The letter writer describes an imitative sequence in which her friend’s letters ‘shall serve mee for copies, and at least you shall gaine this advantage, that if i be happy in imitation, those you receive from mee shall bee more polite and pleasing to you, so much as they shall resemble yours. Perhaps by little and little, i shall become a good scholler in your schoole.’28 The Secretary of Ladies represents passionate friendship less as a unique consequence of the chemistry between two individuals and more as a mimetic effect of a dialogical rhetorical form. the community implied by the ladies’ friendship is defined by education in interpretation, judgement and opposing arguments, key features of epistolary rhetoric. Familiar letters typically define the freedoms of friendship in opposition to the obligations of family. in the classical model, Cicero’s letters to atticus model a nonfamilial relationship of choice based on shared values. Masculine friendship straddles the private sphere of the family (oikos) and the public sphere of the state (polis) to provide emotional and political support. epistolary amicitia implies a particular form of state. although in his political writing Cicero follows the aristotelian tenet that the state is an organic outgrowth of the family, his friendships – as modelled in his letters – imply a state bound by ethical rather than kinship ties.29 the popularity of Cicero’s letters in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries can be explained in part by an increasingly widespread recognition that the ideology of friendship threatens organicist, family-based, notions of the state. as anthony fletcher observes, the royalist, Sir robert filmer, wrote Patriarcha (as early as the 1620s) to defend ‘a mental world which was dissolving’.30 although it is usually assumed that royalists supported the organicist idea of the state and Puritans the more progressive antiorganicist idea of the state as a historical construction, in fact the distinction was not so clear. Both attitudes are present in 1630s royalist writing.31 Like the republican values humanists derived from classical writing, the challenge implicit in friendship was not consistently realized. as Carole Pateman observes, fraternity and comradery Stanley fish, Is There a Text in this Class?: The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge, Ma, 1980), pp. 4–5; richard Strier, Resistant Structures: Particularity, Radicalism, and Renaissance Texts (Berkeley, 1995), pp. 1–4; Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983; London, 1991); Paul Duguid, “Material Matters: The Past and Futurology of the Book”, The Future of the Book, ed. Geoffrey Nunberg (Berkeley, 1996), pp. 79–80. 28 Du Bosque, §54 271–2. 29 Gordon Schocket, Patriarchalism and Political Thought (Oxford, 1975), p. 24. 30 anthony fletcher, Gender, Sex, Subordination in England in 1500–1800 (new Haven, 1995), pp. 291–5; Glenn Burgess, The Politics of the Ancient Constitution: An Introduction to English Political Thought, 1603–1642 (University Park, 1993), pp. 134, 265. 31 Smuts, Court Culture, p. 259. 27

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have been used interchangeably to describe the ‘free union’ between members of a democracy.32 friendship expresses a nascent conception of contract, or association determined by reason, which took clearer shape over the century.33 epistolary amicitia envisages a form of political community carrying traces of classical republicanism. in The Secretary of Ladies, the letter writers gain emotional comfort from their friendship which does not appear to characterize their kinship relations. Husbands are a shadowy, indistinct presence. the women are not duty bound to their husbands’ authority, rather their facility for reasoned choice grounds the non-familial affiliations which drive their passions. the triviality of some of the topics discussed implies that the mode of their discourse is more important than the content. independent thought is emphasized in the passionate persuasive arguments that the ladies present to each other. the two alterations to familiar epistolary form introduced by The Secretary of Ladies – anonymity (or absence of individual personality) and femininity – both effect the kind of political community imagined. friendship and courtesy are interrelated ideals integral to the community values upheld by The Secretary of Ladies. Courteous dialogue is central to the community envisaged because courtesy is understood to entail civility. a number of letters are solely concerned with how to give and receive compliments. in competitive exchanges of compliments the ladies display their wit, or readiness for judicious reasoning, through what they describe as ‘civility mixt with friendship’.34 for example, the letter ‘Shee makes her a Complement on the praises she had received’ opens with a chastisement: ‘Madam, you give me approbation for a thing which hardly deserves patience. I thinke tis rather an effect of your affection, then of your judgement.’ Here the letter writer expresses concern that emotion impairs judgement. She warns that ‘praysing [her] after this manner’ can have two negative consequences: it may either ‘offend’ or flatter.35 Just as Cicero calls for plain, unadorned prose at the same time as lavishing praise upon atticus, the women vociferously reject fashionable courtly compliment and yet participate in an endless circuit of compliments themselves.36 The motivation is to establish a discourse free of rhetorical trickery in which truth is palpable. they distinguish between vain empty compliments of fashionable discourse, and civility entailing honest judgement and reason. to give and receive compliments appropriately are acts of judgement based upon exercising reason before ‘esteeming’ or offering ‘good will’. The ladies seek to separate judgement from mere good manners and emotion in order to establish a language practice to support ethical interpersonal relations. Mutual respect, modesty and truth are valued over custom, eloquence or slavish decorum. these are shared values; the ladies only debate the appropriate application. this straining for truth should not be reduced to an empty exchange of compliments or reprimands. One lady warns her friend to avoid compromising her integrity: ‘i doe not desire you to run your selfe into errour’; she Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Stanford, 1988), pp. 78–9. Margaret r. Sommerville, Sex and Subjection: Attitudes to Women in Early Modern Society (London, 1995), pp. 210–42. 34 Du Bosque, §48 248. 35 Du Bosque, §36 216–17. 36 Cicero, Ad Atticum ii, 1. 32

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stresses that her ‘request’ that her friend only speak of her to others in honest terms ‘is not uncivil’.37 this concern for decorum is not a quest for civility as etiquette, but for civility as the value that grounds community. Judgement of persuasive argument based upon a shared ethical code grounds the women’s friendship in an ideal community in which the speakers are distinguished by difference of opinion. this is an attempt to imagine a community governed by reason; the political nature of this community is confirmed by the prevalence of seventeenth-century political ideas such as the body politic, and the country/city opposition.38 early modern letter collections tend to emphasize their endorsement of ars rhetorica, or the humanist premise that linguistic facility derived from book-learning provides the enabling life skills of judgement and reason. In The Secretary of Ladies, books supply the discourse that strengthens the letter-writers’ friendship. The ethical code shared by the women is reinforced by the discussion of books exchanged.39 When the Parisian lady passes on a book, her friend responds with a letter entitled ‘Shee complaines of the ignorance of the Country, and saith that they cannot judge of good books’. Writing that ‘i wish you had been here’ to witness the ‘grosse, or false’ reception given to a good book, she calls her friend to witness and judge the scene. Thus the bonds between the women gain definition and reinforcement through epistolary discussion of books and letters. That their receptivity to such books is rare in both the city and the country promotes the idea of a community isolated by its superior, or sovereign, powers of ethical reason. the women describe themselves as crusaders for a cause defined by certain books: ‘Thinke into what country you have sent honest F. to make lessons of morality. Count it not strange if they give him not the approbation hee deserves, and if hee be no better received in this Countrey, then those that preach the Gospell among Turkes.’ She assures her friend that she is not alone in her devotion to the author’s teachings. She and her sister ‘will make a speciall esteeme of him: wee will learne him by heart.’ She eulogises: ‘This book corrects the humour, aswell as instructs the soule. and we have either of us given it a name: my sister cals it her schoole, and i, my consolation.’ Her only complaint is that she and her sister hate to share their copy and require a second.40 this is a learned female community schooled in, or consoled by, values spread through printed texts. the sisters appropriately receive the ethical message encoded in F’s book as the infidels surrounding them do not. they devote themselves to committing it to memory. in reply, the Parisian emphasizes that the community of readers is physically dispersed (‘even at Paris it selfe, there are not many which judge soundly, of good books’); it is made coherent by the act of positively receiving an encrypted message imperceptible to other readers. the limits to this community are not geographic; they are set by intellectual receptivity to certain ethical tenets, that is, by reason.41 the women form a community not because they are sisters but because they esteem the values 37 38 39 40 41

(p. 7).

Du Bosque, §36 217–18. Du Bosque, §8 56–9. Cicero and Atticus also exchange books, see Cicero, Ad Atticum, i, 5. Du Bosque, §16 116–18. Anderson argues that the nation is always conceived with ‘finite, if elastic boundaries’

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presented in F’s book. F’s message is not a private thing for solitary closet reading; it is better spoken about in society. The Parisian praises the author for socializing with decorum: ‘he speakes yet better then hee writes, and … There is no lesse force in his discourse then judgement in his writings.’42 this writing is sociable and public rather than readerly and private. a mode of sociability practised by ‘the better sort’ of women, but not necessarily bound to the court, is promoted.43 if the country is full of dullards and characterized by the tedium of nature and the court is made up of self-deceived flatterers who ‘love novelty better then reason’, then the only thing of substance constituting either is this epistolary dialogue.44 the values shared by the women extend beyond their epistolary exchange to ground a self-sufficient community. They bolster each other’s reputations. In ‘Shee promises to publish every where the effects of her courtesie’, the letter writer declares ‘that there is no body which does not instantly judge, the [respect] [she has] of [her friend’s favours]’.45 they also patronize other worthy men and women on the grounds of shared values. for example, one lady recommends the ‘wisedome, and vertue’ of the bearer of her letter to a friend who loves and possesses these qualities. The friendship creates a network of alliances: ‘I doubt not but you will assist him, and doe beleeve that in obliging him, you will give me new ground to serve you.’46 Patronage depends upon a shared interpretive code, or criteria of judgement. Just as they offer safe passage through civil circles to those whom they judge worthy, like Cicero they also judge discourtesy negatively.47 irregular behaviour is criticized in the letter entitled ‘Shee complaines of the inconstancy of a certaine Lady who had in the beginning expresst an extraordinary inclination, and soone after quitted it’.48 One of the women even reprimands her brother for his behaviour, placing reason or reasoned friendship above familial ties and masculine authority.49 The Secretary of Ladies is not a collection of private friendship letters, in the religious subtext of the volume, feminine friendship addresses a political situation. When one of the letter writers elaborates her description of the author they refer to as ‘F’ via an example from the Scriptures, she implies that he is a divine and the ladies his disciples. the women form a discursive community bound by shared religious views disseminated in books. In The Secretary of Ladies religious conversion, or the decision to lead a devout religious life, is represented as a function of female friendship. the letter entitled ‘She tels that one of her friends intends to become religious, and that she is resolved to follow her’ opens with a description of her friend Lucinde’s devout religiousness: Madam, i must tell you news, no lesse unpleasing to your selfe then me. Mistris Lucinde speakes no more, but of religion, and the cloysters: all her entertainment is the contempt 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

Du Bosque, §16 121–2. Du Bosque, §16 120. Du Bosque, §10 72. Du Bosque, §28 173. Du Bosque, §35 214–15. Cicero, Ad Atticus, i, 17. Du Bosque, §51 258. Du Bosque, §50 254–7.

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of the world, and she reads nothing but introductions to a devout life. there is nothing to change but her habit, her face, and her soule are gone already. She carries her eyes like those that weare the vaile: not a looke of hers but reaches penitence.50

The first thing established here is that this ‘news’ is pleasing to both ladies. This is because they share Lucinde’s religiosity. Her behaviour is the function of a practice of reading, in this case specifically of Introduction to a Devout Life, which is shared and endorsed by the letter writers. in her devotion to the religious principles embodied in François de Sales’ book, she has practically taken the veil.51 the act itself would merely formalize her oblation. As the letter writers are not identified as distinct individuals, this brings into relief their arguments and mode of discourse. even their named friend Lucinde is simply a type, someone who has followed the logical consequences of a particular reading practice. no doubt whatever the turn towards such roman Catholic religiosity means in Catholic France, it has different social and political ramifications in Protestant england. according to the ideal of mimesis, the terms of classical and Continental discourses are redeployed to fit new contexts; anonymity, or impersonality, aids this process of adaptation. thus Ciceronian friendship is unmoored from republican rome and adapted to give shape and credence to a range of different local modes of interpersonal affiliation. Likewise, when the story of the devout lives of a group of aristocratic roman Catholic frenchwomen circulates in translation in Caroline england, it undergoes mimesis. The mimetic text works on both the level of literal and apparent content and the level generated by the tension between the text and its precedents. the idea was not limited to writing itself; it was claimed that the process of reading was imitative. The often-cited Horatian dictum that fiction should teach (and delight) implied that reading shaped a reader’s life. these principles rest upon the premise that the form of a literary work could apply to any potential reader. The Secretary of Ladies imagines the consequences of a mimetic reading practice. in this spirit, Hainhofer encourages English readers to link the volume to their own context. Foreign books imported into England had symbolic significance in the context of courtly roman Catholicism, recusancy and the anxiety about a popish plot. The practice of Catholicism was sustained by books printed on secret presses and those imported from the Continent. A number of Catholic books were printed with the support of Henrietta Maria and her courtiers. Encrypted Catholic books able to pass censorship were also important, and suspicion of this encoded, invisible, secret Catholicism fuelled anti-Catholic sentiment in england. in the 1630s, foreign books, such as Sales’ Introduction to a Devout Life, became marked as Catholic even though they were popular with Protestants and Catholics alike.52 Introduction to a Devout Life is a counter-reformation treatise upon meditation. it reconceptualizes Catholicism under the pressure of Protestant individualism, advocating humility and Du Bosque, §15 110–11. Louis Martz, The Poetry of Meditation: A Study in English Religious Literature of the Seventeenth Century (new Haven, 1954), pp. 249–59. 52 Strier, p. 91. 50 51

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poverty in terms that did not challenge aristocratic decorum, wealth or display.53 two different translations had been available in england since 1609 and it had even been ‘recently licensed in an expurgated de-romanised version by one of [Laud’s] own chaplains’.54 Laud issued a proclamation on 14 May 1637 recalling Sales’ book.55 a ritual public burning followed. Laud desired to clearly separate himself from the taint of Roman Catholicism identified by Puritan radicals who called him ‘the Pope of Canterbury’.56 Closely associated with the devout humanism fashionable at court, the treatise was viewed as having the seditious potential to feed the festering Catholic Plot. Like Laud, The Secretary of Ladies identifies Sales’ Introduction to a Devout Life as a powerful foreign body with the potential to cement roman Catholic loyalties. Sales and du Bosque were both franciscan priests (Sales was a Capuchin or reformed Franciscan). Du Bosque’s better-known work, L’honnest femme (1632), has been described as an introduction to Sales.57 this celebration of the piety of an autonomous female community fits the English court which had become a haven for recusants and roman Catholic converts.58 When the letter writer asserts that the godly may form a subculture within the larger court community, she reiterates Sales’ overriding message that it is not necessary to shun worldly material pleasures in order to be devout. She writes that it would not be ‘very reasonable’ for her friend to think of ‘the cloysters’ as the only means of ‘salvation’: ‘though we be at Court, and in company; our soule is as capable of grace. Truely to forsake the world, wee need but retire our thoughts, and our desires.’ Here a religious code of courtly behaviour is being formulated in which women may live an exemplary devout life all but taking the veil without ostracizing themselves from society. She stresses: ‘tis so with the just, whose conversation is among the Saints, albeit [she] lives among the profane.’ Lucinde’s conversion is a performance of her beliefs which registers her factional affiliations to an oppositional religious community at court. after reiterating the Salesian principles, the argument turns: ‘But not to dissemble … i [will] tell you the change, which hers causeth in my soule.’ She renounces the obliquity of her style up to this point, implying that sociable piety is inadequate. She praises Lucinde’s renunciation of the court and vows to join her in embracing an unearthly kind of devotion: ‘If she quit not the designe shee hath to forsake the world, I shall mine to tarry there. I tooke indeed some delight Martz, p. 5; Strier, pp. 85–90. Caroline M. Hibbard, Charles I and the Popish Plot (Chapel Hill, 1983), p. 61; Strier, p. 85; Martz, pp. 6–7; a.f. allison and D.M. rogers, The Contemporary Printed Literature of the English Counter-Reformation between 1558 and 1640, vol. 2, Works in English (aldershot, 1994), pp. 173–4. 55 Hibbard, Charles I, p. 262. 56 John Bastwick cited in S.R. Gardiner, History of England, vol. 7 (New York, 1965), p. 231. 57 Desaive, p. 266. One translation, The Compleat Woman, was published in 1632, in addition Walter Montague’s translation was circulating at court in manuscript. Du Bosque’s influence is evident in Montague’s masque The Shepherds’ Paradise (1656) performed in 1633. erica Veevers “the Source of Walter Montague’s The Accomplish’d Woman”, Notes and Queries 228 [30.5] (October 1983): 439–40. 58 Sharpe, Personal Rule, p. 305. 53 54

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therein, but since it was for the love of her[,] she shal carry away the effect with the cause, i must wholly follow her to be content.’ then she anticipates the criticism that to follow her friend in rejecting earthly pleasures is to conform to a fashion rather than make an independent rational decision: ‘you will tell me perhaps, this is not to renounce the world, but to seek the world where it is not, that it is an effect of friendship, not devotion: and that to run after her into the cloysters, is not to seeke God but Lucinde.’ She admits that friendship was the catalyst to her decision but protests that the effect is more important than the cause: ‘a tempest may sometimes cast us upon a countrey, where afterwards we freely choose to inhabit.’ Stressing her own volition, she explains that conscience may not have led her to the convent but once there she may achieve Godliness. this community of friends is represented as having been thrown by a ‘tempest’ into ‘a countrey’, that is, it occupies space as a nation would. friendship is imagined as the means of charting new political territory; it is a public mode of affiliation which consolidates factionalism. The letter generically registers this in the subscription: ‘and what ever come on it, follow her i will. this is my inviolable purpose, and that to be all my life, Madam, Your, &c.’59 the subscription provides the opportunity for the letter writer to swear her loyalty to the chain of conversions and invoke its perpetuation through her friend. It is little surprise that her friend also writes of conversion in the reply; the suasory element of the genre of friendship effects social change. in reply the friend ‘rejoice[s]’ in the ‘newes’, writing: ‘the good newes is double which i learne, the change of Lucinde and your owne.’ as anticipated, she criticizes her correspondent for converting in order to follow her friend: ‘your resolution is good, you neede onely change the cause, doeing that for the love of God, which you intend to do for the creature.’ Nevertheless, she justifies her own subsequent decision to take vows in the same terms: the friendship with her correspondent had been the only thing holding her back from the monastic life and once her friend has left society for a convent she might as well follow suit. She explains: But I bring you newes which perhaps you looke not for, If you be two, I promise you to make the third. It is not new to me to have a great distaste of vanities: I had not stayed so long to abandon them, but for the great griefe i had to lose your company. now, by Gods grace, all the cords are broken, and I perceive nothing that hinders the effect of my resolution, after that you have made.60

Here friendship galvanizes a generalized ‘distaste of vanities’ into a resolve actively to follow principles. This qualification of her friend’s position, typical of the paired letters, illustrates a process of independent intellection within a sympathetic community formed by print. Friendship makes relinquishing ties with society easier and provides a mode for doing so. As the letter implies, religious affiliations are ‘newes’ or matters of public interest with far-reaching consequences. the idea of a community of women centred at court bound by views not held by others around them but spread beyond the court through letters which affirm friendships based upon printed books has a close parallel with the court of Henrietta Maria. The Secretary 59 60

Du Bosque, §15 110–13. Du Bosque, §15 113–15.

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of Ladies’ prefatory references to schism, ‘obliquity’, ‘casuists’, ‘broken vowes’ and competing altars prepare the reader for this interpretation. these words are tacitly roman Catholic. The Secretary of Ladies was published when the scandal of court conversions was at a peak. While only Henrietta Maria was officially permitted to practise roman Catholicism, in fact she obtained so many special dispensations for recusant courtiers that at the end of 1637 Laud complained to the privy council.61 the court and king’s tolerance of Catholicism was at odds with the attitudes of the Commons and English people. Beyond the court, fines for recusancy were enforced, albeit sporadically. the impasse over religion was one of the reasons that Charles i did not call Parliament again after the 1629 sessions which had been dominated by religious issues such as recusancy.62 it was a matter of scandal that english roman Catholics were attending mass at the houses of foreign ambassadors in 1629 and at Henrietta Maria’s chapel in 1630. On both occasions guards were posted to arrest recusants as they left. Both Charles I and Lord Secretary Windebank recognized the problem of aristocratic Catholicism as a threat to national security so they issued and reissued proclamations forbidding the english to attend mass; foreigners from drawing the English away from the Church of England; and the use of Catholic prayer books.63 the presence of roman Catholic priests at court and the spectacle of Henrietta Maria’s religious devotions were infectious. although alarmed by the wave of public conversions from the 1620s onwards, Charles i did not absolutely repudiate roman Catholicism; taking the Nicene creed literally, he identified himself as ‘a Catholic Christian’ but saw no reason for affiliation with Rome.64 His visits to roman Catholic churches were public knowledge and rumours of his own conversion spread.65 He did not seem to understand the danger of letting his sympathy be known, and only at the height of the Scottish crisis when the prayer book he strove to impose was denounced as popish, did he proclaim that ‘he abhorreth all symptoms of Popery’.66 the papal ambassador George Conn arrived at court in 1637. His urbanity found favour with the king; they were known to discuss theology. It was rumoured that he heard the king’s confession.67 He focused his proselytizing efforts upon the ladies at court; it was thought that his well-spoken, gentlemanly manner gave him great appeal with women. In fact his predecessor, Panzani, had specifically stipulated that to get ahead at court his successor ‘must seek to win the ladies of the court, since here many negotiations are conducted through women’.68 Women at court had the Hibbard, Charles I, p. 61. Sharpe, Personal Rule, p. 301. 63 Sharpe, Personal Rule, pp. 302, 305; Havran, p. 146. 64 Charles Carlton, Charles I: The Personal Monarch (1985; London, 1995), p. 62; Smuts, Court Culture, p. 226. 65 anzolo Correr, Letter to Doge and Senate, 2 January 1637, Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts, Relating to English Affairs Existing in the Archives and Libraries of Venice, and in other Libraries of Northern Italy, vol. 24 1636–39, ed. allen B. Hinds (London, 1923) p. 119; Sharpe, Personal Rule, p. 305. 66 Statement made on 1 December 1637 (Carlton, p. 196). 67 albion, p. 203. 68 Smuts, “Puritan followers”, p. 31; Smuts, Court Culture, p. 195. 61

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freedom to enter discussions with men on equal terms and did so with both Conn and father robert Philip, Henrietta Maria’s confessor.69 a contemporary observed that Conn ‘evidently contemplated subjecting the realm through women’.70 from the 1620s onwards there was a steady flow of conversions. In 1636, after the opening of Henrietta Maria’s chapel at Somerset House, they were estimated to be as high as one or two a week.71 The conversions were of different types: some are best defined as reconciliations of lapsed Catholics, such as Sir Kenelm Digby who was brought up roman Catholic, announced his allegiance to the Church of england in 1630 but then reconverted to rome in 1635 much to the disappointment of Laud, his former tutor;72 others were just the publication of recusancy which had been sustained within the privacy of the family without detection for generations. the cases that caused the most scandal, however, were those where the convert went against his or her family, such as Tobie Matthew, son of Tobias Matthew, Archbishop of York, or the 1636 conversion of Walter Montagu, son of the Puritan activist Henry Montagu, earl of Manchester, Lord Privy Seal. although Montagu was ordained while in rome, eventually father and son were privately reconciled.73 the scandal was increased when gender and marriage were added to the equation. Elizabeth Cary, Viscountess Falkland, and Olivia Porter, wife of Endymion Porter, are notable cases. In 1626 Cary’s Roman Catholicism became public knowledge, although she had been recusant for 20 years.74 When her husband returned from business in france, he expelled her from his household and refused to support her; her father cut her from his will.75 Her case was still causing a stir in 1634 when Laud called for her debarment from court because her daughters had converted ‘not without the practice of their mother’.76 The High Commission took two of her daughters as wards of the state, and the Privy Council indicted her for secretly sending two of her sons to a Continental seminary.77 Cary’s religious faith not only placed her in opposition to her husband, english law and government, but also supported what her husband (and others) viewed as the corruption of his family. Porter’s conversion became public in October 1636. as her husband seems to have sympathized with her religious beliefs, the outrage was not the violation of her family but the consequences of her energetic proselytism.78 She quickly effected a number of conversions, including that of her father Lord Boteler on his deathbed. Mary fielding, Marchioness of Hamilton’s Puritan convictions faltered after she spoke with Conn. Porter then provided books and acted as a go-between, passing CSP, Ven, 1636–39, pp. 148–9. albion, p. 162. 71 albion, p. 196. 72 Veevers, Images, p. 86; albion, p. 200. 73 albion, p. 195; pp. 204–8. 74 Louise Schleiner, Tudor and Stuart Women Writers (Bloomington, 1994) p. 175. 75 Barry Weller and Margaret ferguson, introduction, elizabeth Cary, The Tragedy of Miriam: The Fair Queen of Jewry with The Lady Falkland: Her Life by one of her Daughters (Berkeley, 1994), pp. 7–8. 76 Sharpe, Personal Rule, p. 305. 77 Havran, p. 146. 78 albion, p. 210. 69 70

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on messages from Conn. Fielding’s father asked the Bishop of Carlisle to visit his daughter.79 Most scandalous of all was Porter’s influence over her Puritan sister, Anne Blount, Lady newport, in 1637, who had earlier competed with her at their father’s deathbed. Confident in her thorough knowledge of theology, Lady Newport entered into theological debate with the Capuchin priests at court. Over a series of meetings they contested her arguments point by point until she gave in; Conn gave her lessons in the catechism. Her husband (Mountjoy Blount, earl of newport) was distressed by her conversion; as Lord of the Ordnance his public office was threatened.80 He went straight to see Laud and blamed Montague and Matthew.81 edward, Viscount Conway, records: ‘My Lord Newport was so fierce in complaining for his wife being made a Papist, that the matter was debated at the Council table.’ it was interpreted as a matter of state security. On Sunday 22 October Laud recorded in his diary: a great noise about the perverting of the La. newport. Speech of it at the Council. My free speech there to the King, concerning the increasing of the roman party, the freedom at Denmark House, the carriage of Wal. Montague and Sr. Tobye Matthewe. The Queen acquainted with all i said that very night; and highly displeased with me, and so continues.82

Laud’s diary extract demonstrates how rumours of Papist conversions instantly raised the names of other known Catholics; religion was viewed as a factional activity. Laud was not alone in associating Montagu and Matthew with Lady newport’s conversion.83 roman Catholicism was believed to constitute an independent community within england that threatened national security by corrupting the state from within, beginning with the family. Henrietta Maria did not personally bring about conversions, but she enthusiastically offered converts protection and support.84 She held a Christmas Day service for recent converts which was attended by Lady newport.85 This act of defiance, directed at Laud, proclaimed Roman Catholic solidarity, symbolically guaranteed by the queen’s right to practise her faith.86 Many of the converts were women acting upon their own judgement with or without their husband’s approval. Contemporaries perceived this challenge to the patriarchal family to be the greatest threat to the nation.87 as John Bossy observes, these cases fielding never publicly declared herself roman Catholic, in spite of having received daily visits from Conn in October 1637. albion, p. 209; Dorothea townsend, Life and Letters of Mr Endyminion Porter: Sometime Gentleman of the Bedchamber to King Charles the First (London, 1897), pp. 165–6. 80 Havran, p. 146; albion, p. 212. 81 Gardiner, p. 239. 82 William Laud, The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, D.D. Sometime Archbishop of Canterbury, vol. 3 (Oxford, 1853), pp. 229–30. 83 Sir William Calley to richard Harvey, 27 november 1637 (cited albion, p. 213). 84 Gardiner, p. 239. 85 Gardiner, p. 242. 86 Sharpe, Personal Rule, p. 304. 87 Lowell Gallagher, “Mary Ward’s ‘Jesuitresses’ and the Construction of a typological Community”, Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens: Women’s Alliances in Early Modern England, ed. Susan frye and Karen robertson (Oxford, 1999), p. 209. 79

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of female conversion demonstrate that ‘religious divisions were clarifying at the same time as ideals of conjugal behaviour were rising and pressure for the spiritual unity of the household intensifying on all sides’.88 Falkland could only have kept her conversion secret from her husband for 20 years if communication and agreement were not the grounds of their marriage.89 at this time the dominant view was that women were subject to their husbands whose authority was endorsed by God. in the 1620s and 1630s some women departed from this to follow God even if it meant disobeying their husbands to whom they were only conditionally contracted. this contravened both the ancient constitution of England and the religious justification for male superiority.90 Women took advantage of the political theories based upon the individual rather than family emerging at this time.91 In the first half of the seventeenth century, women claimed extraordinary autonomy in religion. Oppositional religions seem to have been particularly attractive to women because they were not subject to the same degree of institutional control. for instance, in Puritan sects emphasizing spiritual equality, women were more likely to be involved in preaching and parish government.92 Moves towards equality were not confined to sectarianism; in the pre-civil war climate traditional gender roles were contested as much as any other system of authority.93 as roman Catholicism was illegal in england and cut off from central church power, it was less tightly controlled than on the Continent. Consequently there was considerable freedom in its practice.94 recusants were not subject to the tridentine reforms which centralized institutional control, giving more power to the parish than the family or household.95 By necessity recusancy relied upon secret networks sustained by households.96 Women hid priests in their houses and taught their children the tenets of Roman Catholicism, while husbands kept up the public face.97 recusancy depended upon female sub-cultures which bypassed the authority of husbands and priests.98 in trials for recusancy, women exploited the fact that they lacked political suffrage. As they were not citizens in the eyes of the law, they could not be punished.99 When a recusant wife was taken to court she was often neither fined nor jailed, because this would effectively punish a man who was not on trial himself.100 John Bossy, English Catholic Community 1570–1850 (London, 1975), p. 159. Weller and ferguson, p. 8. 90 Burgess, p. 96; Schocket, p. 71. 91 Keith thomas, “Women and the Civil War Sects”, Past and Present 13 (april 1958): 55. 92 thomas, pp. 44, 47–51. 93 thomas, p. 55. 94 Martz, pp. 7–8. 95 Diane Willen, “Women and religion in early Modern england”, Women in Reformation and Counter Reformation Europe, ed. Sherrin Marshall (Bloomington, 1989), p. 152. 96 Patricia Crawford, Women and Religion in England 1500–1720 (London, 1993), p. 63. 97 Marie B. rowlands, “recusant Women 1560–1640”, Women in English Society 1500– 1800, ed. Mary Prior (London, 1985), p. 157; Willen, p. 147; Bossy, “Character”, pp. 40, 47. 98 rowlands, p. 161; Willen, p. 153. 99 rowlands, pp. 152–3, 158. 100 rowlands, p.156; Crawford stresses that some did go to gaol (pp. 59, 62). 88 89

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in The Secretary of Ladies the decision to lead a devout life is ‘newes’ with ramifications beyond the court. Likewise, news of conversions circulated as scandal which fed the fervently anti-Catholic climate in england. anxiety that england was being taken over by Papists was a central feature of pre-civil war unrest.101 the alliance between Puritans and Catholics against Laudian arminianism only operated at court (and only there until 1637).102 On 10 May 1638 a news gatherer, reverend Mr Garrard, Master of Charter-House, wrote to the earl of Strafford in ireland. He recounted a number of Papist scandals including that which occurred when the Spanish ambassador set off with an irishman and torch-bearing servants to worship in the queen’s chapel at Somerset House. as the two men proceeded through the streets, the spectacle attracted followers. the next day reports ‘that the Spanish ambassador had gone [in] Procession openly though the Streets’ circulated. the rumour fed the anxiety about the increase of Papacy.103 Forced to take action, the king ‘gave Order for questioning those English who were in [the Ambassador’s] Company’. the writer diagnoses: ’Tis true, not withstanding all the Care and Vigilancy the King and Prelates take for the suppressing of Popery, yet it much increaseth about London, and these pompous Shews of the Sepulchre contribute much to it, for they grow common; they are not only set up now in the Queen’s Chapel, for which there is some reason, but also in the ambassador’s Houses, in Con’s Lodgings, nay at York-House, and in my Lord of Worcester’s House, if they be not Lyars who tell it. Our great Women fall away every Day. My Lady Maltravers is declared a Papist; and also my Lady Katherine Howard, but ’tis Love hath been the principal agent in her conversion; for unknown to her Father, the Earl of Suffolk, she is or will be married to the Lord d’Aubigny.104

Garrard reports the increasingly widespread belief that flagrant celebration of roman Catholic ritual was increasing as a consequence of the queen’s practice of her religion. this in turn fosters the scandal of aristocratic women’s conversions and illicit affairs. Secret love and religious scandal are associated. Garrard stresses women’s defiance of their fathers underscoring the transgression of familial authority implicit in the court conversions of the 1630s. Contemporary accounts of ‘our great Women fall[ing] away each day’, Conn’s ‘subjecting the nation through women’ and ‘agents of conversion’ reflect a particular anxiety about the autonomy of women. The identification of the converts as ‘our’ ladies suggests that English men experienced the conversions as a threat to their realm and their authority. in The Secretary of Ladies devout life is a manifestation of the capacities of epistolary discourse, namely dialogue, dialectical reasoning, friendship and community. the women value their friendship for the opportunity it provides for Conrad russell, The Causes of the English Civil War (Oxford, 1990), pp. 8–9. Smuts, “Puritan followers”, pp. 26–45. 103 William Knowler, The Earle of Strafforde’s Letters and Dispatches with an Essay towards his life by Sir George Radcliffe, From the Originals in the Possession of his Great Grandson, The Right Honourable Thomas Earl of Malton, Knight of the Bath, vol. 2 (London, 1739), p. 165. 104 Knowler, vol. 2, p. 166. 101 102

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intellection, and they choose it over court, company and worldly pleasures. feminine friendship sustains the practice of reason unsustainable at court, in the country, or in families. Husbands and children are glaringly absent from the ladies’ discussions of books, country versus city, courtesy, friendship or religion. They are only mentioned when one of the ladies persuades her husband or children to enter a seminary or nunnery.105 they symbolize how feminine friendship provides an impetus for others to act upon religious convictions. Otherwise the family is incidental to the passions that drive the women. the women’s passions are expressed in the language of friendship, courtesy and compliment. this discourse is intrinsically political because it grounds and preserves a sovereign community. the discourse of friendship provides the terms for claiming that any ‘Madam’ can imitate the singular prerogatives of the queen. the letter ‘She conjures her to continue her friendship’ celebrates female friendship as: the greatest consolation i have in my solitude is to entertaine myself with your rare qualities, and to hope for your newes. I aske them boldly, since you have done me the honour to promise them in your celestiall cabinet, where they doe never tell lies, and where you appeare with so much Majesty, as a Queene upon a glorious throne.106

Here familiar epistolary tropes – the cabinet, the solitude only alleviated by the dialogue of friendship, the passionate yearning for communication, and the exchange of compliments – are identified as the properties of feminine letters. The subscription invokes the longevity of female friendship: ‘I reckon it will last long: and your complexion being most equall, the friendship you beare mee, shall never bee lessened. i am certaine it shall never have an end, if it endure as long as the purpose i have to serve you and be, Madam, your, &c.’107 in the context of the volume itself and the Caroline court of the 1630s, this promise of unending female friendship secured through anonymity, the rhetoric of friendship and the iterable generic features of the letter form, reads as the threat of the Popish plot which like the holy day procession is gaining momentum and followers. in the wider community, the court conversions were viewed as a festering infection secretly taking hold of the nation from within. the rhetoric of feminine friendship presented at the ‘alter’ of Mary Sackville, who governs Catholic ‘hopes’ and protects those who more ‘directly kindle the flame of piety’, provides a form which claims sovereignty for the community of courtly roman Catholic converts. apologizing for her effusive style, one lady writes: ‘excuse me if i write thus unto you, since the soveraigne remedy of my solitude, is to think that you have promised to love me’; the affective language of the familiar letter not only guarantees the sovereignty of the community of women but its reproduction.108

105 106 107 108

Du Bosque, §43 232–6; §41 228–9. Du Bosque, §42 230. Du Bosque, §42 231–2. Du Bosque, §27 166–7.

Chapter 3

Queen Henrietta Maria’s theatrical Patronage Karen Britland

On 7 December 1625, about six months after Henrietta Maria arrived in england, the noblewoman Katherine Gorges wrote a letter to her brother-in-law, Sir Hugh Smyth, describing a visit she had paid to court in the company of her kinswoman, Susan, Lady Denbigh.1 She wrote: my Lady Denbeigh my old acquaintance and kinswoman dyninge at Langford, would needs haue me promise hir that i would goe to see the Queen and the Masque, on Sunday night was fortnight, where i saw the Masque acted by the Queens seruants all french, but it was disliked of all the English for it was neither masque nor play, but a french antique; and for the french ladies the elder sorte that are neerest hir Maie: are something like to Nurce Ball only nurce is a litle hansomer, but whether it was the sight of the Masque, or the old french Ladies I know not, but I cam home the next day soe sicke that I kept my Chamber 3: or 4: dayes after, and soe weared with the Court, that for ought I know Ile’ neuer desire to be Courtiar more.2

this letter is interesting for several reasons, not least because it is amusing. firstly, it provides evidence of Henrietta Maria’s theatrical activity prior to her performance in the french pastoral Arténice in february 1626. Secondly, it demonstrates not only Gorges’ nationalistic response to the new queen consort’s attendants, but a vivid distrust of courtly spectacle that would continue to resonate in certain quarters throughout the Caroline period. And thirdly, it makes clear that the entertainment was unfamiliar to English observers for it did not fit into expected categories of theatrical display, being a french ‘antique’, rather than a masque or play.3 in sum, the englishwoman, Gorges, was bewildered by this imported cultural form which, as the tone of her letter implies, she perceived as wearisome and undignified. 1 Katherine Gorges was the widow of edward Haselwood, and the daughter of Sir robert Osborne and his wife Margaret. She was married to Sir edward Gorges, son of Sir thomas Gorges of Longford Castle, Wiltshire. Sir Hugh Smyth, her correspondent, was the husband of elizabeth, sister to Sir edward Gorges. 2 Katherine Gorges to her brother from Longford in Wiltshire, 7 December 1625, Bristol Record Office, Ashton Court Muniments, AC/C/47–3. 3 Presumably the production was like the French court’s ballet à entrées, in that, unlike a Jonsonian masque, it would have consisted of a series of disparate entries danced in different costumes.

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I want to draw together these three elements of Gorges letter and look, in this chapter, at Henrietta Maria’s interest in theatre, her French-influenced dramatic tastes, and the way that these intersected with the criticism and reform of Caroline professional theatre. it is usually assumed that the queen’s direct support of professional drama was slight, and confined to the example she set by performing herself and by condoning others’ theatrical activity.4 By looking at two theatrical seasons, those of 1633–34 and 1634–35, i hope to complicate this view of her engagement with professional drama. This chapter will consequently fall into two sections: the first will examine the scant evidence for the queen’s patronage of english professional companies, lingering particularly on the production at Somerset House of John fletcher’s The Faithful Shepherdess, an event believed by Meg Powers Livingston to be part of Henrietta Maria’s attempt to ‘create a cult of platonic love that would foster an idealised view of women’.5 The second will look at Henrietta Maria’s 1635 involvement with a troupe of itinerant French actors, briefly considering the cultural and political significance of the plays they brought with them to England. 1 Kenneth richards has pointed out that after the 1633 publication and subsequent Star Chamber condemnation of William Prynne’s polemical Histriomastix which infamously termed women actors, notorious whores, Henrietta Maria did not take to the dramatic stage again, although she continued to perform as a silent dancer in court masques.6 interestingly, though, from May 1634, after the completion of Prynne’s trial and punishment, the queen began to attend the public playhouses, reinforcing the Star Chamber judgement that playgoing was a lawful activity.7 at the same time, as Gerald eades Bentley has noted, ‘an unusually large number of the activities of [her] company [were] recorded in Sir Henry Herbert’s office book.’8 Lack of evidence makes it impossible to suggest that Henrietta Maria’s engagement with the professional companies definitely increased in 1633–34. That said, it certainly became more visible. the years around the publication of Histriomastix show a distinct attempt by the Caroline administrative machine to clean up the image of court theatre. indeed, richard Dutton has described the period between november 1632 and January Kenneth richards, “Queen Henrietta Maria as a Patron of the Drama”, Studia Neophilologica 42 (1970): 9–24, p. 15. 5 Meg Powers Livingston, “the reinvention of John fletcher as Caroline Court Playwright” (unpublished paper given at the 1999 Group for early Modern Cultural Studies conference). 6 richards, “Queen Henrietta Maria”, p. 20. 7 Henrietta Maria saw Massinger’s Cleander at the Blackfriars in May 1634 and Heywood’s Love’s Mistress at the Phoenix the following november. She also saw Carlell’s Arviragus and Philicia, Part 2, at the Blackfriars in 1635/6 and Davenant’s Unfortunate Lovers at the same theatre in 1638: see Gerald eades Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 7 vols (Oxford, 1941–68), 7.92–110. 8 Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 1.229. 4

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1634 as a ‘particularly fraught’ one for Henry Herbert, Master of the revels. Dutton suggests that the limits of his authority were tested both by the acting companies and by the intervention of William Laud who, as Bishop of London, ‘oversaw the whole process of licensing for print’.9 Dutton argues convincingly that Jonson’s play The Magnetic Lady, Prynne’s Histriomastix and a revival of John fletcher’s The Woman’s Prize were censured during this time because of their potentially subversive religious content, and notes that Herbert’s ‘policing of “oaths” and “prophaness” … primarily [spoke] to the heightened religious tensions around the court’.10 following Dutton, i want to argue that the 1633–34 season saw Charles and Henrietta Maria joining together to promote a reform of theatre at court characterized by gentility, decorum and refined language. It seems counterproductive, therefore, to look at Henrietta Maria’s sponsorship of court productions in isolation, particularly as there is evidence that the royal couple were using their respective theatre companies mutually to compliment each other during this period. For example, on 16 November 1633, the court watched Shakespeare’s Richard III, performed by the King’s Company in celebration of Henrietta Maria’s twentyfourth birthday. three nights later, the Queen’s Company performed Shirley’s The Young Admiral for the king (who was thirty-three). Both productions took place in the intimate setting of Saint James’ and, perhaps significantly, they were the first of only two occasions when the couple’s birthday celebrations were mentioned across the Channel in the French newsbook, the Gazette de France.11 Like the mutual shrovetide masques that took place in 1631 and 1632, Henrietta Maria and Charles seem to have provided reciprocal entertainments on these anniversaries. However, this time, rather than employing members of their own households, they employed their respective acting troupes. the King’s Company’s Richard III seems an anachronistic choice for a birthday celebration and it becomes even more odd when one considers Henrietta Maria’s taste for pastorals and tragi-comedies in which refined manners and language were combined with plots about constant love. in 1633, Joseph taylor, the leading actor with the King’s Company, had been employed to coach the queen and her ladies in The Shepherds’ Paradise, a production conceived in part, according to John Pory, to help the queen practise her english.12 It is tempting to see a similar kind of 9 richard Dutton, “‘Discourse in the players, though no disobedience’: Sir Henry Herbert’s Problems with the Players and archbishop Laud, 1632–34”, Ben Jonson Journal 5 (1998): 37–61, p. 38 and p. 40. 10 Dutton, “‘Discourse’”, pp. 44–5. David Como, who has more widely investigated Caroline religious censorship, similarly suggests that the early 1630s saw Laud deliberately attempting to ‘shut down Calvinist discourse in the capital’: David r. Como, “Predestination and Political Conflict in Laud’s London”, The Historical Journal 46, no. 2 (2003): 263–94, p. 265. 11 On the St James’ theatrical space, see John H. astington, English Court Theatre 1558– 1642 (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 67–9 and p. 209. See also Recueil des Gazettes Nouuelles (Paris, 1634), sub. 11 décembre 1633. 12 John Pory to Sir Thomas Puckering, 20 September 1632, in Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 2.176. nevertheless, Henrietta Maria seems stubbornly to have clung to the french language – for example, in 1634, Henry Herbert recorded her approbation of the

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didacticism at work in the production of Richard III: on Henrietta Maria’s birthday, she was encouraged to increase her knowledge of her adopted country by watching a popular play about english history.13 More importantly, though, I think this performance had a political agenda, much as Prince Charles’ 1625 promotion of Henry IV was probably intended to imply that he, like Hal, Prince of Wales, would soon emerge as England’s martial saviour.14 the early months of 1633 had seen the uncovering of the infamous Châteauneuf plot which implicated Henrietta Maria in international intrigue and which was reputed to have aspired so far as to set Gaston d’Orléans on his brother’s throne.15 Richard III famously dramatizes the results of a usurping brother’s tyranny and might well have served as a warning to the english queen not to become embroiled in her family’s problems. in October 1633, Henrietta Maria had given birth to a new prince, an occasion seized upon by her exiled brother and mother who both sent envoys to London, ostensibly to congratulate her. that autumn, Vincent de Voiture, renowned poet and member of Gaston d’Orléans’ household, also turned up in London on his way back to Brussels from Spain. He appears to have spent some time courting the favours of Lucy Hay, Countess of Carlisle, whose husband, unlike the queen consort, was beginning to lean more towards a pro-french policy of help for the Palatinate.16 Voiture was introduced into Lucy’s circle by a certain ‘Monsieur Gourdon’, possibly a relation of the elderly George Gordon, first Marquis of Huntly, who, five years previously, had been involved in secret negotiations with richelieu intended, in part, to foster a military alliance between france and Scottish Catholic peers.17 indeed, in the early spring of 1633, the Gazette de France reported that the ‘Marquis de Gourdon Prince de la maison d’escosse’ was awaiting the arrival in London of a troop of Scottish horse that he intended to conduct into Picardy for costumes for Coelum Britannicum: ‘The Q. was pleased to tell mee before the king, “pour les habits, elle n’avoit jamais rien vue de si brave”’: Joseph Quincy adams, ed., The Dramatic Records of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels, 1623–1673 (new Haven, 1917), p. 55. 13 in thomas Heywood’s Apology for Actors (London, 1612), the author notes, ‘plays have … taught the unlearned the knowledge of many famous histories, instructed such as cannot read in the discovery of all our english chronicles’ (sig. f3r). Ben Jonson, though, was sceptical about Shakespeare’s accuracy in his history plays: see Every Man In His Humour, Prologue, lines 9–12. 14 On this, see rebecca Bailey, “Queen Henrietta Maria, the ‘Old faith’ and ‘Her Majesties Servants’: Roman Catholicism and the Caroline Stage” (unpublished PhD thesis, Birkbeck College, University of London, 2003), p. 62. 15 for information about the Châteauneuf conspiracy, see r. Malcolm Smuts, “the Puritan followers of Henrietta Maria in the 1630s”, The English Historical Review 93, no. 366 (1978): 26–45, esp. pp. 28–35. 16 See Claude Kurt abraham, Gaston d’Orléans et sa Cour: Étude Littéraire (Chapel Hill, 1963), pp. 54–5. 17 Part of the plan was to encourage the marquis of Hamilton to leave his english wife and to marry Huntly’s eldest daughter, thus encouraging Hamilton to convert to Catholicism and allying him with Huntly, a person who was already ‘engagé à la france’: see M.C. Hippeau, ed., Mémoires Inédits du Comte Leveneur de Tillières (Paris, 1862), pp. 207–13.

