Tea at Trianon: Henry Jermyn

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, November 18, 2021

Henry Jermyn

Henrietta Maria's close friend and faithful retainer. From BCW Project:

Henry Jermyn was the second surviving son of Sir Thomas Jermyn (1573-1644) of Rushbrook in Suffolk, a court official who was appointed governor of Jersey in 1631. Henry followed his father into royal service around 1622 and joined the household of Queen Henrietta Maria as a gentleman usher in 1627. He quickly became the Queen's favourite and confidante but in 1633, King Charles banished him to France over his scandalous refusal to marry Eleanor Villiers, whom he had seduced. Jermyn was allowed to return to court in 1636 and was appointed master of horse to the Queen in 1639. He was elected MP for Corfe Castle in the Short Parliament and for St Edmundsbury in the Long Parliament (1640).
In the spring of 1641, Jermyn took a leading part in the so-called "Army Plot", in which Royalist officers conspired to bring the northern army to London to coerce the King's enemies in Parliament. Jermyn was forced to flee to France when the plot was discovered in May 1641. The following year, with civil war about to break out in England, he joined Henrietta Maria at The Hague and assisted her efforts to raise loans, buy weapons and recruit troops for the Royalist cause. Jermyn returned to England with the Queen in February 1643 and was appointed colonel of the Queen's bodyguard on her march south to rejoin King Charles during the summer of 1643. At the Queen's request, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Jermyn of St Edmundsbury (8 September 1643).

In July 1644, Jermyn accompanied the Queen when she left England for France where he continued to assist her efforts to raise foreign support for the Royalist cause. He succeeded his father as governor of Jersey in 1644 and proposed a plan to cede the Channel Islands to France in exchange for military aid. This brought him into conflict with Sir Edward Hyde and his supporters which was exacerbated in June 1646 when Jermyn brought the Prince of Wales from Jersey to Paris against Hyde's advice, and in 1647 when he encouraged the King to promise a Presbyterian church settlement in England in order to gain Scottish support. After the defeat of the Royalists in the Second Civil War, it fell to Jermyn to break the terrible news of the King's execution to Henrietta Maria. (Read more.)