# Cassell's Illustrated History of England/Volume 3/Chapter 1

CASSELL'S
ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF ENGLAND
VOLUME III.
KING JAMES I
CHAPTER I.
THE REIGN OF JAMES I.
We open a new volume with a new dynasty, and an entirely new order of things. The direct line of the Tudors ceased in Elizabeth, and the collateral one of the Stuarts introduced the kings of Scotland to the English throne, After all the ages of conflict to unite the two kingdoms under one crown, it was effected, but in the reverse direction to that in which all the monarchs of England had striven. They had not mounted the throne of Scotland, but Scotland sent her king to rule over England. With Elizabeth and the Tudors terminated the reign of unresisted absolutism; with James commenced that mighty struggle for constitutional liberty which did not cease till it had expelled this dynasty from the throne, and placed on a firm basis the independence of the people.
With great haste various messengers flew to Scotland to announce the demise of Elizabeth; the winner in the race ​of loyalty, or, in other words, of self-interest, being, as we have seen. Sir Robert Carey, to whom the artifice of his sister, lady Scrope, had communicated the earliest news of the queen's decease. He reached Edinburgh four days before Sir Charles Percy and Thomas Somerset, who were despatched officially by the council. Meantime, on March 24th, 1603, Cecil assembled thirty-five individuals, members of council, peers, prelates, and officers of state, at Whitehall, and accompanied by the lord mayor and aldermen, proclaimed James VI. of Scotland James I. of England, first in front of the palace, and then at the High Cross, in Cheapside.
There were some who were apprehensive that the accession of James might be opposed by the noblemen who had been so active in the death of his mother. But these had taken care to make their peace with the facile James, whose filial affection was not of an intensity to weigh much in the scales with the crown of England. On the contrary, his accession was hailed with apparent enthusiasm by all parties, for all parties believed that they should reap decided advantages from his government. The persecuted catholics felt certain that the son of the queen of Scots would at least tolerate their religion, as he had many a time privately assured their agents. The puritans were equally confident that a king who had been educated in the strictest faith of Calvinism, would place them in the ascendant; and the episcopal church—as it deemed, on equally good grounds—rejoiced in the advent of a prince who had protested to its friends that he was heartily sick of a religion which had domineered over both his mother and himself with an iron rigidity. The populace, in the hope of a milder yoke than that of the truculent Tudors, gave vent to their joy in loud acclamations, by bonfires and ringing of bells, while Elizabeth was lying a corpse, scarcely cold, on her bier.
James, who was in his thirty-seventh year, was transported at the prospect of his escape from the poverty and religious restraint of Scotland, to the affluence of so much more extensive an empire, and one only impediment checked his flight southward—the want of money for the journey. He sent a speedy message to Cecil for the necessary funds, and also added a request for the transmission of the crown jewels for the adornment of his wife. The money was forwarded, but the jewels were prudently withhold till he reached his future capital. Once in possession of the means of locomotion, James did not conceal his pleasure at escaping from the control of his presbyterian clergy, and the haughty rudeness of his nobles, to an accession of wealth and power which he imagined would make him as absolute as Henry VIII., a condition for which he had an intense yearning. Now was the time for the English ministers to have taken from him a guarantee for the maintenance of the constitution, as secured by Magna Charta, and for the redress of the gross abuses which had accumulated under the Tudor government. But Cecil and his compeers were too much concerned for their own especial aggrandisement, to take any precautions for the public benefit; and the new monarch was suffered to enter on his functions as if there were no constitutional restraints at all, a neglect which soon led him to boast of his royal right to do whatever he pleased.
On the 5th of April James commenced his journey towards London, but however much he rejoiced in the prospect of his new kingdom, he was in no haste to reach the capital. The moment that he set foot in England he seemed to have realised the full luxury of his new sovereignty, and announced to those about him that they had indeed at last arrived at the Land of Promise. At Berwick he fired a piece of ordnance himself in his joy, which seemed for the moment to have raised him above his constitutional timidity; and he then sate down and wrote to Cecil, informing him of his progress, and of his intention to take York and other places on his way. As he intended to enter York and pass through other towns in state, he pressed on the obsequious minister the necessity of forwarding to him coaches, litters, horses, jewels, and all that was requisite for regal dignity, as well as a lord chamberlain; and he forthwith appointed to that office the lord Thomas Howard. He informed the minister that the jewels as well as dresses which he required were such as were necessary to enable his wife to appear as queen-consort in her new realm, which he again urged should be sent to York to await the arrival of her majesty, who did not accompany him, as she expected her confinement, but was to follow as soon as convenient. James, moreover, desired them not to delay the funeral of the late queen on his account,—it was a ceremony which he preferred being exempt from; and accordingly Elizabeth was deposited in Westminster Abbey without farther procrastination. James also ordered coins of gold and silver to be struck, after the manner of former English kings, against the day of his coronation, and proceeded lazily on his way, rarely passing a gentleman's house without taking up his quarters there, with his constantly increasing retinue, and hunting, and living on his host as long as there were the means. Many families did not recover the debt into which this plunged them, for ages. At Houghton Tower, near Blackburn in Lancashire, after remaining some time, on looking out of the window one day, and not observing a fine herd of cattle in the meadow below, which he had seen at his coming, he demanded of the owner where they were. His host replied that they were all killed and eaten by his majesty's followers. "Then," said James, "it is time to be going." He staid three days at York, and did not reach Newark till the 21st of the month. Cecil had met him at York, and accompanied his progress; and as he rode forward the people crowded around to welcome their new sovereign with the most hearty acclamations. To express his satisfaction to the gentry, he made almost every man of any standing who approached him a knight; so that by the time he reached London he is said to have created two hundred and fifty, and before he had been in England three months, seven hundred knights, a profusion which took away every value from the gift.
At Newark James startled the public by an act of absolutism. A pick-pocket was detected in the very act, who had accompanied the court all the way from Berwick, wearing the appearance of a gentleman, and had thus reaped a good harvest. James ordered him to instant execution without judge or jury, and when some one ventured to remark that this was not the English practice, he replied, "Do I not make the judges? do I not make the bishops? Then, God's wounds! I make what likes me, law and gospel." On the 3rd of May, having been nearly a month on the way, he arrived at Theobalds, the magnificent residence of Cecil, whither flocked to him numbers of the nobility and gentry, amongst the most zealous of whom appeared Francis Bacon, who was as thorough a courtier as he was a philosopher. He wrote to the earl of Northumberland a very flattering account of ​James, yet clearly indicating his faults. "Your lordship," says Bacon, "shall find a prince the furthest from vain-glory that may be, and rather like a prince of the ancient form than of the latter time. His speech is swift and cursory, and in the fullest dialect of his nation; and in speech of business short, in speech of discourse large. He affecteth popularity by gracing them that are popular, and not any fashions of his own. He is thought somewhat general in his favours, and his virtue of access is rather that he is much abroad and in press, than that he giveth easy audience; he hasteth to a mixture of both kingdoms and nations, faster, perhaps, than policy will bear."
The truth was that James, who made himself very free and easy in his immediate circle, greatly disliked exposure to the mob, and dealt about his smiles and knighthoods to get rid of his throngers as soon as possible. By the time he had reached Berwick he had knighted three persons; at Darlington he knighted eleven, at York thirty-one, at Worksop in Nottinghamshire eighteen, at Newark eight, on the road thence to Belvoir Castle four, at Belvoir forty-five. Yet gracious as he was and agreeable as he wanted to make himself, his new subjects did not behold his person and manner without considerable astonishment. The fright which his mother had received before his birth by the murder of Rizzio, is supposed to have had a mischievous effect on both his physical and moral constitution, and the absurd practice of swathing children in that age, from which large numbers perished, added, it is imagined, its untoward influences to his gait and carriage; for this son of the beautiful queen of Scots is described by a contemporary, "as of a middle stature, more corpulent through his clothes than in his body, his clothes being ever made large and easy; the doublets quilted for stiletto proof, his breeches in great plaits and full stuffed. He was naturally of a timorous disposition, which was the greatest reason of his quilted doublets. His eyes large, ever rolling after any stranger who came into his presence, in so much as many for shame left the room, as being out of countenance. His beard was very thin; his tongue too large for his mouth, which made him drink very uncomely, as if eating his drink, which came out into the cup on each side of his mouth. His skin was as soft as taffety sarcenet, which felt so because he never washed his hands, only rubbed his fingers slightly with the wet end of a napkin. His legs were very weak, having had, as was thought, some foul play in his youth, or rather before he was born, that he was not able to stand at seven years of age; that weakness made him ever leaning on other men's shoulders." His ungainly person and his equally uncouth dialect, no little amazed the stately courtiers of Elizabeth, who, however, paid him the most devoted homage, as the dispenser of the honours and good hoped for.
At Theobalds Cecil had the opportunity of studying James's character and of ingratiating himself with him. A new council was formed, and whilst James introduced six of his own countrymen, Cecil recommended six of his partisans to balance them. Whilst he had corresponded with James he had managed to fix in his mind a deep and ineradicable aversion to the men whom he himself regarded with jealous and hostile feelings—Raleigh, Cobham, and Grey. It was in vain that they paid their court, they were treated with coldness, and Raleigh, instead of receiving the promotion to which he aspired, was even deprived of the valuable office of the warden of the Stannaries. It is supposed that Cecil had represented these statesmen as having made overtures to Spain for the support of another candidate for the throne. Northumberland was equally the object of Cecil's dislike, but Bacon was warmly in his favour, and the king received him graciously. The Scotchmen who received immediate admission to the royal council were the duke of Lennox, the earl of Mar, the lord Hume, Sir George Hume, Bruce of Kinloss, and secretary Elphinstone; the Englishmen were Cecil, the earls of Nottingham and Cumberland, the lords Henry and Thomas Howard, and the barons Zouch and Borough.
On the 7th James set out for his capital, and at Stamford Hill was met by the lord mayor and aldermen of London in their scarlet robes, followed by a great crowd, and with these he entered the city, and proceeded to the Charter-House. He immediately caused a proclamation to be made that all licences and monopolies granted by Elizabeth, and which had excited so much discontent, should be suspended till they had been examined by the council; that all protections from the crown to delay the progress of justice in the courts of law should cease, as well as the abuses of purveyance, and the oppressions of saltpetre makers and officers of the household.
These announcements wore calculated to inspire the hope of a reign of justice, but with the peculiar art which James possessed of neutralising his favours, they were quickly followed by an injunction against all persons whatever killing the king's deer or wild-fowl; James being passionately fond of hunting and sporting, and apprehensive that during the absence of the prince inroads would be made on his beloved game.
From the Charter-House he proceeded, according to routine, to the Tower, and thence to Greenwich and back to Whitehall, at every step making more knights and creating peers. He had sent for the earl of Southampton to meet him at York, and he now restored both him and the son of his friend the earl of Essex to their honours and estates. Mountjoy and three of the Howards were raised to the rank of earls; nine new barons were created, amongst them Cecil, who was made lord Cecil, and afterwards viscount Cranbourne, and finally earl of Salisbury. Buckhurst and Egerton were promoted; and eventually, besides his seven hundred spick-and-span new knights, he added sixty-two fresh members to the peerage. So extravagant was his distribution of honours that a pasquinade was affixed to the door of St. Paul's, offering to teach weak memories the art of recollecting the titles of the nobility. The people, moreover, were disgusted to hear the new monarch, who claimed to be a man of first-rate learning, speak with contempt of the talents and character of their late queen. Elizabeth had in her last days fallen deeply in public opinion by her treatment of the earl of Essex, who had been in secret alliance with James, but they were not prepared to hear her disparaged for ability by her successor. Had he condemned her memory, which he might with justice, as the oppressor and murderess of his mother, little could be objected, though his own exertions to save that mother had not been of a very energetic kind, and he had been wiling to become the pensioner of the royal assassin; but his treatment of her memory as of a weak and mediocre ruler only tended to revive the acknowedgment of her remarkable intellectual and diplomatic powers.
Whilst James was receiving the welcome of his English subjects, he was not free from domestic trials, of no trivial ​kind. His queen had always struggled against the rule of state by which the heir-apparent of Scotland was taken out of the hands of his own mother, and placed in those of a state guardian. Prince Henry, now ten years old, had been placed as a mere infant in the care of the earl of Mar, in Stirling Castle, where he was educating under the learned Adam Newton; and James had himself written a book, which he called "Basilicon Doron; or, His Majesty's Instructions to his Dearest Son, the Prince," for his especial guidance. But queen Anne preferred the dictates of nature to those of state policy, and never ceased to importune the king for the society of her children, of whom now she had three—Henry, Elizabeth, and Charles. Weak as was James in many respects, he was, like most weak men, excessively stubborn; and on this head he stood firm against all the entreaties of his house. He contended that in Scotland it had always been the policy of the nobles to possess themselves of the heir, and then destroy the reigning king, that they might hold the power through a long minority. That, owing to such causes, there had been no fewer than seven successive minorities of the kings of Scotland, stretching from the reign of Robert III. to his own time, and that he himself had been thus set up against his own mother. That he owed his life and crown to the very plan which he was now enforcing. These were strong reasons, but nature in the mother was still stronger; and, foiled as he had been till now, no sooner was James in England, and the earl of Mar summoned to attend him, than Anne presented herself at Stirling, and demanded her son of the countess of Mar. That lady, however, was inexorable in the discharge of her high trust, and a great contention arose betwixt the faction of the queen and that of the king. Despatches were forwarded to James both from the countess of Mar and from the queen. For a time he refused to yield, but finding that the agitation of the queen had led to the premature birth of a son, which was dead, and to the serious illness of the queen, he gave way; and Anne, when sufficiently restored, set out with the prince Henry and the princess Elizabeth, the second son Charles being left behind at the queen's palace of Dunfermline, under the earl of Fife.
The progress of Anne of Denmark was one continuous fête, as thronged as that of her husband, and certainly much more poetical. Lady Bedford and lady Harrington had voluntarily travelled to Edinburgh to pay their respects to her; and at Berwick a number of other ladies, attended by the earls of Sussex and Lincoln, and Sir George Carew, were in waiting for her, with the required dresses and jewels. From York, where silver cups heaped with gold angels were presented to her majesty and to the young prince and princess, and where, on her departure, the corporation, all in their robes, escorted her out of the city, she advanced, through Grimstone, Newark, and Nottingham, to Dingley, near Leicester, at which place the little princess Elizabeth separated from her, and was conducted to Combe Abbey, near Coventry, the seat of the Harringtons, to be educated under the care of the ladies Harrington and Kildare.
At Althorpe, the seat of Sir Robert Spenser, the queen was received on the eve of Midsummer-day, with "The Masque of the Fairies," the first of the splendid series of Ben Jonson, who from that day became the queen's especial poet; and whatever were the faults of Anne of Denmark, she was the friend and advocate of genius. As the queen advanced there came before her satyrs, queen Mab with all her fairy suite, and the son of Sir Robert, a boy of twelve years, leading a dog as a present to the prince, and followed by a troop of other boys dressed as forester's. Then came a troop of hunters, and another of morris-dancers, all making suitable addresses in verse. Thence the queen went to Sir Hatton Fermor's, where the king met her, and there was a great flocking thither of courtiers and gentry; and so they progressed from house to house till they reached Windsor, where the king held a solemn chapter of the garter, and made prince Henry, the duke of Lennox, and other nobles, knights of that order.
After this the court removed to Westminster for the coronation, which took place on the 25th. The weather had been intensely hot, and it now set in as rainy. To spoil the pleasure of the people, the plague was raging fiercely in the city, and the inhabitants were by proclamation forbidden to enter Westminster. No queen-consort had been crowned since Anne Boleyn, nor had any king and queen been crowned together since Henry VIII. and Catherine of Arragon, and therefore the restriction was the more mortifying. Queen Anne went to the coronation "with her seemly hair down hanging on her princely shoulders, and on her head a coronet of gold. She so mildly saluted her new subjects, that the women, weeping, cried out with one voice, 'God bless the royal queen! Welcome to England, long to live and continue!'"
That week there died in London and the suburbs eight hundred and fifty-seven persons of the plague. On the 5th of August James ordered morning and evening prayers and sermons, with bonfires all night to drive away the pestilence, not forgetting to order that all men should praise God for his Majesty's escape that day three years before, from the Gowry conspiracy; and on the 10th of August he commanded that a fast, with sermons of repentance, should be held, and repeated every week on Wednesday so long as the plague continued.
James's pride was soon gratified by the flocking in of ambassadors from all the great nations of Europe, soliciting his alliance; and on the first intimation of their approach he appointed Sir Lewis Lewknor master of the ceremonies, to receive and entertain these distinguished persons. This was the first establishment of such an office in England. First arrived, from Holland and the United Provinces, prince Frederick of Nassau, son of the prince of Orange, attended by the three able diplomatists, Valck, Barnevelt, and Brederode. James, with equally high notions of the royal prerogative, had not the sympathy of Elizabeth with the struggles of protestantism abroad, and therefore regarded the revolted Netheranders as rebels and traitors, and did not fail amongst his courtiers to pronounce them so; and more particularly as they owed the English crown large sums for their assistance, which they appeared in no hurry to pay. He, therefore, framed various excuses to defer their audiences till the arrival of the envoy of the archduke of Austria, count Aremberg, who was not long in appearing, bringing the agreeable news that the archduke had liberated all English prisoners, as the subjects of a friendly power. Two days after Aremberg's arrival, the celebrated Rhosny, afterwards still better known as the duke of Sully, reached London. Aremberg was in no condition to negotiate on any positive terms till he received instructions from Spain; and Rhosny seized time by the forelock, by distributing amongst the courtiers sixty thousand crowns, a considerable sum of which found its ​way into the queen's purse. He prevailed on James to make a treaty with Henry IV., in which he engaged to send money to the states in aid against the Spaniards, and join France in open hostilities should Philip attempt to invade that country. Rhosny, delighted with his success—for Henry feared nothing more than James's making peace with Spain, and leaving him to assist Holland alone—returned to France. But a little time convinced the French court that nothing in reality had been secured by it, for James had no money to send to Holland had he been really so disposed, which is doubtful, and that he merely temporised with them as he had done with different states before.
Meantime the court of Spain, notwithstanding the activity of France, was slow in deciding the course of policy to be adopted towards England under the new king. After the decided hostility towards it under Elizabeth, and the signal defeats experienced, pride forbade Philip to solicit a peace, lest it should look like weakness. And, indeed, Spain had never recovered from the severe blow received in the loss of its Armada, and the other ravages of its ports and colonies by the English, added to the loss of a great portion of the Low Countries; and this consciousness made it more tardy in its proceedings. But whilst engaged in prolonged discussions on this head, two Englishmen arrived at the court of Spain, whose mission was of a nature to bring it to a decision. These were Wright and Fawkes, who were soon to assume a conspicuous position in the strife betwixt the catholics and protestants of England. Previous to the death of Elizabeth, Thomas Winter had negotiated with the Spanish court a plan for the invasion of this country, which had been abandoned on her decease. Now, however, the scheme was revived, and these two emissaries were despatched to sound the present disposition of the court of Madrid. This direct appeal from the conspirators seems to has startled the Spanish government from its wavering policy. It was not prepared for anything so desperate, and replied that it had no cause of complaint against James, but, on the contrary, regarded him as a friend and ally, and had appointed the Conde de Villa Mediana as ambassador to his court.
This was decisive, and the way now seemed open towards a more friendly tone betwixt Spain and England; but there appears at the same moment a secret and mysterious correspondence to have been going on betwixt Aremberg, the agent of the archduke of Austria, and a discontented party in England. Northumberland, Cobham, and Raleigh were ill at ease under the disappointment which they had met with in their hopes of favour at James's court. Northumberland had been to a certain degree graciously received, and even entertained with promises by James; but he felt that whilst Cecil was so completely in the ascendant there was little hope of a cordial feeling towards him in the monarch's heart. Cobham and Raleigh were undisguisedly in disgrace, and were shunned by the courtiers as fallen men. The three friends, therefore, entered into intrigues with the court of France through the resident minister Beaumont, and Rhosny, the envoy extraordinary. For a time their suggestions were listened to, but the apparent success of Rhosny with James put an end to all further overtures, and there Northumberland was prudent enough to desist. But Cobham and Raleigh, disappointed of court favour, and burning with resentment against Cecil, whom they felt to be the cause of their disgrace, went on, and plotted for the overthrow of the crafty minister. Rhosny, the French envoy extraordinary, had, whilst in London, done his best to inspire James with distrust of Cecil; and there is little doubt that this was at the suggestion, or with the co-operation of Cobham, Northumberland, and Raleigh When Northumberland drew back, these two held communication with Aremberg, to whom they offered their services in promoting the objects he sought on behalf of Spain and the Netherlands. Aremberg, who did not know what was going on at the Spanish court, communicated the proposal to the archduke, who instructed him to give a favourable answer. What the scheme proposed by Cobham and Raleigh precisely was seems never to have been known; but we may suppose that in return for aid from the arch-duke, these ambitious men were to attempt the removal of Cecil by some means, and on their succeeding to power, the exertion of their influence with the king on behalf of Spain.
This was designated by those in the secret as "The Main" conspiracy; but there were also another going on simultaneously, of which these gentlemen are supposed to have been cognisant, but not mixed up with. This was called "The Bye" conspiracy, and was composed of an extraordinary medley of the discontented, the most determined of whom aimed at nothing less than the seizure of the king, and the government of the country in his name, for their own party purposes.
The grand cause of discontent was the disappointment of both catholics and puritans in James. Before his coming to the English crown he had held out the most flattering expectations to the catholics that he would grant them toleration, whilst the puritans calculated on his presbyterian education for a decided adhesion to their views. But no sooner did he reach England than he threw himself into the arms of the high church party, declaring that it was the only religion fit for a king. To the catholics he declared he would grant no toleration—rather would he fight to the death against it; and he took no pains to conceal his disgust at the presbyterian clergy amongst whom he had spent his youth. The antagonism of catholic and puritan was forgotten in the resentment against this disclosure of the king's disposition. Instantly plans were cogitated to avenge themselves of the royal perfidy, as it was termed, and to secure themselves against the threatened storm. Sir Griffin Markham, a catholic gentleman, of no great property or influence, concerted with two priests, Watson and Clarke, the means of raising the catholics against the government. Watson had been sent into Scotland, to James, on behalf of the catholics, before the death of Elizabeth, and he represented now indignantly, that James had given them, through him, the most solemn promises of toleration, which he had now broken. He, therefore, threw himself with the greatest heat into the conspiracy: he drew up an awful oath of secresy, and he and Clarke travelled far and wide amongst the catholic families, calling upon them to come forward in the name of their religion and their property.
CORONATION OF KING JAMES I. AT WESTMINSTER.
THE FAVOURITE DOG OF JAMES I WITH A PETITION ROUND HIS NECK, EGGING THE KING TO ATTEND TO STATE AFFAIRS
The conspirators proposed to meet during the darkness of night at Greenwich; but the reflection that there wore three hundred armed gentlemen within the palace, made that appear too hazardous; they, therefore, altered their plan, and concluded to seize James as he was hunting at Hanworth, and where he was accustomed to call for refreshment at a gentleman's house. The plan, as communicated by Watson to the conspirators, was to assemble in a numerous body under pretence of presenting a petition to the king as he went out hunting, seize the king, and convey him to a place of safety, where they were to extort from him a declaration of liberty of conscience. With the king in their lands, they would then wreak their vengeance on Cecil and Sir George Howe; and it was afterwards charged against them in the indictment, that they meant to make Watson lord chancellor, Brooke, the brother of Cobham—who was a most unprincipled man, and has been suspected of being Cecil's spy and tool on the occasion—lord treasurer, Markham secretary, and Grey earl marshal. Probably this was the scheme devised for them by the accusers, for it appeals too wild for belief; but be that as it may, the 24th of June was the day named for the attempt, when the refusal of lord Grey caused it to be abandoned, and the bodies separated with much mutual recrimination.