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Louis Xiii.18 Voiture’s association with Gaston d’Orléans and his solicitation of the Countess of Carlisle, taken in conjunction with the latter’s apparent association with ‘Monsieur Gourdon’ and her husband’s inclinations towards the French, make it unlikely that the poet’s presence in London was politically innocent. He returned to the side of his master in December 1633, probably having tried to muster support for him amongst those whose eyes were turning towards richelieu.19 Whatever his mission in London, his presence alone makes it clear that the Châteauneuf conspiracy was still having repercussions that could damage the english queen. i suggest, therefore, that the november 1633 performance of Richard III spoke directly to Henrietta Maria about her factious family: not only does the play foreground the political instability caused by Machiavellian intriguing, it also demonstrates that the position of women in such circumstances is particularly invidious. Queen Margaret especially (like Henrietta Maria, a Frenchwoman who was also an english queen) bears witness to the dispossession that can result from a woman’s active political involvement. although she might curse effectively, her previous political activity has marginalized her, bereaving her of her friends and influence (much, indeed, like Henrietta Maria’s exiled mother). The only properly political role a royal woman can take up, the play seems to conclude, is, like the princess elizabeth, as a peaceweaver, cementing alliances between opposing parties, and bearing the promise of generation. three days after this production, the Queen’s Company responded with a performance of Shirley’s The Young Admiral for the king’s birthday.20 rebecca Bailey has suggested that the play, written by a man she believes to have been Catholic, ‘powerfully displays … the real pain inflicted on the recusant community by the Oaths of allegiance and Supremacy’.21 arguing that in Vittori, the play’s titular character, King Charles would see played out before him ‘the agony of a subject whose innate loyalty is complicated by state intervention’, she also suggests that The Young Admiral ‘urges the Queen Consort of England to fulfil her own proselytising mission’.22 it is certainly possible that Shirley’s play was chosen for performance on Charles’ birthday because of its oblique dramatization of politicoreligious concerns. The Young Admiral’s plot, which bears some initial flattering resemblance to that of The Shepherds’ Paradise, centres around two women: the court lady Cassandra (beloved of both Cesario, prince of naples, and Vittori, a neapolitan admiral); and Recueil des Gazettes Nouuelles (Paris, 1634), sub. ‘De Paris, le 5 mars 1633’. i suspect that this ‘marquis’ was actually the younger George Gordon, Huntly’s son. The first marquis was 71 years old at the time and unlikely to have been able to captain a group of horse. In contrast, the future second marquis is known to have served for the French in Lorraine and alsace. 19 notably, in October 1634, Gaston abandoned his mother and new wife, and defected back to Paris, having reached an accommodation with the cardinal. 20 The Young Admiral was based on the Spanish play, Don Lope de Cordona, by Lope de Vega: see John Loftis, “english renaissance Plays from the Spanish Comedia”, ELR 14 (1984): 230–48, pp. 240–41. 21 Bailey, “Queen Henrietta Maria”, p. 26. 22 ibid., p. 148 and p. 26. 18

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rosinda, princess of Sicily (Cesario’s betrothed). However, where The Shepherds’ Paradise saw the lovers’ discords removed from the city and resolved in a pastoral sanctuary, The Young Admiral sees them played out in the political realm in a war fought between Naples and the scorned state of Sicily. Indeed, the play, like The Shepherds’ Paradise, dramatizes a society in which even the rulers find it difficult to govern their passions, so it is to the female characters and to Vittori that one looks to find temperance and virtue. However, in The Young Admiral, unlike Montagu’s play, constant love is not a panacea for the state’s problems – indeed, there are indications that it is a potentially destabilizing force. Captured by the Sicilian army, Vittori is offered a choice – to fight against his native land, or to be the cause of his beloved Cassandra’s death. in a truly neoPlatonic manner, Cassandra declares to the Sicilian king that she loves Vittori so much ‘we are one soule, life cannot be / So precious as our loves’.23 Vittori, though, knows that his public duty far outweighs his private desires: ‘It was / Articled in the creation of my soule / i should obey’, he says, ‘and serve my Country with it / above my selfe’ (f1r). in other words, the play initially represents men as intrinsically and selflessly linked to the state, while women define themselves through love. nevertheless, in a rapid three and a half lines, after nearly 110 lines of moralistic debate, Vittori suddenly changes his mind and resolves to ‘bring [his] honour to the grave’ to save Cassandra’s life (f2r). Bailey notes of Vittori’s faithful soul that it provides an ‘image of an inextricable union between religion and state allegiance’, and comments of this moment of crisis that it dramatizes ‘the over-riding fear of Protestant england’, that of an english Catholic who finally decides to ‘take arms’ against the state.24 She reads the play’s love discourse as an allegory of a subject’s religious commitment that calls into question his allegiance to his nation. nevertheless, as she points out, ‘Vittori is finally saved from betraying his country through the salvatory figure of Rosinda, daughter of the King of Sicily’ who ‘dissolves the inextricable tensions surrounding the issues of treason and allegiance.’25 She concludes that the play ‘surely recalls the adumbration within roman Catholic europe of Queen Henrietta Maria as a second “esther”, whose vocation was to re-convert england to the “old faith”’.26 Her argument reinforces Veevers’ contention that Henrietta Maria’s neo-Platonic love fashion provided a fitting discourse through which to manifest her Catholicism. the choice of this suggestively allusive play for Charles’ birthday certainly does not seem arbitrary and speaks to the king’s position as much as Richard III reflected on that of the queen. nevertheless, while its text might well have dramatized the conflicts experienced by a Catholic subject torn by his allegiances to his king and faith, The Young Admiral’s performance also expressed the royal couple’s mutuality, showing them to be united in promoting civil manners and language through their patronage of public cultural forms. indeed, one might be inclined to suggest that

23 24 25 26

James Shirley, The Young Admirall (London, 1637), sig. e4r. Bailey, “Queen Henrietta Maria”, p. 151. ibid., pp. 152–3. ibid., p. 153.

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the play had an ecumenical impulse, showing how disparate faiths could be drawn together for the benefit of the health of the nation. Ira Clark has suggested that the court production of The Young Admiral came about through the involvement of the Master of the revels who so appreciated the play, he included a rare approbation of it in his office book, noting: the comedy called The Yonge Admirall, being free from oaths, prophaness, or obsceanes, hath given mee much delight and satisfaction in the readinge, and may serve for a patterne to other poetts, not only for the bettring of maners and language, but for the improvement of the quality, which hath received some brushings of late.27

n.W. Bawcutt interprets Herbert’s obscure phrase, ‘some brushings’, as a reference to Prynne’s Histriomastix.28 Dutton, however, believes it might refer to the Master of the revels’ own previous objections to Shirley’s The Ball (acted in costumes that mocked ‘real’ courtiers) and to the ‘intervention of the High Commission over The Magnetic Lady’.29 Invoking the common view that Herbert was a pious and fastidious man, Dutton notes, nevertheless, that the early 1630s saw him evincing an ‘intensified concern’ about ‘oaths’ and ‘prophaness’ in plays, and links this to a religious sensitivity about Calvinism among the new arminian Church hierarchy.30 In other words, Herbert, like Laud in his wider role, sought to reduce the scope for the public discussion of Calvinism, at the same time as he limited the ‘relatively casual anti-Catholicism’ of older, Jacobean plays.31 Performed at St James’ by the Queen’s Company, The Young Admiral was both a birthday present to Charles from Henrietta Maria and a declaration of her household’s complicity in the king’s reformatory projects, demonstrating the civilized cultural values he wished to promote both at court and throughout his country. indeed, given that Charles allegedly took it upon himself to suggest the plot of The Gamester to the playwright, it is entirely possible that Shirley’s plays were more appreciated by the king than they were by his wife.32 the same, i suggest, might well be true of fletcher’s plays, revivals of which during the 1630s should not necessarily be attributed to the queen’s influence. Fletcher’s work certainly did provide models of virtuous femininity, but his plays were being performed in significant numbers at court prior to the queen consort’s arrival in the country. for example, A King and No King was acted at Whitehall by King James’ Men at Christmas in 1611, and a performance of The Coxcomb was See Ira Clark, Professional Playwrights: Massinger, Ford, Shirley, and Brome (Lexington, 1992), p. 114. See also adams, ed., Dramatic Records, p. 19. Herbert’s note is dated 3 July 1633. 28 n.W. Bawcutt, The Control and Censorship of Caroline Drama: The Records of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels, 1623–73 (Oxford, 1996), p. 75. 29 Dutton, “‘Discourse’”, p. 44. 30 ibid., pp. 42–5. 31 ibid., p. 54. 32 The Gamester was licensed in november 1633, and was performed at court on 6 february 1634, so was probably written by Shirley the previous summer; that is, before the november performance of The Young Admiral. 27

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sponsored by Prince Charles in the winter of 1612–13. indeed, during that season, fletcher’s plays were put on at court at least seven times, three times under Charles’ sponsorship.33 from 1621 to Henrietta Maria’s arrival in London in 1625, records show that 14 fletcher plays were acted at court. in the same period, three plays apiece are recorded for Middleton and Shakespeare, two each for Jonson and Massinger, and one for Dekker.34 admittedly, this is hardly a comprehensive list as many of the plays performed were not named or noted down. However, the number of fletcher productions is significant and indicates that the Stuart court, and perhaps Charles himself, was already predisposed towards such drama. it is impossible, therefore, to say that the Caroline court performances of fletcher’s plays served an agenda that was exclusively the queen’s. instead, they seem to be part of a reformatory project, presenting a new moral standard both for dramatic productions and courtly behaviour, advocated, significantly, by both the royal households.35 in this context, the production of The Faithful Shepherdess on twelfth night 1634 deserves renewed attention. rather than helping to create a cult of neo-Platonic love or fostering an idealized view of women, it seems to be a moment in a broader courtly campaign to promote a certain type of exemplary drama.36 the performance took place in the Presence Chamber at Somerset House and was acted by the King’s Company in costumes donated to them from The Shepherds’ Paradise. Kenneth richards has described this as one of the queen’s occasional acts of generosity towards a professional company, rather than a sustained act of patronage, but i think the situation is rather more complicated than this suggests.37 Both the donation and the decision to call the King’s Men to perform a play at the queen’s residence were acts that neglected the company that bore Henrietta Maria’s name (and this is particularly significant after the royal couple had specifically used their own acting troupes to present birthday entertainments to each other in 1633). it might be argued that the King’s Company owned the text of The Faithful Shepherdess and were therefore the only actors who could put it on. Or, one might propose that the queen had established a relationship with Joseph taylor and his company during the rehearsals for Montagu’s pastoral and that this performance was a continuation of that connection. However, I would like to suggest that the production of The Faithful Shepherdess was conceived with the king’s particular tastes in mind, and was presented to him as a quasi-public declaration of the queen’s household’s complicity in his project of theatrical reform. The Faithful Shepherdess had not been a success on the Jacobean stage. in his preface to the printed text (published in 1610), fletcher explained that the audience ‘having ever had a singuler gift in defining, concluded [it] to be a play of country hired Shepheards … and missing whitsun ales, creame, wassel and morris-dances,

astington, English Court Theatre, pp. 224–7. ibid., pp. 254–6. 35 See Dutton’s persuasive reading of The Women’s Prize controversy as an instance of religious censorship: Dutton, “‘Discourse’”, pp. 45–58. 36 Livingston, “the reinvention of John fletcher”. 37 richards, “Queen Henrietta Maria”, p. 14. 33 34

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began to be angry.’38 This uncontrolled Jacobean anger makes the play especially fitting for production at the Caroline court, contrasting an earlier uneducated misrecognition with a new Caroline sensibility. the play promotes the spiritual over the physical, self-denial over personal pleasure and defines heroism as an interior virtue that is achieved through the renunciation of lust and appetite. However, The Faithful Shepherdess does present a complimentary view of women, compatible with that promoted in The Shepherds’ Paradise, and it is for this reason, I think, that it was selected for this particular performance. Cécile istria has suggested that it was a play conceived by fletcher as a Protestant response to the reformation of drama on the continent, and it certainly does bear comparison to plays such as racan’s Arténice, performed in england by Henrietta Maria in 1626.39 as such, it was a very appropriate vehicle for the queen’s type of neo-Platonism, at the same time as it unproblematically flattered the tastes of the king. it opens, unusually for a play conceived for the public stage, with a woman’s speech. ‘Haile holy earth’, the shepherdess Clorin laments over the grave of her dead beloved, thus do i pay My early vowes and tribute of mine eies, to thy still loved ashes: thus i free My selfe from all ensuing heates and fires Of love, all sports, delights and games, that Shepheards hold full deare. (1.1.4–9)

Clorin is the play’s virtuous heart and promotes the value of chaste women within a community. Dedicated to tending her dead lover’s grave, she rejects the advances of further suitors and serves as a regenerative force, healing the physical and spiritual wounds of the less virtuous characters. Indeed, like the figure of Divine Beauty in Tempe Restored, her virtue extends even to the transformation of wild beasts – her most faithful servant in the play is a satyr, traditionally a figure of lust and disorder, but here seconded to her by his master Pan and ultimately dedicated devoutly to her service. In keeping with its origins on the Jacobean stage, The Faithful Shepherdess’ governing deity is Pan – much as Pan was the chief figure of authority in Pan’s Anniversary (a masque danced before King James in 1621 which Martin Butler has shown played on the idea of the king as a benevolent yet potent ruler).40 However, the 1634 performance was prefaced by a dialogue written by William Davenant

John fletcher, The Faithful Shepherdess, ed. Cyrus Hoy, in The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, ed. fredson Bowers, 10 vols (1966–96), 3 (1976), p. 497, ‘To the Reader’, lines 4–8. All subsequent line references to this play will be taken from this edition. 39 Cécile istria, “The Faithful Shepherdess, une pastorale protestante” (unpublished paper given at the epistémè seminar, Université de Paris 3, february 2001). 40 Martin Butler, “Ben Jonson’s Pan’s Anniversary and the Politics of early Stuart Pastoral”, ELR 22, no. 3 (1992): 369–404, p. 376. 38

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which shifted Pan’s authority to Henrietta Maria with words placed in the mouth of a priest. appearing on stage in the company of a nymph, the priest declared: a Broyling Lambe on Pans chiefe altar lies My Wreath, my Censor, Virge, and incense by: But I delay’d the pretious Sacrifice, to shew thee here, a gentler Deity … Blesse then that Queene, that doth his [the King’s] eyes envite and eares, t’obey her Scepter, halfe this night.41

In this new Caroline context, Henrietta Maria takes over from Pan as the play’s presiding deity – her gentle rule supersedes his reign, and she is hailed as ‘Welcome as Peace’ (line 13). In their reference to the sacrificial altar, abandoned by the priest in favour of this new deity, Davenant’s verses also shadow the reformation of the Old testament God of abraham and isaac by the new testament’s merciful Christ. In like manner, The Faithful Shepherdess itself is transformed from its paternalistic Jacobean origins into a Caroline production which refines and redefines heroism, not as martial valour, but as self-abnegating devotion, and which validates spiritually strong women as the caretakers of a community’s moral health. The Faithful Shepherdess, then, when performed by the King’s Company in 1634, was transformed into a spectacle that suited the queen’s neo-Platonic agenda, providing an image of a strong heroine whose presence purified a community of lust and disruption, and whose actions were always at the service of others not herself. it would have been possible to sponsor a production of one of Shirley’s plays that night, but instead Henrietta Maria and her advisors chose to rehabilitate an old play in a manner that drew a direct comparison between the apparent lack of discernment of a former age and a new Caroline sensibility that located women as the gatekeepers of an honourable society. furthermore, the use of the King’s Company rather than her own demonstrated again the royal couple’s close and mutual relationship and the integration of their dramatic interests. to sum up, in 1633–34, Henrietta Maria offered patronage not only to the theatrical company that bore her name, but also to that of her husband, in a manner that helped validate theatre-going as a legitimate pastime and which was calculated to encourage the production of clean, refined and unsubversive plays. The royal couple appear to have been using their acting companies on occasions such as birthdays to present mutually complimentary plays to each other, showing themselves to be jointly engaged in the enjoyment and promotion of theatre. 2 that said, the next theatrical season (that of 1634–35) provides the strongest indications of Henrietta Maria’s independent sponsorship of a professional theatre 41

9–10.

Davenant’s prologue in Hoy, ed., The Faithful Shepherdess, p. 499, lines 1–4 and lines

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company. the troupe in question was an itinerant french one led by the then littleknown actor Josias de Soulas (called Floridor). Floridor’s presence in London at this time is intriguing and provides evidence that Henrietta Maria was still inclined above all to support french cultural forms. Just as her arrival in england was characterized by a french ‘antique’ masque and the production of a french pastoral play, so in 1635 she actively sponsored a french professional company and then encouraged her maids to mount Florimène, a pastoral play by the french court dramatist, françois le Metel, seigneur de Boisrobert.42 In what follows, I want to sketch her involvement with this company and briefly investigate the type of drama it promoted at the English court, before concluding with a consideration of the significance of its presence in London in the winter of 1634–35. Floridor’s first recorded appearance in London was before the queen. Herbert’s office book records him performing a play at the Cockpit before the royal couple on 17 february 1635, noting that his troupe had been ‘approved of’ by the queen at her house two days previously.43 the Gazette de France corroborates this, observing that, on the 14/24 february 1635, after three performances of her masque, The Temple of Love, Henrietta Maria watched a french play at Somerset House that was later performed at Whitehall before the English king.44 the company performed two more plays at the Cockpit-in-Court that April and, in May, were paid the going rate of £30 for their pains.45 Records in Herbert’s office book make it clear that Henrietta Maria was actively supporting the troupe. Christopher Beeston, the manager of the Queen’s Company, was told to let the french players use the Phoenix playhouse on Wednesdays and fridays during Lent when the english players were forbidden to play, and they played the whole week before Easter at the theatre, again when the English players were forcibly resting. The book’s marginal notes bear witness to the queen’s influence, recording, for example, Herbert’s refusal of money from the french players in order ‘to render the queene my mistris an acceptable service’.46 if this wasn’t enough, Henrietta Maria seems to have roped Charles and his ministers into her support of the company. in March, the Gazette de France reported:

42 For Boisrobert’s links to this play and for his connections with Richelieu, see Karen Britland, “Florimène: the author and the Occasion”, Review of English Studies 53 (2002): 475–83. 43 adams, ed., Dramatic Records, p. 60. Adams notes that the dates in the office book are askew during this period, commenting that ‘Herbert seems to be writing from memory’: adams, ed., Dramatic Records, p. 61, n. 4. 44 Recueil de Toutes les Gazettes Novvelles, 1635 (Paris, 1636), sub. De Londres, le 28 février 1635. this performance has previously been thought to be a fourth performance of the queen’s masque The Temple of Love. 45 Adams notes that the customary sum given by the king for a performance at the Cockpit was £10: adams, ed., Dramatic Records, p. 60, n. 5. in December 1635, floridor’s company performed another play before the king, this time a tragedy: see Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 7.100. 46 adams, ed., Dramatic Records, p. 61.

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Henrietta Maria Les plus grands Seigneurs de cette Cour ont tesmoigné leur liberalité à l’envie les uns des autres aux Comédiens françois, qui ont fort contenté leurs Majestez Britanniques.47 [to the envy of each other, the greatest Lords of this court have shown their liberality towards the french actors who have much contented their British Majesties.]

By March, then, both the king and queen were perceived to be supporting the company in a manner that was emulated by the court. in april, after the end of Lent, Charles commanded his Lord Chamberlain, Pembroke, to ‘direct his warrant’ to a certain ‘Monsieur Le fevure’, giving him and the players permission to construct a temporary theatre in the former’s London riding school. Noting this in his office book, Herbert again observed significantly that the players had been ‘commended unto mee by the queene’.48 To my knowledge, there is no stronger evidence of Henrietta Maria’s patronage of a professional company than is provided by this season. What has interested me for a long time is where floridor came from and why he was so well looked after by the English queen. Did he come with recommendations from her family or friends in France, or did she just make a point of patronizing a fellow countryman? annoyingly, very little evidence remains about his early years as an actor, although, some information about his interest for the queen can be gleaned from the named plays he performed at the english court. He was born into the minor nobility in Brie, france, around 1608, so he was virtually the same age as Henrietta Maria who was born in november 1609. He was educated in Paris and then served in the french army before becoming a strolling player in the french provinces in the early 1630s.49 after his return from england in 1635, he began to consolidate his reputation as an actor and, in 1637 or 1638, united his troupe with the itinerant Prince de Condé’s company. He appears to have been in Paris and associating with actors from the théâtre du Marais, the home of the second Parisian theatre company, as early as 1638, and became that company’s leader in 1642.50 five years later, he joined france’s premier theatre company, the troupe royale at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, as its chief.51 By the time of his death in 1671, he was one of the most well-known and celebrated Parisian actors. In the same way that little is known about Floridor’s movements before 1635, there is very little information about his itinerant company – the warrant permitting the players to act in Monsieur Le fevure’s Drury Lane riding school only mentions ‘Josias D’aunay, Hurfries de Lau, and others’. D’aulnay was floridor’s mother’s maiden name, so it is likely that ‘Josias D’Aunay’ refers to him (or possibly a relative, although I think that is unlikely). Floridor’s wife, Marguerite Beloré, was a member 47 Recueil de Toutes les Gazettes Novvelles, 1635 (Paris, 1636), sub. De Londres, le 20 avril 1635. 48 adams, ed., Dramatic Records, p. 62. 49 William Brooks, “Floridor”, in International Dictionary of Theatre, ed. David Pickering, 3 vols (Detroit, 1996), 3.283–4. 50 See S. Wilma Deierkauf-Holsboer, Le Théatre du Marais, 2 vols (Paris, 1954), 1.75 and 1.86. 51 See S. Wilma Deierkauf-Holsboer, Le Théatre de l’Hotel de Bourgogne, 2 vols (Paris, 1970), 2.41–2.

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of his later troupe, but they did not marry until 1638 and it is highly unlikely that she was present in england. nevertheless, an analysis of the named plays performed in england would indicate that the company would need to have included at least three women, together with at least six, possibly seven, men, unless the plays were substantially cut to fit the company’s needs.52 What can be established with some certainty (although, as i will show, even this is subject to some problems) is the type of drama the french troupe was concerned to promote at the english court. Herbert records the name of the three plays performed at the Cockpit-in-Court, two of which can be discussed with some confidence. All were compatible with the kind of refined drama both the English king and queen were keen to promote, and all were from a stable of similar plays being promoted in Paris. Joseph Quincy Adams has identified the plays listed in Herbert’s office book as La Mélise by the french nobleman, the seigneur Du rocher; Le Trompeur Puni by Georges Scudéry; and Alcimedon, by Pierre Du ryer.53 A question mark hangs over the identification of La Mélise, which French theatre historians tend to think was actually Pierre Corneille’s more famous and popular comedy, La Mélite.54 Because of this, i’m going to focus mainly on Georges Scudéry’s Le Trompeur Puni, which Herbert recorded was received ‘with better approbation’ than the Frenchmen’s first play, although that, too, was regarded ‘with good approbation’.55 Le Trompeur Puni was published in 1633, at which point, according to french theatrical convention, it became available for the use of other acting troupes and might well have found its way into floridor’s repertory.56 it had initially been part of the repertory of the Théâtre du Marais, but was taken to the Hôtel de Bourgogne in December 1634 by former Marais actors requisitioned to the troupe royale by Louis Xiii. What was notable about it, then, and about the other plays performed by With some inconvenient doubling, Le Trompeur Puni could be performed with three women and five men; Alcimedon with three women and four men; La Mélite with the same. Without textual alteration, La Mélise would require three women and seven men. as a comparison, in 1641 the company of the théâtre du Marais seems to have consisted of 13 actors, five of whom were women. See Deierkauf-Holsboer, Le Théatre du Marais, 1.81. Given French theatrical convention, I think it is unlikely that Floridor used male actors to perform the female roles. 53 adams, ed., Dramatic Records, p. 60, n. 4, p. 61, n. 5 and n. 8. 54 for a convenient summary of the debate, see H.C. Lancaster, A History of French Dramatic Literature in the Seventeenth Century 2 vols (Baltimore, 1929), 2.418–19. the identification of the play as La Mélite seems to hang on little more than a perception of Corneille as the more important playwright, coupled with the fact that La Mélite terms itself a comedy, whereas La Mélise was a pastoral. 55 adams, ed., Dramatic Records, pp. 60–61. 56 Lancaster notes that as soon as a play was printed ‘it could be acted by a rival troupe’, adding that, ‘Corneille, who wrote for actors less well established than those at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, would naturally tend to avoid publication for several years’: Lancaster, History, 2.523. La Mélite was first performed by Montdory’s troupe in 1629/30, and had a huge success in Paris, bringing the young playwright to the attention of the french court. for a discussion of the problem of dating the play, see Lancaster, History, 2. 571–6. 52

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floridor, was that it was relatively new and fashionable in 1635, it was available in print, and it was written by a playwright of the new generation.57 Le Trompeur Puni was inspired, in the main, by Honoré d’Urfé’s popular prose romance, L’Astrée (the first part of which appeared in 1607), supplemented by a plot borrowed from Marin Le roy de Gomberville’s more recent, but equally fashionable, prose narrative, Polexandre, published in 1629.58 Like the other plays performed in england by floridor, it was lauded for its elegant use of language, a preface by Scudéry’s friend Chandeville in the printed edition noting that the playwright surpassed others in ‘cet enthousiasme et cette esleuation d’esprit qui a fait appeler la Poésie diuine’ [that enthusiasm and elevation of spirit which has caused poetry to be called divine].59 In other words, the plays that Floridor took to England participated in a vogue for tragi-comedy that was flourishing on the French stage; a stage which was given support by Louis Xiii early in 1635 in a proclamation that declared that the theatre, ‘depuis qu’on a banni des théâtres tout ce qui pouvait souiller les oreilles les plus délicates, est l’un des plus innocents divertissements et le plus agréable à sa bonne ville de Paris’ [since all that could soil even the most delicate ears had been banished from it, was one of the most innocent and pleasing diversions in Paris].60 floridor, himself, seems to have been an actor well suited to the plays favoured by his generation for, as Maurice Descotes has remarked, his own acting style was characterized by distinction, elegance and natural dignity, and was proper for the expression of gallant sentiments.61 in sum, the plays put on by the french company in London were not only good examples of contemporary, fashionable Parisian drama, but were also highly compatible with the renovations in theatre being encouraged at the english court by its king and queen. For Henrietta Maria, it should be added, they had an additional familial interest. Pierre Du ryer, the author of Alcimedon, was a servant of her halfbrother, the Duc de Vendôme, who had visited england with his son in 1632, and to whom Alcimedon was dedicated. Georges Scudéry, the son of a norman gentleman, was a follower of Cardinal richelieu and his Trompeur Puni was dedicated to richelieu’s niece, Madame de Combalet. La Mélise (if it was performed) was written by a member of the minor nobility and dedicated to the Duchesse de Montbazon, step-mother of Henrietta Maria’s good friend Marie de Chevreuse. It is unlikely that floridor’s plays were randomly selected; all were new, fashionable and endorsed by people close to the english queen. Le Trompeur Puni was derived, as I have mentioned, from episodes taken from L’Astrée and Polexandre, the latter of which gave Scudéry a plot about the kingdoms of England and Denmark, again making it a highly appropriate and suggestive play 57 Du ryer was born in Paris around 1600; Scudéry in Le Havre around 1601; Corneille in Rouen around 1606. I have been unable to trace Du Rocher’s birth date, but his first literary work was not published until 1631, making it likely that he was a contemporary of the others. 58 for the sources of La Mélite and La Mélise, see Lancaster, History, 2.576–8 and 2.419– 20. Both plays show evidence of the influence of L’Astrée. 59 See Lancaster, History, p. 476. The British Library copy of the play lacks the prelims. 60 See the Gazette de France, 6 janvier 1635. 61 Maurice Descotes, Les Grands Roles du Theatre de Corneille (Paris, 1962), pp. 128–9.

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to perform on an english stage. Strangely, though, england does not come off all that well in the action. In Scudéry’s play, the king of England, solicited by the king of Denmark, wishes to marry one of his wife’s maids to Alcandre, the Danish king’s favourite. the english queen intercedes on her extremely reluctant servant’s behalf, but the English king is inflexible, invoking the idea of divine right when he observes that, once his word has been given, it commands his subject’s destiny as much as does the word of the gods.62 the english queen, however, has a more humane and, one might say, spiritual approach to the problem, responding: Voulez-vous qu’vn himen, où vostre main la force, Se commence en tristesse, & finisse en diuorce? Sire, souuenez-vous qu’en faisant ces accords, On doit ioindre l’esprit aussi bien que le corps. (e5v) [Do you want this marriage (to which your hand forces her) to begin in sadness and end in divorce? Sire, remember that in making these unions you must join the spirit as well as the body.]

Like The Young Admiral’s rosinda, the play’s english queen is an intercessional figure who demonstrates greater sympathy for the nation’s subjects than the king himself, and who puts personal integrity and human emotion before the need to maintain the country in peace with its neighbours. However, unlike Rosinda, the play sees her silenced by the king who replies, autocratically, that she should not give uninvited counsel, and then orders her not to speak anymore.63 While it is decidedly problematic to read any deliberate topical intent into these plays, Le Trompeur Puni shows a queen trying to persuade her imperialistic husband to adopt what is obviously an honourable cause. It was precisely this kind of intercession that Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu wished Henrietta Maria to make towards her husband in the early months of 1635 when their eyes were turning towards war with Spain. in february 1635 (notably the same month floridor fetched up in London), Walter Montagu returned from a trip to Paris and began to solicit Henrietta Maria for france.64 in March, as i have noted, the Gazette de France, a newsbook known to be part of Richelieu’s personal propaganda machine, prominently reported on floridor’s good treatment by the english nobility. the same month, a new french ambassador, Henri de Senneterre, was dispatched to London and began to have success in wooing the english queen to her brother’s cause, writing home in april to inform his masters that ‘Montagu has served us very well and intends to do even more in the future if he can’.65 Henrietta Maria herself was not unaware that she was being wooed by the french, commenting later to ‘Qv’on ne n’en parle plus: ma parole donnée, / Comme celle des Dieux porte sa destinée’: Georges Scudéry, Le Trompeur Puny (Paris, 1633), e5r. 63 ‘ne donnez de conseil à qui ne le demande, / et ne m’en parlez plus, car ie vous le commande’ (e6r). 64 Smuts, “Puritan followers”, p. 35. 65 Smuts, “Puritan followers”, p. 35 and n. 5. france declared war on Spain in May 1635. 62

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her sister Christine, duchess of Savoy, that Senneterre had begun soliciting her on richelieu’s behalf as soon as he had arrived in england.66 Most tellingly, for a consideration of floridor’s part in this diplomatic manoeuvring, the winter of 1634–35 also saw a Spanish troupe present in London, under the management of a certain Juan navarro. this troupe performed before the king and queen at Hampton Court in October 1634 and then again at court before the king in November 1635.67 Like Floridor, Navarro went on to have some success as an actor once he returned to his native Spain. Unlike Floridor, his presence in England does not seem to have provoked anything near the same kind of patronage and public support that floridor received from Henrietta Maria. I would like, then, to suggest that Floridor’s presence in England in early 1635 was not coincidental, and to propose that he and his compatriots were introduced to the influential English queen through Walter Montagu (who, notably, had penned her 1633 pastoral play, The Shepherds’ Paradise). they formed part of a successful attempt on the part of richelieu and the french authorities to persuade Henrietta Maria to turn from the more pro-Spanish position she had adopted since her mother’s exile from france, and to espouse, once again, france’s international cause.68 in addition, their visible presence in London and their apparent success at attracting custom, both to the Phoenix and to Monsieur Le fevure’s riding school, cannot have hindered Richelieu’s goal to raise the profile of the French nation in England on the eve of a franco-Spanish war. Set in the international political context of 1635, and given that they were performing at court at precisely the same time as a visiting Spanish troupe, it seems insufficient to put Henrietta Maria’s distinct and surprising patronage of Floridor’s troupe down simply to her interest in theatre and her support of her countrymen. to my mind, the english queen began fully to appreciate the uses of professional theatre during the 1633–34 season, while 1635 saw her successfully wooed by richelieu, in part through drama, to espouse and promote the cause of france in the war against Spain. the Cardinal, perhaps aided by Walter Montagu, played on a taste for theatre evinced by Henrietta Maria right from the start of her marriage, and that had been commented on very early by Katherine Gorges. this taste remained distinctly conditioned by Henrietta Maria’s early experiences at the Bourbon court, even when it was deployed in the service of her husband. as Parliamentarian civil war polemic would soon show, however, it also continued to provoke distrust and downright hostility from certain quarters in england. Ultimately, indeed, it would lead to the historical commonplace, evinced so convincingly by erin Griffey in the introduction to this volume, that Henrietta Maria’s artistic and theatrical interests were the frivolous hobby of a tiresome girl.

Hermann ferrero, ed., Lettres de Henriette-Marie de France, Reine d’Angleterre à sa Soeur Christine Duchesse de Savoie (rome, 1881), p. 43. 67 Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 7.94 and 7.100. 68 See Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (new Haven, 1992), p. 538. 66

Chapter 4

‘the rare and excellent Partes of Mr. Walter Montague’: Henrietta Maria and her Playwright Sarah Poynting

the production of The Shepherds’ Paradise in January 1633 was a high-profile theatrical event: a court performance by the queen in the first English play known to have been acted by women. Walter Montagu was not an obvious choice for its writer. He had been the favourite of the Duke of Buckingham, who had not contributed to the success of the early years of Henrietta Maria’s marriage, and his career so far had been as a diplomatic agent, often of a decidedly clandestine kind. His previous literary connections were minimal. according to Joseph Hunter, he contributed verses on the death of Anna of Denmark to a manuscript collection at Cambridge University, and he was the subject of a dedication in William Cross’ translation of Sallust’s works in 1629, in which he was praised for his ‘Iudgement in the point of Historicall iudicature’ and his ‘learned and iuditious censure’ was requested.1 the other two dedications being straightforward pleas for patronage, this tribute to Montagu’s erudition cannot be wholly disregarded, though an alternative view of him as a young man is provided by Clarendon, who remembered him as having ‘enjoyed the Pleasures of the World in a very great Measure and excess’.2 His own letters reveal ambition, arrogance and a bouncy charm, while his intelligence and wit were recognized even by those who distrusted him, whose views were usefully summarized by the tuscan resident amerigo Salvetti (perhaps judging with the benefit of hindsight): ‘E uomo di spirito e bello ingegno, ma fazioso al possibile e da non fidarsene.’3 the origins of Henrietta Maria’s choice of Wat Montagu for this venture lie rather in their relationship and his involvement in french politics than in any demonstrable dramatic ability on his part. 1 Joseph Hunter, Chorus Vatum anglicanorum: Collections concerning the Poets and Verse-Writers of the English Nations, British Library (BL) Harleian MS 6987, vol. 5, fos 115v–116; William Crosse, The Workes of Caius Crispus Salustius (London, 1629), sig. Cc6. the other dedicatees were the Marquis of Hamilton and ‘the Lord Harbert of Castle island’. 2 edward Hyde, The Life of the Earl of Clarendon (Oxford, 1759), p. 120. Clarendon is not, of course, always a reliable witness, but this memory of the young Montagu has some support in letters of the 1620s–1630s. 3 BL, add. MS 27962G (Part i), fo. 27r.: ‘He is an intelligent and very witty man, but as factious as it is possible to be and therefore not trustworthy.’

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1: Une grande passion au service de la Royne Henrietta Maria first met Walter Montagu in 1624 when he was employed as a courier during the negotiations for her marriage to Charles i. She was 14 years old, he a young man of 20 or 21 who spoke fluent French: an inestimable advantage in a period when the task of letter-bearers was often not simply to hand over the correspondence they were carrying, but to amplify and explain the messages they bore. Couriers like Montagu, as well as the Earls of Carlisle and Holland, leading the negotiations in Paris, had to flesh out Prince Charles’ short, awkward expressions of devotion.4 That Montagu was not backward in taking advantage of the privileged access he gained from being Buckingham’s favourite is obvious from a letter he wrote to Carlisle from the english court: the Prince being inquisitiue concerning your differences with the minesters i made him the truest relation my memory could furnish me with in all particulars his Highnes iustified you so much that he sayd if you had done lesse you might haue passed for kind men but not for wise and this I will make good upon him: i haue made him in loue with euery hare in Madames [Henrietta Maria’s] head and swares she shall haue no more powder till he powder her and blow her up himselfe … my sute is that if euer you haue occassion to speake to the blessed Queene [Anne of austria] of any ill thing that you expresse it by naming me for thats the onely way i can hope she should euer heare of me againe 5

Montagu was making himself equally at home in the complex world of French court politics. His wistful reference to the french queen in this letter is important, signalling as it does a life-long personal and political devotion to her. However, until 1628 his primary loyalty was to Buckingham, who was presumably responsible for Montagu’s promotion from letter bearer to undercover agent for Charles I. His task in 1627–28 was to put together an alliance of disaffected princes and dukes from France, Lorraine and Savoy, with the aim of taking action against Louis Xiii in order to provide relief for the english navy attempting to relieve Protestants besieged by the French king’s troops at the Huguenot port of La rochelle. When he was captured by richelieu’s agents and imprisoned in the Bastille from november 1627 to april 1628 for his activities, Henrietta Maria wrote to the Cardinal to plead for his release not for her own sake (though this might, of course, have been unwise), but because ‘Montaigu … étoit fort aimé de Buckingham’.6 4 Henry rich, Lord Kensington, was raised to the earldom during the negotiations, in September 1624. 5 Montagu to the earl of Carlisle, BL, egerton MS 2596, fo. 49 (undated, but from its contents, probably written february 1625); printed in Miscellaneous State Papers, ed. Philip Yorke, 2 vols (London, 1778), vol. 2, p. 526 (Hardwicke State Papers), in which, however, Charles’ comment on Henrietta Maria has been removed. the letter is characteristically almost entirely unpunctuated. 6 Mémoires du cardinal de Richelieu, 10 vols, Société de l’Histoire de france (Paris, 1907–31), vol. 8, p. 43.

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After the Duke’s murder in August 1628 and the surrender of La Rochelle later in the year (for which Montagu was held largely responsible by the earl of Carlisle, amongst others, because of his unauthorized peace negotiations with richelieu), he found himself lacking the protection of a patron and suffering the displeasure of his king. It seems probable that it was at this time that he took the opportunity to establish himself at the queen’s court at Somerset House. in Henrietta Maria he found a new and (for the time being) rather less dangerous patron. By June 1630 his standing was sufficiently recovered for him to be sent to the French court with the news of the birth on 29 May of the Prince of Wales. for the next two years he travelled regularly between London and Paris on public diplomatic missions, and appears to have regained the trust of both french and english governments. Bullen reymes, attached as a young man to the english embassy, noted in his diary how much it annoyed Sir Isaac Wake, then ambassador in Paris, that he had to confer with richelieu by proxy, while Montagu could see the Cardinal whenever he wished.7 In January 1632 Montagu was sworn in as a gentleman extraordinary of the king’s Privy Chamber, but his official success in Charles’ court was short-lived. Both governments should have been more wary. in this period Montagu and Henrietta Maria were deeply involved in an anglo-french conspiracy aimed at bringing about the fall of Cardinal richelieu, and the dismissal of the english Lord treasurer, richard Weston (created earl of Portland in 1633).8 there were members of the french faction, including Louis Xiii’s constantly plotting brother Gaston d’Orléans and their mother Marie de Médicis, who saw this as a first step to deposing Louis himself, an aim which became plain when Gaston attempted to foment an armed uprising against his brother in 1632. Montagu had close links with the French conspirators, most notably Marie de rohan, Duchesse de Chevreuse (rumoured to have an even closer link with the Earl of Holland), whose husband had acted as proxy for Charles i at his wedding. Holland was the leader of the english faction, but the members of it who were most closely associated with Henrietta Maria by observers were Henry Percy, Henry Jermyn and Montagu, whose familiarity with the queen disquieted statesmen in both Paris and London. Caroline Hibbard has rightly pointed out that ‘assertions about her frivolity [in this period] should … be carefully weighed; this traditional picture derives largely from the reports of successive french ambassadors who were unable to enlist her full support for richelieu’s projects.’9 Nevertheless, the impression they conveyed is unlikely to be wholly fictitious, the more serious allegations, indeed, being recorded privately, rather than in official dispatches, in which the innocence of her relationship with Montagu in particular was stressed. the marquis de St Chamond, for example, sent to the english court in 1632 to assess the problems being faced by the french ambassador, wrote to richelieu that Montagu’s ‘grande passion au service de la royne’ was ‘toutes fois sans aucun scandale’; though it is just possible that he may at this point still have 7 Helen andrews Kaufman, Conscientious Cavalier: Colonel Bullen Reymes, M.P., F.R.S. 1613–72. The Man and his Times (London, 1962), p. 100. 8 See Malcolm Smuts, “the Puritan followers of Henrietta Maria in the 1630s”, English Historical Review 93 (January 1978): 27–45. 9 Caroline Hibbard, “Henrietta Maria”, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

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been hoping that Montagu was working for rather than against the Cardinal, and therefore a useful contact to have close to the queen. But even this, as well as his report that ‘elle ayme son esprit et sa conversation’, implies that their friendship was significant.10 the Comte de tillières’ concern about the queen’s conduct, found in his memoirs, records convincing detail about ‘ces messieurs [qui] étaient toujours pendu à son oreille’.11 Later in the decade the insinuations (discussed below) about the relationship between Henrietta Maria and Montagu made by Chavigny were contained in a private letter to his friend Mazarin, not intended for public consumption. tillières’ interpretation of the freedom of the queen’s conversation with the young men as indicating a fundamental and potentially dangerous lack of seriousness may indeed have resulted from opposition to the political direction of her activities, but there seems no reason to doubt that this freedom existed, to the extent that tillières (perhaps unable to imagine the existence of a genuinely loving royal marriage) appears to have feared a sexual scandal. But scandal, when it came, was not sexual but political. By 1632 the grand conspiracy had begun to unravel, although its english component would not become public knowledge until the following year, a few weeks after the second performance of The Shepherds’ Paradise on 2 february 1633. However, as early as June 1632, when Secretary of State John Coke made notes of an intercepted letter from the Chevalier de Jars in Lorraine to Montagu, much of the plot was known to the king.12 Charles’ attitude to Montagu during this year was oddly mixed. in July he refused to allow him to join the royal progress, despite ‘les prières de la royne’.13 nevertheless, he presumably gave permission for him to be the queen’s playwright; and in november (the same month that Louis Xiii had french members of the conspiracy executed after they were betrayed by Gaston) the english king ‘did highly congratulate and extoll’ to the Earl of Manchester, Lord Privy Seal, ‘the rare and excellent partes of his sonne Mr. Walter Montague appearing in the Pastorall which hee hath penned for her Majesty her Ladies, and maydes to acte’.14 Perhaps he judged that their dramatic enterprise, controversial though it was, would keep them out of greater mischief. By this time some of Montagu’s most significant friendships were with women whose relationship with political power was complex, ambiguous and sometimes dangerous: Henrietta Maria and Anne of Austria, the daughters and wives of kings, but not rulers in their own right; Madame de Chevreuse, confidante of the French 10

fo. 49.

St Chamond to richelieu, 15 June 1632, national archives (tna), PrO 31/3/67,

11 Mémoires inédits du comte Leveneur de tillières, ambassadeur en angleterre sur la cour de Charles ier (Paris, 1862), p. 204. 12 tna, SP 78/91, fos 233–5. While in exile at the english court in the 1620s de Jars, another regular anti-richelieu conspirator, had become a friend of Charles i, who lost considerable sums of money to him betting on their games of tennis. 13 Marquis de fontenay-Mareuil (french ambassador) to St Chamond, 23 July 1632, tna, PrO 31/3/67, fo. 52v. 14 John Pory to Viscount Scudamore, 3 november 1632, tna, C.115/M35/8416, printed in microfiche appendix to William S. Powell, John Pory 1572–1636: the Life and Letters of a Man of Many Parts (Chapel Hill, 1977).

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queen, as well as an inveterate conspirator who used her sexuality as a potent weapon. If Montagu lacked dramatic experience, his sympathetic knowledge of the interests and problems of powerful, and would-be powerful, women was second to none. It is a knowledge that informs England’s longest play, in which there is a subtle examination of the relationship between gender and power that has rarely been recognized.15 the world that he created – an independent enclave (the Shepherds’ Paradise) within the kingdom of Castile, ruled over by a queen elected annually by the women members of the Society of Shepherds and Shepherdesses – was an ideal space in which to explore issues of concern to his leading actor, queen and close friend. 2: Beauty to be most regarded The history provided by Montagu tells us that the Shepherds’ Paradise was first established by Sabina, Princess of Castile (great-aunt of the play’s hero Prince Basilino), after the Prince of navarre and Dauphin of france both fell in love with her, and the Dauphin invaded navarre, rightly fearing that she preferred the Prince. Sabina tricked the Dauphin into withdrawing from Navarre and signing a peace treaty, then, revealing that she had sworn a vow of chastity, founded the Society of Shepherds and Shepherdesses and, with her father’s permission, settled with a group of likeminded aristocrats in a remote and beautiful valley. The Prince of Navarre, caring more about the loss of Sabina than of his kingdom, joined the Society in disguise and remained there unrecognized until his death. the account of the founding of the Shepherds’ Paradise reveals how the relative balance of male and female power was established by Sabina as well as defining the moral basis on which it operates. the Society’s priest Votorio tells Basilino, now in disguise as Moramante, that Sabina: fearing lest [the Prince of navarre’s] sufferings might raise his virtue to such an estimation, as he might be thought to have deserved her, and so the matching of herself might lessen her, resolved to take the glory wholly with the sufferings to herself … (2.2.38–41; C5r) 16

She remained regent of the Society for life, but decreed that after her death an annual election should be held to choose the queen, an election in which only women might vote. Women’s appropriation of power is based on their control of the moral agenda: Sabina dictates what is to be regarded as virtuous action, and asserts the right for this to be seen as an exclusively feminine sphere, which, in this version of events, men may enter only as subordinates. However, the political authority which she Sophie tomlinson is the exception: Women on Stage in Stuart Drama (Cambridge, 2006). See also her “theatrical Women: the female actor in english theatre and Drama 1603–1670”, PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 1995. 16 The first reference is to the act, scene and line number in my DPhil thesis “A Critical edition of Walter Montagu’s The Shepherds’ Paradise”, University of Oxford, 1999, from volume two of which (the text) the majority of quotations from the play are taken; the second is the signature number from the printed edition (London, thomas Dring, 1659; variant issue printed for John Starkey). 15

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claims must be ratified and continuously safeguarded by her father the king, and thereafter by the kingdom of Castile. This relationship is even reflected in the womblike geography of the Paradise, as described by Votorio: the peace and settledness of this place is secured by nature’s enclosure of it on all sides by impregnableness, as if it was meant for chastity only to make a plantation here. At one passage only, the rocks seem to open themselves, so as to let in the King’s care in a garrison, which he maintains for safety of the place, which delivers all strangers to us as suitors, not invaders. (2.2.66–71; C5v)

Moral virtue, in the form of chastity, confers power on women, but it is a power which is strictly circumscribed by male surveillance, the only protection against the threat of male violence. it may seem that the play presents us, quite straightforwardly, with alternative views of power from female and male perspectives, with the latter validated, effectively if not ethically, by its literal grounding in nature itself. However, in an earlier scene, when Basilino proposes to agenor (later disguised as Genorio) that they should visit the Paradise, the latter suggests: fame tells such wonders of the beauty of this place as sure it is rather a religious fear, than your father’s Guard, secures their solitude from invasion on the pretence of adoration. (1.6.33–5; B8r–v)

in this interpretation of the Paradise, female virtue engenders male virtue, the guard becomes dispensable, and the power wielded by the Paradise’s queen begins to have the potential to extend beyond its borders, in moral if not in political terms: a view of the influence of virtue which is reminiscent of Charles’ conviction that reform of the rules governing the royal court would spread order ‘through all parts of our Kingdome’.17 the Paradise’s coronation ceremony includes a reading of the Laws of the Society as laid down by Sabina; the first two concern the election of the queen: 1. That a Queen is to be elected the first of May every year, by the plurality of the sisters’ voices, from which election the brothers are excluded. 2. that the Queen must be aged under thirty, and beauty to be most regarded in the election. (2.1.42–6; C3v)

the date of the election, May Day, obviously places it within the tradition of choosing May Queens or Ladies of the May, neutralizing the potential for offence in the portrayal of an elective monarchy in a play acted for a king who had recently dispensed with elected representatives in the government of england. indeed, it lends the scene a specifically royalist gloss, owing to the controversy within the Church concerning traditional pastimes that culminated in Charles’ reissue of the Book of Sports in October 1633. The image of the May Queen, though, may not have had quite the same significance for Henrietta Maria as for her husband and the still-Protestant Montagu. in Catholic areas of europe members of the ecclesiastical 17

BL, Stowe MS 561, fo. 18r.

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hierarchy were equally concerned about pagan and potentially anarchic celebrations of May Day, but alongside sporadic attempts to suppress them, there was a growing trend to subsume them within church ritual, and May began to be dedicated to the worship of the Blessed Virgin Mary, statues of whom were crowned with flowers as the true Lady of the May.18 this complex interplay of ideas is, however, never further developed. in the part of the Law concerning the nature of the electorate, a potentially subversive concept – that only women may vote – is similarly furnished with a deeply conventional and conservative foundation, which is linked to the clause that ‘beauty is to be most regarded’ in making the choice: when Moramante asks Votorio why the men are not allowed to vote, as they are sure to be the best judges of beauty, he is told that Sabina had given the reason that men would inevitably vote on the basis of their interest in a particular woman, whereas all women are rather inquisitors than admirers one of another; and being void of passion, no friendship can incline them to yield priority in beauty, and so ’twas thought most probable, that where most of them agreed to yield, the advantage must be unquestionable. (2.2.93–7; C6r)

it is a little dispiriting to believe that we have stumbled on an elective matriarchy only to find that it is, in fact, a beauty contest in which women are able to choose the winner, Miss Shepherds’ Paradise 1633, merely because their vanity is stronger than their capacity for friendship. nevertheless, there remains a contradiction between the process and the outcome (whereby women maintain permanent control over the male members of the Society), a contradiction which is equivalent to that already seen in the different possible interpretations of the foundation of the Paradise by Sabina. there is, too, a further inconsistency in Sabina’s imposition of beauty as the most important factor to be considered in the election: in Votorio’s account of the Society’s history, virtue and chastity were to be its fundamental principles, not beauty. there are two very obvious explanations for this problem. The first, which is undeniable in terms of the play’s performance, is that it constitutes one of those embarrassingly fulsome compliments to Henrietta Maria which formed an essential part of the masques of the 1630s; in Jonson’s Love’s Triumph through Callipolis of 1631, for example, the queen was enthroned throughout as the personification of beauty. The second explanation, in terms of the play’s internal logic, is that a straightforward neo-Platonic equation is being implied, if not overtly stated, between virtue and beauty. However, while two of the queens who appear in the play, Bellessa and fidamira, provide perfect illustrations of the truth of this equation, the third refuses to conform to type. Before Bellessa (the disguised Saphira, Princess of navarre, played by Henrietta Maria) arrived in the Paradise, it was expected that the previous queen, Pantamora, would be re-elected. She is obviously second in beauty only to Bellessa. the intelligent, playful and virtuous Camena is not seen as a rival. Pantamora’s behaviour, though, is ludicrously and inappropriately masculine: she expresses both 18 Herbert thurston, “the Dedication of the Month of May to Our Lady”, The Month 97 (1901): 470–83.

