Annie Whitehead, the historian and novelist, reviews Leanda de Lisle’s new biography of Henrietta Maria and finds it a “triumph”.
Henrietta Maria, known to most with even a passing interest as the French, Catholic, wife of Charles I, has been perceived as, at best, a bad influence; at worst, “the most reviled consort to have worn the crown of Britain’s three kingdoms.”
Despite having studied this period at A level and again at university, I had little idea of the pivotal role that Henrietta Maria played in her husband’s life and, indeed, how much she was involved in not only politics, but in war, too.
In this excellent new book, Leanda de Lisle seeks to present Henrietta in a new light. That she does so, and in such an accessible and captivating read, is a treat.
By starting the story from the point of view of the midwife who delivered the future queen, the author focuses on the females at court, getting right to the heart of the story of royal women and the aspects of their lives which determined their role and their fate.
In a wonderfully holistic treatment of Henrietta Maria, we are introduced to her formidable mother, Marie de’ Medici, a tour de force who imbued her daughters – Henrietta’s sisters, Elisabeth and Christine, were also destined to marry foreign leaders – with values that saw them strive to play active roles in politics.
The details provided of the marriage negotiations and in particular, Elisabeth’s initial disappointment, give a moving glimpse of the real people behind these marriage alliances.
When it comes to Henrietta Maria’s turn, it is hard not to feel sympathy for her, given the burden of expectation placed upon her by both nations and both religions. At a tender age, the French Catholic becomes the consort of an English Protestant.
She made mistakes (she was berated for the unseemly behaviour of her household), and she had to contend with the influence of her husband’s favourite, Buckingham, but it is clear that from the outset this was more than a political marriage; the couple fell unwaveringly in love.
We are given enough detail about Charles’s – often disastrous – statecraft and the lead up to war to fill in any gaps in our knowledge of this turbulent slice of English history, but only as background. The focus is firmly on Henrietta Maria and, inevitably because of her nationality and religion, on events overseas.
Her relationship with her mother, brothers, and her sisters, is presented in detail, so much so that we can almost feel that we are in the room listening to the conversations.
This was an aspect of the book which particularly appealed to me. Every time I had to put it down, I found myself wanting to return to it, almost as one does with a captivating novel, because of the breadth of detail provided by letters, eye-witness accounts, and lavish detail of furnishings, paintings and costumes.
It’s my belief that we cannot understand history without looking at the stories of women, and this book proves it. Here, as with all royal marriages where bride and groom are from different countries, it is the women who leave their country of birth. They are at a double disadvantage, being both isolated and dismissed as the weaker, and often therefore sinful, sex. It makes the achievement, ambition and determination even more laudable.
Henrietta Maria proved to be a strategist and at times it was to Charles’ detriment that he chose not to listen to her. She, and her sister Elisabeth, raised troops for their husbands, but Elisabeth at least did not have the disadvantage of having the ‘wrong’ faith in her adoptive country of Spain.
From a young girl dismissed as frivolous, Henrietta Maria became a woman determined to do what she could to assist her husband, a “Generalissima” bringing arms and men into England in 1643 and, when Charles called her to Oxford, she remained in the north to keep fighting.
She was also canny enough to realise her value as a hostage and was at great pains to avoid capture, wary that Fairfax at one point was calling her into a trap. When she finally left English shores, she had to leave her new-born daughter behind, but it is clear that whilst she understood that it was necessary, the separation very nearly broke her.
The execution of her husband affected her greatly, but she did not fade to the shadows. She continued to campaign on behalf of her eldest son, Charles II, and, even when elderly and ailing in the late 1660s, she was still helping her nephew Louis XIV.
The book, rightly, does not solely concentrate on Henrietta Maria’s life as queen consort, for she was so much more than that. As the daughter of a French king, with sisters married to other European leaders, she was involved, directly or indirectly, with events on a much wider stage.
The religious situation in England was so complicated (and the definitions so misunderstood – the author provides helpful discussion on the real meaning of ‘popish’ and details of Arminianism) that in a sense Henrietta Maria was almost bound to ‘fail’.
While she wasn’t always right, nor always ‘sweetness and light’ (though she was self-aware, once apologising in her youth for a “sulky fit”), she nevertheless steps out of the pages as a sympathetic character, one who seems to have acted in what she thought were the best interests of others; a woman who inherited the indomitable spirit of her mother, who loved her husband and children fiercely, and paid scant regard to her own personal safety, being mindful only of how her capture would hurt the Royalist cause.
De Lisle presents the complicated politics, alliances, religious differences and wars of the crowned heads of Europe in an accessible way, and always keeps Henrietta Maria at the forefront of the narrative.
There is much about Henrietta Maria to be admired, much to be pitied. The absolute triumph of this book is that it achieves everything it sets out to do, and will reshape opinion about this “most reviled” woman.
Henrietta Maria: Conspirator, Warrior, Phoenix Queen by Leanda de Lisle is published on 4 August, 2022.
Read more about this book.
Leanda shared some of her earlier research for this biography with Historia three years ago in Henrietta Maria: queen, warrior, politician, woman, to mark the 350th anniversary of the queen’s death.
Frances Quinn has also written about her in Henrietta Maria, a forgotten queen?
And Leanda retells the events of Charles I’s last day in Killing a king: the execution of Charles I.
White King, her biography of Charles I, won the 2018 HWA Non-fiction Crown Award. Read our winner’s interview with Leanda de Lisle.
Annie Whitehead is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and has written four novels set in, and two non-fiction books about, pre-Conquest England, the latest of which is Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon History.
Annie has given a taste of the remarkable women in her book in her feature, Anglo-Saxon women with power and influence.
She has written for Historia about researching the history of Mercia when the evidence is elusive.
Annie was the winner of the inaugural HWA/Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition in 2017. Read her story, A Poppy Against the Sky.
She also hosts a blog, Casting Light upon the Shadow.
Images:
- From the cover of Henrietta Maria
- Henrietta Maria as a child by Frans Pourbus the Younger, 1611: Wikimedia (public domain)
- Queen Henrietta Maria by Anthony van Dyck, 1636–38: San Diego Museum of Art via Wikimedia (public domain)
- Engraving of the execution of Charles I, 1649: Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2022
- Henrietta Maria, the Queen Mother, in mourning for King Charles I: Ann Longmore-Etheridge for Flickr (public domain)
