The day of reckoning came in February 1654, and all happened as Hatton had predicted.
"You talk of money the King should have upon the prizes at Nantes!" wrote Hyde indignantly. "Alas, he hath not only not had one penny from thence, but Prince Rupert pretends that the King owes him more money than ever I was worth."[24] The quarrel raged for a month before Rupert would give any explanation of his claims. At last, in March, he condescended to give the King "a little short paper, not containing twenty lines," which he charged his cousin not to show to Hyde. But Charles of course suffered Hyde to see it, charging him, in his turn, to conceal his knowledge of it from Rupert.[25] The result was a worse quarrel than ever. Seeing that the King was not going to acknowledge his claim, Rupert prompted his creditors to arrest the guns. Charles remonstrated,--"kindly expostulated," Hyde phrased it,--whereupon Rupert lost his temper, and protested that "justice would have justice," speaking, said Hyde, "with isolence enough."[26] The affair was "exceedingly taken notice of,"[27] and it was rumoured that Rupert would leave his cousin's service. Mazarin, who realised that the sooner Charles got some money, the sooner he would leave France, enabled him to { 273} rescue the guns from the creditors' clutches; but Queen Henrietta gave all her support to her nephew. "It is not possible to believe how much, in so gross a thing, the Queen and Lord Jermyn side with Prince Rupert," complained Hyde.[28] Probably Henrietta and her favourite cared little whether the creditors were paid or not; but more than a mere question of debts was at stake, the exiled Court was as factious as ever. In the King's Council, Henrietta, the Duke of York, the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Jermyn opposed themselves violently to the policy of Ormonde, Rochester (Wilmot), Percy, Inchiquin, Taafe, and Hyde. Hyde's party was then in the ascendant, and the Queen was anxious to secure Rupert's adherence to her own party. He was not without a considerable following of his own, and there was a definite design to represent him "as head of the Swordsmen, making it good by little insignificant particulars."[29] The most influential of his friends was the Attorney-General, Herbert, recently made Lord Keeper, to whom Henrietta had hastened to pay court as soon as she heard of Rupert's arrival at Nantes. Herbert, though distinguished neither for tact nor for wisdom, possessed great influence with the Prince. "The Lord Keeper is so extreme vain and foolish in his government of Prince Rupert that he does more towards the ruin of that Prince than all his enemies could do,"[30] declared Hyde. And though Charles declared that he could cure his cousin of his infatuation, he failed to do so. Lord Gerard, a man of fertile brain, who "could never lack projects,"[31] was not much wiser than Herbert. Between them, they concocted a thousand schemes "to make Prince Rupert General in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and Admiral of two or { 274} three fleets together," not to mention other projects, all contrived for the benefit of the unlucky Prince, who, Hyde might justly say, would "have cause to curse the day he ever knew either of them."[32]