HENRIETTA, DUCHESS OF ORLEANS, Charles I.'s youngest child, was born 16th June 1644. Her mother, Henrietta Maria, had to leave her behind at Exeter, which in April 1646 was taken by Fairfax; but three months afterwards, disguised as a French beggar-woman, her governess, Lady Dalkeith, escaped with her from Oatlands to Calais. Her mother brought her up a Catholic. Gay, brilliant, beautiful, in 1661 she was married to Louis XIV.'s only brother, Philip, Duke of Orleans; 'of all the love he had borne her there soon remained nothing but jealousy.' As Louis's ambassador, in 1670 she wheedled Charles II. into signing the secret treaty of Dover; and she had been back in France little more than a fortnight, when on 30th June she died at St Cloud—almost certainly of poison, but possibly without her husband's cognisance.
See CHARLES II. and works there cited; Mdme. de la Fayette's Histoire d'Henriette d'Angleterre (1720; new ed. by An. France, 1882); Mrs Everett Green's Princesses of England; and monographs by Baillon (French, 1885) and Julia Cartwright (Mrs Ady; 1893).