Perceiving Power in Early Modern Europe

Francis K.H. So, Francis K.H. So, Francis K. H. So

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781137586247
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137583819
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

This collection conceptualizes the question of rulership in past centuries, incorporating such diverse disciplines as archaeology, art history, history, literature and psychoanalysis to illustrate how kings and queens ruled in Europe from the antiquity to early modern times. It discusses forms of kingship such as client-kingship, monarchy, queen consort and regnant queenship that manifest gubernatorial power in concert with paternal succession and the divine right of the king. While the king assumes a religious dimension in his obligatory functions, justice and peace are vital elements to maintain his sovereignty. In sum, the active side of governmental power is to keep peace and order leading to prosperity for the subjects; the passive side of power is to protect the subjects from external attack and free them from fear. These concepts of power find concurrence in modern times as well as in non-European cultures. Through a truly cross-cultural, transnational, multidimensional, gender-conscious and interdisciplinary study, this collection offers a cutting edge account of how power has been exercised and demonstrated in various cultures of some bygone eras.

© The Author(s) 2016

Francis K.H. So (ed.)Perceiving Power in Early Modern Europe10.1057/978-1-137-58381-9_8

Begin Abstract

Henrietta Maria as a Mediatrix of French Court Culture: A Reconsideration of the Decorations in the Queen’s House

Grace Y. S. Cheng¹

(1)

Department of Fine Arts, University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong

Keywords

Queen’s HouseHenrietta Maria L’Honneste Femme honnêteté préciosité

I am grateful to Opher Mansour for his guidance and Joel H. Swann for reading and commenting on a draft of this chapter.

End Abstract

This chapter is a study of Henrietta Maria’s (1609–69) patronage in the Queen’s House in Greenwich, particularly architectural elements and decorations which reflect aspects of contemporary French court culture in the 1630s before the English Civil War broke out in 1640. In investigating elements related to such French court culture, specifically préciosité, in the royal couple’s second home, this chapter explores ways in which Henrietta Maria expressed her notion of the ideal queen consort.

Historians writing in the years before 1970 have portrayed Henrietta Maria as a malignant influence over Charles I (White 2006, p. 1. White (2006) cited Haynes 1912; Oman 1936; Oliver 1940). This view corresponds to the popular perception of the queen. Henrietta Maria has long been viewed as a divisive figure who contributed to the downfall and execution of her husband, Charles I (1600–49). The 15-year-old Henrietta Maria had arrived in Dover on 22 June 1625 as the bride of Charles I, nine years her senior. The French princess brought with her an entourage of ladies-in-waiting, a bishop and 20 priests. As stated in the articles of the marriage treaty, Henrietta and her household were allowed to freely practice Catholicism in Protestant England. Charles grew increasingly frustrated with his wife’s French entourage, blaming them for diverting Henrietta from him and his people (Charles I 1625, qtd. in White 2006, p. 12). On 26 June 1626, he dismissed all of Henrietta’s French household including all the clergy in attendance (Skrine 13 August 1626, pp. 82–83, qtd. in White 2006, p. 12). Henry Duncan Skrine, esq., wrote in 1626 that the expulsion was “a resolution which the people have heard of with infinite satisfaction.” This record testifies to the unpopularity of Henrietta’s French court being brought over to England owing primarily to the Queen’s Catholicism. In the late 1620s and 1630s, the queen consort failed, perhaps intentionally, to project an amiable image to the English. There were few open criticisms because such public denunciations were crimes of high treason. Even so, some such as William Prynne condemned Henrietta openly and was eventually imprisoned, fined and branded as a seditious libeler (Orgel and Strong 1973, I, p. 51). In the 1640s, after the Civil War broke out, censorship laws were not properly enforced. A propaganda campaign against the queen propelled her to become the devilish figure, linking her to a sinister Catholic popish plot and drawing a tight connection between her and the rebels in Ireland (White 2006, p. 100. See also White 2009).

In the 1970s, Quinton Bone and Elizabeth Hamilton challenged the conclusion that Henrietta had a powerful influence on the King (White 2006, p. 2). They proposed that Henrietta’s influence has been exaggerated. Bone claimed that Charles often ignored Henrietta’s counsel and that the queen’s “influence was primarily of a personal and familial sort rather than of a significant political nature” (Bone 1972, p. vi).

