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  • Country Life

    The misunderstood queen

    Aug 03, 2022 5 minutes
    Edited by Kate Green

    Henrietta Maria: Conspirator, Warrior, Phoenix Queen Leanda de Lisle (Vintage, £25)

    IN Ken Hughes’s film Cromwell (1970), there is a scene that sets up Henrietta Maria, Charles I’s queen, as the villain of the piece. It is May 1641 and the Earl of Strafford, one of the King’s ‘evil counsellors’, has just been executed by the will of parliament. Charles receives a deputation of MPs and the meeting is fractious. Suddenly, a portrait on the wall catches Oliver Cromwell’s eye: Henrietta Maria in a necklace with large pendant cross, an unmistakable Catholic symbol. He glowers; there, in paint, is the most diabolical of the King’s evil counsellors.

    ‘Charles was in love with his wife, as well as in desire, and she with him’

    Then the queen herself appears (Dorothy Tutin, a remarkable likeness)—pretty, imperious, haughty even. She has overheard the diatribe against Catholicism and

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