whose vigilance she had been confided, together with her household, immediately ordered out a hundred musketeers to guard her; but many of these obeyed the command reluctantly, declaring that they could find better employment than watching over foreigners.  Startled by this demonstration, Lord Holland laid the case before the House of Peers (the royal authority being no longer recognized), and generously represented the indignity of such an insult to so great a Princess, who had, moreover, thrown herself upon the hospitality of the nation to which she was so nearly allied; urging them to avert the reproach which must inevitably fall upon the country should the misguided zeal of the people be permitted to subject the exiled Queen to violence, when her rank, her misfortunes, and her age should alike render her person sacred.

The Peers referred the remonstrance to the Commons, who at once agreed to the necessity of affording protection to the Queen-mother; but, urged by the agents of Richelieu, they at the same time suggested that she should be desired to depart the kingdom; “for the quieting those jealousies in the hearts of his Majesty’s well-affected subjects, occasioned by some ill instruments about the Queen’s person, by the flowing of priests and Papists to her house, and by the use and practice of the idolatry of the mass, and exercise of other superstitious services of the Romish Church, to the great scandal of true religion.” [228]

Incapable of opposing the will of his Parliament, Charles I. had no alternative save to request his unhappy mother-in-law to pardon him if he entreated her to seek another asylum, while Marie de Medicis on her side, compelled to obey this intimation, promised immediate compliance; only imploring him to exert his influence with Philip of Spain to receive her once more in his dominions; or, failing that concession, to permit her passage through the Low Countries into Holland.  Philip, however, affecting great displeasure at the manner in which she had left Brussels, refused to concede either favour; upon which the persecuted Princess applied to the States-General of the United Provinces to afford her an asylum; and solicited the Prince of Orange (whose son had recently married her grand-daughter) to second her request.  Both the States-General and Frederic Henry, however, stood too much in awe of Richelieu to venture thus to brave his displeasure; and, accordingly, they also, in their turn, requested the Queen-mother to select another retreat.

The iron hand of the Cardinal still pressed upon his victim.  Abandoned by her children, and by the ancient allies of the King her husband; forsaken by her friends, and almost despised by her enemies, the wretched Marie de Medicis found herself literally bereft of all support, and at length, hopeless and heart-stricken, she took leave of her afflicted daughter, who was fated only a few years later to become like herself dependent upon the reluctant hospitality of her relatives; and of her son-in-law, so soon to expiate the errors of his government upon a scaffold; and in the month of August 1641 she quitted the Court of London, under the escort of the Marquis of Arundel, and proceeded to Holland, where the States-General informed her on her landing that the country was so much impoverished by the long war which it had sustained, that they were unable to provide funds for her maintenance.