Henrietta Maria of France (25 November 1609-10 September 1669) was the Queen Consort of England from 13 June 1625 to 30 January 1649 with King Charles I of England. The daughter of King Henry IV of France, she was the mother of Charles II of England and James II of England. The United States state of Maryland was named for her in 1632.
Biography[]
Henrietta Maria was born on 25 November 1609 in the Palais du Louvre in Paris, France, and she was the daughter of King Henry IV of France and Marie de Medici. Her father was assassinated in 1610, and she became the most senior royal princess at the French court when her sister Christine Marie of France married Victor Amadeus I of Savoy. On 13 June 1625, Henrietta Maria was married to King Charles I of England and had England adopt a pro-French policy. She was disliked by the English people for being a Catholic, and she had difficulty reading or writing in English into the late 1640s. In 1630, she gave birth to the future King Charles II of England, her husband's heir. In 1649, her life as Queen ended when her husband was beheaded by the Parliamentarians of Oliver Cromwell during the English Civil War, and she lived in a convent in France in the 1650s until the English Restoration in 1660. She died in 1669 in England.
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