HENRIETTA MARIA (1609-1669), queen of Charles I. of England, daughter of Henry IV. of France, was born on Nov. 25, 1609. The first serious overtures for her hand were made in the spring of 1624, on behalf of Charles, prince of Wales. Her brother, Louis XIII., consented to the marriage on the condition that the English Roman Catholics were relieved from the opera tion of the penal laws. She was married on May 11, 1625, in Paris, the duke of Chevreuse acting as proxy for Charles, who was now king, and she set out for England in June.
The early years of their married life were unhappy. Charles soon found an excuse for breaking his promise to relieve the Eng lish Catholics. His young wife was deeply offended, and the favourite Buckingham stirred the flames of his master's discontent. After the assassination of Buckingham (1628) the barrier between the married pair was broken down, and Charles caused much dis content by his favourable treatment of the Catholic subjects whom he had formerly persecuted. The children of the marriage were Charles II. (b. 1630), Mary, princess of Orange (b. 1631), James II. (b. 1633) Elizabeth (b. 1636), Henry, duke of Glou cester (b. 1640), and Henrietta, duchess of Orleans (b. 1644). For some years Henrietta Maria's chief interests lay in the amusements of a brilliant court, and she took no part in politics. Her participation in the private rehearsals of the Shepherd's Pastoral, written by her favourite Walter Montague, probably drew down upon her the savage attack of Prynne. Her co-religion ists found little aid from her till 1636. She had then recently opened a diplomatic communication with the see of Rome, and under the influence of a papal agent, a Scotsman named George Conn, accredited to her, thwarted Laud's proclamation against the Catholic recusants.
When the Scottish troubles broke out in 1639, she raised money from her fellow-Catholics to support the king's army on the borders. During the session of the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, the queen urged the king to oppose himself to the House of Commons in defence of the Catholics. She was at the time generally believed to be the instigator of the Army Plot, in which the English people saw only an attempt to establish Catholic supremacy, but she was probably acting on the sugges tion of her adviser Henry Jermyn. She threw herself heart and soul into the schemes for rescuing Strafford and coercing the parliament, and the impeachment of the five members on the charge of treason was brought about by her influence over the king.
In Feb. 1642 the queen went to the Continent to try to raise support in arms and money. In Feb. 1643 she landed at Bridling ton quay with a large sum of money, but no foreign troops. She placed herself at the head of a force of loyalists, and in spite of some opposition marched through England to join the king near Oxford, which they entered together on July 14. By July 1644, however, her position had become so insecure that she was per suaded again to take refuge in France, where she received a pen sion of 12,000 crowns a month from the queen regent. As long as her husband was alive the queen never ceased to make plans and raise funds to encourage his resistance, and she continued to hope for success until she heard of his execution in She brought up her youngest child Henrietta in her own faith, but failed to induce her youngest son, the duke of Gloucester, to take the same course. When after the Restoration (Oct. 166o) she returned to England, she found that she had no place in the new world. She received from parliament a grant of £30,00o a year in compensation for the loss of her dower-lands, and the king added a similar yearly sum. In Jan. 166 i she returned to France to be present at the marriage of her daughter Henrietta to the duke of Orleans. She set out again for England in July 1662, and took up her residence once more at Somerset House. In 1665 she returned to France, and died on August 31, 1669, at Colombes, not far from Paris.
See I. A. Taylor, The Life of Queen Henrietta Maria (19o5) . HENRY, "prince of the house" (Fr. Henri; Span. Enrique; Ger. Heinrich). The name of many European sovereigns.