Best Books of 2025: "Generalissima"--Queen Henrietta Maria and the English Civil War!

This is the second volume in a trilogy of historical novels about Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of King Charles I; mother of Kings Charles II and James II and therefore grandmother of the Old Pretender and great-grandmother of the Young Pretender and the Cardinal Pretender. 

In this book the author traces the lives of the Queen and her family from 1640 to 1644, from the Royal palaces of Saint James, Wimbledon, Whitehall, Hampton Court, to The Hague in the Netherlands, the battlefields of the English Civil War, through betrayals--especially by Lucy Fairfax, one of her ladies-in-waiting--and attacks on Henriette (as she is called throughout the book) because she is a Catholic; storms and battles at sea, the death of her mother, pregnancies, separations, her efforts and love for her husband and her disappointments that he has not always fulfilled the promises of their marriage contract, times in York, Oxford, Cornwall, and France!

Throughout all these conflicts, dangers, and adventures, Vidal's narration, use of dialogue, and description are vivid, personal, and often poignant.

The publisher's blurb:

As the Three Kingdoms totter on the brink of anarchy, Henriette-Marie, queen of Charles I, strives to bring up their lively, growing family. In addition to her own health problems, she worries about the welfare of her mother the Dowager Queen of France, who sought refuge in London only to find herself under attack. As Henriette faces choices which may separate herself from her beloved husband and children, she seeks help from the Pope and the Irish Catholics. Meanwhile, Henriette's spy, Wat Montagu, informs her that there is a traitor within the royal household. Determined to save the throne, Henriette eventually decides to sell her jewels in order to raise an army. In spite of storms and near shipwreck as well as the attempts of her enemies to kill her, Henriette is able to return to her husband's side with an army, earning for herself the moniker of "Generalissima."

And my blurb for the book, written after reading the book in manuscript:

“From the first words of the Prologue, you're there with the Royal Family in the picture Gallery. Limned by a great historical novelist, each episode in this second volume of Vidal's ‘Henrietta of France Trilogy’ develops the characters and explores the challenges they face with vivid description and riveting action. Vidal depicts Queen Henrietta Maria's love and loyalty to her husband King Charles I and her family in the throes of the English Civil War sympathetically and realistically. Volume Three can't appear soon enough! —Stephanie A. Mann, blogger and author of Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation

I appreciated Vidal's focus on James, the Duke of York in a couple of scenes; the author assured me that he will certainly be featured in the third volume of this work. I think a novel about his life would be wonderful from the pen of this author!

Please note again, that I was asked to blurb the book, and that I received a copy of the book. The author and I have been acquainted since my book was published, and we met at the Catholic Writers Guild Live Conference in 2010. I appreciate her craft and historical acumen.

Queen Henrietta Maria Dies in France, 1669

I checked in earlier this week with Elena Maria Vidal, author of several historical novels and a biography of Marie Antoinette. She is working on the second volume in her "Henrietta of France" trilogy. (I participated in the blog tour last year.) I made contact with her since this is the anniversary of the death of Henrietta Maria, widowed Dowager Queen of Charles I. This website provides a narration of her last days and death:

10 September 1669 [According to the Gregorian Calendar in effect in France] - The Death of Henrietta Maria of France, Queen of England, Scotland & Ireland:

Gradually Henrietta was preparing for death… She had already made a general confession of all her sins, “with great application and very firm designs to apply herself to the care of her salvation.” Now she often said “that she saw clearly that is was necessary to think of leaving.” … She was fed up with doctors and medicines, she said: she would think of them no more, “but only of her salvation.” But still, at [her daughter] Henrietta Anne’s insistence, France’s leading physicians descended on Colombes… Their examination, on Saturday, August 28, was promising. All the Queen’s symptoms - the fainting fits, insomnia, recurring fevers, and chest infections - were “painful, but without danger of death,” pronounced Antoine Vallot, first physician to Louis XIV. He prescribed a regime of opiates and purges… Henrietta was reluctant, she knew from experience that laudanum “disagreed with her”: “the famous English physician, Monsieur de Mayerne, had warned her never to take any.” But Vallot persisted… So unwillingly, Henrietta agreed. All the next day, Henrietta was occupied with religious observances, it being Lady Day… That night she took her “usual remedy,” and on Monday morning she was purged “with a certain opiate designed for that purpose.” That day was also tiring, as the queen received “several visits” from friends and spent hours in “long spiritual conversations” with her confessor, preparing to receive Communion the next day. . . .When she retired to bed, she was rather feverish, so her physician, Antone d’Aquin, decided not to give her the laudanum after all. On Henrietta’s orders, the curtains were drawn around her bed and her courtiers departed. But Henrietta could not sleep, so around 11 p.m. she summoned d’Aquin and demanded the dose. Reluctantly, he gave it to her, mixed into a raw egg yolk. At once the queen fell asleep. But d’Aquin, sitting by her bedside and observing her shallow, sighing breaths and irregular pulse,realized that she was sleeping “too profoundly.” Desperately, he “endeavored by all means he could to walk her,” but “all the several remedies used in such cases” had no effect. Her valets de chambre were sent rushing to summon more doctors and Henrietta’s priests, who begged her to confess her sins or at least “to give some sign that she understood.” But they met only “a mortal silence…” “Seeing that there was no abatement of her malady,” Father Gamache gave orders for the queen to receive Extreme Unction. Through the dark night, the village curé of Colombes “came in haste” bearing holy oil, with which he anointed the queen’s eyes, ears, nostrils, lips, hands, and feet. Between three and four in the morning of Tuesday, August 31 [O.S.], “without violence, without the slightest convulsion, with great serenity, and a sweet expression of countenance,” the fifty-nine-year-old queen slipped away into death. (source: A Royal Passion: The Turbulent Marriage of King Charles I of England and Henrietta Maria of France, by Katie Whitaker)