But Watson had already proceeded to a length which led to the revelation of the plot to Cecil. He had endeavoured to engage in it the society of the Jesuits, and had communicated his plans to a Jesuit of the name of Gerard. The society not only refused to sanction the conspiracy, but the arch-priest went at once and revealed it to Cecil. The crafty minister kept his information close, and resolved to let the conspirators go on till the very day for the execution of their design, so that he might the more summarily conflict them; but the failure of their plan left him no further reason for delay, and Anthony Copley, one of the "Bye," was arrested, as a man well known to be of a timid character, and likely in his terror to betray his associates. Cecil had probably plenty of intelligence of both the plan and its agitators, from others as well is from Gerard, and most probably from Brooke. But he neglected no means of making the conspirators furnish evidence against each other, and thus keeping his own sources of knowledge secret. On the heels of Copley's arrest, followed, as a natural consequence, the arrest of Griffin, Markham, the priests Watson and Clarke, and the rest of Copley's associates. Cecil said that the mere fact of Brooke being in the conspiracy made him feel certain that Cobham, Raleigh, and Northumberland were in it.
Northumberland was already in custody on another charge, but he was called before the council, and nothing appearing against him, he was soon after discharged. Cecil met Raleigh on the terrace at Windsor, and begged him to accompany him to the council then sitting. Raleigh followed him, and was immediately questioned as to certain private intercourse of his friend Cobham with the ambassador Aremberg. Raleigh denied any knowledge of such intercourse or overtures on the part of Cobham, but he advised the apprehension of La Rensie, the agent of Aremberg, as the more likely person to give evidence, if such dealings existed. Sir Walter was dismissed; and he asserts that Cecil himself appeared to discourage any summons of La Rensie, alleging that such an act would give offence to Aremberg, and that the king did not wish that this should be the case. But Raleigh, uneasy in his mind after his return from the council, wrote to Cecil—evidently to give an air of innocence to himself—that if La Rensie was not secured, he would fly, and the truth would not be discovered; at the same time suggesting this difficulty, that if La Rensie were then arrested, it would excite suspicion in lord Cobham. This was as much as to say that Cobham had such dealings, or why should the summons of La Rensie to the council affect him? At the same time Raleigh wrote to Cobham to apprise him of his danger, and his letter was intercepted by Cecil. Cecil, both at the trial and in his letter to Winwood, protests that no question was asked of Raleigh before the council respecting Cobham, till he had voluntarily introduced his name; and that in his intercepted letter to Cobham, he had said, that having exculpated Cobham, let Cobham pursue the same course towards him, and then no harm could happen; for whatever La Rensie might confess would be only the evidence of a single witness, and would be inadequate to a legal conviction.
Cobham was then summoned before the council on the 16th of July, and then and on the 19th underwent a strict examination; but he stoutly denied every charge advanced against him. On the 20th he was called upon to answer interrogatories prepared in writing, but he gave the same answers. On this Raleigh's letter to Cecil was put into his hands, on which Cobham indignantly exclaimed—"That wretch! that traitor, Raleigh! hath he used me thus! Nay, then, I will tell you all." He then confessed that he had been led by the persuasions of Raleigh, and on his assurances that the present state of things would soon be broken up, to open this communication with Aremberg, and that it had been arranged that he, Cobham, should proceed to Spain, and on his return visit Raleigh in his government in Jersey, where they should decide on ultimate proceedings, with aid of money from Spain.
Thus Cecil had induced these two friends to accuse each other, and had them both sent to the Tower to abide their trial. Cecil was unable to conceal his joy on thus having the gifted and popular Raleigh in his power, for from the earliest moment of his public life, he had betrayed the most intense jealousy of Sir Walter's abilities, and had used every art, and effectually, to prejudice James against him. Raleigh in the Tower stabbed himself under the right breast, but not mortally, declaring that he knew the inexorable malice of his enemies and the cruelty of the law in England, and therefore despaired of escaping with his life. Whilst he thus endeavoured to turn the odium on Cecil, Cecil and his emissaries out of doors actively disseminated the opinion that Raleigh had betrayed by this suicidal act a consciousness of guilt. It is remarkable that Cecil instructed Coke on the trial to avoid all mention of this attempt at suicide, probably to prevent Raleigh asserting in his defence that he was driven to the act by the conviction of the minister's intention to destroy him.
The coronation of the king, which took place on the 25th of July, being his saint's day, the festival of St. James, and ​the violence of the plague, which caused the king to flee into the country, postponed the trials of the conspirators. The court, followed by the judges and their suitors, fled from place to place for several months, pursued by the plague; and it was not till November that the trials took place, in the castle at Winchester. Another cause had, perhaps still more than the plague, deferred them,—the presence of Aremberg, who was deeply implicated, and whose intrigues could not be opened up whilst he was in the country, at the same time that issuing an order for his quitting it, would have embarrassed the affairs of Spain. In October he left, and on the 15th of November the trials of the conspirators commenced. The accomplices of the "Bye," Brooke, Brookesby, Markham, Copley, Watson, and Clarke, with others. They were all condemned on their own confessions; for they had been so managed that they not only accused each other, but made the most ample confessions of their own guilt, as if each thought he should obtain pardon by discovering most. These confessions, which had been carefully compiled, were put in as evidence against them. Sir Edward Parham only was acquitted, who pleaded that he joined solely to rescue the king from the hands of those who held him in captivity; and yet Cecil threw in his word in his favour, suggesting that the king's dignity consisted as much in freeing the innocent as condemning the guilty. This conduct gave an air of impartiality to the proceedings, of which no one could estimate the effect more fully than the astute Cecil.
Sir Walter Raleigh was next put upon his trial. His extraordinary ability, and his knowledge of court secrets, made it too dangerous an attempt to connect him with the "Bye," and arraign him along with the unhappy and weak members of that part of the conspiracy. He was not placed at the bar even along with Cobham, for the only evidence against him which the court dared to bring forward, was that of Cobham; and they knew too well that in Raleigh's presence, the wavering Cobham would be worse than useless. Already repenting of his accusation of Raleigh in the surprise of his resentment, he had retracted his accusations; and when pressed and cross-questioned by the council, had so contradicted himself, that to bring him into public, would be to render his evidence worthless. True, the council was in possession of intercepted letters, which had passed betwixt Aremberg and the archduke of Austria, which were sufficiently criminatory of Raleigh and Cobham; but these could not be produced without an exposure of the fact that the correspondence of ambassadors and their principals was not safe in England. In fact, Coke, who was of course duly instructed in the particulars of this correspondence, having made some too intelligible reference to Aremberg, Cecil compelled him to apologise to the ambassador, and hastened to assure the other ambassadors of foreign courts that Aremberg had no notion of the purpose for which Cobham and Raleigh had solicited money from Spain.
Coke's accusation of Raleigh being thus hemmed in with difficulties, he was obliged to have recourse to his first-rate faculty for abuse and blackguardism. Raleigh, on his part, conducted himself with a degree of calmness, dignity, and sagacity, which excited in the public the utmost admiration. His trial lasted from eight in the morning to nine at night. The indictment charged him with having, with sundry other persons, conspired to kill the king, to raise a rebellion, in order to change the religion, subvert the government, and cause the invasion of the realm by its enemies. That on the 9th of June, Sir Walter had conspired with lord Cobham to depose the sovereign and raise Arabella Stuart to the throne. That for this purpose Cobham had agreed, at the instigation of Raleigh, to make a journey to Spain to solicit the advance of six hundred thousand crowns, for the payment of the necessary forces and partisans. That Arabella Stuart should herself write letters to the king of Spain, the archduke, and the Duke of Savoy, urging them to support her claim, and promising, in return for their aid, to make an advantageous peace with Spain, tolerate popery, and on her own part, accept a marriage with such person as should be most agreeable to his catholic majesty. Cobham, as already stated, was then declared to have it in charge to pass over from the Continent to Jersey to Sir Walter, there to settle the plan of the plot, and to decide on the men who were to be bribed with Spanish money to carry it out. That on the very day that Sir Water had communicated his views to lord Cobham, Cobham had imparted them to his brother, George Brooke, who had assented to it; and that the two had declared "that there would never be a good world in England till the king and his cubs were taken away." Moreover, that Raleigh had given Cobham a book written against the king's title; and that in pursuance of Raleigh's advice, both Arabella Stuart and Cobham had applied, through La Rensie, to Aremberg, the king of Spain, and the other princes mentioned. That the money had been promised, and that Cobham had agreed to hand over to Raleigh eight thousand crowns of it, and to his brother Brooke one thousand crowns.
Sir Walter pleaded not guilty, and Heale, the king's sergeant, opened the case against him, recapitulating the points of the indictment; and when he came to the clause implicating Arabella Stuart, he foolishly exclaimed—"As for Arabella Stuart, she hath no more title to the crown than I have, and I utterly renounce any." Raleigh, even in his critical situation, could not restrain a smile at this absurdity. Coke then went into the case at length, and what he lacked in proof he endeavoured to supply by the most virulent abuse. He described in inflated language the intentions of the agitators of the "Bye," and amongst other things that they meant to make proclamation against monopolies, as if that were absolute treason. Raleigh calmly reminded him that he was not charged with the "Bye." "You are not," replied Coke; "but it will be seen that all these treasons, though they consisted of several parts, closed in together like Samson's foxes, which were joined in their tails, though their heads were separated." Raleigh still insisted that the "Bye" was the treason of the priests, and said, "What is the treason of the priests to me?" "I will then come close to you," said Coke. "I will prove you to be the most notorious traitor that ever came to the bar; you are, indeed, upon the 'Main,' but you have followed them upon the 'Bye' in imitation." And Raleigh's pertinent checks so enraged the scurrilous lawyer, that he went on furiously denouncing Raleigh as a damnable atheist, a spider of hell, the most vile and execrable of traitors. "You speak indiscreetly, barbarously, and un-civilly," interposed Raleigh. "I want words," shouted Coke, "I want words to express thy viperous treasons." "True," replied Raleigh; "for you have spoken the same things half a dozen times over already."
​In his defence Sir Walter displayed not only consummate ability, but a range of reading which astonished every one. He illustrated the points of his speech by quotations from history, the civil and canon law, and treating the conspiracy as a chimera, and which none but fools or madmen would have engaged in, took leave to protest that he did not range himself in either of those classes. "I was not," he declared, "so base of sense but I saw that if ever this state was strong and able to defend itself, it was now. The kingdom of Scotland united, whence we were wont to fear all our troubles; Ireland quieted, where our forces were wont to be divided; Denmark assured, whom before we were wont to have in jealousy; the Low Countries, our nearest neighbour, at peace with us; and, instead of a lady whom time had surprised, we had now an active king, a lawful successor to the crown, who was able to attend to his own business. I was not such a madman as to make myself in this time a Robin Hood, a Wat Tyler, or a Jack Cade. I knew also the state of Spain well; his weakness, and poorness, and humbleness at this time; I knew that he was discouraged and dishonoured. I knew that six times we had repulsed his forces—thrice in Ireland, thrice at sea; wherein, for my country's sake, I had expended of my own property four thousand pounds. I knew that where before time he was wont to have forty great sails at the least in his ports, now he hath not past six or seven; and, for sending to his Indies, he was driven to hire strange vessels, a thing contrary to the institutions of his proud ancestors, who forbad straitly, in case of any necessity, that the kings of Spain should make their case known to strangers. I knew that of five-and-twenty millions he had from his Indies, he had scarce any left; nay, I knew his poorness at this time to be such, that the Jesuits, his imps, were to beg at the church doors; his pride so abated, as, notwithstanding his former high terms, he was glad to congratulate the king, my master, on his accession, and now cometh creeping unto him for peace. Then, was it ever read or heard of that any prince should disburse so much money without any pawn? And whose knows what great assurances the king of Spain stood upon with other states for smaller sums, will not think that he would so freely disburse to my lord Cobham six hundred thousand crowns. And if I had minded to set the lord Cobham to work in such a case, I surely should have given him some instructions how to persuade the king of Spain and answer his objections; for I know Cobham to be no such a minion as could persuade a king who was in want, to disburse so great a sum without great reason, and some assurance for his money. I know the queen of England lent not her money to the States, but had Flushing, Brill, and other towns in assurance for it. She lent not money to France but had Havre for it. Nay, her subjects, the merchants of London, did not lend her money without having her lands in pawn. What pawn did we give to the king of Spain? What did we offer him?"
He demanded that his accuser should be produced and brought face to face with him. He demanded it on the authority of the statute law and the law of God, both of which required that to prove an offence. But the lord chief justice Popham told him that the statutes of Edward VI., to which he appealed, were cancelled by Philip and Mary, and that he must take his trial by the common law, as settled by Edward III., under which a trial by jury and written evidences was as valid as a trial by jury and witnesses. That at most one witness was sufficient. But Raleigh replied that his case was peculiar. That in fact, there was no single witness against him; for even the man who had borne testimony against him had retracted his assertions. He, therefore, reiterated his demand for the production of Cobham; declaring that if Cobham dared in his presence to reaffirm a single charge, he would submit to his doom, and would not add another word. When this challenge was passed over without any notice whatever, he produced a letter which Cobham had written to him about a fortnight before, in which he said:—"To free myself from the cry of blood, I protest, upon my sold, and before God and his angels, I never had conference with you in any treason, nor was ever moved by you to the things I heretofore accused you of; and, for anything I know, you are as innocent and as clear from any treasons against the king as is subject living. And God so deal with me and have mercy on my soul, as this is true."
This appeared a strong avowal, but Cecil was prepared for this, having, no doubt, already seen this letter on its passage; and Coke produced in defeat of it another letter written by Cobham to the council but the day before. In this letter Cobham stated that Raleigh had twice sent letters to him in the Tower, which had been thrown into his window-sash in an apple. That in these letters he entreated him to do him right by denying what he had said as to his wishing him to come from the Continent by Jersey, and in other particulars. Cobham says that he has retracted the assertion about Jersey, but he goes on to assert that Raleigh had been the original cause of his ruin, for that he had no dealings with Aremberg but at his instigation; and he adds that at Aremberg's coming Raleigh was to receive a pension of fifteen hundred pounds a year, for which he was to keep the king of Spain informed of all designs against the Indies, the Netherlands, or Spain. That he counselled him also not to be overtaken by preachers as Essex was, and that the king would better allow of a constant denial than of the accusation of any one.
During the reading of this letter Raleigh could not conceal his astonishment and confusion. When it was finished, he admitted that there had been some talk of a pension, but mere talk and nothing more. But the fact made a deep impression on the minds of the jury, and the prisoner probably being conscious of it, reiterated his demand for the production of Cobham himself. "My lords," he exclaimed, "let Cobham be sent for; I know he is in this very house! I beseech you let him be confronted with me! Let him be here openly charged—upon his soul—upon his allegiance to the king—and if he will then maintain his accusations to my face, I will confess myself guilty!" But no notice was taken of this appeal: Coke still strove to bear him down by the coarsest brow-beating, exclaiming fiercely, "I will have the last word for the king!" "Nay," retorted Raleigh; "I will have the last word for my life!" "Go to," said the insolent lawyer; "I will lay thee upon thy back for the confidentest traitor that ever came to the bar." Cecil here interposed, telling Coke that he was too impatient and severe; but Coke cried, "I am the king's sworn servant, and must speak. You discourage the king's counsel, my lord, and encourage traitors."
The jury, but with evident reluctance, returned a verdict of guilty, On being asked, in the usual form, whether he ​had anything to say why judgment should not be pronounced against him, he replied that he was perfectly innocent of the charges of Cobham, but that he submitted himself to the king's mercy, and recommended to the compassion of his majesty his wife and his son of tender years. After the sentence of high treason, with all its disgusting details had been pronounced, the prisoner asked to speak privately with Cecil, lord Henry Howard, and the earls of Suffolk and Devonshire, entreating them that, in consideration of the position which he had held under the crown, his death might not be so ignominious as the strict sentence required. They promised to use their influence, and he was taken back to the castle.
The admirable defence of Sir Walter produced the most wonderful effect on all that heard him, causing a thorough revolution of opinion in his favour. Sir Dudley Carlton, as reported in the Hardwicke State Papers, said "That he answered with that temper, wit, learning, courage, and judgment, that, save it went with the hazard of his life, it was the happiest day that ever he spent. And so well he shifted all advantages that were taken against him, that were not fama mala gravius quam res, and an ill name half-hanged, in the opinion of all men he had been acquitted. The two first that brought the news to the king were Roger Ashton and a Scotchman, whereof one affirmed that never man spoke so well in times past, nor would do in the world to come; and the other said that whereas, when he saw him first, he was so led with the common hatred, that he would have gone a hundred miles to have seen him hanged, he would, ere he parted, have gone a thousand to have saved his life. In one word never was a man so hated and so popular in so short a time.
There can be little doubt that the King and Cecil were both jealous of Raleigh's brilliant and popular talents, and were glad to have him in their power. But Raleigh had been his own worst enemy, in not displaying a nature as generous and noble, as it was highly endowed. He had endeavoured to pull down Essex, and the people never forgave him for it. Even at this moment, when his masterly conduct and his unrivalled oratorical genius had won him such admiration and good-will amongst those who heard him, the people, as we learn from a contemporary, expressed their contempt and aversion for him on account of his desertion and betrayal of Essex. All through London and the other towns through which he passed to his trial, the people followed, him with execrations, and threw mud, stones, and tobacco pipes, at the coach in which he was.
The charges which were made against Arabella Stuart, in the indictment against Raleigh, were of a nature which called for denial on her part. She was present at the trial in a gallery; and Charles Howard, earl of Nottingham, who was sitting by her, arose, and in her name protested, on her salvation, that she had never meddled in any such matters. There appeared, indeed, no disposition at this moment to implicate the lady Arabella, though her relation to the crown made her an object of anxiety to James, as we shall soon have occasion to see. Cecil himself acquitted her of any concern in this treason, admitting that though she had received a letter from Cobham, entreating her to countenance it, she only laughed at it, and at once sent it to the king. Of the actual extent of Raleigh's participation, and what was his real object, we have no means of judging, for though James was in possession of the letters betwixt the accused parties and Aremberg, they were never produced.
Cobham and Grey were arraigned before a tribunal of their peers, consisting of eleven earls and nineteen barons. Nothing could be more striking than the cowardice and meanness of Cobham, and the noble dignity of Grey. Cobham was all fear and trembling, ready to accuse everybody to excuse himself. He repeatedly interrupted the reading of the indictment to protest against what he declared was not true; and at its conclusion said that he meant to have confessed everything, but as so many untruths were mixed with the truths in the indictment, he was compelled to plead not guilty. He denied any design of setting up Arabella Stuart, though she admitted that he had sent her a letter to that effect; and his cringing, obsequious manner to his judges, was in strange contrast with the bitterness with which he accused not only Raleigh, but his own brother George Brooke, whom he pronounced a most wicked wretch, murderer, and viper. He not only declared that what he had said of Raleigh in his letters was true, but he accused the youth Harvey, the son of the lieutenant of the Tower, of having engaged to carry letters between them. "Thus," says Sir Dudley Carleton, "having accused all his friends, and so little excused himself, the peers were not long in deliberating what to judge; and after sentence of condemnation given, he begged a great while for life and favour, alleging his confession as a meritorious act." The same authority says that to move the king, he reminded him that the king's father was his godfather, and that his own father had suffered imprisonment for the king's mother.
Very different was the conduct of lord Grey of Wilton. Though he was a young man with everything to make life desirable, he manifested no such contemptible fear of death as Cobham did; far less did he seek to exculpate himself by the betrayal of his friends. He defended himself in a long speech of the most elevated and eloquent description. He fought the whole ground with the crown lawyers manfully, from eight in the morning to eight at night. His judges admired and commiserated him as much as they despised Cobham, and would fain have acquitted him, but the proofs were too strong. He was condemned, and on being asked why sentence of death should not be pronounced against him, he replied, "I have nothing to say;" but then, as if recollecting himself, he added, "and yet a word of Tacitus comes into my mind—'Non cadem omnibus decora.' The house of the Wiltons hath spent many lives in their princes' service, and Grey cannot beg his. God send the king a long and prosperous reign, and to your lordships all honour."
The two priests were first conducted to execution. They suffered all the bloody horrors of the law at Winchester, on the 29th of November. It was surmised that James was glad to be rid of Watson as one of the individuals to whom, before coming to the English throne, he had promised toleration to the catholics. There was an attempt to prove the non-existence of such a promise, by the earl of Northampton visiting him in prison, and on his return asserting that he denied having received any such promise; but this obtained no credit. At the gallows both Watson and Clarke declared their conviction that they owed their death to their priesthood. They were cut down alive, and their bowels torn out.
The next execution was that of Brooke. He was simply beheaded, also at Winchester, on the 5th of December. The ​people expressed great sympathy for him, under a belief that he had first been employed by Cecil in the troubled waters of these conspiracies, and then victimised by him. Cecil had married his sister, and was thus closely allied to both Cobham and him. Whilst in custody, he wrote to Cecil to ask what he was to expect "after so many promises received, and so much conformity and accepted service performed by him for Cecil." His words on the scaffold also favoured the suspicion that he had been deceived and trapanned by Cecil, to whom. Clarendon says, "it was as necessary that there should be treasons, as it was for the state to punish them."
But when the time of the chief conspirators came, the country was astonished by one of the most extraordinary spectacles that ever occurred under any king or in any country. It was a marvellous example of the kingcraft on which James especially prided himself. The moment that Brooke had fallen beneath the axe, the bishop of Chichester, by express order of the king, went to his brother Cobham in his cell, to prepare him for his end, and to obtain his confession. He found Cobham ready to die, and obtained a promise that he would assert on the scaffold the truth of his charges against Raleigh. At the same time the bishop of Winchester, also by order of the king, waited on Raleigh for the same purpose; but so far from confessing himself guilty, like the pusillanimous Cobham, he stoutly denied the whole of the charges, except, as he had admitted on the trial, a pension had once been mentioned to him, but no steps taken to carry it out. For the rest, he expressed himself at ease in his conscience, and prepared to die like a Christian. Grey and Markham were also ordered to prepare themselves for death, but were not troubled by the interrogations of bishops or other royal messengers. Grey, who was attended by a puritan preacher, was observed to be in as cheerful a mood of mind as if on the verge of liberation instead of death, and spent his time in prayer. On the other hand, Markham declared that he had received assurances of pardon on which he could rely, and refused to believe in the fulfilment of the sentence.
Meantime the king proceeded with regular steps for their execution, and so positively refused to listen to any intercession on behalf of the prisoners, that there appeared no hope of pardon or reprieve. At the same time he snubbed Galloway, the preacher of Perth—"who preached so hotly against remissness and moderation of justice, as if it were one of the seven deadly sins"—telling him that he would go no whit the faster for his driving. On Wednesday he signed the death-warrants of Markham, Grey, and Cobham, fixing Friday for the day of execution. Accordingly on that morning Markham was first brought out, about ten o'clock, to the scaffold, and was permitted to take leave of his friends and prepare himself for the block. He was evidently surprised at this proceeding, declaring that he had been promised his life; and when a napkin was offered to him to bind his eyes with, he indignantly refused it, saying he was, notwithstanding, able to look upon death without blushing. At the moment that he was about to lay his head upon the block, there was a disturbance outside, and the sheriff was called away. On his return, he told the tantalised prisoner that as he had thought himself deceived, and therefore was but ill-prepared for death, he should have two hours more for his devotions; whereupon, without further explanation, he locked him up apart.
