Henrietta Maria

National Institute for Coordinated Experiments
Fictional institute from That Hideous Strength

JMSmith is on a tear. I'm reading along and I come across the “Henrietta Marie Window”. I have no idea what he is talking about, so a-Googling I go.

I find a question on History Stack Exchange that gives us the story:

C. S. Lewis's novel That Hideous Strength contains the following passage:

“Look out! Look out!” said a dozen voices at once as a splintering of glass became audible and a shower of stones fell onto the Common Room floor. A moment later several of the Fellows had made a rush for the windows and put up the shutters: and then they were all standing staring at one another, and silent but for the noise of their heavy breathing. Glossop had a cut on the forehead, and on the floor lay the fragments of that famous east window on which Henrietta Maria had once cut her name with a diamond.

Is there is any historical basis for this? The short answer:

The reference to "that famous east window on which Henrietta Maria had once cut her name with a diamond" seems most likely to be a conflation of two or more of various events and artefacts connected to Henrietta Maria and / or her husband, Charles I. These events / artefacts involve Henrietta Maria breaking a window, Charles I purportedly inscribing messages to her on glass with a diamond, a window with an anti-Henrietta Maria inscription made with a diamond, and a marble tablet with her name inscribed on it above a window.

So who is this Henrietta? Well, if you screw up and ask for Henrietta Marie instead of Henrietta Maria you get a 17th Century slave ship.

English merchant slave ship Henrietta Marie - Peter Copeland

Wikipedia lets you know that there is also a queen with a similar name. That article finishes with this line:

During his 1631 Northwest Passage expedition in the ship Henrietta Maria, Captain Thomas James named the northwest headland of James Bay where it opens into Hudson Bay for her.

So is the Henritta Maria the same ship as the Henrietta Marie, or are they completely different ships? We're not getting any concrete answers here. The ship and the Queen are both from the 17th Century, so feel free to suppose that ship was named after the queen either as an honor or as an insult.

Henrietta Maria of France 1609 - 1699

Henrietta Maria was Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland from her marriage to King Charles I. Her Roman Catholicism made her unpopular in England, and also prohibited her from being crowned. King Charles fought Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army in the English Civil War. Charles eventually lost and was beheaded in 1649.

The North American Province of Maryland, a major haven for Roman Catholic settlers, was named in honour of Queen Henrietta Maria. The name was carried over into the current U.S. state of Maryland.

And that business about etching messages in the glass with a diamond? Well, there seems to be some truth to that.

The central panel reads, 'I am yours and only yours till death separates'.
Inscribed Glass quarries with diamond-engraved inscriptions possibly 1646
Reputed to have been inscribed by Charles I (1600-1649)
while imprisoned at Carisbrooke Castle, Isle of Wight, in 1646

So maybe all those scratched up bathroom mirrors are just the genetic royal prerogative asserting itself.