My new book chapter “The Reputation of Dowager Queen Henrietta Maria and the Legitimacy of the Restoration Monarchy” has been published in Later Stuart Queens, 1660-1735: Religion, Political Culture and Patronage edited by Eilish Gregory and Michael C. Questier. Later Stuart Queens, 1660-1735 is part of the Queenship and Power series at Palgrave Macmillan.
Abstract
The restoration of the English monarchy in 1660 resulted in the return of the exiled King Charles II and the re-establishment of an extended royal family. Charles II had numerous family members whose place in the new political order was uncertain including his mother, Henrietta Maria, the queen dowager. Although Charles II enjoyed broad popular support at the time of his Restoration, some of the factions that emerged during the English Civil Wars and Interregnum were motivated to use Henrietta Maria’s reputation as a weapon to undermine her son’s political legitimacy. During the 1660s, Charles faced two modes of political attack based on his mother’s reputation, which coincided with Henrietta Maria’s two periods of residency in England. From 1660 to 1661, various English men and women outside court circles who opposed monarchical government challenged the very premise of “Restoration” by accusing Henrietta Maria of being unchaste. From 1662 to 1665, when Henrietta Maria presided over a splendid and well attended court at Somerset House, rumours spread in elite and diplomatic circles that she had recently married her private secretary, Henry Jermyn, first earl of St Albans. These rumours were an attempt to undermine both the perceived influence of both Henrietta Maria and the earl of St Albans over Charles, and to diminish the attraction of the queen dowager’s splendid court, which appeared to promote French and Roman Catholic interests. Although Charles II would make numerous conciliatory gestures towards his political opponents, his support for the status and privileges of all members of the royal family would remain steadfast throughout his reign. Charles’s later determination to preserve James’s place in the line of succession during the Exclusion Crisis demonstrated the same concern for hereditary legitimacy as his previous efforts to grant Henrietta Maria full honours as queen dowager.