Great Seal of King James I.
When Markham was withdrawn. Grey was led forth to the scaffold. He came attended by a number of young noblemen, and supported on each hand by two of his dearest friends. He appeared thoroughly undaunted, and falling on his knees before the block, prayed fervently for half an hour, in a manner which deeply affected all that heard him. At the moment that he expected to suffer, the sheriff told him that he had been brought forward by mistake; that it was for Cobham to die first; and withdrew him also. This proceeding equally astonished the condemned and the spectators: it was perfectly unexampled, and no one could penetrate the meaning of it.
No sooner was lord Grey removed than Cobham was brought forward. Here again the public was at fault. Instead of the mean, cringing man, pitifully begging for his life, appeared a bold and thoroughly composed person, who looked calmly on the apparatus of death, confessed his own guilt, ​and again asseverated that of Raleigh. He was in the act of taking his last farewell when the sheriff bade him wait, for there was something yet to do; that he must once more be confronted with the other prisoners. At this moment Grey and Markham were again brought forward and placed before him. The astonished men looked, according to a spectator, in strange amazement on each other, "like men beheaded, and met again in the other world." Not less full of wonder were the spectators, who now crowded eagerly round the scaffold, marvelling at the mysterious proceeding. Whilst they gazed in breathless suspense, the sheriff demanded of the prisoners if they admitted their guilt, and acknowledged the justice of their sentences, and they assenting, he then exclaimed, "See the mercy of your prince, who hath sent hither the countermand, and given you your lives." At this finale, the crowd raised a shout so loud that it reached the town, and the cry being understood as one of pardon, it was taken up and repeated from end to end of the city.
George Buchanan, Tutor of King James I. of England.
Perhaps more puzzled than any one else by these singular movements, was the other prisoner, Sir Walter Raleigh, who was himself ordered for execution on the following Monday, and had surveyed the whole inexplicable transaction from the window of his prison. It was clear that he had been kept apart from the other prisoners out of dread of his extraordinary talents and powers of persuasion; for the real object of James was, according to Cecil, to see how far Cobham at his death would stand to his accusation of Raleigh. The whole was a scheme of the king's, a secret, to the participation in which he admitted not, so far as we can. learn, even his most trusty counsellors. Having planned the whole, and signed and sent off the death-warrants on Wednesday, on Thursday morning he summoned John Gib, the Scottish messenger, and despatched him to Winchester with a sealed packet containing the reprieve. In his haste, for the time was little enough to give room for any unforeseen hindrance, he had forgotten to sign it, and the messenger had to be recalled. The delay had nearly proved fatal to Markham, who was at the point of execution before the messenger arrived. The danger was increased by the fact that Gib, being unknown at Winchester, found himself repelled from the scaffold by the crowd, and could only with difficulty catch the attention of Sir James Hayes, by shouting to him on the scaffold, and begging him to bring him to the sheriff on the king's business. Well may Sir James Mackintosh exclaim in his History of England— "What a government, with the penal justice in such hands, and the lives of men at the hazard of such sad buffoonery!"
But James prided himself on this buffoonery as the very essence of kingcraft. There were those who doubted the truth of Cobham's charge against Raleigh, nay, many doubted of the existence of any plot at all; but by this stratagem he brought the public to hear Cobham in his last moments, as he believed, not only confers the plot, but reassert Raleigh's guilt. In his exultation at his success, James called together the lords of the counsel, and told ​them, according to Sir Dudley Carlton, "how much he had been troubled to resolve in this business; for to execute Grey, who was a noble, young, spirited fellow, and save Cobham, who was as base and unworthy, were a matter of injustice; to save Grey, who was of a proud, insolent nature, and execute Cobham, who showed great tokens of humility and repentance, were as great a solecism; and so went on with Plutarch's comparisons in the rest, still travelling in contrarieties, but holding the conclusion in so indifferent balance, that the lords knew not what to look for, till the end came out—'and, therefore, I have saved them all!'"
The fortune of James, however, with all his cunning and kingcraft, was to be suspected, and to leave the knots which he undertook to unravel still knots, and enveloped in confusion. Doubts have always been cast on his version of the Gowry conspiracy; and the exact objects of the present plot, so far as Raleigh was concerned, and the precise guilt of most of the prisoners, remain still obscure. James took possession of the fortunes of the conspirators, and retained them for a considerable time, in spite of the eager desire of the greedy courtiers to get hold of them. The fate of the prisoners was various. Though they were pardoned, they were not liberated. Grey lived in the Tower eleven years and died there. Cobham after a few years was discharged, but he was an object of general contempt, and endured an existence of poverty in a wretched house in the Minories, where, in a loft, to which he climbed by a ladder, he is supposed to have perished by starvation. Markham, Copley, and Brookesby were banished for life. Sir Walter Raleigh, who, though reprieved, was not pardoned, remained a prisoner for twelve years, when he came abroad only to return to the Tower and the axe.
The effect of this conspiracy was to deepen James' suspicion of the catholics and his dislike of the puritans. The catholics, since his coming to the English throne, had conducted themselves with more policy than their robustious rivals, the puritans. They had claimed, indeed, the fulfilment of his promises whilst merely king of Scotland, to favour them, as the stanch friends of his mother, and serious sufferers on her account; but they had preferred their claims with a degree of courtesy and moderation to which the brusque reformers were strangers. The pope, Clement VIII., probably led by the same expectations, had by two breves addressed to the archpriest and provincial of the Jesuits, strictly enjoined the missionaries to confine themselves to their spiritual duties, and on no account to mix themselves up with the agitators for political change. He condemned unequivocally the conduct of Watson and Clarke, and sent a secret envoy to the English court, expressing his abhorrence of all acts of disloyalty, and offering to withdraw any missionary from the kingdom that was in any way obnoxious to the king and council. James appeared so far influenced by this moderation, that though he stoutly refused all application for a free exercise of the catholic worship, and even committed individuals to the Tower who offended in this respect, yet he invited the catholics to frequent his court, he conferred knighthood on some of them, and assured them generally that they should not suffer for recusancy so long as they abstained from a breach of the laws as it regarded religion, and from all acts of political insubordination.
But towards the puritans he was by no means so courteous. He could never forget the restraint in which they had kept his infancy and youth: that they had been the defamers and persecutors of his mother; and that to the very hour in which he escaped into the larger field of English power, they had goaded him with their demands and defied his authority. As he drew nearer to the English throne, the charms of the English church increased in his imagination. A church which set up the king as its head was a church as much after James's own heart as after that of Henry VIII. Like that monarch, he dearly loved to shine in polemics, and long before he arrived in England, it required no great shrewdness to perceive where his affections lay. In 1590 "he had," says Calderwood, "stood up in the general assembly at Edinburgh, with his bonnet off, and his hands lifted up to heaven, and said that he praised God that he was born in the time of the height of the gospel, and in such a place, as to be king of such a church, the sincerest (purest) kirk in the world. The church of Geneva, he said, keeps pasch and yule, what have they for them? They have no institution. As for our neighbour kirk of England, their service is an evil-said mass in English; they want nothing of the mass but the liftings. I charge you, my good ministers, doctors, elders, nobles, gentlemen, and barons, to stand to your purity, and to exhort the people to do the same: and I, forsooth, as long as I brook my life, shall maintain the same."
This was solemn and emphatic, but it was all hollow, and merely a play of that kingcraft which James gloried in. No sooner was he in England than he spoke his mind roundly as to his real feelings towards the puritans. He said to the bishops and courtiers: "I will tell you, I have lived amongst this sect of men ever since I was ten years old; but I may say of myself as Christ said of himself, though I lived amongst them, yet, since I had ability to judge, I was never of them." And this was at least sincere. He had grown more undisguisedly episcopalian as he saw Elizabeth sinking, and felt his hold on the throne through her own ministers. He had given seats in parliament to a certain number of clergymen, thus making them bishops without the name; but it was in his Basilicon Doron, or manual for the instruction of his son, published in 1779, that he had given loose to his deep dislike of the presbyterians. He tells his son to "take heed to such puritans, very pests in the church and commonwealth, whom no deserts can oblige, neither oaths nor promises bind, breathing nothing but sedition and calumnies, aspiring without measure, ruling without reason, making their own imaginations, without any warrant of the Word, the square of their conscience. I protest," he added, "before the great God, and since I am here upon my testament, it is no place for me to be in, that you shall never find with any Highland or Border thieves greater ingratitude, and more lies and perjuries than with these fanatic spirits; and suffer not the principal of them to brook your land, if ye list to sit at rest; except you would keep them for trying your patience, as Socrates did an evil wife."
But whilst the royal Solomon thus plainly enunciated his hatred of puritanism, he was cautious not to let the English bishops too early into his fixed intention to patronise them. He liked to feel himself the undoubted head of that church, and to see those dignitaries in fear and trembling prostrate at his feet; and it was not till they had sufficiently humbled themselves before him, that he revived their spirits with the declaration of his real sentiments. The puritans precipitated this avowal, by urging on James a further reform of the church, and its purgation from ceremonies. In their ​millenary petition, so called because it was expected it would have a thousand signatures, but in reality it had only about eight hundred, they demanded a conference, in which to settle the form and doctrines of the church. This, of all things, delighted James. It was the very arena in which to display his theological knowledge; he gladly consented to it, and appointed it to take place early in January, 1604. On the 14th of that month the first assembly took place: and the bishops, who were first admitted to the royal presence alone, were so alarmed at the prospect of a conference which had been demanded by dissenters, that they threw themselves on their knees, and earnestly entreated the king not to alter the constitution of the church, nor to give the puritans the triumph in the coming debate, lest the popish recusants should rejoice over and declare them justly punished for their repulsion and persecution of them. Then James condescended to lift the weight of fear from their hearts, for he meant to give the puritans a sound flagellation: the truth could no longer be disguised. He avowed to them that he was a sincere convert to the church of England, and thanked God who had brought him to the promised land, to a country where religion was purely professed, and where he sate among grave, reverend, and learned men; not as before, elsewhere, a king without state, without honour, and without order, and braved to his face by beardless boys under the garb of ministers."
The delight of the bishops and dignitaries may be imagined at this gracious confession, who were nearly twenty in number, whilst the number of the reformers summoned was only four—namely, Doctors Reynolds and Sparkes, divinity professors of Oxford, and Doctors Knewtubs and Chatterton, of Cambridge. James something cooled the raptures of the churchmen, by adding that he knew all things were not perfect, and that, as there required, in his opinion, some modifications of the ritual and the ecclesiastical courts, he had called them together in the first instance, in order that they might settle what concessions should be made to the puritans. It was necessary to show some compliance; and after the day's discussion it was agreed that some explanatory words should be added in the book of common prayer to the forms of general absolution and of confirmation; that the chancellor and the chief justice should reform the practice of the commissary court; that excommunication should only be inflicted for particularly serious offences; that the bishops should neither confer ordinations nor pronounce censures, without the assistance and concurrence of other eminent divines; that baptism should not be administered by women or by laymen.
These points being determined, on the 16th the four puritan divines were admitted, and desired to state their demands. These were, first, a general revision of the book of common prayer, and the withdrawal of excommunication, baptism by women, the use of the ring in marriage, bowing at the name of Jesus, confirmation, the wearing of the cap and surplice, the reading of the apocrypha; that pluralities and non-residence should cease, the obligation to subscribe the thirty-nine articles be abrogated, as well as the commendatories held by bishops. The matter being cut and dried to their hands, the bishops defended such parts of the church service and practices as the king had agreed should remain, and the prelates of London and Winchester argued in their behalf long and vehemently. As the puritan doctors were not thus to be satisfied, and had by much the best of the argument, James himself took up the debate, and conducted it in that royal style which admits of no contradiction. He was now in his true element: theological discussion was his pride and glory, and he believed himself capable of silencing all Christendom. Dr. Reynolds, however, who was the chief speaker, undaunted by his crowned opponent, insisted boldly on various points; but when he came to the demand for the disuse of the apocrypha in the church service James could bear it no longer. He called for a Bible, read a chapter out of Ecclesiasticus, and expounded it according to his own views; then turning to the lords of his council, he said, "What trow ye makes these men so angry with Ecclesiasticus? By my soul, I think Ecclesiasticus was a bishop, or they would never use him so." The bishops and courtiers applauded the royal wit. James continued to hold forth on all sorts of topics—baptism, confirmation, absolution, which he declared to be apostolical, and a very good ordinance—and assured the anti-episcopal divines that in his opinion, if there were no bishops, there would soon be no king.
When he had tired himself out with talking, Dr. Reynolds again ventured to open his mouth, and inquired how ordinances of the church agreed with Christian liberty. This was touching James closely: it brought back to his memory the harangues on the same liberty which he had heard from his clergy in Scotland. He declared that he would not argue that point, but answer as kings were wont to do in parliament, Le roy's'aviscra. Without pretending to treat the matter as one of conviction, he treated it as one of authority. He exclaimed, "I will have none of that: I will have one doctrine and one discipline, one religion in substance and in ceremony." He was resolved to be as absolute over every man's conscience and understanding as Henry VIII. had been. "If that is what you be at, then I tell you that a Scottish presbytery agreeth with monarchy as well as God with the devil. Then shall Jack and Tom and Dick meet, and at their pleasure censure me and my council and all our proceedings. Then Will shall stand up and say, 'It must be thus;' then Dick shall reply and say, 'Nay, marry, but we will have it thus;' and therefore, here I must once more reiterate my former speech, and say, Le roy's'avisera."
It was in vain that Dr. Reynolds, who was reputed one of the most able divines and logicians of the age, attempted to state his views and opinions. The king constantly interrupted him and scoffed at him, treating him in the most insolently overbearing manner, and when he paused, asked him, "Well, doctor, have you anything more to say?" Reynolds, perceiving it useless, replied, "No, please your majesty;" on which James told these brow-beaten divines, that had they disputed no better in college, and he had been moderator, he would have had them all fetched up and flogged for dunces; that if that was all they had to say for themselves, he would make them conform, or hurry them out of the kingdom, or worse. With this scandalous treatment they were dismissed till the 18th, when the conference met again. The greater part of the day was consumed by the king, the council, and prelates in inquiring into the abuses of the high commission court, and devising means for checking them. At a late hour the dissenting delegates were again admitted, not to continue the discussion, but to hear the fixed decision of the king. On hearing it they prayed that a certain time might be allowed before the ​new regulations were enforced. This was granted, but not strictly kept, for the new book of common prayer was immediately prepared and published by authority.
Thus ended this digraceful conference, which excited almost equal discontent amongst the high-church partisans and the dissenters. The bishops had consented to changes, out of fear of offending the king, which they by no means approved, and were in no haste to carry out; and the dissenters were greatly chagrined that their delegates had not more boldly and resolutely enforced their views. But with such a monarch as James nothing like fair argument was possible; he avowed the most despotic principles, and contradicted those who opposed him with the undignified rudeness of a pothouse politician. The reformers complained bitterly of this, but James himself was incapable of feeling the force of public opinion. He was inflated with the idea of his own unrivalled eloquence and ability. He boasted that he had "peppered the dissenters soundly; they fled me," he said, "from argument to argument like schoolboys."
The bishops and ministers of his council added to his absurd egotism, by actually pouring deluges of the most fulsome adulation upon him. Bancroft, bishop of London, flung him-self on his knees before him, and exclaimed "that his heart melted with joy, and made haste to acknowledge unto Almighty God his singular mercy in giving them such a king, as since Christ's time the like had not been;" and Whitgift, the primate, protested "that his majesty spake by the special assistance of God's spirit."
The lord chancellor Ellesmere, emulating the sycophants of the church, said that "the king and the priest had never been so wonderfully united in the same person;" and the peers echoed the plaudits, declaring that his majesty's speeches proceeded from the spirit of God operating on an understanding heart. "I wist not what they mean," wrote Harrington, in Nugæ Antiquæ; "but the spirit was rather foul-mouthed."
All parties connected with the church having thus admitted that the king was acting under the most luminous effusion of the divine spirit, ought not, therefore, to have murmured when soon afterwards, without waiting for Ecclesiastical sanction, he made his own alterations in the book of common prayer, and then issued a proclamation, warning all men neither to attempt nor expect any further alterations in the church, and commanding all ecclesiastical and civil authority to enforce the strictest conformity. Whitgift soon after died, and many attributed the acceleration of his death to his mortification at the king's ordering the affairs of the church by his own will and wisdom, which Whitgift had been one of the first to extol as infallible. Bancroft succeeded, and showed himself a ready instrument of James's bigotry, and ready to enforce whatever cruelty he would attempt.
James spent full half of his year in hunting, and if any person or party had an urgent matter to prefer, the only opportunity for it appeared by waylaying him in his rides to the forest. The dissenters, as the time approached for the enforcement of the new canons of the church, presented a petition to him near Newmarket, praying a prolongation of the time allowed them for conforming. James received them with savage fierceness; told them that it was from such petitions that the rebellion in the Netherlands originated; that his mother and ho had been haunted by puritan devils from their cradles; that he would sooner lose his crown than encourage such malicious spirits; and if he thought his son would tolerate them in his time, he would wish to see him that moment lying in his grave. The nonconformists complained that he persecuted the disciples whilst he favoured the enemies of the gospel. This was referring to his reception of catholics at court, and his promises not to molest them if they abstained from the open prosecution of their worship. But James left them under no mistake on that head: he expressed an equally vehement hatred of papists; and on the 22nd of February he issued a proclamation enjoining the banishment of all catholic missionaries. He went to the star chamber, framed regulations for the discovery and prosecution of all recusants, and issued orders to all magistrates to see the penal laws put in force against all persons, of whatever faith, who did not fully conform to the rites and ordinances of the church. Thus the miseries and oppressions of religious persecution were renewed with all their virulence; and the only consolation for those who refused to conform, was that they might persecute one another.
In the midst of this state of things, James was compelled to call a parliament. This assembled on the 19th of March, 1604. It was one of the most remarkable parliaments in our history, for it came together, on the part of both king and commons, prepared to contest the great principles of absolutism and constitutional liberty; a contest which never again ceased till the people had triumphed over the crown, and prescribed for it those limits within which it continues still to exist. The Tudors had made themselves absolute, but rather by acting than talking. They had willed, but had only occasionally boasted of the supremacy of their will. Whenever they had done so, especially in the person of Elizabeth, they received a protest so spirited from parliament, that they wisely again veiled their pretensions. But James, possessing all their personal vanity and love of unlimited power, had not the policy to keep his pretensions in the background. He protruded them on the public notice; he vaunted his towering belief of his earthly divinity, declaring that as God killed or made alive, so had he ordained kings to do the same at pleasure. Years before he came to England, he published these imperious and imprudent doctrines in a discourse "On the True Law of Free Monarchies; or, the Reciprogue and Mutual Duty betwixt a Free King and his Natural Subjects." This true law, according to him, consisted in a king doing as he pleased, independent of councils, peers, or parliaments. The king was to be all command, the subject all submission. In these lawless ideas of the British Solomon regarding government, are comprehended all the conflicts which succeeded between the princes of his family and the people, and which eventually drove them from the throne.
In the proclamation calling this parliament, James took care to set forth the supremacy of his prerogative, and commanded the sheriffs and other officers to make no returns of members but such as were wholly agreeable to his views; there were to be no "persons noted for their superstitious blindness in religion one way, or for their turbulent humour the other." That is, neither puritans nor catholics were to be elected. Instructions were sent down to the various counties and boroughs, naming such persons for candidates as were agreeable to the court. But the puritans were in no humour to comply with such unconstitutional orders. They were justly filled with resentment at the ​treatment of their representatives at Hampton Court, and put forward their own men, and returned them in great numbers in defiance of the government. One case led to a direct and vehement collision betwixt the crown and the House of Commons. As a member for the county of Buckingham, Sir John Fortescue, a member of the privy council, had been named by the court. The people of Buckinghamshire, afterwards so conspicuous in the struggles betwixt the Stuarts and parliament, put forward and returned Sir Francis Goodwin. The clerk of the crown refused to receive the return, and sent it back to the sheriff as contrary to the Proclamation; for Goodwin had formerly been outlawed, and James had forbidden the return of outlaws. A second writ was issued, and under it Sir John Fortescue was elected. But the commons refused to admit him, declaring that as Goodwin's outlawry had been reversed, the proclamation did not apply to him, and that his return was good and should stand.
The government, in the name of the lords, proposed to the commons that there should be a conference betwixt the two houses on the subject before any other business was proceeded with; but the commons, with a clear insight into their privileges, where the constitution and functions of their own body were concerned, replied that it did not consist with the honour of their house to give an account of their proceedings and doings. On this they received a second message, in which they were informed through Coke, that his majesty being apprised of their objection, conceived that his honour was touched, and desired that there should be some conference between the houses. On this the commons sent a deputation of their members, headed by the speaker, to represent to the king why they could not confer with the lords on any subject. The king was exceedingly high, and let them know that they held all their privileges by the royal favour; but the members stoutly denied that doctrine, as the house at large had already this session denied it, saying "that new laws could not be instituted, nor imperfect laws reformed, nor inconvenient laws abrogated, by any other power than that of the high court of parliament, that is, by the agreement of the commons, the accord of the lords, and the assent of the sovereign; that to him belonged the right either negatively to frustrate, or affirmatively to ratify, but that he could not institute; every bill must pass through the two houses before it could be submitted to his pleasure."
This was a doctrine that clashed most disagreeably with James's absolute notions, and he rudely upbraided them with their presumption. But they stood firm to their position, and what was extremely humiliating to the new monarch, excused his unconstitutional ideas through ignorance or misinformation of the custom and laws of England; that the privileges of their house were the birthright of Englishmen, and could not be surrendered. James claimed that all disputed matters should be referred to his court of chancery; but they claimed to settle all such themselves, as the essential to the government of their estate. When James found that nothing would induce the commons to confer with the lords, he ordered them to confer with the judges, and this command the deputation carried back to the house. But the house, after a warm debate, unanimously refused to refer the question to the judges; they drew up an answer to all the king's arguments, and sent it to the lords, requesting them to present it to his majesty, and be mediators betwixt them. James, now finding that he could make no impression by express command, sent for the speaker, and endeavoured to coax him over to his views; but that being unsuccessful, he ordered him to deliver to the house his command, "as an absolute king," to confer with the judges. This was a direct challenge to the popular element, to try its strength with the royal one; language which was sure to put a high-spirited people on its mettle: the first utterance of that language, which no warning, no experience could teach a Stuart to abandon, till the utterance was quenched in blood.
When the speaker delivered this command, there fell a profound silence on the house; an augury and foreboding, as it were, of the gigantic struggle which was commencing. At length the ominous silence was broken by a member starting up and exclaiming that "the prince's command was like a thunderbolt; his command over our allegiance," he said, "is like the roaring of a lion! To his command there is no contradiction; but how, or in what manner we should proceed to perform obedience, that will be the question." It as finally agreed to send a deputation to confer with the judges in the presence of the king and council. At the conference there appeared no better prospect of success, when the king happily proposed that both Goodwin and Fortescue should be set aside, and a new writ issued. The commons gladly acceded to this proposal. The house was rejoiced at this solution of the difficulty, but out of doors those they represented were for from satisfied, and reproached the house with having yielded the right which they had boldly claimed. But in reality, the commons had done no such thing, for they proceeded, by their speaker's warrant, to issue the new writ themselves, and they have ever since exercised the right which they then assumed, of deciding all cases of contested elections.
