Though Charles features in this pamphlet the author is careful not to criticise him, rather the blame was with the queen for trying to introduce a вЂPopish PlanetвЂ™ into Protestant England. The frontispiece of the pamphlet presents a drawing which shows the king pointing his sword towards the sun, which is being covered by the moon (Henrietta Maria), who according to the tract had caused the nation to вЂburn in the combustion of civill warreвЂ™. The most circulated tract about the queen was an anonymous pamphlet titled, The Great Eclipse of the Sun, or, Charles his Weine Over-clouded, which was published in 1644. Pamphlets were an important source of information for contemporaries вЂ“ they could influence public opinion or even reflect it. Like newsbooks, pamphlets were utilised as a tool of propaganda by both parliamentarians and royalists. By deconstructing the composite parts of the queenвЂ™s name, her very identity and her femininity was destabilised, moreover, by branding the queen as half masculine, half feminine, the newsbook aimed to evoke fear in its reader by suggesting that the queen posed a threat to the natural order.ДЇigure 3: A woodcut showing the frontispiece of The Great Eclipse of the Sun, or, Charles his Waine Over-clouded presenting the king as вЂEclipsedвЂ™ by his Queen. Michelle White has convincingly argued that Henrietta Maria was here even criticized for her name. This rhetoric against Henrietta Maria continued throughout the 1640s, for example in 1643 a newsbook wrote that вЂHenrietta is of the masculine, though Maria be of the feminineвЂ™. Yet, such rhetoric also demonstrates that parliamentarians considered Henrietta Maria to pose a threat to the stability of the Three Kingdoms.

By presenting the queen as assertive and domineering parliamentarians could blame the collapse of the patriarchal society solely on her, without mentioning the weaknesses of the king. Another newsbook, The Reformed Malignants, wrote that вЂwe are merely fooled and delued, and the Queen is the very president of the councell TableвЂ™.

Parliamentarians could not openly criticise the king, hence they attacked those closest to him to undermine the royalistsвЂ™ campaign. Gendered, and often highly sexualised, satire was commonly used in pamphlet literature, as a means for both parliamentarians and royalists to delegitimise their opponents. ДЇigure 2: A woodcut by John Taylor showing that even dogs had to take sides in the civil war.ДЄ similar criticism is found in Mercurius Britannicus which described her as вЂthe man and RaignesвЂ™ вЂ“ the tract details how the queen posed a threat to the patriarchal government. Another tract stated that вЂnothing is to done in that or other matters without her consentвЂ™, the notion of a woman having control over a man, especially when that man was a king, was a subversion of the natural order and did not follow seventeenth-century ideals on gender. A queen was expected to be submissive, dutiful and kind, rather than an engaged, and active, political force influencing her husbandsвЂ™ political views. The queen is presented as duplicitous by the pamphleteers, as she was perceived as undermining the established patriarchal order. In 1643 Mercurius Britannicus wrote that вЂthis kingdome is woefully ruined by aвЂ¦Conjugall Conspiracie, by a plotin MatromonieвЂ™. Parliamentarian pamphleteers used the expected role of women in early modern England to portray Henrietta Maria as over-stepping her position as the queen consort. Satirical newsbooks, such as Mercurius Britannicus, A perfect diurnall of the passages in Parliament, and Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer, were the predominate medium through which parliamentarians criticised the queen. The power exerted by Henrietta Maria over her husband King Charles I was manipulated by English parliamentarians to create a public illusion of her power to push their own propaganda campaign. Figure 1: Anthony van Dyck 1636-1638, Princess Henrietta Maria, Queen consort of England.

Cavalier queen wordpresscom