Thereafter, her marriage with the King blossomed into one of real devotion and love – they wrote regularly, Charles addressing many of them ‘Dear Heart’ – and by 1630, Henrietta had given birth to the future Charles II. Over the next decade she would give birth to another six children who would live beyond early childhood. Henrietta Maria was still a devout Catholic and the closeness of the royal couple would lead to suspicions about her influence over the King. When in 1637 Charles attempted to introduce a new prayer book to Presbyterian Scotland, which triggered rebellion, people feared that this was the first step towards reinstating Catholicism, with many pointing the finger of blame at the Queen, the ‘popish brat of France’. Needing funds to fight the war in Scotland, Charles summoned Parliament, who refused to issue him with a tax subsidy. The King subsequently dissolved Parliament and by August 1642, civil war had broken out between Charles and his Royalist supporters and Parliament.
Henrietta, meanwhile, had been trying to enlist the support for the King from the Pope, the French and the Dutch, and when the civil war broke out she was in the Netherlands raising funds for the King (having also smuggled out many of the Crown Jewels and her personal valuables). Her return from the Netherlands led to the aforementioned forced landing at Burlington Bay, where pursuing parliamentary ships were intent on capturing or killing her. She was saved by a Dutch escort who threatened to open fire on the ships, forcing them to retreat. Despite the narrow escape, she remained undaunted and spent months in the north of England recruiting men and raising funds, continually arguing for nothing less than a total victory over Charles’s enemies. Having evaded capture again during a bloody battle against the parliamentary cavalry, the ‘generalissima’, as she jokingly called herself, arrived at Oxford with an army and ammunition and enjoyed an emotional reunion with her husband.
Henrietta continued to be accused by Parliament and London society of a papist conspiracy, not helped by a massacre of Protestant settlers during a rebellion in Ireland in 1641, which some believed was organised by Jesuits linked to the Queen. Suspicions about her turned to hatred and by 1644, Parliament was quick to make the most of her poor image, publishing a pamphlet entitled ‘Great Eclipse of the Sun’ that claimed ‘… the King was eclipsed by the Queen, and she perswaded him that the Darknesse was Light and that it was better to be a Papist, than a Protestant …’ and called for her impeachment as a traitor.
On the battlefield, things turned from bad to worse for the King and Royalist forces. Knowing that she would likely be executed if captured, Henrietta was forced to flee to France. Before she left, Henrietta and Charles said their final farewells in April 1644, not knowing that this would be the last time they would ever see each other. Henrietta was heavily pregnant and bore her final child, Henrietta Anne, in Exeter in June. Desperately ill from the birth, she nonetheless left ten days afterwards, leaving the baby in Exeter due to the risks of the journey. She fled disguised in humble dress and was forced to hide in a hut for two days, where, as she wrote, she could hear parliamentary soldiers passing by talking about the 50,0000-crown reward for the return of her head to London. She eventually boarded a Dutch ship for France, and despite coming under fire once again from parliamentary ships, she made it to the sanctuary of her family.
Henrietta continued to try to raise money and arms in France, and she was later joined by her infant daughter Henrietta Anne and eldest son Charles. However, the King’s position gradually grew worse and in 1646 he was captured and taken prisoner by the Scots. Letters between the King and Queen were published, with parliamentary journalists mocking the Queen’s unfeminine behaviour as a woman who led armies and titled herself ‘generalissima’, indicating that it was she who lost the King his throne and who was the ‘wearer of the breeches’. Parliament eventually condemned the King for treason in January 1649 and on 30 January 1649 he stepped onto the scaffold at Banqueting House and was beheaded. Deeply shocked at the news, Henrietta focused instead on her children and on her faith, founding a convent in Chaillot in 1651, where she lived for much of the 1650s.
In 1652 Henrietta’s youngest son Henry was released from captivity and was sent to France. There, Henrietta sent him to a Jesuit school and attempted to convert him to Catholicism, much to the anger of her eldest son Charles. Already a staunch Protestant, Henry refused to listen to his mother on matters of religion and from the mid-1650s to his early death in 1660 she never again saw Henry and was alienated from Charles. Nonetheless, she was delighted to hear of Charles’s restoration to the throne in 1660, after which she visited England, returning another two times, but finally she returned to France where she felt most comfortable and where she eventually died in 1669.
Far from doing anything of little importance, Henrietta Maria was a leading Royalist figure who fought tirelessly for the King. Her open, and some would say defiant, Catholicism served to deepen divisions in Britain and she was deeply criticised for her involvement in politics and warfare. As Queen, she faced extraordinary dangers both in the form of vicious propaganda by her enemies and volleys of cannonball fire, and she was lucky to escape with her life.
Born: circa 1583
Died: 1663
The seventeenth-century African queen, Nzinga (also known as Njinga) is a national heroine in Angola. In the Western world, however, she is virtually unknown, despite her decades-long reign in which she skilfully navigated the ruthless power politics of the time, brilliantly playing off her rivals. Contemporary Europeans and later writers delighted in vilifying her as an uncivilised savage – no doubt to make themselves feel better about slave trading – and lurid stories tell of her slaughtering her enemies, murdering babies, and keeping a harem of cross-dressing slaves for her sexual gratification.
Whilst some of these tales smack of fantasy, European colonisers were engaged in very real acts of barbarity: namely the trade of African slaves to the New World. The growing demand for human labour in the mines and plantations of Brazil had led Portugal to seek control of city states along the Central African coast and by the early 1600s the slave markets in Angola were rapidly expanding. Local African rulers were faced with a dilemma: either resist the occupiers, which meant risking established trade opportunities (including selling members of rival or hostile tribes as slaves) or submitting to them and thereby losing their independence. It was at this point that we first hear of Nzinga, acting as the official negotiator with the Portuguese on behalf of her brother, the Ngola (King) of the Ndongo in central West Africa.
Nzinga was born into the royal family of Ndongo, one of the principal kingdoms in the region. Tradition says she was born with an umbilical cord around her neck, which foretold of future greatness. Her father, the King of Ndongo, favoured his bright daughter and she was allowed to accompany him on royal visits. When he died, her brother inherited the throne, after which Portuguese forces continued to sweep through the kingdom, abducting and selling thousands of its people into slavery. Nzinga’s task in 1622, as an envoy of her brother, was to negotiate with the Portuguese Governor, João Correia de Sousa, in the new settlement of Luanda (now the capital of Angola). The aim was to secure the independence of Ndongo whilst at the same time enlisting Portuguese help in expelling their rivals, the Imbangala, a fearsome warrior tribe, from the Ndongo kingdom. The story goes that when Nzinga met the Governor, he was sat on a velvet-covered chair, whilst she was given a mat to sit on. Unwilling to be treated as an inferior, she ordered one of her maid servants to get down on all fours so she could sit