The king, on his part, was as little satisfied as the people. He laboured under no mistake as to where the victory lay: he felt keenly that he was defeated in his soaring claims of prerogative, and the commons went on to let him know that they were resolved on an exercise of power still greater. They attacked the monopolies which James had declared by proclamation that he would abolish, but towards which not a step was taken. They complained of the continuance of the feudal grievances of assarts, wardships, aids for royal marriages, and purveyance. The right of guardianship of minors of estate continued a source of vast emolument to the crown, which received the proceeds of these estates, and rendered no account. This was, moreover, a source of equal peculation to the minister for the time being, and Cecil was judged to draw enormous wealth from this abuse; and as for purveyance, it appears to have been as recklessly and insolently pursued as under any of the kings of York or Lancaster. The royal purveyors seized the property of the subject just as they pleased: took horses, carts, carriages, and provisions at will, called out men to labour for the royal pleasure, paying or not as suited them, felling trees, and committing sundry other depredations.
After much debate these grievances were referred to a committee; but as the lords would have nothing to do with it, the matter was obliged to be dropped. Bacon, who was assiduously climbing into royal favour, played a contemptible part on this occasion in the house, affecting the character of a patriot, and discoursing feelingly of abuses, ​and the sufferings of the people; whilst in the council, before the king, he declared that his majesty was the voice of God in man, the good spirit of God in the mouth of man.
The struggle continued betwixt the crown and the commons through the whole session. As the crown would not agree to reform the abuses complained of, the commons declined to grant the king any money beyond the usual rate of tonnage and poundage. So apprehensive, in fact, was the king of another defeat in the present temper of the house, that he sent a message to it requesting them not to enter on the business of subsidy, notwithstanding his urgent need of money.
The struggle regarding religious liberty was carried on by the puritans in the house with equal obstinacy. The convocation sitting at the same time with parliament, occupied itself in framing a new code of ecclesiastical canons. In spite of the resolution of the conference at Hampton Court, which declared that no excommunication should issue except for very grave offences, these canons, one hundred and forty-one in number, equalled in ecclesiastical despotism anything which had been decreed under Henry VIII. Excommunication was pronounced against all who denied the supremacy of the king or the orthodoxy of the church; who affirmed the book of common prayer to be superstitious or unlawful, that any one of the thirty-nine articles was erroneous, or that the ordinal was opposed to the word of God. All who should separate from the established church, or establish conventicles, were equally denounced; and this bigoted code James ratified by letters patent under the great seal. But it did not pass without severe comment from the puritan members of the house, in the midst of which the king prorogued parliament; and so remained the question of the canon law of England, which in reality was and is a law binding only on the clergy, having received their own sanction and that of their head the king, but not that of the legislature; for which reason the judges in Westminster Hall have always held that it binds the clergy who framed, but not the people whose representatives refused it.
Chamber in which Sir Walter Raleigh was imprisoned in the Tower of London.
No sooner was the canon law promulgated, and parliament prorogued, than Bancroft, the new archbishop, let loose the fury of the church against the nonconformists, whether catholic or protestant. All were called on to conform to the new regulations, and no less than three hundred clergymen were forced from their livings. The catholics, on their part, were equally harassed, fined, and insulted. The legal penalty of twenty pounds a month for recusancy was again enforced, notwithstanding James had promised to overlook this; and it was executed with a new rigour of barbarity, the fines for the whole time during which James had been professing leniency being levied. Thus the sufferers were called on to pay thirteen payments at one time, which at once reduced a vast number of families to absolute beggary. What rendered these oppressions the more intolerable was, that the court was now crowded by whole shoals of hungry Scots, who had flocked after their king into this new land of Goshen, and were clamorous for place, pension, and grants of the estates of the recusants. From the book of Free Gifts, it appears that James, in his first year, gave out of the goods of recusants, £150 to Sir Richard Person; in his third, £3,000 to John Gibb, the Scotch messenger; in his fourth, £2,000 to John Murray, and £1,500 to Sir James Sandilands: in his fifth, £2,000 to John Auchmoutie, £3,000 to Martin and Abraham Hardaret, and £200 to John Potten; in his eleventh, £3,000 to Charles Chambers, £6,000 to the lord of Loreston, £2,000 to Sir William Wade, £1,000 to Sir Ralph Bowes, £1,000 to Sir Richard Wigmore, £4,000 to Sir James Simple and Thomas Lee, and £3,000 to Sir Hugh Beeston.
sir walter raleigh in prison.
​and distress of his subjects, was very comfortably and unconcernedly pursuing his great pastime of hunting. The crowds of courtiers and expectants which flocked to the neighbourhood of his sporting sojourn, were such as to eat up all the resources of those districts, and create distress of another kind, for the visits of royal purveyors were neither pleasant nor profitable. The archbishop of York, whilst writing to Cecil praying for a more vigorous prosecution of the catholics, ventured to entreat him to advise the king "against the wasting of the treasure of the realm, and for more moderation in the lawful exercise of hunting, both that poor men's corn may be less spoiled, and other his majesty's subjects more spared."
Cecil, with the tact of a courtier, replied to the archbishop before mentioning it to the king, letting him know that his majesty, amid his amusement, did not neglect the due chastisement of recusants; and that as to his hunting, it was a manly exercise, and ought to be a joy to him to behold the king so able of constitution, promising long life and a plentiful posterity. This answer he then laid before James, who was duly delighted with it, telling Cecil that he had "payed" the archbishop soundly, against whom he was extremely incensed for his plain suggestion as to the wasting of the treasure and excess in hunting, declaring it the most foolish letter that he ever read. He announced to Cecil that he meant to proceed from Royston, where he then was, to Newmarket, to hunt, and thence to Thetford. But other subjects were as foolish as the archbishop. The people of Royston caught a favourite hound of the king's, and put a label round his neck, saying, "Pray, good Mr. Jowler, speak to the king, for he heareth you every day, and so doth he not us, and entreat that it will please his majesty to go back to London, or else the country will be undone; all our provision is spent already, and we are not able to entertain him longer." The puritans also, who were expelled from their livings, continually presented themselves amid his hunting with petitions, and as these were disregarded, their friends proceeded to diffuse their complaints through the press. On the printers and publishers of these papers James let loose Cecil, whom he designated his "little beagle."
From hunting James was called on to perform a task equally congenial to his disposition. This was to decide on what would now be at once recognised as a case of mesmeric clairvoyance. One Richard Haddock, of New College, Oxford, who practised medicine there, and was equally ignorant of Latin and Greek, as well as of divinity, had fallen into the habit of preaching in his sleep, during which he not only astonished his hearers by the depth and eloquence of his discourses, but by his accurate quotations of the learned languages. When awake, which is almost invariably the case with clairvoyants, he knew nothing of what he had said or done in his sleep, and could not pronounce a word of the classical tongues. The man was sent for to court, and first heard in his sleep and then examined by the king, who dealt with him in his usual way of imagined shrewdness, till he had satisfied himself that the man had assumed this peculiarity to attract attention, and badgered and cross-questioned the poor man till he prevailed on him to confess that this was so. The king's profundity, however, did not attempt to solve the mystery of a man's speaking Greek and Latin who knew none; and it is probable that with his subtle questionings, he mingled more persuasive premises, for he sent the man back to Oxford, and soon after gave him preferment in the church, a singular mode, certainly, of punishing religious imposture.
From sleeping preachers, however, James was very soon called to the proceedings of men who were wide awake. The catholics, smarting under their renewed persecutions, felt it useless to remonstrate like the puritans, for both the church party and nonconformists were against them. They, therefore, as a body, brooded in silence over their sufferings; but there were amongst the oppressed spirits those who could not thus endure in patience, but planned a desperate revenge. Amongst these was Robert Catesby, the descendant of an ancient catholic family, seated for centuries at Ashby St. Legers, in Northamptonshire, and also possessing considerable property in Warwickshire. Catesby's father had been a great sufferer for recusancy, having several times been imprisoned, in addition to the plundering of his substance. In his youth the younger Catesby, who was wild and extravagant, was not disposed to sacrifice his jollity for the maintenance of a persecuted faith. He embraced protestantism, but in 1598 he returned to his original belief, and feeling the bitter force of persecution, he became stimulated to an active hatred of the government. He joined the insurrection of Essex on condition that he should enjoy full religious freedom; and escaping the fate of his leader by the forfeiture of three thousand pounds, he then secretly joined himself to the Spanish party amongst the catholics, in order to prevent the succession of the Scottish prince. This hope being defeated, and the catholics not only seeing James prepared to falsify his promises of catholic indulgence, but all the heads of the catholic world abroad—the kings of France and Spain, and the pope himself—seeking the friendship of James, Catesby conceived the gloomy idea that deliverance could only proceed from the English catholics themselves. In following out this desperate idea, he gradually evolved a scheme of vengeance and annihilation of all the persecutors of his faith—the king, the lords, and the commons together—which would have enraptured Nero, and struck the modern world on its discovery with an appalling consternation. This was no other than to blow up the king and parliament with gunpowder.
The idea was not original, for it is stated in a letter by Persons, in Butler's Historical Memoirs, that "There be recounted in histories many attempts of the same kynds, and some also by protestants in our dayes; as that of men who at Antwerp placed a whole barrel of powder in the great street of that city, where the prince of Parma with his nobility was to passe; and of him in the Hague, that would have blown up the whole council of Hollande upon private revenge." But if it was not the first design of the kind, it certainly was second to none in its daring and wholesale atrocity.
Catesby first made a confidant in his terrible project of Thomas Winter, the younger brother of Robert Winter, of Huddington, in Worcestershire. Winter was the intimate friend of Catesby, and had been long associated with him in his plans for the relief of the catholics. He had been a volunteer in the wars of the Netherlands, and then was sent to Madrid as the secret agent of the Spanish party in England, amongst whom his friend Catesby was an active partisan. But familiar as Winter was with the sufferings and projects of the catholics, this bloody revelation struck him with horror, and he denounced it vehemently as most ​criminal and inhuman. But Catesby spared no labour to reconcile his mind to the idea; he painted in vivid colours the long, the pitiless, and the unmerited cruelties inflicted on the catholics. He enumerated the numbers who had been exterminated by the axe and the rope of the executioner; who had perished in their prisons, or who had been reduced from affluence and honour to beggary by the relentless bigotry of the government. He demanded whence relief was to come. What hope there was left of effectual intercession from abroad, or of resolute resistance from the dispirited catholics at home. He appealed to him whether God had not given to every man the right to repel force by force, and whether the whole world besides afforded them any other chance.
Winter was staggered but not convinced, and declared that he would not consent to any such frightful measure before fresh attempts were made to procure a mitigation of their sufferings by milder means. He, therefore, hastened over to the Netherlands, where the Spanish ambassador, Velasco, had arrived, in order to conclude a peace betwixt England and Spain. At Bergen, near Dunkirk, he had an interview with the ambassador, and urged upon him to demand a clause in the treaty for the protection of the catholics. He was soon convinced that Velasco, though promising to use his influence for that end, would not risk the completion of the peace by the advocacy of such a stipulation.
Indignant at this apathy, he hastened to Ostend on his return, where he accidentally encountered an old comrade in the Netherland wars, of the name of Guido or Guy Fawkes, a native of Yorkshire, and a man of determined courage, as well as of great experience and address. He had been Winter's companion in his mission to Madrid, and he now solicited him to accompany him to England, and unite his endeavours with other friends for catholic relief. Winter, it would seem, had now made up his mind to enter into Catesby's plot, but did not let Fawkes into the full secret for some time.
Meantime, Catesby had been ardently at work in the prosecution of his idea. He had communicated his plan to Percy and Wright. Thomas Percy was of the Northumberland family, and steward to the earl, and John Wright was brother-in-law to Percy, and reputed to be the best swordsman in England. Percy had joined the catholics about the same time as Catesby returned to them, and like a zealous proselyte had, during the latter days of Elizabeth, gone to James at Edinburgh, and endeavoured to draw from him a promise of favour to the catholics on his accession. James is reported to have assured Percy that he would at least tolerate the mass in a corner. This James afterwards denied, but his denial can go for very little, for it was perfectly in keeping with his kingcraft to promise what served to secure his ends for the time; and almost every monarch in Europe had to make that complaint against him. Percy, on the breaking out of the persecution under James, felt that he had been made the dupe of James's duplicity. He presented a remonstrance to the king, to which no answer was deigned, and Catesby found him in a mood of great resentment against the king, and in a favourable temper for his views. He not only agreed to co-operate but brought in his brother-in-law Wright, who was also a recent proselyte to catholicism.
Percy appears to have been of a very excitable nature: the embryo conspirators assembled at Catesby's lodgings, and Percy demanded whether they were merely to talk and never to act. Catesby said that before he would open his plan to them, he must demand from every one an oath of secrecy. This was assented to, and a few days afterwards, as appears by the confession of Winter, the five, that is, Catesby, Winter, Percy, Wright, and Fawkes, "met at a house in the fields beyond St. Clement's Inn, where they did confer and agree upon the plot, and there they took a solemn oath and vows by all their force and power to execute the same, and of secrecy not to reveal it to any of their fellows but of such as should be thought fit persons to enter into that action."
When they had all sworn and perfectly understood what was proposed, Catesby led them into an upper chamber of the house, where they received the sacrament from Gerard, the Jesuit missionary, but who, according to Winter's confession, was not let into the secret. Fawkes and Winter both asserted this in their examinations, which were read at the trial; but the part exculpating Gerard was omitted by Coke, whose mark, with the words ad usque, still remains in the original document, showing that Coke purposely omitted what would have exempted Gerard from blame.
This dreadful oath was taken on the 1st of May, 1604, but the conspirators resolved to wait for the remotest chance of any good arising out of the negotiations betwixt England and Spain. But the treaty was concluded on the 18th of August, without any clause protective of the catholics. Peace and commercial relations were restored betwixt the two countries, and James was left at liberty to do as he pleased with the cautionary towns if the states did not redeem them. After the ratification of the treaty, the Spanish ambassador solicited in the name of his sovereign the good-will of James towards his catholic subjects; but James assured Velasco that however much he might be disposed to such indulgence, he dared not grant it, such was the terror of his protestant subjects of any return to power of the catholics. Velasco took his leave, and fresh orders were issued to judges and magistrates to enforce the laws against the catholics with all rigour. This put the finish to the patience of the conspirators, and they protested that it was but a fitting retribution to bury the authors of all their oppressions under the ruins of the edifice in which they enacted such diabolical laws.
They now sought for a proper place to commence their operations, and they soon found a house adjoining the parliament house in the possession of one Ferris, the tenant of Whinneard, the keeper of the king's wardrobe. This Percy hired, in his own name, of Ferris, on pretence that his office of gentleman pensioner compelled him to reside part of the year in the vicinity of the court. But the conspirators were debarred from immediate operations, by the commissioners appointed by James to consider a scheme for the union of the two kingdoms, taking possession of this house, where they sate for several months. Not wholly, however, to lose time, the conspirators hired another house in Lambeth, on the banks of the river, where they stored up wood, gunpowder, and other combustibles, which they could easily remove by night in boats, as occasion served, to their house in Westminster as soon as it was in their hands. They confided the charge of this house in Lambeth to Thomas Kay, a catholic gentleman of reduced means, who took the oath and entered into the plot.
On the 11th of December the conspirators obtained ​possession of their house, when they again swore to be faithful to each other, and they began by night their preparations. Behind the house, in a garden, and adjoining the parliament house, stood an old building. Within this they began to perforate the wall, one keeping watch whilst the others laboured. The watching was allotted to Fawkes, whose person was unknown, and who assumed the name of Johnson, and appeared as the servant of Percy. Three of the others worked whilst the fourth rested. During the day they toiled at undermining the wall, and during the night they buried the rubbish under the earth in the garden. They had laid in a store of eggs, dried meats, and the like, so that no suspicion should be excited in the neighbourhood by their going in and out, or from there being brought in provisions for so many persons. They thus laboured indefatigably for a fortnight, when Fawkes brought them the intelligence that parliament was prorogued from the 7th of February to the 3rd of October. On this they agreed to cease their labours till after the Christmas holidays, and to separate to their respective residences, and agreeing neither to meet in the interim, nor to correspond or send messages to each other regarding the plot.
During their late labours, as they discussed various matters, Catesby, to his dread and mortification, discovered a strong tendency amongst his associates to doubt the lawfulness of their attempt, because innocent people must perish with the guilty, catholics amid the persecuting protestants. In vain he employed all his ingenuity in reasoning, he saw the feeling remain, and he endeavoured to secure a plausible argument before their coming together again. He therefore consulted Garnet, the provincial of the Jesuits, an this point. He had accepted a commission as captain in a regiment of cavalry, to be commanded by Sir Charles Percy, in the service of the archduke. He now observed to Garnet in a large company that he had no doubt about the justice of the war on the side of the archduke; but as he might be called on to make attacks in which the innocent might fall with the guilty, women and children with armed soldiers, could he do that lawfully in the sight of the Almighty? Garnet replied certainly, otherwise an aggressor could always defeat the object of the party invaded by placing innocent persons amongst guilty ones in his ranks. This was enough for Catesby, the principle was admitted; and on the meeting of the conspirators after the recess, he was prepared to banish their scruple by assuring them that it was decided to be groundless by competent ecclesiastical authority.
Catesby had also employed the holidays in bringing over Christopher, the brother of John Wright, and Robert, the brother of Thomas Winter, to his views. They had both suffered severely as recusants, and the storm of persecution, which was now raging amongst the catholic population, stimulated them to thoughts of vengeance. "In the shires and provinces," says Persons, "and even in London itself, and in the eyes of the court, the violence and insolency of continual searches grew to be such as was intolerable; no night passing commonly but that soldiers and catchpoles brake into quiet men's houses when they were asleep, and not only carried away their persons into prisons at their pleasure, except they would brybe excessively, but whatsoever liked them best besides in the house." Gentlewomen were dragged out of their beds to see whether they had anything there concealed. The gaols were crammed with prisoners; priests and missionaries were condemned to death. Sugar, a priest, and Grissold, Baily, Wilbourne, Fulthering, and Brown, suffered death; Hill, Green, Tichbomne, Smith, and Briscow, priests, were sentenced to death, but at the intercession of the French and Spanish ambassadors, were let off with banishment; Skitel, a layman, suffered exile with them for having received a Jesuit into his house. But a case which excited peculiar sympathy was that of an old gentleman of the name of Pound, who had suffered under Elizabeth. He ventured to present a petition to the king, complaining of the sentence of Skitel. Instead of obtaining redress, he was immediately seized and carried into the star-chamber, where all the great lawyers and bishops assailed him with a very tempest of abuse. Coke excelled himself in virulent Billingsgate of the bar, chief justice Popham, chancellor Egerton, Cecil, the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishop of London, and several of the judges stormed at the poor old man, who stood without a single advocate; but Bancroft, the primate, was thought to exceed them all in violence. They condemned Pound to lose one of his ears in London, and the other in the place whence he came; to be fined one thousand pounds, and to remain a prisoner for ever unless he impeached those who incited him to this course. The queen interceded for the poor old man, but James forbade her ever again to open her mouth in favour of a catholic; however, some time after the French and Spanish ambassador remonstrated on the severity of the sentence, and the old man was suffered to retire to his own house at Belmont, in Hampshire, after standing a whole day in the pillory in London.
The virulence of the storm seemed to increase rather than abate. The penalties were enforced with a rigour which exceeded all past example. The bishops were ordered to excommunicate the more opulent catholics in their dioceses; to sue for writs in chancery by which they would be rendered liable to imprisonment and outlawry, and made incapable of recovering debts, rents, or damages for injuries. Under these inhuman exactions no less than four hundred and nine families in the county of Hereford were suddenly reduced to beggary. The clergyman at Allan Moor, near Hereford, refused to bury a woman because she was a catholic, on the plea that she was excommunicated, which led to a riot, and government were compelled to call in the aid of the earl of Worcester, a catholic, to appease the people, which was done by the aid of the missionaries and priests.
In the midst of this frightful state of things the conspirators again met at their house in Westminster, nerved to desperation by the desolation of almost every catholic family in the kingdom. On the 30th of January, 1605, they resumed their operations. They found the wall through which they had to dig was no less than three yards thick, and composed of huge stones, so that the labour was intense, and the danger of their blows being heard began to alarm them. They had an accession of force to their numbers, the brothers of Wright and Winter, one John Grant, of Norbrook, in Warwickshire, who had married a sister of the Winters. He had suffered much from persecution under Elizabeth, and his house was large and strongly fortified, offering a good depôt for horse and ammunition. Besides these, Catesby had admitted Bates, his confidential servant, into the secret, believing he had more than half-guessed it, and sent him with arms and ammunition to Grant's house in Worcestershire.
Whilst the conspirators were labouring with all their energies to complete the passage through the wall, they ​were suddenly startled by the tolling of a bell, deep in the earth, under the parliament house, and the sound could only be stopped by the aspersion of holy water. But a still more formidable obstacle appeared in the shape of ordinary water, which now began to ooze in from the river, and put a stop to all hope of making the passage. Whilst they were in this state of dejection, they were extremely alarmed by a loud noise, which appeared to come from a room just over their heads. Fawkes went to endeavour to learn the cause of it, and returned with the intelligence that it proceeded from the selling of the stock in trade of Bright, a coal merchant, who was evacuating the cellar, which would be in a few days unoccupied. At this joyful news, the mining of the foundation was abandoned; the cellar, which lay directly under the house of lords, was immediately taken by Fawkes in the name of his pretended master, Percy. In a short time they had removed thirty-six barrels of gun-powder from the house in Lambeth in the darkness of night, and had covered them over in the cellar with faggots and billets of wood. All being prepared, they once more separated till September, a few days before the assembling of parliament. They dispersed themselves to avoid all suspicion, and Fawkes went over to Flanders to endeavour to procure a supply of military stores, and to win over Sir William Stanley, Captain Owen, and other officers of the regiment in the pay of the archduke. Catesby, it will be remembered, was an officer of this regiment; most of these officers were catholics and his personal friends, and he informed them through Fawkes, that things were come to that pass that it was reported that the catholics were to be utterly exterminated throughout England, and that if they could not defend themselves by peaceable means, they must do it by the sword; and he enjoined them to engage as many of their brethren as possible to aid them in their deliverance. Sir William Stanley was absent in Spain, and Owen promised that he would communicate with him; but little effect appears to have been produced by Fawkes' mission, except that of exciting the attention of Cecil, who received repeated intimations from Flanders that the English exiles had some secret enterprise in agitation, though what it was the informants could not discover.
Catesby at home was in constant activity. He had obtained a fresh accomplice in Keyes, an intimate friend of his, who had been stripped of his property, and was prepared for the worst, being a man of determined disposition; and he had his eye on others who appeared in a mood for it. At the same time the growing excitement of Catesby endangered the secret. There was a tone and a restlessness about him which attracted the notice of his friends. He still delayed joining his regiment in Flanders, and Garnet, the Jesuit, came to suspect that he was engaged in some plot, and warned him against such attempts. This only excited the anger of Catesby, and Garnet wrote to Rome and obtained letters from the pope and the generals of his order, strongly enjoining on the catholics submission to the government. Catesby, uneasy in his conscience, at length confessed to Garnet the existence of some plot. The Jesuit refused to hear anything of it, but endeavoured to impress on the conspirator the necessity of obedience to the breves from Rome. At length he prevailed on him to promise that nothing should be done till they had sent a messenger to the pope fully detailing the condition of the catholics in England, and had received an answer. But Catesby had no intention of deferring his enterprise on such grounds. Fawkes returned to England in September, and they resolved to proceed. A second prorogation of parliament, however, from October to the 5th of November, disconcerted the conspirators, and induced them to fear that their designs had become known to government. To ascertain this, if possible, Thomas Winter was deputed to attend in the house of lords and watch the countenances and behaviour of the commissioners during the ceremony of prorogation. He returned, assuring them that their secret was still safe, for the commissioners walked about and conversed in the utmost unconsciousness of danger on the very surface of the prepared volcano—the six-and-thirty barrels of gunpowder.
