It was one evening that the king suddenly appeared, and, summoning the French household, commanded them to take their instant departure—­the carriages were prepared for their removal.  In doing this, Charles had to resist the warmest entreaties, and even the vehement anger of the queen, who is said in her rage to have broken several panes of the window of the apartment to which the king dragged her, and confined her from them.[214]

The scene which took place among the French people, at the sudden announcement of the king’s determination, was remarkably indecorous.  They instantly flew to take possession of all the queen’s wardrobe and jewels; they did not leave her, it appears, a change of linen, since it was with difficulty she procured one as a favour, according to some manuscript letters of the times.  One of their extraordinary expedients was that of inventing bills, for which they pretended they had engaged themselves on account of the queen, to the amount of L10,000, which the queen at first owned to, but afterwards acknowledged the debts were fictitious ones.  Among these items was one of L400 for necessaries for her majesty; an apothecary’s bill for drugs of L800; and another of L150 for “the bishop’s unholy water,” as the writer expresses it.  The young French bishop attempted by all sorts of delays to avoid this ignominious expulsion; till the king was forced to send his yeomen of the guards to turn them out from Somerset-house, where the juvenile French bishop, at once protesting against it, and mounting the steps of the coach, took his departure “head and shoulders."[215] It appears that to pay the debts and the pensions, besides sending the French troops free home, cost L50,000.

In a long procession of nearly forty coaches, after four days’ tedious travelling, they reached Dover; but the spectacle of these impatient foreigners so reluctantly quitting England, gesticulating their sorrows or their quarrels, exposed them to the derision, and stirred up the prejudices of the common people.  As Madame George, whose vivacity is always described as extravagantly French, was stepping into the boat, one of the mob could not resist the satisfaction of flinging a stone at her French cap; an English courtier, who was conducting her, instantly quitted his charge, ran the fellow through the body, and quietly returned to the boat.  The man died on the spot; but no farther notice appears to have been taken of the inconsiderate gallantry of this English courtier.

But Charles did not show his kingly firmness only on this occasion:  it did not forsake him when the French Marshal Bassompierre was instantly sent over to awe the king; Charles sternly offered the alternative of war, rather than permit a French faction to trouble an English court.  Bassompierre makes a curious observation in a letter to the French Bishop of Mende, he who had been just sent away from England; and which serves as the most positive evidence of the firm refusal