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126 wife, urged on by her infatuated French attendants. There was never wanting some subject of altercation. The queen was persuaded by her French advisers to give all the profitable posts connected with her dowry lands, to her country-men. This Charles would not permit, and there were high scenes betwixt them on that account. Charles himself relates one of these, and says, "Thus she plainly bade me take my lands to myself, for if she had no power to put in whom she would into those places, she would have neither lands nor houses of me. I bade her remember to whom she spoke, and then she fell into a passionate discourse, how she was miserable in having no power to place servants, and that business succeeded worse for her recommendation. When I offered to answer, she would not so much as hear me, but went on lamenting, saying, 'that she was not of such base quality as to be used so.' But," says Charles, "I both made her hear me, and end that discourse."



The king appointed the earl of Holland, formerly lord Kennington, steward of her dowry lands; but the young bishop of Mantes showed his own commission from the queen, and would not resign the office. At length Charles felt compelled to finish this state of domestic warfare by driving away the French. We have the whole proceeding in the letter of John Pory, who was at the court, to Meade, whose letters we have already quoted. "On Monday last," says Pory, writing in June, 1626, "about three in the afternoon, the king passing into the queen's side (her side of the palace at Whitehall), and finding some Frenchmen,