These repeated delays, however, insured the defeat of the plot. All the conspirators except Catesby were now ruined by fines, exactions, and persecutions on account of their faith. They had depended for support for the last twelve, months on the assistance of relations and friends. Catesby had purchased the military stores and other requisites: his means were now exhausted, and yet more money must be in hand against the day of explosion if they meant to take full advantage of it. This induced them to extend the number of their accomplices, a perilous proceeding in anything demanding secrecy; and yet Catesby ventured on divulging the scheme to no less than three fresh associates, men of family and fortune. The first was Sir Everard Digby, of Drystoke, in Rutlandshire, Gotehurst, in Buckinghamshire, and of other large estates. Digby had been left as a boy a ward of queen Elizabeth's, had been educated at her court, and as a protestant. But a little before the death of the queen he embraced the catholic faith, and thus abandoning the brilliant prospects before him, retired to his estates in the country. At the time of the conspiracy he had a young wife and two children, was only twenty-five himself, and thus had every imaginable earthly good within his reach. Subtle must have been the persuasion which could have induced such a man to risk all this in a desperate enterprise, and bold the spirit of Catesby who could venture to tempt him to it. It was not effected without difficulty. Digby could not avoid seeing the hazard and doubting the innocence of such a proceeding, but eventually he gave way, and promised to assemble his catholic friends on the opening of parliament, to hunt with him on Dunsmoor, in Warwickshire, and to advance one thousand five hundred pounds.
The next was Ambrose Rookwood, of Coldham Hall, Suffolk, the head of an ancient and wealthy family, who had suffered like his neighbours, but was still affluent. He had a fine stud of horses, which made him a very desirable coadjutor, independent of other considerations. He seems to have had as little ambition as he had motive for conspiracy, being, spite of his share of persecutions, able to enjoy a quiet life; but his attachment to Catesby was his snare. Like the rest, he at first recoiled from the prospect of so much bloodshed; but Catesby managed to reconcile him to the idea, and he removed his family to Clopton Hall, near Stratford-on-Avon, in order to be near the catholic rendezvous at Dunsmoor.
The third new accomplice was Sir Francis Tresham. His father, Sir Thomas Tresham, had long been severely handled on account of his religion, in Elizabeth's reign, and his son Francis, who succeeded him had been engaged in several plots. He was in that of Essex, in conjunction with Catesby and Percy, and escaped by a prompt distribution of ​three thousand pounds amongst the queen's favourites. His chief seat was at Rushton, in Northamptonshire. The selection of Tresham was especially imprudent, for he had the character of a man selfish, reserved, and fickle; but he had money, which induced Catesby to trust him. From the moment, however, that he did so, he had no more peace of mind. Terrible fears and suspicions seized him, dreams as terrible haunted him at night. His comrades had no confidence in Tresham, whose character was well known; but the thing was done, and there was no retracing the step which was to bring destruction upon them. Tresham promised a contribution of two thousand pounds, and Percy also engaging to advance four thousand pounds from the rents of the earl of Northumberland, whose steward he was, the pecuniary provision appeared ample, and they proceeded to organise their plan of operations.
Old House at Lambeth in which the Gunpowder-plot Conspirators assembled.
A list of all the peers and commons who were catholics, or who had opposed the penal statutes and other harsh measures against the catholics, was made out, and these were at; the last moment on the fatal morning to be called away from the house by some urgent message. Guy Fawkes was appointed to fire the train with a slow burning match, which, should allow of his escape before the explosion; and a ship was to be ready in the river to carry him over to Flanders, where he was to publish a manifesto justifying the deed, and calling on the catholic powers for aid. Percy, as a gentleman pensioner, was to enter the palace and secure the person of the young prince Charles—it seems they were: willing to let prince Henry perish—and on pretence of placing him in security, convey him away to the appointed rendezvous at Dunchurch. Digby, Tresham, Grant, and others, were to hasten to Combe Abbey, and secure the princess Elizabeth, whom, if the two young princes should not be saved, they were at once to proclaim queen. Catesby was to proclaim the heir-apparent, whoever it was, at Charing-cross; and on reaching Warwickshire a declaration was to be issued abolishing monopolies, purveyance, and wardships. A protector was to be appointed to conduct the government during the minority of the sovereign.
There were circumstances enough in these regulations to have alarmed all but fanatics in the cause. The messages at the last moment to so many members of the two houses must have created suspicion, and the endeavour to secure the royal children was full of hazard. But there were greater dangers than these. As the time drew nigh, almost every one had friends amongst the members of parliament, and they were not contented with the general plan of drawing them away at the critical moment. Each wished to convey a particular warning to his own friends or relatives, which should make their safety certain. Every such warning, however, menaced the discovery of the whole scheme. Tresham was excessively anxious to rescue the lords Mordaurt and Mounteagle, who had married two of his sisters. Percy was equally desirous to save his relative, the earl of Northumberland; Keyes, the old gentleman who had the custody of the house at Lambeth, was importunate to save lord Mordaunt, who sheltered and maintained his wife and children after his own ruin; and all were eager to warn the young earl of Arundel.
Catesby, extremely alarmed by these proposals, declared that means enough were in operation to keep all those that they wished to save away; but that rather than endanger the result, he would have all blown up, though they were as dear to him as his own son. He and Fawkes, as the day drew near, retired to a solitary house in Enfield Chase, called White Webbs, where, as they were in consultation with Thomas Winter, Tresham suddenly made his appearance. He appeared excited and embarrassed, and demanded that he should be allowed to put lord Mounteagle, who had married his sister, on his guard. When Catesby ​and his associates protested against it, he advanced reasons for delay, declaring that he should not be prepared with the promised advance of money till he had sold some property. He pleaded that the explosion would be as effectual at the end of the session as at the beginning: that in the meantime the conspirators might live in Flanders, whither his ship should convey them, and where he would supply them with the necessary funds for maintenance. Catesby was confirmed in his fears of Tresham by these proposals, but thought it best to dissemble and appear to acquiesce. Tresham returned to town, and would seem to have warned not only Mounteagle but others, most likely including lord Mordaunt, who had married his other sister. Digby and others of the conspirators are supposed to have warned their own friends, so that the danger of discovery was hourly increasing. Tresham, in his examination, alleged that his real object at this moment was not to delay, but to put an end to the plot, as the only means he could devise to save the lives of all concerned, and to preserve his own life, fortune, and reputation.
King James and his Courtiers setting out for the Hunt.
The movements of lord Mounteagle warranted the belief that he had received a warning of some kind that there was danger in town, for he removed from his house in London to one which he had at Hoxton, and on the 26th of October, six days before the proposed opening of parliament, he, much to the surprise of his own family, ordered a good supper to be prepared there. Mounteagle had formerly been engaged in the Spanish treason, and had written to Baynham, who was the emissary at Rome, and therefore was probably aware of some plot in agitation, but he had latterly obtained the confidence of the king, and was one of the commissioners for the late prorogation.
As he sate at table about seven o'clock in the evening, a page handed to him a letter, which he said he had received from a tall man whose features he could not recognise in the dark. Mounteagle opened the letter, and seeing that it had neither date nor signature, he handed it to Thomas Ward, a gentleman of his establishment, to read aloud. It was as follows:—"My lord out of the love i beare to some of youer frends i have a caer of your preservacion therefor i would advyse yowe as yowe tender youer lyfe to devyse some exscuse to shift of youer attendance at this parleament for god and man hath concurred to punishe the wickednes of this tyme and think not slightlye of this advertisment but retyere to youre self into youre contri wheare you may expect the event in safeti for thowghe theare be no apparance of ​anni stir yet i saye they shall receyve a terrible blowe this parleament and yet they shall not seie who hurts them this cowncel is not to be contemned because it may do yowe good and can do yowe no harme for the danger is passed as soon as yowe have burnt the letter and i hope God will give yowe the grace to mak good use of it to whose holy protecion i comend yowe."
The astonishment of the guests at the hearing of this letter may be imagined. Lord Mounteagle immediately hastened to town, and laid the letter before Cecil and some of the other ministers, the king being away still at Royston hunting. Cecil determined that nothing should be done till the king's return. The next morning Ward, who had read the letter publicly at the supper-table, communicated the circumstance to Thomas Winter, and that the letter was in the possession of Cecil. Winter was thunderstruck, but put the best face upon the matter that he could, and pretended to laugh at the whole affair as a hoax on the credulity of lord Mounteagle; but no sooner was Ward gone than he flew to White Webbs, and imparted the news to Catesby. Catesby at once attributed the letter to Tresham, and the more so as he had absented himself for several days on the pretence of having business in Northamptonshire. The question with Catesby was, had he revealed the particulars of the plot and the names of the conspirators. To ascertain the extent of the mischief, and of the guilt of Tresham, he sent him an imperative message to come to White Webbs. Tresham obeyed the summons on the 30th of October, and met Catesby and Winter at this lonely house in Enfield Chase. They had made up their minds if they found him guilty, to shoot him on the spot. They charged him point blank with the discovery of the plot, and kept a searching gaze upon his countenance as he received their declaration. Had he faltered or shown any confusion, his doom would have been instant. But he exhibited the utmost calmness and firmness of expression, protesting most solemnly that he was innocent of the charge.
That Tresham was the writer of the letter, and that he had entered into a confidential understanding with Mounteagle for the defeat of the plot, there appears every reason to conclude. His own avowal on the examination that such was his intention is borne out by all the examinations. The delivery of the letter whilst Mounteagle was at supper with his friends, if it was done by Tresham, shows an intention that it should thus be made irrevocably public. The instant communication of lord Mounteagle's servant with Winter the conspirator, in order to warn them, confirms the idea that all this was planned betwixt Tresham and Mounteagle; but there is no reason to believe that Tresham had betrayed the names of his accomplices.
Catesby and Winter returned with Tresham to town, and Guy Fawkes was despatched to the cellar under the parliament house to discover whether all was right there. Not a thing or a secret mark was disturbed. They then first told him why they had sent him, on which Fawkes complained of their distrust of his courage, and said he would visit the cellar every day till the 5th of November. Had Cecil not been still more cunning than the conspirators, had he made a stir and an inquisition, the aim of Tresham would have been effected, the conspirators would have escaped, and the plot have been put an end to without any catastrophe. But the artifice of Cecil lulled their suspicions, and lured them on to their fate.
On the 31st of October James returned to town, and the letter was laid before him, with the particulars of its delivery. James was greatly struck by the account, read the letter several times over, and discussed the matter for two hours with his ministers. James boasted to parliament on its opening, that it was his own bright suggestion that the receiving of the letter sent to lord Mounteagle implied that they were all to be blown up, and that he in consequence ordered the search of the cellars under the parliament house. But this was a piece of consummate flattery on the part of his ministers, to make it appear the result of his superior sagacity; for we have direct evidence in the circular of the earl of Salisbury, that the ministers were in possession of the secret, but he observes, "we all thought fit to forbear to impart it to the king until some three or four days before the sessions." In fact, the intelligence that the letter was in the hands of the king, and that the council was considering on it, was immediately conveyed to Winter by Mounteagle's servant. Upon this Winter waited on Tresham at his house in Lincoln's Inn walks, where Tresham, in great agitation, assured him that the existence of the mine was known to the ministers; that he knew certainly, but denied any knowledge of by whom the discovery had been made. He declared that they were all lost men if they did not instantly escape. From the moment the affair was known, Tresham had avoided further intercourse with the conspirators, meaning to appear totally ignorant of their concerns, for which reason he went about openly, and even offered his services to the council.
The conspirators met to decide on their plan of action. Some of them advised instant escape to the Continent; Catesby, Winter, and others were perfectly convinced that Tresham was in communication with Mounteagle, and perhaps with Cecil; but some of them would not believe such treason, and the arguments of Percy finally nailed them to their fate. This discussion took place on the 3rd of November. Percy conjured them to wait and see what the next day would bring forth, the very last day before the grand crisis. He represented all the labour, the anxieties, the plannings they had gone through, the costs they had incurred, the difficulties they had overcome, and he demanded whether, on the very point of complete success, they were to abandon their enterprise through the fears of a recreant colleague, who probably described what only his affrighted fancy pictured to him. He reminded them that his vessel still lay in the Thames at their service, and on the first positive proof of danger, they had only to hasten on board and drop down the river out of reach of their enemies.
These arguments prevailed, but they changed their plan of operations. Fawkes was still to keep guard in the cellar, Percy and Winter to superintend the necessary operations in London; but Catesby and John Wright were to hasten to Dunchurch, and put Sir Everard Digby and the party on their guard.
On the evening of Monday the 4th of November, the earl of Suffolk, in prosecution of his duty as lord chamberlain, to see all necessary preparations made for the opening of parliament, went down to the house, accompanied by lord Mounteagle.
After they had been some time in the parliament chamber, on pretence that some necessary articles were missing, they went down to the cellars to make a search. They entered ​the vault where the mine was prepared, and where Fawkes was at his post. The chamberlain, casting his eyes round the place, inquired by whom it was occupied, and who Fawkes was. The stanch traitor replied that it was occupied by Mr. Percy, whose servant he was; on which Suffolk observed in a careless manner, "Your master has laid in a good stock of fuel;" and he and Mounteagle left the cellar. No sooner were they off the ground, than Fawkes hastened to inform Percy of what had occurred, but the warning was lost upon him. He persuaded himself that all was yet undiscovered, and Fawkes returned to the cellar to await the fatal hour.
Gunpowder Conspirators at work in the Vault.
A little after midnight, being now actually the 5th of November, Guy Fawkes had occasion to open the door of the vault, and he was immediately seized by Sir Thomas Knevett, a magistrate of Westminster, who, with a party of soldiers, had silently invested the place. Fawkes was found to be booted and spurred, ready for a precipitate flight after lighting the train; three matches were found in his pocket, and a dark lantern containing a light was placed behind the door. The least delay in seizing the desperado, and he would have blown himself and the guard all into the air together. But he was instantly pinioned, bound hand and foot, and conveyed to Whitehall, where the council had assembled in the king's bed-chamber by four o'clock to interrogate him. Fast fettered as he was, the determined look of the undaunted traitor instilled terror into the spectators. He appeared quite self-possessed, calm in aspect, and bold, though respectful in speech. Nothing could be drawn from him regarding the conspiracy. He said his name ​was Johnson, and that Percy was his master. He avowed that his object was to annihilate king and parliament, as the only possible means of ridding the catholics of their persecutions. When asked who were his accomplices, he replied that should never be known from him.
The king demanded of him how he could have the heart to destroy his children, and so many innocent souls with them. "Dangerous diseases," replied Fawkes, "require desperate remedies." To this courtiers who surrounded him with inquisitive looks and pressed him with questions, he returned a defiant stare, and retorted their remarks with unscrupulous sarcasm. One Scotch nobleman asked him the needless question of what he meant to do with so many barrels of gunpowder. "To blow the beggarly Scots back to their native mountains," replied Fawkes.
Finding that nothing could be extracted from the conspirator, on the morning of the 6th of November he was sent to the Tower, accompanied by orders that the secret was to be extorted from him by torture. The instructions of James in the State Paper Office direct that the gentle tortures were to be tried first, et sic per gradus ad ima tendatur. For three or four days this man of iron nerve and will endured the utmost agony they could put him to, without divulging a syllable, nor did he relax till he learned for certain that the conspirators had proclaimed themselves by appearing in arms.
Catesby and John Wright had left on the evening of the 4th for Dunchurch as agreed; Percy and Christopher Wright maintained their watch in London till they heard of the arrest of Fawkes, when they mounted and rode after Catesby and John Wright. Keyes and Rookwood still waited till morning, when finding the whole known, and all London in a state of terror, Keyes got away after the rest. Rookwood lingered in town till near noon, as he had a relay of vigorous horses ready, and when mounted, he rode furiously, overtook Keyes on Finchley Common, whence they rode to Turvey, in Bedfordshire. Rookwood still pursued his gallop till he overtook first Percy and Christopher Wright, and then Catesby and John Wright, and the whole troop rode on together till they came to lady Catesby's, at Ashby St. Legers, in Northamptonshire. They arrived there at six o'clock in the evening, Rookwood having ridden the whole eighty miles from London in little more than six hours. A party of conspirators, with whom was Winter, were just sitting down to supper when the fugitives came in, covered with mud and sinking with fatigue. Yet no time was to be lost. After a hasty refreshment, the whole company got to horse, and rode with all speed to Dunchurch.
The strange, haggard, and dejected appearance of the conspirators, and their eager closeting with Sir Everard Digby, awoke the suspicions of the hunting party. Before midnight a whisper of treason and its failure flew amongst them, and they quickly got to horse and rode off each his own way. In the morning there remained only Catesby, Digby, Percy, the Wrights, Winter, and a few servants.
Catesby now advised that they should strike across Worcestershire for Wales, where he flattered himself they might assemble the catholic gentry, and make a formidable stand. In pursuance of this romantic plan, they mounted and rode to Warwick, whence, after exchanging fresh horses for their jaded ones, they made for Grant's house at Norbrook, and thence rode on through Warwickshire and Worcestershire to Holbeach House, on the borders of Staffordshire. All the way they had called on the catholics to arm and join them for the rescue of their faith, but not a man would listen to the appeal. On this decided failure, instead of pushing for the mountains of Wales, they resolved to make a stand at Holbeach.
Meantime Sir Richard Walsh, the sheriff of Worcestershire, with the whole posse comitatis and a number of volunteer gentlemen, was in chase of them. They had diverged from their original route in the hope of being joined by the gentry, who only drove them from their doors; and now, no sooner did Stephen Littleton, the owner of Holbeach, learn the real facts, than, horrified at the certain destruction impending over these desperate men, he escaped at the earliest opportunity from the house. He was soon followed by Sir Everard Digby, on the plea of endeavouring to muster assistance. The remaining conspirators, who, with servants, did not amount to more than forty men, set about to put the house in a state of defence; but as they were drying some powder before the fire it exploded, horribly scorching Catesby and some others of the bystanders.
This accident so appalled them, impressing them with the idea that their enterprise was displeasing to God, that Robert Winter, Bates, the servant of Catesby, and others got away. About noon Sir Richard Walsh came up with his troop and surrounded the house, and summoned them to surrender. But preferring death in arms to the gallows, they defied their assailants, and resolved to fight to the last. On this the sheriff ordered one part of his followers to set fire to the house, and the other to batter in the gates. Catesby, blackened and nearly blinded by the powder, called on the rest to make a rush and die hand to hand with their assailants. In the courtyard, Catesby, the two Wrights, and Percy were mortally wounded. Catesby crawled on hands and knees into the house to a crucifix, which he seized in his hands and expired. Rookwood, dreadfully burnt and wounded, was seized as well as Winter, whose arm was broken. Percy died the next day. The rest of them were soon taken. Robert Winter had overtaken Stephen Littleton in a wood, and together they made their way to the house of a Mrs. Littleton, near Hagley, where they were secreted, without her knowledge, by her cousin, Humphrey Littleton, but were betrayed by a servant of Mrs. Littleton. Sir Everard Digby was pursued and taken in a wood near Dudley. They were all captured, with Keyes and Rates, Catesby's servant, who was taken in Staffordshire. Four days after the seizure of the captives at Holbeach, Tresham was arrested in London, notwithstanding his affected innocence, and his offers of assistance to the council; and thus were the authors of this insane and diabolical conspiracy destroyed, or safe in the hands of government.
Whilst these events had been taking place. Guido Fawkes had been undergoing repeated examinations before commissioners appointed by the king, and also by the chief justice Popham, Sir Edward Coke, attorney-general, and Sir William Wood, lieutenant of the Tower. He made free confessions of his own participation in the conspiracy, but as he had said that nothing should be learned from him as to his accomplices, so no tortures could force a word of betrayal from him. It was not till the conspirators were taken or killed that he would admit a word about them, and then only what was become well known by other means. When ​told his concealment of the names of his associates was useless, because they had betrayed themselves, "Then," rejoined the undaunted man, "it is superfluous to ask me." On the 8th of November, the very day on which the conspirators were overcome at Holbeach, he signed a deposition with a clear firm hand;
but two days after, when called on to sign another, he had become so shattered in nerve and muscle, that he could only trace his Christian name, Guido, in a tremulous scrawl, and attempted the surname in vain.
Bates, the servant of Catesby, was made of far meaner stuff. Under the operation of the rack he confessed anything that they pleased. Tresham was racked also, to obtain a confession of the guilt of the priests, and though he denied that they had any share in the plot, he admitted that Garnet and Greenway were privy to it. In his prison he was attacked by a violent complaint, and died on the 23rd of December, as it was strongly suspected, of poison. On the approach of death he signed a solemn recantation of the truth of his confession implicating Garnet and Greenway. He declared that he had made the confession only under the terror of fresh torture; and this declaration he gave to his wife, charging her to deliver it into the hands of Cecil herself.
Notwithstanding, a royal proclamation was issued on the 15th of January, 1606, for the seizure of the three Jesuits, Garnet, Greenway, and Gerard. The trials of the conspirators were delayed in order to be able to arraign the Jesuits with them, as well as Baldwin, another Jesuit, and Sir William Stanley and Captain Owen, who were still serving in the Netherlands. But as the Spaniards refused to give up the accused, and the capture of the three Jesuits appeared uncertain, the trials of the prisoners were ordered to take place on the 27th of January.
The trials, of course, excited intense interest, and the king, queen, and prince were said to be present, where they could see and hear without attracting public notice. The prisoners were eight, Sir Everard Digby, Robert and Thomas Winter, Rookwood, Grant, Guido Fawkes, Keyes, and Bates. Sir Everard Digby pleaded guilty, all the rest not guilty, on the ground that many things were included in the indictments which were not true. There were no witnesses called, but the written depositions of the prisoners and of a servant of Sir Everard's were taken as sufficient proof. The accused, for the most part, denied that the three Jesuits had any part in the plot, though they might more or less be aware of it; nor was there any proof brought forward or admission made which implicated the catholic body generally. On the contrary, it was too notorious that the catholics had everywhere shrunk from the conspirators with horror; and Sir Everard Digby, in his letters to his wife, written from the Tower, pathetically laments that the catholics everywhere, so far from supporting the conspiracy, shunned and condemned them, and adds that he would never have engaged in the design if he had not thought it lawful. The prisoners who pleaded, excused their conduct by the cruelty of the persecutions which they were enduring, the ruin and sufferings of their families, the violated promises of the king, and their consequent despair of any other termination of their oppressions, as well as their natural desire to effect the restoration of what they deemed the only true church. The earls of Salisbury and Northampton denied, on the part of the king, the breach of any promises; and the whole of the prisoners were condemned to the death of traitors, which they endured, in all its revolting severity, at the west end of St. Paul's Churchyard. Digby, Robert Winter, Grant, and Bates, on the 30th of January, and Thomas Winter, Fawkes, Rookwood and Keyes, next day.