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her ambition and her lust openly. Her unsubtle attempts to woo Moramante away from Bellessa – ‘i have showed [my love] through so clear a tiffany, as the least breath of Moramante’s would have blown’t away, and he methought did hold his breath’ (4.9.5–7; sig. H4r) – have a touch of real comedy, which must have been considerably enhanced for the audience, if not for the actor, by the casting of eleanor Villiers, a sexually very active young woman, if court gossip could be believed.19 Montagu, moreover, uncouples the idea of beauty not only from its identification with virtue, but also from any concept of the absolute. in four of the witnesses, including the 1659 printed edition, in the scene following the plea for admission to the Society by fidamira (in disguise as a Moor, Gemella), all votes agree on her admission, and after a short, not wholly relevant speech on ambition being contrary to her colour, she is sworn in. in two of the manuscripts, including the shortened version probably used for performance (the tixall manuscript), Moramante votes against her admission. He argues that she is so brave that she ought not to have to face the indignity of being debarred from becoming the Paradise’s queen, which, as a Moor and therefore not beautiful, she must be. He is severely admonished by Bellessa, who tells him that beauty is a relative and changing concept, and Gemella as eligible as the other shepherdesses are: The Darkenes of the night may be as faire for it, as can the dayes serenest ayre and soe this coulour of itself may bee Lovely as our’s in it’s owne Degree.20

there then follows Gemella’s now relevant disclaimer to ambition. it is possible that this passage was cut on narrative grounds, in that Bellessa’s words are inconsistent with what happens in act 5 after fidamira, still disguised as Gemella, is actually elected queen of the society, when it seems to be accepted by all characters, including Bellessa, that Gemella’s Moorishness would indeed disqualify her from being queen. in view of this it is interesting that in the tixall manuscript the passage has been not merely retained, but sharpened to emphasize the fact that it is her being a Moor that Moramante views as disqualifying her. it is evident that Montagu, or someone else concerned with the production,21 was sufficiently committed to the ideas expressed in this scene to ensure that it was not cut in performance, and it is therefore tempting to suppose that the textual confusion is a reflection of conceptual and not merely dramaturgical disagreements. However, Montagu was also probably making a satirical joke at the expense of court values when he has Bellessa say 19 Sarah Poynting, “‘in the name of all the sisters’: Henrietta Maria’s notorious Whores’, in Women and Culture at the Courts of the Stuart Queens, ed. Clare McManus (Basingstoke, 2003), pp. 176–7. 20 The Shepherds’ Paradise, ed. Sarah Poynting, Malone Society reprint, vol. 159 (Oxford, 1998): near-diplomatic transcription of the Tixall manuscript (Folger Shakespeare Library MS Vb 203), lines 1779–82. 21 i have argued elsewhere that another writer, possibly thomas Killigrew, may have been responsible for the abridgement of the text contained in the tixall manuscript (“a Critical edition”, vol. 1, pp. 103–4; Shepherds’ Paradise,1998, p. viii).

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‘whoe knowes what one day may be called beauty? since wee see the opinion of it alter every day’.22 if we place this aesthetic relativism alongside other references to the election of the queen, we can see that the Society’s queen is chosen according to norms which are recognized to be socially agreed, albeit within extremely restricted limits. it is a system which succeeds in being, whether intentionally or not, simultaneously reactionary and subversive. the play raises a number of complex questions about both beauty and power which it cannot attempt to answer, because the only queen seen in office for any length of time is Bellessa, who is, unsurprisingly, portrayed as perfect in every way: wise, virtuous, womanly, and stunningly beautiful. Like Sabina, she sets and controls the ethical agenda, but the items on the agenda are no longer the same. Sabina’s code of conduct was centred around moral fortitude (lifelong celibacy and separation from her lover), a code which is reflected in the annual ceremony held at the tombs of the foundress and the Prince of navarre, when each character declaims a verse in honour of the ‘glorious couple’. Moramante’s, directed to Sabina alone, reads: Wonder of women, on whose chastity Heaven hath bestowed such a posterity, as is a self-perpetuation Without the help of propagation. We thus your children in our yearly task Come here to leave our prayers, and blessings ask. (ll. 17–22; H6v)

Genorio, however, adds a qualifying note: this scruple only now doth here remain, that i cannot from wishing yet refrain: if it were meant this heavenly residence Should but refine, and not extinguish sense … (ll. 47–50; H7r)

even within the hymn glorifying Sabina as foundress and the Prince for his heavenly self-sacrifice, it is strongly suggested that such virtue may be divine but is ultimately sterile. 3: Discreetly passionate During the year which Bellessa and Moramante spend together in the Paradise, the whole basis of power within the Society is transformed, as she becomes his pupil in love. it is a process which is not merely personal, since their relationship displaces that of Sabina’s with the Prince of navarre as a paradigm for the rest of the Society. Bellessa has run away from navarre to escape from the reality of royal matchmaking: marriage inescapably and humiliatingly as a diplomatic treaty. Her only power is in retreat. However, as queen of the female-dominated Paradise, her superiority makes it necessary for her to assume control in the pursuit of her love, without risking 22

Shepherds’ Paradise, 1998, lines 1785–6.

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the loss of her feminine virtue as Pantamora does. in order to further her own desires, she has to employ complex linguistic strategies which allow occasional glimpses of the subtext of desire while appearing to remain unaware that it exists. it is a game in which Bellessa must act simultaneously as leader and follower, while ensuring that Moramante takes on the correct role and plays by the same rules. As we have seen, it was also a game of which, if we can believe french diplomatic reports, Montagu and Henrietta Maria had considerable experience. tillières anxiously noted that all she had to do was to ‘retrancher de petits divertissements dans la conversation’, but she refused to do so, either because she preferred ‘son divertissement à tout’, or because she believed that her own innocence ‘surmonterait la calomnie’.23 If this would seem to make Henrietta Maria a more appropriate model for Pantamora than for the idealized Bellessa, that was surely not Montagu’s intention. However, the coquetry that may have characterized Henrietta Maria’s relationship with her admirers is more in evidence in the scenes between Bellessa and Moramante than may at first appear to be the case. Throughout most of the play, Moramante acts the role of shepherd to Bellessa’s queen: a courtier, not an equal. these two are not clearly and consistently Charles and Henrietta Maria, the CarLOMaria of Carew’s Coelum Britannicum. as Bellessa falls in love with him, she must, without declaring herself, manoeuvre him into a position where he may assume the part of lover. The false report by Genorio of her own death (when she is not known to be Saphira) may be seen as the first stage in this journey. It gives the disguised Basilino/ Moramante an opportunity to pretend to be himself: ‘i’ll read [these verses on the death of Saphira] to you, Madam, in the person of the Prince’ (4.1.31–2; f6r). it is a perfectly judged moment for her to step down from her position as his queen to declare herself his pupil in love. even as she does so, she instructs him as to how to behave, by her praise of his ‘discreetly passionate’ verses (4.1.30; f6r). the dialogue proceeds on the understanding that they are discussing principles and abstractions, not themselves. One begins to understand how a queen might conduct a flirtation with a favourite: how there would be rules to be followed, lines not to be crossed; pleasure provided by the subtext of desire, spoken about as if it did not apply to the speakers (as it may well not have done – but there would still be ‘divertissement’ in the game). Montagu understands that Bellessa has to play the game in a different way from Moramante: she needs to be seen to stay virtuously in control while he tests out which rules may be broken and where the lines are drawn. Bellessa’s anger when he kisses her hand while she is asleep makes his breaking of the rules appear to be an irretrievable mistake. In fact, he will be rewarded for it. His penultimate, apparently self-abnegating, sentence in this scene contains an oblique request to repeat his ‘crime’ and kiss her hand again (5.2.111–13; I2r), which is precisely the ‘punishment’ that Bellessa will inflict on him. In the last of their scenes as unacknowledged lovers, she toys with him by offering and withdrawing hope that his love will be successful, before temporarily ceding control to him. A reader of the 1659 edition will not know that in this scene Moramante removes Bellessa’s glove before kissing her hand. The stage direction ‘He pulls off her glove’, which is present in four of the five 23

tillières, Mémoires, pp. 205–6.

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manuscripts, is missing from the printed edition. What appears to be a formal courtly gesture becomes, with the stage direction in place, an intimate, erotic one in which the relative dominance of the characters is reversed. Other references in literature of this period to the male removal of a woman’s glove prior to kissing her bare hand strongly support the suggestion that it was an act bearing sexual connotations; it may even have been a recognized step in the process of seduction. in Shirley’s The Wittie Faire One, fowler, in a speech contemplating the defamation of a woman’s virtue, speaks of gallants who ‘confidently boast the fruition of this or that Lady, whose hand they never kist with the Glove off …’; and in Jonson’s masque Time Vindicated to Himselfe, Sport warns – in lines immediately preceding the revels – against overexcitement, ‘Or if you doe their gloves off-strip, / Or taste the nectar of the lip: / See, so you temper your desires, / For kisses, that yee sucke not fires.’24 This kiss also needs to be read in the context of Moramante’s first kiss, when Bellessa is lying asleep, where a textual omission in one of the witnesses similarly draws attention to the sexual ambiguity of the action. Moramante approaches her in the guise of a neo-Platonic lover, separating body and soul. But the language he uses to convince himself of his own purity of mind carries a surprising sexual pun: ‘Methinks I am so near her now, as I am all soul. My body, on whose carriage it was brought, is now recoiled, and my spirit is shot out upon Bellessa; and thus all spirit i may touch her and not be felt’ (5.2.54–6; i1r). the reviser who produced the short version of the play appears to have seen the joke: the ejaculatory ‘and my spirit is shot out upon Bellessa’ has been cut.25 the image is not developed, but, like Bellessa’s apparently innocent wish that Moramante might ‘enjoy the best part’ of her,26 it should alert us to the ambiguity of the moral implications of the scenes in which these actions occur. it is not unreasonable to suppose that these moments are hinting synecdochically at greater sexual freedom than we actually see, though indeed this is hardly necessary. if we imagine Montagu, or any other of Henrietta Maria’s admirers, daring to emulate Moramante, we can see that a questionable collusion would have been created: it is this degree of familiarity which Montagu is asking his audience of courtiers to contemplate. 4: The Image of the Gods What Bellessa’s period as queen is achieving is a masculinization of power within the Paradise under the guise of the synthesis of the male and female spheres of interest. the independent power of the single woman is willingly ceded. it is left to fidamira, who succeeds Bellessa as queen, to reassert the fundamental principles of the Society, which she does by returning to Sabina’s original vision: she declares her life-long vow of celibacy. But this vow is not taken from a desire to exhibit her 24 James Shirley, The Wittie Faire One (London, 1633), sig. H4r; Ben Jonson, Works, vol. 7, p. 670, ll. 441–4. 25 Gordon Williams, A Glossary of Shakespeare’s Sexual Language (London and new Jersey, 1997), pp. 284–5: ‘spirit’. 26 2.3.115; D1v. throughout the rest of the play, the word ‘enjoy’ is always used to signify sexual possession.

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virtue, like Sabina, but from an ineradicable weariness with the ways of male lovers, from the inconstancy of her betrothed, Genorio (later discovered to be her brother), to the unwelcome persistence of the King of Castile himself: she has ‘come to such a perfect knowledge of all men, as I am so far from envying even Bellessa, as I am scrupulous of my contribution towards her loving one’ (5.5.4–6; i4v). the only power which she sees as remaining to her is that of choosing to remain single.27 Once again, we are left with contradictory messages, and the final contradiction comes when Fidamira, having freed herself from the king’s control, is discovered to be Miranda, Bellessa’s elder sister, and the king instantly proposes ‘to the Society, the confirming you Queen during your life’, to which there is a general response of ‘We all agree to it with joy’ (5.16.573, 576; M6v). the elective monarchy, and (perhaps more significantly) the laws governing it, collapse without a struggle in the face of the power of a ‘real’ king. In two of the earliest manuscripts only, Bellessa adds ‘You have spoken like the image of the Gods’ (5.16.575), a term which is strongly evocative of Stuart ideology. as so often in Montagu’s play, though, an issue which we might expect to be clearcut, given the circumstances of the performance, is surprisingly ambiguous. the phrase is used at three other points in the play. in the second scene, when fidamira rejects Prince Basilino (Moramante), he accuses her of ‘a froward contempt of all the joys and blessings the Gods ordain for those that represent themselves’, adding that no such ‘frowardness’ should be able to defeat the ‘just desires’ of princes (1.2.40–45; B2v). fidamira’s reply is made with the same sharpness that we later see in Bellessa’s correction of him following his vote against fidamira/Gemella’s acceptance in the Society, and has the same function, to lead him in the path of right thinking. She tells him that he is claiming for princes that which belongs only to the Gods, the right to control their subjects’ personal desires and decisions, and that for ‘you that call yourselves the images of Gods’ ‘to repine, if in your large commission they [that is, the Gods] have reserved the sovereignty of our wills unto themselves’ is a ‘tyranny’ that ‘may warrant disobedience to them [that is, princes]’ (1.2.47–51; B2v). it is less surprising that the Prince should offer standard Stuart ideology on the divine right of kings in support of his argument that to refuse his proposal is irreligious, than that fidamira should offer a counter-argument that he is evidently intended to accept, suggesting that monarchs must learn to restrict their desires to those that may be judged as just both by the Gods and by their subjects; and that to do otherwise may be tyrannical and license resistance to their rule. the reference to those that call themselves the images of Gods may be compared with James Vi and i’s declaration of monarchical divine right in his speech of March 1610, when he proclaimed, ‘Kings are not onely GODS Lieutenants on earth, and sit upon GODS

27 tomlinson sees this as an unequivocally positive representation of ‘a valid alternative to marriage’ in which fidamira ‘gives priority to the recovery of her self’ following the ‘radical self-alienation’ that her disguise as Gemella imposes (tomlinson, “theatrical Women”, pp. 104, 99). this seems to me a perceptive reading of the character, which, however, fails to note the negative implications of her decision.

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throne, but even by GOD himselfe they are called GODS.’28 One cannot help feeling that if Charles was listening carefully he could not have been very pleased by the heterodox sentiment expressed in fidamira’s speech, which appears to espouse resistance theory. for those involved in the anti-richelieu conspiracy, this would presumably not have been an insurmountable ideological or ethical problem. Fidamira uses the phrase in a less controversial way when she tells the king that she will obey him ‘with that devotion which is due to the Gods, whose image you are’ (1.7.75; C2r). On her next appearance, though, she is fleeing from the royal court precisely because of his failure both to safeguard her liberty – ‘the greatest blessing Kings are trusted with’ (1.7.51–2; C1v) – and to behave in a way which suits ‘with his divine image’ (2.5.20; C4r). However, when Bellessa praises the king for his appointment of fidamira/Miranda as Queen-for-life, she sanctions his use of the royal prerogative to abolish the laws of the Society, for which he has divine authority. as her speech only appears in two of the manuscripts, it may well have been cut before performance, which makes it even more difficult to find any stable or final position taken on this subject in the play. As in other key areas, Montagu’s messages are mixed and ambiguous. the moral education provided by women in the Paradise is essential in preparing princes for government and men for life. What women receive in return seems to be potentially more civilized husbands and rulers, and access to the world of the senses as well as of the mind. Considerable ambivalence, though, surrounds both the equivalence and the success of this exchange. if Bellessa and Moramante are unavoidably shown as achieving a perfect partnership, Genorio and the king of Castile hardly measure up to the demands made on them. they bring corruption into the Paradise, in the forms of faithlessness and lust, which fidamira has earlier defined as expressions of tyranny, and leave behind them a disillusioned queen and a disenfranchised female electorate. 5: No power to suspend the laws Sabina’s Paradise was supposed to provide a haven from such dangers, and ought therefore to be free from the political concerns inescapable in the outer world. Montagu, however, slipped his – and Henrietta Maria’s – factional interests inside even its closed borders. at the coronation following the election of a queen, she swears to observe the Oath: By beauty, innocence, and all that’s fair, i Bellessa as a Queen do swear, To keep the honour and the regal due, Without exacting anything that’s new; and to assume to me no more than must Give me the means and power to be just; “a Speech to the Lords and Commons of the Parliament at White-Hall, on Wednesday the XXi. of March. anno 1609 [1610]” in The Workes of the Most High and Mightie Prince, Iames … King of Great Britaine, France and Ireland (London, 1616). 28

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and but for charity and mercy’s cause, reserve no power to suspend the laws. (2.1.29–36; C3v)

this statement concerning taxation – exacting anything that’s new’ – and the royal prerogative – ‘power to suspend the laws’ – bears little relevance to the affairs of the Shepherds’ Paradise as we see them unfold, especially given that all the Society’s goods are held in common. it is, though, highly suggestive of the england of Charles i. During the years following his suspension of Parliament in 1629, the man responsible for raising money for the crown, in undoubtedly ‘new’ ways, was, of course, Lord treasurer Weston. in france richelieu’s use of tax-gathering powers was cited by Gaston d’Orléans as a legitimation of his rebellion. annabel Patterson has argued that one reason for Charles’ commissioning of a translation of Argenis in 1628 was that its discussion of a ruler’s right to raise taxes without parliamentary consent lent support to his own position.29 Montagu gives him no such comfort. it is an expression not merely of factional interest, but of principle. With a rather blithe disregard for the offence which this might cause to Charles, and an equal disregard for dramatic probability, Montagu provided Henrietta Maria with a speech challenging her husband’s most contentious policies. the representation of royalty in The Shepherds’ Paradise is surprisingly problematic. the theoretical basis of power in the Society of Shepherds and Shepherdesses is, from the royalist viewpoint of the 1630s, deeply suspect: an elective monarchy founded on a supposedly God-given quality, beauty, which can, however, confer no divine right and attract no divine sanction because it has been dissociated from both inherent virtue and from any idea of the absolute. this ambivalence is reinforced by the portrayal of the operation of power in the play as a whole, in which the exercise of the royal prerogative is, at different moments, both rejected and upheld. Gender is crucial to these contradictions. throughout the play men employ the language of mutual praise, high-minded misery and apparent selfsacrifice as a cloak for the furtherance of personal advantage in competition with each other for women. if love is, or represents, power in The Shepherds’ Paradise, as both Stephen Orgel and Kevin Sharpe have argued, we see male characters behave in some morally very dubious ways in pursuit of it.30 it may be realistic, but it hardly adds up to the unquestioning endorsement of Caroline government they see in the play. Even Bellessa’s marriage to Moramante – the dynastic alliance she fled navarre to avoid, but now warranted by love – leaves her as the wife of a prince, and no longer independent monarch of the Paradise or heir to the kingdom of Navarre. Montagu’s admiration for women’s exercise of power is tempered by a recognition of the limitations placed upon it, largely by male characters who have not shown themselves to merit their dominant status. nevertheless, the moral element that women bring to the political sphere is seen as vital to the exercise of government.

annabel Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation (Wisconsin, 1984), pp. 191–2. Kevin Sharpe, Criticism and Compliment: the Politics of Literature in the England of Charles I (Cambridge, 1987), p. 42; Stephen Orgel and roy Strong, Inigo Jones: the Theatre of the Stuart Court, 2 vols (London, 1973), vol. 1, p. 55. 29 30

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This was, of course, a compliment to the queen and a reflection of the occasion itself, but was probably also the outcome of Montagu’s personal and political loyalties. 6: Too busie in manie matters Loyalty seems to have been in rather short supply some weeks later when the conspiracy finally became public in England. Henrietta Maria may have used Montagu as something of a scapegoat, Sir thomas Wentworth writing to the earl of Carlisle – neither of them friends to Montagu – that ‘the Wiser think … Wat Mountague very extreamly ill used by her Majesty’, adding that ‘it is fear’d he may grow out of Countenance as well on the Queen’s side comme nous autres’.31 the queen was reconciled to him, but Charles was not, and in September Montagu was sent out of the country ‘as being too busie in many matters’.32 this was a rare hiccup in his relationship with Henrietta Maria, which was widely enough known for Cardinal Barberini, nephew to the Pope, to refer in the same month to ‘il piccolo Montagu’, who ‘is too well-liked by the Queen of England’.33 it was probably the combination of Montagu’s political activities and his relationship with the queen that made him less well liked by her husband, a sentiment that was only reinforced by Montagu’s return to england in 1635. His dramatic declaration of his conversion to Catholicism in September of that year sent him back into exile with the bond between himself and Henrietta Maria strengthened. In the summary of a letter of august 1636 from Montagu to the queen that had been intercepted by the french government it was noted tersely that he had written, ‘il ne se nourist que de ses lres.’ Although language of this kind was commonplace enough, as was his assertion that he had ‘la viue image d’elle en son ame’ with which the portrait of herself she had sent him could not compare, the portrait itself presents an undeniably material manifestation of their relationship, while his addition ‘qu’elle est Infinimt plus belle que 51’ has a convincing specificity.34 Like Bellessa, Henrietta Maria was still winning Moramante’s beauty contest. a reference to her own letters makes it clear that they were largely concerned with finding a way of bringing him home. the queen was not able to achieve this for almost a year, Montagu returning to London in april 1637, when both Charles and his own father refused to receive him. The king gave way by the end of the month, but always remained resistant to any preferment for him, despite, or perhaps because of, his wife’s wishes. in September 1637 Chavigny reported to Mazarin on gossip passed on to him by ambassador 31 Sir thomas Wentworth to the earl of Carlisle, 20 May 1633, The Earl of Strafforde’s Letters and Dispatches, ed. William Knowler, 2 vols (London, 1739), vol. 1, p. 85. 32 John flower to Viscount Scudamore, 13 July 1633, tna, PrO C.115/M31/8156. 33 Quoted by Gordon albion (Charles I and the Court of Rome (London, 1935), p. 206) from BL, additional MS 8656, fo. 44. the number of references to ‘little’ Wat Montagu suggest that he was exceptionally small and slight. 34 archives du Ministère des affaires etrangères (ae), Correspondence Politique (Angleterre), 46, fo. 83. Regrettably ‘51’ is not identified. If the detailed summary accurately reflects his letter, most of it consisted of a report on military events in and around Turin.

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Senneterre, recently returned to Paris from London, to the effect that Montagu was the queen’s lover (her ‘comte Philippe’).35 there seems to be no evidence either way, but if there was even a hint of intimacy between them, Charles’ unalterable suspicion of Montagu becomes even more explicable. the latter’s reputation as a proselytizing Catholic and his continuing conspiratorial tendencies also made him as unpopular with the king as they endeared him to Henrietta Maria, who supported Montagu’s bid for a potential english cardinalate. this signalled a shift in their friendship. from her choice of him in 1639, along with Sir Kenelm Digby, to raise a contribution from recusants for the king’s expedition against the Scots (in part responsible for Montagu’s third and final period of exile, this time demanded by Parliament in 1641); through his appointment as her grand almoner after he took orders in 1651, and the dedicatory epistle in his volume of devout essays, in which he suggested that Henrietta Maria was a Catholic martyr, whose subjects had lost every part of their birthright except language with which to pay her homage;36 to her attempt to force her son Henry to convert to Catholicism by lodging him with Montagu in 1654 at the abbey at Pontoise bestowed on him by anne of austria: their relationship was from this time informed primarily by their shared religion. the alteration is manifested in Henrietta Maria’s letters to her sister Christine: in 1635, writing of Montagu’s post-conversion melancholy, he was, familiarly ‘Wat’; by 1652 he was ‘l’abbé de Montegu’. the courtier shepherd had become a pastor of a different kind. But while their friendship may have been marked by greater formality, they remained close for the rest of Henrietta Maria’s life. By July 1670 all the royal women to whom Montagu had given his devotion – two of them for half a century – were dead and he withdrew from public life.37 His last years were spent at l’Hôpital des Incurables, where he undertook his final literary work, a translation of Exposition de la doctrine de l’Eglise catholique sur les matières de controverse (Paris, 1671) by Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet. in Montagu’s prefatory letter to his ‘Deare Countreymen’, he looked back 40 years with a mixture of pride and nostalgia, as well as with a sense of the distance he had travelled: and having heretofore presented my Country in their seuerall seasons Spring-flowers, and other Summer-Fruits, as the Parfumes of Poesy, and the Reflection of Morality, now in this winter of my age i transport to my nation this riper and more whole-some fruit, the feeding where-on (contrary to the effect denounced against the forbidden fruit) may produce life euerlasting.38

it was a journey he had often shared with the queen to whom he had presented the perfumed spring flowers of The Shepherds’ Paradise.

ae, Mémoires et Documents (france), 828, fo. 35. ‘Comte Philippe’ was Philippe d’aglié, notorious as the lover of Henrietta Maria’s sister Christine Duchess of Savoy. 36 Walter Montagu, Miscellanea Spiritualia, vol. 2 (London, 1654 [i.e. 1653]), sig. a4. 37 anne of austria died in January 1666, Henrietta Maria in September 1669, and her daughter Henriette anne, whom he had also served as almoner, the following year. 38 James Benignus Bossuet, An Exposition of the Doctrine of the Catholique Church, translated into english by W.M. (Paris, 1672), sig. a8. 35

Chapter 5

the three Marys: the Virgin; Marie de Médicis; and Henrietta Maria Jessica Bell

The French queen, Marie de Médicis (1573–1642), was a prolific patron of the arts and, consequently, the resultant literature on her participation in the seventeenthcentury art market has been abundant. Marie amassed an enormous painting collection which included works by some of the most pre-eminent contemporary local and international talent, but it is her patronage of Peter Paul rubens that has generated the most discussion. authors such as Jacques thuillier and Jacques foucart, Deborah Marrow, Susan Saward, ronald forsyth Millen and robert erich Wolf and more recently Geraldine a. Johnson have added much to the current understanding of Marie’s relationship with the flemish painter which resulted in the twenty-four large-scale canvases depicting events from the french queen’s life which now hang in Salle 18 in the Louvre, but which originally decorated the western gallery of her personal residence: the Luxembourg Palace.1 although these authors vary in their interpretations of specific signs and symbols, all note that Marie’s love of painting extended to a desire to use it to manipulate public perception and create an appropriate persona which highlighted her virtues. a great deal of Marie’s patronage was focused on building and decorating the Luxembourg Palace, the imposing private residence which she commissioned for herself in Paris (1612). it was within this palace that Marie developed much of her personal, highly recognizable iconography and hung much of her sizeable picture collection. Her intention in building such a grand residence was surely to create a sense of magnificence that she felt befitted someone of her position. The building is huge, consisting of a corps-de-logis, two wings and a screen which surround a large central courtyard. the immense scale, coupled with the marble detailing and bronze statues on the exterior, would not only have indicated wealth but would also have exuded a sense of majesty, both of which were qualities which consequently would be associated with the owner of the palace. yet grandeur was not the only aim of this costly undertaking. Marie was a woman who continuously attempted to increase her personal power throughout her reign as queen, then as queen regent during the 1 Deborah Marrow, The Art Patronage of Maria de’ Medici (ann arbor, 1982), ronald forsyth Millen and robert erich Wolf, Heroic Deeds and Mystic Figures: A New Reading of Rubens’ Life of Maria de’ Medici (Princeton, 1989), Susan Saward, The Golden Age of Marie de’ Medici (ann arbor, 1982), Jacques thuillier and Jacques foucart, Rubens’ Life of Marie de’ Medici (New York, 1967).

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minority of her son, Louis XIII, and finally as queen mother, after she had been ignobly forced to step aside for her son’s ascendancy; thus, many of her painting commissions in the Luxembourg had particular themes relating to her personal power and dynastic glory which were intended to champion her cause. a battle for power and glory was not in itself unique for seventeenth-century rulers, but, because of her gender, Marie’s case is different from many other contemporary figures, like Pope Urban VIII, Philip IV of Spain, Louis XIII of france, or Charles i of england. While being consistently characterized as inept, inefficient and even a ‘brainless’ vixen in contemporary accounts, and in much of the subsequent scholarship of the next three hundred years,2 Marie was one of the most powerful rulers of early-seventeenth-century europe and she was a woman. thus, when creating an imagery which would support her cause by highlighting her virtues, she had to fashion an iconography which not only emphasized her authority – a quality usually associated with men because they dominated the political and military landscape of the seventeenth century – but which also was appropriate for a woman. One motif explored here, that was particularly useful for highlighting Marie’s (feminine) virtues, was alluding to the Virgin Mary, an allusion which crops up repeatedly in this french queen’s patronage. Marie’s use of Marian imagery, and her art patronage in general, seems to have influenced her youngest daughter, Henrietta Maria (1609–69), when the English queen began her own excursions into art acquisition. When Henrietta Maria moved to the english court at the age of 15, after marrying Charles i in 1625, she appears to have gone with an awareness of the power that the image had as a means of glorifying a patron. This knowledge must have been formed, at least in part, by viewing her mother’s involvement with art. However, that there may have been an influence from mother to daughter has not yet been adequately explored in art historical scholarship. this may be because, prior to the late twentieth century, much of the literature in which Henrietta Maria appeared focused either on the Caroline Court in general or on her husband and his ‘good nose’ for painting; very little was mentioned about Henrietta Maria’s personal agency in acquiring art. Henrietta Maria’s role as active provocateur in obtaining art works for herself or as gifts for others has really only come to light in recent years, particularly through 2 J. Michael Hayden, France and the Estates General of 1614 (Cambridge, 1974), p. 15. for instance, Marie’s early biographer, Louis Batiffol, suggested that the french Queen had no real knowledge of the arts and that it was simply fortuitous that she was able to secure the services of rubens, the contemporary court painter par excellence. Marrow, p. 1. Hayden attempted to redress the idea that Marie was an entirely incompetent queen in his detailed historical analysis of Marie’s regency, France and the Estates General of 1614. in this text, Hayden focused particularly on the events leading up to and immediately following the meeting of the estates General in 1614 and, in doing so, he came to the conclusion that, though not a brilliant ruler, Marie had chosen good advisers and had exceeded performance expectations in many ways. Hayden, p. 173. But the negative perception of Marie proved enduring. as late as 1983, David Maland reverted to a more traditional characterization by suggesting that Marie simply ‘squandered’ what little power she did have to incompetent italian compatriots, namely her primary advisor, Concino Concini, and his wife. David Maland, Europe in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1983), p. 177.

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the scholarly research of Oliver Millar, Gabriele finaldi, aidan Weston-Lewis, Hilary Maddicott, Jeremy Wood and Susan Alexander Sykes. Drawing on this research into Henrietta Maria’s collecting, it is now possible to compare the painting acquisitions of these two significant early modern female patrons and, in particular, to explore whether or not Marie’s example influenced her daughter’s patronage of the arts. the idea that there could be some connection between their patronage has been proposed by scholars of Henrietta Maria such as Sykes and Maddicott, but often only in passing.3 this essay is thus intended to explore the idea that there was such an influence by examining common features in the iconography found in the two queens’ respective painting collections, particularly in relation to the creation of a feminine iconography through the use of Marian imagery. it should be noted, however, that while Marie seems to have had a significant influence upon her youngest daughter’s adoption of this sort of imagery, Henrietta Maria altered it to suit the social, political and religious conditions of the english court. Exactly how Marie may have influenced Henrietta Maria to adopt Marian imagery will be explored shortly, but it is necessary first to underscore why this sort of iconography may have been attractive to these two queens. Marie and Henrietta Maria were both devout Catholics, their devotion to their faith making up an important component of their lives. It is therefore almost self-evident that they would look to the Virgin Mary as a model worthy of emulation. She was not only both queens’ patron saint and namesake, but also, according to Catholic doctrine, the most important of all saints and possessed what were perceived as necessary traits in women; she was praised for her chastity and spirituality and, while on earth, she was also an exemplary mother.4 the Virgin had always been held in the highest regard by the Church, but after the reformation Protestants severely diminished her importance, along with all the other intercessory figures. In response to this, Catholic reformers reasserted her authority and very much elevated her role, suggesting that her personal powers were on a par with those of God the father and His Son.5 the early modern Cult of the Virgin was thus born and her importance as a model for women was re-established. Hence, when fashioning a court persona that was intended to highlight their own numerous virtues, what better model could Marie and Henrietta Maria imitate? the qualities that the Virgin had in abundance were all attributes with which a queen would be only too happy to be associated; queens had to appear as pillars of society who were worthy of 3 Sykes, “Henrietta Maria’s ‘House of Delight’: French Influence and Iconography in the Queen’s House, Greenwich”, Apollo 133 (1991): 332–6. In this article, Sykes suggests that a number of links can be found between mother and daughter in terms of the artists they chose to patronize. She proposes that Marie went so far as to actively encourage her daughter to choose certain artists over others for large scale commissions. For example, Sykes suggests that Marie played a role in Henrietta Maria’s decision to commission a cycle depicting the tale of Cupid and Psyche from Jacob Jordaens to decorate her house at Greenwich. Hilary Maddicott also suggests, although without elucidating any possible explanations for this, that Marie’s decoration of the Luxembourg must have inspired Henrietta Maria’s own artistic programme in her various palaces. Maddicott, “the Provenance of the ‘Castle Howard’ Version of Orazio Gentileschi’s ‘finding of Moses’”, Burlington Magazine 140, no. 1139 (1998): 120–22. 4 erica Veevers, Images of Love and Religion (Cambridge, 1989), p. 94. 5 Marrow, p. 2, cites rubin’s argument.

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public respect, but their primary role at court was to produce an heir, preferably male, who would ensure the continuation of the royal line. in relation to Henrietta Maria, references to the Virgin could have had additional connotations for it was expected by her mother, the papacy, french Catholics, as well as by herself that she would champion the rights of Catholics in england. the Virgin was renowned for her ability to gain converts to Christianity, so she was an appropriate model for a queen who perceived herself to be on a similar crusading mission. While at the english court, Henrietta Maria became an active proselytizer, promoting conversions amongst courtiers. During the 1630s, as Diana Barnes has explored in a previous essay in this volume, there was something of a ‘conversion craze’ at the english court and a number of Henrietta Maria’s companions attempted to exact conversions to the Catholic faith. for instance, Olivia Porter was converted to Catholicism. after pledging her devotion to the Catholic faith, Porter attempted to convert those closest to her. She successfully converted her father, Lord Boteler, and her brother-in-law, Captain tom Porter, and, possibly, Lady Mary Hamilton on their deathbeds.6 However, Porter’s conversion of her sister, Lady newport, generated particular attention and criticism. Lady newport had been ardently Protestant, and particularly opposed to her father’s conversion, but she too succumbed to her sister’s proselytizing. However, Lady newport’s husband, who was, according to George Conn, ‘one of the chief Puritans’, probably did not want his own position jeopardized by his wife’s deviancy.7 He therefore approached the archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, and the matter was brought before the Privy Council.8 the subsequent public denunciations against Lady newport and prominent Catholics at court eventually drew Henrietta Maria into the dispute and she requested Charles’ intervention.9 However, despite her desire to assist her Catholic allies, the queen consort also attempted to support her husband and to maintain the authority of the Stuart dynasty. there were thus somewhat contradictory strands in her loyalties that sometimes resulted in conflicting messages in the visual imagery with which she was associated; her paintings may include allusions to the Virgin, but they are often quite subtle references, especially – as will become apparent – in comparison to the quite blatant references found in her mother’s painting commissions. there were thus numerous reasons why Marie and Henrietta Maria would utilize Marian imagery in their personal iconography. She had been a popular heroine for centuries and remained so, among both Protestants and Catholics. Charles, for instance, had a number of representations of the Virgin in his extensive collection including works such as Raphael’s Holy Family, La Perla, Mategna’s Death of the Virgin and Caravaggio’s Death of the Virgin. even the earlier Protestant queen Elizabeth I alluded to the Virgin in her personal iconography; she was known as the ‘Virgin Queen’ and many of her portraits have features often associated with Marian imagery. a portrait of elizabeth from around 1600 shows her crowned, holding an 6 alison Plowden, Henrietta Maria: Charles I’s Indomitable Queen (Stroud, 2001) p. 123. 7 ibid., pp. 123–4. 8 ibid., p. 123. 9 Caroline M. Hibbard, Charles I and the Popish Plot (Chapel Hill, 1983), p. 55.

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orb and sceptre and wearing her coronation dress (figure 5.1). She is presented in a manner which recalls a typical maestà. She appears in a static, fully frontal pose and stares directly at the viewer. Her face has the flattened quality, created by a lack of tonal modelling, often found in fourteenth-century iconic images of the Virgin such as Duccio’s Maestà. this general popularity for Marian imagery begs the question of whether or not allusions to the Virgin in Henrietta Maria’s collection are indicative of a direct influence from her mother. It does seem likely, however, when Marie’s involvement in the evolution of Henrietta Maria’s faith is examined: Henrietta Maria was very much guided in her Catholic observance by her mother from a young age. While Marie seems to have had little interest in Henrietta Maria’s education in general, she paid particular attention to her daughter’s religious instruction, sending the young princess to the Carmelite Convent of which she was the patron for tuition from the prioress, Mother Madeleine de Saint-Joseph.10 Moreover, that Marie attempted to guide her daughter in her dedication to the Virgin is demonstrated in a letter which she wrote to Henrietta Maria on the occasion of her wedding. in this letter, Marie insisted that her daughter remember that she owed the Virgin ‘une devotion particulière’ as the Virgin was her patron saint as well as the ‘mère de [son] âme’.11 Marie’s influence over her daughter’s faith did not, moreover, end with this letter; she also played an important role in determining the mode of Catholicism that was practised by Henrietta Maria and her Catholic retinue in england as late as 1630 when a decision was to be made concerning which priests would be best suited to meet Henrietta Maria’s devotional requirements. as erica Veevers points out, the type of Catholicism observed by the french princess in england – Devout Humanism – had flourished during the early seventeenth-century in France. Developing from the teachings of St françois de Sales, it held much sway over the cultural and religious practices of the french court, largely because it was endorsed by Marie, who was probably attracted by its incorporation of neo-Platonic theories into worship, as well as its encouragement of the use of intercessory figures, particularly the Virgin Mary, to aid worship.12 Certain Catholic orders, such as the Capuchin friars, had emerged which closely followed the tenets of men like Sales. This order was, therefore, particularly appealing to Marie, so they had risen to prominence at the french court; a key Capuchin friar, Father Joseph (Francis le Clerc du Tremblay), for instance, had the confidence of both Marie and her son, Louis XIII.13 thus, when Henrietta Maria’s situation came to be discussed, the Capuchins were an obvious choice to enter her retinue in england, largely because of Marie’s, and of course, Louis’ regard.14 it is therefore clear that Marie was a dominant force in shaping Henrietta Veevers, p. 34. ibid., p. 94. 12 ibid., pp. 7 and 21–2. 13 ibid., p. 92. 14 the Capuchins were also acceptable to english negotiators because they preached a moderate form of Catholicism and were relatively discrete in their observance around court, a trait which was considered somewhat necessitous for Catholic priests in a Protestant kingdom. ibid., p. 92. 10 11

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Henrietta Maria

Unknown artist, Queen Elizabeth I, c.1600 (c.1559?), national Portrait Gallery, London

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Maria’s faith. Because of this, it seems likely that she would have had an impact on other aspects of her daughter’s life, including her art acquisition and her adoption of Marian imagery. Marie consistently emphasized her connection to the Virgin in all manner of ways and it is necessary to examine her patronage in some detail before attempting a comparison with her daughter. Examples of Marie making blatant connections between herself and the Virgin are found throughout her most famous commission: the allegorical canvases executed by Peter Paul rubens from 1622 to 1625, which originally bedecked the western gallery on the ground floor of the Luxembourg Palace. these paintings have been discussed in great detail by numerous authors, such as Thuillier and Foucart in their epic book, Rubens’ Life of Marie de’ Medici, as well as Saward, Marrow, Millen and Wolf and Johnson, but they are extremely important in a study of Marie’s personal iconography largely because they are one of the few intact large-scale commissions which survive from her oeuvre. in the volumes of text which deal with the cycle, most scholars cite at least some examples of Marian imagery in one or more of rubens’ impressive paintings.15 Relatively recently, Geraldine A. Johnson has undertaken a quite extensive comparison between Marie’s iconography and Marian imagery. She has related the depiction of Marie in The Presentation of the Portrait of Marie de’ Médicis to Henri IV to Catholic icons representing the Virgin Mary (figure 5.2).16 in this painting, rubens has dedicated only a small portion of the canvas to the depiction of Marie. She appears, at the exact centre of the composition, in a picture within the picture. the subject of this painting is the presentation of a portrait of Marie to a possible suitor, Henri iV of france. On seeing the portrait, it is clear that Henri is entirely taken with the Médicis princess and will accept her as his bride. His expression as he gazes up at the portrait establishes this without a doubt; he appears to be entirely oblivious to anything else but Marie. it is his gesture with his left hand, however, which truly captures his rapture; his hand is held taut, his fingers outstretched, almost as if he has reeled back in wondrous shock at the beauty of Marie. In the sky above the earthly king, Jupiter and Juno appear and their presence indicates that this pair will enjoy every possible happiness and accordance. By depicting a representation of a portrait in this way, rubens alludes to a common practice of seventeenth-century royalty and courtiers where portraits of potential suitors or brides were sent to prospective marriage partners in the hope that the recipient would be suitably impressed with what he or she saw. A prolific patron of portraits, Marie herself engaged enthusiastically in this trade. She sent, for instance, portraits of Henrietta Maria, possibly by frans Pourbus the younger (1569–1622), to england when a possible alliance between the french princess and the thenPrince Charles was being discussed with James i, King of england (1566–1625).17 15 See also Karen Britland, Drama at the Courts of Queen Henrietta Maria (Cambridge and New York, 2006). 16 See Geraldine a. Johnson, “Pictures fit for a Queen: Peter Paul rubens and the Marie de’ Medici Cycle”, in Female Agency: Feminist Art History after Postmodernism, ed. norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 2005), pp. 101–19. 17 erin Griffey, unpublished research notes, p. 15.

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Peter Paul rubens, The Presentation of the Portrait of Marie de Médicis to Henri IV, 1622–25, Musée du Louvre, Paris

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Henrietta Maria and her husband also used portraiture for this purpose. When it came to organizing the marriage of their eldest daughter, Mary, the English king and queen looked firstly to Spain, but when various conflicts made such a match unlikely, the approaches of the Stadholder, Frederick Henry, of the Dutch Republic became more appealing. negotiations for a marriage between the Stadholder’s son, William, and the Princess royal continued for some time and involved the exchange of portraits: a portrait of William by Honthorst was sent to england possibly in exchange for a portrait of the English princess by Van Dyck.18 Henrietta Maria’s exact involvement in this transaction is not apparent, but Honthorst’s portrait may indeed be identified as one hanging in the Great Closet at Somerset House, which was of course one of Henrietta Maria’s residences,19 so her interest in the proceedings is evident. thus, in The Presentation of the Portrait, rubens depicts a common court ritual in grandiose allegorical terms. it was necessary for him to present this event in such a way that Marie would be showcased in the best light, as this was the primary purpose of the courtly practice. Marie’s beauty is therefore emphasized, in accordance particularly with French tastes: she has the pale skin preferred by french spectators, as well as perfectly formed eyebrows, lips and nose.20 in addition to this, however, rubens also suggests her numerous virtues by reverting to Marian imagery. His depiction of Marie contrasts quite considerably with the appearance of his other figures in the work; though by no means forbidding, she has a very formal, iconic appearance. rubens has depicted her in a full frontal pose, half-length against a stark background while the other figures, particularly the half-nude figures of the adolescent Hymen and Cupid, twist and turn in a manner typical of rubenesque exuberance. the reason for this contrast may be thus: though a relatively common format for courtly portraiture, the composition type utilized in this portrait within a painting also recalls traditional depictions of the Virgin which had existed for centuries. Giotto’s (1267–75–1337) depiction of the Madonna and Child in one of the ceiling roundels of the Scrovegni Chapel, Padua, is just one example. the fact that rubens may have drawn on this traditional mode of representing the Virgin becomes more likely, as Johnson points out, when one compares The Presentation of the Portrait with his 1608 image of the Virgin which was painted for the high altar of the roman Church of Santa Maria in Vallicella (figure 5.3).21 these two works – which both utilize the idea of including a picture within a painting – are almost identical in format. Like the painting from the Médicis cycle, the altarpiece shows the Virgin, with her son, half-length, this time in a circular frame,

18 Christopher White, The Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen: The Dutch Pictures (Cambridge, 1982), p. xxviii. 19 ibid., p. 59. 20 Marrow discusses this preference in relation to another portrait commission instigated by Marie in order to arrange a marriage between her son, Gaston d’Orléans, and one of the Medici princesses from florence, either Margherita or anna. Marie requested portraits of both girls, but Gondi specifically stated that the face of Anna in her portrait should not be painted too red because the French preferred white skin. Marrow, p. 49. 21 Johnson, p. 111.

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Peter Paul rubens, The Virgin and Child with Angels. rome, Chiesa nuova (S. Maria in Vallicella), 1608, ©2003 Photo SCaLa, florence

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against a dark background, staring directly at the viewer. The static quality of this icon image contrasts with the dynamism found in the rest of the canvas; it is held aloft by a crowd of dramatically foreshortened angels, and light radiates outwards from it, shedding rays upon the painted spectators whose rapture at this heavenly host foreshadows Henri’s jubilant response to Marie’s portrait. though the number of figures has been very much reduced in the latter work, and the icon-like image of Marie has been brought closer to the earthly realm – she was after all only a mortal princess – rubens’ later painting strongly recalls his earlier image of the Virgin. Moreover, rubens has included a rose in Marie’s hair, an attribute which could suggest the purity of the Virgin.22 The rose is a flower often associated with the Virgin, some of her titles being the rose of Heaven or the Mystic rose.23 that Marie was represented in such a way would surely have been intended to align her with the Virgin and more particularly with this holy figure’s particular virtues such as chastity and motherhood. at this point in the chronology of rubens’ biographical narrative, Marie was, after all, still hoping to attract Henri as her husband. She would therefore wish to appear chaste, but also be shown to have the potential to produce, like the Virgin did, a future king to lead France. The Presentation of the Portrait was not the only painting within the Médicis cycle to include such references to Mary and her particularly female virtues. in fact, a number of images contain even more blatant allusions. a connection with the Virgin is apparent in the very first scene in which Marie appears; in The Birth of Marie (figure 5.4), the infant Marie is crowned with a halo. according to Susan Saward, it is unlikely that the halo is a specifically Christian symbol. She instead relates it to a classical corona radiata which initially symbolized Helios or apolloSol and eventually came to have imperial connotations.24 Saward’s argument is entirely plausible, especially as an Apollo figure appears in the Council of the Gods canvas adorned in the same fashion. However, by the seventeenth century, haloes were an integral part of any Christian iconography. thus, given the french court’s interest in Catholic orders which promoted the worship of the Virgin, as well as the Marian imagery within the surrounding works, there is an element of this Christian symbolism here. it could therefore provide another example of rubens mixing biblical and mythological references in order to create the most flattering representation of his patron possible. Other scenes which include a similar amalgam of references are the Education of Marie and the Proxy Marriage of Marie. they both closely parallel typical representations of the Virgin, in terms of the themes depicted and the way in which Marie is represented, but they also include numerous antique gods and goddesses. then, in the Conclusion of the Peace at Angers, Marie is depicted not in the guise of the Virgin, but looking with reverence towards an image of Mary painted on a church, outside which she stands. Saward might suggest that such allusions 22 Roland, “Van Dyck’s Holy Family with Partridges: Catholic and Classical Imagery at the english Court”, Artibus et Historiae 15, no. 29 (1994): 127. 23 edward Hulme, Symbolism in Christian Art (Poole, 1976), p. 192. 24 Saward, p. 32. Saward suggests that by being presented with a corona radiata, Marie is intended to be presented as the promised child spoken of by Virgil in the Fourth Eclogue, pp. 33–6.

