Henrietta Maria under the microscope

 

Kathryn Hughes on Leanda de Lisle’s study of Henrietta Maria

It was not quite a case of lightning striking twice in almost the same place within twenty four hours but it was pretty close. Today’s edition of The Sunday Times has a review by Kathryn Hughes in its Culture magazine of Leanda de Lisle’s new book, Henrietta Maria, Conspirator, Warrior and Phoenix Queen.[1] In one sense, it is the logical successor to the latter’s study of Charles I, White King, published not long ago. But I am not clear what Hughes’s qualifications for this task were since she is an historian of the Victorian period who is also interested in contemporary culture. John Adamson or Michelle Dobbie or Malcolm Smuts would have been more appropriate for this role.

Much of Kathryn Hughes’s review concentrates on Henrietta Maria’s early life as the daughter of Henri IV and Marie de Medici and the development of her relationship after their marriage with King Charles I. Her predilection for conspicuous display and for the attractions of Court masques is also stressed. In religion, she was apparently shrewd enough, according to Kathryn Hughes and, by implication, Leanda de Lisle, to avoid trying to restore Catholicism to the kingdoms of England and Scotland but preferred to try to protect her co-religionists from the penalties of the laws against recusancy. Here, a doubt creeps in since anti-Catholicism was deeply entrenched in the view of the great bulk of the populations of England and Scotland and amongst Protestants in Ireland. Neither Charles nor Henrietta Maria, pace Kathryn Hughes, understood the depth of this animosity. Eventually, it cost the King his life by which time she was already in exile in France. Nonetheless, Hughes concluded that de Lisle had produced an excellent summary of “revisionary scholarship” over the last twenty years and had produced a deeply satisfying study that made an excellent companion to her earlier volume on Charles I.

It looks like the book relies on published works rather than being the product of new historical scholarship. Without reading it, one cannot be sure on this point but I do expect it to have been clearly written and excellently presented. It would have been helpful all the same to have had review written by a specialist in Stuart history.

                                                                                                                                        24th July, 2022

 


[1] Kathryn Hughes, Hail Queen Henry How Charles I’s wife fought by his side – and avoided the chop. The Sunday Times (24 July, 2022). Culture, Pages 24-25.

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