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Henrietta Maria of the acceptance of presbyterianism by the king, but she still looked forward too hopefully to the help of the continental protestants to attach much weight to these overtures, to the chief of which she was compelled to give a reluctant consent. When in December Charles was planning one last desperate campaign, it was on the landing of a French force supported by money forwarded at the queen's entreaty, by French clergy, that he mainly relied.

Early in 1646 the queen, discovering that there was little chance of her getting much assistance from Rome, turned to the Scottish alliance. After the king placed himself in the hands of the Scots and was removed to Newcastle, her efforts to persuade her husband to give up his scruples about abandoning episcopacy were unceasing. In June 1646 she obtained possession of the person of her eldest son, who was, much against the will of Hyde and the other supporters of a purely English policy, removed from Jersey by her orders, confirmed by those of his father. In July, when Belliévre was going on a mission from the French government to Charles, the queen sent to him a memoir for his guidance, which had been drawn up by Digby, and which was too fantastic to be reckoned as a practical scheme. A little later she urged Charles to agree with the Scots on the basis of presbyterianism without the covenant. Her own letters during this year have for the most part been lost, but her opinions can be gathered from the despatches of her ministers, and one characteristic letter written by her on 9 Oct. has been preserved. ‘If you are lost,’ she wrote to Charles, ‘the bishops have no resource; but if you can again place yourself at the head of an army we can restore them to their sees. … Preserve the militia and never abandon it. By that all will come back to you. God will send you means to your restoration, and of this there is already some little hope’ (the queen to the king, 9 Oct. 1646, in Clarendon State Papers, ii. 271). She was in fact once more looking to Mazarin for aid, thinking that the war between France and Spain would soon draw to a close, and that he would then be free to help her. It is hardly to be doubted that she was ready to purchase that help by surrendering the Channel Islands to France.

In the course of 1646 Henrietta Maria recovered her youngest daughter, Henrietta, who was brought from England by Lady Morton in the disguise of a beggar. Her joy did not cause her to forget her anxiety for her husband. Money was before all things needful if the queen's many schemes were to come to anything, and one of her first objects now was to obtain a rich wife for her son. The Dutch marriage treaty having broken down, she urged the young Charles, a boy of fifteen, to make love to ‘La Grande Mademoiselle,’ the daughter and heiress of her brother Gaston. The lady was too old to care for such youthful courtship, and this plan, like so many others of the queen's, came to nothing. In the course of 1647 she sent Sir Kenelm Digby back to Rome [see ], and she employed an agent, Winter Grant, in Ireland (Carte MSS.), in both cases in the hope of obtaining Irish assistance for Charles. In 1648 she took an active part both in the negotiations which led to that combination between the Irish catholics and the royalists, which brought down on them the sword of Cromwell in the following year, and in those which led to the Prince of Wales placing himself at the head of the fleet which revolted from the parliament, and which would, if his plans had not been cut short by Hamilton's defeat at Preston, have led to his transferring himself to the camp of the Scots. She was in correspondence with her second son, James, in England, urging him to effect his escape, and had the satisfaction of learning that it was successfully accomplished.

In the summer of 1648, when the troubles of the Fronde were becoming serious, Henrietta Maria removed to the Louvre. The French court had enough to do to take care of itself, and about 21–31 Dec. Cardinal de Retz found the queen of England in a state verging on destitution, taking care of her little Henrietta, whom she kept in bed for want of means to light a fire (, Mémoires, ed. Champollion-Figeac, i. 269; Miss Strickland, who tells the story from De Retz, gives a wrong date). Bad news from England, however, occupied the queen more than her own suffering, and on 27 Dec.–6 Jan. she wrote to the French ambassador in England, asking him to apply for passports to enable her to return to plead for her husband's life (the queen to Grignon, 27 Dec.–6 Jan. 1649, in, Lives of the Queens of England, viii. 145). On 8–18 Feb. she received the news of his execution.

With her husband's death Henrietta Maria's political career came practically to an end. The troubles of the Fronde were at their height, and for some little time she retired into a Carmelite nunnery in the Faubourg St. Jacques. In the course of the summer of 1649, after she had left her retreat, she received a visit from her eldest son, now known by his supporters as Charles II. When in 1650 he started on his expedition to Scot-