Lives of the last four princesses of the royal house of Stuart

1670.] HEK VOYAGE TO ENGLAND. 297
Henrietta was also attended on her voyage to Dover, by
Mareschal du Plessis, the Count and Countess de Gramont,
the Bishop of Tournay, Abbe Chaurnont, Monsieur l'Avocat,
and others, who, with their attendants, swelled the number
of her followers to upwards of two hundred persons.*
The morning was fine, and the squadron was seen from
the heights of Dover. The King, Prince Kupert, the
Duke of Monmouth, and others of the British court, rowed
out a mile to meet her. The Duke of York had been
compelled to return to London, so his was not among the
familiar faces that greeted the longing eyes of Henrietta
on her first return to England.
Dover Castle, the most beautiful and attractive of all
the marine palaces of England, had been fitted up for
the reception of the King, his beloved sister, and their
suites. The weather was beautiful, and Henrietta appeared
to derive new life from the change, and, most of all, from
being relieved from the presence of her jealous and un-
qpurteous husband, whose recent unkindness to her, on their
last journey, still rankled in her mind, and disposed her to
make an urgent attempt to escape from his intolerable
yoke ; but in vain, for Charles would not listen to her en-
treaties, to grant her an asylum in England. " Much as he
loved her," he told her, " it could not be. She must, when
her mission was accomplished, return to her connubial
misery, and endeavour to make the best of her hard lot."
and others, she returned' to France, with Henrietta, and came not back
to England, till the following November, five montbs after the death of
that unfortunate Princess, having obtained the post of maid of honour
to Queen Catherine of Braganza, and then became the mistress of the
King, and the mother of the Duke of Eichmond. She was a most
troublesome and unprincipled intriguante, one of the pests of that
reign.
* ' Gazette de France.' Lingard's ' History of England.' ' London
Gazette.' ' Theat. Europe.'