coach! They have made her to go barefoot, to spin, to eat her
meat out of dishes, to wait at the table of servants, with many other
ridiculous and absurd penances. And if they dare thus insult (adds the
writer) over the daughter, sister, and wife of so great kings, what
slavery would they not make us, the people, to undergo!"[213]

One of the articles in the contract of marriage was, that the queen
should have a chapel at St. James's, to be built and consecrated by her
French bishop; the priests became very importunate, declaring that
without a chapel mass could not be performed with the state it ought
before a queen. The king's answer is not that of a man inclined to
popery. "If the queen's closet, where they now say mass, is not large
enough, let them have it in the great chamber; and, if the great chamber
is not wide enough, they might use the garden; and, if the garden would
not serve their turn, then was the park the fittest place."

The French priests and the whole party feeling themselves slighted, and
sometimes worse treated, were breeding perpetual quarrels among
themselves, grew weary of England, and wished themselves away: but many
having purchased their places with all their fortune, would have been
ruined by the breaking up of the establishment. Bassompierre alludes to
the broils and clamours of these French strangers, which exposed them to
the laughter of the English court; and we cannot but smile in observing,
in one of the despatches of this great mediator between two kings and a
queen, addressed to the minister, that one of the greatest obstacles
which he had found in this difficult negotiation arose from the
bedchamber women! The French king being desirous of having two
additional women to attend the English queen his sister, the ambassador
declares, that "it would be more expedient rather to diminish than to
increase the number; for they all live so ill together, with such
rancorous jealousies and enmities, that I have more trouble to make them
agree than I shall find to accommodate the differences between the two
kings. Their continual bickerings, and often their vituperative
language, occasion the English to entertain the most contemptible and
ridiculous opinions of our nation. I shall not, therefore, insist on
this point, unless it shall please his majesty to renew it."

The French bishop was under the age of thirty, and his authority was
imagined to have been but irreverently treated by two beau