But those cruel men would not release my children and I continued to fret for them.
I had just had news that Charles had landed in Scotland and that he was promised help. He had had to buy it dearly and had agreed to the Covenant, to renounce treaties with the Irish rebels and to uproot Popery wherever it should be found once he had regained his kingdom. For this the Scots would rally to his cause and provide an army with which to invade England and win his crown for him.
I was furious when I heard that. It seemed like a betrayal of his own family. It could only be directed against me. And there was little Henriette too. She was a Catholic now, even as I was.
I fumed with rage and it was Henry Jermyn who reminded me that my own father had made peace and become King of all France because as he had said, when Paris had refused to surrender to a Huguenot, “Paris is worth a Mass.”
So Charles was in Scotland and there was hope. And now…this fresh blow. If only I could have been with my child, if I could have spoken with her, held her in my arms, I should not have felt so bitter. What sort of men were these to ruin the lives of little children?
My little Elizabeth was only fifteen. What unhappy years they had been for her! She must have been about seven when the troubles started—a sweet, loving child, my own little daughter whom I had scarcely seen while she was growing up.
The Roundheads had put her and her brother in the care of the Countess of Leicester at Penshurst. I knew Penshurst. A delightful castle set on a pleasant incline with woods, fields and hop grounds around it. I remembered well the old banqueting hall lighted by its five Gothic windows and I could picture my children seated at the oak table there. The Parliament had announced that there was no royalty now and that the children were to be treated as those of an ordinary nobleman. They would not have cared about that, I was sure; what would have broken their hearts was the separation from their family. I had heard that the Roundheads suspected the Countess of ignoring orders and showing the children too much respect; they had even sent some of their men to Penshurst to make sure their orders were carried out. How I despised them for their persecution of two helpless children!
Apparently the spies were most dissatisfied by the manner in which the Countess treated the children, swearing that she gave them too much deference. Dear Countess! I had always liked her and it had given me some relief to know that the children were put into her hands for the reports I had heard at that time filled me with dread. The talk of apprenticing Henry to a shoemaker had horrified me for I knew those wicked men were capable of doing that. There was a rumor that they were to be sent to a charity school and were to be known as Bessy and Harry Stuart.
Lady Leicester had brought in a tutor for them—a man named Richard Lovell, who had instructed her own children; but even so this brave and noble lady could not go on defying the Parliament. There were frightening rumors at that time. One was that the children were to be poisoned and I was terrified that they would disappear as long ago two little Princes had vanished in the Tower of London.
When Charles landed in Scotland the Roundheads must have been alarmed and perhaps because they thought an attempt to rescue the children might be made they removed them to Carisbroke Castle.
I wondered what my two little ones felt at being sent to the prison where their father had spent some of the last days of his life.
A week after they had arrived at Carisbroke Elizabeth and Henry were playing bowls on that green which had been made for their father when there was a heavy rain shower and the children were wet through. The next day Elizabeth was in a high fever and confined to her bed.
She must have been in a low state and very melancholy to be in her father’s prison and she must have remembered that last interview with him; she had loved him so dearly and had mourned him ever since. The poor child must have wondered from day to day what her own fate would be in the hands of her father’s murderers.
If only Mayerne could have been with her! But they had dismissed him and they were certainly not going to allow any member of the royal family to have the services of the renowned doctor. He was nearly eighty now but still as skillful and it might have been that he could have saved my child’s life.
One of the doctors whom they were obliged to call in—Dr. Bagnall—did send to Mayerne and ask his advice and the good doctor sent back medicines, but it was too late.
My dear child knew she was dying. I tried to imagine the sorrow and desolation of poor little Henry. Elizabeth gave him her pearl necklace and sent a diamond ornament to the Earl and Countess of Leicester. It was all she had to leave.
They were determined that no honor should be paid to her. She was placed in a lead coffin and taken by a borrowed coach to Newport, attended by a few of those who had served her in the past. The coffin was placed in the east part of the chancel in St. Thomas’s Chapel and they put a simple inscription on it.
ELIZABETH SECOND DAUGHTER
OF THE LATE KING CHARLES
DECEASED SEPTEMBER 8TH M.D.C.L.
No stone was erected and the letters E.S. were engraved in the wall above the spot where the coffin had been laid.
So died my daughter, the child I had borne with such joy and loved with such devotion.
It was small wonder that I thought Heaven itself was against me.
Children are both a blessing and an anxiety. I loved mine dearly but we were often in conflict.
There was James. He was growing up very different from his brother; they were unlike in every way except in their impeccably good manners, which I had insisted be instilled in them. James was fair and Charles had those swarthy looks which must have come down from an ancestor of Navarre, so they never looked like brothers. James’s temperament was difficult and it was the easiest thing in the world to quarrel with him whereas it was impossible to quarrel with Charles, who could be serene, evasive and indifferent, and when one thought he had acquiesced he would go away and do exactly what he had planned to do from the first.
I know I was not the easiest person to live with. I had been born with a desire to impose my will on others but it was meant to be for their good, though they so often could not see this.
James was restive, hating, I suppose, to be cooped up in Paris while his brother was in Scotland. I think he rather resented being the younger son and in spite of his undoubted good looks and Charles’s far from handsome ones, he was always overshadowed by his brother.
Well Charles was no longer with us in Paris and James was difficult. I sometimes think he enjoyed quarreling and looked round for trouble. Heaven knew life was hard enough for me to bear. What were his troubles compared with mine?
Some trivial matter flared up one day and James took it seriously. He turned on me and said: “I want to get away. I’m tired of being here. You tutor me in all things. I am old enough to think for myself.”
“You are clearly not,” I retorted. “You talk like a foolish boy and that does not surprise me because you are one.”
In a very short time we were shouting at each other and James was behaving very badly, forgetting entirely the respect due to me, not only as his mother but as Queen of England.
I cried: “Whatever I do, I do for you children. You are my main concern.”
Then he turned on me and said something which I found it very hard to forgive. “Your main concern!” he said almost sneering. “I thought your main concern was Henry Jermyn. You are more fond of him than you are of all your children put together.”