Whilst these things had been in progress, the quest after the three Jesuits, Garnet, Greenway, and Gerard, had been unintermitted. After many adventures and narrow escapes, the two latter got clear off to the Continent, and the interest centred itself in the apprehension of Garnet. He had managed to conceal himself at Hendlip, near Worcester, in the house of Thomas Abingdon, whose wife was the sister of lord Mounteagle. Here his hiding-place might have been effectual, for it was furnished with all those contrivances so common in catholic houses at that time, and which yet remain in these old residences. But his retreat was known to that Humphrey Littleton who had concealed his cousin Stephen Littleton and Robert Winter at Hagley, and who, himself now in prison, betrayed the secret to win favour for himself. Sir Henry Bromley, a neighbouring magistrate, received an order to take an armed force, surround the house, and secure the hidden Jesuit. On his arrival Mrs. Abingdon put the keys of her house into his hands with the utmost frankness, and bade him satisfy himself. A rigorous search was instituted: every room, closet, and visible recess was minutely explored, whilst sentinels were placed on the constant watch in every passage and at every outlet. Three days passed without any discovery, and the magistrate began to suspect that the Jesuit had anticipated his arrival, and was gone; but on the fourth day two strange men suddenly appeared in a gallery. They were instantly seized, and proved to be Owen, the servant of Garnet, and Chambers, the servant of Oldcorne, another Jesuit. The vigilance of the guards had prevented the necessary supplies, and hunger had driven them from their retreat. The search now became most active: more secret chambers were discovered, and on the eighth day a trap-door, in a boarded floor, was detected, which led behind the fire-place up into the hole in the wall where Garnet and Oldcorne lay. They and their two servants were at once conducted to London and committed to the Tower.
The Jesuits and their servants there underwent the strictest examinations, but as nothing was drawn from them, Oldcorne, Owen, and Chambers were placed upon the rack. Garnet was not racked, but was threatened with it, to which he replied, "Minare ista pueris," threats are only for boys. As it was probably thought that nothing was to be hoped from Garnet through torture, a stratagem worthy of the inquisition was resolved on. It had been already practised on Fawkes and Winter with but moderate success: here it answered more completely. Garnet was well known to be a man of extraordinary learning, of consummate ability and address, and endowed with all the subtle ingenuity of the order to which he belonged. Even the rude and scurrilous Coke, in his speech on Garnet's trial, confessed that he was a man "having many excellent gifts and endowments by nature; by birth a gentleman, by education a scholar, by art learned, and a good linguist." Yet artful and circumspect as the order of Jesuits is popularly reputed to be, this masterly adept fell into the snare laid by Cecil, who ​would have made a first-rate general of the order of Loyola.
The warder in whose custody the Jesuits lay, received an order from the lieutenant of the Tower to assume a friendly demeanour towards them; to express his sympathy for their sufferings, and his respect for their undaunted maintenance of their religious faith. Having satisfied himself that he had made a favourable impression, he proceeded to offer them all the indulgence in his power, consistent with their safe custody. The Jesuits fell into the snare. The warder offered to take charge of any letters that they wished to convey to their friends. The sincerity of the man appeared so genuine that the offer was gladly accepted; a correspondence with several catholics was commenced, and the letters each way were regularly carried to the commissioners, opened, and copied before delivery. Many of the letters being found to have secret notes appended in lemon juice, which only became visible when heated, were retained, and exact copies sent. Some of these letters still remain in the State Paper Office. But this correspondence, notwithstanding the sympathetic ink, was so guarded, that it furnished no new facts, and another plan was adopted. The warder, as if growing more nailing to serve them by longer acquaintance, showed them that by leaving an intermediate door unlocked betwixt their cells, the two Jesuits could meet and converse at freedom. Still confiding entirely in their apparent friend the warder, who recommended extreme caution, Garnet and Oldcorne gladly embraced this opportunity of intercourse. But in secret recesses in the passage were placed Lockerson, the private secretary of Cecil, and Forsett, a magistrate of the Tower, who heard and noted down the conversations of the prisoners. Five times were these treacherous interviews permitted, and the reported conversations of four of them are still preserved.
Cellars under the Parliament House, in the time of James I.
As might be expected, the conversations chiefly turned on the best mode of conducting their defence. In these conversations Garnet admitted that though he had denied it, he had still been at White Webbs, in Enfield Chace, with the conspirators, and would still maintain that he had not been there since Bartholomew-tide. On another occasion he let fall things which still further betrayed his knowledge of the plot; and he asserted his intention when again examined to demand that the witnesses which the commissioners boasted of having should be produced.
ARREST OF GUY FAWKES.
​to the catholic account—led to the rack himself, and in its presence was brought to admit that he had received no knowledge of the plot except under the seal of confession, which to a catholic priest was inviolable. But according to the government account—which, after the perfidious means used to obtain the knowledge, is deserving of very little credence—he confessed that he had received a general knowledge of it from Greenway; but both in that case and when it was recounted in confession by Catesby, had done all in his power to discourage and put an end to it. It was charged upon him that he had given Catesby an assurance that it was lawful in certain cases to destroy the innocent with the guilty: but he explained that this had in his mind no reference to the gunpowder plot, but had been in answer to a question put by Catesby in reference to his serving in the Netherlands.
At this stage of the proceedings Oldcorne, a priest of the name of Strange, and Mr. Abingdon were sent down to Hendlip to be tried, where both the priests and some other of the minor conspirators were condemned and executed; but Abingdon received a pardon through the intercession of his brother-in-law, lord Mounteagle.
Garnet was put upon his trial before a special commission in Guildhall on the 28th of March. The interest attached to this trial was evidenced by the numerous crowd which flocked to it. All the members of parliament were present, with the king himself placed in one retired corner, and Arabella Stuart in another. Coke, the attorney-general, exerted himself to the utmost to damage the catholics as well as the prisoner in public opinion. For this purpose he had raked together all the conspiracies which had been attributed to that body since the commencement of the reign of Elizabeth. He drew an alarming picture of the pretensions of the papal court for the subtle policy and habitual equivocation of the Jesuits, and described them and the missionaries as the agents of a grand scheme for the destruction of the king and all the heads of the protestant party. He made great boasts that he would prove the prisoner at the bar to be the original author of the plot and the confidential adviser of the conspirators; but when he came to his proofs, there he miserably failed. There was no evidence but such as had been drawn from the forced depositions of the conspirators themselves, and the incautious admissions of Garnet and Oldcorne in the hearing of the spies in the Tower. So far as the depositions went, they were in direct contradiction to these assertions; and the conversations of the two Jesuits, if faithfully reported, only proved Garnet to have been aware of the plot, and in no case to have originated or encouraged it.
Garnet defended himself with a suavity and ability which charmed even so prejudiced and reluctant an audience. He admitted precisely what he had admitted on his last examinations, and nothing more. Nothing could exceed the temper which he displayed under the most provoking and continual interruptions from the attorney-general and the commissioners on the bench. So harassing and unfair were these, that James himself declared that Garnet had a great right to complain. A verdict of guilty was pronounced against him, with the sentence of hanging, drawing, and quartering.
But though Garnet was condemned, from some cause or other he was not led to execution for more than six weeks after his trial. Either it was deemed that the evidence against him was not sufficient to justify his death, or, possibly, that more proofs of the real extent and ramifications of the plot might be drawn from him. Some such reasons created the delay, for though under sentence of death he was still subjected to harassing examinations, and fresh stratagems and falsehoods were employed to suprise him into disclosures. He was now told that Greenway was a prisoner in the Tower, though he really was safe on the Continent, and that five hundred catholics, shocked at his guilt in the plot, had turned protestants. Under the agony of mind which these statements produced, he was permitted to write to the supposed prisoner Greenway, and to Mrs. Vaux, a real prisoner, in explanation; but out of these letters they obtained nothing further. Garnet at the same time wrote also to the king, declaring his ignorance of any plot of gunpowder. They then pretended that Greenway had asserted that what he told Garnet of the plot was not under seal of confession. These tricks, though they tortured the prisoner, did not advance the objects of his persecutors, for he protested that by the laws of England no man was bound to criminate himself, and that if unduly pressed, a prisoner was less blamable for equivocating than were his powerful oppressors who violated the law in order to condemn him. And truly, however much the Jesuit might prevaricate under these inquisitorial and un-English proceedings, he had far more excuse than the government, which sought its ends by spies, the most despicable falsehoods, and by stripping his admissions, in charging the jury, of all qualifying circumstances, which, says Jardine, truly "was a forgery of evidence. For when a qualified statement is made, the suppression of the qualification is no less a forgery than if the whole statement had been falsicated." Garnet was executed on the 3rd of May, and Cecil was honoured with the garter for his diligence in tracing out the plot, and bringing the traitors to justice.
Though the catholics had shown such a decided aversion to the plot, they were not allowed to escape without further punishment. The lords Montague, Stourton, and Mordaunt, being persons mentioned in the depositions of the conspirators as persons who were to be warned, they were arrested, along with the earl of Northumberland, who was suspected, on account of his relationship to Percy. They were brought into the star-chamber, and though nothing could be proved against them they were condemned to be fined—Stourton six thousand pounds, Mordaunt ten thousand pounds, and Montague considerably more. Against Northumberland the proceedings were especially severe. He had long been a decided antagonist of Cecil's, and the opportunity was too tempting to that cold-blooded statesman to be omitted; besides, it was suspected by the government that it was to him that the conspirators proposed to offer the protectorship if they had succeeded. His conduct in the Tower displayed so much spirit and independence, that it greatly alarmed the timid soul of James. He demanded to be brought to a public and legal trial, and dared them to prove him guilty of any treasonable act. After a seven months delay, they preferred arraigning him in the star-chamber, on the charges that he sought to make himself the head of the papists, and to procure toleration, the latter an honour to him to all posterity, could they have proved it; that he had admitted Percy to be a gentleman-pensioner without tendering him the oath of supremacy, to which were added the frivolous accusations, that after his arrest he ​had written to the north to his servants to tell them to take care that Percy did not carry off his money; thus, it was argued, showing more regard for his money than his king, On such miserable grounds, totally unsupported by fact, he was sentenced to pay a fine of thirty thousand pounds, to be deprived of all his offices, held incapable of ever holding them again, and to be detained in the Tower during life. The public was greatly astonished at the severity of this punishment, which nothing but private motives could explain.
The earl passed his time in his captivity in literary and scientific pursuits, and in the society of the most distinguished men of the age. His liberality to men of genius and learning was extraordinary. The number of mathematicians who were his associates and entertained at his table, gave him the title of Henry the Wizard. Hill, Allen, Hariot, Dee, Torperly, and Warner, "the Atlantes of the mathematical world," were nearly all in receipt of annuities from him. Yet the spiteful Cecil could not leave him unmolested in this pleasant and honourable society. In 1611 he employed the spleen of a dismissed servant against him, but again failed in his charge. In 1617 the king's favourite. Hay, afterwards earl of Carlisle, married his daughter Lucy, much against his will, and obtained an order for his liberation after thirteen years' imprisonment.
Besides these noblemen, an attempt was made by every effort to secure the persons of Owen and Baldwin, two Jesuits, who had been confederates of Fawkes in Flanders; but the king of Spain and the archduke refused to surrender them.
No further prosecutions appearing feasible, a parliament, was summoned for the double purpose of raising money and of extending additional punishment over the catholics generally. The whole country was in that state of alarm and hostility to them, that James found it necessary to restrain rather than encourage the mania. Such was the public excitement, that even he was not exempt from blame on account of this lenity. He had chosen this inauspicious moment to make overtures to Spain for the Infanta as a wife for prince Henry, and the puritans at once ascribed his moderation to this cause, and declared that he was little better than a secret papist himself. James was alarmed and obliged to give way. It was in vain that Henry IV. of France remonstrated against a bigotry which had already driven some of the catholics to such desperate lengths. Broderic, his ambassador, represented that the king his master had learned from experience that persecution only stimulated zealots to a temper in which they gloried in suffering, and that far more could be effected by kindness than by severity; that James should, if he loved peace, make himself their protector instead of their persecutor. But parliament soon showed how useless at the moment was such advice. Both houses appeared to be carried beyond all reason by their fears and their resentment. On the 3rd of February every member of the and propound such measures as appeared to him most desirable. The most extravagant propositions appeared the most acceptable, and after impetuous debates upon them, they were communicated by conferences to the other house, and in both lords and commons motions of the severest description were made and carried by triumphant majorities. Catholic recusants were now forbidden to appear at court, to dwell within its boundaries, or within ten miles of the boundaries; of London; or to remove on any occasion more than five miles from their homes, under particular penalties, unless in the latter case they had a license from four neighbouring magistrates. They were rendered incapable of practising in surgery, physic, or common or civil law; of acting as judges, clerks, officers, in any court or corporation, of presenting to church livings, schools, or hospitals in their gift; or of exercising the functions of executors or guardians; where persons were married by catholic priests, the husband, if a catholic, could not claim the property of the wife, nor the wife, if a catholic, that of the husband; and if a child born was not baptised by a protestant minister within a month, the penalty was one hundred and fifty pounds; and so every corpse not buried in a protestant cemetery, the penalty was twenty pounds. All the existing penalties for absence from church were retained, with the addition that whoever received catholic visitors, or kept catholic servants, must pay for each such individual ten pounds per lunar month. Every recusant was declared to be excommunicated; his house might be broken open and searched at any time, his books and any articles belonging to "his idolatrous worship" might be burnt, and his arms and horses seized by the order of a single magistrate.
A new oath of allegiance was framed recognising absolute renunciation of the right of the pope to interfere in the temporal affairs of the kingdom. The catholics who submitted to take this oath were to be liable only to the penalties now enumerated; but they who refused were to be imprisoned for life, and to suffer forfeiture of their personal property and the rents of their lands.
The publication of these terrible enactments carried astonishment and dismay through the nation; many protestants as well as catholics condemned them. The French minister Villeroy declared that they were characteristic of barbarians rather than of Christians. Many catholics made haste to quit their native country, and the rest prepared to sacrifice both property and personal liberty. The pope Paul V. despatched a secret emissary to James, imploring him to relax the rigour of the new laws, but without success; and the pontiff, resenting the repulse, then published a breve, denouncing the oath of allegiance as unlawful, "because contrary to faith and salvation." The publication of this imprudent breve only made matters worse. The catholic clergy were before its arrival divided in their opinions as to the lawfulness of taking (illegible text); the archpriest Blackwall himself, with many of his brethren, were prepared to take it. The authority of the pope extinguished theirs, and decided the majority; yet Blackwell took the oath himself, and advised the catholics, by a circular letter, to take it.
But no submission on the part of a portion of the catholics could mitigate the wrath of James at the conduct of the pope. He ordered the bishops in their several dioceses to tender the oath, and to enforce the penalties on all recusants. Three missionaries lying under sentence of death for the commons was ordered to stand up in his place exercise of their priestly functions, were called upon to take it; they refused. Two of them were saved by the earnest intercession of the prince de Joinville and the French ambassador. The third, named Drury, was hanged, drawn, and quartered. Blackwall, the archpriest, himself was thrown into prison, though he had both taken the oath and advised the rest of the catholics to take it; and though James greatly pitied him, he could do nothing more in his behalf ​than prevent his being brought to trial and capitally condemned. The case of Blackwall was extremely hard, for, on the other hand, he had excited the resentment of the pope by his concession. He was called on by letters from cardinals Bellarmine and Arrigoni, and the Jesuits Persons and Holtby to retract; but as he would not, he was superseded by Birket. He was then in his seventieth year, and remained in prison till his death, in 1613.
A second breve from the pope roused the spirit of James; he determined to try whether he could not silence the clamour of the papal party by his pen. He abandoned even the pleasures of the chase, refused to listen to his ministers, and calling his favourite divines around him, he shut himself up with them, and produced a tract called "An Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance," which was immediately translated into French and Latin. But as the royal brochure did not convince the catholics, six priests were condemned for refusing the oath, and three of them were executed, one at York and two at Tyburn. Moreau, Bellarmine, and Persons, published replies to the royal treatise; and again James closeted himself with his divines, revised his publication, and prefaced it with a "Premonition to all Christian Princes." It was in vain that the kings of Denmark and France counselled him to desist from a contest so unworthy of a great monarch, in vain that the queen urged the same advice. He condescended to declare that the fittest answer to Persons would be a rope; and as for Bellarmine, who had written under a feigned name, he dubbed him "a most obscure author, a very desperate fellow in beginning his apprentisage, not only to refute, but to rail at a king." The flatterers of the king applauded his "immortal labours," as they were pleased to call them; and James continued to toil at them, revise, and remodel his arguments till 1609. The catholic peers, with the exception of lord Teynham, all took the oath on different occasions in the upper house.
To dismiss for the present the religious controversies which kept the kingdom in a ferment of bitterness, we have a little overstepped the progress of general events. In the spring of 1606 James called together parliament, for he was in much distress for money. As usual, the commons had their list of grievances to set off against his demands, and as James showed no eagerness to redress no less than sixteen subjects of complaint, the commons made no haste with the supplies. At length, in the month of May, whilst the question of the subsidy was dragging its slow length along, and Cecil was endeavouring in vain to quicken the motion of the house, by making promises which meant nothing beyond inducing the members to vote, a sudden rumour ran through the court that the king was assassinated at Oaking, in Berkshire, where he was hunting along with his favourites, the earl of Montgomery, Sir John Ramsay, and Sir James Hay. The mode of his death was variously reported. One version was that he had been stabbed with a poisoned knife, and another that he had been shot with a pistol, and a third that he was smothered in his bed. The murderers were differently represented to be the Jesuits, Scotchmen in women's clothes, Frenchmen, and Spaniards. There was a great consternation both in the city and the parliament. The lords displayed the greatest loyalty; and the commons suddenly closed their money debate by voting three subsidies and six fifteenths. In the midst of the panic James arrived safe and sound in London, and was received with proportionate enthusiasm. As the sensation went off, many began to suspect that Cecil, and perhaps the king himself, could have explained the origin of the ruse; that it was but a spur to the tardy liberality of the commons. At all events, James, having obtained his supplies, prorogued parliament to the 18th of November.
The subsidies were voted all in good time, for in July of this year, Christian IV., king of Denmark, the brother of queen Anne, paid his royal brother-in-law a visit. The queen had been recently confined of a daughter, which only lived to be christened, so that Anne was necessarily unable to be present at the rejoicings and court fêtes given on the occasion. And perhaps it was owing to the absence of the restraint of her presence that the festivities of the two kings and the whole court degenerated into a grossness and drunken excess which scandalised the whole nation. The maskings, banquetings, balls, tiltings, and all manner of rude sports, wrestling, bull and bear baitings, kept both court and city in a continual riot. But the excess reached its height at an entertainment given by Cecil to the kings and courtiers at his magnificent seat of Theobalds. "There," says Sir John Harrington, in "Nugæ Antiquæ," "those whom I never could get to taste good liquor, now follow the fashion and wallow in beastly delights. The ladies abandon sobriety, and roll about in intoxication. After dinner, the representation of Solomon, his temple, and the coming of the queen of Sheba was made. The lady who did play the queen's part did carry most precious gifts to both their majesties, but forgetting the steps arising to the canopy, overset her caskets into his Danish majesty's lap, and fell at his feet, though I rather think it was his face. Much was the hurry and confusion: cloths and napkins were at hand to make all clean."
The end of the entertainment was that his Danish majesty, attempting to dance with the queen of Sheba, fell down, and was obliged to be carried to bed, and the majesty of England was at the same time carried to his in the same state of drunken prostration. King Christian remained barely a month, and during the time was as lavish of his gifts as of his jollity. He presented to his sister his portrait richly set with jewels; to the king a rapier and hanger worth seven thousand pounds; to the prince of Wales a man of war, valued at eight thousand pounds; and distributed amongst the English courtiers gold chains and jewels amounting to fifteen thousand pounds. But with all his munificence. Christian did not avoid making enemies in the English court in his drunken freedoms: his expressions to the countess of Nottingham were never forgiven by her, and the offence is recorded in a very indignant letter addressed by her to one of the king of Denmark's suite, Sir Andrew St. Clair.
We may here devote a few words to the character of James's court at this period. So strong did party run in those times, that we have the most opposite descriptions of both James and his queen, personality, morality, and intellectually. With few of any party, however, had James managed to make himself popular. He was not without a certain degree of shrewdness which often took by surprise those who were disposed to think him shallow: he had a considerable amount of learning, but so accompanied by authorly vanity, rather than regal pride, that he lost all respect by his inordinate desire to show it. He had no manly dignity even on public state occasions, and amongst his chosen associates he condescended to such displays of homely ​familiarity and of drunken debauchery as were more in character with a groom than a great king. The description which we have already given of his person is by no means attractive, yet cardinal Bentivoglio, whilst expressing his resentment at his persecution of the catholics, represents him in a much more agreeable light than many other contemporaries. He says, "The king of England is above the middle height, of a fair and florid complexion, and very noble feature, though in his demeanour and carriage he manifests no kind of grace or kingly dignity."
The cardinal was equally flattering in his opinion of the queen, praising her beauty and elegance of manner, and her fluency in the Italian language. On the other hand, Molino draws a very different picture of her. "She has an ordinary appearance," he says, "and lives remote from public affairs. She is very fond of dancing and entertainments; very gracious to those who know how to promote her wishes; but to those whom she does not like, she is proud, disdainful, not to say insupportable."
Anne of Denmark, we may believe, was a princess of a handsome person, and possessing a love of elegance and pleasure. She had a high, sensitive spirit, and much taste. She was fond of court pageants, and of those domestic sports and relaxations in which the German and Scandinavian people still delight, but which, to our grave fancy, often approach the puerile. Whilst James and his lords were absent at the hunt, she and her maids amused themselves in the long autumnal evenings with a variety of such games as may yet be seen in her native country at social parties. They played at "Rise pig, and go." "One penny, follow me." "Fire," and "I pray, my lord, give me a course in your park." Anne was passionately fond of dancing, and the marquis of Westminster gave some grand fêtes and balls at Basing House for her entertainment. But as she was fond of poetry and the fine arts, she made her court celebrated for the performance of masques, of which Ben Jonson was the chief artificer. On the installation of prince Charles as duke of York in 1605, she had performed Jonson's Masque of Blackness, and appeared in it herself as one of the twelve daughters of the Nile, with her maids of honour, all with their faces, arms, and hands blackened. In this sable disguise she danced with the Spanish ambassador.
With her taste for amusement, however, Anne was a woman of spotless honour, and displayed much affection for her children, and good sense in their management; and had James been a man to estimate her better qualities and to cherish them, she might have displayed a still higher tone of womanly superiority. But the king was too vain, and too much addicted to rude and degrading indulgences to sympathise sufficiently with her in her tastes and fancies, and the consequence was that she despised him, and was not at sufficient pains often to disguise her feelings. Her son Henry is said to have caught this sentiment from her, and James was so much aware of it, that he was often constrained and embarrassed in her presence. After Anne arrived in England, however, and had the society of her children, she never meddled in political affairs, except it was to intercede in behalf of some meritorious man in trouble, as in the case of Sir Walter Raleigh. She contented herself with her domestic life, and with enlivening her court with gay masques and ballets, with the assistance of the first poets and artists of the age; sometimes appearing herself as a goddess, a Turkish sultana, or an Indian queen. To enable her to appear fitly as the queen of England in this her gay court, she not only retained her Scotch dower, but had a jointure of six thousand three hundred and seventy-six pounds a year, besides Somerset House, Hatfield Manor, and the royal palaces of Nonsuch and Pontefract; the king charging himself with all the expenses of her household and stable, her own funds being reserved for her costs in wages, her wardrobe, and gratuities. Twelve councillors were appointed to assist her in regulating her expenditure, and she devoted much money to the improvement and embellishment of her town residence, Somerset House, which then, in honour of her, was called Denmark House.
The severity of James did not prevent his wife being suspected of a leaning towards popery and the Spanish interest; but this probably arose from the favour which the Spanish ambassador enjoyed amongst all the ladies at court, not excepting the queen herself, being a very gay and fascinating fellow, who devoted himself greatly to their amusement, and distributed amongst them Spanish gloves. Perhaps, too, the popery notion was strengthened by Anne refusing at her coronation to receive the sacrament in the English fashion. She had already been required in Scotland to abandon her Lutheran faith for the Calvinistic one, and thought it rather too unreasonable to be called on to relinquish that for the modes of the church of England. She was only the more deserving of respect for objecting to put off her religion as she would a dress on every new occasion; and it seems that the prelates of the Anglican church were some of them liberal enough to admit that; for the bishop of Winchester declared that she "was of a religious stock, professing the gospel of Christ with him; a mirror of true modesty, a queen of beauty, beloved by the people." It is much to the credit of Anne that she always expressed her unmitigated disgust at the injustice and rapacity which she found rife at the English court, and did not hesitate to counsel any of those about her to resist it, and to guard themselves against it.
