1625 – King Charles I of England marries Catholic princess Henrietta Maria of France and Navarre, at Canterbury.

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Canterbury, Charles I of England, Felipe III of Spain, Felipe IV of Spain, Henri IV of France and Navarre, Henrietta Maria de Bourbon of France, Infanta Maria Anna of Spain, Proxy Marriage

Charles I (November 19, 1600 – January 30, 1649) was King of England, Scotland, and Ireland from March 27, 1625 until his execution in 1649. He was born into the House of Stuart as the second son of King James VI of Scotland and Anne of Denmark, but after his father inherited the English throne in 1603 (as James I), he moved to England, where he spent much of the rest of his life.

Charles became heir apparent to the kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1612 upon the death of his elder brother, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales.

Charles and Buckingham, James’s favourite and a man who had great influence over the prince, travelled incognito to Spain in February 1623 to try to reach agreement on the long-pending Spanish match with Infanta Maria Anna of Spain the daughter of King Felipe III of Spain and Margaret of Austria, the daughter of Archduke Charles II of Austria and Maria Anna of Bavaria and thus the paternal granddaughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I. Her elder brother was the Archduke Ferdinand, who succeeded as Emperor Ferdinand II in 1619.

The trip to Spain was an embarrassing failure. The Infanta Maria Anna thought Charles little more than an infidel. The proposal fell through when Felipe IV of Spain demanded Charles convert to the Catholic Church and live in Spain for a year as pre-conditions for the marriage. As Felipe IV was aware, such terms were unacceptable, and when Charles returned to England in October, he and Buckingham demanded King James declare war on Spain.

The Spanish court also insisted on the repeal of the penal laws, which Charles knew Parliament would not agree to. A personal quarrel erupted between Buckingham and the Count of Olivares, the Spanish chief minister, and so Charles conducted the ultimately futile negotiations personally.

With the failure of the Spanish match, Charles and Buckingham turned their attention to France in searching elsewhere for a bride. Charles sent his close friend Henry Rich, 1st Earl of Holland, to Paris in 1624. A Francophile and godson of Henri IV of France, Holland strongly favoured a marriage with Henrietta Maria, the terms of which were negotiated by James Hay, 1st Earl of Carlisle.

Henrietta Maria de Bourbon was the youngest daughter of Henri IV of France (Henri III of Navarre) and his second wife, Marie de’ Medici, and was named after her parents.

Henrietta Maria was born at the Palais du Louvre on 25 November 25, 1609, and was brought up as a Roman Catholic.

As a daughter of the Bourbon king of France, she was a Fille de France and a member of the House of Bourbon. She was the youngest sister of the future Louis XIII of France. Her father was assassinated on May 14, 1610, when she was less than a year old. As a child, she was raised under the supervision of the royal governess Françoise de Montglat.

Henrietta Maria first met her future husband in 1623 at a court entertainment in Paris, when he was on his way to Spain with the Duke of Buckingham to discuss a possible marriage with Infanta Maria Anna of Spain.

Henrietta Maria was aged fifteen at the time of her marriage, which was not unusual for royal princesses of the period. Opinions on her appearance vary; her niece Sophia of Hanover commented that the “beautiful portraits of Van Dyck had given me such a fine idea of all the ladies of England that I was surprised to see that the queen, who I had seen as so beautiful and lean, was a woman well past her prime. Her arms were long and lean, her shoulders uneven, and some of her teeth were coming out of her mouth like tusks…. She did, however, have pretty eyes, nose, and a good complexion…”

A proxy marriage was held at Notre-Dame de Paris on 1 May 1625, where Duke Claude of Chevreuse stood as proxy for Charles, shortly after Charles succeeded as king, with the couple spending their first night together at St Augustine’s Abbey near Canterbury on June 13, 1625.

Charles delayed the opening of his first Parliament until after the marriage was consummated, to forestall any opposition.

Many members of the Commons opposed his marriage to a Roman Catholic, fearing that he would lift restrictions on Catholic recusants and undermine the official establishment of the reformed Church of England. Charles told Parliament that he would not relax religious restrictions, but promised to do exactly that in a secret marriage treaty with his brother-in-law Louis XIII of France.