Henrietta Maria was interred in the great royal necropolis and basilica, St. Denis. Therefore, her remains were desecrated during the French Revolution in 1793 and now are mixed in with the other royals in the mass graves in the crypt.

There's a special poignancy to remembering the death of this Queen (consort) of England as the death of Queen Elizabeth II was announced on Thursday (September 8, the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary). 

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and the may the souls of the Faithful Departed rest in peace.

The Fortnight for Freedom: St. John Southworth

The Archdiocese of Westminster celebrates its martyr saint today, St. John Southworth, executed for the crime of being a priest in 1654. He had been arrested and protected by Queen Henrietta Maria and suffered imprisonment and exile. Returning to London, he assisted St. Henry Morse, SJ, during an attack of the plague. Finally, he was arrested and executed during Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate:

He pleaded guilty to exercising the priesthood and was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. At his execution at Tyburn, London, he suffered the full pains of his sentence and was hanged, drawn and quartered. He was allowed to speak before his sentence was carried out. Among his last words:

“My faith and obedience to my superiors is all the treason charged against me; nay, I die for Christ’s law, which no human law, by whomsoever made, ought to withstand or contradict… To follow His holy doctrine and imitate His holy death, I willingly suffer at present; this gallows I look on as His Cross, which I gladly take to follow my Dear Saviour…I plead not for myself…but for you poor persecuted Catholics whom I leave behind me.

"My faith is my crime, the performance of my duty the occasion of my condemnation. I confess I am a great sinner; against God I have offended, but am innocent of any sin against man, I mean the Commonwealth, and the present Government."

The Venetian Secretary reported on his execution: he was hung, and was not dead when the executioner "cut out his heart and entrails and threw them into a fire kindled for the purpose, the body being quartered . . . Such is the inhuman cruelty used towards the English Catholic religious."

The Spanish ambassador returned his corpse to Douai for burial. His corpse was sewn together and parboiled, to preserve it. Following the French Revolution, his body was buried in an unmarked grave for its protection. The grave was discovered in 1927 and his remains were returned to England. They are now kept in Westminster Cathedral in London. He was beatified in 1929. In 1970, he was canonized by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. The Cathedral honors him with a guild.

St. John Southworth, pray for us!

Queen Henrietta Maria and Her Dwarf

When I received this month's email from History Today, I noticed an article about Jeffery Hudson, a dwarf at the Court of Charles I by C. Northcote Parkinson--and recalled that Father George Rutler had also written an article about Jeffery, for Crisis Magazine.

Parkinson emphasizes Hudson's role at Court and in the Civil War:

When the Queen was with child in 1630, Jeffery was sent to fetch Madame Peronne, the midwife, from France. His ship was taken by a privateer, however, and the midwife came too late for the event; which was the birth, in fact, of Charles II. Jeffery seems to have been popular at Court ‘wanting nothing but humility,’ and was the subject of an anonymous poem ‘The New Yeere’s Gift’ printed in 1636. There followed Jeffereidos, a poem about his capture, possibly written by Davenant and published in 1638.

Before this, in 1637, the Queen’s dwarf appeared, with other English volunteers, at the Siege of Breda, during which campaign he came to be known as ‘Strenuous Jeffery’- although no bigger, seemingly, then when he first came to Court. We hear nothing of Jeffery during the next few years, the period leading up to the Civil War. On February 23rd, however, 1641/2, the Queen sailed for Holland with the object of raising money for the royal cause. She was successful in her mission and returned to England a year later with a man-of-war and eleven transports laden with ammunition and stores.