Meantime the king addicted himself to his own low mode of life in spite of conjugal appeal or ministerial remonstrance. We are assured by various authorities of the time that twice a week he went to the cock-pit, and the rest of the week was given up to the pleasures of the chase, from dawn till twilight, and the night was wound up by a gormandising supper and a drunken debauch. Business was the last thing he could be led to. For weeks together foreign ambassadors on pressing occasions could obtain no access to him, though his ministers on their knees implored him to give attention to urgent affairs. Anonymous letters were addressed to him, calling him to remember his royal duties; and the actors even introduced him on the stage in the character of a mad huntsman, cursing his hounds and hawks, striking his attendants in his fury, and drinking like a bacchanal every evening. But these freedoms only irritated without reforming him. He declared that his health demanded active life, that he did not come to England to be a slave, and would sooner go back to Scotland than mope his time away in a closet or chained to the council table.
The visit of his brother-in-law of Denmark had led James into greater excess than ever, and no sooner was he gone than prince Vaudemont, a relative of James's, of the house of Guise, made his appearance with a gay and numerous retinue. This led to fresh hunting, fresh jovialities, ​and James was more than ever intractible as to business. After the departure of Vaudemont, however, he consented to meet his parliament. The great business of parliament now for several sessions, that is, from 1604 to 1607, was that of discussing James's proposition for the union of the two kingdoms. This very proposition, so immediately brought forward, was a glaring proof of James's want of solid judgment. The least reflection might have satisfied the least reflecting mind, that two nations which had for so many ages been inflamed against each other by wars, injustice, mutual cruelties, political jealousies, and the taunts which the most embittered passions had caused them to fling on each other, would require a long time to reconcile them to the idea of entire amalgamation. The centuries of attempted usurpation on the part of the English, and the determined resistance, even to the death, on the part of the Scots, made the latter people sensitively apprehensive of the union. They saw in it only the accomplishment of the same end by different means. They felt assured that the stronger nation in such a coalition would seek to domineer, and they had no intention to wipe out all the glories of their more than Spartan valour in defence of their independence, all the cherished fame of their Wallace and their Bruces, by a tamely accepted yoke of diplomatic subtlety. They were the more indisposed by the foolish boastings of James of his absolute power. His high notions of prerogative appeared to have grown wonderfully since his accession to the English throne. He compared himself to a god upon earth, and had already given out his style and title as king of Great Britain. The Scotch were, therefore, naturally apprehensive of a union which would wonderfully augment his powers. Still more, his new and excessive leaning towards episcopacy alarmed the Scots. They saw nothing but its attempted imposition on them in the union of the kingdoms, and they were not inclined thus easily to give up their freedom of conscience which they had fought out at so much cost. On the other hand, James's imprudent lavishment of posts and honours on Scotchmen in England, offended and disgusted the English. They asked whether they were to be overrun by a regular inundation of proud and hungry adventurers from the north. In the commons the expressions of contempt and aversion to the Scottish race grew to the height of insolence and insult, and were sure to excite the most indignant feeling in that people. Sir Christopher Pigot, the member for Buckinghamshire, especially distinguished himself by the vituperation of Scotchmen. He professed the utmost horror at the idea of union betwixt a rich and fertile country like England, and a sterile and poor one like Scotland; betwixt a people wealthy, frank, and generous, and one at once haughty, beggarly, and penurious. This put the climax to the patience of Scotland, and James declared he could no longer tolerate language which insulted himself as a Scot.
Hendlip House, the Retreat of the Jesuit Garnet.
Cecil at the command of the king took up the matter warmly, and the house of commons, persuaded by him, expelled Pigot, and he was committed to the Tower. Defeated in the commons, James betook himself to the courts of law. He had proposed to the commons to pass an act, naturalising all Scots, even those born before his accession to the English throne; but when they rejected this, he obtained a decision from the judges sanctioning the admission of the inhabitants of each kingdom to all the rights of subjects in both. This would in a few years have made the Scots as much subjects of the English crown as the English themselves, but James was not content with this. He used very angry and impudent ​language, threatening to leave London and fix his court at York or Berwick; telling his English subjects to remember that he was a king, who had to govern them and to answer for their errors; who was made of flesh and blood like themselves, and might be tempted to do what they would not like.
Arabella Stuart. From the original picture.
The commons resented this language: they sent their speaker to desire that he would receive no reports of their debates or proceedings except from themselves, and that they might be permitted to feel that they were at liberty to deliver their opinions in their own house without restraint or fear. James, who was easily alarmed, professed to have no desire to encroach on their liberty of speech, but no sooner did they put him to the test than he renewed his interference. A petition being presented to the house complaining of the oppressions upon the puritans, and the abuses of the church. James sent an order to the speaker to inform the house that they were meddling with what belonged alone to him. The members declared this to be a violation of their privileges, but the speaker informed them that there were plenty of ​precedents for such restraint on the house by the crown. The house on this proposed to appoint a committee to inquire into these precedents, and how far they were founded in constitutional right; but here again, James, fearing he had gone too far, sent them word, that although the matter in question properly belonged to him, he should not object to their reading the petition.
But the crown and the house very soon came into collision on the subject of the powers of the commons. A petition was presented from the merchants, representing the injuries their ships and commerce received from Spain, particularly on the coasts of South America, the ports of which the Spanish were endeavouring to close against all other nations. The commons thought it a subject of that national character that they should have the co-operation of the peers with them, and therefore sent to the upper house proposing a conference. But the lords demurred, thinking it a subject which the commons were scarcely authorised to enter upon. The difficulty, however, was mutually obviated; the lords agreed to the conference. But it proved only an occasion seized upon by the crown to deliver a lecture to the commons on their aspiring to deal with subjects too high for them. James was, in fact, contemplating an alliance with Spain, and was by no means disposed to offend its rulers. Cecil, therefore, and lord Henry Howard, now earl of Northampton, read the commons a very plain lecture, instructing them that all matters appertaining to peace or war, and all such topics as led to these results, belonged especially to the crown; which indeed occasionally consulted the commons, not out of right or necessity, but as a matter of favour, and also of policy, when it was advisable to have the sympathy and co-operation of the representatives of the people. That the declaration of war or concession of peace were the absolute prerogative of the crown; the business of the commons was more private and local, such as furnishing funds, and when money was wanted, they would be sure to hear of it.
The commons allowed the petition of the merchants to stand over for the time, but out of doors the spirit of dissatisfaction rose high, and the leaning of James towards Spain was narrowly watched and commented upon.
Whilst the government and the commons were engaged in this discussion, a serious insurrection called the attention of the council another way. The lucky courtiers who had obtained amongst them the estates of the gentlemen forfeited for their share in the gunpowder plot, whilst dividing and inclosing, like their predecessors who had obtained the estates of the church, cast greedy eyes on the adjacent common lands, and inclosed as much as they could of them with the rest. The people, deprived of their right of pasturage, rose in resistance, as they had done in the reign of Edward VI. They had the statutes regarding inclosures in their favour, and assembling in numbers from one to five thousand, they broke down the new fences, filled up the ditches, and restored the usurped fields to their ancient state as common. Like the agrarian reformer, Ket of Norfolk, they confined themselves strictly to their legitimate object. They conducted themselves with perfect order; committed no depredations on really private property, nor perpetrated any excesses, to which their numbers might have tempted them. They appeared in great force at Hill Norton, in Warwickshire, an estate of Tresham's, and in their largest amount of five thousand at Coleshill. Their leaders, whoever they were, appeared in masks, except one man of the name of Reynolds, who was an enthusiast, and set all danger at defiance; declaring that he was sent of God to satisfy men of all degrees, and had, moreover, authority from the king to level all the new fences. He acquired the name of Captain Pouch, from a large pocket which he wore at his side, and in which he boasted that he carried a charm which not only made him invulnerable to sword or bullet, but which would protect them from all harm.
The insurgents broke out about the middle of May, having in vain previously presented their memorials to the council, the members of which were too much interested in the lands in question to pay any attention to them. At first James and the court were greatly alarmed, supposing it to be a demonstration of the catholics or puritans. The guards at the palace were doubled, and orders were issued to the lord mayor to watch the motions of the apprentices in the city. A little time, however, revealed the real nature of the movement, and the insurgents were ordered by proclamation to disperse; but they stood their ground, assuring the magistrates that they were only executing the statutes against inclosures, and were under orders not to violate the law in any manner, nor even to indulge in swearing. The lieutenants then endeavoured to raise the counties, but the yeomanry displayed no desire to interfere in such a cause; and many gentlemen even contended that it was best to concede the matter to the poor, advice which, if followed, would no doubt have insured speedy quietness without bloodshed. But this did not suit the views of the interested council, and the earls of Huntingdon and Exeter and lord Zouch were sent down with a considerable force to quell them. Sir Edward Montague and Sir Anthony Mildmay came upon a number of them busy levelling the inclosures at Newton, another estate forfeited by Tresham. They found them well armed with bills and bows, pikes and stones. The officers commanded them to disperse, but they refused, and after twice reading the riot act in vain, they ordered a charge. The trained bands showed no relish for the business; but the regular cavalry, and the servants of Mildmay and Montague, attacked them briskly. The insurgents returned the attack with much bravery, but at the second charge broke and fled. Forty or fifty of them were killed, and a great number wounded. Sir Henry Fookes, who led on the infantry against them, was severely wounded.
After this defeat "the levellers," as they were called, were pursued in all directions, and everywhere put down and dispersed. Many prisoners were made, and a commission, with Sir Edward Coke at its head, was appointed to try them.
James, with a good feeling that did him honour, instructed the commission to use moderation in punishing the prisoners, declaring that the council had been more to blame than them, for neglecting their petitions. Had they not intercepted them, he pretended to say that they would have received redress from him. He maintained that they had been oppressed and driven to resistance by the rapacity of ​the gentry and the neglect of ministers. Pouch and some of his associates were condemned and executed as traitors on the 28th of June; and some of the others were hanged as felons because they had not dispersed on the reading of the riot act.
The king could now return to his beloved chase. On the 4th of July he prorogued parliament till November, but having got a considerable sum of money from it, and little other satisfaction, he did not call it together again till the February of 1610. Could he have found sufficient funds any other way, it is quite certain that he would never have called it any more. In his suit of Lincoln green, with a little feather in his hat, and a horn by his side instead of a sword, he followed his hounds through the forest, happy as Nimrod himself, so long as the means lasted. But James's court was altogether on an extravagant scale. Like a youthful heir, whose guardians have kept him close, and who makes up for a long abstinence by tenfold profuseness on coming to his estate, James, escaped from the poverty of his Scottish establishment, where he had mainly lived on his pension from Elizabeth, now gave a loose to extravagance, as if nothing could exhaust the affluence of England. He had a most expensive menage, and he gave away money to his favourites as though he had the wishing-cap of Fortunatus.
We have already seen how liberally his queen was provided for. His own household was on a scale of proportionate expenditure. Even those of Henry and Elizabeth, two children, consisted of one hundred and forty personages. In 1610, but three years after this period, that of prince Henry was increased to four hundred and twenty-six individuals, of whom two hundred and ninety-seven were in receipt of salaries, besides a number of workmen employed under Inigo Jones, the architect.
But the presents to his favourites would have given the idea that his resources were interminable. At the marriage of Sir Philip Herbert with Lady Susan Vere, he gave him an estate valued at £500 a year. At the marriage of Ramsay, viscount Haddington, with lady Elizabeth Ratcliffe, he paid his debts, amounting to £10,000, having already endowed him with an estate of £1,000 per annum; and he presented to the bride a gold cup containing the patent of a grant of lands worth £600 a year. His presents at different times to lord Dunbar amounted to £15,262; to the earl of Mar, £15,500; and to viscount Haddington, £31,000.
This viscount Haddington was the Sir John Ramsay who stabbed the earl of Gowrie, at the time of the singular Gowrie conspiracy; and James went on promoting him till he became earl of Holderness, with many grants of lands, gifts, and pensions. The second in James's regard, in the early part of his reign, was another Scotchman, James Hay, whom he successively created lord Hay, viscount Doncaster, and earl of Carlisle. Clarendon says that this man, in the course of a very licentious career, spent above four hundred thousand pounds, and left neither house nor child to be remembered by. James, in England, also chose several English favourites. The first of those was Sir Philip Herbert, brother of the earl of Pembroke, and a son of the sister of Sir Philip Sidney. He was created earl of Montgomery, and was especially agreeable to James because he despised all learning—for James was jealous of all such—and took pleasure only, like his royal master, in dogs and horses. Montgomery was in the ascendant till the king's eye fell on one Robert Carr, destined to a strange history; and the English and Scottish favourites, by their mutual hatred of each other, their quarrels and duels, gave James sufficient trouble. Haddington and Montgomery had an affray in which Montgomery showed the white feather, and James sent Haddington for a short time to the Tower. Douglas, the master of the horse, was killed in one of these squabbles; and some years later lord Sanquhar had an eye thrust out by a fencing master, for which his lordship killed him, and was executed for the deed. Such was the disgraceful condition of the court of the Scottish Solomon.
During the years 1608 and 1609, negotiations were pending betwixt the United Provinces of the Netherlands and Spain. James, who had a claim on these provinces for above eight hundred thousand pounds, on account of advances and services by Elizabeth, for which he held the towns of Flushing, Brill, and Rammekens, would have been glad to obtain possession of the money. So well was this known, that there were rumours that, as he could not obtain the sum due, he was intending to sell the towns to Philip III. of Spain. The archduke Albert was still in Flanders, not having abandoned the hope of recovering the revolted states; and catholics from England were in the habit of volunteering to assist them in undoing what queen Elizabeth had done there. But much as James was pressed for money, he was scarcely daring enough to aid Spain in its views. The spirit of protestantism was too strong in England tamely to witness such an anti-protestant policy; and, in fact, James himself was rather afraid of an attack from Spain, than hoping for a coalition with it. The earl of Tyrone had fallen under suspicion of fresh rebellion, and had fled to the Spaniards in the Netherlands for security Cecil apprehended that Philip might be disposed to attempt his restoration, and sent to Sir Charles Cornwallis, at Madrid, to use bold language on the occasion. This appears to have had effect, for Tyrone retired to Italy. But a new danger presented itself in the rumour of negotiations for peace betwixt Holland and Spain. Cecil dreaded a pacification betwixt these powers, as it would allow Philip more opportunity to turn his attention to Ireland, if so disposed.
The English government was surprised and mortified to learn that such negotiations were actually proceeding, and that the king of France had been invited to join in them. At length James, who had so deep a stake in the Netherlands, received a formal notice to the same effect, soliciting his co-operation. These negotiations were conducted at the Hague, but it was not till March, 1609, that they were brought to a conclusion. The result was a truce for twelve years, which was, in fact, equivalent to a peace, acknowledging the independence of the Dutch states, after a brave conflict for liberty of forty years. The debt of James, amounting to eight hundred and eighteen thousand pounds, was acknowledged, and engagements entered into for its payment by annual instalments of sixty thousand pounds. But the first payment was not to be made till the end of two years, and James was still to retain the cautionary towns till the whole was discharged.
​The postponement of the payment of the debt of Holland was extremely embarrassing to Cecil. On the death of the earl of Dorset, in 1608, he succeeded to the office of treasurer, and to the clamorous demands which had been made upon Dorset. His carriage had been stopped in the streets by the servants of the king's household, who were loud in their demands for their long arrears of wages, and the purveyors refused to bring in any more supplies till they were paid their advances. Cecil, on examining the accounts, found James one million three hundred thousand pounds in debt, and exceeding his income at the rate of upwards of eighty thousand pounds per annum. He set to work resolutely to curtail this expenditure, and to devise means of raising money. James always claimed an authority paramount to all laws; and Cecil ventured to put in practice the idea of prerogative in raising the necessary funds. He called in rigorously the unpaid remains of the last-voted subsidies, and then proceeded to lay on duties and impose monopolies of the most odious nature, without any sanction of parliament. His predecessor Dorset has set him the example by levying an import duty on currants by letters patent. This illegal demand had been resisted, and Bates, a Turkey merchant, was proceeded against for refusal to pay, in the court of exchequer. This court was base enough to decide in favour of this unconstitutional stretch of power, and James was delighted at so auspicious a concession of the justice of his doctrine of prerogative. Cecil pressed on in the path thus opened, and laid on import and export duties on various articles by orders under the great seal. He imposed a feudal aid towards the knighting of the prince Henry, of twenty shillings on each knight's fee; but this produced only twenty-eight thousand pounds. He then extended his duties to almost every species of imported and exported goods, at the rate of five pounds per cent. on the value of the goods, which he calculated would produce three hundred thousand pounds per annum; and he sold to the Dutch a right of fishing on the coasts of England and Scotland. Cecil himself was the farmer of these duties. They were, however, of a character to excite the utmost dissatisfaction; trade fell off under their influence, fewer ships came into the English ports, and there was at length no alternative but to summon a parliament, which met on the 24th of February, 1610.
The great topics which occupied this parliament were, of course, the king's want of money, and his continual violations of magna charta. Cecil, seeing the desperate state of the royal finances, made a bold demand that six hundred thousand pounds should be at once voted to liquidate his debts, and that an annual addition of two hundred thousand pounds should be consented to, as a permanent pension, to prevent his getting into debt again. But Cecil committed a great blunder, both in business routine and in sound policy, by proposing this money measure to the lords instead of to the commons, whose proper business it was. The commons resented this course, and were more determined than ever in demanding a departure from the unconstitutional practice of imposing duties without their consent. They declared that the imprisonment of Bates for opposing this practice, though sanctioned by the exchequer, was nevertheless illegal. Francis Bacon and Sir John Davis endeavoured to justify the despotic proceeding, but only to the greater exasperation of the house. It was declared that if the taxing of merchandise by prerogative was permitted, the taxing of their lands would soon follow. James sent them word to desist from such discussions; but the commons were not to be thus silenced, whereupon James sent for both houses to Whitehall, and delivered a most blasphemous speech in vindication of his inflated notions of kingly authority. "Kings," said he, "are justly called gods, for they exercise a manner or resemblance of divine power upon earth. For if you will consider the attributes of God, you shall see how they agree in the person of a king. God hath power to create or destroy, to make or unmake, at his pleasure; to give life or send death, to judge all, and to be judged of nor accountable to none; to raise low things, and to make high things low, at his pleasure; and to God both body and soul are due. And the like power have kings. They make and unmake their subjects; they have power of raising and casting down, of life and of death; judges over all their subjects, and in all cases, and yet accountable to none but God only. They have power to exalt low things and abase high things, and make of their subjects like men of chess—a pawn to take a bishop or a knight; and to cry up or down any of their subjects as they do their money. And to the king is due both the affection of the soul, and the service of the body of his subjects." To resist the king in any of his acts or impositions, he declared was sedition; for the king was above all law, and laws were, in fact, but granted by kings to the people as a matter of favour.
We, who have seen the result of this spirit and this language, cannot but recognise in them the fatal power which placed the block and whetted the axe for his son. James had the mind essentially of a pedant, and not of a philosopher. With all his affected wisdom, and with occasional gleams of knowingness, he saw only the surface of things; and could no more penetrate into the depths of their causation, than a butterfly in a flower can dream of the roots which supply the honey to its glands. He was the incurable fool of absolutism. Before him stood a rising and mighty power, a people growing rich, independent, and cognisant of their rights; but he was as blind to the formidable apparition as Balaam was to the angel in his way, though his very ass could see it.
The commons would not listen to such insane language. They told the king that in extolling the power of kings, he forgot the existence of magna charta, which set eternal and impassable bounds to that power; and they appointed a committee to search for the legality or illegality of all such practices. The crown lawyers in committee argued that "the reverence of past ages, and the possession of present times," sanctioned the king's doctrine; and that the right of imposing duties had been exercised by the three first Edwards by their own will, and independent of parliament; and that if it had been interrupted from Richard II. to Mary, yet that princess had reassumed the royal privilege, and that it was continued by Elizabeth. But the commons replied that in all these cases the monarchs had violated magna charta, the statute de tallagio non concedendo, and twelve other parliamentary enactments; that no time or ​practice could establish a right against those great bulwarks of popular liberty. And the commons therefore demanded that a law should be made during this session, declaring that all such impositions of duties or taxes, without consent of parliament, should be pronounced for ever void. And they accordingly passed such a bill, which, however, was rejected by the more subservient lords.
James writhed under this plain and direct denial of his assumed authority, and refused to surrender the question. He found in the bishops a body, on the whole, ready to cooperate with him in his attempt to destroy the constitution; and Bancroft, the primate, led the way with most unblushing baseness. Under his leadership the whole high church party echoed the king's most absolute dogmas, and claimed for him all the divinity which he professed to possess. The king, according to their creed, being divine, so were the bishops who were appointed by him, and therefore this divine crown and church were above all law. The ecclesiastical courts carried this pernicious theory into daily practice, and encroached on the temporal ones as pertinaciously as the king did on parliament. There was a grand struggle betwixt the common and the civil law. The judges, who saw this arrogance of the clergy with jealousy and disgust, began to relax their enmity against the puritans, and to regard them as the natural allies of the law against absolutism.
On the other hand, the king and the bishops sought out fresh means, and one of these was to bring forward a base slave, called Dr. Cowell, who, in his "Interpreter, or Law Dictionary," broached the most unmitigated maxims of tyranny. He declared that the king inherited all the powers which had been exercised by the emperors of Rome; as if the empire of the Romans had never ceased in this country, or as if the civil law being still used by the church, it became in all its forms imperative on the nation. It was dedicated to Bancroft, and he and the king highly eulogised this infamous production, which maintained all the rampant maxims of absolutism which James had ever uttered. The king, Cowell declared, was soliitus à legibus, freed from all restraint of laws; and though he took an oath at his coronation to maintain all the laws unchanged, yet he was at full liberty to quash any laws that he pleased; and, in a word, "that the king of England is an absolute king."
The commons called upon the lords to unite with them in punishing this miscreant, who, not content with selling his own birthright for a mess of pottage, was endeavouring to sell that of the entire nation. The case was so flagrant that the lords could not decline the challenge. And Bacon, who had shortly before been the advocate of the royal prerogative, now conducted the case for the commons in the conference against Cowell, who was sent to prison for a time, and his book was suppressed by the king's proclamation, poor James himself being obliged to condemn his own champion.
Having triumphed in this particular, the commons proceeded to much older grievances. They demanded the abolition of that den of injustice and extortion the Court of High Commission, in which the king exercised that unrestrained despotism which he claimed over the whole kingdom; where men were sentenced and fined at the arbitrary will of the king and of its council, without jury or evidence admitted in their defence: but this was an institution so dear to James's heart, that he would not listen to any abatement of its power. They next complained of the growing abuse of substituting royal proclamations for established law, "by reason of which," said the commons, "there is a general fear conceived and spread amongst your majesty's people, that proclamations will, by degrees, grow up and increase to the strength and nature of laws." To this James simply replied that his proclamations should not exceed the warranty of law. They further complained of the delay of the courts in granting writs of habeas corpus and prohibition, and of the encroachment of the council of Wales, which extended its jurisdiction over various neighbouring counties, where it had no real authority; as well as of various monopolies, taxes on public-houses, and on sea-coal.
