er. How
should one power really seek the permanent advantage of another?

At that time also, as on so many occasions, other relations arising
out of the position of the leading statesmen as members of parties,
produced an effect on politics. Cardinal Richelieu met with opposition
from a zealously Catholic party, which gathered round the queen
mother, and considered the influence of Spain to a certain degree
necessary. This party seized the first favourable opportunity of
setting on foot a preliminary treaty of peace, to which Richelieu,
however long he hesitated, and however much he disliked it, could not
help acceding.

Quite in keeping with this understanding between the Catholic powers
was the partial recoil of Protestantism in England from the advances
which it had made to the Catholic party. The French who surrounded the
Queen were so numerous, that a strong feeling of opposition on
religious and national grounds was awakened in them by their contact
with the English character. They saw in the English nothing but
heretics and apostates; the Catholics who had formerly been executed
at Tyburn as rebels they honoured as martyrs. The Queen herself, upon
whom her priests laid all kinds of penance corresponding to her
dignity, was once induced to take part in a procession to this place
of execution. It is conceivable how deeply wounded and irritated the
English must have felt at these odious demonstrations. To the King it
seemed insufferable that the household of his consort should take up a
position of open hostility to the ecclesiastical laws of the land.
Personally also he felt injured and affronted. We hear complaints from
him that he was robbed of his sleep at night by these demonstrations.
He quickly and properly resolved to rid himself once for all of these
refractory people, whatever might be the consequence. The Queen's
court was then refusing to admit into it the English ladies whom he
had appointed to attend on her. The King seized the opportunity: he
invited his wife to dine with him, for they still had separate
households; and after dinner he made her understand by degrees that he
could no longer put up with this exhibition of feeling on the part of
her retinue, but must send them all home again, priests and laymen,
men and women alike.[463] This resolution was carried out in spite of
all the resistance offered by those whom it affected. Only some few
ladies and two priests of moderate views were left with