Catholic Culture in Early Modern England

4. A Cosmopolitan Court in a Confessional Age: Henrietta Maria Revisited

 A Cosmopolitan Court in a Confessional Age Henrietta Maria Revisited Caroline Hibbard Queen Henrietta Maria’s life and its impact on English politics provide a striking example of the international dimensions of early modern English Catholic culture, illustrating how difficult it is to discuss this culture in a purely English context. Arguably, her career served to emphasize and even exaggerate the “foreignness” of Catholicism, reopening the latent debate about Catholic loyalty and arousing unprecedented xenophobic expressions by the s. She found herself described as an evil counselor and even as a traitor to the English people and as the focus for Catholic plotting against the English nation .1 But although as a queen and a Frenchwoman Henrietta Maria had a very particular story, as a Catholic living in England her situation was not altogether unique or accidental. The survival of the Catholic faith in postReformation England depended on organization, financing, and to some extent clerical recruitment that was directed or generated from overseas. These facts of life made English Catholics perennially vulnerable to the charge that they were unpatriotic or even treasonous, even though the great majority of the lay Catholics were loyal subjects of the crown throughout the early modern period.2 It is true that English lay Catholics were often (but not invariably)  more “cosmopolitan” than their Protestant counterparts, but the international orientation of English Catholicism was far more than a matter of culture or attitude; it was institutionally their destiny. By , Henrietta Maria was already receiving the bad press that would accelerate during the civil war as she was demonized by the king’s enemies. This brought about a precipitous and long-term decline in her reputation, which lingers in our sense that the political disaster she helped create was somehow an inevitable outcome of her personal character and background.3 In this assumption, we adopt the perspective of her enemies, who defined the “culture wars” of their century as the struggle of the godly against Antichrist. Likewise, the evolution of English antipopery is now a familiar story: the character of the Henrician Reformation, more schismatic than “reformed,” ensuring that the polemics of antipopery were deeply etched into national discourse, this polemic then reinforced by the Spanish marriage of Mary Tudor, later by the Armada, and finally by the Gunpowder Plot. In retrospect, this wider narrative has also acquired an aura of inevitability that obscures the energy devoted by three successive monarchs to ensuring that the de facto religious pluralism that they inherited did not destroy England’s internal unity or external standing in the European world. In “revisiting” Henrietta Maria, it is worth trying to avoid the ex post facto perspective inherent in both these narratives and to look afresh at the queen’s life before the Scottish crisis. Restoring contingency to the narrative will also reveal how, from  onwards, the Frenchborn queen came, ironically, to be identified with what might more plausibly be labeled a “Spanish” policy than a French one. Some general reflections on cosmopolitan courts in this confessional age may help set the stage for this review. The religious schism of the Reformation caused enormous disruptions in both the domestic politics and the international relations of Europe, making a hash of careful geopolitical calculations of national interest, breaking traditional lines of communication, and cutting across the hierarchical organization of domestic society. This played out differently in each country, and not always to the permanent disadvantage of the prince; among the several peculiarities of the English situation was that an anointed monarch ruled over a state church with a highly Calvinistic theology.4 And the culture and pretensions of anointed monarchs coexisted very uneasily with the predestinarian theology and apocalyptic outlook of Calvinism. Externally, the Reformation had almost entirely negative effects on English foreign policy, reducing options, creating potential enemies, and com-  Caroline Hibbard plicating foreign alliances. For over a century, English monarchs can be seen struggling to free themselves from these constrictions in the international arena and to sustain English independence against the Catholic superpowers .5 Elizabeth evaded part of this problem by refusing to marry, thus maintaining domestic stability by not introducing a sexual relationship with an emissary of Antichrist into the heart of the court; this (like so many of Elizabeth ’s policies) was not a permanent solution. England’s safety as a small power lay in international alliances that would prevent the predominance of one...