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Peter Paul rubens, The Birth of Marie de Médicis in Florence 26 April 1573, 1622–25, Musée du Louvre, Paris

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would have been considered blasphemous by contemporary spectators,25 but patrons had been depicting themselves in the guise of, or accompanied by, religious figures for generations. Marie’s fifteenth-century Florentine ancestors were leaders in this field and the Procession of the Magi, by Benozzo Gozzoli (c.1420–97), in the private chapel of the Palazzo Médicis, is an obvious example of this type of imagery. in this work, the youngest magi, dressed in an elaborate cream costume and looking out towards the viewer, may indeed be an idealized depiction of the young Lorenzo, although his features are by no means individualized. even if this is not Lorenzo, there are clearly recognizable portraits of Cosimo and Piero de Médicis at the front of the crowd forming part of the caravan.26 Such portrayals were therefore not new phenomena and would probably have seemed an obvious way for Marie to establish her virtues. Compositionally, rubens has also drawn on examples of traditional representations of various biblical events concerning the Virgin. in The Proxy Marriage of Marie, for instance, rubens’ composition recalls typical renaissance depictions of the Marriage of the Virgin. if rubens’ painting is compared with raphael’s 1504 Betrothal of the Virgin some quite striking similarities can be found: both works are roughly divided in half; they have a strong horizontal emphasis which is created by the fact that the figures are all positioned in a line at the base of the work; the upper half of the canvas is dedicated to an architectural backdrop; and, most importantly, the three central figures are positioned almost identically and their gestures correspond closely.27 rubens himself represented a Marriage of the Virgin (figure 5.5) and, while his composition is quite unique in its positioning of the figures, he retains the architectural setting. The way in which the figures give and receive the ring also recalls not only raphael’s painting, but rubens’ earlier representation of Marie’s wedding. thus, it seems that rubens drew on a long-established tradition of representations of the Virgin’s wedding when he created his composition for the Marriage of Marie and, moreover, it is most likely that contemporary spectators would have been very much aware of this parallel. it would be possible to examine almost every scene in the Médicis cycle and find some element of Marian imagery, but there is not the necessary space here to do such explications justice. Needless to say, it seems likely that Marie wished to be connected with the Virgin in more than just name. Having herself portrayed in this deified way would have implied that she did indeed possess the very virtues that were looked for in female figures of power. Kings were lauded for their physical strength whereas queens were valued for their chastity, their maternal instincts and their ability to guide the masses by exhibiting these traits. thus, in this series of ibid., p. 32. evelyn Welch, Art in Renaissance Italy 1350–1500 (Oxford, 1997), p. 292. 27 This composition can actually be traced as far back as Medieval Christian imagery. (fl. c.1420–48), Niccolo di Buonaccorso (fl. 1356–88), Gregorio di Cecco di Luca (1390–95–1424) are just three instances of trecento and quattrocento artists organizing their representations in this same format. Millen and Wolf also make this association between Rubens’ composition and raphael’s earlier image, as well as Dürer’s Betrothal of the Virgin in the Marienleben. Millen and Wolf, p. 61. 25 26

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Abraham van Diepenbeeck and Peter Paul Rubens, The Marriage of the Virgin, 1630s, the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

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paintings, Marie ensured that there were ample opportunities for spectators to create some form of a connection between her merits and those of the Virgin. Henrietta Maria’s patronage suggests that she, too, wished to be perceived as possessing these same virtues. When one casts a cursory gaze over the painted images commissioned, collected or displayed by Henrietta Maria in her palaces, it might seem that attempting a comparison of her imagery to that of her mother’s, as is showcased in the Médicis cycle, is stretching the realms of the possible. the paintings which are usually associated with Henrietta Maria are portraits by artists such as Van Dyck (1599–1641) and Daniel Mytens (c.1590–c.1647) both of whom produced works which were, in general, more refined and elegant than the emphatic dynamism found in rubens’ Médicis cycle. yet both Marie and Henrietta Maria had eclectic tastes when it came to their patronage of the arts. Marie did not, for instance, always commission energetic, busy works from painters like Rubens. When choosing religious paintings, she seems to have often preferred a more refined, quiet imagery created by artists such as Guido reni (1575–1642) and Philippe de Champaigne (1602–74). the Annunciation by reni that Marie donated to the Carmelite Convent, for instance, has a simple restraint which contrasts entirely with the vibrant dynamism found in the canvases produced by rubens for the Luxembourg gallery. Similarly, Henrietta Maria did not only enlist the services of portraitists such as Van Dyck and Mytens when creating her painting collection. She, too, was an avid admirer of painters like Reni and had some paintings by Rubens in her collection, such as the Crucifixion which decorated the altar of her private chapel in Somerset House but was destroyed by soldiers during the civil wars.28 there was even discussion among Charles, Henrietta Maria, apparently Marie and advisors such as Gerbier over whether or not Rubens should be asked to decorate the ceiling and walls of her Cabinet at Greenwich.29 thus, there existed a greater similarity between the two queens in terms of stylistic and artist preference than might otherwise appear from the extant works which were in their collections. And, of particular interest here is the fact that, like Marie, Henrietta Maria often favoured paintings which included some aspect of Marian imagery. Both Marie and Henrietta Maria commissioned copious numbers of portraits of themselves, their families and their favourite courtiers. Many of the surviving portraits associated with Marie are found in the family history paintings that she commissioned, a genre of painting not typically associated with Henrietta Maria, but there is a surviving portrait of Marie by rubens which he completed contemporaneously with the Médicis cycle (figure 5.6). this portrait includes various Marian references, but they are much subtler than those in the Médicis cycle and more in line with the sort of imagery usually associated with Henrietta Maria. rubens depicts Marie in a manner that recalls the painted portrait in The Presentation of the Portrait. She is shown in a formal pose, looking directly at the 28 See Loomie, “A Lost Crucifixion by Rubens”, Burlington Magazine 140, no. 1139 (1996): 734–9. 29 this commission was eventually given to Jacob Jordaens, but was never completed. r.a. d’Hulst, Jacob Jordaens, trans. P.S. Falla (London, 1982), pp. 26 and 212–13 and Sykes, pp. 335–6.

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Peter Paul rubens, Marie de Médicis, Queen of France, 1622–25, Museo del Prado, Madrid

viewer, against a plain gilded background. It is a more sober portrait than, say, Frans Pourbus the younger’s enormous state portrait of Marie, from around 1610, which shows the queen in full regalia under a baldachin. What is particularly interesting about rubens’ portrait is the fact that Marie points towards her abdomen in a gesture which seems intended to highlight her success at producing an heir to the throne of France, a virtue akin to the Virgin’s role as the mother of Christ. Moreover, such a

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gesture was not without precedent in earlier Marian imagery. in fra filippo Lippi’s (c.1406–69) Annunciation from around 1448–50,30 which may have, incidentally, been commissioned by one of Marie’s Médicis ancestors, the young, delicate Virgin is presented absorbed in her devotional readings, which she holds with her left hand. Her right hand which holds up her mantle around her waist is, however, pointing directly at her abdomen. Moreover, the way in which the mantle has been positioned has the effect of making the young Mary appear as if she is already pregnant. Likewise, in Lorenzo Monaco’s (1370–75–1425–30) earlier Coronation of the Virgin (c.1394–95) the Virgin is depicted receiving the crown from her adult son. She seems to cradle her abdomen in the manner which a pregnant woman might do thus highlighting her fertility and the fact that she bore the Son of God.31 the more restrained suggestion of a connection to the Virgin Mary is found in a number of pictures portraying Henrietta Maria. in many ways, this subtlety is not surprising given the political climate of england; it was a time when the rights of Catholics were, if granted, held in low esteem. the queen may have been guaranteed freedom of worship, but this was by no means a privilege which was extended to all Catholics.32 thus, a degree of tact, in relation to a particularly Catholic set of ideals, would almost certainly have been considered necessary. instead of halos or the use of well-known religious compositions then, Marian references in portraits of Henrietta Maria are often simply created by the attributes with which she is depicted. For instance, Van Dyck in his double portrait, Queen Henrietta Maria with Sir Jeffrey Hudson (figure 5.7), includes an orange tree. this was a motif which could be associated with the Virgin as it was used to symbolize virtues such as purity, chastity and generosity. Because of these associations, Wheelock suggests that the orange tree included in this portrait may have been intended as a Marian symbol.33 this is certainly not the sole or even the most important meaning of this motif. as is argued by raatschen below, the orange can be interpreted as a reference to Henrietta Maria’s maternal lineage as the orange was one of the Médicis family’s emblems.34 it is also possible that some viewers simply conceived of the tree as a reference to the queen’s well-known passion for gardening.35 nonetheless, certain viewers, particularly Catholics, may have sought for a religious meaning, especially when one considers the recommendations of the Council of trent (1545–63). in the tenets proposed at trent, reformers encouraged Catholic practitioners to ‘read’ a painting and to search for symbolic significance within each detail in order to gain

fra filippo Lippi, Annunciation, c.1448–50, 68 × 152 cm, national Gallery. Lorenzo Monaco, Coronation of the Virgin, Courtauld Gallery. 32 as Diana Barnes points out in this volume, only Henrietta Maria was granted the freedom to practise Catholicism, although she did obtain numerous dispensations for recusant courtiers. recusancy laws were imposed beyond the court, see p. 51. 33 Arthur K. Wheelock, Susan J. Barnes and Julius S. Held, eds, Anthony Van Dyck (new York, 1990), p. 265. 34 See Gudrun raatschen’s discussion of this Medici symbolism in her essay in this volume, p. 160. 35 Wheelock, Barnes and Held, eds, p. 265. 30 31

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Anthony van Dyck, Queen Henrietta Maria with Sir Jeffrey Hudson, 1633, ©2007 Board of trustees, national Gallery of art, Washington

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a full appreciation of the work: ‘[L]et the bishops diligently teach that by means of the stories of the mysteries of our redemption portrayed in paintings and other representations the people are instructed and confirmed in the articles of faith, which ought to be borne in mind and constantly reflected upon.’36 that such ideas were prevalent amongst Catholic viewers would probably have encouraged them to always search for deeper meanings in paintings, including portraits, and provided them with the skills to interpret the various symbols which were included by artists. The compositional arrangement of Van Dyck’s Queen Henrietta Maria with Sir Jeffrey Hudson implies that the orange tree was symbolically significant. The composition is arranged in such a way that the tree becomes a prominent feature of the portrait; it is clearly intended to provide more than just a pretty background flourish or a useful framing device. It dominates the upper left-hand corner of the work, and is in line with Henrietta Maria’s head. it frames the queen by essentially providing a ‘stop’ which prevents the viewer’s eye from exiting the canvas, but in acting this way, it is given particular prominence. Moreover, there is nothing in the background beyond it to distract the viewer from the tree. a reference to Henrietta Maria’s family certainly deserved such attention in this portrait, yet perhaps so too did a subtle allusion to the Virgin. the fact that not every seventeenth-century spectator would have interpreted the orange tree in the same way highlights a problem, or perhaps an advantage given the volatile socio-political climate of england, of attempting to use paintings as conveyers of messages. By their very nature, artworks are highly complex, multifaceted objects which can take on different meanings at different times depending on the prior knowledge, background and values of the viewer. But because of Henrietta Maria’s devotion to the Virgin Mary, as her patron saint and as a heroine most worthy of emulation, it would seem that the reference to the orange tree was intended to highlight that this queen possessed similar virtues as the Virgin.37 Other attributes of the Virgin which appear in Marie’s iconography, such as roses and olive trees, also make an appearance in portraits of Henrietta Maria. A portrait of the English queen by Van Dyck which hung in the king’s bedchamber at Whitehall (figure 5.8) shows her lightly holding what appear to be two roses which sit on the table next to her. they are positioned in front of her crown, so are given more prominence than this piece of royal insignia. there were various european precedents in Marian imagery of the Virgin, or her son, holding a rose or in close proximity to one,38 so this detail, like the rose in Marie’s hair in The Presentation of H.J. Schroeder, Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent (Rockford, 1978), p. 216. It is interesting to note that probably a copy of this work was sent as a gift to Thomas Wentworth, (Wheelock, Barnes and Held, eds, p. 262) one of Charles’ primary advisors, who during the Civil War was suspected of being a Popish conspirator with Catholic sympathies, although these charges were eventually dropped. Hibbard, Charles I and the Popish Plot, p. 188. In actual fact, Wentworth was known for his ruthless position towards Irish Catholics and would not therefore have been sympathetic towards references to Catholicism, thus subtlety would have been essential. 38 Hulme, p. 192. Martin Schongauer’s Madonna of the Rose Bower (1473, tempera on wood, Saint-Martin Church, Colmar france), is one example. the Virgin sits in a rose bower with the infant Christ on her lap. 36 37

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Anthony van Dyck, Henrietta Maria, 1632, the royal Collection ©2007, Her Majesty Queen elizabeth ii

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the Portrait, can be interpreted as an example of a Catholic queen attempting to align herself with an important saint. Van Dyck used his depiction of Henrietta Maria in this individual portrait to create the figure of the queen in his double portrait: Portrait of Charles I and Henrietta Maria (figure 5.9).39 the roses are absent from the double portrait, but it includes other, albeit faint, references to the Virgin. Like Rubens’ portrait of Marie, Henrietta Maria is shown cradling her abdomen in such a way as to recall earlier depictions of the Virgin and, thus, suggests her fertility. Moreover, Charles points towards Henrietta Maria’s abdomen which further emphasizes this point. His gesture is not, in fact, dissimilar to Marie’s in the Prado portrait by rubens. as well as this, Henrietta Maria proudly displays her pearl necklace and earrings; these of course were signifiers of wealth, but could be seen as having a biblical significance as well. Because pearls were held in high esteem during antiquity, they came to be used metaphorically as a symbol for anything of great value. this metaphor was continued in the Bible where pearls are often used to symbolize precious items and ideals.40 in the book of Revelation 21:21, pearls are actually used to describe the New Jerusalem: ‘the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate made of a single pearl.’ Later on, pearls became the attribute of St Margaret of antioch – the patron saint of childbirth. as Malcolm rogers has shown, in england, ‘Margarite’ became a term that could be used alternatively with ‘pearl’ and amongst Catholics also came to be associated with the Virgin Mary.41 alluding to the patron saint of childbirth would no doubt have appealed to Henrietta Maria, as would the added association with the Virgin.42 frans Pourbus the younger includes numerous pearls in his portrait of Marie de’ Médicis (figure 5.10) so Henrietta Maria was perhaps inspired by this portrait. He depicts the french queen resplendent in her state robes and covered in pearls and other expensive jewels all of which are clearly indicators of her enormous wealth, but which perhaps can also be read in terms of the meaning given to them in the Bible. The possibility of this becomes even more likely because some of these pearls form part of the cross that Marie proudly displays on her bodice. The cross alone makes an overt reference to her religion, but the symbolic connotations of the pearl emphasize this point. Henrietta Maria does not wear a cross in Van Dyck’s double portrait, Oliver Millar, Susan J. Barnes, nora de Poorter and Horst Vey, Van Dyck: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings (new Haven and London, 2004), p. 460. a lot of the portraits of Henrietta Maria are based on the same sittings. it seems she did not give her time freely when it came to sitting for artists. raatschen provides a fuller discussion of Henrietta Maria’s unwillingness to sit for portraits, see p. 142. 40 alexander Cruden, Cruden’s Complete Concordance to the Old and New Testaments (London, 1951), p. 486. A parable in Matthew mentions pearls: ‘Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it’ (Matthew 13:46). 41 Malcolm Rogers, “Van Dyck’s Portrait of Lord George Stuart, Seigneur d’Aubigny, and Some Related Works”, in Van Dyck 350, ed. Arthur K. Wheelock and Susan J. Barnes (Hanover and London, 1994), p. 274. 42 Malcolm rogers discusses this use of pearls in Stuart portraiture in relation to Van Dyck’s Katherine Howard, Lady Aubigny, and Frances Stuart, Countess of Portland (c.1638– 39, Hermitage). 39

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5.9

Anthony van Dyck, Charles I and Henrietta Maria, 1632, Státni Zámek, Kromĕříž

although this motif does appear in some later depictions of her, such as the c.1636 portrait in blue and the frontal portrait painted in 1639 for Bernini so that he could sculpt her bust.43 But, in the double portrait, like her mother, she showcases her pearls which also happen to be an attribute of the Virgin. Van Dyck has therefore included a number of subtle allusions to the Virgin in a portrait which hung prominently at the heart of an officially Protestant court. It must be acknowledged, however, that pearls are also a recurrent feature of contemporaneous portraits of Protestant women. In Dutch portraits like Rembrandt’s Portrait of Saskia van Uylenburgh and his Maria Trip, both women are represented wearing their enormously expensive jewels, including their pearl necklaces.44 Like Marie and Henrietta Maria, these sitters would have wanted to highlight their affluence, but probably did not intend to make any reference to intercessory figures. Henrietta Maria’s dedication to the Virgin and, hence, her association with the Virgin’s virtues, are demonstrated, perhaps more clearly than her portraits can indicate, by the vast number of religious paintings which she acquired during the halcyon days of her reign. numerous pictures of the Virgin appear throughout the parts of the Van der Doort (1637–39) and the Commonwealth Sales inventories (1649–51) which document Henrietta Maria’s collection, as well as in the inventory of her possessions at Colombes taken after her death in 1669. At Colombes, for instance, there was a Madonna and Child with Joseph in the Guard Chamber. there were also at least four works featuring the Madonna in the Queen’s Privy Chamber amongst others. this is not to say that other Caroline collectors did not also relish the See Griffey’s discussion in this volume of crosses in portraits of Henrietta Maria. Portrait of Saskia van Utlenburgh, 1633, oil on panel, 65 × 48 cm, Rijksmuseum, amsterdam. Maria Trip, 1639, oil on panel, 107 × 82 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. 43 44

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frans Pourbus the younger, Marie de Médicis, Queen of France, c.1609–10, Musée du Louvre, Paris

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task of collecting, in particular, sixteenth-century Italian paintings which were often depictions of biblical events or holy figures. As mentioned above, Charles himself had an enormous collection of such paintings, as did collectors like George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham.45 But because of her Catholic faith, these images probably had more significance than being a simple act of connoisseurship. Moreover, Henrietta Maria was one of the few patrons from the Caroline court directly to commission a religious painting which is now only known in engravings and painted copies, The Holy Family with Angels Dancing and Making Music, from Van Dyck; in England, Van Dyck was used almost exclusively as a portraitist. Henrietta Maria’s dedication to the Virgin is, however, most apparent in the private chapel she had built at Somerset House. this chapel was not only dedicated to the Virgin, but Marian imagery also made up a large proportion of the decoration within the chapel. the Chapel was absolutely desecrated by iconoclasts in March 1643 who were on a mission to destroy what they saw as a dangerous tolerance to rome and the Catholic Church,46 but the manner of its decoration can be established through the accounts of Capuchin friars who observed the events that were published by Jean Mauzaize in the seventeenth century.47 not only was the Crucifixion by rubens, which hung above the altar, thrown into the thames, but two paintings of the Virgin and St francis in the side chapels were cut to shreds and a large statue of the Virgin and Child in the vestry was demolished. And, as if this was not sufficient, on 31 March soldiers returned and destroyed the oval ceiling painting by Matthew Goodrich and thomas de Critz which depicted the Assumption of the Virgin.48 What this destruction best demonstrates is Henrietta Maria’s clear reverence of the Virgin and her desire to be perceived as being equally virtuous, both in her devotion and in her everyday life, a reverence which was anathema to Protestant reformers. imagery dedicated to the Virgin in a private chapel is not in itself unique, nor particularly uncommon. there are numerous examples such as the tornabuoni Chapel in Santa Maria novella and the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua.49 However, in light of the strong assertions made by Henrietta Maria’s mother in encouraging her daughter’s allegiance to the Virgin, it is worthy to examine the type of subject matter found in Marie’s arsenal of religious paintings. Paillet’s inventory was not taken until 1686 – 44 years after Marie’s death – and admittedly contains inaccuracies: works have been wrongly attributed to certain artists50 and it includes any alterations which were made to the palace in the intervening years between Marie’s departure See Jonathan Brown, Kings and Connoisseurs: Collecting Art in SeventeenthCentury Europe (Princeton, 1995), pp. 23–49 for information about the works in Charles and Buckingham’s collections, including Marian imagery. 46 ibid., p. 10. 47 Jean Mauzaize, La Rôle et l’action des Capuchins de la Province de Paris dans la France religieuse du XVIIeme siècle, referenced in Loomie, p. 680. 48 Loomie, p. 681. 49 the tornabuoni Chapel is dedicated to St John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary while the Scorvegni Chapel is dedicated to the Virgin of the annunciation and the Virgin of Charity. 50 Paillet, for instance, recorded that Giovanni Baglione’s Apollo and the Nine Muses were by Jean Monier. “Paillet inventory” in arthur Hustin, Le palais du Luxembourg – Ses transformations, son agrandissement, ses architectes, sa décoration, ses décorateurs (Paris, 45

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from Paris and the start of the inventory. However, although Paillet does not identify the artists, in the chapel in the Palace behind the Médicis gallery he records that there was a representation of the annunciation of the Virgin, various paintings in which she would have appeared, such as a Descent from the Cross, as well as five paintings with subjects in which she was a main protagonist. these included the nativity, the Circumcision, the Presentation to the temple, the flight into egypt and the Visitation.51 Likewise, as patroness of the Carmelite Convent, Marie provided the nuns with a considerable number of paintings with which to decorate their buildings, including the spectacular Annunciation by Guido reni which is mentioned above. thus, mother and daughter not only incorporated a similar iconography into the representations they commissioned of themselves, but they also collected analogous works in terms of subject matter. Marian imagery is just one example where a convergence of interest in terms of themes and subject matter can be found in their patronage. Other parallels which have not been explored here include an emphasis on marriage and fertility, as well as allusions to other illustrious women, including various saints, mythological heroes and powerful female rulers, or at least the mothers of powerful male rulers. Marie always encouraged her children to admire art and to use the spectacle of visual imagery to its full potential;52 it seems that with her youngest daughter, at least, she left a lasting impression. When attempting to establish sumptuous surroundings that would highlight her virtues as the wife of Charles I, it stands to reason that Henrietta Maria would look to past precedents of powerful women making similar assertions. And it so happened that her own mother was one of the best models to emulate and emulate she did; she adopted the iconography developed by Marie, but adapted it so that it would fulfil her requirements living as she was as a Catholic queen in an often hostile Protestant state. As a final concluding remark, it is interesting to note that there exists a portrait in the national Portrait Gallery, London, by Sir Peter Lely, a leading portraitist of Charles II’s court, which makes full use of this Marian imagery (Figure 5.11). The portrait, however, depicts the king’s mistress, Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland, with his illegitimate son, figures which would not typically be associated with the chaste Virgin. Lely’s reference to the Virgin in this work, moreover, has no subtlety. Villiers is depicted exactly as a Madonna would appear in any standard representation of a Madonna and Child, from her pose and expression to the colour of her dress: she wears the typical blue and red found in almost any representation of the Virgin. Her son, Charles Fitzroy, is depicted in similarly sanctified terms, appearing as the Virgin’s son. What this blatant, almost blasphemous and certainly transgressive depiction suggests is that this manner of alluding to the Virgin in court portraiture, or in the more subtle act of collecting paintings, had become a recognized 1904), p. 56. In addition to this, he misidentified the figure of Apollo and instead suggested that it was Orpheus. Marrow, p. 29. 51 “Paillet inventory”, in Hustin, p. 62. 52 Karen Britland, “an Under-Stated Mother-in-Law: Marie de Médicis and the Last Caroline Court Masque”, in Women and Culture at the Courts of the Stuart Queens, ed. Clare McManus (Hampshire and New York, 2003), p. 207.

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Sir Peter Lely, Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland with Her Son, Charles Fitzroy, as Madonna and Child, c.1664, national Portrait Gallery, London

feature of seventeenth-century representation and patronage. When a motif can be subverted in this way, it usually indicates that it had become a successful means of conveying a certain notion. in this instance, this motif was the suggestion of queenly virtue by creating an association with the purity and chastity of the Virgin Mary and it was successfully utilized by Marie and, on Marie’s encouragement at the very least, by her daughter as well.

Chapter 6

‘By Our Direction and for Our Use’: the Queen’s Patronage of artists and artisans seen through her Household accounts Caroline Hibbard

Henrietta Maria’s activities as a connoisseur and patron of the fine and decorative arts have been overshadowed by those of her husband Charles i, who is generally regarded by art historians as having the finest taste of any English monarch.1 Difficult sources, and the queen’s young age when she arrived – ignorant of english – in england, have led to premature assumptions, and discouraged investigation of her patronage. A scholar recently commented that there was ‘no reason to think that Henrietta Maria, who was then only 15 years old, was at all informed about art’.2 If we delve more deeply, framing hypotheses from what we know of other consorts and their roles, and using financial records for this queen that have been little explored, several revisions to this traditional picture will emerge. the role of inference in this essay is admittedly large, but the methods are not new, as they have long figured in the study of medieval figures for whom first-hand documents such as correspondence are often lacking. At the outset, we will need to reconsider a definition of patronage that relies entirely on who paid for a particular commission, and to look more thoughtfully at what has been called ‘the dynamics of conjugal patronage’,3 considering who the work was for as well as who actually commissioned or paid for it. Then, in looking at Henrietta Maria’s accounts, we will confirm and elaborate in detail what has already been argued elsewhere for Charles i, that far more 1 I wish to thank my former undergraduate student Warner Ferratier, who some years ago encouraged me to develop an interest in the material culture of the court, and provided invaluable research assistance. i am also grateful to my colleague Clare Crowston for discussions of the clothing trade and dressmaking in early modern Europe. 2 Jeremy Wood, “Orazio Gentileschi and Some netherlandish artists in London: the Patronage of the Duke of Buckingham, Charles I and Henrietta Maria”, Simiolus 28, no. 3 (2000–2001): 120. 3 the phrase comes from the Prologue to Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy, ed. Sheryl E. Reiss and David G. Wilkins (Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies 54, 2001), p. xvi. this is a richly documented and valuable set of studies where these issues are discussed at some length; see especially the Prologue, introduction, and articles by Crum (was patronage a solitary act?), Bourne (an unjustly neglected husband, francesco II Gonzaga) and Edelstein (Eleonora di Toledo, overlooked patron and wife of Cosimo I de’ Medici).

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money went to patronage of the decorative arts and costume than to fine arts such as painting and sculpture. in the course of this analysis, we will note the importance of the profit motive for well-placed royal officials and their contacts in the luxury trade in sustaining a conservative model of courtly display. the discussion as a whole suggests yet again how the study of consort queens brings to the foreground aspects of the general court scene that otherwise might be distorted or downplayed by an overemphasis on literary sources or by modern cultural assumptions.4 this french queen was no younger than many other princely brides,5 all of whom had been educated at their natal courts, and many of whom played important roles in cultural transfer.6 there is little advice literature for consort queens comparable to the ‘mirrors for princes’ produced by royal advisers, clerical moralists or aspirant literary figures in a tradition dating back to antiquity.7 Court educations did not always involve much book-learning along the ‘humanist’ model, but they were not necessarily the less intense for that. Music, dancing, riding, courteous speech and courtly manners, religious observation, discrimination in the visual arts – all these skills and practices would be well inculcated by the age of 15, together with the retentive memory so prized by contemporaries, a skill perhaps even more important in the un-bookish. Evidence about Henrietta Maria’s education is sadly lacking; there is very little of her own correspondence, and she only occasionally appears in the reports of foreign observers at the French court. We know that she was trained like her sisters in riding, dancing and singing, and was a frequent participant in court theatricals. apart from special occasions at the court in Paris, she lived mainly at St Germain in her early years. although she had a tutor, she seems to have acquired little beyond french reading and writing. But she was carefully shaped by the Carmelites in the dévot piety that reigned at the french court, an aesthetic and moral code that she would translate to the english scene. and there is much that we can infer about her preparation for queenship from the activities at the court of Marie de Médicis in the years just prior to her departure from france. this formidable french queen, always conscious that she was heiress to the traditions of Medicean patronage, was one of early-seventeenth-century europe’s

4 See Caroline Hibbard, “Henrietta Maria in the 1630s: Perspectives on the role of Consort Queens in ancien regime Courts”, in The 1630s: Interdisciplinary Essays on Culture and Politics in the Caroline Era, ed. ian atherton and Julie Sanders (Manchester, 2006), pp. 92–110. 5 Her sister and sister–in-law, in the double franco-Spanish marriage of 1615, had been 13 and 11 years old respectively. Eleanor of Toledo arrived at the court of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici at the age of 15 in 1539, the same age at which isabella d’este became the bride of francesco ii Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, in 1490. Catherine of aragon had also been 15 when she travelled from Spain to england. 6 See the special issue of The Court Historian 10, no. 1 (2005) on “Queens and the transmission of Political Culture”, ed. Melinda J. Gough and r. Malcolm Smuts, especially the introduction. 7 Cf. J.L. Laynesmith, The Last Medieval Queens: English Queenship 1445–1503 (Oxford, 2004) intro, esp. pp. 2–4.

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leading patrons of the fine and decorative arts,8 and she had returned to Paris from a three-year exile in late 1620. She immediately renewed work on the Luxembourg Palace, which was partly complete by 1623, a banquet being held there in february 1624. Part of the palace must have been well furnished by 1625, when Marie began to stay there regularly; and the rubens cycle ‘Life of Maria de Medici’ would be installed in the gallery in time for the celebrations honouring Henrietta Maria’s marriage in May of 1625. the decoration of the Luxembourg involved sculpture inside and out, wall and ceiling paintings, and elaborate painted decoration on the interior, as well as hung paintings and tapestries.9 it is almost certain that Henrietta Maria was living in Paris at least part of the year from 1622 onwards, at which point she was given a household of almost 200 persons;10 she was by then the sole daughter still at court, her sister Christine having married in 1619. Several marriage plans for her had been floated since the beginning of 1620, and Marie de Médicis would certainly have been attentive to her cultural preparation. in 1623 Charles was to see her in a court entertainment when he passed through france on his chivalrous expedition to Spain, as did the english agent Kensington in february 1624 when he arrived to pursue the french match. This background, and the immediate vigour of her activity when she arrived in England, suggest that Henrietta Maria brought from France to England firm ideas about how a court should function and be housed.11 Certainly she had brought with her a vast trousseau of clothes, jewellery and furnishings suitable for a french princess about to become a queen; a copy of the inventory to these items runs to more than 30 folios.12 Strings, chains and earrings of diamonds and pearls, a diamond ‘bouquet’ of five flowers, jewelled rings and four dozen diamond buttons were among the jewels; a dozen satin and velvet gowns, plus cloaks and skirts all richly embroidered are among the items in the queen’s list of clothing. four velvet ‘chapelles’ (presumably hangings) in different colour schemes supplement the 10,000 livres13 worth of plate, chandeliers, pictures, books, vestments and other necessities for the chapel; there was linen for table, chapel and bed, and entire bedroom sets for the queen, her ladies, her twelve Oratorian priests and her pages – all transported from Paris to London. the queen’s main bedroom set was of crimson velvet and included rich bed drapery Marie de Médicis et le Palais du Luxembourg, ed. Marie-Noelle Baudouin-Matuszek (Paris, 1991). 9 On the Luxembourg, see D. Marrow, Art Patronage of Marie de Medici (Studies in Baroque art History, no. 4, 1982) pp. 17–21, 39. 10 eugene Griselle, État de la Maison du roi Louis XIII (etc) (Paris, 1912). pp. 83–8; many of them would move into her english household above and below stairs. 11 for a dazzling account of the contents of such a court, see Un temps d’éxuberance: les arts décoratifs sous Louis XIII et Anne d’Autriche (Paris, reunion des musee nationaux, 2002); and for the queen’s activities, see Caroline Hibbard, “translating royalty: Henrietta Maria and the transition from Princess to Queen”, Court Historian 5, no. 1 (2000): 15–28. 12 British Library [henceforth BL] Kings Ms 136, fos 430–61 for transcripts of the inventories; Hibbard, “Henrietta Maria in the 1630s”, pp. 94–5. 13 Currency equivalencies are shifting and uncertain, but this amount was well over £1,000. This and succeeding figures may usefully be compared with the £15,000 annual budget assumed for the queen at the beginning of the reign. 8

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and matching dais and carpets, dressing-table, chairs, stools and trunks among other items. Similar less elaborate provisions were made for the chief ladies, maids of honour and chamberwomen. Chests and trunks carried these soft furnishings; bedsteads and tables accompanied them. In addition, the queen’s chamber, kitchen and stable servants had been given sums ranging from 200 to 6,000 livres to equip themselves for the trip, so their baggage must have added considerably to the parade. although the princess came with a virtual auxiliary court and its furnishings, down to the curling irons and chamberpots, she immediately embarked on an impressive spending programme. Her french attendants, already richly furnished and pensioned by Louis Xiii, would be rewarded with rich gifts of jewellery, and see their bills paid off by the english government.14 Until the summer of 1626 when Charles i ordered many of her French retinue to leave, the household from her natal court was racking up bills with local tradesmen that eventually had to be settled out of english coffers, which also provided douceurs upon their indignant departure.15 and there were her palaces to maintain and improve; of the dozen or so royal properties still used by the english court at this time, six palaces were already in her jointure by 1630.16 the result of these spending patterns was a large and mounting debt;17 the desire to curb this spending and the need to provide her with a permanent, largely english, household, led to an administrative reorganization that can be traced over the period Michaelmas 1626 to Michaelmas 1629. The first year’s account reflects exasperation and scepticism about the high bills, with annotations such as ‘call for the bills’ and ‘call for the warrants and acquittances’.18 the tightened procedures began to generate the series of documents now at our disposal, from which we can reconstruct her household and expenditures from the late 1620s to the onset of the civil wars. She had come from France with a full complement of household officers and servants, 14 BL Kings MS 136, fos 416–18, 424–9 for gifts to be dispensed by the queen, and money and pensions provided to the queen’s servants by Louis Xiii; the orders for payments in the national archives [henceforth, tna] SO 3/8 show many gift payments to the queen’s attendants (heralds, coachmen, her bishop), and lavish expenditure on the visiting Duke and Duchess of Chevreuse. 15 Source for amounts given to these french on departure is tna e.101/437/15; the total was over £11,000. 16 Besides Somerset House, these were Greenwich, Oatlands, nonsuch, richmond and Holdenby; when Wimbledon was added in 1639 she immediately began work on house and garden. for building at Greenwich see tna SC 6/Chasi/ 1697, 1699, 1701 and 1705 for payments to Henry Weeks (or Wickes), king’s paymaster of the Work, identified in the last document as a total of £9,000. For Oatlands, see SC 6/ChasI/1701 (1637–38), £579 to Weekes ‘for advancement of HM building at Oatlands’. 17 in 1628 estimated at £30,000 to the tradesmen alone; see tna Lr 57: an entry for 18 October 1627 is a commission to the earl of Holland and others to examine the state of the queen’s revenues and to control unreasonable debts, and not to exceed her revenue; the king was also by then deeply in debt. See Lr 57: Warrant of 22 March 3 Car i 1628 to the receivers of revenues of the king as Prince of Wales; the queen has debts of £30,000 to tradesmen, and that Totnes will undertake payment of the creditors from these revenues. A printed summary is in CSPD 1628–29, p. 31. 18 tna SC 6/Chasi/1693 for which see below n. 25.

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carefully modelled on that of her predecessor Anna of Denmark, and it included many who had served in her household as princess.19 Her treasurer Jean Caille was one of these, and there are regular if unsystematic records of payments to him on the queen’s putative £15,000 per annum allowance, from July 1625 until his departure 12 months later.20 these monies appear to have been advanced from the exchequer and from the ‘revenues of the king as Prince of Wales’, pending the settlement of the household and the assemblage of her jointure lands.21 Caille was succeeded as treasurer and receiver-general by the experienced administrator and soldier George Carew, earl of totnes,22 until the latter’s death in March 1629. the names of the queen’s other administrators, appointed over late 1626 and early 1627 to form the council23 which would manage her income and estates, appear in a draft ‘establishment book’ for 1626–27 and on Totnes’ sole ‘declared account’, that for Michaelmas 1626–Michaelmas 1627.24 The establishment books were official registers of all recognized members of the queen’s household from her Lord Chamberlain to the watermen, with their ‘wages, fees, and allowances’ – plus any regular pensioners (most of these french courtiers and craftsmen), and a dozen assorted figures who had special claims on the queen such as the French surgeon Aubert, a shoemaker, the keeper of the parrots and the servants to Jeffrey and Sarah, the queen’s two dwarfs. By 1630 a household was in place, with Sir richard Wynn succeeding totnes as the queen’s treasurer, that would serve the queen with remarkable continuity until the outbreak of war and her departure from England; this stability was also true 19 See BL King’s MS 136, fos 503–8 for anna’s household, giving a total for the household wages alone of £45,803-10, which might have led to some misunderstanding; for Henrietta’s french household as of 26 May 1625, see ibid., fos 418–28. 20 tna, Lr 5/57, fo. 2: feb 1625/6: £4,300-10 to Jean Caille, treasurer of queen as part of £15,000 per annum from her arrival at Dover 12 June 1625. this sum is repeated in tna, SO 3/8. earlier payments to Caille are recorded in SO 3/8 for July and november 1625. 21 the jointure was slowly put together, and amounted to over £28,000 by 1630, but despite efforts that were renewed in the Long Parliament, the jointure was never confirmed by parliament. When the queen attempted to gain access to funds from england after her husband’s death, she was refused on the grounds she had never been crowned and her jointure never confirmed. 22 ODNB, “George Carew, earl of totnes (1555–1629)”. 23 n.r.r. fisher, “the Queen’s Courte in her Councell Chamber at Westminster”, English Historical Review 108 (1993): 314–37. the council had its own chamber in Somerset House. i am grateful to Mrs. Fisher for much valuable information about the queen’s officers. 24 The financial year began with Michaelmas term, and was usually divided into quarters; see n. 26 below. Some classes of financial records ran by half-year, marked by Easter and Michaelmas. The draft establishment book is in TNA, LR 5/57, fos 3–7. Like its successors, it is signed in April to apply from the preceding Michaelmas. Other establishment books are in tna, Lr 5/57 (1627–28, 1628–29), e.101/438/7,14 (1629–30, 1631–32); and national Library of Wales [henceforth nLW], Wynnstay MS 166 (1641–42). these can be supplemented with ‘acquittance books’ in which recipients sign for their wages or pensions; these are organized like the establishment books, and thus record changes in household appointments. The most helpful of these books are TNA, E.101/438/15 (1632–33), E.101/439/3 (1634–35), and LR 5/63 (1636–37) which fill in gaps in the establishment books.

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of the pattern of provisions for the household. the ‘declared accounts’ prepared by her treasurer and presented to an official board of review each year give us a great deal of information on her receipts and expenditures.25 annual expenditures ran around £33–38,000; of this under £10,000 went to the establishment fees, wages and pensions; an annual £1,500 went to the Countess of Denbigh for ‘linens’; £4,000 was for the Privy Purse; and new year’s gifts amounted to about £3,000. none of these outlays changed significantly from year to year. The ‘debenture’ sums varied somewhat more. The so-called debenture books compiled for each quarter of the year were part of the reforms instituted in 1627–28 as the queen’s expenses were regulated and her council took control;26 they list the bills approved for payments, primarily to London tradesmen, by the Countess of Denbigh as Mistress of the robes to the queen (figure 6.1). The totals thus disbursed amounted to a fluctuating sum between £3,500 and £5,500. finally, the declared accounts end with a long list of other payments ‘by particular warrant from the queen’, by ‘order of the Council Board’, on ‘bills signed by the Lord Chamberlain’. Some of these were regular payments (for example, for Council supplies or to the messengers), others more ad hoc. What do all these records tell us about the queen’s patronage? first, only a very small number of artists or highly trained artisans whose names we would now recognize ever figured in the household itself, aside from the distinguished group of musicians who served both chapel and secular functions. inigo Jones had a pension of £20 from the queen by 1630; he was called ‘surveyor’ of her works then, and ‘surveyor of the king’s and our works’ in a later list.27 The king provided Jones with the bulk of his apparently substantial income; so the queen’s pension payment, like the 250 oz. of gold plate she awarded him in 1632 ‘in regard of several extraordinary services’,28 or the gifts of £100 in 1635, 1638 and 164029, were not real payment for his work at Somerset House or Greenwich. They were more in the nature of what Malcolm Smuts has aptly called ‘retaining fees’.30 the ‘gens de metier’ (as the french household lists called them) in the queen’s establishment lists were those upon whom she depended daily – besides the musicians, the half dozen cooks who there are two extant series that together cover almost every year from 1627 through 1641. these are in tna, SC 6/Chasi/1692–1705 and nLW, Wynnstay MSS 174–85. 26 there are 30 rolls extant in tna, Lr 5/63, which cover the period 1627 to 1639. Only 1629–30 has no debentures. The financial year begins at Michaelmas and the successive quarters are named for the point at which they end: Christmas, Lady Day, Midsummer and Michaelmas. 27 TNA, SC 6/ChasI/1696 (Declared account for 1629–30) has the first reference; TNA, Lr 5/66 contains a payment voucher in Christmas Qtr 1637 for £252 to Hubert Le Sueur and £53 to Nicholas Stone ‘the master mason’. ‘By direction of I. Jones surveyor of the king’s and our works.’ For a description of the bills and vouchers in TNA, LR 5/64–7 see note 82 below. 28 tna, Lr 5/65 Midsummer 1633 voucher for gold to be given to Jones by William Ward. 29 tna, SC 6/Chasi/1698, 1701. 30 r. Malcolm Smuts, “the Structure of the Court and the roles of the artist and Poet under Charles i”, Court Historian 9, no. 2 (2004): 108. 25

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Debenture roll for Lady Day Quarter, 1636, the national archives Lr 5/63

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came with her and remained for a decade or more – or else skilled French craftsmen like her shoemaker31 and her tailors and dressmakers, to whom she needed ready and regular access for fittings and consultation.32 Other fine craftsmen, such as Jean Petitot and Jacques Bordier, sometimes described as belonging to her household, were rather in the loose category of those she was willing to name as her ‘servants’ – for example, ‘sworn Her Majesty’s servants in extraordinary’ – so that they might receive protection or privileges.33 Payments to tradesmen listed in the debenture books often refer to ‘the queen’s silkman’ or ‘the queen’s linen draper’, but in most cases they did not work exclusively for her. To the contrary, their association with the royal household is likely to have widened their clientele, being the equivalent of the modern expression ‘by appointment to Her Majesty’. Neither the king nor the queen provided, for more than a few (foreignborn) artists, the kind of regular subvention, lodging and workshops that artists and craftsmen enjoyed in france or Spain.34 nor were they paying them very much. artists were paid by the piece, and the price of painting and sculpture was not very high, at least in comparison to the purchases of jewels and textiles.35 these payments appear in any of three places in the queen’s records: in the declared accounts of each year under the list of her own warrants, in her quarterly ‘debenture books’, and/or as itemized bills or receipts.36 there is no question that the queen’s expenditures on fine art were overall much more modest than those of the king, who purchased the Mantuan collection in 1628 for almost £16,000 (thereafter spending much less),37 but there are interesting hints of early activity on her part in sponsoring artists. Here, as in her early court entertainments, she was able to exploit experience gained at her mother’s court, and may have been prompted by a desire to show her worth in competition with Buckingham.38 after 1628, the presence at court of the Catholic aletheia, Countess of arundel, an older 31 Jean fausse (fossey, fussey, forcey, fossie) who probably was already resident in London when she arrived. Three or four shoemakers are mentioned in the accounts, this being the only french name among them; by Michaelmas 1628 he is on the establishment lists. 32 The shoemaker visited court about once a week (visits itemized in his bills), and he also made shoes for the dwarfs and the pages. His bill for one three-month period, ending Lady Day 1635, was £22-0-6 for 18 pairs of shoes for the pages; 7 pairs for Sarah the female dwarf; 13 pairs of shoes, 1 pair of dancing shoes, 2 pairs of boots and a pair of galoshes for Jeffrey Hudson; and for the queen a pair of slippers, 13 pairs of shoes ‘laced with silver and gold lace and lined’, and 3 pairs of velvet galoshes laced with silver and gold lace. the tailor Georges Guillin (Guillain, Guilin) had come with the queen from france and was immediately put into the Office of the Robes, as well as receiving a pension. 33 On these two see r.W. Lightbown, “Jean Petitot and Jacques Bordier at the english Court”, Connoisseur 168 (1968): 82–91. 34 Smuts, “Structure of the Court”, p. 108. Orazio Gentileschi and his sons were given lodging in York House, and rent was paid for Hubert LeSueur. 35 These points were first made with impressive documentation by R. Malcolm Smuts in an important article “art and the Material Culture of royalty”, The Stuart Court and Europe, ed. r.M. Smuts (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 86–112. 36 On the bills and receipts see n. 84 below. 37 Smuts, “Material Culture”, pp. 102–4. 38 Hibbard, “translating royalty”, pp. 24–6.

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woman and established patron of the arts who cultivated a friendship with the queen, doubtless encouraged her further.39 Within a few years of Charles and Henrietta Maria’s marriage, both Orazio Gentileschi and Hubert Le Sueur had arrived at the english court from that of Marie de Médicis. Although Buckingham, much impressed by the art and artists on display in Paris when he visited in 1625, 40 was primarily responsible for enticing Gentileschi, the french queen’s presence in London may well have contributed to the recruitment of both the painter and the sculptor.41 Gentileschi, who may have assumed that a Catholic queen who already knew his work would want a Catholic painter,42 came to england in late 1626. He was probably in the train of the french ambassador Bassompierre, sent to patch up the quarrels between Charles i and his wife. After Buckingham’s death it was the queen rather than the king who became Gentileschi’s chief patron, collecting his paintings at Greenwich and engaging him to paint the ceilings there.43 His sons, who had been sent to purchase art in italy in 1627 by the king, were later sent on a purchasing trip to Italy by the queen.44 Hubert Le Sueur’s work for the queen began when he was engaged to make a suit of armour for her dwarf Jeffrey Hudson in 1628, but progressed to more ambitious projects. Under the direction of Inigo Jones he worked in brass and marble on at least one fountain in the queen’s garden at Somerset House in the mid-1630s.45 It is likely too that the young queen had heard about the Mantuan collection well before it was acquired by her husband, since her mother was to be a chief bidder for part of it.46 news of the Mantuan succession reached the court in the spring of 1627, and the queen immediately sent a message; when the Mantuan ambassador reached ODNB, “Aletheia [nee Talbot] Howard, countess of Arundel, of Surrey, and of Norfolk”, mentions the king and queen visiting Arundel House in 1628 to view the art collections there. 40 David Howarth, “the arundel Collection: Collecting and Patronage in england in the reigns of Philip iii and Philip iV”, in Sale of the Century, ed. Jonathan Brown and John elliott (yale, 2002), p. 79. 41 On Le Sueur, see Charles avery “Hubert Le Sueur, the ‘unworthy Praxiteles’ of King Charles i”, Walpole Society 48 (1980–82): 138–9; it is hard to understand his being ‘ordered’ to go to England by the French king unless it was connected with Henrietta Maria. 42 this suggestion is made by r. Ward Bissell, Orazio Gentileschi and the Poetic Tradition in Caravaggesque Painting (Pennsylvania, 1981), p. 51. 43 See the important article by Gabriele finaldi, “Orazio Gentileschi at the Court of Charles i”, in Orazio Gentileschi at the Court of Charles I, ed. finaldi (London, 1999), p. 11. Payment for the Greenwich ceilings has not been traced. in the sale by the Commonwealth they were appraised at £600. (Oliver Millar, “inventories and Valuations of the King’s Goods”, Walpole Society 43 (1970–72): 137). 44 record of a payment of £50 to frances Gentileschi for ‘his charges into italy about Her Majesty’s affairs there’, in tna, SC 6/Chasi/1702 (1638–39), apparently a buying trip for fabrics. 45 Hubert Le Sueur for armour for Jeffrey the dwarf: £40 in 1628–29. (SC 6/Chasi/1694). On the Somerset House garden, see SC 6/ChasI/1700 ‘brass and marble work done by him for a fountain in Her Majesty’s garden at Somerset House’. 46 W.n. Sainsbury, Original Unpublished Papers Illustrative of the Life of Sir Peter Paul Rubens (London, 1859) pp. 321, 326, 328 on the interest of Marie de Medici, the Duke 39

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the court in August, it was remarked that he was ‘received with great distinction, particularly by the queen’.47 The arrival of the first shipment of treasures from Italy a year later coincided with the death of Buckingham, and the beginning of the royal love affair. It is not difficult to imagine the king and queen – described as virtually inseparable at this point – discussing the Mantuan acquisitions, overseeing the inventory being made of them by Nicholas Lanier, Inigo Jones and the clerk of the king’s Wardrobe, and deciding where they would be displayed.48 Many of the paintings were displayed at Somerset House, where the queen in the years 1628–30 rebuilt and extensively decorated a ‘new cabinet room’ on the east end of the upper floor beyond the Cross Gallery; at least 66 frames were made, carved, painted and gilded during the 1630s, 20 of them for the cabinet room in 1631–33, others for the Cross Gallery.49 The marbles would, in the end, be housed chiefly at St James’ palace and at her own Somerset House. and of course, it was through her mediation in the mid-1630s that the king acquired paintings from the papal court. Meagre as her individual investment in painting was, a number of works had migrated to her houses by 1640, which may explain the appointment in that year of Daniel Soreau for ‘keeping, looking into, repairing, and amending all her Majesty’s pictures whatsoever in any of their Majesty’s houses’.50 the queen, then, was at home in the courtly world of competition for artistic resources, and her arrival in London added an extra edge to what has been called ‘the most sophisticated and refined centre of art collecting in Europe’ at this time,51 although she was not a major player in the early years compared with the king, Buckingham, Hamilton or Arundel. Is it exaggerating to see her as an artistic collaborator with the king starting in 1628? Here, the ‘paper trail’ – the evidence of the accounts – has several things to tell us. First, it reminds us that much of the work of the artists most typically associated with her was actually paid for by the king – notably Inigo Jones’ work at the renovation of Somerset House and its new chapel,52 of Bavaria and unnamed others; also alessandro Luzio, La Galleria dei Gonzaga venduta all’Inghilterra nel 1627–28 (Milan, 1913) pp. 154–5: letter of nys to Porter, 12 May 1628. 47 florentine agent amerigo Salvetti letter of 28 august 1627, in Historical Manuscripts Commission Eleventh Report (1: Skrine Mss: Salvetti Despatches), p. 129. 48 Lanier was part of her musical establishment from 1627, one of the very few figures with appointments in both king’s and queen’s household. 49 H.M. Colvin and John Summerson, “the King’s Houses, 1485–1660”, in The History of the King’s Works IV (1485–1660), ed. H.M. Colvin (London, 1982), pp. 261–2, 267–8. 50 tna, LC 5/134: Warrant to swear Daniell Soreau, his Majesty’s servant in ordinary who is to attend [the Queen] in ‘keeping, looking into, repairing, and amending all her Majesty’s pictures whatsoever in any of their Majesty’s houses’, 16 november 1640. 51 finaldi, “Orazio Gentileschi”, p. 19. 52 Somerset House remodelling was through Office of the Works; the total came to over £4,000 and it seems that this came out of the exchequer by the order of privy seals from the king, the expenditures being overseen by Sir Richard Wynn; his declared account for this is tna, e.351/3404. See John Summerson, “Surveyorship of inigo Jones”, in History of the King’s Works III (1485–1660), ed. Colvin et al. (London, 1975), p. 139. this contrasts with the queen’s transfer of sums from her income to the Office of the Works in the 1630s as repayment for work at Greenwich and Oatlands. See note 16 above. This, although Somerset House was

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and Hubert Le Sueur’s fountains and statues for her garden there.53 We must detach ourselves somewhat, looking at these patterns, from the association between funding and artistic control. it is charming to read the queen’s notation on the payment of £40 to Jan van Belcamp in March of 1632 that it is for the ‘drawing of 3 pictures all of them by our direction and for our use’.54 But this is the same painter whose trip to France in 1636 to make portraits of the French royal family was sponsored jointly by king and queen. And the bulk of the payments to him for paintings, some of which apparently passed quickly to the queen, was out of the king’s account. 55 a project of central concern to the queen was the renovation of Somerset House and the building of the new chapel there. Her substantial expenditures for decorating all her chapels attest to her care: repeated silk and linen purchases56 and payments to the seamstress Barbara Stephenson and the embroiderer Charles Gentile for producing albs, amices, surplices, altar clothes, corporals, communion towels and other items.57 The design of the chapel must surely also have been her keen concern, although it was the king who was paying for it. In the work of dynastic patronage, as in the dynastic enterprise generally, individuals are seldom wholly dominant or wholly submerged.58 Separating the queen’s from the king’s budget is not entirely fictional, but particularly in the first decade of the reign there were very substantial subsidies to the queen that are visible when we look at the king’s accounts – liveries of her pages, payment to her footmen, supplies for her Chamber, refurbishing of her palaces, and

as much part of her jointure as were Oatlands and Greenwich. Queen anna had also paid for work done on Greenwich and Oatlands (see Colvin, History of the King’s Works IV (London, 1982), pp. 114–15, 213). 53 She appears to have paid £252 or more to him (tna, SC 6/Chasi/1700 (1636–37)), but he is asking the king for £100 for ‘a Mercury delivered for her Majestie’s fountain’ in early 1639 (Sainsbury, Ruben, p. 319). 54 tna, Lr 5/64; the only other payment to him on her records is for £150 in 1636 for ‘his charges for a journey into france’, SC 6/Chasi/1699 (1635–36). 55 He received at least £500 in commissions from Charles i, including £300 for ‘pictures of the French king and queen and divers other great personages in France’ done in 1636. See the table in Smuts, “Material Culture”, pp. 104–5, and tna, e.403/2755, fo. 31v, ‘Being lately employed in france by His Majesty’s special commandment’. 56 in Lady Day Quarter, 1639 (Lr 5/66) she ordered over £150 of linen from the linendraper John Hunt for chapels alone; and the following summer her bill for lace for the chapel was over £310 (Lr 5/67: Mids. Qtr). 57 Lr 5/65, e.g. the bills of Gentile in Lady Day 1632/3 for ‘a garment for the Queen’s chapel with white damask, the vestment, stole and manuple, corporal, 2 cushions and cover of the book and box for the Host … all laced with gold, silver, bonelace and carnation satin’ and ‘A garment for the chair in the Queen’s chapel of purple colored damask, the hanging about and in the box where the preacher stand, and the valence over, all laced with gold, silver lace and a fringe round about’. Little could be found about Gentile; the life, work and milieu of his contemporary, the king’s embroiderer Edmund Harrison, has been detailed by Patricia Wardle in a two part article in Textile History 25, no. 1 (1994): 29–59, and 26, no. 2 (1995): 139–84. 58 Hibbard, “Henrietta Maria in the l630s”, pp. 97–9.