Her squadron was caught in a gale and her ladies gave up all hope of survival, but Henrietta Maria told them not to worry - ‘Queens of England are never drowned’. She came nearer to being shot after landing at Bridlington, her headquarters ashore being bombarded by a Parliamentary man-of-war. She reached York, nevertheless, and reported her arrival in a letter to the King dated March 20th, 1643. It is virtually certain that Jeffery was with her, and more than probable that he was now created Captain of Horse, perhaps to give him some status and pay.

History books have paid little attention to the part played by the Queen at this time. She played, in fact, a significant role, her first success being to provide the King with forty waggon-loads of arms and munitions, her second being to join him at Edgehill at the head of her cavalry, with 3,000 infantry and six cannon. ‘Her She Majesty Generalissima’ she gaily called herself, and was evidently adored by everyone. But the war went badly for Charles, and the Queen, again pregnant, was sent to Exeter for safety.

Following the battle of Marston Moor, fatal to the King’s cause, the Earl of Essex marched into the west country. Having given birth to a daughter, the Queen fled to Truro and eventually sailed for France from Falmouth. Jeffery was certainly with her during this adventure, and was under fire again when her ship was almost captured by a Parliamentary man-of-war. There is reason to suppose that Jeffery was his strenuous self on this occasion, making himself useful and expecting to be taken more seriously in future.

Father George Rutler emphasizes, first, the fascination such unusual stories and lives bring to the study of history, and second, that Jeffery Hudson was a convert to Catholicism in Henrietta Maria's Catholic Court:

A boy’s eyes may glaze over if he is made to memorize only names and dates, but tell him something odd about those names and dates and it will never be forgotten. Consider, as one case in point, the defeat of the Scots by Muslims at Teba near Malaga on their way to bury the heart of Robert the Bruce in Jerusalem. King Robert had been excommunicated by both Pope Clement V and Pope John XXII, and the burial of his heart in the Holy Land was to be a penitential gesture, entrusted to Sir James Douglas. When he was killed at Teba on August 25, 1330, the knight Keith of Glastone brought it back to Melrose Abbey in Scotland. Some 201 years earlier, the heart of Richard the Lionheart was buried in Rouen, embalmed with frankincense, as were his entrails which were entombed at Chalus, and the rest of his body at Fontevraud Abbey in Anjou. The same John XXII who excommunicated the Bruce, had received favorably in 1320 the Declaration of Arbraoth, which contained many expressions anticipatory of our 1776 Declaration of Independence. Its reputed author, Abbot Bernard, may thus be called the Thomas Jefferson of Scotland. Or, more fittingly, Thomas Jefferson was the Abbot Bernard of the United States. Arbroath had a happier connection with the papacy than did Magna Carta, which Pope Innocent III called “a shameful and demeaning agreement forced upon the King by violence and fear.” At least the Pope could read the Latin document. In a recent interview on American television, British Prime Minister David Cameron was unable to translate the words “Magna Carta.” That does not speak well of his schooling at Eton and Oxford. Perhaps his father should have spent more time teaching him at home.

In the saga of Catholic curiosities, unique is the smallest known adult Catholic, Sir Jeffrey Hudson who as a man was eighteen inches tall. His parents and siblings were of average height. He was not a typical dwarf, inasmuch as he was perfectly proportioned in every way, only tiny—more of what is called vernacularly a midget, and technically a pituitary dwarf, conditioned by a lack of growth hormone. But his hypopituitarism was without precedent in England and his perfect and delicate miniature size distinguished him from the common Continental court dwarves of his day. As a possible portent, he was born on June 14, 1619 in England’s smallest county, Rutland, whose motto is “Multum in Parvo,” or, Much in Little as David Cameron might try to translate it. His father raised cattle, particularly bulls for baiting, for the Duke of Buckingham. When little Jeffrey failed to grow, he was taken in to the Buckingham household as a “rarity of nature.” He was seven years old and when King Charles I and his queen Henrietta Maria were entertained by the Duke and Duchess of Buckingham, the lavish banquet ended with a large pie out of which popped Jeffrey Hudson in a miniature suit of armor. This gave rise to a rumor that he had been baked in the pie, but this was not the case. The Queen was so delighted that the Buckinghams presented their rarity to her. The Queen kept a separate household at Denmark House in London, and Jeffrey joined it at the end of 1626, along with two disproportionate dwarfs and a Welsh giant. Jeffrey became favored for his wit and elegance, and Inigo Jones wrote costumed masques in which he took part. The French queen’s court was Catholic and housed so many priests that some objections were raised among Londoners who feared a conspiracy might be afoot. Jeffrey embraced Catholicism and kept his faith throughout his difficult life, regularly assisting at Low Masses which occasioned tasteless puns.