In the last few decades, historians such as R. Malcolm Smuts (1987, 1996), Caroline Hibbard (1983, 1991, 2006), Kevin Sharpe (1992), Michelle Anne White (2006), Erica Veevers (1989), Karen Britland (2006), Erin Griffey (2008) and Gesa Stedman (2013) attempted to situate Henrietta Maria more neutrally in Caroline English history by focusing on particular aspects of her political role, her position in court and her patronage in the arts (White 2006, p. 4). Erica Veevers’s Images of Love and Religion: Queen Henrietta Maria and Court Entertainments (1989) re-evaluates Henrietta’s position by analyzing her role in Caroline court masques in the decade 1630‑40. Prior to Veevers, Caroline court masques have been seen generally from the point of view of the King, the Parliament and public affairs (Orgel and Strong 1973). Veevers discusses how concepts in vogue in France in the early seventeenth century such as préciosité, honnêteté and Neoplatonic love were deployed in Henrietta’s masques, positioning her as a translator of French concepts to the English court. The book presents a shift from the then popular view of Henrietta as a frivolous, naïve queen by demonstrating the queen’s agency in staging the court masques.

Erin Griffey’s Henrietta Maria: Piety, Politics and Patronage (2008) is a collection of essays which explore the ways in which Henrietta made religious‑political commentary via her patronage of the arts. Her book fills a large research gap whereby the queen’s patronage of visual arts, fashion, furniture and tapestries is analyzed in the same way as Charles I’s patronage was by scholars such as John Peacock and Oliver Millar among others (Griffey 2008, p. 2). Griffey claims that not only scholars but also documentation itself favors the male connoisseurial ideal. Consequently, Henrietta’s active role as an art patron has been unjustifiably subsumed under that of Charles I. Largely by emphasizing the importance of “decorative arts” and the queen’s “private” activities, Griffey’s volume revives Henrietta and her importance as an important political figure who attempted to shape court politics through her cultural patronage of and representation in art, drama and music with the notion of Catholic piety as the principal tool (Griffey 2008, p. 6). Jessica Bell’s essay in the volume, “The Three Marys: The Virgin; Marie de Médicis; and Henrietta Maria,” attempts to draw a parallel, maternal dynastic lineage to the dominant model of patrilineage by considering allusions of Marian images in artworks commissioned and acquired by Marie and Henrietta. However, Bell did not place any emphasis on ideas of fecundity, marriage and love. Caroline Hibbard’s chapter “‘By Our Direction and For Our Use’: The Queen’s Patronage of Artists and Artisans Seen Through her Household Accounts” scrutinizes the paper trail of financial records, demonstrating that expenditure on luxury objects such as textile, clothing and jewelry were substantial components of the queen’s patronage. As a subsidiary but important argument, Hibbard asserts that a separation of the queen’s and king’s budget for decorations and artworks is blurry and artificial (Hibbard 2008, p. 115). None of the chapters in Griffey’s book deals with architecture, a substantial omission since the Queen’s House is one of the most famous buildings in English architectural history. This chapter, however, addresses this unexplored area of scholarship.

Gesa Stedman’s Cultural Exchange in Seventeenth-Century France and England (2013) is the most recent work on the queen. It dedicates one of the three chapters to Henrietta. Stedman situates Henrietta as the cultural ambassador in the first phase of cultural exchange between France and England within a framework developed by Urs Bitterli which posits three phases of exchange, namely cultural contact, acculturation and cultural collision (Stedman 2013, pp. 20–21). While the application of a particular framework to historical observations may be useful, Stedman’s imposition of the cultural exchange model onto seventeenth-century England does not seem fruitful. England and France have had a shared history tracing back to the eleventh century, which renders Stedman’s argument about a specific period of cultural initiation difficult. The second problem of Stedman’s chapter is that she does not distinguish between cultural and religious influences of Henrietta’s, but rather attributes her impact to her “Frenchness” (Stedman 2013, p. 61). Stedman’s chapter explores generally new cultural elements introduced by Henrietta into England, in the realms of religion, fashion, theater and drama without connecting these French aspects to conceptions of a queen consort.

The Queen’s House has been studied by architecture scholars mostly from the point of view of Inigo Jones (Chettle 1937; Colvin (Ed.) 1975; Colvin (Ed.) 1982; Summerson 1966; Harris and Higgott 1989; Newman 1994). The Queen’s House was commissioned by Queen Anne of Denmark, consort to James I, in 1616. She turned to Inigo Jones, who was by that time an established architect. The building was left unfinished at the time Anne died in 1619. It was not until 1629–30 when work resumed under the patronage of Henrietta Maria (Bold 2000, p. 52). John Bold’s Greenwich: An Architectural History of the Royal Hospital for Seamen and the Queen’s House (2000) puts the building into the geographical and historical context and gives the two queens, Anne and Henrietta, a proper place in the building of the Queen’s House. The present chapter aims to provide an interpretive angle needed to explain the choices made by the patrons.

