To Sell England’s Jewels: Queen Henrietta Maria’s visits to the Continent, 1642 and 1644

Abstract

In the pursuit of raising much needed finance for the English Royalist cause, Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of King Charles I of England, twice visited the European mainland in the 1640s in attempts to sell items of the English Crown Jewels. On both occasions her attempts were beset with problems including a perceived lack of legitimacy of any right she or the king had to sell such items. By association, extremely low offer prices were made by would-be buyers. The English Parliament did its best to track the queen’s activities using both overt and covert approaches. Her visits in 1642 and 1644 met with some success dspite Parliaments best efforts to intervene, but both visits failed to fulfill their aims.