Moreover, the treaty loaned to the French seven English naval ships that were used to suppress the Protestant Huguenots at La Rochelle in September 1625. Charles was crowned on February 2, 1626 at Westminster Abbey, but without his wife at his side.

Henrietta Maria’s Roman Catholicism made her unpopular in England, and also prohibited her from being crowned in a Church of England service; because she refused to participate in a Protestant religious ceremony, therefore, she never had a coronation.

May 14, 1643: Death of Louis XIII, King of France and Navarre. Part II.

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Anne of Austria, Dauphin of France, Felipe III of Spain, King Henry IV of France and Navarre, King Louis XIII of France and Navarre, King Louis XIV of France and Navarre, Louis XIV, Louis-Dieudonné, The Man in the Iron Mask, Voltaire

From the Emperor’s Desk: we left off with the marriage of Louis XIII and Archduchess Anne of Austria, Infanta of Spain.

Louis XIII, King of France and Navarre

On November 24, 1615, Louis XIII married Archduchess Anne of Austria, daughter of Felipe III of Spain, his wife Margaret of Austria, the daughter of Archduke Charles II of Austria and Maria-Anna of Bavaria and thus the paternal granddaughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I.

Voltaire claimed in the second edition of Questions sur l’Encyclopédie that Louis XIII had an illegitimate son, before Louis XIV; adding he was jailed and his face hidden beneath an iron mask or velvet mask depending on the source.

Anne of Austria widow, by Charles de Steuben, Versailles. She never lost her love for magnificent jewellery, and she especially loved bracelets, which emphasized her famously beautiful hands

Sexuality

There is no evidence that Louis kept mistresses (a distinction that earned him the title “Louis the Chaste”), but several reports suggest that he may have been homosexual. The prolonged temporal gap between the queen’s pregnancies may have been a result of Louis XIII’s aversion to heterosexuality, a matter of great political consequence, since it took the couple more than 20 years of marriage before Louis XIV’s birth.

His interests as a teenager were focused on male courtiers and he developed an intense emotional attachment to his favourite, Charles d’Albert, although some say there is no clear evidence of a physical sexual relationship. Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux, drawing from rumours told to him by a critic of the King (the Marquise de Rambouillet), explicitly speculated in his Historiettes about what happened in the king’s bed.

Louis XIII as a Warrior King

A further liaison with an equerry, François de Baradas, ended when the latter lost favour fighting a duel after duelling had been forbidden by royal decree.

Louis was also captivated by Henri Coiffier de Ruzé, Marquis of Cinq-Mars, who was later executed for conspiring with the Spanish enemy in time of war. Tallemant described how on a royal journey, the King “sent M. le Grand [de Cinq-Mars] to undress, who returned, adorned like a bride. ‘To bed, to bed’ he said to him impatiently… and the mignon was not in before the king was already kissing his hands.”

Death

Louis XIII died in Paris on May 14, 1643, the 33rd anniversary of his father’s death, Henri IV. According to his biographer A. Lloyd Moote,

“his intestines were inflamed and ulcerated, making digestion virtually impossible; tuberculosis had spread to his lungs, accompanied by habitual cough. Either of these major ailments, or the accumulation of minor problems, may have killed him, not to mention physiological weaknesses that made him prone to disease or his doctors’ remedies of enemas and bleedings, which continued right to his death.”

With Louis XIII dead, the five year old HRH Prince Louis-Dieudonné de Bourbon, Dauphin of France becomes King Louis XIV of France and Navarre. Queen Anne had her husband’s will annulled by the Parlement de Paris (a judicial body comprising mostly nobles and high clergymen).

Young HRH Prince Louis-Dieudonné de Bourbon, Dauphin of France

This action abolished the regency council and made Anne sole Regent of France. Anne exiled some of her husband’s ministers (Chavigny, Bouthilier), and she nominated Brienne as her minister of foreign affairs.

Known as Louis the Great (Louis le Grand) or the Sun King (le Roi Soleil), Louis XIV was King of France and Navarre from May 14 1643 until his death in September 1, 1715. His reign of 72 years and 110 days is the longest recorded of any monarch of a sovereign country in European history. In the age of absolutism in Europe, Louis XIV’s France was a leader in the growing centralisation of power.