This chapter appreciates that royal building projects are always collaborative efforts, involving the patron, architect, decorators, painters, sculptors and members of the court. Henrietta’s commission of various works on the Queen’s House in the 1630s should be investigated in the specific historical context. In 1628, Charles I’s favorite, the Duke of Buckingham was assassinated. Charles increasingly turned to Henrietta for counsel and affection. By the summer of 1629, Henrietta was pregnant with the future Charles II. The queen’s works on the Queen House in the 1630s were undertaken and completed in the best part of Henrietta’s life: “I was the happiest and most fortunate of queens, for not only had I every pleasure the heart could desire, I had a husband who adored me” (Ashley 1963, p. 131). At the same time, Henrietta’s refusal to attend Charles I’s Protestant coronation, her French entourage—in particular, the Capuchins priests—and the staging of lavish masques all seemed to give her a terrible press. Henrietta’s Queen’s House was conceived in this period of apparent conjugal harmony and political tension.

The chapter explores the relationship between the Queen’s House and concepts of queenship in Europe in the 1630s. Caroline Hibbard stated justly that “the historiography of Henrietta Maria reflects our failure to construct useful models for discussing consorts” (Hibbard 2006, p. 92). By investigating French elements in the Queen’s House, this chapter aims to illuminate concepts of queenship in relation to Henrietta Maria specifically, and to foreign-born queens generally. I suggest that Henrietta’s patronage in the Queen’s House is tied to her perception of the role of queens consort within a court culture of préciosité and honnêteté. The Queen’s House articulates a social identity, emphasizing the female honnêteté ideal and the concept of Neoplatonic love as key characteristics (Hibbard 2006, p. 94). By considering primarily the decorations placed in the building with a focus on paintings and sculptures, this chapter investigates how ideas of French court culture are made manifest.

The Question of Henrietta Maria’s Agency

The Queen’s House was the first royal gendered space. Situated in the outskirts of London, the architecture falls into the category of villas. Unlike the traditional English country house, the Queen’s House was not the primary residence of the owners, whose income typically derived from the rents or architectural development of the estate of which they were a part (Girouard 1978, p. 135). The Queen’s House as a villa traced its origin and ideology to that of Pliny the Younger, who contrasts the relaxation and carefree luxury of a villa with the city, delineating a rural‑urban antithesis (Pliny the Younger, Epistles, V.vi.45, qtd. in Ackerman 1990, p. 13). Henrietta’s Palladian Villa was occupied by the King and Queen as a second home when they were away from London, where they resided in Whitehall. Before the Queen’s House, none of the villas or country houses in England or France was tied explicitly to the Queen herself. The eponymous building bears an inherent concept of the house as linked to the Queen herself, perhaps including her court. Without any contemporary commentary on the building itself, it is still safe to conjecture that the Queen’s House was perceived as a space granted to and owned by the Queen.

Inigo Jones had been credited with importing the classicism of Palladio and Scamozzi to England (Girouard 1978, p. 136). The Queen’s House, as the first Italianate architecture ever built in England, was and still is regarded by many as the genius architect’s great creati...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• Introduction
• “Live Like a King”: The Monument of Philopappus and the Continuity of Client-Kingship
• Dreams of Kings in the Liber Thesauri Occulti of Pascalis Romanus
• The Jewel for the Crown: Reconsidering Female Kingship and Queenship in the Galfridian Historiography
• King Arthur: Leadership Masculinity and Homosocial Manhood
• Innocent and Simple: The Making of Henry VI’s Kingship in Fifteenth-Century England
• Mending People’s Broken Hearts: The Fashioning of Rulership in John Ford’s The Broken Heart
• Henrietta Maria as a Mediatrix of French Court Culture: A Reconsideration of the Decorations in the Queen’s House
• Royalism and Divinity in Katherine Philips’s Poems
• Private and Public: Rulers, Kings, and Tyrants in Plato, Aristotle, John of Salisbury, and Shakespeare and his Contemporaries
• Tobias Smollett’s Literary Redefinition of Kingship for the Eighteenth Century
• Backmatter