“Henrietta Maria has been looked at far too much through the male gaze – it’s time for another perspective”

An important aspect of Henrietta Maria to address is her legacy. How has the Stuart queen been seen through history?

She is probably the most reviled consort to have ever worn the crown of the three kingdoms, but she was ultimately a victim of parliamentary propaganda of the period. In her lifetime she was described as the “popish brat of France” and a whore, and was said to have worn the britches in her marriage. Ever since, she’s been perceived as the original “bad woman”: Eve, the corrupter who seduced her husband into evil.

How did she come to be so hated?

As the old adage goes, history is written by the victors – those who overthrew the house of Stuart in 1688. A myth then grew up that English Protestantism played a pivotal role in the creation of our democracy, and indeed our sense of nationhood. Therefore, being a Catholic, Henrietta Maria was associated with Charles’s authoritarianism and is wrongly assumed to have been, in part, responsible for it.

Beyond this, I actually think her legacy shaped that of Charles I. To ensure that she is believable in the role of the seductress corrupting him into evil, Charles has to be perceived as weak and feeble. So, though it’s true that he was a sickly child, we often don’t hear that he was actually extremely athletic and physically strong in adulthood.

How much do we actually know about Henrietta Maria’s character?

One of the fascinating things about studying the 17th century is that a myriad of sources exist from different people and places, which provide us with a more well-rounded picture of a person’s life than might be possible in previous centuries. In comparison to some English sources, the French saw Henrietta Maria far more positively: as her father’s daughter, as incredibly brave and as a martyr for her faith through her suffering in support of her husband. They describe a remarkable woman, who was respected for her political and diplomatic acumen.

We can also get a sense of her personality from her own letters. She wrote many letters – especially during the Civil War – and in them she comes across as someone who was very affectionate and passionate.

Something I particularly like about her is that she seems to have been funny and really quite naughty – she liked to make light of grim situations. One time, on her way back from Holland to England, horrendous storms plagued her fleet, sinking two of her ships. Fearing that they might die, some of her ladies openly confessed their sins out loud. When they made it to shore, Henrietta Maria then teased them about their secrets. She often made jokes about herself as well – even when she was in some horrendous situations.

What type of society was Henrietta Maria born into?

Henrietta Maria was born into the fun and feminine French court, where women could speak on stage, advertising a female perspective in a way they did not in the English court. As I mentioned at the start, her mother was also the regent of France for much of her childhood. This must have provided her with a very particular perspective on what was possible for women, and given her a sense that women could, and should, have a voice.

It’s also important to remember that her father introduced the Edict of Nantes in 1598 (later confirmed by her mother and brother), which gave Protestants religious rights in France. So she came from a society where you could be a Catholic and practise your faith, and you could also be a Protestant and practise your faith – which was very, very different from England. Her father also firmly believed in forming alliances with Protestant powers against their great rivals, the Catholic Habsburgs. When she married Charles, I think she saw it very much in this tradition.

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Would you say that this upbringing encouraged her to be tolerant of other faiths?

I’d say so. There’s a great story about when Henrietta Maria first arrived in England in 1625, and she was asked: “Can you stand the Huguenots [French Protestants]?” She replied, “Was not my father one?”, because her father had been a Protestant in his youth and later converted to Catholicism.

Her doctor, who was in charge of caring for her life, was a Protestant. Later on, her dearest and closest friends were not only Protestants, but the leaders of the Puritan-inclined faction at court, who shared similar views in terms of aggression towards the Habsburgs.

So yes, I’d say she took a rather tolerant view in that respect. I think she hoped she would be able to encourage her husband to offer persecuted British Catholics something similar to the Edict of Nantes.

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What was Henrietta Maria’s own religious life like, both publicly and privately?

Henrietta Maria was of course a committed Catholic, and her public standpoint was that she needed to openly protect persecuted British Catholics and set an example to them, as well as to potential converts. She was careful to ensure she attended Catholic mass wherever she was, even though English Catholics were not permitted to attend mass. She was even permitted to build a chapel at Somerset House, which displayed the baroque Mass in all its spiritual power and beauty.

In terms of her private religious standpoint, we know that she read plenty of spiritual books about the life of Christ. While she was very aware that she was a queen, the daughter and wife of kings and the mother of a future king, she also recognised that she was a human being, like other human beings, so wanted to consider the suffering Christ endured and pursue an inner Christian humility.

However, there’s another interesting side to Henrietta Maria’s private faith which came from her mother. Because Eve tempted Adam in the Garden of Eden in the Christian faith, women were perceived as flawed, weak and corrupting. What Henrietta Maria’s mother reminded her was that Mary, the virgin mother of Christ and the “new Eve”, had the ear of Christ and was able to guide him. So the Virgin Mary and everything she represented as a woman, mother and partner became very important to Henrietta Maria.

How much truth is there in the accusation that Henrietta Maria turned Charles Catholic?

There’s no truth to it at all. If you think about it, it doesn’t make any sense. Charles I is a martyr of the Church of England, a Protestant martyr; surely he couldn’t have been Catholic? It just shows how ingrained and ridiculous our prejudices have been against her.
When Henrietta Maria first arrived in England, aged 15, Charles was already extremely attached to his father’s theories about the divine right of kingship, which held at its heart the denial of papal authority. He believed that he had the right to rule not only his subjects’ bodies, but also their souls – so they should worship as he did. This didn’t leave space for Catholicism. When he was on the scaffold awaiting execution, he even reaffirmed his belief in the divine right of kingship and proclaimed that he was willing to die for the Church of England. He didn’t change; he was the same man as he was when Henrietta Maria married him.