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so on.59 there were a number of reasons for this, not least the debts she ran up in the first years, her continued inability to live within her income, and the delay in putting together a jointure that would provide the income of more than £28,000 deemed suitable for her.60 the ‘french debt’ as it was called, was still being paid off in 1634.61 But there were also conventions about subsidies; the french had carefully investigated this before the queen’s departure, and noted that the £20,000 per annum she would enjoy would be devoted only to ‘gages de ses serviteurs, et les habits de sa personne’.62 This was not quite true, but they correctly identified massive ongoing subsidies – all the food for her household (augmented by £230 per annum for ‘french bread daily served to the queen’)63 and the charge of her stables, upkeep of her barge, lodging and in some cases livery for her servants.64 this somewhat blurry line between the households extended to patronage and employment, and both the latter were usually extended without regard to confessional differences. As the king employed the Catholic artists Rubens and Van Dyck (and the Catholic upholsterer Grynder), so the queen extended aid and protection to the Huguenot sculptor Le Sueur and the Huguenot miniature-painters Jean Petitot and Jacques Bordier, both of whom spent years at the english court.65 The king also took into his own employ a very few frenchmen who came to england with the queen

TNA, E.351/544 payment of her gentleman ushers for ‘appareling and making ready’ the various residences as she moved about. See also tna, e.405/283 (1628–32 issues from the exchequer) for the substantial direct support of her household, fees to numerous of her household. See also such subsidies continuing into the mid-1630s in tna, LC 5/134: 4 ox leather ‘barehides’ [leather coverings for protecting baggage in carts] from the Great Wardrobe; and supplies from the Great Wardrobe for the ‘Queen’s waiter’s chamber’ on 16 December 1634. 60 CSPD 1627–28, p. 573 (20 february 1628). By the mid-1630s her receipts regularly topped £35,000, of which over £3,000 came directly from the exchequer. 61 tna, SC 6/Chasi/1692 (moneys paid 1627–33 to creditors), 1698 (1633–34). 62 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale [henceforth, Bn], Mélanges de Colbert 11, fo. 419, the stables and ‘la bouche de la reine et celles de tous ses serviteurs’ were mentioned as the king’s burden. But they also said all the furnishings of her house would be covered by the king which turned out not to be true, see below. 63 CSPD 1625–49 (Add’l) p. 156. 64 Wages and rewards to the Master of the Horse, Master of the Game, and the halfdozen huntsmen were, however, on her establishment book, as were the wages and ‘operating expenses’ of the Master of the Barges and his 23 watermen. the queen received £20,000 per year from the Cofferer of the King’s Household for her diet; see G.e. aylmer, “attempts at administrative reform, 1625–40”, English Historical Review 72 (1957): p. 247, n. 1. 65 Petitot appears in 1637 on a list of those ‘sworn her Majesty’s servants in extraordinary’ who are to pay no more than the english for the right to practise their trade in Westminster. tna, SP 16/362/107, endorsed ‘names of such of the queen’s servants as are to be eased of the composition’. the association with Bordier is more tenuous; she claimed him as her servant in early 1641 when she intervened for him with the Milanese inquisition, probably at the instigation of his fellow-Genevan and fellow-Huguenot theodore de Mayerne, referred to in the papal agent’s dispatch as ‘her chief physician’. See Lightbown, “Jean Petitot”, esp. pp. 82–4; there is no evidence in the queen’s household lists of either figure. 59

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or because she was there.66 actual dual appointments between the two courts were very rare, almost exclusively musicians,67 although within the chambers of king and queen there were a number of men and women married to figures on the other side. The very lucrative position as head of the Robes was filled by the Earl of Denbigh on the king’s side and the Countess of Denbigh on the queen’s. Providing places or pensions in the household was a serious, long-term commitment that was very seldom reversed, and represented an obligation that could pass on to the heir. When Charles i came to the throne, members of his father’s (and his mother’s) household remained on pension until and unless places were found for them in the new households. So we should not be surprised that so few artists and artisans appear in the queen’s official household or pension list. English royal ‘patronage’ was of a much more ad hoc character, in the form of consumption of luxury goods, and here the queen’s records provide a rich picture of a magnificent environment. Here, too, the king and queen had complementary and expensive tastes. Before all else, there were the jewels. Charles i and his young wife both purchased diamonds and other jewellery at a staggering rate in the early years – for gifts, for themselves, and sometimes (one feels) as a courtesy and perk to the courtiers who have ‘found’ them and present them as worthy of royal ownership. records for a period of some 18 months in the late 1620s show the king disbursing over £50,000 for diamonds and other jewellery bought in part for the queen,68 and her own expenditures both on the trip to england and after her arrival were very lavish. into the later 1630s the queen was still spending over £1,000 annually in gold and plate purchased from a single goldsmith, William Ward, who apparently provided much of the plate traditionally given as new years’ gifts, as well as £1,500 or more for jewels from others than Ward – out of a total yearly expenditure of under £40,000.69 She had 66 Such as Claude de Molette, ‘chief gardener’ by 1627 at £120 per annum (tna, SO 3/9, December 1627). Nicholas Briot the engraver fled from Paris to England in 1625; given a monopoly on engraving the king’s ‘and his dearest consort the Queen’s’ ensigns and other medals for coins in 1628 and granted denisation there, he worked in England and Scotland until his death in 1646. (tna, SO 3/9: December 1628: grant of monopoly and a pension of £250 per annum.) 67 At least four musicians were officially in both households by 1635: Nicholas Lanier, Richard Dering, Nicholas DuVall and Dietrich Stoeffken. 68 Much of this is recorded in TNA, E.405/283. Compare this with the figure of £56,047 for Exchequer expenditures on art for the whole period 1625–40, the figure provided by Smuts in “Material Culture”, p. 106. The mistaken impression that there was a fall-off in royal jewel purchases under the early Stuarts is based on the influential work of A.J. Collins, Jewels and Plate of Queen Elizabeth I: the Inventory of 1574 (London, 1955) which is welldocumented for its own period, using primarily British Library resouces, but ignores the array of relevant sources for the early Stuart period that are in the national archives. the incorrect generalizations are repeated by Lightbown in his article for The Late King’s Goods, ed. arthur MacGregor (Oxford University Press, 1989), and also by Phillippa Glanville, Silver in Tudor and Early Stuart England: A Social History and Catalogue of the National Collection 1480– 1660 (London, 1990), e.g. ‘the years of Charles I are dark’ (p. 19), both relying on Collins. 69 except in the year 1637–38 when outgoings are totalled at £43,973: tna, SC 6/ Chasi/1701.

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a ‘clerk of the jewel coffers’70 years before she had a keeper of her pictures. Besides Ward, the king’s jeweller Heriot whom she occasionally used, and the goldsmith edward Vaughan of Cheapside, the queen bought from the frenchman Gabriel Mathieu71 and an englishman thomas Simpson – both described as her jewellers. Purchases from courtiers are seldom described in much detail (‘a ring with a great fossett diamond’ is a typical description),72 and the lack of specificity in references to many purchases may also reflect relations with a trusted and relatively high status supplier such as Ward.73 More scrutiny was directed to Mathieu,74 whose £95 bill for six months over 1627–28 passed before the queen’s council accompanied by a very detailed list of items, including ‘makinge a ring with 3 hand in hands and 3 harts in each of them and 3 diamonds in each of them as also 18 little ones’ at £6 for the gold and the work, and £14 for ‘making the case of a looking glass of golde enameled blewe’.75 Diamonds, rubies and emeralds, set in gold rings, strung in chains, attached to pictures and to their cases, or to ‘hanging books’ – we are in the world of princely magnificence that Malcolm Smuts has evoked so well: the entire royal household can be described, with only slight exaggeration, as a large bureaucratic machine designed to procure and maintain the apparatus of magnificence essential to royal life. Although Aristotle had defined magnificence as a capacity to spend large sums of money with discernment and elegance, in practice it consisted essentially of overwhelming displays of exquisitely crafted objects fashioned from rare and costly materials, especially expensive textiles, precious metals and gems.76

J. richbell in 1626 as per tna, SC 6/Chasi/1693 (1626–27); see also SC 6/Chasi/1695 (1629–30); and Lr 9/20 (Declared acct 1632–33) ‘Jeoff richbell’. By 1633–34 (SC 6/ Chasi/1698), richbell has been replaced by richard forebench; by 1635–36 there is a new person John Waller (SC 6/Chasi/1699) who is still there in 1641–42. (SC 6/Chasi/1705). 71 in 1625–26, the queen had made large purchases from the Marcadet family, french jewellers attached to the court there. Her £3,000 bill acknowledged in July 1625 was assigned to be paid out of the dowry/portion money about to be received from france. CSPD 1625–26, pp. 66, 79. 72 But see TNA, LR 5/64 Sir William Crofts for a gold bracelet ‘set with five great table diamonds and 12 smaller’ for which there is the queen’s warrant of 15 May 1630 to pay £550. 73 tna, Lr 5/64: William rogers, goldsmith of London: 8 July 1630 £300 for ‘a cross of diamonds’, and Lr 5/65: edw Vaughan, goldsmith £113-2-1 for ‘a gold chain’; Lr 5/66 (Christmas 1637) from alexander Herriott ‘a cross of diamonds’ for £350. 74 Perhaps because of the whopping bill he had presented for her purchases from January 1626 to november 1627; see tna, SC 6/Chasi/1692: ‘Gabriel Matthews jeweller £875’, apparently on top of money already paid him. Mathieu may have come over with the queen (TNA, SP 16/3/112 (June 1625) list of officers and servants of the queen); but by the mid1630s he is a householder in Westminster (SP 16/300/75) and receiving the freedom to practise his trade in Westminster (CSPD 1637, p. 499). 75 tna, Lr 5/64; the Council approved the bill in 1630, but Mathieu wasn’t paid until 1633. 76 Smuts, “Structure of the Court”, p. 109. 70

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In this world, the patronage is of ‘all the artificers and tradesmen that belongeth to Her Majesty’77 not just of artists. the range of providers and artisans is very wide, from dressmakers to organ-tuners to the strewer of herbs in the queen’s chambers,78 and very few of them are known to history.79 a number of the queen’s more substantial providers – the mercers, Grinder/Grynder the upholsterer, edward Basse the lace provider, Henry Lewgar the coffermaker and Edward Bradbourne the silk merchant – were typical providers for the king’s household as well.80 Clothing and furnishings are the main items of expenditure,81 and the providers include mercers, silkmen, wooldrapers, linendrapers, milliners, perfumers, haberdashers, embroiderers, hosiers, seamstresses, tailors, shoemakers, furriers and a featherdresser, not to speak of the pinmaker Thomas Ardington who by 1628 was entrenched in the queen’s purveyance service, and by 1631 had established a typical quarterly bill of £10 or more for ‘13,500 middle vardingale pins, 100 fine needles, 1,500 velvet pins, 21,000 round head pins, 17,000 middle round head pins, and 17,000 short round head pins’, a pattern that persisted for the next decade.82 Detailed bills from gilders, trunkmakers, glaziers, cabinetmakers and joiners remind us that everything used by a seventeenth-century family was made by hand, that this royal family was not inclined to recycle or refurbish much,83 and that for many recurring occasions, such as the summer progresses, whole new sets of objects such as harnesses for the horses would be ordered. everything fresh, everything new, often seems to have been the motto. But foremost are the mercers. Both the debenture books and the stacks of individual invoices or receipts84 reveal that the two leading mercers alone – richard tna, Lr 5/67 (1639) for the quotation. elizabeth Burges, frequently receiving £3 a quarter, e.g. tna, Lr 5/65 (Michaelmas 1633); Lr 5/66 (1637). 79 Exceptions are the upholsterer Ralph Grinder/Grynder who was identified by Geoffrey Beard, Upholsterers and Interior Furnishing in England 1530–1840 (yale, 1997), who edited and reproduced his bill from 1637 (LR 5/66); the furniture makers (Lewgar, Hardwicke, Cordell, Godeliere) discussed by Jervis in Late King’s Goods; and a few others familiar to specialists, such as the landscape architects tradescant, Caux and Mollet, the organ builder Dallam, and William Petit the clockmaker. 80 TNA, LC 9/256 for these names as providers to the king. For other providers used by both king and queen, see the accounts of George Kirke, Gentleman of the Robes to Charles i, reprinted by roy Strong in “Charles i’s Clothes for the years 1633 to 1635”, Costume 14 (1980): 73–89. 81 On these priorities see Jonathan Brown, Kings and Connoisseurs: Collecting Art in Seventeenth Century Europe (Princeton, 1995), pp. 228–9. On the importance of textiles for peripatetic nobility in the sixteenth century see Kristin neuschel, “noble Households in the Sixteenth Century”, French Historical Studies 15 (1988): 595–622. for the Caroline court, the point was made first in detail by Smuts, “Material Culture”, p. 91; also p. 107 for Charles i’s personal wardrobe at £5,000 a year. 82 tna Lr 5/64 (Mids. qtr.); for the receipts of £6–£14 quarter after quarter, see the debenture books (LR 5/63). 83 a point also made by Strong in “Charles i’s Clothes”. 84 these are in four large boxes labelled ‘Household Vouchers’ in the national archives, Lr 5/64 (Household vouchers 1627–33); Lr 5/65 (Lady Day 1631/2 thru Mich 1633); Lr 77 78

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Miller and rice Williams – were receiving up to £1,500 annually by 1630, with the silk providers William Geere and Edward Bradbourne, and Charles Gentile the embroiderer, not far behind at roughly £800 per year. the larger merchants, mercers in particular, were clearly of financial importance in court circles. The upholsterer Ralph Grynder rented furnishings of all kinds to the court for the use of important visitors, and was a substantial royal creditor who was later involved in the sale of the king’s artworks.85 On a smaller scale, we are reminded by the pinmaker’s bills of how much production must have been skimmed by employees, or otherwise entered into a second-hand market that has scarcely been explored for this time period.86 in case after case, we see redundant purchasing entered in the debenture books, where certain quarterly bills seem to have become conventional.87 the importance of the court as a market was highlighted in the pre-war crisis of 1641 when the possible departure of the queen was lamented by a number of tradeswomen who petitioned that she might stay, for without her custom, they claimed they and their families would be ruined.88 These women appear in the debenture books and receipts, sometimes as widows taking payment for their husbands’ work or seemingly taking over their businesses, other times as independent workers from the start. Thus Anna Henshawe ‘in performing the service of silkman’ collected £661-7-4 at the end of 1631, presumably in lieu of her husband Benjamin, one of the major crown purveyors.89 at roughly the same time, Margaret Ward succeeded Gilbert Ward as linendraper, and was joined within a few years by John Hunt who later displaced her.90 Peter Lermitt the featherdresser gave way to his widow Judith Lermitt by 1638; he had done such work as washing and drying the four carnation and white plumes on the queen’s ‘carnation velvet 5/66 (1634–38); and Lr 5/67 (1639–40 and onwards), and have not been inventoried or properly or permanently organized; it is easy to ‘reorganize’ the papers, and there is some evidence this has been done by modern researchers, few as they seem to have been. there are many bundles in each box that have been labelled by quarter, and tied in the pink official ribbon which gave rise to the expression ‘red tape’. for this reason, i have not given more than box number information, and where possible the quarter. the dates covered by each box are not exact. 85 Millar, Inventories, pp. xxi–xxii, and elsewhere in the text as buyer. edmund Harrison, the king’s embroider, was another such, as was the queen’s linendraper John Hunt. Rice Williams signed for Dorset’s payment in tna, SC 6/Chasi/1705 (1641–42), which suggests a fiduciary relationship. 86 See Linda Levy Peck, Consuming Splendor (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 222–5 on “Circulation of Goods”. 87 By the mid-1630s the amount being disbursed by the queen’s own warrant equalled the debenture totals, chiefly in payments for gifts, jewels and for construction and gardens at her palaces. 88 The humble petition of many thousands of courtiers, citizens, gentlemen, and tradesmens wives, inhabiting within the cities of London and Westminster, etc., 10 february 1641/2 (London: t. Hales, 1641/2). 89 By the end of the year she is yoked with William Geares (Geere); see TNA, LR 5/63. Subsequently he becomes the chief silkman to the queen. 90 TNA, LR 5/63 (debenture books).

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bed for the progress’.91 feathers adorned the queen’s beds at Somerset House and Whitehall, her hats and the caps of her dwarf Jeffrey Hudson and her pageboys, and the headdresses made for her and other ladies for the masques.92 among the independent female artisans are the ‘tyrewomen’, or theatrical costume-makers, who received (along with much else) consignments of feathers from the Lermitts – women such as Blanche Browne, Sara Gretton and antonia DuVall. in february 1632, Brown provided ‘one pair of wings for Her Majesty’ for £4, and another for ‘Mrs. Carew’.93 the ‘tyrers’ helped dress the queen for entertainments, and devised headdresses for her and other ladies. Most regularly appearing of the female artisans are the ‘sempstresses’, the queen’s regular provider Mrs Barbara Stevenson, and others such as ann Davenport and alice Maggitt – ‘sempstress for the musique boys’ – who provided three boys in just one quarter of 1632 with: ‘18 shirts, 6 ruffs, 18 falling bands, 2 dozen pairs laced cuffs, 18 pairs boothoses, 18 pairs socks, 18 handkerchiefs, 7 bandboxes for ruffs, [and] 18 dozen handkerchief buttons’.94 these and other women can be found signing acquittances for their own pay or that of others (usually kin), evidence of some degree of literacy in that section of the London female population. the bill for the music boys reminds us that the queen paid not only for her personal dress and furnishings, but always for the dress of her music boys (sometimes called ‘pages’ – who sang in her chapel) and her dwarfs Jeffrey Hudson and Sarah, occasionally for women in her household or ladies of the court joining in her entertainments, and for some of the early expenses of her children as they arrived.95 the music boys, of course, were growing children, and they received new suits, ruffs, capes, hose, shoes on a regular basis. they are sometimes described as ‘the little page’, ‘the great page’ or the ‘French page’ (getting a ‘fine beaver hat’ from the haberdasher arthur Knight in Michaelmas 1628, and ‘a riding coat of scarlet’ later), and sometimes named. But their outfitting was a minor expense and concern compared to the elaborate, sumptuous and ever-changing wardrobes provided for the dwarfs Jeffrey Hudson and ‘little Sara’, as she was often called. Gilbert Morrett, tailor for the boys and for Jeffrey,96 provided one suit after another for the dwarf. in 1628 there was ‘an ashcolor barracan sute and cloak with sleeves for Mr. Jeffrey’, as well as ‘a black mourning sute of Flander saye and a long cloak’, a green taffeta suit and a blue satin

tna, Lr 5/63 for the succession of Lermitts paid; Lr 5/64 for the bill from Christmas Qtr 1630. 92 TNA, LR 5/65: Lady Day 1632 bill. A watercolour of the queen attributed to Hoskins shows her with a white feather attached to a jewelled cap; see Age of Charles I: Painting in England 1620–1649, ed. Oliver Millar (London, 1972), cover and p. 115. 93 tna, Lr 5/64 bill. 94 tna, Lr 5/64 bill. 95 But TNA, LR 5/63 Christmas Qtr 1630 a list of items ‘for the prince – paid by the king’. these bills were from robt ramsey, tailor, Humphrey Palmer, embroiderer, John Baptiste Ferrin, perfumer, for a shoemaker and for the ubiquitous pinmaker Ardington. 96 He did some work directly for the queen after her French dressmaker Gillin/Guillain is gone, that is after 1634. 91

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suit, and the next year scarlet hose ‘to wear under his armor’.97 Dipping into the bills in the following decade we find masking suits, riding suits, ‘a suit for Jeffrey, for a comedy’ and ‘a morning suit’. for Mayday in 1629, there would be a new cloak, doublet, suit and waistcoat at a cost of £6 for the materials alone.98 the hats (some with feathers, some beaver hats with silver bands), the boots and shoes, the points, gloves and embroidered handkerchiefs, the satin stockings and the linen are all detailed in the bills. The standard order of silk hose for Jeffrey was twelve pair in every quarter. Grynder the upholsterer provided a bed for him with ‘a round french canopy’, and Cordell the cabinetmaker made cases for his looking-glass and his combs. ‘Little Sara’ was outfitted in an equally lavish style. Shoes, garters and ‘morning gowns’ were augmented by such items as petticoats and waistcoats ‘bound with gold and silver parchment’, and ‘a black taffeta gown … w/ pistaques and black lace’. the queen’s tailor Gillin made for Sarah, in one quarter alone, a crimson velvet gown, a black satin petticoat and hungerline, and ‘an Italian gown of scarlet bays bound with gold and silver’.99 Perhaps in her early childless years Henrietta Maria found some consolation in dressing up her ‘little people’ almost like a prince and princess, but the scale of expenditures continued into the 1630s, alongside orders for hats for the prince, green and white satin gowns for the princess, a gown of ‘cloth of silver’ for the princess and coats of the same fabric for both of them.100 Debenture books and bills permit us to glimpse the production process for textile goods, since much of the raw material was provided to the Office of the Robes, mostly labelled for specific purposes. Take, for example, the wooldraper Richard Aldworth (aldworthy), who in the early 1630s is recorded as providing ‘fawn color wool for a suit for thom the queen’s footboy’, ‘crimson bays to lay up a rich bed’, ‘bastard scarlet to make a folding screen for HM bedchamber’ and ‘fine grass green [wool] to make a carpet for the Queen’s bedchamber’.101 After supply, the work is taken up by the queen’s upholsterer ralph Grynder, her embroiderer Charles Gentile, her hosier thomas robinson and most especially her french tailors.102 that suit for thom the footboy is billed by Gilbert Morrette in the quarter when the wool is provided. the chief tailors for the queen herself were George Gillin until 1635, then his replacement Jacques Bardou (Bardoul, Bardon). their bills provide us with

tna, Lr 5/64 (Michaelmas 1628; Midsummer and Michaelmas 1629). tna, Lr 5/64 (Midsummer 1629). 99 tna, Lr 5/64 (Christmas 1630). 100 tna, Lr 5/65 (Michaelmas 1633). 101 tna, Lr 5/64 (Christmas 1630, Michaelmas 1631), Lr 5/65 (Lady Day 1632). 102 although Gentile frequently appears as ‘Genty’ i have adopted the spelling used in The Late King’s Goods, which is also the most common in the bills. the word ‘tailor’ is used for those who fit, cut and constructed men’s and women’s garments; the stitching and decoration of the cloth and the finished garment (e.g. with lace) was done by the embroiderers, for silk and velvet, and the seamstresses in the case of linen. See Patricia Wardle, “‘Divers necessaries for his Majesty’s use and service’: Seamstresses to the Stuart Kings”, Costume 31 (1997): 16–20; and Janet arnold, ed. Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d (London, 1988), ch. 8. 97 98

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tantalizing views of the queen’s lavish wardrobe.103 In the first quarter of 1628, George Gillin’s bills for £86-15 included at least three gowns for the queen, half a dozen petticoats and several other items such as waistcoats; in the first quarter of 1632 he made at least as many items but was not getting the prices he asked. On the other hand, he was by then providing white satin waistcoats for her at the rate of four a month.104 He appears to have been at court at least three times a week. The garment descriptions are designed to reinforce his pay claims, of course: in 1628 there was ‘a watchett satin gown embroidered with silver and pistaques of the same lined with white taffeta’ and ‘a peach color wrought satin gown … with pistaques laced all over with a small satin lace lined with white tafetta’, while around Christmas 1631 he made a nightgown of ‘skycolor damask lined w/ ermine fur and taffeta, and laced with gold and silver lace’.105 the bills of the embroiderer Charles Gentile provide corroborating details about all these items of dress, as well as the extensive work he did for the chapel and chaplains. at the conservatively estimated rate of about ten gowns a year for the queen, a search of the vouchers (even in the incomplete state of the records), would yield descriptions of dozens of gowns produced for Henrietta Maria before 1640. Court patronage of artisans, of course, extended beyond the workers in textiles and items of dress to most of the other skills and products needed by a large household. The coffermakers John Lewgar and Thomas Hardwicke,106 and the cabinetmaker Edward Cordell, were kept constantly busy producing and repairing the furniture of the queen’s court.107 Coffers were leather-covered wooden trunks without feet that were designed for the safe transport of royal possessions in a court that was still peripatetic.108 The description of the coffermaker’s products emphasized their strength (‘strongly banded’), the locks (‘an extraordinary good backspring lock’) and the fine lining fabrics in many of them (‘lined with fine holland’). Some were ‘covered with red Spanish leather and very fairly gilt’; some had drawers or partitions (‘for the carriage of the feathers for the bed’). there was a large case for the queen’s theorbo, leather cases for the folding chairs, cases for the bedsteads themselves as well as for the bedding. Chests, usually with feet to raise them from the floor, were Valerie Cumming, “Great vanity and excesse in apparell”, in Late King’s Goods, p. 334, says we have ‘little evidence’ of the extravagance to which she later confessed; now we have more. in the study of clothing as with that of jewellery, the sources exploited have seldom included the national archives; this is true of the Cumming article and the recent publication of aileen ribeiro, Fashion and Fiction: Dress in Art and Literature in Stuart England (London, 2005). 104 tna, Lr 5/64 (Lady Day 1628). He gets £2 for each set of 4. 105 tna, Lr 5/64 (Christmas 1631), one of his more expensive productions at £3-10. a wide range of colours is described – not only white, black, green, yellow, blue and various shades of red, but also silver, gold, watchett (light blue), blush, isabella (greyish yellow), ash, blossom and aurora (rich orange). 106 Lugar is the alternative spelling. Succeeded by Thomas Hardwicke by 1637. 107 See the excellent article on furniture by Simon Jervis, in Late King’s Goods, one of the very few contributors to that volume to have used these documents (in transcript). 108 r.W. Symonds, “the Chest and the Coffer: their Difference in function and Design”, Connoisseur 107 (1941): 15–21. 103

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for storage in the queen’s rooms, such as ‘two great iron chests for the keeping of HM treasure’, or ‘a trunk or standard to put the queen’s records in’ (most likely for the Council Chamber, not her bedchamber).109 Charles Godeliere (Godelire), ‘one of her Majesty’s joiners’, was also employed by the king; he made all kinds of folding furniture – stools, tables, chair frames, even bedsteads – and much of his work is described as being ‘in the French fashion’.110 Edward Cordell, the queen’s chief cabinetmaker, made boxes of all kinds and sizes – a red-leather gilded box ‘for the Queen’s cabinet for her knotts’ and three ‘cabinets’ each of 12 inches long for pins, covered with velvet and gold – as well as larger items such as the aforementioned cabinet, with four great drawers ‘for the queen’s knots and roses’; a ‘great ebony frame for Her Majesty’s glass of 16 inches long’; and ‘one great cabinet of windscott 2 ft long … with five drawers in it covered with red turkey leather all inlaid with watchett leather and richly gilt with gold … all lined with crimson satin’. Many of his bills specify that the items are intended for the queen’s bedchamber. all of these purveyors – and others not mentioned here – provided items for the queen’s offices as well as for her personal or ‘family’ use. When the Somerset House chapel was redesigned in mid-1635 elaborate furnishings were provided; but even in June 1628 the embroiderer Gentile was making ‘a chapel’ of satin with flower of gold, a cope and ‘other things thereunto belonging, embroidered in crosses all over with the fastening and strings and fringes to it, and two cushions; and another similar chapel of velvet silver ground’, with also ten ‘arms to put upon the Chapel, eight great and two small’.111 The Office of the Robes seems to have had unusually lavish requests and recurring needs. the individuals employed there enjoyed generous new year’s gifts, and of course they received a good deal of the material and products that the queen had ordered. But there were also items dedicated to the use of the office – cabinets and coffers, perfuming agents such as rosewater, and green wool ‘for a carpet to lay the books on in the Robes’, to say nothing of the thousands upon thousands of tenterhooks.112 the queen’s Council met in the summer for the review of her accounts, and the members were provided with rich dinners to ease their labours;113 the council chamber at Somerset House also required refurbishing. for example, Codelier provided a great cupboard with five locks in 1628, two inner rooms by the chamber were redecorated by joiners and upholsterers in late 1631, Grynder received £33 for furnishings in the chamber, and Gentile billed £46 ‘for embroidering a large

tna, SC 6/Chasi/1694 (1628–29). TNA, LC 9/100 (Great Wardrobe) for the king’s employment of him; and LR 5/64 (Christmas 1630; Christmas 1631) for bills to the queen. this frenchman (he signs his receipts “par moi”), has a difficult hand, but his surname is not “Goodyleare” as it is rendered in endorsements of his bills by English officials (and repeated by Jervis; see n. 79 above). 111 tna, Lr 5/64 (Midsummer 1628). 112 for the wool: tna, Lr 5/66 (Lady Day 1637). 113 Bills are from Henry Browne as underkeeper of Somerset House, citing meetings in June, sometimes early July. 109 110

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hanging cloth and cushions for Her Majesty’s council chamber at Westminster’.114 There were supplies of all kinds for the queen’s secretaries, and bags in the dozens provided for all – a bag for her chancellor Lord Savage to hold her seals, bags for her jeweller Sympson and her apothecary Planchie, money bags for the treasurer (of ‘very fine Normandy canvas’), bags and cases for her bottlemen Mons. Osander and Thomas Cooke. Cooke, the ‘bottleman of the field’ received a velvet bag, and a cup and spoon and knife case – for picnics? – and a ‘crimson velvet bag with 36 buttonholes laced with gold’.115 all these generous allocations to household servants and offices were so many more opportunities for wastage and losses of the kind that the Jewel House periodically investigated for its more precious goods. This was the more difficult to control because generosity was an undisputed virtue in queens as in kings,116 and many members of household and court were treated as extended family. a surprising number and variety of persons – mainly but not exclusively women – were given occasional clothing and furnishings by the queen. among them were Mme Garnier, the former nurse to the queen, and the numerous members of her family at court, the other french chamberwomen, english chamberwomen who were setting up rooms at court, the mistress of the laundry and the laundrymaids, maids of honour and the ‘mother of the maids’, the nursemaid to Princess Mary, and Mme Peronne the French midwife. Peronne first came to court in mid-1630, just after the birth of Prince Charles, and was put on diet there at £400 yearly.117 thereafter, she was in england frequently, six babies being born to the queen between 1631 and 1640; and we find the tailor Gillin making a ‘grey damask nightgown … lined with bays and laid with gold and silver lace’, an ‘ashcolor damask petticoat’ and hoods for her at Christmas 1631 – at the time of Princess Mary’s birth. Later she would be provided with a ‘livery’ of silk from the silkman Edward Bradbourne.118 indeed such ‘liveries’ of precious cloth to favourite household servants begin to appear in the records regularly by 1633 – ‘summer livery’ to Jean Garnier worth over £30, that of the Countess of Denbigh twice as much.119 Members of the Garnier family dug themselves firmly into leading positions in the Office of the Robes from an early date; and numerous, sometimes large, deliveries from the mercers and other tna, Lr 5/64 Midsummer 1628, Christmas 1631; for Grynder (possibly a rental bill) and Gentile see SC 6/Chasi/1698 (1633–34). 115 TNA, LR 5/64 (Lady Day, 1632) for the velvet bag for Cooke. Many of these bags are provided by the cabinetmaker Cordell, even those described as of velvet, such as the ‘crimson velvet bag for the queen’s night linen’, so presumably they had leather bottoms. 116 See Laynesmith, pp. 75, 108–9. 117 tna, e. 405/283. 118 tna, Lr 5/64: Christmas 1631; Lr 5/65: Christmas 1631; Lr 5/66: Midsummer 1637; Lr 5/67: Lady Day 1639 Provision of wool from roger Price in 1637 (Lr 5/66: Michaelmas Qtr). 119 Combining the summer and winter liveries gives values of £60+ and £80 per annum minimally; G.a. aylmer, King’s Servants, p. 173 notes that very few individual liveries exceeded L20-30 per annum. these awards seem to be in addition to liveries regularly provided to her Robes staff through the Lord Chamberlain’s office (8 such liveries on the queen’s side listed in 1629: tna, SP 16/178/10). 114

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purveyors are recorded going to ‘Madame nurse’ directly in the 1630s. there were purveyors operating under the patronage of Robes officers; the wooldraper Richard aldworthy was succeeded by 1634 by one roger Price, brought in as a purveyor by thomas arpe, himself a Garnier son-in-law who would be Provider of the robes in 1636 in succession to Jean Garnier. roger Price immediately began to present much higher bills for materials (over £100 in a quarter – cf. with his predecessor’s £30–£80) most of which is identified as going in lots to ‘Mr. Arpe’ or ‘Madame nurse’.120 It is more likely here, than in the excesses of the pinmaker, that we can see the opportunities for graft that the luxury trades of the palace presented, given the trust lodged in these figures by the queen. The offices of the Wardrobe and the robes had long been the most lucrative government departments in peacetime, and consequently the most corrupt.121 The very personal and corruptible nature of provision for the court’s ‘magnificence’ – from the diamonds sold to the king and queen by individual courtiers, for which we have clear evidence, to the likelihood of profit from diversion of luxury textile supplies for the court, and the deals cut by household officials with the purveyors, for which these materials offer only hints – suggests a powerful reason for the persistence of this form of courtly display. the system of provision, and the opportunities it offered to hard-pressed aristocrats who expected to profit from office, may help to explain the phenomenon of cultural lag in the early seventeenth century that Malcolm Smuts has identified – the ‘failure of new artistic fashions to bring about wider and deeper shifts in mentality’, to triumph over what he has aptly called the ‘massive inherited system’ of magnificence.122 Smuts persuasively argues that the concept of art promoted by ‘renaissance enthusiasts’ and their intellectual descendants in the modern worlds of art historical collecting and scholarship have led us to believe that ‘great painting and sculpture differ qualitatively from other forms of craftsmanship and visual display, demanding much deeper levels of understanding’.123 He also emphasizes the ‘skewed nature of the surviving evidence’, given the fragility of textile products, and to this i would add their availability for recycling through giftgiving, pawning and re-sale – their divisibility and the possibility of re-use until they were literally in shreds. ironically, it is through the underpaid painters of the Stuart court that we can best recapture visual images of the costly garments recorded in the court records. But the alternative, of following the paper trail of financial records, offers a number of insights, leading us to a richer understanding of the economic processes that underlay the culture of London and the court. and in so doing, we see once again how focusing on the queen’s side of the household and court draws attention See, e.g., Michaelmas 1637 and Lady Day 1639 in tna, Lr 5/66. Menna Prestwich, Cranfield: Politics and Profits under the Early Stuarts (Oxford, 1966); and the more summary treatment of the reign of Charles i by roy e. Schreiber in The First Carlisle (transactions of the american Philosophical Society 74:7, 1984). See also the remarks by Valerie Cumming, in The Late King’s Goods, pp. 323–4. 122 Smuts, “Material Culture”, pp. 110, 107. 123 ibid., p. 112. at the same time, perhaps paradoxically, there are assumptions of an intellectual equality available across social classes that are embedded in the study of the canonical objects of the fine arts. 120 121

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to general features of court life that might otherwise be overlooked or downplayed. We see something of the role of female entrepreneurs, we are reminded of the importance of ephemeral activities such as court entertainments that have left no visual and often no literary records (a ‘tinsell seller’ submits his bills),124 we find a list of ‘sweetmeates’ (fruit, nuts, marzipan) provided for a court banquet with a bill of over £100. More generally, we find support for the points made by Smuts about the allocation of resources and the primacy of textiles in the world of display.125 Equally important, we find the partially revealed a heretofore shadowy world of wholesale luxury providers, whose financial resources suggest they would repay study as part of the royal and aristocratic financial nexus. it would be fatuous to suggest that our project of retrieval should lead us to reorder the objects of proper study so as to follow the values of seventeenth-century courts, expressed in their hierarchies of expenditure – to raise the study, for example, of elite clothing to some kind of parity with the study of painting and sculpture. There have been ideological as well as practical barriers of several kinds to even a slight reordering of priorities. fine clothing is so clearly an elite symbol as to fall within what one might call the ‘curse of Marie Antoinette’ – it, like the court, represents a world of false values, morally deserving to be overthrown. But such views on luxury products are retreating, and even Marie antoinette is being rehabilitated.126 as the study of costume and clothing is now a pursuit of cultural historians,127 it could also find a role in the study of the economic history of the period, a pre-eminent example of those luxury trades in metropolitan centres that helped to energize the early modern economy.128

Matthew Jumper, in tna, Lr 5/64 (Christmas Qtr 1630 bill for £8-19-0), and Lr 5/66 (Michaelmas Qtr 1635 bill for £18-9-6). 125 Smuts, “Material Culture”, p. 91; see also p. 107 for Charles i’s personal wardrobe at £5,000 a year. 126 See Alan Riding, “The French Art of Living, Back in Business in Paris”, New York Times Sept. 14, 2006, on the reopening of the Musée des art Décoratifs for discussion of these issues. Marie Antoinette is the subject of at least half a dozen studies since 2000, most seeking to rescue her from the vilifications and propaganda of contemporary accounts, which have had a very long historical resonance. 127 Susan Vincent, Dressing the Elite: Clothes in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2003); ann rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (Cambridge, 2000), which has a very informative introductory chapter on socio-economic aspects, including the value of livery and other non-monetary perks of office. 128 Articles that take up some of these themes can be found in Material London, ca. 1600, ed. Lena Cowen Orlin (Philadelphia, 2000), esp. the article by Jane Schneider on textiles, dyes and fashion. the volume Luxury Trades and Consumerism in Ancien Regime Paris: Studies in the History of the Skilled Workforce, ed. robert fox and anthony turner (London, 1998) offers a comparison study and, in the last three summary articles, explicitly raises comparative perspectives on London and Paris. 124

Chapter 7

Merely Ornamental? Van Dyck’s Portraits of Henrietta Maria Gudrun raatschen

Well fare the hand! which to our humble sight Presents that beauty, which the dazzling light Of royal splendour hides from weaker eyes, and all access, save by this art, denies. (edmund Waller, to the Queen, occasioned upon sight of her Majesty’s picture)

Henrietta Maria’s portraits by Anthony van Dyck, ‘principalle Paynter in ordinary to their Majesties’ from 1632 to 1641, have received little scholarly attention. With the exceptions of Henrietta Maria’s portrait with Jeffrey Hudson and the double portrait in Kroměříž, none has been the subject of a recent study.1 One possible reason for this neglect may be the perception that, in the portraits, Henrietta Maria is ‘looking as if her only possible function was to be ornamental’.2 While beauty is indeed vital to the portraits, a closer look will reveal that there is more to this than meets the eye. When Van Dyck came to London in April 1632, he was an artist with an international reputation, at the height of his career and his artistic powers. at the age of 33, he was considered the foremost portrait painter in Europe and had worked for the rich, the noble and the clergy in Genoa, rome, Palermo, his native antwerp, in Brussels and the Hague. already court painter to the archduchess isabella, his appointment as court painter to Charles i and Henrietta Maria was to become the culmination of his life’s work. His portraits were to change the course of English art, and they determine our image of the Stuart court even today. 1 See Arthur Wheelock, “The Queen, the Dwarf, and the Court: Van Dyck and the Ideals of the english Monarchy”, in Van Dyck 1599–1999: Conjectures and Refutations, ed. Hans Vlieghe (Turnhout 2001), pp. 151–66; Eva Struhal, “Posen und Gesten in van Dycks Porträts – Das Ehebildnis Karls I. und Henrietta Marias in Kroměříž und das Porträt Olivia Porters”, in Van Dyck 1599–1999, ed. Vlieghe, pp. 199–210. The most recent and definite account of the portraits is the contribution of Sir Oliver Millar in Susan J. Barnes, nora de Poorter, Oliver Millar and Horst Vey, Van Dyck. A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings (new Haven and London, 2004), cats. iV.45, iV.46, iV.113, iV.114, iV.118, iV.120, iV.121, iV.122, iV.123, iV.125, iV.126, iV.127, iV.128, iV.a19, iV.a20. this contribution is based loosely on my dissertation, Anton Van Dycks Porträts König Karls I. von England und Königin Henrietta Marias. Form, Inhalt und Funktion (Bonn, 2003). 2 alison Plowden, Henrietta Maria: Charles I’s Indomitable Queen (Stroud, 2001), p. 187, see also p. 22.

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Charles I immediately used Van Dyck’s creative potential in order to outline his concept of monarchy on canvas, and commissioned portraits that he conceived as ‘lasting monuments remaining to posterity’.3 as one of the great collectors of his time and a true connoisseur, Charles i understood the power of images, while at the same time appreciating their aesthetic quality.4 Henrietta Maria was no such collector and no connoisseur.5 although she patronized various artists, was surrounded by art and took an active interest especially in the stage productions of court masques, her approach to art seems to have been quite distinct from that of her husband. this difference becomes clear in their respective reactions to the well-known gift of Cardinal Barberini. When seven pictures for Henrietta Maria arrived in London on 30 January 1636, Charles i immediately went to see them and examined them closely. He even removed the names of the painters to challenge his attendants with the attributions. Henrietta Maria, however, simply lamented the lack of devotional pictures.6 So, while Charles i had an almost scholarly interest in paintings, Henrietta Maria seems to have valued them above all for their content, whether it be depictions of her family or religious subjects. Family and religion were also two ties that connected her to Van Dyck. In the autumn of 1631, Marie de Médicis, the exiled queen mother, stayed in Brussels as guest of the Archduchess Isabella. Here, Van Dyck painted her portrait, and she went to see his collection of pictures. A few weeks later, Balthazar Gerbier, acting secretly on behalf of Charles I, spoke to Isabella and Marie de Médicis in order to persuade them to send Van Dyck on a pretext to England. Officially, Van Dyck was sent to oversee the transport of five portraits to England, but the true aim of this venture was to win Van Dyck over and convince him to stay and work for the king.7 the efforts of Charles i’s mother-in-law to provide him with a new apelles were not wholly unselfish. Four months after Van Dyck arrived in London, she expressed the wish to send him a gold chain, ‘but with the real object of relating the pitiable state into which the queen mother was falling more and more every day, farther than ever from succeeding in her hopes’.8 Obviously, after being involved in a scheme of Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (new Haven, 1992), p. 181. the most recent publication on Charles i as collector is Jonathan Brown, The Sale of the Century: Artistic Relations between Spain and Great Britain, 1604–1655 (new Haven and London, 2001). 5 Jeremy Wood stressed this point in his article “Orazio Gentileschi and Some Netherlandish Artists in London: the Patronage of the Duke of Buckingham, Charles I and Henrietta Maria”, Simiolus 28 (2001): 122. 6 See Rudolf Wittkower, “Inigo Jones – ‘Puritanissimo Fiero’”, Burlington Magazine 90 (1948): 50–51; Susan Madocks Lister, “‘Trumperies brought from Rome’: Barberini Gifts to the Stuart Court in 1635”, in The Diplomacy of Art: Artistic Creation and Politics in Seicento Italy. Papers from a Colloquium held at the Villa Spelman, Florence, 1998, ed. elizabeth Cropper (2000), p. 161. 7 As has been revealed by David Howarth, “The Entry Books of Sir Balthazar Gerbier: Van Dyck, Charles I and the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand”, in Van Dyck 1599–1999, ed. Vlieghe, p.78f. 8 Balthazar Gerbier in a letter of 3 July 1632 from Brussels to Charles I’s secretary Coke in W. noel Sainsbury, Original Unpublished Papers illustrative of the Life of Sir Peter Paul 3 4

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‘head-hunting’ which sought to move an artist from one court to another, she had no qualms about using him again as an instrument for her own cause once he was firmly established. Indeed, her trust in Van Dyck was so great that two years later she thought of sending him to Spain, presumably to portray her family members there and thus save herself a troublesome journey.9 the favour Marie de Médicis showed towards Van Dyck must have paved the way for him to establish a trusting relationship with her daughter right from the start. also, it would have pleased Henrietta Maria that one of the five portraits that Van Dyck brought with him depicted her brother Gaston, Duke of Orléans.10 Henrietta Maria seems to have been fully satisfied with the work rendered by the painter as she mentions ‘les bons et agréables services que nous recevons touts les jours du chevalier Antoine Vandyck’ in a letter from 26 August 1633.11 in this letter she asks permission for Van Dyck’s brother Theodore Waltman, Norbertine canon of St Michael in antwerp, to be sent to england to become one of her chaplains. She argues that this would bring him and the order honour, contentment from conversation with his brother, and security while living under her protection.12 Van Dyck, who belonged to the Jesuit Confraternity of Bachelors in Antwerp, was close to his younger brother and had painted a tender Rest on the Flight into Egypt for him.13 Theodore went to stay in London for about half a year, but he was back in antwerp on 9 March 1634. He would not have seen much of his brother because Van Dyck had to fulfil other obligations and, accordingly, left England for Brussels and antwerp two months after theodore arrived, only to return in March 1635. if the attempt to win Theodore was meant to tie Van Dyck to the English court, it failed.14 in the six years between 1632 and 1638 there are no portraits of Charles i and Henrietta Maria by Van Dyck, but during the last three years of his life Van Dyck created 15 compositions of the queen, 12 of which are extant in the original. it is not Rubens as an artist and a diplomatist (London, 1859), p. 168f, no. 4. 9 The plan came to nothing because there was no money. Howarth, p. 81. Howarth thinks that Van Dyck was meant to act as Marie de Medici’s representative. 10 Oliver Millar, “the inventories and Valuations of the King’s Goods 1649–1651”, The Walpole Society 43 (1972): 381, cat 17. it was hung in the Cross Gallery in Somerset House, together with portraits of Henrietta Maria’s and Charles’ parents and siblings and other royalty. 11 Henri Hymans, “Les dernières années de Van Dyck”, Gazette des Beaux Arts 36 (1887): 434. 12 ‘Le crédit que par ce moyen il pourra acquérir tant à soymesme comme à tout son ordre, le contentement qu’il pourra recevoir jouissant de la conversation de son frère, la sécurité en laquelle il sera pour le faict de sa conscience, ayant à vivre soubs nostre protection’. ibid., p. 434. 13 Konrad Renger and Claudia Denk, Flämische Malerei des Barock in der Alten Pinakothek (Munich and Cologne, 2002), pp. 180–84. On theodore as a collector see Horst Vey, “Die Kunstsammlung Pastor Theodoor van Dijcks”, Musées Royaux des Beaux Arts Bulletin 10 (1961). 14 Between October 1633 and March 1635, Van Dyck must have been in England for a short time because a drawing of St Mary’s in rye is signed and dated 1634. Martin royaltonKisch, The Light of Nature: Landscape Drawings and Watercolours by Van Dyck and his Contemporaries (London, 1999), p. 88, cat 13.

