Henrietta Maria: Conspirator, Warrior, Phoenix Queen
Leanda de Lisle (Vintage, £25)
IN Ken Hughes's film Cromwell (1970), there is a scene that sets up Henrietta Maria, Charles I's queen, as the villain of the piece. It is May 1641 and the Earl of Strafford, one of the King's 'evil counsellors', has just been executed by the will of parliament. Charles receives a deputation of MPs and the meeting is fractious. Suddenly, a portrait on the wall catches Oliver Cromwell's eye: Henrietta Maria in a necklace with large pendant cross, an unmistakable Catholic symbol. He glowers; there, in paint, is the most diabolical of the King's evil counsellors.
Then the queen herself appears (Dorothy Tutin, a remarkable likeness)-pretty, imperious, haughty even. She has overheard the diatribe against Catholicism and the accusation that her husband has failed to defend the Church and Protestant settlers in Ireland against attacks by the native Irish because of 'domestic expedience'. She is not amused.
Henrietta Maria, named after her father and mother, Henri IV of France and Marie de' Medici, is a goddaughter of the Pope. To Cromwell, a Puritan, Catholicism is a political force inimical to parliamentary government and the attempts to introduce ritual into the Church of England by the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, nothing but popery. Laud, the third of the 'evil counsellors', would go to the scaffold in 1645. In 17th-century England, there was no getting away from religion.
This story is from the August 03, 2022 edition of Country Life UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the August 03, 2022 edition of Country Life UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