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It’s also worth pointing out that Charles continued to persecute Catholics throughout his reign. Henrietta Maria managed to mitigate this persecution in the 1630s, and there were no executions for religion during this period – to the disappointment of some MPs. But Charles was, nevertheless, still enforcing heavy fines on Catholics for not going to Church of England services. Indeed they were even heavier than those of the 1620s.

Was she really “the wife who wore the britches”?

There must have been times in her life when she wished she was wearing the britches, but she really didn’t. I think her marriage changed after the Bishops’ Wars (1639 and 1640), the second of which Charles lost to the Scottish rebels. As I mentioned earlier, Charles wanted his subjects to worship as he did, but his particular brand of Protestantism was quite elaborate and anti-Calvinist, whereas the Scottish Presbyterians followed the Calvinist tradition.

After the first of these wars, he was forced to call a parliament – having not had a parliament for 11 years. Those in parliament were obviously extremely angry about the fact he had ruled without them for so long, so they started stripping him of his power and his chosen ministers. Overall, he was short of advice and help.

It was at that point that Henrietta Maria stepped up to help her husband, which she continued to do throughout the Civil War. What she did was extremely impressive. Even the king’s enemies said he would never have been able to resist them without her help and support. So I think it’s fair to say that she was an extremely effective partner, but not dominating. She still had to follow his decisions, at least one of which she believed cost him the Civil War – his refusal to attempt to re-take London in August 1643.

How did she support Charles during the Civil War?

She was actually in Holland during the build-up to the Civil War and in the early months of the conflict. During that period, she raised money and arms for Charles. Most people believed that he would be beaten soundly in the first major battle of the Civil War, but of course he wasn’t, and both friends and enemies agreed that this was largely down to Henrietta Maria. She’d really saved his bacon by raising those arms and sending them back to England for him.

When she returned to England, she was very helpful in many ways. She managed to encourage defectors, including senior parliamentarian commanders. She also gave a lot of good advice: Charles’s nephew Prince Rupert was extremely upset when she returned to France in 1644, because he’d grown to respect her and her advice enormously. People believed that she was firmer and more reliable than Charles.

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How did she continue to support the royalist cause after Charles surrendered?

She tried several things. First of all, she attempted to encourage Charles to come to terms with his various jailers – first the Scots, then parliament and then the New Model Army. When all that failed – she was in France at this time – she then supported efforts to raise arms for the second Civil War in 1648. When the royalists lost that as well, Charles was tried as a man of blood and executed, and this had a devastating effect on Henrietta Maria.

She wanted to retire to a convent at that stage and hide herself away, but Charles wrote to her before his death and said something like: “You’re vital to my cause and you’re vital to what happens to the children, and you mustn’t do any such thing.” So she did continue to support the royalist cause, but she took on a new persona, using Catholic imagery of the Virgin as the Queen of Sorrows – you don’t see it so often in England, but elsewhere you’ll see images in Catholic churches of the Virgin Mary with swords through her heart. She hoped allying herself with those who had suffered would make the Catholic royals around her feel guilty for not doing more to help Charles.

So although sometimes she’s perceived as a sad woman dressed in black, actually we should think of her more like Diana, Princess of Wales, after her divorce. Diana projected this image of a suffering woman, but also a very glamorous woman who understood the suffering of others around her, and people felt a great connection with her because of this. That was also true of Henrietta Maria. She used her diplomatic skills to try and keep the royalist cause alive and still went on raising money for her son, Charles II. She never gave up.

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In your book, you note how Henrietta Maria was commonly portrayed as a cruel and bigoted mother, especially to her son Henry. What was her relationship with her family actually like?

I think her children adored her. I’d argue that her relationship with her third surviving son, Henry, was weaker, but that was because he was a tiny child when the Civil War broke out and he remained in parliament’s care throughout the conflict. By the time he was finally released into her care at the age of about 12, they were strangers to each other.

In the mid-1650s Charles II’s position was incredibly weak. He had very little support from France or Spain. I think Henrietta Maria believed that if Henry became Catholic, he would be able to marry somebody rich – or he could become a cardinal, and so have money, power and influence. To have had a Catholic brother would have also demonstrated Charles’s religious tolerance at a time when he was trying to secure the support of the Catholic powers by claiming he would permit British Catholics to practise their faith.
When Henry refused she was very angry, proclaiming that he was dead to her. Again, this was not uncommon – Charles I’s sister did exactly the same with her children when they converted to Catholicism. These women could not afford to have their children disobey them as this made them look weak, and would limit their ability to help the cause of their dynasty.

The real tragedy is that when Henry and another son, James, later went to fight on the continent, she wrote letters worrying about them and proclaiming how much she was looking forward to seeing the family be united after Charles II’s restoration. Unfortunately, Henry died a few months after that restoration, and she was devastated by it, so to say she was unloving is wholly untrue.

How do you think Henrietta Maria should be seen now?

Henrietta Maria has been looked at far too much through the male gaze – it’s time for another perspective. We should try and see her on her own terms, through her eyes. We can then see both her strengths and weaknesses, and uncover the real life of a woman who has been endlessly caricatured, but is utterly fascinating.

Henrietta Maria: Charles I’s warrior queen

During her years as queen of England, Scotland and Ireland, Henrietta Maria attracted vicious Puritan abuse – and occasional volleys of cannon fire. Based on new archival research, Leanda de Lisle profiles a queen who sacrificed her reputation – and, very nearly, her life – fighting her husband’s cause in the Civil War

Leanda de Lisle is the author of Henrietta Maria: Conspirator, Warrior, Phoenix Queen (Vintage, 2022). Buy it now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org

This article was first published in the September 2022 issue of BBC History Magazine