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known how often Henrietta Maria sat for him, but from the genesis of her portraits made for Gianlorenzo Bernini (figures 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3) it becomes clear that, in order to catch a glimpse of his model, careful planning, endless patience and much luck was required. Henrietta Maria wished to have a portrait bust of herself made by Bernini to act as a companion piece for the bust of her husband. this required painted studies showing her from different angles to be sent to rome as models for the sculptor’s workshop. After Cardinal Barberini had been informed in November 1637 that Henrietta Maria had allowed herself to be painted in the three necessary positions, still nothing happened, so at the end of June 1638 Charles i exerted a gentle pressure on his wife to spur on the commission. George Conn, her papal agent in London, had urged her to allow herself to be portrayed, to which the king good-humouredly added: ‘i too am going hunting on tuesday, and i will leave you my wife for all the rest of the week; persuade her, and guard her well.’ Conn was to meet Van Dyck in Greenwich where Henrietta Maria was residing, to see if there was an occasion for a sitting. There was not, and it took another two months before the portraits were on display.15 We do not know what caused these delays. There had also been delays with the completion of the portrait for Cardinal Barberini at the end of 1636, but again we do not know what caused them.16 Charles i, who as Prince of Wales had once given Daniel Mytens the slip, sat patiently for Van Dyck in the artist’s Blackfriars studio where he could admire the artist’s collection of Venetian paintings, a passion which they both shared.17 So it seems that Henrietta Maria eschewed sittings. this is corroborated by the paintings. Without exception, she appears in a three-quarter view looking to the left. the early portraits which show her in half-length in a white dress (figure 5.8), the related double portrait in Kroměříž (Figure 5.9), and the later portrait in a blue dress (Figure 7.4) show her slightly more in profile than the portrait at Longford Castle (figure 7.5) and all the others that follow. apart from her face becoming softer and more rounded after 1636, the only noticeable change in her features is her hairstyle. from 1632 to about 1636 Henrietta Maria is depicted with her hair in short, frizzedout curls at chin length, with sickle-shaped curls surrounding her face and one or two ronald William Lightbown, “Bernini’s Busts of english Patrons”, in Art the Ape of Nature. Studies in honour of H.W. Janson, ed. Moshe Barasch, Lucy freeman Sandler and Patricia Egan (New York, 1981), p. 452. 16 See everett fahy and francis Watson, The Wrightsman Collection. V. Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture (New York, 1973), p. 304, Mary Anne Everett Green, ed., Letters of Queen Henrietta Maria, including her Private Correspondence with Charles the First (London, 1857), p. 34, Oliver Millar, “Notes on Three Pictures by Van Dyck”, Burlington Magazine 111 (1969): 417. 17 for Mytens see Mary f.S. Hervey, The Life, Correspondence, and Collections of Thomas Howard, Father of Vertu in England (New York, 1969), p. 143. For Charles sitting for Van Dyck in Blackfriars see Oliver Millar et al., Van Dyck. A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings (New Haven and London: 2004), p. 473, cat. IV 54. On Van Dyck’s collection see Jeremy Wood, “Van Dyck’s ‘Cabinet de Titien’: the Contents and the Dispersal of His Collection”, Burlington Magazine 132 (1990). Daniel Mytens often had to travel to Greenwich or nonsuch to portray Charles i or Henrietta Maria and charged them for his troubles, see Charlotte C. Stopes, “Daniel Mytens in england”, Burlington Magazine 17 (1910): 162–3. 15

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Anthony van Dyck, Henrietta Maria (profile to the right), 1637, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art

lovelocks falling on her left shoulder. From about 1636 the curls of her fringe and at the sides of her face also became frizzy and are virtually identical on her portraits in Dresden (figure 7.6), San Diego (figure 7.4) and St Petersburg (figure 7.7). the portrait for Cardinal Barberini in the Wrightsman Collection is the only one that shows a combination of long, sickle-shaped curls and frizzy ringlets (Figure 7.8). Her hair is now longer and falls over her right shoulder. in the last portraits of her by

144

7.2

Henrietta Maria

Anthony van Dyck, Henrietta Maria (frontal view), 1638, the royal Collection ©2007, Her Majesty Queen elizabeth ii

Van Dyck – the ad-vivum studies for Bernini painted in mid 1638 – (figures 7.1–3) her hair is shorter and smooth at the sides and the locks surrounding her face are again sickle-shaped. The hair on top of her head remains the same, always combed back and gathered in a knot at the back of her head, adorned with bows and pearls. Because the only verified sittings of Henrietta Maria concern the studies made for Bernini, it is likely that Van Dyck made one or two initial studies in 1632 which he then varied and brought up to date over the years. the basic pattern was the one first used for the portrait at Longford Castle. The same contours of her face and left shoulder appear in the portraits in Washington (figure 5.7), Dresden, in

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Anthony van Dyck, Henrietta Maria (profile to the left), 1638, The Royal Collection ©2007, Her Majesty Queen elizabeth ii

the Wrightsman Collection and in Oranienburg (figure 7.9). However, in all these portraits except the last one her nose follows the pattern used in the half-length in white. This portrait was the basis for the pictures in Kroměříž and San Diego and, as mirror image, the full-length in a green dress in the national Portrait Gallery.18 The fact that this portrait by an unknown artist follows the inverted outlines of Van Dyck indicates that some sort of pattern must have existed, maybe a drawing that

18

Millar et al., Van Dyck. A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, p. 634, cat. a iV 18.

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7.4

Henrietta Maria

Anthony van Dyck, Henrietta Maria, San Diego Museum of art

was traced or punctured and pounced in the manner that Hans Holbein had used,19 or some other form of pattern and transfer. and although the discoloured area around Henrietta Maria’s head in the portrait in the Wrightsman Collection indicates that an actual sitting occurred for this work, the principal outlines are the same as in the picture at Longford Castle. In this case, Van Dyck seems to have started from his pattern and then brought it to life in the presence of his sitter. So, for his portraits of Henrietta Maria, Van Dyck seems to have ensured that her features remained the 19 Maryan ainsworth, “‘Paternes for phiosioneamyes’: Holbein’s Portraiture reconsidered”, Burlington Magazine 132 (1990).

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Anthony van Dyck, Henrietta Maria, 1632, Private Collection

same and were instantly recognizable with the help of patterns. this practice was not new; it had already been used under elizabeth i.20 it is one of the primary functions of a portrait to preserve the appearance of the sitter for posterity. To accomplish this, the artist could undertake a purely mimetic 20 there is, however, nothing to prove this. as Sir Oliver Millar has pointed out, there is no evidence that Van Dyck made and kept such patterns for future reference in his studio. See Millar et al., Van Dyck. A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, p. 421. for elizabeth i, see ellis K. Waterhouse, “Portraits of our Kings and Queens. from Henry Viii to Queen Victoria”, The Studio 135 (1948): 137.

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Henrietta Maria

Anthony van Dyck, Henrietta Maria, c.1635, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden

description, warts and all, or he could correct physical defects, a practice known as dissimulatione. as Henrietta Maria was a queen, her portraits are state portraits. Dissimulation had been a typical feature of state portraits since the time of aristotle. it was also claimed by Gian Paolo Lomazzo in his Trattato dell’Arte de la Pittura: ‘Conciosia che al pittore conniene che sempre accresa nelle faccie grandezza, & maestà, coprendo il difetto del naturale, come si vede che hanno fatto gl’antichi pittori, i quali solenano sempre dissimulare, & anco nascondere le imperfettioni

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Anthony van Dyck, Henrietta Maria, the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

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7.8

Henrietta Maria

Anthony van Dyck, Henrietta Maria, 1636, Private Collection, New York

naturali con l’arte.’21 according to Lomazzo, the right proportions – seven heads – give majesty and beauty to the body, a graceful and erect carriage conveys nobility and greatness, a grave expression dignity. in a state portrait, therefore, the sitter appears not as he is, but as he should be.22 21 Paolo Lomazzo, Trattato dell’arte de la pittura (Hildesheim, 1584, repr 1968), p. 433. the Trattato has been translated into English by R. Haydocke in 1598 and was widely popular at the court of Charles i. 22 Marianna Jenkins, The State Portrait: Its Origin and Evolution (New York, 1947), 44ff.

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Anthony van Dyck, Henrietta Maria, Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Branderburg

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So while the question of likeness is secondary to a state portrait, the artist certainly did not render his sitter unrecognizable. It is worth looking at contemporary descriptions of Henrietta Maria in order to see how Van Dyck modified her. Henrietta Maria was petite and only reached her husband’s shoulder. as Charles i himself was no more than 1.62 metres tall, Henrietta Maria can only have measured about 1.4 metres. But she compensated for this lack in height with a regal bearing. Mme La fayette, a lady at the court of anne of austria, described Henrietta Maria’s expression as ‘grand and noble throughout her whole person’. according to La fayette, Henrietta Maria had a well-proportioned body, a long face with large black eyes, fine teeth and a beautiful complexion; her forehead, nose and mouth were a bit large, but well formed. there was a strong family resemblance to her father, Henri iV of france.23 But nine pregnancies in 15 years and prolonged ill health left their mark on Henrietta Maria’s body. in 1642 she wrote to her old friend Mamie St Georges from her exile in the Hague, ‘be assured that there is not a more wretched creature in this world than I, separated far from the king my lord, from my children, out of my country, and without hope of returning there.’24 no wonder then that when her niece Sophie of Hannover met her just a month later, the impression the 11-year-old gained was that of a small woman with long thin arms, crooked shoulders and teeth ‘protruding from her mouth like guns from a fort’.25 When Henrietta Maria returned to england after the restoration in 1660, Samuel Pepys saw her on 22 november and described her as ‘a very little plain old woman and nothing more in her presence in any respect nor garbe then any ordinary woman’.26 It is obvious that Van Dyck has stretched the queen to ideal measurements. In the full-length portraits, her body is eight heads long, and compared to surrounding tables, pillars or other sitters portrayed with her, she appears just right, never too small. Painted before the civil troubles in england started, her features correspond to the description given by Mme La fayette, especially her nose. the studies made for Bernini make it clear that Van Dyck did not flatter her. Although her aquiline nose gains prominence in the profile views, her shoulders slope visibly and her slightly protuberant lower lip brings to mind the words of Sophie of Hannover, there is no marked difference to her other portraits. Her large dark eyes draw the attention of the beholder and distract from her other features and her shoulders are covered by lace. As Sir Oliver Millar has rightly observed: ‘Van Dyck enhanced, rather than flattered, his sitter’s appearance.’27 The portraits were made to hang in the king and queen’s personal collections and to be given away as gifts. those portraits which were hung in the royal galleries were among the first Van Dyck executed in 1632 – the ‘greate peece’ of the royal family (figure 7.10), the half-length in white for Charles’ i bedchamber (figure 5.8), and the double portrait in Kroměříž – while all the later ones were given away, either Agnes Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England, vol. 8 (London, 1845), p. 31. Letter of 28 May 1642, Green, ed., p. 72. 25 Quoted after Plowden, p. 168. After being flattered by a remark by Henrietta Maria, Sophie concluded her report with the decision to find her from now on quite handsome. 26 robert Latham, ed., The Shorter Pepys (Harmondsworth, 1985), p. 97. 27 Millar et al., Van Dyck. A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, p. 424. 23 24

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Anthony van Dyck, The ‘Greate Peece’, 1632, the royal Collection ©2007, Her Majesty Queen elizabeth ii

as presents to family members or courtiers, as diplomatic gifts, or in exchange for other paintings.28 Sometimes, as was the case with the pair for Frederick Hendrick’s 28 Charles i exchanged a copy of Henrietta Maria’s portrait ‘in blue’ for a self-portrait by Pordenone from Pembroke, the Lord Chamberlain. See Oliver Millar, “Abraham Van Der Doort’s Catalogue of the Collections of Charles i”, Walpole Society 37 (1958–60): 49, no. 19. Pembroke had already received a portrait of Henrietta Maria by Van Dyck in May or July 1633, see Stopes, p. 163. Millar et al., Van Dyck. A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, p. 8.

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portrait gallery in Huis ter Nieuwburgh in Rijswijk, now in the Oranienburg, Van Dyck had to adapt his compositions to given measurements.29 He usually knew who the recipient would be, as becomes clear from his Memoire pour Sa Magte Le Roy, the reminder for the king of payments he owed the artist in about 1638.30 The king and queen made payments independently of each other. In Van Dyck’s Memoire, nine pictures for which Henrietta Maria was expected to pay are singled out: ‘the other pictures wch the King hathe marked wth a cross before them the Queene is to paye for them and her matie is to rate them.’ although she did not cross out the prices the painter had demanded and write the reduced price behind, as Charles i had done, she reduced the prices to almost half: ‘the Picture [sic] for the queene 0200’, instead of the original £380. interestingly, the two portraits chosen for Bernini were paid for by the king, as was ‘Une piece pour La Maison a Grunwitz’, most probably Van Dyck’s Cupid and Psyche,31 while two versions of ‘Une reyne en petite forme’, possibly copies of the third portrait study which was made, but not used by Bernini, were paid for by the queen. Turning now to the portraits themselves, it is striking that the most ambitious compositions stem from the first two years of Van Dyck’s residence in London, with the exception of the portrait for Cardinal Barberini. iconographically the early portraits are more substantial than the later ones painted between 1636 and 1638, and their artistic quality is mostly higher. as some of these early portraits are new versions of already existing compositions by artists such as Mytens, it becomes clear that the content and to some extent the form of a portrait were decided by Charles i and Henrietta Maria, not the artist. Obviously, some ideas were dear to them, and they did not rest until these ideas were transformed into a work of art to their satisfaction. The portraits in question are the ‘greate peece’, the double portrait in Kroměříž and the portrait with Jeffrey Hudson. About four months after Van Dyck arrived in London, a warrant was issued to pay him £100 for ‘One greate peece of our royall selfe, Consort and children’, among other works, on 8 August 1632. Measuring 3.02 × 2.55 metres, this painting was the largest royal portrait group in England on canvas to that date. It was also the first official portrait of a royal family since Henry VIII. It did not fail to make an impact on contemporaries.32 the royal pair are shown sitting on chairs of state together with their two children, Charles, Prince of Wales, aged two, standing at his father’s knee, and Mary, Princess royal, about six months old, being held by her mother. to the left a table covered with a red cloth carries the crown, orb and sceptre, above which there is a view of Westminster in the distance. a column rises behind Charles i, while Henrietta Maria is set in front of a gold curtain. Between the royal pair, two little greyhounds move about playfully.

SP 16/406, fos 16–17. Millar et al., Van Dyck. A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, cat. iV 3. 31 William Hookham Carpenter, Mémoires et Documents inédits sur Antoine van Dyck, P. P. Rubens et autres artistes contemporains … Traduit de l’anglais par Louis Hymans (antwerp, 1845), p. 71. 32 Howarth, p. 81. 29 30

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At first glance, this portrait appears to be the domestic image of a happy family. However, a family life in the contemporary sense of the word did not exist at the Stuart court: the king and queen had separate households and their children were raised by others. a comparable situation, with the parents seated and the children by their side, could have been observed at audiences when the children were present. Instead of being an informal image like a snapshot from a family album, this painting is a highly political statement of the legitimacy of Charles i’s right to rule. it provides the painted theory of Charles I’s reign: it shows him as king dei gratia, who takes care of the common good like a father, guaranteeing a stable government through his lawful reign and a legitimate heir. Henrietta Maria plays an important role at Charles i’s side. Presenting his child to the viewer, her smiling gaze is turned towards her husband. She is the very image of marital devotion. this is supported by the two little dogs at her feet. Greyhounds, apart from being royal beasts in the heraldic sense and actually belonging to the royal households, function as symbols of fidelity. Fidelity not only describes the relationship between husband and wife, but also between monarch and subject. in this way, marital fidelity becomes the symbol of the king’s duty towards his subjects and of their loyalty towards their monarch. the analogy of family and state was drawn by Plato, aristotle and Cicero and their ideas had been revived by James i in his Basilicon Doron. Marriage, the nucleus of the family, formed the basis of society. as the family corresponds to society, the father corresponds to the ruler. the father protects and cares for his wife and children, who are subject to him and have a duty to obey him. Adam, the first father, was used as a justification for absolute monarchy: he was given power by God, so the only natural power on earth is the power of fathers. therefore, it was argued, people had never lived without government, but always in absolute monarchy with the firstborn as successor. Because of the power bestowed unto the king by God, the protection and the well-being of his people is his first duty; he has to care for them like a father for his family. in return, he could expect their love, loyalty and obedience. and as a father, a king has to be an example to his people. In 1614, the parliamentary speaker ranulph Crew summarized James i’s concept of monarchy: Your Majesty is the image and representation of God upon earth, for kings be gods upon earth, sitting upon God’s throne to administer justice and judgement unto his people; they be patres patriae, the parent of their people to tender them as their children. they are the head of the people for direction and preservation, and therefore to your majesty (as representing God) we owe all honour and legal allegiance.33

So, in Van Dyck’s portrait we have Charles I as pater patriae presiding over his family, an ideal model for the court to imitate. The first duty of a royal marriage is to secure the succession. A legitimate heir guarantees a peaceful transition from one reign to the next, and the continuity of the dynasty secures the state and the well-being of the people. in this sense, the children of Charles i are the expression of his duty towards the salus populi. In Van Dyck’s 33 Quoted from Peter Wende, “Das Herrscherbild des 17. Jahrhunderts in england”, in Herrscherbild im 17. Jahrhundert, ed. Konrad repgen (Münster, 1991), p. 62.

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painting, the pictorial relationship between the king, his son and the buildings of Westminster corresponds to their actual relationship during Charles i’s reign: to secure the freedom and the property of his subjects, Charles i has to rule according to the laws. the laws were made in Parliament, which in 1632 was housed in St Stephen’s chapel and the White Chamber of the old Palace of Westminster, and were executed in the courts of justice. the Supreme Court was housed in Westminster Hall. the piece of paper Charles i holds may be understood as a legal document. it is placed near the symbols of his kingship, the crown, orb and sceptre. So, here we have in one axis the hierarchy of power. Unseen, but present in the glowing light of the sun, is God, under whom Charles – God’s lieutenant on earth – places a protective arm around his eldest son and heir. Westminster appears slightly below the king’s head, in a shadow cast by clouds. it is also positioned further into the distance than was geographically the case. in 1632, Charles i had not called Parliament for three years, so this may explain its inconspicuous representation in the picture. However, if Charles i planned to rule without Parliament, as is often said, he hardly would have given it a place in his portrait at all. So, in this axis we find the means by which Charles i reigns and which legitimizes his right to rule: by divine right, by law and by succession.34 the family portrait was hung in the long gallery of Whitehall Palace where it surpassed all other paintings in size. the full-length representation of the sitters, although seated, and the grave and dignified expression of the king demands the respect and awe of the beholder and keeps him at a certain distance. A closer approach and greater intimacy is granted by half-length portraits like the double portrait of Charles I and Henrietta Maria in Kroměříž. It was painted for Henrietta Maria’s new Cabinet room in Somerset House where it hung above the chimney.35 This portrait more than any other makes it clear how persistent the king and queen were in translating their ideas into a pictorial form. the genesis of the painting is well known. In about 1630–32, Daniel Mytens had painted a double portrait with Charles i and Henrietta Maria. this portrait, however, obviously did not please his patrons, because in 1632 he was asked to overpaint the image of Henrietta Maria with a copy of the portrait Van Dyck had made for Charles I’s bedchamber. The result still did not satisfy, however, so Van Dyck was commissioned to paint an entirely new picture. Van Dyck’s portrait was such a success that Henrietta Maria also hung the print which was made after it by robert van Voerst in her dressing-room.36 Mytens and Van Dyck were not the only ones busy producing double portraits of Charles and Henrietta Maria: in the same year Hendrik Gerritsz Pot painted a small portrait with

34 for a detailed analysis of this painting see my dissertation in Anton Van Dycks Porträts König Karls I. von England und Königin Henrietta Marias. Form, Inhalt und Funktion (Bonn, 2003), pp. 133–52. 35 for the decoration of this room see John Harris and Gordon Higgott, Inigo Jones: Complete Architectural Drawings (New York, 1989), p. 194. 36 Antony Griffiths, The Print in Stuart Britain (London, 1998), pp. 71 and 86, cat. 42.

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Charles i, Henrietta Maria and the Prince of Wales which had similar accoutrements and the same message.37 Charles i and Henrietta Maria did not tire from engaging their artists to produce representations of their mutual and fruitful love. In the double portrait in Kroměříž, Charles looks at his wife who gives him a laurel wreath. She glances towards the beholder and holds a sprig of olive. the inscription on robert van Voerst’s engraving explains the scene: ‘Filius sic Magni est Jacobi, hac filia Magni Henrici, soboles dic misi qualis erit?’ in other words, the offspring of the present generation will continue to be as virtuous as their forefathers. James i’s peaceful nature has been given to Henrietta Maria, symbolized in the olive branch, while the laurel wreath of the victorious Henri iV is being handed to Charles i. this chiastic interchange of gestures and symbolic evergreens pictorially connects the Stuart and Bourbon lines and unites the opposites of war and peace: harmonia est discordia concors. and as harmony was considered the foundation of peace and order in the realm, this was the dawn of a new Golden age. the theme of union is also borne out in the form of the portrait, which follows the conventions of pair portraiture and especially alliance portraits which were developed to document family lineages.38 instead of the family arms, which were used to identify the sitters in earlier portraits, Charles i and Henrietta Maria are clad in the heraldic colours of their families. Charles appears in the red of the Stuarts, which is associated with the english rose, and Henrietta Maria wears the white of the french lily. the red bows on Henrietta Maria’s gown and the white shirt under Charles I’s paned doublet take up the theme of interchanging. it is hard to say who commissioned this portrait as no documents concerning payment are known. A model for the composition, Titian’s double portrait of Charles V and Isabella of 1548, which is now lost, was known to Charles I who had seen it 1623 in Madrid. He acquired a copy rubens made of it, probably in 1640 after the artist’s death.39 However, the idea of fertility and the union of virtues in a royal marriage was also a topic found at the french court. it is alluded to in a series of drawings by antoine Caron in the Louvre.40 Henri ii and Catherine de Médicis are shown holding a flaming cornucopia in a drawing for the cycle ‘L’Histoire des Rois de france’. in a drawing for the cycle ‘La Descendance d’Henri ii et de Catherine de Médicis’ the pair is crowned by iuno and Catherine is holding an olive branch. a poem by nicolas Houel explains the scene as an image of the fertility of this holy marriage which unites the courage of Henri and the virtue of Catherine. the parallels to the paintings by Mytens and Van Dyck are obvious. It is not clear whether Henrietta Maria knew these drawings, but it seems that her part in the commission was greater than has been hitherto acknowledged. 37 Christopher White, The Dutch Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen (Cambridge, 1982), p. 97, cat. 152. 38 Berthold Hinz, “Studien zur Geschichte des ehepaarbildes”, Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 19 (1974). 39 Harold e. Wethey, The Paintings of Titian. II. The Portraits (London, 1971), pp. 194–5, cat. L 6. 40 Ju les Guiffrey, Les Dessins de L’Histoire des Rois de France par Nicolas Houel (Paris, 1920), figs XVIII and XIX. Jean Jean Ehrmann, Antoine Caron. Peintre des fêtes et des massacres (Paris, 1986), cat. XVi and XViii, see also p. 153.

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this is also suggested by another layer of meaning found in the portrait. in the great family portrait, Henrietta Maria obediently and adoringly gazes at her husband, but in this work it is Charles I who casts a tender and loving look at his wife, who in turn takes up contact with the viewer. This exchange of glances can be read as an expression of Platonic Love, a philosophy that was widespread at the Caroline court. When Henrietta Maria came to england in 1625, she brought with her Honoré d’Urfé’s pastoral novel L’Astrée and made it popular. in the ensuing cult of Platonic Love, the contemplation of earthly beauty played a central role. it was thought to result in the vision and understanding of divine ideas, the origin of matter. Love in its desire of beauty was supposed to transcend the senses and help the soul to understand divine ideas.41 So, here we have Charles i contemplating the beauty of Henrietta Maria, and in doing so he sees divine truth. In looking at his wife, the king recognizes God, his only master. Like the great family portrait, but on a much more intimate scale, the love of king and queen gained political dimensions in this portrait. Through loving his wife, the king expressed his love of his subjects, and with his children he meant to revive the fame and virtues of their ancestors and to secure the peace and well-being of his people. These ideas are not only found in the portraits by Van Dyck, but also in prints, medals and in the court masques, which are analysed elsewhere in this volume. So far, the portraits discussed were made for the residences of the king and queen, so the courtiers who had access to the galleries and state rooms were privy to the thoughts expressed in the paintings. Charles i and Henrietta Maria visually communicated the central ideas of their reign in locations where they knew that they would be understood. not surprisingly, the pictorial content of the portraits which were made to be given away is of a much more general nature, following an international iconography that could easily be read at courts in other countries. One of the earliest and certainly the most well-known of the portraits that were intended as gifts is the portrait of Henrietta Maria with Jeffrey Hudson in Washington. It is not known for whom Van Dyck’s original was painted, but Charles I gave a workshop replica to Thomas Wentworth and paid the artist £40 for it in October 1633. Like the double portrait in Kroměříž, the composition was possibly modelled on an earlier painting by Daniel Mytens of 1628 which is now lost.42 So much has been said about this portrait that there is little to add. it must have made a striking impression because of its chord of primary colours which appear in the velvet, silk and brocade. Despite their splendour, they do not detract from the queen’s face which is framed and isolated by a black beaver hat. This hat, an 41 On the cult of Platonic Love at the court of Henrietta Maria, see erica Veevers, Images of Love and Religion: Queen Henrietta Maria and Court Entertainments (Cambridge, 1989). 42 For possible reflections of Mytens’ composition Millar et al., Van Dyck. A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, p. 522, cat. iV 18. three versions were to be given to a Madame nourice, to elizabeth of Bohemia and to the Duchess of Saxony. for a discussion about the identity of Madame nourice and the Duchess, see erin Griffey, “Multum in parvo. Portraits of Jeffrey Hudson, Court Dwarf to Henrietta Maria”, The British Art Journal iV, no. 3 (2003): 42. another possible candidate for ‘Madame nourice’ would be Madame Peronne, the french midwife. Henrietta Maria expected her first child in the summer of 1629.

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element of male dress worn by women only when on horseback, her high necked gown and the spurs on Jeffrey’s boots indicate that the queen and her dwarf are about to go for a ride, or go hunting as has been suggested. indeed, Henrietta Maria is wearing a similar gown to that which she wears in Mytens’ painting of Charles i and Henrietta Maria departing for the chase of about 1630 in Hampton Court Palace.43 This painting incorporates two important protagonists also portrayed by Van Dyck: Jeffrey Hudson and a monkey. In the painting by Mytens, the little monkey, often cut off in reproductions, rides on the back of a dog at the right hand side of the picture. this humorous element, also present in Jeffrey’s battle with the lap-dogs, is missing in Van Dyck’s portrait. Here, the court dwarf gains prominence and appears as an agile and attentive little companion to the queen. Dwarfs have belonged to royal or ducal courts since antiquity. they were laughed at, a rarity to be collected and shown off, they served as scapegoat for their master, surrogate child for their mistress, and their small stature gave others someone to look down on which gave them a feeling of greatness. Being contrasted with a dwarf must have been an elevating and beautifying experience for a courtier. However, dwarfs, and especially Jeffrey, also served as a corrective to a court imminent to drown in its own narcissism: ‘Rex, memento te eße minimum: O King remember how thou art little, borne like others little, to teach thee to Heaven humility, to Earth, humanity.’44 Henrietta Maria was genuinely fond of her little servant, and for years they were inseparable. Monkeys, apart from being exotic pets, epitomized human weakness and desire. A chained monkey was a symbol of a voluntary prisoner of evil, a fool. They were also thought to be the advisers of fools. From early on, monkeys and fools or dwarfs were depicted together. In Van Dyck’s portrait, the little monkey standing on the dwarf’s arm has rightly been understood as a symbol of human desires and senses – note the pear in Jeffrey’s hand – which are overcome by the virtue of the queen. Her gesture on the monkey’s arm is a controlling, suppressing one, indicating that she bridles her passions, an image which accords with the hint towards riding and the hunt. thus, in this portrait, Henrietta Maria is represented as a heroine of virtue, fit to rule over others as she governs herself. Just as there is a tradition of depicting dwarfs, there is also a long tradition of portraits depicting queens or ladies of the court with monkeys. Quite a number of them were to be found in the collections of Charles I. In the background of the family portrait of Henry Viii, which had served as a model for the ‘greate peece’, the court fool Will Somers appears with a monkey on his shoulder. From Mantua Charles I 43 Oliver Millar, Catalogue of Tudor, Stuart and Early Georgian Pictures in the Collection of H.M. The Queen (London, 1963), p. 86, cat. 120. the term ‘hunting dress’ is misleading, as there were no special hunting clothes in the early seventeenth century. for a hunt, normal riding clothes were worn. 44 Microphilus. The New-Yeeres Gift: Presented at Court, from the Lady Parvula to the Lord Minimus (commonly called little Jeffery), Her Majesties servant, with a Letter as it was penned in short-hand wherein is proved Little Things are better then Great (London, 1638). On Jeffrey see Griffey, “Multum in parvo. Portraits of Jeffrey Hudson, Court Dwarf to Henrietta Maria” and Nick Page, Lord Minimus. The Extraordinary Life of Britain’s Smallest Man (London, 2001).

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acquired a painting by fra Semplice da Verona, the Expulsion of the Wedding Guest, of 1622. there is a certain similarity between the dwarf and Jeffrey’s pose, and as this painting came to england in 1628, the same year that Mytens painted his portrait of Henrietta Maria and Jeffrey, there might be a connection.45 there were two portraits of isabella Clara eugenia in the royal collection. in one of these, a full-length portrait in the Cross Gallery of Somerset House, she was depicted with a dwarf, and in the other, a half-length by Pantoja de la Cruz now in Petworth, a monkey sits next to her on a table.46 Other portraits of ladies with a monkey in Charles I’s collection included Margaret Tudor, possibly Arabella Stuart, and Lady Shirley by Van Dyck.47 So the tradition was well known to Henrietta Maria. The presence of these paintings may have inspired her when having her own likeness made. and then there is the orange. a portrait with a potted orange tree was unprecedented. through it, Henrietta Maria was referring to her descent, as well as her pastimes. Palle, or oranges, were the emblems of the Médicis family, and there is no doubt that the orange tree is a reference to her maternal lineage. Her father, Henri iV of france, the Gallic Hercules, might be referred to in the lion’s head decorating the flower pot. Oranges grew in the garden of the Hesperides and were the prize for the hero Hercules. as Henrietta Maria was named after both her parents, Henri and Marie, this pot plant may not only be a dynastic symbol, but also act as a reference to the sitter herself. furthermore, it highlighted a horticultural innovation of the early seventeenth century. Oranges had been grown in england for half a century, but for a plant to be viable, it had to be sheltered in winter. thus, each year a house was built around a plant to protect it from the cold. This was a cumbersome task, and so a more practical solution was sought. instead of a temporary cover, a permanent structure was built for mobile oranges. in her garden at Oatlands, Henrietta Maria had 60 orange trees for which a new orangery was being built in 1633.48 Henrietta Maria was an important patron of horticulture in england, employing gardeners such as John tradescant, andré Mollet and andré Le nôtre. and in her garden, she was able to control and overcome nature, just as she does the monkey in her portrait. So here we have Henrietta Maria depicted with the rarities of nature which were found This must remain an assumption as long as the portrait by Mytens is unknown. Charles i soon exchanged the big painting against a small portrait of Maria Stuart. See Millar, “abraham Van Der Doort’s Catalogue of the Collections of Charles i”, p. 158, no. 7. for fra Semplice’s painting see Sergio Marinelli, ed., Manierismo a Mantova. La Pittura da Giulio Romano all’età di Rubens (Verona, 1998), pp. 284f. and 92–3. 46 Karen Hearn, Dynasties: Painting in Tudor and Jacobean England 1530–1630 (London, 1995), p. 182, cat. 24; Maria Kusche, Juan Pantoja de La Cruz (Madrid, 1964), p. 149, cat. 14. 47 Millar, “abraham Van Der Doort’s Catalogue of the Collections of Charles i”, p. 84; Millar, Catalogue of Tudor, Stuart and Early Georgian Pictures in the Collection of H.M. The Queen, p. 84, cat. 115; Millar et al., Van Dyck. A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, cat. II 63. For a more general discussion of queens and other ladies portrayed with monkeys see my dissertation Anton Van Dycks Porträts König Karls I. von England und Königin Henrietta Marias. Form, Inhalt und Funktion, pp. 181–3. 48 Prudence Leith-ross, The John Tradescants: Gardeners to the Rose and Lily Queen (London, 1984), p. 96. 45

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at her court. She tames and controls nature just as she controls herself and becomes a perfect queen, the descendant of virtuous and heroic ancestors. The accoutrements in her other portraits are kept to a minimum, allowing only very general interpretations. A small crown identifies her as queen. She is almost always shown holding or touching a couple of roses in the half-length portraits, and in the full-lengths a glass vase filled with roses stands beside her on a table. The significance of olive branches, laurel wreaths and orange trees has already been discussed. Only the portrait in the Wrightsman Collection is without any greenery. Sir Oliver Millar has supposed that there might be no other reason for the use of flowers in the portraits than their decorative value.49 However, both the roses and the vases can be read as symbols. Roses were the heraldic flowers of England, and they were the attribute of the Virgin Mary, Henrietta Maria’s namesake and patron. As the most beautiful and fragrant of all flowers, the rose took the first place in the floral hierarchy: ‘Inter omnes flores principatum Rosa facile obtinet.’50 the rose is the attribute of Venus and the three Graces, so it was the obvious choice for an analogy with women: as roses were the most beautiful of flowers, they implied that the lady portrayed with them was equally beautiful. Henrietta Maria’s beauty was praised again and again by her poets and dramatists, and, as has already been explained, it played a central role in the cult of Platonic Love: ‘corporeal beauty, consisting in symmetry, colour, and certain unexpressable graces shining in the queen’s majesty, may draw us to the contemplation of the beauty of the soul, unto which it hath analogy.’51 Vases and other glass vessels were symbols of purity and chastity. In Christian iconography, the Virgin Mary conceived her child like a ray of sun penetrating a glass vessel without destroying it. in the renaissance, vessels were symbols for the body as container of the soul and of virtue, as Cicero had explained in his Tusculanae Disputationes: ‘nam corpus quidem quasi vas est aut aliquod animi receptaculum.’52 Van Dyck had known these metaphors and used them in many of his english portraits,53 so the vases in Henrietta Maria’s portraits may be understood as a symbol of her chastity and as reference to her considerable virtues. Vases with flowers were also used to signify a pregnancy, so the roses which Henrietta Maria holds before her stomach or cradles in her hands could be interpreted in this way. this cradling gesture, appropriate for decent and modest women,54 is mostly to be found in the half-lengths, and visually closes the body. We know that Van Dyck painted Henrietta Maria while she was pregnant: ‘The Picture of yte Queene

Millar et al., Van Dyck. A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, p. 424. Crispijn de Passe, Hortus floridus, vol. 2 (arnhem, 1614), p. 12. 51 Aurelian Townshend, Tempe Restored, 1632, taken from Stephen Orgel and Roy Strong, Inigo Jones: the Theatre of the Stuart Court, 2 vols (London, 1973), vol. 1, p. 62. 52 Quoted after Ute Davitt asmus, Corpus Quasi Vas. Beiträge zur Ikonographie der italienischen Renaissance (Berlin, 1977), p. 96, no. 63. 53 Zirka Zaremba Filipczak, “Reflections on Motifs in Van Dyck’s Portraits” in Anthony Van Dyck, ed. Wheelock, Barnes, and Held, p. 61. 54 Frank Zöllner, Leonardo da Vinci. Mona Lisa. Das Porträt der Lisa del Giocondo. Legende und Geschichte (Frankfurt am Main, 1994), p. 57. 49

50

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when she was wth Childe’ was sold on 26 april 1650.55 it is not sure which portrait this was; it could have been the painting at Longford Castle, in Dresden or in the Wrightsman Collection, or a replica of one of them. in all of these portraits Henrietta Maria is lavishly adorned with pearls. Pearls are the attribute of St Margaret, the patron saint of pregnant women: like a pearl inside an oyster, a child grows inside a mother’s womb.56 And like the crystal vase, it could be compared to the immaculate conception, the white pearl signifying the chastity and purity of the Virgin.57 Here, again, we have a reference to Henrietta Maria’s namesake. Moreover, the pearls were fitting for a queen over the British Isles, whose husband ruled like Neptune over the seas. the string of pearls in the portrait in Dresden forms a fleur de lis, as does the bodice on the portrait in state robes in Oranienburg. Like the orange tree, they refer to her french and italian ancestry. Children played a crucial role in the continuity of a dynasty, and so portraits of pregnant women were seen as documents of ‘anticipated dynastic success’.58 as a Catholic watched suspiciously by the Puritans, Henrietta Maria had to be careful with open demonstrations of her religion. therefore, in the Catholic Van Dyck’s portraits, allusions to his faith are kept well hidden. Charles I’s state crown was always depicted from the back in order not to show the image of Mary with the child in a fleuron.59 the possible allusions to Mary in the roses and pearls, which also had other connotations, have already been explained. the white, gold and blue colour of some of her dresses may also allude to her faith: white, the colour of purity and light, has been associated with the Catholic faith by Cesare ripa;60 gold is the colour of a gown worn by Fede in an Allegory of Faith by David teniers in the Hermitage;61 and blue is the colour of heaven.62 the half-length of Henrietta Maria in a gold dress was a present for Cardinal Barberini (figure 7.8) and the portrait in blue (figure 7.4) probably was connected with her new chapel in Somerset House, so it seems that these colours have religious significance. Henrietta Maria’s jewellery more clearly refers to her faith. in the portrait in Dresden, a brooch in the form of a cross adorns her bodice, and in the portrait in San Diego her blue dress is held together 55 Oliver Millar, “the inventories and Valuations of the King’s Goods 1649–1651”, Walpole Society 43 (1970–72): 64, no. 71. 56 e. de Jongh, “Pearls of Virtue and Pearls of Vice”, Simiolus 8, no. 2 (1975–76): 84f. Susan J. Barnes and Arthur Wheelock, Van Dyck 350 (Washington, 1994), p. 274. 57 See, for example, John Horden, ed., Partheneia Sacra. 1633 (Menston, 1971), p. 193. 58 Hearn, p. 91. See also Hearn’s “a fatal fertility? elizabethan and Jacobean Pregnancy Portraits”, Costume 32 (1998) and her Marcus Gheeraerts II. Elizabethan Artist (London, 2002), pp. 41–51. 59 M.r. Holmes, “the Crowns of england”, Archaeologia 86 (1936): 83, roy Strong, Lost Treasures of Britain (London, 1990), p. 122. Daniel Mytens showed the crown from its front. 60 Cesare ripa, Iconologia (Hildesheim and New York, 1970), p. 149f. Here he describes fede christiana and fede cattolica with white gowns, ‘perche come il color biancho ci mostra la similitudine della luce’. 61 Jongh, p. 87. 62 Arthur K. Wheelock, Vermeer. Das Gesamtwerk (Stuttgart and Zurich, 1995), p. 190, cat. 20.

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by a multitude of winged heads, identified by Diana Scarisbrick as cherubim.63 in Henrietta Maria’s new chapel in Somerset House, opened in December 1636, the altar by françois Dieussart was decorated by countless angels, cherubs and seraphs, surrounded by rays of light.64 the chapel was led by a group of french Capuchins, a branch of the franciscan order, founded by Saint francis of assisi. as he had been stigmatized by Seraphs, the franciscans were also called the seraphic order. therefore, the brooches on her blue dress possibly refer to her connection to the Capuchins and her hope of eventually converting england to the Catholic faith.65 So was it Henrietta Maria’s only function in the portraits to look ornamental? As we have seen, her beauty was central to the cult of Platonic Love, closely related to the love of her husband and her motherhood which secured the peace and continuity of the reign. Henrietta Maria was portrayed as the virtuous queen, controlling nature, and, in a more arcane way, she was shown as a Catholic queen. Van Dyck, always sensitive to the political and economical climate of a place, was ready to pack his bags in 1641 and try his luck in Paris. But before he could establish himself, he died in December, aged 42. three months later, Henrietta Maria went into exile in Holland. the halcyon years were over.

Diana Scarisbrick, “For Richer For Poorer”, Country Life 4 (1990): 138 in the caption to fig. 5 Comparable brooches are, apart from the portraits of Anne Crofts, Countess of Cleveland and Lady Tufton, to be found in Van Dyck’s portrait of Lady Mary Villiers as agnes in the royal Collection and in the painting of the Virgin and Child with two Donors in the Louvre. They may have been inspired by Michelangelo’s influential design of a Pietà for Vittoria Colonna, see Charles de tolnay, Michelangelo. Vol. V. The Final Period (Princeton, 1960), p. 61, fig. 159, and pp. 340–58. 64 Veevers, p. 166. 65 this interpretation is supported by the copies in Syon House and in ingatestone Hall, where angels have been added, and by the copy in Serlby Hall which shows a church, possibly St Paul’s, in the background. 63

Chapter 8

Devotional Jewellery in Portraits of Henrietta Maria erin Griffey

the visual representation of Catholic devotion – whether through gesture, dress or jewellery – faces us in many portraits of Catholic queens. though often neglected by scholars in their studies of portraiture and the history of collecting, jewellery served a vital function as a visual marker of both piety and magnificence, what might be termed prince/ssly piety. Crosses and crucifixes, rosaries and wimples all appear in early modern portraits of Catholic queens and noblewomen. Peter Paul rubens (1577–1640) executed a number of splendid portraits of explicitly Catholic queens and regents at the french, Spanish and Brussels courts, including Marie de Médicis (1609), anne of austria (c.1622–25) and isabella Clara eugenia (1625). But Henrietta Maria, who was related by marriage or blood-lines to all of these women, was the first Catholic queen at a Protestant court, and in a country that was deeply suspicious of ‘popish’ influence.1 My examination of the visual persona of Henrietta Maria hinges on the potential significance of the appearance (or absence) of devotional jewellery in her portraits from 1625 to 1641. although jewellery was scandalously expensive (especially relative to painting, for example), surviving bills and receipts are unfortunately very vague.2 Although we know that she spent vast sums on jewellery and had a series of clerks of the jewel coffers, there are few references to specifically devotional jewellery. Diamonds figure prominently in the documents which sometimes mention that they are set in a necklace or ring, and occasionally they are listed as gifts of congratulation on the occasion of marriage or birth.3 there are, however, a few very 1 Caroline Hibbard discusses these suspicions and the queen’s Catholicism at length in Charles I and the Popish Plot (Chapel Hill, 1983). this is deftly and succinctly treated in her entry for Henrietta Maria in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. See also, with specific reference to patronage, Jeremy Wood, “Van Dyck: A Catholic Artist in Protestant england, and the notes on Painting Compiled by francis russell, 4th earl of Bedford”, in Van Dyck 1599–1999, Conjectures and Refutations, ed. Hans Vlieghe (turnhout, 2001), pp.167–98. 2 Caroline Hibbard generously shared with me a number of examples from court records, See for example, PrO e.405/283, fo. 53v, 1100 for 2 pendants of diamonds and 2 fair pearls bought by the queen to give to Mme d’Effiat (letter 19 December 1626); fos 81–2, H[erriott] ‘one fair jewel bought of him for the Queen’ for 400 pounds sterling. 3 Hibbard again provided these references for me. See PrO t56, fo. 6r, £320 paid for a diamond to congratulate on the birth of Princess anne.

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tantalizing references to diamonds in the form of a cross in the documents, which Caroline Hibbard has brought to my attention.4 the queen brought a ‘diamond cross’ with her from france5 and bought a ‘jewel of diamonds set in the form of a cross’ from John Lawrence, a jeweller, in 1628–29 for £3006; £300 was also paid for ‘a cross of diamonds’ in Michaelmas Quarter 1630.7 two further references to crosses of diamonds appear in 1636–37, references that are important for the argument of this essay because this coincides with the appearance of such diamond crosses in portraits.8 Because of the nature of these descriptions it is impossible to link such documented jewels with portrayed ones, though the documents highlight the cost of such jewels, and the abundance of them in her possession throughout her time in england. Henrietta Maria brought one such diamond cross with her when she arrived at Dover in 1625, a girl of 15.9 She must have taken jewellery with her when she left dramatically in 1644 to escape the english civil wars for france, only to return briefly at the Restoration in 1660 and settling briefly at Somerset House from 1662 to 1665.10 Her letters and contemporary accounts attest to her piety and devotion to the Catholic cause in england, as a handmaiden for Catholics in her adopted country and in fervent hopes for her own Catholic heirs to the throne.11 the proliferation of portraits that emerged from her period in england occupy a fascinating place in early modern portraiture, because they stage her visual persona in a multiplicity of ways and raise interesting questions about her role as an art patron. after a few years of settling into the country and into what began as a tense marriage largely centred on religious issues, she embraced both england and her husband, Charles i. in the portraits of the early 1630s she appears in the generic courtly roles of loyal wife, fruitful mother, virtuous neo-Platonic beauty and court sophisticate. these images celebrate the monarch and his consort as paterfamilias and mother of the country, a paradigm of ideal marriage as the basis of the ideal state. Since this was a Protestant state, it was crucial to divorce Henrietta Maria’s Catholicism from her portraits – and so understandably she is shorn of devotional jewellery. these sanctioned images of the queen were apparently commissioned Caroline Hibbard generously shared her information on jewellery in court records. See also her essay here, which includes references to the clerks of the jewel coffers. 5 BL, royal (King’s) MS 136, fo. 431. 6 PrO, SC6/Chasi/1694 (declared account for 1628–29), under the queen’s ‘particular warrants’. 7 Hibbard’s reference – Lr 5/64, paid to ester rogers and John rogers, executives of William rogers goldsmith of London. 8 reference from Caroline Hibbard: Lr 5/66, a ‘cross of diamonds’ purchased from alexander Herriott in Christmas 1637; and the declared account for 1636–37 refers to ‘a cross diamond’ bought from alexander Herriot ‘for Her Majesties use’ for £100. 9 Hibbard’s reference – British Library, royal (King’s) MS 136, fo. 431. 4

10 She went to London briefly in 1660 (late October to late December) and then returned in august 1662 and left for france in spring 1665.

Her correspondence with her brother, Louis Xiii, and Pope Urban Viii indicates such intentions clearly. See the letters published in Letters of Queen Henrietta Maria, ed. Mary anne everett Green (London, 1857), pp. 7–10. 11

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and approved by her husband, who hung them in his palaces and distributed them amongst courtiers and foreign elites.12 a lost portrait by Daniel Mytens (c.1590–c.1647) is the earliest documentary mention of an english oil portrait commission of the queen – and this appears only in 1630, though undoubtedly he had painted her portrait previously.13 in a payment recorded to the court painter in the Lord Chamberlain’s books in 1630, and there is an entry for a bill for Daniell Mittens … viz., £60 for his Majesty’s picture at large with a prospect, and the Crown and the Sceptre, in a scarlet embroidered suit, … £40 for the Queen’s picture at length in a pearl suit … , and £5 for perusing two pictures of ye King and Queene in black and white to be cut in brasse. Signed april 2nd 1630.14

although no later documentary reference to the original painting appears to survive, there are two apparent copies of it from the same date. the engraved 12 the bills of payment signed by the Lord Chamberlain for Mytens in 1630 and 1631 document that the payment for the Mytens’ royal images of both king and queen came from the king’s accounts, London, PRO, L.C. 5/132, p. 178, p. 197, p. 273 and p. 279; the documents are transcribed in Onno ter Kuile, “Daniel Mijtens: ‘His Majesties Picture Drawer’”, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 20 (1969): 33–5. The king’s continued control over commissions, payments and distributions of Van Dyck’s early images, both of himself and of the queen, are documented in Bills from 1632/33 cited in William Hookham Carpenter, Pictorial Notices Consisting of a Memoir of Sir Anthony van Dyck with a Descriptive Catalogue of the Etchings Executed by Him (London, 1844), pp. 71–3, and Susan Barnes et al., Van Dyck, A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings (new Haven and London, 2005), pp. 7–8. Abraham van der Doort’s 1637–39 inventory includes many details about the king’s distribution and placement of paintings in the royal Collection. See Oliver Millar, ed. “abraham van der Doort’s Catalogue of the Collection of Charles i”, The Walpole Society 37 (1958–60), cited hereafter as Millar, Van der Doort. Van Dyck’s Memoir, transcribed in Hookham Carpenter, Pictorial Notices, pp. 67–8, records examples of portraits of the queen which were paid for and earmarked for recipients by the king c.1637, though notably others were left for her payment/distribution. 13 the Witt Library contains a photograph of a full-length portrait of Henrietta Maria in the Van Dyck files. A hand written note by Oliver Millar on it reads, Mytens? The picture, which the label says was removed from the panelling of the Saloon at West Harling Hall, is now untraceable. a close comparison of the rather poor quality photograph with the engraved, painted and glass copies after the original Mytens indicate some similarities in dress, but, however, a very different hairstyle found only in her portraits from c.1632, with looser curls on her forehead and sides and a lovelock. This indicates to me that the portrait may have been a 1630s copy after the original Mytens which updated her hairstyle. formerly Little Saxham Hall, home of the Crofts, makes it probable that it was a royal gift to Sir Henry or Lord William Crofts, both active at court, the latter in particular in Henrietta Maria’s circle. it was probably the latter, William, who converted to Catholicism in 1637 and who was killed by the queen’s dwarf Jeffrey Hudson in a duel in 1644, which resulted in Hudson’s departure from court. His brother was the Master of the Queen’s House and head of her lifeguard – Catholic? Her grandson was James Crofts, son of Charles ii and Lucy Walter. 14 ter Kuile, “Daniel Mijtens”, p. 33, citing London, PrO, L.C. 5/132, p. 178; also cited Charlotte Stopes, “Daniel Mytens in england”, Burlington Magazine 17 (1910), p. 160.

