Father Philip came to me.
“Why will not the Holy Father help me?” I demanded. “A great deal of this trouble has come about because I worked so zealously for the Holy Church.”
“You know the Holy Father’s price. Charles must embrace the Catholic Faith. Let him do that and he can be assured of the Holy Father’s help.”
“If he became a Catholic the Puritans would immediately depose him,” I reminded him.
Poor Father Philip! What could he say? As for me, I was beginning to see how dangerous everything was becoming. I was certain now that we must show the people that we were not fanatical Catholics, that we were quite ready to accept their allegiance to the Protestant Faith and it seemed to me that the best way of doing this was to make approaches to the Prince of Orange.
Recently he had wanted our daughter Elizabeth for his son. Although Elizabeth was a second daughter we had thought the match demeaning. The Prince of Orange was of small consequence in the world and we were the ruling family of a great country.
I said to Charles: “They are Protestant and many have said that I was against the match because I wanted Catholic alliances for my daughters.”
“Which you did, dear heart,” replied Charles.
“Of course I did. But the Prince of Orange is very eager.” I laid my hand on his arm. “Let us do this. Let us show the people how ready we are for a Protestant alliance. Let us give Mary—our eldest—to the son of the Prince of Orange.”
He stared at me in disbelief. Then I saw the realization of what this would mean dawn in his eyes.
Charles was a man who needed someone to rely on—Buckingham, Strafford…men like that. Buckingham had been dispatched by the assassin’s dagger and it could well be that Strafford might go by the executioner’s axe. I was left to him. I might not be clever and shrewd and have little knowledge of affairs but I was more staunchly loyal to him than anyone in the world could be.
He clung to me and that made me all the more determined to do everything I could however much others might disapprove. I would do anything…just anything for him.
When Archbishop Laud was arrested, Father Philip and Rosetti came to me and talked very seriously about the Puritans in Parliament.
“The time has come for the King to declare his conversion to the Catholic Faith,” they said. “Now is the moment. The Parliament is ready to rise against the King. If the King would announce his conversion, the might of the Pope would be behind him and the Parliament with its Puritans would be quickly subdued.”
“The King will never do it. He has sworn to govern the country in the Reformed Faith.”
“A man can change such an oath if he has the might of an army behind him. How many of his subjects would be ready to follow him?”
“Not so many as would be against him.”
“Let him say then that he wants liberty of conscience to think and worship as he pleases.”
“He will never do it. I will speak to him but even I could not persuade him to that.”
“They have Strafford. They have Laud. Who next?” asked Rosetti.
“I do not know,” I cried in despair.
They would be horrified when they heard of the proposed marriage with the House of Orange. But the people were not, although it did not have the impact I had hoped for.
Strafford and Laud were still in the Tower.
Of course the Prince of Orange accepted with alacrity and there was a lull in our unpopularity because of the coming marriage.
Mary’s wedding should have been a wonderful occasion but it was not. Our first daughter to marry—and her husband a petty Prince! But that was not really why we were depressed.
The trial of Strafford had begun and in our hearts we knew that it was really a quarrel between the Throne and the Commons. It was King against Parliament. Charles was wretchedly unhappy. He had always been loyal to his friends and he had loved Strafford who, he knew, had been condemned not for his betrayal of his country but for his loyalty to his King.
Charles had written to him. I had been beside him as he wrote and mingled my tears and prayers with his.
“The misfortune which has fallen upon you,” wrote Charles, “being such that I must lay by the thought of employing you hereafter in my affairs, yet I cannot satisfy myself in honor or conscience without assuring you now in the midst of your troubles, that upon the word of a king you shall not suffer in life, honor or fortune.”
We were both happier when he wrote that, for those wicked men who accused him would do their best to bring him to the scaffold, but it would be the King who would have to sign the death warrant so Strafford could not go to the block unless the King agreed to his death. “And that,” declared Charles, “is something I will never do.”
They had set up a great tribunal in Westminster Hall and the peers and Lord Chancellor on the Woolsack were there with the judges—and also the Commons. How I hated them in their black clothes. Cruel Roundheads, I called them.
I watched, with the King, behind a trellis. I had said that the two elder children should go with us—so Charles and Mary came. I shall never forget the intent look on the face of my serious son. Young Charles was determined to learn how to be a king. Mary was a little apprehensive. I supposed she was thinking of the young bridegroom who would soon be coming to claim his bride.
We sat there throughout the day, and at night returned to Whitehall Palace. We grew more and more depressed as the days passed. I had to do something for I could not endure inactivity.
I wrote again to the Pope. I begged him to let me have five hundred crowns for I believed that if I had this money I could bribe the members of Parliament. It was a wild idea and as soon as I had done it I regretted it and saw the folly of it. But watching those horrible Roundheads in the hall with the cruelty on their stern pale faces and knowing that they were doing their best to hound dear Strafford to his death made me desperate and I was sure that they were such villains that they would be open to bribes.
That was not the height of my stupidity. I knew that Lucy was rather interested in their Puritan doctrines. It was laughable. Lucy a Puritan! Her main preoccupation was with her gowns and her complexion. But Lucy was like that. She favored contrasts, and oddly enough she had become quite friendly with the odious Pym.
I guessed that she was worried about the Earl of Strafford and she must be believing that Pym might help to get him released. How clever of her! Pym carried great weight in the Commons. He was their leader, and of course the best way to serve Strafford was to be friendly with men like Pym, to try to make them understand that in no way could he be called a traitor.
I told Lucy that I too would like to meet some of the Parliamentarians that I might talk to them and attempt to make them see reason.
She said it would have to be in secret.
“Could you bring them to Whitehall?” I asked.
“Well, you know I am talking to Pym quite a lot nowadays.”
“Yes, I know. You are so clever, Lucy. What could you arrange for me?”
Lucy loved intrigue. She said we could use one of the rooms in the palace. One of the ladies was away for a time so why should we not use hers? Lucy would see whom she could bring to the palace.