Page:The Queens of England.djvu/517

 HENRIETTA MARIA OF FRANCE. 467 of Gloucester, were committed to the Countess of Leicester to be treated without any addition of titles, that they might not be the objects of respect, to draw the eyes of people toward them. They were afterward removed to Carisbrook Castle, where the princess died. The duke, from Cromwell's suspicion of his becoming a favorite with the disaffected, was allowed to embark for Holland soon after the end of the year 1652. To obtain some addition to_ her straitened resources, Henrietta applied, through Cardinal Mazarine, to Cromwell for her dowry, which was refused upon a plea which, as the queen remarked, reflected less upon herself than upon the realm and monarch of France ; namely, that she had never been owned for queen of England. In spite, however, of this national insult, Mazarine, of whom it was commonly remarked in Paris that he had less fear of the devil than of Oliver Cromwell, concluded a treaty with England, by which it was stipulated that Henrietta should leave Paris, the French queen, when appealed to, consoling her with the trite senti- ment, we must comply with the times ! As the connection became closer, Charles was banished from France and imme- diately entertained by the king of Spain, who agreed to fur- nish him with men and money for the invasion of England from Flanders. Before King Charles left Paris he changed his religion, by whose persuasion is not known, only Cardinal de Retz was in the secret ; it was reported, however, that the queen gave notice to the King of France that her eldest son was turned Catholic, and it is certain that she showed her anxiety to advance her own religion, both by advising the king to agree with the Scottish demands and by every effort, through the Abbe Montague, during her residence in the Convent of Chaillot, which she had founded, to bring over the Duke of Gloucester to her faith. With the Princess Hen- rietta she had no difficulty; but the duke, who was encouraged, with strange inconsistency, by his brother, the king, to remem- ber the last words of his dead father and be constant to his religion, resisted every attempt to force him to continue in the Jesuits' College, though the bishopric of Metz and other ecclesiastical dignities were guaranteed to him. So violent was the domestic persecution of the duke by his mother that the Marquis of Ormond was dispatched to demand, on the part of the king, that his brother should repair to his presence ; and, indeed, conducted his mission with the greatest delicacy;