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image, described in the entry above as the picture to be cut ‘in brasse’ (in bronze) was executed by Willem Jacobsz Delff (1580–1638) in the Hague in 1630, and includes the inscription ‘Daniel Mytens pinxit’ (figure 8.1).15 Veronika Vernier has recently identified a picture at The Queen’s College, Oxford, previously recorded ‘by an unknown painter’ as another probable painted copy (Figure 8.2).16 the Queen’s College portrait uses the same oval format and orientation of the head as the Delff engraving, is surrounded by the same inscription, and includes the same costume and jewellery. The only major difference is the addition of a handkerchief, a characteristically Mytens flourish that may have been indebted to the full-length original.17 Mytens’ original must have been a widely known image of the young queen, since we also find it as the source for the portrait of Henrietta Maria in stained glass at Magdalen College, Oxford (figure 8.3).18 and a further image of the queen, an engraving by Jan Barra (?–1634) (figure 8.4), though in this case full-length and seated, shows the same French fashion found in the Mytens-inspired works: the black gown worn over a square-necked bodice and full skirt, and the elaborate upturned lace collar.19 Because Barra’s works are dated from 1624 to 1627,20 this may support my speculations outlined below that the Mytens original was executed not in 1630 itself but a couple of years prior. If this cluster of works is typical of the queen’s visual persona in the period until Van Dyck arrived at court in 1632, they are conspicuous in their adherence to generic court portrait formulae, and in the absence of both Bourbon symbolism and Catholic jewellery. the dearth of images in any media from 1625 to 1627 is notable and can be explained by the personal and political problems she faced at court, both with the king over her household and religious practice, and the king’s own struggles with anti-Catholic parliaments. including explicit Catholic iconography would be dangerous in the face of parliamentary intransigence about english Catholics, and yet Henrietta Maria’s staunch Catholicism must have been central to her own 15 f.W.H. Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, ca.1450– 1700 (Amsterdam, 1961), V, p. 141, no. 3. See also Anthony Griffiths, p. 74. 16 My thanks to Veronika Vernier for this important reference. She also points to the records of payment in the Long Rolls of the College Account Books, which record a price of 34 shillings, a very modest price for an oil painting. The entry in the book 7 July 1630 to 7 July 1631 reads: ‘pro picturis regis Caroli at reginae Mariae’. the low price and the College’s own payment rules out a court gift or commission, and instead points to a cheap copyist, and perhaps one that only knew the engraved image and just added the handkerchief because they were a common attribute of his portraits of women. 17 in the portrait formerly at West Harling Hall (Witt Photograph), Henrietta Maria is shown holding a handkerchief in her right. 18 Veronika Vernier kindly passed on this information. 19 On French versus English fashion at this stage, see Emilie S. Gordenker, “Aspects of Costume in Van Dyck’s English Portraits”, in Van Dyck 1599–1999: Conjectures and Refutations (2001), pp. 211–26, esp. pp. 211–12. For similar French fashion, see Van Dyck’s portrait of Princess Henrietta of Lorraine (Kenwood House, London), reproduced p. 214. 20 arthur M. Hind, Engraving in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Cambridge, 1952–64), iii, p. 95.

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William Jacobsz Delff, Henrietta Maria, 1630, the national Portrait Gallery, London

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after Daniel Mytens, Henrietta Maria, the Queen’s College, Oxford

sense of virtue. an early portrait of the queen that was true to her virtue would have displayed a specifically Catholic queen of illustrious Bourbon lineage, and this may explain why it was easier instead to have fewer images that resorted to generic court portrait templates. The Duke of Buckingham’s assassination in 1628 provided a turning point in the royal marriage, and in her visual persona. this convergence of events suggests that, for Charles and Henrietta Maria, portrait commissions were not governed purely by

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Henrietta Maria, stained glass, Magdalen College, Oxford

political ambition (even when trying to down-play potentially ‘popish’ influences) but also by personal affection. It was as if Henrietta Maria had finally been acknowledged as the royal consort in portraits from 1628 onwards, and it is in this context that we should see the paired images by Mytens that were widely circulated in print, painted and stained glass versions. it is my contention that Mytens probably received the commission for the important pair in 1628, because Charles’ engraved portrait is based on a 1628 Mytens image, making it at least possible that his ‘1630’ piece of

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Jan Barra, Henrietta Maria, c.1627, the ashmolean Museum, Oxford

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the queen was based on an earlier 1628 portrait.21 The flurry of copies – especially the Delff engravings made in 1630 – could be seen then as a product of her rising popularity at court at that time. this theory is based on the personal and political situation outlined above but also on the queen’s coiffure. Her hairstyle in the Delff 1630 engraving (and other related works) is in the French fashion, tightly coiffed into a helmet of frizzled curls. It was this kind of hairstyle that Charles himself wore to the Duke of Buckingham’s son’s christening in 1628, and which was criticized as ‘all goffered and frizzled, which he never uses before’ [sic].22 More to the point, in 1630 when the Delff engravings were made, this frizzled hairstyle was out of fashion, and not au fait for a woman interested in the latest styles. as i stated above, too, Barra’s engraving works well within this c.1628 context in terms of his known dated works. The very up-to-date fashions we find in pictures of the early 1630s are beautifully displayed in Van Dyck’s portraits of Henrietta Maria.23 Upon his arrival at the english court in 1632, Van Dyck painted a number of portraits of the king and his consort, including two closely linked images of Henrietta Maria: one appears in the double portrait with Charles i (figure 5.9), modelled on Mytens’ own version of the same subject, and the other a virtually identical independent portrait of her (figure 5.8).24 although highly complex in allegorical terms, for the purposes here i want to stress the lack of religious iconography. This is neo-Platonic iconography marshalled for state purposes, the court masque being performed on canvas to showcase a paragon of the ideal marriage and state.25 Charles’ visual persona at this period was closely 21 Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts c.1450–1700 (Amsterdam, 1951), V, no. 2, p. 140. We know, too, that full-length portraits with the same descriptions as the 1630 document cited above are also documented in 1631 – see ter Kuile, “Daniel Mijtens”, p. 33, citing Lord Chamberlain’s Department, Miscellanea 5/132, p. 178 – another sign that Mytens and his studio were producing copies of older works. 22 Cited in rosalind K. Marshall, Henrietta Maria, The Intrepid Queen (London, 1992), p. 53. 23 although numerous sources claim that she sat for as many as 25 portraits (such as Marshall, Henrietta Maria, p. 66, it is much more likely that she sat on a few occasions which served as models for other versions. in terms of sittings, she may have only sat once in 1632 (the Longford Castle image probably being the first, and possibly the model for the threequarter length images in white at Windsor and in the Czech republic), and just a handful of others, with her dwarf in 1633 (national Gallery, Washington), as St Catherine in c.1635, and in four others from c.1636–38 (‘Barberini’ portrait in the Wrightsman Collection; the three Bernini portraits). See the discussion on her portrait sittings in Gudrun raatschen’s essay here. 24 For the literature on these works and their relationship to each other is extensive. See in the first instance on Mytens, Ter Kuile, “Daniel Mijtens”, p. 35, for a transcription of the original document paying Mytens, and Van der Doort, pp. 105–6, on the location of Van Dyck’s later version. A succinct discussion of the original and versions with specific reference to the influence of Mytens on Van Dyck is Millar’s “Some Painters and Charles I”, Burlington Magazine 104 (august 1962): 325–30. 25 in addition to Millar’s discussion, “Some Painters and Charles i”, see also Millar/Barnes iV.46, pp. 460–62, Christopher Brown, Van Dyck 1599–1641 (exhibition catalogue, London, 1999), p. 242, and Wood, “Van Dyck”, p. 170. John Peacock, “The Visual Image of Charles

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linked with that of his queen as a way to differentiate himself from the Catholic courts of france and Spain and to align himself with the Protestant courts, especially at the Hague. Dutch marriage portraits were instrumental in shaping Caroline family court portraits, and offered a visual and ideological parallel. if Catholic absolutist kings were painted on big canvases separate from their queens, then Protestant rulers stressed their difference in part through being represented on double canvases with their wives alongside, as for example in Gerard van Honthorst’s (1590–1656) double portrait of Frederick Hendrick with his wife, Amalia van Solms (the future in-laws of the English king and queen) (Figure 8.5). Moreover, the queen in 1632 is moulded to shape Charles’ Protestant absolutist interests rather than reflecting her own visual identity. But this is the same young woman who was the god-daughter of Pope Urban VIII, whom he personally asked to serve the Catholic cause in england. She, in turn, insisted that she would. this is the queen-consort who claimed that she never took a particular cross necklace off and who kept a number of priests and confessors.26 And while we may not find that cross necklace in these two closely related 1632 portraits, two pieces of jewellery are particularly revealing. neither piece has, to my knowledge, been previously analysed. In the independent portrait of her, the crown on the table beside her is less ornate than those in portraits of Charles, but it may well be an allusion to the king himself. The crown’s position on the hierarchic right of the canvas, the king’s privileged position in the double portrait, is a symbolic, appropriate site for this attribute. Because the queen’s visual persona was so closely tied with that of the king in the 1630s, this allusion seems quite explicit. Perhaps less obvious is the apparent symbolic reference to another man: Frederick, Elector Palatine. The black ribbon she wears around her wrist has a clasp and ring attached to it. this type of decoration is not uncommon in Stuart portraiture and sometimes had a memorial function.27 Frederick, the queen’s brother-in-law, had died in 1632, the date of the painting, and his cause, to regain the Palatinate, was championed by both Henrietta Maria and Charles. this connection seems to have been overtly staged in the arrangement of pictures in Charles’ bedroom, where this hung. Van der Doort’s c.1637 inventory reveals that this image of Henrietta Maria hung directly next to a portrait by ‘Hunthirst’ of ‘ye kinge of Bohemia’.28 i”, in The Royal Image: Representations of Charles I, ed. thomas n. Corns (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 225–6, relates this iconography to the programme of the masque Albion’s Triumph, performed at court in 1632. 26 this is detailed in a lengthy dispatch from George Conn, the Papal agent, to Cardinal francesco Barberini, nephew of Pope Urban Viii, on 17 november 1636. Green, ed., Letters, p. 34, citing Vatican Papers, XXXiX, fo. 343. 27 I am grateful for Emilie Gordenker’s information in this respect, who provided as a comparison the ribbon with the ring on Killigrew in the double portrait in the royal Collection (Barnes iV.146), referring to Killigrew’s deceased wife. 28 Millar, Van der Doort, p. 35, no. 2. this is prefaced by ‘item above an other table’, which may refer to its placement above Van Dyck’s portrait of Henrietta Maria. It’s worth noting, too, that the next portrait listed, no. 3, is one of Prince Henry by Mytens, and one might interpret the memorial band as referring to the king’s brother, who died in 1612, as well.

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Gerrit van Honthorst, Frederik Hendrik and Amalia van Solms, royal Picture Gallery, Mauritshuis, the Hague

One could therefore make a strong case for these 1632 portraits being quite Protestant in their allusions to male power and alliances. More explicitly, she is the face of status and virtue – outwardly beautiful, poised and elegant with a long neck and slender arms, resplendent in a white dress – now notably english fashion with a tabbed bodice and skirt – and sparkling with pearl jewellery and a crown of her own. Her delicate right hand is positioned insistently around two english roses. But something very interesting happened around 1636. With a growing Catholic faction at her court and the opening of her spectacular chapel at Somerset House, the queen seems also to have taken a bigger role in the staging of her visual persona. Portraits from this period – sculpted, painted and in miniature – are striking in their inclusion of devotional jewellery.

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although Catholics continued to wear devotional jewellery during Charles’ reign, prudence meant that it typically appears sparingly and subtly in Stuart portraiture.29 Crosses appear more commonly than crucifixes, rosaries or the Sacred Monogram (iHS).30 Henrietta Maria is only ever depicted wearing crosses, though we know from letters and her own inventory that she possessed over the years a treasure trove of devotional jewellery, including a chain with an agnus Dei, and jewelled reliquaries, richly carved rosaries and even a diamond cross with Barberini bees from Cardinal Barberini.31 The first appearance of a cross in a representation of the queen is probably the statue of her by the french sculptor Hubert Le Sueur (c.1585–c.1658) (figure 8.6), a pendant to one of Charles (figure 8.7).32 in 1633, the archbishop William Laud, Chancellor of Oxford, commissioned a pair of statues of the royal couple for the new Canterbury Quadrangle at his alma mater, St John’s College.33 the quadrangle was commissioned to mark his elevation to Archbishop of Canterbury. The contract states simply that the sculptor is to ‘make and cast in brass [bronze] the statue of the king six foot high and the statue of the queen in brass likewise as big as the life’.34 It goes on to stipulate that they be made for a total of ₤400 before Michaelmas day 1634.35 it thus reveals Laud’s focus on the practical side of the commission rather than artistic merit or iconography. the rather outmoded, stylized sculptures are unlikely to have made a great impression on the royal pair during their visit to the opening in august of 1636. the two statues are situated above the gateways, facing each other across the court, in niches. the idea of pendant full-length sculpted portraits was unusual for living sitters, though it bears comparison with funeral effigies of elite couples.36 the decision to commemorate the queen in this manner is significant and underscores the importance of ‘double’ representations of the royal pair in the 1630s. the generalized 29 Diana Scarisbrick, Jewellery in Britain, 1066–1837: A Documentary, Social, Literary and Artistic Survey (norwich, 1994), pp. 97–104 and pp. 192–5, See for example the portrait attributed to Marcus Gheeraerts of Jean, Countess of roxburgh, Princess Mary’s governess, Grimsthorpe and Drummond Castle trust (reproduced in Marshall, Henrietta Maria, p. 61), and the portrait of Susan, Lady Bathurst, c.1630, Collection of Lord Bathurst, Cirencester Park (reproduced Scarisbrick, Plate 76, unpaginated). 30 Scarisbrick, Jewellery in Britain, p.128. 31 For the inventory, see Cal SP, 78/128, fos 195–6. Scarisbrick, Jewellery in Britain, p. 192, citing CSP Ven. XXiV, p. 69. 32 On Le Sueur, see Charles avery, “Hubert Le Sueur, the ‘Unworthy Praxiteles’ of King Charles i”, Walpole Society 48 (1980–82): 137–209 and Peacock, “The Visual Image of Charles i”, pp. 209–20. 33 On the quadrangle, see Howard Colvin, The Canterbury Quadrangle (Oxford, 1988), esp. pp. 36–8, and Charles Carlton, Archbishop William Laud (London, 1987), pp. 137–8. 34 avery, “Hubert Le Sueur”, p. 161 and p. 203, citing Cal. S.P.D., Charles I (1633–34), p. 43 and pp. 16–17. 35 Half of this seems to have been made on signature, because another document of 3 May 1634 records a ‘second payment’ of ₤200; Avery, “Hubert Le Sueur”, p. 203, citing Cal. S.P.D., Charles I (1634–35), p. 6, p. 27. See avery, pp. 203–4, for the document of april 1636 on the transport costs. 36 avery, “Hubert Le Sueur”, p. 162.

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Hubert Le Seuer, Henrietta Maria, 1636, St John’s College, Oxford

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Hubert Le Seuer, Charles I, 1636, St John’s College, Oxford

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features of the queen’s head and dress indicate that this commission was more about symbol than likeness, majesty than individuality. Henrietta Maria’s costume appears at first glance to be a simple flowing skirt with a bodice edged with jewelled roses and a cape on top, but on close inspection one sees that her skirt is embroidered with delicate flower patterns. By far the most remarkable feature is the necklace around the queen’s neck, two strands of pearls with a modest cross at her collarbone.37 While such a small cross would have been difficult, if impossible, to spot from below, its presence is perhaps surprising nonetheless. the year 1633 was an important year for Catholicism in england; it ushered in the exchange of diplomatic agents with the papal court and there were suspicions that the archbishop was plotting to restore england to Catholicism and that the king might convert.38 By 1636, when the statues were delivered, Catholicism was an overt presence at court. Court Catholicism had been enhanced by the debonair new papal agent to the queen, the Scotsman George Conn, the opening of the queen’s new chapel and the energetic proselytizing of the queen herself. Laud would undoubtedly have been aware of this symbol of the queen’s Catholicism.39 Some of Laud’s ideas about symbolism in the church were considered by many to be Papist.40 If anyone knew the symbolic significance of the cross, it was Laud, and one can only speculate on whether or not he was consulted. Because the queen had such a tense relationship with Laud,41 one wonders if his acquiescence here was a way of placating her. Or perhaps he allowed it only because it was barely discernible from below, looking almost like a fashionable strand of pearls with a pendant. Because of the sculptor’s dependence on royal patronage, Le Sueur would have been unlikely to have included such a potentially contentious item without some kind of permission. the royal statues are surrounded by a conventional scheme of the Liberal arts and the Virtues.42 the addition of religion to the representation of the virtues and learning with the Liberal arts pinpoints the two sources of Laud’s glory: as Chancellor and Archbishop, embodied figuratively in the roles of rulership (through the king) and religion (through the queen). The symbolic significance of the cross for Laud’s own position on matters of church policy in 1636 may be illuminated by an entertainment that happened as part of the royal visit.43 Sir David Cunningham, a Scottish courtier in the Prince of Wales’ household, described one of the spectacles of the Oxford State Banquet as

37 A similar necklace appears in Le Sueur’s bust of the Lady Ann Cottington, but a rose is used instead of a cross. 38 Hibbard, “Henrietta Maria”, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 39 Carlton, Archbishop William Laud, p. 93. 40 Carlton, Archbishop William Laud, p. 96 and pp. 129–30. 41 See Caroline Hibbard, Charles I and the Popish Plot, (Chapel Hill, 1983). 42 Colvin, Canterbury Quadrangle, p. 39. 43 On the royal visit, see Carlton, Archbishop William Laud, pp. 137–43 and Hugh trevorroper, Archbishop Laud 1573–1645 (London, 1940), pp. 311–12.

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Henrietta Maria an invention of pyes walking, the one half representing English Bishops, with my lord’s grace of Canterbury conducting them, th’other half foreign Cardinalls, with the Pope leading them, and both came to the King at table, one on his right hand and t’other on his left and both were received and made friends.44

Cunningham was a Presbyterian and on this ground might be discounted. But the ‘strange passage’ he relates is perhaps comparable to the two statues – Charles representing the english Bishops and Henrietta Maria as the Catholic faction, made ‘friends’ by Laud and co-existing in the happy union of the royal pair. in the peace of Canterbury quadrangle, and in the year 1636, it may have been seen to be possible. Certainly if you were going to put a small cross in a ‘public’ place in 1636, this was a relatively safe place to do it.45 Other works that feature devotional jewellery congregate around 1636. Probably the first painted image of Henrietta Maria with a cross, in Dresden, dates to on or before 1635 (figure 7.6).46 While the cross is relatively small in relation to the portrait as a whole, it is centrally positioned and is unambiguously delineated against her white satin dress. attention is drawn to the queen’s familial identity, too, by the shape of the pearl-knot around her waist, a fleur de lis, an obvious reference to her Bourbon lineage. it follows that this is an image that insists that the sitter is not just a paradigm of female courtly virtue like the works of 1628–32, but specifically a french Catholic queen. it was this portrait that served as the basis for the only engraving that bears her permission (Glover is inscribed as ‘engraver of the effigy of her’), and which would have necessitated Van Dyck’s approval as well. This was a fashionable octavo bust in an oval frame (figure 8.8), the same format used in Delff’s engraving and widely employed in portrait prints of royalty in the 1620s and ’30s. The pendant shown here is, however, not the same sharply defined cross as Van Dyck’s portrait but instead a round pendant with a barely detectable cross in relief. This notable modification may well have been occasioned by fears of a ‘popish plot’ at court at the time. But before these hostilities peaked, other portraits were made that offer insight into how the queen’s portraits were apparently stage-managed for particular audiences, Catholic and Protestant, through the appearance (or absence) of devotional jewellery. two widely copied portraits of the queen appeared c.1636 by Van Dyck, known as the portrait in white and the portrait in blue.47 the portrait in white in the royal Collection (Figure 8.9), a studio work, is considered the finest of this type to survive, while the images in blue are of a rather mediocre quality, like the one in San Diego 44 Colvin, Canterbury Quadrangle, p. 14, citing the letter from Oatlands on 4 October 1636, Scottish Record Office, GD237/221/4/1/54. 45 their fate must have hung in the balance when Oxford surrendered to the Parliamentary forces in 1646. Colvin, Canterbury Quadrangle, p. 38, notes that it has been claimed that they were removed and buried to save them and elsewhere that Parliamentary authorities tried unsuccessfully to sell them. 46 Millar/Barnes iV.120. the placement of roses over her stomach may be interpreted as Millar suggests, as it may have been made before Princess elizabeth’s birth on 28 December 1635. 47 Millar/Barnes iV.a19, p. 635.

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George Glover, Henrietta Maria, ©the trustees of the British Museum

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(figure 7.4).48 the image in blue includes a cross pendant, but the queen wears a small plain decorative jewelled pendant in the portrait in white. Because the portrait in blue resembles so closely the 1632 images in physiognomy, pose and setting, the portrait in blue may not have involved a new sitting. Arguably Van Dyck simply borrowed the blue dress in an effort to capitalize on images of the queen at this time. the same can be said for the portrait in white, which, as Millar has stated, is based on other Van Dyck portraits of the queen.49 these two new images, widely circulated in numerous painted copies,50 coincided with the opening of the queen’s breathtaking chapel at Somerset House in December 1636 after seven years of work. Visitors thronged to see the mesmerizing decorative scheme, replete with paintings and a special sacristy. Conversions of prominent courtiers and aristocrats, ladies in particular, were not uncommon in 1637. Laud was incensed by the public scandal.51 He responded by bringing up the subject of conversions at a Privy Council meeting and the king agreed with the problem, deciding to close the queen’s chapel and the Catholic ambassadors’ chapels to english subjects. Henrietta Maria was so upset that Conn purportedly had to restrain her. an issue prohibiting conversions was issued that December, but this was not totally effective and the queen’s court became the focus for a Catholic faction in 1638. fears of ‘popish’ conspiracy at court were rife, further fuelled by rumours that the king sought help from Spain and Ireland to defeat Protestant Covenanters in Scotland, England’s failure to offer significant aid to the Palatinate cause, and Marie de Médicis’ arrival at court.52 Intriguingly, of the portraits of Catholic female converts by Van Dyck of this period, none to my knowledge are shown wearing devotional jewellery.53 However, A version of the portrait in blue recently appeared on the London art market, Sotheby’s sale, 7 June 2006, lot 115. 49 Millar/Barnes iV.128, p. 530. 50 See Millar/Barnes, p. 635 for a list of copies and versions. a portrait of ‘Une reyne vestu en blu’ valued at ₤30 and another ‘Une Reyne vestu en blu’ valued at ₤60, the latter given to the Earl of Holland, as well as ‘Une Reyne vestu en blanc’ for ₤50, are all listed in Van Dyck’s ‘Memoir’ to the king of c.1638, Hookham Carpenter, pp. 67–8, transcribing the original in her Majesty’s State Paper Office. These pictures are all marked by a cross to indicate that the queen paid for them and possibly distributed them – the earl of Holland, Henry rich, was a favourite of the queen. Van der Doort’s 1637 inventory documents that the king gave the Lord Chamberlain a copy of the ‘Queen’s picture in blue’ in an exchange, p. 45, and Charles asked that ‘My Wives Picture in blew, sitting in a Chair’ at Hampton Court be sent to Mrs. Kirk in a letter to Colonel Whalley on 11 November 1647. Anne, appointed lady-in-waiting to the queen in 1637, drowned in 1641 from the queen’s barge, but the king must not have known. 51 On the conversions of 1637 and Laud’s response, see Carlton, Archbishop William Laud, pp. 128–9. 52 Wilcher, p. 25. 53 Van Dyck painted both Mrs. Endymion Porter and her sister, Anne, Countess of Newport, around the time of their conversions, but no devotional jewellery is present. See Millar/Barnes iV.170, p. 562, and iV.192, p. 578. See also the double portrait of Dorothy, Viscountess Andover and later Countess of Berkshire and her sister, Elizabeth, Lady Thimbleby, both of whom were Catholic, Millar/Barnes iV.8, pp. 434–6. 48

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Anthony van Dyck, Henrietta Maria in White, c.1636, the royal Collection ©2007, Her Majesty Queen elizabeth ii

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in Van Dyck’s portrait of two Catholic ladies in a portrait of c.1638, frances, Countess of Portland, is shown wearing her pearls knotted in a manner that resembles both a cross and a fleur de lis.54 Malcolm rogers has discussed pearls as possible symbols of pregnancy in Van Dyck’s portraits, since pearls were the attribute of St Margaret of antioch, patron saint of women in childbirth.55 if we agree with rogers’ approach, it seems possible that the knots of the pearls may themselves have significance – perhaps religious significance. in comparing the pearls of the Catholic frances, Countess of Portland, with those of the Protestant elizabeth, Countess of Peterborough (figure 8.10), the Protestant countess’ pearls are much more loosely tied, so as not to resemble a cross like we find in the Catholic countess. this would have been moreover particularly vital in the year 1638, when these were painted, as this was the time of the Catholic faction at Henrietta Maria’s court. The knotted pearls around the queen’s waist at Dresden, too, recall somewhat those in a portrait of anne Sophia, Countess of Carnarvon, who was a Catholic and regular participant in the queen’s masques (figure 8.11). if we continue along these lines, it is possible that the portrait in blue was made for recipients with Catholic sympathies and the portrait in white was earmarked for a Protestant audience. Van Dyck’s ‘Memoire’ to the king of c.1637 reveals that Lord Wharton was the recipient of a portrait of ‘La Reyne’, paid for by the king along with its companion portrait of the king.56 Although this is not specified as the portrait in white, it is likely not one of the portraits in blue since these are carefully delineated in the same document. The only other full-length portrait by Van Dyck of the queen around this time is also notable by the absence of a cross, and this will be discussed below. What is worth stressing here is the intended audience for a portrait of the queen that was almost certainly lacking a cross: a Protestant. Jeremy Wood has called Wharton not simply a man with Protestant sympathies but indeed the ‘zealous Puritan’.57 the role of the queen’s portraits, whether instigated by her commissions or not, in making claims to, or downplaying, religious devotion seems to have been understood. it is my contention that the date of the portrait in white is slightly later than the one in blue, namely because of the resemblance of the knotted pearls and costume to slightly later pictures of c.1637. Van Dyck also provides us with a rare, perhaps exceptional, example of a male courtier wearing a cross during this very volatile time at the english court: thomas Killigrew, a courtier and wit, with another man, possibly William, Lord Crofts (figure 8.12).58 Killigrew had close links to the queen via his father and wife and The State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. Reproduced in Millar/Barnes iV.194, p. 579. 55 “Van Dyck’s Portrait of Lord George Stuart, Seigneur d’Aubigny, and Some Related Works”, Van Dyck 350, ed. Susan J. Barnes and Arthur K. Wheelock (Hanover and London, 1995), pp. 274–6. 56 Hookham Carpenter, Pictorial Notices, p. 68, ‘La Reyne au de Baron’ (Baron Wartō is listed in the above pendant), valued by the artist at ₤50, the standard price for a full-length portrait. 57 “Van Dyck: A Catholic Artist”, p. 180. 58 On the sitters’ links to Catholicism and the significance of the cross here, see Malcolm rogers, “‘Golden Houses for Shadows’: Some Portraits of thomas Killigrew and His family”, 54

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Anthony van Dyck, Elizabeth, Countess of Peterborough, c.1638, Private Collection

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Anthony van Dyck, Anna Sophia, Countess of Carnarvon, Sir edmund Verney and the Claydon House trust

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Anthony van Dyck, Thomas Killigrew and William, Lord Crofts (?), 1638, the royal Collection ©2007, Her Majesty Queen elizabeth ii

had Catholic sympathies, and perhaps even converted. it is his wife’s initials which appear on the cross, a commemoration of her recent death. rogers has surmised that the cross may have belonged to his Catholic wife, Cecilia, and was perhaps a gift from him. it’s worth adding that the cross also becomes a way of announcing Killigrew’s allegiance to the queen and relates to her own appearance with crosses in portraits at this time. it may also be relevant that Killigrew’s sister-in-law, Lady Cleveland, is shown with a small book that may be devotional in the family portrait of thomas, 4th Lord Wentworth, with their children.59 Miniatures, too, small pictures executed in watercolour on vellum both ad vivum and after existing portraits, occasionally depict the queen wearing devotional jewellery. The miniature portrait of her by John Hoskins (c.1590–1664/5)60 at Madresfield Court (Figure 8.13), which is dated to c.1630–35 in the literature, in Art and Patronage at the Caroline Court: Essays in Honour of Oliver Millar, ed. David Howarth (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 225–7. See also Millar/Barnes iV.146, pp. 542–3. 59 Millar/Barnes iV.78, pp. 491–2. 60 On Hoskins’ style and patronage, see John Murdoch, Jim Murrell, Patrick J. Noon and roy Strong, The English Miniature (new Haven and London, 1981), pp. 95–104.

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displays a prominent cross-shaped emerald earring. this type of earring is very unusual, if not exceptional, in Stuart portraiture. Whether this was a fantasy or an actual piece of jewellery is unclear, but the distractingly large cross implies that it was intended for a recipient with Catholic sympathies. the provenance of the piece is unknown,61 but based on the visual evidence discussed in this essay it seems more likely that the miniature dates to c.1635–36, when she first appears wearing crosses, and when we find the hair styled more loosely. Another undated Hoskins miniature of the queen in The Walters Art Museum has been dated on stylistic grounds to c.1635 (figure 8.14), corroborated by the inclusion of a cross, attached to the rosette at her breast. Although the subject is strikingly similar to Van Dyck’s 1632 portraits and Hoskins’ miniatures after them of the same year, it bears closer resemblance in the length of the hair and cut of the collar to works of c.1636, like the so-called Barberini portrait.62 the dating of miniatures is particularly difficult because of the widespread copying of existing paintings and miniatures both by Hoskins and others, and later in the 1630s in enamel copies as well. Keeping to the period of c.1636, there is a series of portraits by Van Dyck from c.1637–39 that are of special interest in the complex variations and expected viewers/ recipients.63 Henrietta Maria had been instrumental in securing the commission for Bernini’s bust of Charles i of 1636, and sought one for herself. Charles’ bust was placed at her new property of Greenwich and not more prominently at Whitehall, which indicates her role in the commission of one of the most important pieces of Stuart portraiture.64 The Windsor frontal portrait (Figure 7.2) is one of three views made by Van Dyck to send to Bernini as models for the queen’s bust, much like what he did for the image of Charles.65 Because Bernini had kept the triple portrait of Charles, the queen probably thought that these pictures, too, would stay in rome. the other two views show the queen in different – more formal – dress, and eliminate the cross.66 the sketchy technique, close observation of physiognomy, nuances of different dress and pose all indicate ad vivum sittings, which is confirmed by correspondence between Conn and Cardinal Barberini about the commission.67 In the frontal portrait the queen is shown in a magnificent white satin dress and fantastically big jewels on a chain, stitched into her bodice and dress, and in her 61 My thanks to Peter Hughes from the Estate Office of Madredfield Court for supplying me with a colour image and giving me the available information on the piece. 62 Wrightsman Collection, New York. 63 On the commission and treatment of the three views, see Millar/Barnes iV.125–7, pp. 528–30. 64 Rudolf Wittkower, Gianlorenzo Bernini: The Sculptor of the Roman Baroque (ithaca, 1981, 3rd edn), pp. 207–8. it is recorded in the 1649–51 inventory at Greenwich, no. 28. 65 On Charles’ triple portrait, see Millar, Tudor, Stuart and Early Georgian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen (London, 1963), vol. 1, no. 146, pp. 96–7 and Millar/ Barnes iV.48, pp. 464–6. On the commission for Charles’ bust, see ronald Lightbown, “the Journey of the Bernini Bust of Charles i to england”, Connoisseur, pp. 217–20. 66 Emilie Gordenker gave me this intriguing information about the different fashions in the three views. 67 Millar/Barnes, p. 529.

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John Hoskins, Henrietta Maria, c.1630–35, Private Collection

necklace and earrings. The cross is especially prominent here, and would only have been included by Van Dyck under the specific instructions of his patron. Van Dyck may himself have been a Catholic, but he was also court painter to a Protestant king who he did not want to cross. But the pictorial studies were never sent to rome. there are no references to the portraits in documents about Charles’ collection after its dispersal or recovery, so they were likely given as gifts. In the Memoire c.1638 listing pictures Van Dyck painted for the Crown, the painter asks for ₤15 for each of two portraits of the queen for ‘Barnini’, presumably two of these works, but there is no evidence the king or

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John Hoskins, Henrietta Maria, c.1635, the Walters art Museum, Baltimore

queen received them.68 Perhaps these images were considered too ‘Catholic’ for the English court at this period. A copy of the frontal portrait and one of the profiles can be identified in the inventories of the Hamiltons by the 1640s, but there are no documents about how they got there.69 the Hamilton provenance is of interest in that Mary, Marchioness of Hamilton, was a Lady of the Bedchamber to the queen and had strong Catholic sympathies. Her husband, James, was a close friend of the king, and a connoisseur of pictures who gave and exchanged pictures with the king.70 it

Hookham Carpenter, pp. 66–8. See also Millar/Barnes pp. 529–30. Millar/Barnes, p. 529, citing Hamilton MSS, no. 287, ‘One piece of the queen to the waste syde faced of Sr. Anthonye Vandyke’. See also Millar, Tudor, Stuart and Georgian Pictures (London, 1963), no. 149, p. 97. 70 Millar/Barnes, p. 517. 68 69

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is possible that this was given as part of one such exchange with his wife’s Catholic sympathies in mind.71 In comparing the portraits meant for Rome with the official full-length sent to the Protestant Prince of Orange, the difference in the treatment of jewellery is especially notable. Painted in 1637 with a companion piece of the king (Figure 7.9), it was a repetition of a now-lost picture made for the Cross Gallery at Somerset House.72 the use of the pendant format was appropriate for a Dutch audience, since the paired formula was especially favoured by Dutch burghers and the Orange court and it is possible that the Prince of Orange himself suggested it.73 it is of interest that in this 1637 portrait the cross is omitted here for the intended Protestant audience in favour of a more generic jewelled pendant at her breast. the inverted fleur-de-lis pattern of her bodice reminds us that the queen is french, but any overt sign of her Catholicism is eliminated. Van Dyck is invoking Frans Pourbus the Younger’s (1523–84) c.1609–10 portrait of her mother, Marie de Médicis (figure 5.10), in the pose, attributes and aspects of the costume with robes of state, but he opts for a more subtle version of Marie’s dramatically inverted fleur de lis as well as omitting the cross. Oliver Millar has stated that the pair were probably the first official state pendant portraits and ‘particularly suitable for dispatch overseas’;74 perhaps it was essential that such works relied on generic state portraiture iconography rather than make personal claims to religious faith. One of the last images of the queen before she fled to France during the civil wars includes a very prominent cross (figure 8.15). Dated 1640, this marble bust is attributed to françois Dieussart (c.1600–1661) and is based on Van Dyck’s studies for Bernini.75 Dieussart was at the english court by 1636, because in that year he was commissioned to execute the spectacular monstrance for Henrietta Maria’s chapel at Somerset House.76 When Bernini’s bust did not materialize (the queen only wrote to the sculptor himself about the commission in June 1639),77 the queen may have viewed Dieussart as a natural alternative, especially as he had worked with Bernini, had enjoyed the patronage of Cardinal Barberini in rome and had built a reputation for italianate portrait busts. Since the bust is dated 1640, the commission must have passed swiftly to the sculptor. the civil wars drove Dieussart in 1641 to the Hague,

71 See for example the picture listed as an exchange in Millar, Van der Doort, p. 64, no. 12. 72 Millar/Barnes, pp. 471–3; iV.53 is the Somerset House version of the portrait of Charles i and iV. 54 is the one now in the Schlossmuseum, Oranienburg. for their placement in the Cross Gallery, see Millar, The Age of Charles I, Painting in Britain 1620–1649 (exhibition catalogue, tate Gallery, London, 1972), pp. 318–19. 73 On the reception at the Hague court, see Millar/Barnes, p. 473. 74 Millar/Barnes, p. 473. 75 On Dieussart, see Charles avery, “françois Dieussart (c.1600–1661), Portrait Sculptor to the Courts of northern europe”, Victoria and Albert Museum Yearbook 4 (London, 1974), pp. 63–99. 76 avery, “françois Dieussart”, p. 65. 77 Millar/Barnes, p. 529, citing MS in Royal Library, Windsor Castle. See also Hookham Carpenter, Pictorial Notices, pp. 68–9.

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where he executed several busts of the court there, and then to Denmark, returning to the netherlands c.1644. The provenance is unknown before it came to the Danish court. Although Charles avery has argued that Christian iV may have commissioned it,78 the cross seems very dominant for a work intended for a Protestant court. Furthermore, the Danish king is not known to have shown an interest in portraits of the queen. The timing of the bust was such that the queen may never even have seen it and one wonders if it was more likely intended for herself rather than the distant Danish court with her uncle by marriage. The use of Van Dyck’s three studies is illuminating in this respect. The scallop-necked dress and large cross shown in Dieussart’s bust are derived from Van Dyck’s frontal portrait at Windsor, the only view that shows this outfit and cross. it is worth remembering too that the sculptor was himself a Walloon and had no vested interest in highlighting the queen’s Catholicism. It seems more likely that if a Protestant king wanted an image of a Catholic queen – and he knew about the sittings – surely he would have asked Dieussart to use one of the profile views with their more formal dress and lacking the bold cross – or for that matter Dieussart himself could have elected to take the more prudent route. More likely Dieussart made the bust for Henrietta Maria to place at Greenwich as a pendant to Bernini’s magnificent bust of Charles that was displayed there and only brought it to Denmark – where he gave or sold it to the king – because Henrietta Maria had herself fled before he was finished. after her exile to france the portrait commissions dried up as Henrietta Maria spent all her available funds, and tireless energy, on campaigning for her husband’s cause. a few portraits of her survive that seem to have been commissioned by the french court and are of interest insofar as they continue to stage the queen’s piety and loyalty to her husband. this essay hopes to incite a review of the iconography of the queen and her patronage, if not a new look at the religious dynamics at play in the iconography and patronage of Van Dyck’s English period as a whole. In the case of iconography, art historians have largely taken the jewellery for granted in such works, accepting them generically as signs of material wealth and social status. Building on Malcolm rogers’ analysis of pearls as potential signs of pregnancy in such images, portrait specialists might extend their focus to other interpretative avenues, looking at the patrons and recipients of such works and even the manner in which the jewellery is worn. this may lead to fruitful conclusions about the role of religion in staging visual identity in Stuart portraiture, as this essay suggests in the case of Henrietta Maria. fashion, too, bears a closer examination, especially in building up an idea of the early iconography of the queen before Van Dyck’s arrival at court and the related change from french to english fashion in her portraits. Of pressing relevance to scholars, too, is the issue of the queen’s involvement in the commissioning, payment and distribution of her portraits. though documents suggest that Charles took control of most of the earlier images, they indicate that, by 1637, she was at the very least paying for and choosing the recipients for some 78 avery, “françois Dieussart”, p. 69, speculates that it was ‘presumably either commissioned by or presented to King Christian iV’.

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françois Dieussart, Henrietta Maria, 1640, the royal Collections, rosenborg Castle, Copenhagen

of the portraits of her.79 this coincides with the appearance of crosses in portraits of the queen, a bold sign of her Catholic faith that would have undoubtedly been instigated by the queen herself and which can be linked with historical events of the period. this indicates that the queen understood the power of portraiture to promote See note 3. a possible interesting exception happened with a few double portraits commissioned in 1628. I address this briefly “Multum in Parvo: Portraits of Jeffrey Hudson, Court Dwarf to Henrietta Maria”, British Art Journal 4, no. 3, p. 42. 79

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a religious agenda and calls into question recent conjecture that the queen was neither a connoisseur nor a patron in her own right.80 Moreover, what scholars may find is that Henrietta Maria’s interest in and understanding of the visual arts and her own visual persona has been long overshadowed by Charles’ very well-documented ‘good nose’ for art patronage.81

Jeremy Wood, “Orazio Gentileschi and Some netherlandish artists in London”, Simiolus 28 (2001): 122. 81 this oft-cited reference comes from a letter from Gregorio Panzani, the Papal agent in London, to Cardinal Barberini, about a proposed gift of pictures to the king, in which he refers to the king’s ‘buon naso’ for pictures. Cited in Rudolf Wittkower, “Inigo Jones— ‘Puritanissimo fiero’”, Burlington Magazine 90 (1948): 50; the original is in the Barberini Library, Vatican. 80

Chapter 9

Sounds of Piety and Devotion: Music in the Queen’s Chapel Jonathan P. Wainwright

Queen Henrietta Maria’s marriage settlement of 1624 included the clause that she should be able to continue the unmolested exercise of her roman Catholic religion. the queen was to be provided with a properly ornamented chapel in her residences where the sacrament could be administered and mass and other divine offices celebrated freely.1 in her early years in england, Henrietta Maria used the chapel at St James’ Palace (now Marlborough House chapel), which had been designed by inigo Jones in the Palladian style (1623–25) and was staffed by 28 priests headed by a bishop.2 However, within a year of the queen’s arrival in england, the considerable animosity between the english court and the queen’s french household had led to the expulsion of the queen’s french staff and priests. Henrietta Maria’s relationship with her husband improved beyond measure in the period following the assassination of the Duke of Buckingham (August 1628), and throughout the 1630s her power and influence increased immensely (see below).3 But what do we know about the music and musicians of the queen’s chapel? Details of the queen’s musical establishment are revealed in the court records, but it has to be admitted that information concerning the music performed in the queen’s chapel is scarce and must, to some degree, remain speculative. We know that among the ‘Queen’s servants who came over with her’ in 1625, and who were allowed mourning livery following the funeral of King James i, were 11 musicians and three singing boys4 but, on 5 July 1625, within a month of their arrival, the 1 See Martin J. Havran, The Catholics in Caroline England (Stanford, 1962), pp. 21–3. Marc Antonio Morosini wrote to the Doge and Senate (13 September 1624) that ‘The king and Prince of Wales promise … that [Catholics] shall be allowed to live in the profession of their faith, without molestation, and shall not be persecuted or compelled in any matter of conscience.’ Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, vol. 18. ed. a.B. Hinds (London, 1913), p. 438. 2 the chapel had been planned as early as 1623 as part of Charles’ madcap scheme to entice the Spanish infanta into marriage. 3 for the most recent account, see Michelle anne White, Henrietta Maria and the English Civil Wars (aldershot and Burlington, 2006), ch. 1: “the Queen ascendant (1625–1635)”, pp. 11–29. 4 francis richard ye elder, Lewis richard, francis richard ye younger, Camille Provott, Marturine Marye, robert roane, Simon de La Gard, nichola Du vall, Peter De La Marr, andrew Mawgard, John Garnier, and ‘3 little singing boyes’; the national archives, Kew,

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Privy Council granted a pass to ‘nine french gentlemen, musicions to the queen, to retourne into france’.5 Just why or, indeed, how many musicians returned to France is not known but numbers were soon back to strength as a warrant dated 23 October 1626 reveals payment to 11 musicians.6 ‘Loys richard’ is described as ‘Master of her Majesty’s Musicke’ and ‘Richard Durin’ [Dering] as organist. From 1626 until 1642 it is possible to trace the composition and development of Queen Henrietta Maria’s musical establishment with some confidence as the accounts and establishment lists are remarkably complete.7 as well as personnel and payment details, the court records include important snippets of information concerning the organs in the queen’s chapels. for example, a warrant of 11 May 1630 relates the payment of £45 for ‘one newe Organ to be sett up in the Chappell at St James’,8 and a John Burwood appears frequently in the accounts for tuning and mending the organs at both St James and Somerset House (or Denmark House as it was then known).9 in 1638 robert Dallam is described as ‘her Mats Organmaker’ and was paid £7 ‘for tuning the Organs in her Mats Chappell foure sev’all tymes and for making of 13 newe pipes and mending the bellows of the said Organs’.10 the queen’s musicians were well paid: the Master of Music (Louis richards) received £440 per annum ‘for himself and the music boys’ and the other musicians received £120 per annum, which was three times the normal pay of one of the king’s musicians. The duties of the queen’s musicians included providing intimate ‘chamber music’ (secular and devotional), music for the queen’s banquets and masque entertainments,11 as well as liturgical music in her chapels. the biographical details of the queen’s musicians are available elsewhere12 and i shall therefore concentrate here on perhaps the most important musician working for the queen, the organist richard Dering, for he was a composer of note and his output is significant in relation to the repertoire of the queen’s chapel. Dering (c.1580– Lord Chamberlain’s records LC 2/6 (allowances of mourning liveries for James i), fo. 77; see a. ashbee, ed., Records of English Court Music, vol. 3 (Snodland, Kent, 1988), p. 5. 5 Acts of the Privy Council of England, 1625–26 (London, 1934), p. 115. 6 Seven of the names are the same as the 1625 list, but francis richard elder and younger, robert roane and John Garnier have been replaced by anthony robert, Jehan Prevost, richard Derrin [Dering] and Jacques Gaultier. See ‘to her Mats Musitians by her Mats Warrant dated the 23rd of October 1626’: national archives, Ministers and receivers accounts SC6/ Chasi/1693; a. ashbee, ed., Records of English Court Music, vol. 5 (aldershot, 1991), p. 3. 7 for full details see ashbee, Records, vols 3 and 5, passim. 8 accounts of the receiver General to Henrietta Maria for one year ended at Michaelmas 1630: national archives, Ministers and receivers accounts SC6/Chasi/1696; see ashbee, Records, vol. 5, p. 7. 9 ashbee, Records, vol. 5, passim. 10 accounts of the receiver General to Henrietta Maria for one year ended at Michaelmas 1638: national archives, Ministers and receivers accounts SC6/Chasi/1701; see ashbee, Records, vol. 5, p. 14. 11 See, inter alia, erica Veevers, Images of Love and Religion: Queen Henrietta Maria and Court Entertainments (Cambridge, 1989). 12 Andrew Ashbee and David Lasocki, with Peter Holman and Fiona Kisby, A Biographical Dictionary of English Court Musicians 1485–1714 (Aldershot and Brookfield, 1998), 2 vols.

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1630) was the illegitimate son of one Henry Dering of Liss in Hampshire who had, on 26 april 1610, successfully supplicated for the degree of Bachelor of Music at Oxford.13 it was most probably only a couple of years later, whilst travelling in italy,14 that he converted to Catholicism. By 1617 he was serving as organist to the english Benedictine nuns of the Convent of Our Lady of the assumption in Brussels, and it was very likely there that he came into regular contact with another English émigré, the composer and organist Peter Philips (1560/61–1628). While he was in the Low Countries, Dering published two sets of motets: Cantiones Sacrae Quinque Vocum and Cantica Sacra … Senis Vocibus (P. Phalèse, antwerp, 1617 and 1618 respectively), and two sets of canzonettas: Canzonette a Tre Voci and Canzonette a Quattro Voci (both P. Phalèse, antwerp, 1620). in 1625 Dering returned to england, quite possibly in the train of Henrietta Maria, and six months later (on 22 December) he is listed among the ‘lutes, viols and voices’ at the english court. When Giles Tomkins succeeded him in 1630, this post was described more specifically as being ‘for the virginals with the voices in ordinary’.15 as has already been noted, he also functioned as organist to Queen Henrietta Maria with a salary of £120 per annum (presumably in addition to the £40 a year he had by virtue of his other royal appointment already mentioned).16 Dering died in March 1630 (and not ‘after 1657’ as is stated by anthony Wood);17 he was buried in the church of St Mary-in-Savoy, and was immediately succeeded as queen’s organist by richard Mico.18 Dering’s english music, none of which was published in his lifetime, consists of anthems (full and verse) for the anglican church, fantasias and dances for viols, two madrigals and the well known City Cries and Country Cries for voice and viols which incorporate popular melodies of the time.19 His Italianate works, nearly all of which were published, include Latin motets and italian canzonettas and madrigals.20 these all include a part for continuo instruments, and show a complete assimilation 13 Joseph foster, Alumni Oxonienses: The Members of the University of Oxford, 1500– 1714 (Oxford, 1891–92), early Series, vol. 1, p. 398. for full details of Dering’s life and work see Peter Platt, “Richard Dering: an Account of his Life and Work” (B.Litt. dissertation, Oxford University, 1951–52); idem, “Dering’s Life and training”, Music & Letters 33 (1952): 41–9; idem, “Perspectives of richard Dering’s Vocal Music”, Studies in Music, University of Western Australia, vol. 1 (1967): 56–66; and Ashbee and Lasocki, Biographical Dictionary, vol. 1, pp. 344–5. 14 a ‘Mr Dearing’ – almost certainly the composer – is noted as being present in rome, having visited Venice and ‘now gone to see more of italy’, in a letter from Sir Dudley Carleton (the king’s envoy in Venice) to Sir John Harryngton; National Archives, SP 99/10, No. 62: 26 June 1612. also, in the preface to his Cantiones Sacrae (antwerp, 1617) Dering states that the motets were written in the ‘first City of the World’ (i.e., rome). 15 Ashbee and Lasocki, Biographical Dictionary, vol. 1, pp. 344–5. 16 ashbee, Records, vol. 3, pp. 244–52. 17 “Lives of the Musicians”, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Wood MS D.19/4, fos 41v–42. 18 See John Bennett and Pamela J. Willetts, “richard Mico”, Chelys 7 (1977): 24–46 (in particular pp. 35–6). 19 Consort Songs, ed. Philip Brett, Musica Britannica, vol. 22 (London, 1967), nos 69–70. 20 Richard Dering: Cantica Sacra, 1618, ed. Peter Platt, Early English Church Music, vol. 15 (London, 1974) and Richard Dering: Secular Vocal Music, ed. Peter Platt, Musica Britannica, vol. 25 (London, 1969).

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of the techniques of contemporary italian concertato music (which he probably studied during his travels in italy or from printed italian music circulating in the Low Countries). Another major influence on Dering’s motets must have been the work of his older english colleague Peter Philips who, while Dering was based in Brussels, was close by at the archducal Chapel. Dering composed over 50 Latin motets for one, two or three voices and basso continuo21 and, given that many may have been composed after his return to england, it is highly likely that they were written specifically for Queen Henrietta Maria’s roman Catholic devotions in her private chapel. the motet ‘Sancta et immaculata virginitas’ is typical of these pieces (see below for a complete transcription of the piece). The text is that of the First Respond and Verse at Matins for the Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary22 and typifies the texts that adorn the liturgy on the various feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The motet exemplifies many of the stylistic features of Dering’s small-scale concertato motets: imitative sections contrast with homophonic writing; contrapuntal sections are characterized by the interplay of short and rhythmic motifs; standard harmonic formulae are used in a tonal framework, with consonance and dissonance being regulated by the regular stresses of a vertically oriented chordal scheme in a defined metre; and the voices are supported by a basso continuo part (for organ and/or theorbo). indeed, Dering’s small-scale motets represent a thorough and proficient English version of the stile nuovo and, as such, represent the ‘progressive’ side of english sacred music in the third decade of the seventeenth century. this characterization is slightly at odds with the traditional historiography of english ‘Baroque Music’ which, in traditional italian-centred music histories, is usually painted as somewhat conservative in nature (certainly in comparison to some other parts of europe) and it is noted that the assimilation of italianate, so-called ‘progressive’ elements was relatively late and haphazard. in general terms it is hard to disagree (although we are careful to avoid the often-allied implication that quality can only be associated with the ‘progressive’). it is, however, worth noting that some court-related musical circles in england were absolutely up to date. i suggest that Queen Henrietta Maria’s musical establishment represented the ‘adventurous’ side of english sacred music, and that between 1625 and 1630 richard Dering was at the centre of a progressive musical culture. it is unfortunate that Dering’s death in 1630 came just before Henrietta Maria’s fortunes changed – certainly in terms of influence and permissiveness towards Catholicism. indeed, the 1630s represented something of a golden era for Catholics in england and was signalled in february 1630 when a group of Capuchin friars arrived from france to serve the queen. the same year Henrietta Maria obtained permission from Charles to build a chapel for her Capuchins, and on 14 September 1632 she laid the foundation stone for the chapel at Somerset House which was 21 Richard Dering: Motets for One, Two or Three Voices and Basso Continuo, ed. Jonathan P. Wainwright, Musica Britannica (London, forthcoming). 22 Translation: O holy and spotless virginity, I know not how to praise you: for you have borne on your breast one whom the heavens could not contain. Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.

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designed by inigo Jones and dedicated to the Virgin.23 the chapel was opened with conspicuous ceremony on 8 December 1636, with an eight-part sung Mass,24 and thereafter became – at least to the anglican establishment – an embarrassingly public magnet for roman Catholics and a large number of converts.25 Presumably music by Dering remained in the chapel repertoire after the composer’s death, but recent archival work has led to another intriguing possibility: that the most up-todate italian music by contemporaries of Monteverdi was performed at the queen’s devotions. In order to explain this claim it is necessary to introduce briefly a musical patron of some importance: Christopher Hatton iii (1605–70).26 He is important to seventeenth-century musicological study for two main reasons: firstly because of the musicians and copyists that he employed, and secondly because of the survival – mostly in Christ Church, Oxford – of his music library. the Hatton library may have consisted of as many as two hundred items of mostly printed music, the greater majority of which were of italian origin.27 although the high-point of Christopher Hatton’s career did not come until the civil wars when, in recognition of his support of the royalist cause, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Hatton of Kirby and became the Comptroller of the King’s Household,28 I would like to suggest that Hatton’s musical interests are significant for the postulation of a further repertoire for Henrietta Maria’s chapel. We know that in the 1630s Hatton was purchasing printed music and was a customer of the London bookseller, Robert Martin. Martin had originally worked as ‘journeyman’ to the London bookseller Henry Fetherstone of St Anne’s Parish, Blackfriars, who was one of the Bodleian Library’s main suppliers of books (many of which were bought in italy). When fetherstone retired in 1631/32 he left the import side of his business jointly to Martin and George thomason.29 Martin eventually went

23 See “Memoirs of the mission in england of the Capuchin friars …. By father Cyprien of Gamaches”, published in thomas Birch, The Court and Times of Charles I, ed. robert Folkestone Williams (London, 1848), vol. 2, pp. 301–6; and Father Cuthbert (Lawrence anthony Hess) OSfC, The Capuchins: a Contribution to the History of the CounterReformation, vol. 2 (London, 1928; reprt. 1971). 24 father Cyprien describes how ‘music, composed of excellent voices, set up an anthem, the harmony of which having no outlet but between the clouds and the figures of Angels, it seemed as if the whole Paradise was full of music, and as if the angels themselves were the musicians …’, Birch, Court and Times, vol. 2, p. 313. 25 See, inter alia, White, Henrietta Maria, ch. 2: “The Influential Queen (1635–42)”, pp. 30–59. 26 See Jonathan P. Wainwright, Musical Patronage in Seventeenth-Century England: Christopher, First Baron Hatton (1605–1670) (Aldershot and Brookfield, 1997). 27 for full details of the Hatton collection see Wainwright, Musical Patronage, pp. 25–45. 28 for full details of Hatton’s career see Wainwright, Musical Patronage, pp. 3–24. 29 William A. Jackson, ed., Records of the Court of the Stationers’ Company 1602–1640 (London, 1957), pp. 105, 107, 131–2, 462 and 467; and Henry Graham Pollard and albert ehrman, The Distribution of Books by Catalogue to 1800 (Cambridge, 1965), pp. 91–2.

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into business on his own, continued to supply the Bodleian Library with books,30 and was successful enough to issue, between 1633 and 1650, six printed catalogues of his purchases from abroad (chiefly from Italy) and five of these contain a section listing Venetian music.31 a bill of sale dated november 1638 from robert Martin to Sir Christopher Hatton iii, with a quittance note signed by Martin and dated 9 november 1641 survives.32 it lists 25 Venetian music editions of the period 1624 to 1638 (the very year in which Hatton bought them) and one non-musical item. the music editions are detailed in table 1; all 25 survive today at Christ Church, Oxford. Table 1

Printed Music Bought by Christopher Hatton III from Robert Martin in November 1638

† Copy at Christ Church (†1: unicum; †2: only complete copy extant) * Used by Hatton’s musicians for their manuscript copies G.B. aloisi, Contextus Musicarum Proportionum Op. 4 (1637)†* G.B. aloisi, Corona Stellarum Op. 5 (1637)†2 * f. Cauda, Catena Sacrarum Cantionum Bk 1, Op. 3 (1626)†1 a. della Ciaia, Madrigali Op. 1 (1636)†2 f. Costantini ed., Motetti Bk 4, Op. 12 (1634)†1 a. Cremonese, Madrigali Concertati Bk 1, Op. 1 (1636)†1 a. facchi, Motetti Bk 2 (1635)†1 * a. facchi, Madrigali Bk 2 (1636)†2 B. ferrari, Musiche Varie [Bk 1] (1633)†1 G. filippi, Concerti Ecclesiastici Bk 1 (1637)†2 n. fontei, Bizzarrie Poetiche [Bk 1] (1635)†1 &/or Bk 2 (1636)†1 n. fontei, Melodiae Sacrae Op. 3 (1638)†2 a. Marastoni, Madrigali Concertati Op. 6 (1628)† f.M. Marini, Concerti Spirituali Bk 1 (1637)†2 * t. Merula, Musiche Concertate Bk 2, Op. 10 (1635†* [1/1633]) t. Merula, Curtio Precipitato Bk 2, Op. 13 (1638)†1 G. Monte dell’Olmo, Applausi Ecclesiastici Bk 1 (1636)†2 G. Monte dell’Olmo, Sacri Affetti Bk 2 (1637)†1 a. de Pisticci, Motetti Bk 3, Op. 6 (1633)† a. de Pisticci, Motetti Bk 4, Op. 7 (1637)†1 O. Polidori, Motetti Op. 13 (1636)†

Price 5s-0d 2s-4d 5s-0d 3s-0d 2s-6d 3s-6d 2s-6d 3s-0d 2s-6d 3s-0d 2s-0d 4s-6d 1s-6d 4s-6d 4s-0d 1s-6d 2s-0d 1s-0d 2s-6d 2s-6d 2s-0d

RISM no.33 a876 a877 C1539 D1394 16341 a933 f44 f45 f265 f733 f1485/6 f1487 M407 M672 M2349 M2351 G2516 G2518 P2454 P2455 P5024

30 Gwen Hampshire, ed., The Bodleian Library Account Book 1613–1646 (Oxford, 1983), pp. 92, 96, 105, 125 and 131. 31 See Donald W. Krummel, “Venetian Baroque Music in a London Bookshop: the Robert Martin Catalogues, 1633–50”, in Music and Bibliography: Essays in Honour of Alec Hyatt King, ed. Oliver neighbour (London, 1980), pp. 1–27. 32 Northamptonshire Record Office, Finch-Hatton MS 2652. 33 Répertoire Internationale des Sources Musicales: Einzeldrucke vor 1800, a/i (Kassel, 1971–99) and Recueils Imprimés, XVIe–XVIIe Siècles: Listes Chronologique, B/i/1, ed. françois Lesure (Munich and Duisburg, 1960).

Music in the Queen’s Chapel G.f. Sances, Motetti (1638)†* C. Saracini, Musiche Bk 5 (1624)† & Bk 6 (1624)† B. tomasi, Motecta Op. 6 (1635)†2 *

201 4s-6d S768 3s-0d S913/14 2s-8d t922

Marini is given as ‘Martini’ on the bill; Pisticci’s Motetti Bk 3 is erroneously described as o ‘il 3 Lib Mad[rigali]’; and it is not clear whether Book 1 or Book 2 of Fontei’s Bizzarrie Poetiche was purchased, the fact that there are unique copies of both in Christ Church could indicate that both books were bought in November 1638 (although the price is perhaps too low for both).

This is the only surviving evidence of Hatton’s music purchases, but it seems unlikely that this was Hatton’s only dealing with the bookseller – most likely he had been a customer of Martin’s from the early 1630s. in all, there are 224 music prints listed in Martin’s catalogues; most of them are Venetian and 49 are today unidentifiable (apparently lost). Of the 224 editions cited, only 107 exist today in British libraries (74 at Christ Church). returning to the Hatton purchases of 1638: the fact that there are copies of every one of the 25 publications at Christ Church today cannot be a coincidence. nine of the 25 editions are unique copies, eight are the only complete copies in existence, and seven of the editions were used by Hatton’s musicianscribes, Stephen Bing and George Jeffreys (see below), when they compiled their various manuscripts. these 25 publications provide the nucleus of the Hatton music library surviving in Christ Church, Oxford. table 2 lists other editions that were used by Hatton’s musicians when copying their music manuscripts; it is very likely that these too were once part of Hatton’s library. Table 2

Other Printed Sources used by Hatton’s Musicians/Copyists

† Copy at Christ Church (†1: unicum) ‡ Listed in Martin’s book catalogues * no copy in U.K. today G.B. aloisi, Coelestis Parnasus Op. 1 (1628)†1 G.G. arrigoni, Concerti di Camera (1635)‡ S. Bernardi, Secondo Libro de Madrigali Op. 7 (1616)† S. Bernardi, Concerti Accademici … Libro Primo Op. 8 (1615–16) a. Cifra, Motecta Bk 5, Op. 11 (1616† [1/1612]) r. Dering, Cantica Sacra … Senis Vocibus (1618)†(x2) C. Gesualdo, Madrigali [Bk 1] (1603†, 1617 (as Bk 2)†‡ [1/1594]) C. Gesualdo, Madrigali Bk 2 (1603†, 1616 (as Bk 1)†‡ [1/1594]) C. Gesualdo, Madrigali Bk 3 (1619†‡ [1/1595]) C. Gesualdo, Madrigali Bk 4 (1604†, 1616†‡ [1/1596] a. Grandi, Il Primo Libro de Motetti (1617†, 1628†‡ [1/1610]) a. Grandi, Il Secondo Libro de Motetti (1628†‡ [1/1613]) a. Grandi, Madrigali Concertati [Bk 1] (1626† [1/1615]) a. Grandi, Il Quarto Libro de Motetti (1628†‡ [1/1616]) a. Grandi, Celesti Fiori … Libro Quinto (1625†‡, 1638†‡ [1/1619])

RISM no. a872 a2490 B2066 B2055 C2191 D1319 G1726/9 G1722/4 G1734 G1736/8 G3418/21 G3426 G3468 G3435 G3441/2

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a. Grandi, Motetti … con Sinfonie Bk 3 (1629)† a. Grandi, Il Sesto Libro de Motetti (1630)†‡ a. Gregori, Sacrarum Cantionum Bk 3, Op. 8 (1635)‡ G. Hayne (e. Hennio), Motetti Sacri Op. 4 (1646)* t. Merula, Il Primo Libro de Motetti Op. 6 (1624)‡* t. Merula, Libro Secondo de Concerti Spirituali (1628) C. Monteverdi, Il Quarto Libro de Madrigali (1615†(x3),1622†(x2)‡ [1/1603]) P. nenna, Il Settimo Libro de Madrigali (1624†‡ [1/1608]) D. Pecci, Sacri Modulatus Op. 3 (1629)†1 ‡ f. Pio, Liber Primus Motectorum (1622–4)* G. rovetta, Madrigali Concertati Bk 1, Op. 2 (1629)†‡ e. trabattone, Concerti Bk 2, Op. 4 (1629)†1 ‡ f. turini, Madrigali Bk 1 (1624†‡ [1/1621])

G3450 G3455 G3813 H4924 M2338 M2339 M3471/3 n396 P1100 P2411 R2981 t1070 T1389

again it is noticeable that most of the editions survive today at Christ Church (three being unique) and that many appear in Martin’s book catalogues. It seems reasonable to suggest that most (if not all) of the prints in table 2 were also at one time part of the Hatton collection, particularly in view of the fact that George Jeffreys is not known to have worked for anyone except Hatton.34 What then has the Hatton library got to do with the repertoire of Queen Henrietta Maria’s chapel? Here, it has to be admitted, i am straying into the realms of speculation: Hatton, as Comptroller of the King’s Household in Oxford (1643–46) would undoubtedly have had contact with the queen while she was resident in Merton College (July 1643–April 1644), but no demonstrable link can be made between Hatton and the queen in the 1630s. even so, when one examines the contents of the Hatton music library and – more importantly – the music manuscripts of repertoire copied by Hatton’s musicians from these printed sources – then i believe that some speculation is warranted. thirty-two of the 53 printed editions listed in tables 1 and 2 are of sacred music, and the majority are publications of small-scale concertatostyle pieces – that is, music for a few voices and basso continuo (organ and/or theorbo). Hatton’s ownership of these editions does not, of course, mean that the music was necessarily used in performance; indeed, i have shown elsewhere that, to some extent, Hatton was a random and uncritical collector.35 a far safer indication of music that was actually performed is provided by the manuscript copies made by Hatton’s musicians from the editions: here the repertoire is significant in relation to Henrietta Maria’s chapel.36

for further speculation on the extent of the Hatton music library, see Wainwright, Musical Patronage, pp. 32–45. 35 Wainwright, Musical Patronage, pp. 207–11. 36 in both Musical Patronage, passim, and “images of Virtue and War: Music in Civil War Oxford”, in William Lawes: Essays on His Life, Times and Work, ed. andrew ashbee (London and Brookfield, 1998), pp. 121–42, I argued that these manuscripts were of Oxford provenance and originated in the Civil War years (1643–46). I now think that it is more likely that the manuscripts have their origins in the ‘golden years’ of the 1630s. 34

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Hatton’s most important musicians were Stephen Bing (1610–81) and George Jeffreys (c.1610–85), both of whom were prolific copyists.37 three of their manuscripts concern us here. firstly, Oxford, Bodleian Library, tenbury MS 1013, a score copied by George Jeffreys of alessandro Grandi’s Messa a 4 voci from the first book of motets.38 The paper used by Jeffreys (with a watermark of a Pot lettered ID), is the same as that of a number of manuscripts copied by Jeffreys and Bing and can be assigned to the late 1630s.39 Equally significant, in relation to a posited repertoire for Henrietta Maria’s chapel, are British Library add. MS 31,479 (Latin motets by italian composers for 1–3 voices and basso continuo) and Madrigal Society MSS G 55–9 (Latin motets by italian composers for 4 and 5 voices and basso continuo); these two sets of partbooks are so similar in format and repertoire that they must originally have been intended to form a single collection (see appendix 1).40 it is a vast collection of 159 Latin motets which has been the subject of much debate. the issue of the dating of this collection is complicated but, as the conclusions are of importance to the argument here, it is worth reiterating some of the detail. In an article in 1990 I suggested that, like Jeffreys’ copy of Grandi’s mass, the core of the partbooks could date from as early as 1638.41 at that time two concordances with Hayne’s Motetti Sacri Op. 4 (antwerp, 1646) had not been noted42 and the latest identified copy-source was Sances’ Motetti which was published in Venice in 1638 (the same year that Hatton purchased a copy from robert Martin). the discovery of a concordant printed source of 1646 necessitated a revision of the previously proposed date for British Library add. MS 31,479 and Madrigal Society MSS G 55–9. Dr Robert Thompson’s work concerning the paper-type of the partbooks was

37 for full details concerning Stephen Bing, George Jeffreys, their manuscript copies and their connections with the Hatton family, see Wainwright, Musical Patronage, passim. 38 See Wainwright, Musical Patronage, pp. 122–5 and 343–4. a recording of the mass (together with motets by Grandi, f.M. Marini, aloisi, rovetta and Merula) by Concertare, dir. Jonathan Wainwright, is available on Queen of Heavenly Virtue: Sacred Music for Henrietta Maria’s Chapel (isis records CD023). Grandi’s Il Primo Libro de Motetti was first published in Venice in 1610; an unspecified edition was advertised in Martin’s 1633 booklist and there is a copy of the fifth edition (1628) in the Christ Church library. It is highly likely that this edition was Jeffreys’ copy-source. 39 robert thompson, “Manuscripts of the Civil War Period?”, unpublished paper presented at Study Day on Music 1550–1650, Oxford, May 1990; see also idem, “english Music Manuscripts and the fine Paper trade, 1648–1688” (PhD dissertation, University of London, 1988) and “George Jeffreys and the Stile Nuove in english Sacred Music: a new Date for his autograph Score, British Library add. MS 10338”, Music & Letters 70 (1989): 317–41. 40 for full descriptions and inventories, see Wainwright, Musical Patronage, pp. 125–31 and 254–60. 41 Jonathan P. Wainwright, “George Jeffreys’ Copies of italian Music”, Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle 23 (1990): 109–24. Six pieces were added to the partbooks in the 1670s: these are irrelevant to the issues here and are thus ignored; for full details see Wainwright, Musical Patronage, pp. 129–31. 42 See Wainwright, Musical Patronage, pp. 125–6 and 257.

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invaluable in reaching a correct date for the manuscripts.43 He noted that, whilst the rastrum (stave) ruling of the partbooks is the same as in manuscripts dating from the late 1630s through to the 1660s, the watermark – a Cardinals’ Hat lettered Gr – appears only in sources of the 1650s or later. added to this, robert Spencer discovered the Cardinals’ Hat Gr paper in two publications of 1653: John Playford, Select Musicall Ayres and Dialogues (t. Harper for J. Playford, London, 1653) and Henry Lawes, Ayres and Dialogues (t. H.[arper] for J. Playford, London, 1653).44 this is incontrovertible evidence that the Cardinals’ Hat paper dates from the early 1650s. it appears that the stationer John Playford acquired a consignment of the Cardinals’ Hat Gr paper from italy in the early 1650s and issued his printer, thomas Harper, with the poor quality outer quires and kept the thicker inner quires of reams for ‘pricking’ (manuscript) paper.45 Thus it can now be stated that George Jeffreys’ partbooks of Italian motets for one to five voices and basso continuo were copied in the mid to late 1650s and not c.1638–46 as had been suggested. However, the following facts still remain: (a) the greater majority of the pieces copied by Jeffreys date from before 1638 (see tables 1 and 2) (b) George Jeffreys is known to have been interested in Italian music from as early as c.1634;46 (c) the chapel of Queen Henrietta Maria would have been the obvious environment for the performance of small-scale italian concertato music such as that copied by Jeffreys (the partbooks contain five settings of the ‘Salve regina’, three of the ‘ave regina’, one setting of the Litany of Our Lady, and other settings of blatantly Marian texts);47 and (d) it has been shown that many of Jeffreys’ own italianate compositions – no doubt inspired by the study and performance of italian motets – were written during the early 1640s.48 it seems inconceivable that British Library add. MS 31,479 and Madrigal Society MSS G 55–9 represent Jeffreys’ first copies of Italian motets from his patron’s printed music collection. The 43 thompson “english Music Manuscripts”, 394–430; and idem, “Manuscripts of the Civil War Period?”. 44 reported by thompson in “Manuscripts of the Civil War Period?”. 45 the presence of the two systems of rastrum-ruling found in manuscripts probably copied in the late 1630s/early 1640s is not necessarily problematic. Playford could not have been responsible for these early rastrum rulings but, as robert thompson has noted (“Manuscripts of the Civil War Period?”), it is possible that Playford ‘acquired the stave-ruling equipment from another stationer, perhaps his master John Benson, who had been using it earlier’. 46 See Wainwright, Musical Patronage, pp. 115–16. 47 It should be noted that certain texts in the manuscript partbooks are different from the original printed texts (see appendixes 1 and 2); it appears that, at some point in this complex story of copying and recopying, certain texts were considered unacceptably Marian in reference and were therefore changed. for example, alessandro Grandi’s two-voice motets ‘ave sanctissima Maria’ and ‘tu pulchra es Maria’ have become ‘ave sanctissime Messia’ and ‘tu dulcis es, Messia’. in Musical Patronage, pp. 176–7, i suggested the possibility that the openly Marian pieces were performed in the Queen’s private chapel away from the public, and those pieces with their texts modified to suit a more Protestant taste were perhaps used in more public performances. 48 See thompson, “George Jeffreys and the Stile Nuove”, and Wainwright, Musical Patronage, pp. 132–59. it is worth noting that Jeffreys himself set nine of the Latin texts of motets in British Library add. 31,479 and Madrigal Society G 55–9.

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partbooks do not, in any case, show signs of having been copied directly from the printed copy-sources, but rather from a number of separate intermediary manuscripts (now lost). This hypothesis finds some support in the fact that the order of motets in British Library add. MS 31,479 and Madrigal Society MSS G 55–9 bears little resemblance to the sequence of pieces in the printed sources, and there are never more than four motets in sequence from any one print. the evidence, then, seems to indicate that British Library add. MS 31,479 and Madrigal Society MSS G 55–9 were copied from manuscript sources that are now lost. these sources were probably roughly copied performing parts or scores (like the Tenbury manuscript mentioned above) copied in the 1630s. Jeffreys refers to ‘my other Score book’ in a note on folio 154 of British Library Add. MS 10,338; could this lost book have included some of the original copies of italian motets which he recopied in the late 1650s? finally, the last section of Oxford, Christ Church Mus. 880 needs mention here as it appears to have very close links with Jeffreys’ Madrigal Society MSS G 55–9. Christ Church Mus. 880 is the basso continuo book of a complex set of four partbooks (Mus. 877–80) that contains both printed and manuscript music. the manuscript sections consist of various layers copied, at different times, by five scribes (including Stephen Bing and George Jeffreys). The contents of the partbooks are described as follows in an inscription on the flyleaf of Mus. 880: ‘Mr. Jeffreys Coll: of songs – verry / imperfect – on the first page of one / of the books … it appears / that he was organist of Christ Church. / M.S. / Dr Wilsons Psalterium Carolinum printed / Mr Walter Porters Motetts – printed / thorough Bass to the Prince of / Venosa 5 parts &c. M.S. / a strange meddley.’ the designation ‘Mr. Jeffreys Coll[ection] of songs’ has led to the suggestion that George Jeffreys copied substantial sections of the partbooks.49 Jeffreys’ actual contribution to the copying of the manuscripts was small; he did, however, supervise the work of two of the other copyists: by organizing the layout of the pages (by writing the clefs) and adding the text underlay to the music copied by the second anonymous scribe (B) and Stephen Bing. the inscription ‘Mr. Jeffreys Coll[ection]’ would therefore appear only to indicate that Jeffreys once owned the partbooks (or certain sections of the partbooks). Jeffreys’ ‘supervisory’ hand is not present in those sections of the partbooks copied by the two remaining scribes: one an unidentified copyist (A), the other the Italian lutenist and composer, angelo notari, active in england from c.1610 until his death in 1663. It is the last section of the basso continuo partbook, copied by Stephen Bing, that concerns us here (but it is nevertheless interesting to note that the first sections of the partbooks are an important early source of Latin motets for 1–3 voices and continuo by Richard Dering, Queen Henrietta Maria’s organist). The final section 49 Pamela Willetts, “a neglected Source of Monody and Madrigal”, Music & Letters 43 (1962): 329–39 (at pp. 331–2), considered that ‘the handwriting of much of the manuscript sections of Christ Church 878–80 is in Jeffries’ autograph’. G.E.P. Arkwright, Catalogue of Music in the Library of Christ Church, Oxford (London, 1915–23), vol. 2, p. 94, stated that Christ Church, Mus. 878–80 are ‘in Dean aldrich’s hand-writing’, apparently not having noticed the fact that there are five copyists involved. Arkwright probably compared the hand of the final section of Christ Church, Mus. 880 (Bing) with that of Christ Church, Mus. 2, a manuscript also copied by Bing but to which Dean aldrich added the titles; see Wainwright, Musical Patronage, p. 67, and Plate 8.

Henrietta Maria

206

of Mus. 880 contains the basso continuo parts for 46 italian four-voice pieces of which 34 also appear in Jeffreys’ Madrigal Society MSS G 55–9 (see appendix 2). Like the Madrigal Society collection, this section of Mus. 880 appears to date from the 1650s.50 this would seem to indicate that there was a common core of popular pieces which had been copied from Hatton’s printed collection. the recopying in the late 1650s of Italian music possibly first copied and performed in Henrietta Maria’s chapel may have been the result merely of fastidious and careful copyists wishing to preserve what they perceived as a lost royalist repertoire. alternatively, in the later 1650s when there may have been renewed royalist fervour at the prospect of the end of the Commonwealth and the restoration of the king, Jeffreys and Bing may have been inspired to recopy their manuscripts of italian motets in preparation for the new royalist age. i am very aware that, in an attempt to identify the repertoire of Queen Henrietta Maria’s chapel, i have been building hypothesis upon hypothesis. However, i am of the opinion that, within limits, a certain amount of speculation is worthwhile, if only to present ideas for testing by other scholars as more research is undertaken and new evidence unearthed. I suggest that, as things stand, the most likely explanation for this openly roman Catholic music is that we are here dealing with the repertoire of Queen Henrietta Maria’s chapel – a repertoire that was a symbolic representation of not only the Virgin Mary but of the queen herself. for english roman Catholics the texts of motets such as ‘Dulcissima Maria’, ‘O Maria sanctissima’ and ‘O dulcis virgo virginum’51 would have had a double application, as expressions of devotion not only to the Queen of Heaven, but also to their own temporal queen, Henrietta Maria, the Blessed Virgin’s champion on earth.

for full details and inventory, see Wainwright, Musical Patronage, pp. 160–9 and 405–14. 51 Set, respectively, by Giovanni Battista Aloisi (fl. 1628–44), Biagio Tomasi (c.1585– 1640), and alessandro Grandi (c.1580–1630). 50

Music in the Queen’s Chapel

Sancta et immaculata virginitas by Richard Dering

207

208

Henrietta Maria

Music in the Queen’s Chapel

209

Appendix 1 London, British Library Additional Manuscript 31,479 and Madrigal Society Manuscripts G 55-9 Two sets of partbooks containing George Jeffreys’ copies of Latin motets for one, two, three, four or five voices and basso continuo by Italian composers. The two sets complement each other and are so similar in format that they must originally have formed a single collection. apparently copied in the mid to late 1650s from now-lost manuscripts originally copied in the 1630s(?); includes a few additions made in the 1670s. British Library Add. MS 31,479 No. Composer

Title

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 1 2

[Sances] Jubilate Deo [Grandi] [Sances]

Dulcis amor Jesu Bbc Bbc Salvum me fac Deus Bbc audite me divini fructus Bbc exultate Deo Bbc anima mea desiderat te Bbc Gaudeamus omnes in Domino Cbc Cantate Domino Cbc Salvator mundi Cbc O Maria quam pulchra es Cbc ave maris stel[l]a Cbc Dominus illuminatio mea B 2vln bc Lucifer cælestis olim Bbc Hodie nobis de cælo CCbc Jesu noster Dignissimus CCbc

3 4 5 6

[Grandi] [Facchi] [facchi] [Grandi]

7 8

[Grandi] [Grandi]

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

[Grandi] [Merula] [Merula] [Merula] [facchi] [Tomasi] [facchi]

[Merula] Carissimo [Grandi] [Grandi]

[trabattone] 52

Venite filii Bonum est confiteri Domino Quid timidi estis? O dulce numen numinum as ‘O dulcis virgo’ Salvum me fac Domine O quam gloriosus as ‘O quam gloriosa’ O quam suave est nomen Hodie nobis de cælo O magnum misterium O nomen Jesu Jesu dulcis memoria Fulcite me floribus Omni die dic Mariæ Qui laudes tuas cantat O beatum virum

Scoring52

Printed Source (RISM no.) S768 G3450 S768

CCbc CCbc CCbc CCbc

M2339 (Later addition) G3417 G3431 as ‘Haec est arbor dignissimus’ G3422 F44 f44 G3455

CCbc CCbc

G3431 G3455

CCbc CCbc CCbc CCbc CCbc CCbc CCbc CCbc CCbc

G3422 M2339 M2339 M2339 f44 T922 f44

C: Cantus; a: alto; t: tenor; B: Bass; bc: basso continuo.

t1070

Henrietta Maria

210 18 [trabattone] 19 [trabattone] 20 [Grandi]

O admirabile com[m]ercium CCbc indica mihi quem diligit CCbc ave sanctissime Messia CCbc

21 22 23 24 25

Ecce fideles Salvum me fac Jubilent in c[a]elis egredimini charissimi O im[m]aculate

TTbc ttbc ttbc ttbc Cabc

26 27 [trabattone] 28 [Grandi]

amore langueo Veni O Sanctissima tu dulcis es Messia

Cabc Cabc Ctbc

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

Ctbc Cabc Cabc atbc atbc atbc aBbc CBbc CBbc CBbc CBbc CBbc aBbc CBbc CBbc CBbc CBbc tBbc CBbc CBbc CBbc CBbc CBbc CBbc CBbc CBbc CBbc CBbc CBbc CBbc CBbc

61 [Merula] 62 [Merula]

Luce serena lucent Misericordias Domini ave Maria gratia plena Quem terra pontus tota pulchra es Gaudete omnes Domine inclyna cælos Domine Dominus noster trahe me post te exulta et lætare Sub tuum pr[a]esidium anima Christi Deus meus ad te tota pulchra es Deus in adiutorium O dulcis Jesu Salve regina inclyna Domine aurem Sicut lilium inter spinas Peccavi super numerum et introeuntes Consolare O Mater O Jesu vita mea Quemadmodum desiderat Confitemini Domino Dominus in igne veniet Salvum me fac Deus O pulcher[r]ima Sancti tui Domine in convertendo Dominus anima mea in æterna dulcedine O bone Jesu fontes & omnia

CBbc BBbc

M2338 M2338

1 2 3

Sicut oculi servorum O quam tu pulchra es Salve mundi gloria

atBbc ttBbc atBbc

G3417 G3417 G3422 as ‘Salve radix

[Trabattone] [Sances] [Sances] [trabattone] [Grandi]

[trabattone] [Merula] [tomasi] [facchi] [Sances] [trabattone] [Merula] [trabattone] [tomasi] [Grandi] [D. Pecci] [trabattone] [tomasi] [Sances] [aloisi] [aloisi] [f.M.Marini] [Pio] [sic][Pio] [Grandi] [Trabattone] [Merula] [Merula] [trabattone] [trabattone] [trabattone] [trabattone]

[Grandi] [Grandi] [Grandi]

t1070 t1070 G3455 as ‘ave sanctissima Maria’ T1070 S768 S768 t1070 G3422 as ‘O intemerata’ t1070 G3439 as ‘tu pulchra es Maria’ t1070 M2338 t922 f44 S768 t1070 M2339 t1070 t922 G3431 P1100 t1070 t922 S768 a877 a876 M672 P2411 P2411 G3455 T1070 M2338 M2339 t1070 t1070 t1070 t1070

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4 5

[Grandi] [Grandi]

O magnum sacramentum O lux splendidior

CtBbc CtBbc

6 7

[Grandi] [Grandi]

Hymnum cantemus Domino Hæc est vera ecclesia

atBbc ttBbc

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

[Grandi] [tomasi] [facchi] [tomasi] [Sances] [aloisi] [Sances] [Sances] [Merula]

Benedicta sit Sancta trinitas tota pulchra es exurgat Deus O gloriosa Domina O Domine gutt[a]e Salve regina Plag[a]e tu[a]e Domine O crux benedicta O immaculate

atBbc CCBbc CCBbc CCBbc atBbc CtBbc atBbc atBbc CtBbc

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

[Merula] O quam dulcis es tu ttBbc [Sances] ave regina atBbc [aloisi] Quid mihi est in c[a]elo atBbc [facchi] O sacrum convivium CaBbc Hennio [Hayne] Quid mihi est in caelo ttBbc [f.M.Marini] anima mea liquefacta est CaBbc [f.M.Marini] Magnum hereditatis CaBbc [f.M.Marini] O vos omnes atBbc [aloisi] Benignissime Jesu ttBbc [trabattone] O quam iucundum CCBbc [Hayne] O Domine Deus atBbc [facchi] audite c[a]eli CCBbc [aloisi] ave regina CCBbc [Merula] Sat est Domine CtBbc [aloisi] Dulcissima Maria CaBbc Carissimi insurrexerunt in nos atBbc Charissimi Desiderata nobis atBbc Charissimi Quam pulchra es CCBbc recte rovetta arr. Jeffreys? – a free arrangement of the two-part piece in r2964 35 Charissimi audite sancti CCBbc [reggio] Miserere mei CCBbc

sancta’ G3439 G3455 as ‘O crux splendidior’ G3431 G3431 as ‘Haec est virgo sapiens’ G3439 t922 f44 t922 S768 a877 S768 S768 M2338 as ‘O intemerata’ M2338 S768 a876 f44 H4924 M672 M672 M672 a876 t1070 H4924 f44 a877 M2338 a876 (Later addition) ditto ditto (Later addition) ditto

Madrigal Society MSS G 55–9 (housed in the British Library) No.

Composer

Title

Scoring

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

[Grandi] [Grandi] [Grandi] [Grandi] [Grandi] [Grandi] [Grandi] [Grandi] [Grandi]

Benedictus Dominus Hic est vere Martyr Cantabo Domino Heu mihi Caro mea vere est cibus Magnum hereditatis Vidi spetiosam Obaudite me O bone Jesu

attBbc attBbc attBbc attBbc CatBbc ttBBbc attBbc attBbc attBbc

Printed Source (RISM no.) G3417 G3417 G3417 G3422 G3417 G3422 G3417 G3417 G3422

Henrietta Maria

212 [10]

[aloisi]

Dulcissime Jesu Christe

CatBbc

[11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43]

[trabattone] [trabattone] [aloisi] [aloisi] [Grandi] [Grandi] [Grandi] [Grandi] [Grandi] [aloisi] [Gallerano] [Sances] [Sances] [Merula] [Merula] [Merula] [Merula] [facchi] [tomasi] [trabattone] [aloisi] [Gregori] [Gregori] [Cifra] [Grandi] [trabattone] [trabattone] [trabattone] [Merula] [facchi] [aloisi] [Merula] [Merula]

in cælis hodie Kyrie eleison [Litaniæ BVM] impetum inimicorum Cantate Domino Congratulamini omnes inter vestibulum Domine ne in furore Deus qui nos in tantis Diligam te Domine attollite portas In Domino confido O Jesu mi dulcissime Salve regina Cum complerentur Magnificate Dominum ego sum panis vitæ Panis angelicus O virgo prudentissima O Maria sanctissima Lætis nunc mentibus regina c[a]eli O Jesu O bone Jesu ave regina O quam pulchra Plorabo die ac nocte Dicite nobis Laudate Dominum Qui habitatis Jesu dulcissime ave saluber[r]ima Salve regina Cantate Domino Benignissima Jesu [sic]

CatBbc CatBbc CatBbc CatBbc CatBbc CttBbc CatBbc CatBbc CCBBbc CttBbc CCTBbc CCaBbc CatBbc CatBbc CATBbc CatBbc CatBbc CCaBbc CatBbc CatBbc CatBbc CatBbc CatBbc CCaBbc CatBbc CatBbc CatBbc CatBbc CatBbc CCaBbc CatBbc CCBBbc C[a]ttBbc

[44]

[Merula]

Benedictus tu

C[a]ttBbc

[45] [46] [47] [48] [49]

[facchi] [aloisi] [aloisi]

Salve regina exurgat Deus O dulcis virgo virginum tibi laus ascendo ad Patrem

C[C]atBbc C[C]atBbc C[C]atBbc –CatBbc –CatBbc

a872 as ‘Dulcissima Christi Mater’ t1070 t1070 a872 a872 G3417 G3422 G3455 G3431 G3431 a872 A872 S768 S768 M2338 M2338 M2339 M2339 f44 t922 t1070 a877 G3813 G3813 C2190 G3431 t1070 t1070 t1070 M2338 f44 a877 M2338 M2338 as ‘Benignissime Jesu’ M2338 as ‘Benedicta tu’ f44 a876 a876

Appendix 2 Oxford, Christ Church Music 880 (Fourth Layer) Last section of a composite partbook containing Stephen Bing’s copies of the basso continuo parts to Latin four-voice motets (and a few madrigals) by italian composers.

Music in the Queen’s Chapel

213

apparently copied in the mid to late 1650s from now-lost manuscripts originally copied in the 1630s(?). No.

Composer

Title

Scoring

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 42[sic] 43 44 45 46 10 11 12 13 38 39 40 41 14 15 16 17 18 19 32 33 34 35 36 37 20 21 22

[Merula] [Merula] [Merula] [Grandi] [Grandi] [Grandi] [trabattone] [Grandi] [Grandi] [tomasi] [tomasi] [tomasi] [Sances] [ferrabosco i] [Grandi] [Grandi] [Grandi] [Grandi] [aloisi] [Sances] [facchi] [facchi] [Grandi] [Grandi] [Grandi] [Grandi] [Grandi] [Grandi] [trabattone] [Merula] [Merula] [Merula] [Merula] [Mazzocchi] [aloisi] [aloisi] [aloisi]

Cum complerentur Magnificate Dominum Ego flos campi Diligam te Domine Domine ne in furore tuo O bone Jesu Kyrie eleison ‘Litanie BVM’ Obaudite me Vidi [speciosam] Quasi cedrus O Maria [sanctissima] Kyrie eleison ‘Lettanie BVM’ Salve ò Christe fuerunt mihi [lacrimae] Caro mea [vere est cibus] Congratulamini omnes Cantabo Domino Hic est vere Martyr audite gentes O Jesu mi dulcissime O Jesu clementissime ave saluberrima Benedictus Dominus Heu mihi Magnum hæreditatis inter vestibulum Deus qui nos [in tantis] Plorabo [die ac nocte] Dicite nobis nominativo hic nominativo quis vel qui tempesta di dolcezza Belle ha le perle nigra sum impetum [inimicorum] Cantate Domino Dulcissime [Jesu Christe]

[CatB]bc [CATB]bc [CB 2vln]bc [CCBB]bc [CatB]bc [attB]bc [CatB]bc [attB]bc [attB]bc [CatB]bc [CatB]bc [CatB]bc [CatB]bc [aatt]bc [CatB]bc [CatB]bc [attB]bc [attB]bc [CatB]bc [CCaB]bc [CCaB]bc [CCaB]bc [attB]bc [attB]bc [ttBB]bc [CttB]bc [CatB]bc [CatB]bc [CatB]bc [atBB]bc [CatB]bc [CatB]bc [CatB]bc [CCBB]bc [CatB]bc [CatB]bc [CatB]bc

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

[Gallerano] [aloisi] [trabattone] [trabattone] [Merula] [arrigoni] [arrigoni] [trabattone] [trabattone]

In Domino confido attollite portas Qui habitatis in cælis hodie Jesu dulcissime Usami pur [orgoglio] Stelle fulminatrici Laudate Dominum Lætis nunc mentibus

[CCTB]bc [CttB]bc [CatB]bc [CatB]bc [CatB]bc [CatB]bc [ttBB]bc [CatB]bc [CatB]bc

Printed Source (RISM no.) M2338 M2338 M2339 G3431 G345 G3422 t1070 G3417 G3417 t922 t922 t922 S768 G3417 G3417 G3417 G3417 a876 S768 f44 f44 G3417 G3422 G3422 G3422 G3431 G3431 t1070 M2348 M2348 M2348 M2348 a872 a872 a872 as ‘Dulcissima Christi Mater’ A872 a872 t1070 t1070 M2338 a2490 a2490 t1070 t1070

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index *Explanatory note: Artworks are listed by subject, and cross-listed by artist, with the page number given in italics. anna Sophia, Countess of Carnarvon 184, 185 anne of austria 76, 88, 165

Dieussart, françois 191–2, 193 Digby, Sir Kenelm 31, 52 Dress 129–33, 168, 175

Barberini, Cardinal francesco 87, 140, 142, 154 Barra, Jan 168, 172 Bernini, Gianlorenzo 142, 152, 188 du Bosque, Jacques Secretary of Ladies 7–8, 39–56 L’honnest femme 49 Buckingham, Duke of, see Villiers, George

elizabeth i 92–3, 94

Carew, thomas Coelum Britannicum 82 Cary, Elizabeth, Viscountess Falkland, 52, 54 Chapels Somerset House 10–11, 51, 55, 112–13, 124–5, 134, 175, 182, 198–9, 206 St James 11 Charles i 110, 153, 178 Charles, Marquis de Chateauneuf, de l’aubespine, 20, 23, 24, 27, 60–61 Chevreuse, Duchesse de, see rohan, Marie de Conn, George 29, 31, 33, 51, 52, 53, 92, 179 Conversions at court 51–54, 92, 182, 184 Cottington, francis 14, 20, 27, 28, 29, 35 Davenant, William theatre 6, 22, 65–6 Temple of Love 67 Political alliances 34, 35 Delff, William Jacobsz 168, 169 Derring, richard 196–9 Devout Humanism 93 See also neo-Platonism; françois de Sales

feilding, Susan, Countess of Denbigh 16, 19, 57, 120, 127, 135 fletcher, John 64 The Woman’s Prize, 59 A King and No King 63 The Coxcomb 63 floridor see de Soulas, Josias Frederick Hendrick 97, 175 Gaston d’Orleans 23, 25, 26, 30, 60, 61, 75, 76, 86 Gentileschi, Orazio, 3, 123 Gorges, Katherine 57, 72 Goring, George 19, 26, 30, 32, 35 Hamilton, James, Marquis of Hamilton 34, 124, 190 Hatton, Christopher iii 199–206 Hay, Lucy, Countess of Carlisle 3, 19, 23, 19, 31, 32, 34, 37, 60, 61 Henrietta Maria 106, 108, 110, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 153, 169, 170, 171, 172, 177, 181, 183, 189, 190, 193 Herbert, Sir Henry 58, 59, 67–9 Honthorst, Gerrit von 174, 175 Hoskins, John 187–8, 189, 190 Horticulture 160–62 Howard, aletheia, Countess of arundel 122 Howard, elizabeth, Countess of Peterborough 184, 185 Howard, thomas, earl of arundel 14, 16, 17, 28, 29, 35, 124

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Hudson, Jeffrey 131–2, 158–60 isabella Clara eugenia, archduchess 139, 140, 160, 165 James i 13–14, 195 Jars, Chevallier de 19, 20, 21, 23, 27, 29, 76 Jones, inigo 120, 124, 195, 199 Jeffreys, George 203–6 Jermyn, Henry 19, 20, 21, 23, 30, 32, 33, 35, 75 Jewellery 127–8, 135, 162–3, 165–94 Jonson, Ben 64 The Magnetic Lady 59, 63 Love’s Triumph through Callipolis 79 Time Vindicated to Himselfe 83 Killigrew, thomas 184, 187, 187 La rochelle, 74–5 see also Montagu, richelieu, and Louis Xiii Laud, William, archbishop of Canterbury 20, 27, 29, 35, 51, 52, 53, 59, 63, 92, 176, 179–80, 182 Lely, Sir Peter 113–14, 114 Livingstone, John The Faithful Shepherdess 58, 64–6 Louis Xiii 8, 15, 17, 18, 23, 27, 33, 61, 70, 71, 74, 75, 76, 90, 93, 118 Matthew, tobie 52, 53 Marie de Medici 3, 9, 15, 22, 23, 30, 31, 61, 75, 89, 96, 98, 100, 104, 111, 116–17, 122, 123, 140, 165, 182, 191 Mende, Bishop 16–18 Montagu, Wat Courtier 19, 20, 21, 23, 25, 26, 29, 30, 31, 33, 36, 37, 53, 71, 74 The Shepherd’s Paradise 9, 21, 59, 62, 64, 65, 72, 73–88 relationship with Henrietta Maria 76, 82, 87–8 translations 22 Conversion 52 Mytens, Daniel 103, 167–8, 173 neo–platonism 64–5, 93, 158, 161, 166, 173, see also françois de Sales; Devout Humanism

Panzani, Gregorio 21, 41, 51 Pembroke, Earl of, Lord Chamberlain 16, 17, 32, 68 Percy, algernon, earl of northumberland 28, 32, 33, 34 Percy, Henry, earl of northumberland 32, 34, 35, 75 Petitot, Jean 122, 126 Philip, robert 23, 31, 52 Porter, endymion 29, 35, 52 Pourbus, frans the younger 104–5, 109, 191 111 Providence island group 26, 27, 28, 34 Prynne, William 35 Histriomastix 58, 59, 63 racan, Sieur de Arténice, 57, 65 rich, Henry, earl of Holland 15, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 29, 30, 31, 33, 35, 74 richelieu, armand–Jean du Plessis 7, 8, 15, 18, 21, 23, 25, 26, 27, 31, 33, 36, 60, 61, 71, 72, 74, 75, 85, 86 rohan, Benjamin, Duc de Soubise 15, 17, 25 rohan-Montbazen, Marie de, Duchesse de Chevreuse 23, 26, 30, 32, 33, 36, 37, 75, 76 rubens, Peter Paul 95–105, 126, 157 96, 98, 100, 102, 104 Sackville, Mary, Countess of Dorset 39, 41, 42, 56 Sales, françois de Introduction to a Devout Life 48, 49, 93 Scudéry, Georges Le Trompeur Puni 69–71 Senneterre, Henri de 27–8 71–2, 88 Shakespeare 8, 64 Richard III 59–62 Henry IV 60 Shirley, James The Young Admiral 59, 61, 62, 63, 71 The Ball 63 The Gamester 63 The Wittie Faire One 83 Sidney, robert, earl of Leicester 28, 33, 34 Soulas, Josias de (“floridor”) 67–8, 72 Spanish Match 13–15 Suckling, John 22, 34, 35 Sueur, Hubert le 126, 123, 176, 179–80, 177, 178

Index tyburn 16, 40 Urban Viii, 15, 29, 90, 174 d’Urfé, Honore L’Astrée, 70, 158 Van Dyck, Sir Anthony 2–4, 103, 105–11, 106, 108, 110, 126, 139–63, 43, 144, 145, 146,147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 153, 173, 182, 183,184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 192 Vane, Sir Henry 32–3 Vantelet, Madame de 19, 20, 23, 27

227

Villiers, Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland 113–14, 114 Villiers, George, Duke of Buckingham 14–18, 20, 25, 35, 39, 74, 112, 122–4, 170, 195 Virgin Mary 79, 90–114, 161, 199, 206 Wentworth, thomas, earl of Strafford 19, 23, 24, 32, 33, 35, 55, 87, 158, 187 Weston, richard, earl of Portland 20, 23, 26, 35, 75, 86 Windebank, Francis 27, 29, 33, 51 Winter, John 31, 33