The licenses to public-houses he agreed to revoke, but he demanded a perpetual revenue in lieu of the income thence derived. This the commons refused, alleging that he had no right to impose that tax in the first instance; and they further demanded that the feudal burthens of tenure by knights' service, wardships, and purveyance, should cease. As to the first, James absolutely refused compliance, on the plea that he would not reduce all his subjects, "rich and poor, noble and base, to hold their lands in the same ignoble manner;" but as to wardships, the marriages of infants and widows, and some other odious services, including purveyance, he was willing to barter them for a sum of money. The sum which he demanded was three hundred thousand pounds per annum. The commons only offered one hundred thousand pounds, but by a long course of haggling, like chapmen in a fair, the king descended to two hundred and twenty thousand pounds, and the commons rose to one hundred and eighty thousand pounds. Here the matter paused till James moved a dissolution, when the commons advanced to two hundred thousand pounds, and the king accepted it. But here again the king and his advocates had boasted so much of his being above the law, and of his power to quash, of his own will, any statute to which he had consented, that the commons were cautious in their proceedings, and they had, moreover, to determine out of what funds this revenue should be raised. These discussions had now driven on the session to the middle of July, and it was agreed that they should vote one subsidy, and one tenth and fifteenth for the present session, and defer the final settlement of the other grant till the next.
The interval was employed by James and his ministers in attempts to corrupt some of the members of the opposition, and thus to enable him to concede less and obtain more; but the commons had employed the time in weighing the slippery nature of the man with whom they had to deal. His continual boasts of his superiority to all laws, and of an actually divine power of dispensing with all his most solemn obligations, made them doubtful of the possibility of binding him to any terms; and the growing extravagance and rapacity of both king and courtiers deepened their fears.
When they met they were in a far less complying humour than when they separated. They insisted on seeing the promised reforms before they voted the two hundred ​thousand pounds. James was growing desperate for money; his coffers were empty, and the officers of the crown were clamorous for their arrears of salary. He therefore sent for them to Whitehall, and a deputation of about thirty members attended. The king demanded of them whether they thought that he was really in want of money, as his treasurer and the chancellor of the exchequer had informed them? "Whereto," says Winwood, "when Sir Francis Bacon had begun to answer in a more extravagant style than his majesty did delight to hear, he picked out Sir Henry Neville, commanding him to answer according to his conscience. Thereupon Sir Henry Neville did directly answer that he thought his majesty was in want. 'Then,' said the king, 'tell me whether it belongeth to you, that are my subjects, to relieve me or not?' 'To this,' quoth Sir Henry, 'I must answer with a distinction: where your majesty's expense groweth by the commonwealth, we are bound to maintain it, otherwise not.'" Sir Henry reminded the king that in this one parliament they had already given four subsidies and seven fifteenths, which was more than any parliament at any time had given, and yet they had no relief of their grievances. James demanded what these grievances were—as though he had not heard them enumerated often enough before—and desired Sir Henry to give him a catalogue of them. He adverted to the difficulties of obtaining justice in courts of law, to the usurped jurisdiction in the marches of Wales, and would have gone through the whole list, had not Sir Herbert Croft interrupted him.
Great Hall at Theobalds, favorite residence of James I.
Finding that nothing was to be drawn from the resolute house, James again prorogued them for nine weeks, in order to try every means of drawing over to him individual members. But these efforts were as abortive as the former: the commons were determined not to part with their money till they had a guarantee for the redress of their grievances, and James about this time lost his two right-hand men, Bancroft and Cecil. Bancroft, indeed, had died in November, to the last stanch in his exhortations to James not to give up the High Court of Commission; assuring him that though the lords had thrown out the bill, the commons would bring it in again, and that nothing but unflinching firmness would defeat them. Cecil died on the 24th of May, 1612. He was grievously chagrined at the failure of his favourite scheme for setting the king above all his difficulties. In default of that, the old expedient of the sale of crown lands was resorted to for the raising of money, and privy seals for loans of money were despatched into different counties. Meantime James was subsisting on a subsidy of six shillings in the pound granted by the clergy, and both king and ministers were in terror, lest the privy seals should be "refused by the desperate hardness of the people." They raised, however, one hundred and eleven thousand pounds.
The end of Cecil has been supposed to have been hastened by these anxieties; but probably he was worn out by the incessant cares which have pulled down other ministers besides him; for in his last moments he said to Sir Walter Cope, "Ease and pleasure quake to hear of death; but my life, full of cares and miseries, desireth to be dissolved." He had sought benefit at Bath, but without effect, and died at Marlborough on his return. Like his father, he had great talents, applied in a cold, treacherous, and ungenerous manner; but compared with the vile and unprincipled debauchees who succeeded him, he might be termed respectable.
THE FLIGHT OF ARABELLA STUART IN MALE ATTIRE.
​We must now introduce the story of a lady who has had repeated mention already—Arabella Stuart. Lady Arabella was descended from Henry VII.'s eldest daughter Margaret, like James himself, and therefore was to him an object of suspicion. Her proximity to the crown had drawn upon her the attention of both princes and conspirators at various times. When she was only about ten years of age, Elizabeth used to show her at court as the person she meant to make her heir. This she did to provoke James, whose pretensions were nearly as odious to her as those of his mother. But in after years Elizabeth treated her with extreme severity. James, indeed, contributed to this, by asking her in marriage for his favourite, Esme Stuart, duke of Lennox, who was Arabella's cousin, also of the same royal descent. Elizabeth was extremely chagrined at such a proposal, reprimanded James sharply, forbade the marriage, and imprisoned the unoffending maiden. Again, Raleigh and Cobham were accused on their trial of having designed to depose James and place her on the throne in his stead. Lady Arabella did not wait to be questioned on the subject, but on receiving a letter of such purport from Cobham, immediately sent it to the king, and only laughed at the proposal. Again her name was mentioned in the gun-powder plot. James does not seem to have had any fear of her on these occasions. But he was more afraid of aspirants to her hand than of conspirators; and had, no doubt, settled in his mind that she should never marry. Like Elizabeth, he repulsed all offers of the kind both from subjects and foreign princes, lest from the marriage should issue claimants to his throne. Cecil took care, on the death of Elizabeth, to secure the person of Arabella till James had been proclaimed, and had taken possession of the throne. The king himself appeared disposed to act liberally towards her, except in not permitting her to marry, He settled a pension upon her, allowed her apartments in the palace, and she was recognised whilst the princess Elizabeth was in her tutelage as first lady of the court. The year after James's accession, the king of Poland sent an ambassador to demand her in marriage; but even Poland was not distant enough for royal fears. Next came a proposal from count Maurice, titular duke of Guilders, but James would not listen to it; and lady Arabella, who was a clever woman, made it her policy—both under Elizabeth and James—to appear averse to any marriage whatever. She devoted herself to literature, poetry, and even theology, which became fashionable at court from the predilections of James.
Queen Anne appears to have had a great regard for the lady Arabella, who was handsome, of a lively and affectionate disposition, and ready to enter into all the taste for masques and pageants which distinguished her royal mistress. She was, in fact, the great ornament of the court of James; but her attractions were only the more dangerous to her safety, considering her descent. The feeling that she excited increased James's alarm, and she was kept under the close surveillance of Elizabeth Cavendish, the countess of Shrewsbury, who was her aunt. The countess appears to have treated her with much harshness, and James to have paid her salary very badly. On the whole, no situation, with all its splendour, could be more miserable than that of lady Arabella. No wonder, then, that she sought to escape from it.
In her childhood she had been acquainted with William Seymour, the son of lord Beauchamp. They now met again at court, and their early attachment was renewed and rapidly grew into love. The lady Arabella was now watched and harassed more than ever by her shrewish guardian, lady Shrewsbury, and matters came to such a pass betwixt them that James was obliged to interfere. He paid up the arrears of her pension to enable her to pay her debts, and to soothe her, made a present of a cupboard of plate, worth two hundred pounds. The chief cause of lady Arabella's discontent, says Lodge, was supposed to arise from her pressing necessities; but there was a deeper cause, the restraint upon her affections; and it was not long before some officious court spy conveyed to James the alarming intelligence that there was an engagement of marriage plighted betwixt Seymour and lady Arabella. Seymour was also descended from Henry VII., and such a marriage in prospect was enough to terrify James beyond conception. He instantly summoned the offenders before his council, where they were severely snubbed, and forbidden to marry without the king's permission. They both promised to abandon the idea, but this was only to disarm suspicion till they could effect their marriage. In July, 1610, it was discovered that they were already wedded, and James issued an immediate order for their arrest. Seymour was committed to the Tower, and Arabella to the keeping of Sir Thomas Parry, at Lambeth.
The youthful couple were so much pitied that they did not find it difficult to meet. Seymour bribed his keeper so effectually, that he suffered him frequently to go out of the Tower, and he met lady Arabella in the garden at Lambeth, and even in the house, unknown to Sir Thomas Parry. Meantime, the friends of the young people were not inactive. They used all the means they could imagine to soften the mind of the king towards them; and the queen, who loved Arabella, and received the most eloquent letters from her, praying her to exert her influence in her behalf, did her utmost to procure the liberation of her and her husband. Unfortunately, whispers of their stolen interviews reached James, and he sent instant orders to guard Seymour better, and to remove lady Arabella to Durham, where she was to be in the keeping of the bishop. When the order reached lady Arabella, she positively refused to go; but the officers carried her forcibly out in her bed, placed her in a boat, and rowed her up the river. Spite of her resistance, her keepers set forward on their journey; but by the time that they reached Barnet, her agitation of mind had thrown her into a fever, and the doctor called in declared that nothing but the discontinuance of the journey could save her life. He waited on the king himself, and assured him of this. But though James confessed that carrying her away in her bed was enough to make her ill if she had been well, he was peremptory in his commands that she should proceed. To Durham she should go, he said, if he were king. To this the physician replied that the lady would obey if the king required it. "Obedience!" repeated James; "is that required?" But when his first anger was over he relented, and allowed her to remain for a month at Highgate, in the house of the earl of Essex. There she was closely watched; but on the 3rd of June, 1611, the very day that the bishop ​of Durham set out northward to prepare for her reception, she effected her escape.
The plan of flight to the Continent had been carefully concerted betwixt herself and her husband in the Tower, through the medium of two of Seymour's friends. It was arranged that Arabella should get away in male attire, and Seymour in the garb of his physician. A French vessel was engaged to lie off Gravesend to receive the fugitives, and carry them to the Continent. All was in readiness, and Arabella, says Winwood, "disguising herself by drawing a great pair of French-fashioned hose over her petticoats, putting on a man's doublet, a man-lyke peruque, with long locks, over her hair, a black hat, black cloake, russet bootes with red top, and a rapier by her syde, walked forth between three and four o'clock with Mr. Markham. After they had gone on foot a mile and a halfe to a sorry inne, where Crompton attended with their horses, she grew very sicke and fainte, so as the ostler that held the styrrup said that gentleman would hardly hold out to London. Yet being set on a good gelding a-stryde in an unwonted fashion, the stirring of the horse brought blood enough into her face, and so she rode on towards Blackwall."
Lady Arabella found boats and attendants ready to row her down to Gravesend, where she expected to find her husband. But Seymour had not been quite so expeditious in making his way out of the Tower. He had, indeed, effected it, and was on his way, but lady Arabella, on getting on board, found that he had not arrived; and the French captain, aware of the serious nature of his commission, grew afraid, and spite of Arabella's entreaties, dropped down the river towards its mouth. Seymour, on arriving and finding that the vessel had sailed without him, engaged the captain of a collier for forty pounds to land him in Flanders.
No sooner was the news of Arabella's flight from Highgate conveyed to court, than the utmost consternation prevailed. A messenger was despatched to the Tower to order the strictest surveillance of Seymour, who brought back the appalling tidings that he also had escaped. The terrors of a new conspiracy seized James and the courtiers. It was soon asserted that it was a design of the king of Spain and the papists; that the fugitives were to be received in the Netherlands by the Spanish commander, and were to be brought to London at the head of a catholic host.
Couriers were hurried off in all likely directions to intercept the culprits, and the Thames was astir with ships and boats to discover them on board any vessel there. Spite of this sharp pursuit, the collier put Seymour safe on shore in Flanders; but lady Arabella was not so fortunate. The French vessel was chased, and in mid-channel brought to, and after some resistance, boarded, and the unhappy princess seized, brought back, and secured in the Tower. Meantime James had written very angry letters to the archduke of Austria and the authorities of the Netherlands, as well as to the king and queen-regent of France, accusing them roundly of being accessory to the plot, and demanding them to send the fugitives back.
For a time lady Arabella bore her confinement better than Gould have been expected. She declared that she did not mind captivity for herself, so that her husband had escaped. Yet not the less did she appeal to the generosity of James for her liberty, nor relax her efforts to that end through the kind offices of the queen. But all such endeavours were useless: James had had too great a fright to risk anything more. He sent the lady word that as she had eaten of the forbidden fruit, she must now pay the penalty of it. All hope of moving the relentless soul of the royal pedant gradually forsook her, and then her splendidly sensitive mind gave way. She became a pitiable lunatic, and died in her prison on the 27th of September, 1615. James had thrown the countess of Shrewsbury into the Tower at the same time with the lady Arabella, on suspicion of being a party to the scheme; but that high-spirited lady refused to give an answer to any interrogatories put to her, notwithstanding menaces of the star-chamber and heavy fines. On the death of lady Arabella she was set at liberty.
In pursuing the fate of this ill-used lady to its close, we have passed over another tragedy, that of the popular but dissipated king Henry IV. of France. Notwithstanding his adoption of Catholicism, from motives of policy, it was believed that his heart was still with the protestant cause, and the death of John, duke of Cleves, Juliers, and Berg, which occurred in 1609, gave him an opportunity of serving that interest under the plea of political necessity. The duke of Cleves had died without issue, and the emperor of Germany seized it as a fief of the imperial crown. The electors of Brandenburg and Saxony, and the duke of Neuberg, also laid claim to it. Jealousy of the already too powerful and ambitious house of Austria, combined against it the protestant princes of Germany and Holland, and they were joined by Henry of France on the same political ground, whilst the king of Spain, the archduke, and other catholic and kindred princes, supported the claims of Austria. James of England engaged to furnish four thousand infantry, and the king of France the same. The protestant princes of Germany and Holland were to supply nine thousand foot and two thousand horse, and it was agreed that the elector of Brandenburg should be acknowledged as the real heir.
Meantime Henry IV. did not confine himself to his quota of four thousand infantry. The moment appeared to him favourable for extending his own territory and power, and he appeared at the head of a splendid army of thirty thousand men, with a great train of artillery and camp supplies. Rumour was very busy on the appearance of this great force, that Henry was for apostatising a second time, or rather now going back to his original faith; and the priests diligently propagated the belief that he meant to make war on the pope, and restore protestantism. These representations seem to have excited the brain of a mad young friar, of the name of Francis Ravaillac, who stabbed him in the streets of Paris, three days before his intended departure for the campaign. The murderer was put to the torture to force from him his accomplices or instigators; but he persisted to the last in denying that he had any, but that the idea was wholly his own. Three times before had the life of Henry IV. been attacked by assassins; in 1593 by Pierre Barrierre, in 1597 by Pierre Ouen, and in 1605 by Jean de I'Isle. Ravaillac succeeded, and suffered the reward of his deed in a terrible death. This horrible tragedy renewed the ​terror of the catholics in England, and both the parliament of England and the council of Scotland called on James to secure himself by fresh persecution of the catholics. The Scottish council saw in the French assassins the frogs foretold in the Revelations, to be sent out by the devil against the head of the church, and prayed the king to protect his precious life by fresh guards whilst he indulged himself in hunting.
Whilst James was earnestly engaged in suppressing any rival claims to the crown by persecuting to death the lady Arabella, he was equally busy in endeavouring to secure a succession in his own family. Though he persecuted the catholics as a most dangerous, sinful, and abominable body, he had no objection whatever to marry his children to catholic princes, because those catholic princes were by far the most considerable in Europe. He made overtures, therefore, for the marriage of his son Henry, and his daughter Elizabeth, both to France and Spain. Queen Anne was most bent on the Spanish matches for both son and daughter, and was therefore vehemently suspected of popery, though her motives were the same as those of her husband—the rank and prestige of the alliance.
Prince Henry was the darling of his mother and of the nation: in person, temper, and aspirations the very opposite of his father. All persons, and especially all princes, who die young, are remembered with a peculiar affection, and their virtues are exaggerated, and live in memory as the roots of brilliant hopes cut off by fate. Time has not allowed the adverse influences of life, and especially of royal power, to corrupt them, and to darken the fair picture. Had Henry VIII. died young, he would have left a regretted name as a model of chivalric spirit and generous enthusiasm; yet we have no right to predicate that Henry, prince of Wales, the eldest son of James, would have developed into a similar monster. Our business is to describe him as he was—a handsome, brave, and right-minded youth of eighteen. He possessed none of the timidity nor the bookishness of his father. He was fond of all sorts of martial exercises—pitching the bar, handling the pike, riding, and shooting with the bow. Though extremely fond of horses, he was not, like his father, addicted to the chase, revolting from its cruelty. He seemed to have set before him as models Henry V. and the Black Prince; models which might have led him to inflict serious evils on his country had he lived, by the spirit of conquest. Young as he was, he displayed all the tastes of such a hero. He fired off cannon with his own hands, and had new pieces cast on improved models. He conversed with unceasing pleasure with engineers and men who had seen distinguished service, and he imported the finest horses from the Continent that could be procured. In his private character he was serious, modest, and devout. He attended the best preachers, and listened with a quiet sobriety, in striking contrast to his father, who was always excited when listening to a preacher, and wanting to preach himself. Henry abhorred profanity and swearing, and had a box in each of his houses at Richmond, Nonsuch, and St. James's, to receive the fines for swearing from his household, which were rigorously levied, and the money given to the poor.
As these traits became known, the people flocked after the prince in a manner which greatly piqued his father, who could not help exclaiming—"Will he bury me alive!" The reformers conceived great hopes of him, and there was a prophecy regarding him in every one's mouth:—
   Henry the Eighth pulled down abbeys and cells, But Henry the Ninth shall pull down bishops and bells.
Had James succeeded in obtaining the Spanish Infanta for Henry, he would have effectually neutralised his popularity. But though Henry did not stubbornly oppose his father's plans, he is said to have declared amongst his own friends that he had made up his mind never to marry a popish princess, and the puritans had the firmest faith that he never would.
It was regarded as a good sign that the young prince had a great aversion to his father's favourites, and especially to Carr, who was rapidly rising, and was just now created viscount Rochester. His mother, who partook in this aversion, strengthened him in it with all her influence. But Providence had not destined him the crown of England: he was now attacked with symptoms of premature decay. It was supposed that he had grown too fast for his strength, having reached the stature of six feet at seventeen, and his chivalrous exercises had been too violent and unprudent for such rapid growth. He was accustomed to take his exercises in the greatest heat of summer, to expose himself to all sorts of weather, and to bathe for a long time together after supper. Whilst James was planning marriages for him, the prince was fast hastening out of the world. The Spanish match still lingering, after years of negotiation, James listened to a proposal of Blary de Medici, the widow of Henry IV., and now queen-regent of France, for a wedding betwixt prince Henry and the princess Christine, the second daughter of France; and soon after the duke of Florence sent an ambassador extraordinary to London, offering his daughter with some millions of florins for her dower, and asking the princess Elizabeth for his son and heir.
But James, not succeeding in arranging a marriage for his daughter with a catholic prince, the spirit of the nation showing itself so averse to a popish alliance, had consented to her marriage with Frederick, count palatine of the Rhine. Her suitors were numerous: amongst the most distinguished were the prince of Piedmont and the young king of Spain. Both James and the queen were bent on placing Elizabeth on the throne of Spain, but the pope's nuncio in Spain, not less than the protestants in England, strenuously opposed it; the former deprecating the introduction of a protestant princess into the Spanish court. In the spring of 1612 the health of prince Henry began to fail. In the October of that year the count palatine arrived in England to complete his marriage with Elizabeth, who was still only sixteen. Henry roused himself to receive his proposed brother-in-law; he rode to town from Richmond, and most imprudently, in his infirm state of health, engaged in the sports and pastimes of the occasion. On the 24th of October he played a great match at tennis with the count Henry of Nassau in his shirt. He had been suffering from typhus already, and this brought it to a crisis. He was seized in the night with a violent pain in his head, and an oppressive languor; yet the next day, being Sunday, he would rise and attend two services, one in his own chapel at St. James's, and ​another at the king's Whitehall. The text of the preacher at St. James's was remarkable:—"Man, that is born of a woman, is of short continuance and full of trouble."
In the afternoon, after dinner, he was compelled to yield to the complaint, and hastened home and to bed. By the 29th he was so ill that there was a great dismay amongst the people, and this was immensely aggravated by a lunar rainbow, which appeared to span that part of the palace of St. James's where the sick prince lay. The most fatal auguries were drawn from this phenomenon.
The fever now assumed a putrid form, and was declared by the medical men highly infectious; and his parents and sister were debarred from entering his room. He grew daily worse, was highly delirious, calling for his clothes and his arms, and saying he must be gone. On the 5th of November, the anniversary of the gunpowder plot, James was informed that all hope was extinct; and unable to bear his feelings so near the scene of sorrow, he hastened away to Theobalds; but the queen would only retire to Somerset House, whence she sent continual messengers to inquire after her son's symptoms. The prince had entertained a romantic admiration of Sir Walter Raleigh, declaring that no prince but his father would keep such a bird in a cage, and he had joined with his mother in entreating for his liberty. To Sir Walter the life or death of the prince was life or death to himself. The agonised mother was now seized with a desperate desire to obtain from Raleigh a nostrum which he possessed, and which she had herself formerly taken in a fit of ague. Sir Walter sent it, with the assurance that it would cure any mortal malady except poison.
The prince had been informed that day, in a lucid interval, of his danger, by the archbishop of Canterbury, and had given the primate his confession of faith. He then called repeatedly, "David! David!" for David Murray, his confidential servant, but when asked what he wished for, only said, "I would say something, but I cannot utter it." Murray at length understood that he wished some letters in his cabinet to be burnt, and complied with his wish. After taking Raleigh's nostrum he seemed to revive for a time, but again became worse, and expired at eight o'clock on Friday night, the 6th of November.
Perhaps a more extraordinary 5th of November was never passed than that one preceding Henry's death. The people were assembled in dense crowds around the palace, eagerly listening for news of the prince's condition, whilst all around them were the noises, the firing and the bonfires, of the celebration of the gunpowder plot. They were still remaining there the following day, and when the cry of the prince's servants was heard in the palace on beholding him dead, the people howled, groaned, stamped, and wept in agony. The catholics, on their part, regarded the death of the first-born of the royal house as a manifest judgment for the persecution of their church.
The violence of the queen's grief exceeded that of the people. For some hours after the taking of Raleigh's nostrum, she heard accounts of his rapid improvement, and then came the news that he was as rapidly sinking,—was dead. She fell into the most violent paroxysms of grief; and recollecting Raleigh's assurance that his specific would cure all ailments but poisoning, she declared that the prince was the victim of foul play. Henry had shown the most uncompromising aversion to Carr, the favourite, and she called to mind the evil visage of his agent. Sir Thomas Overbury, and believed that he had been employed to poison him. This led to a post mortem examination, which clearly demonstrated that no poison had been used, but that the prince died from natural causes. The words of the queen, however, flew far and wide, and in that age of superstition, and of violent antipathies, originated the most atrocious rumours, in which the reputation of James himself was not spared.
We may close this chapter with the relation of a circumstance in which the king was as much deserving of censure as he was innocent of all participation in the death of his son.
A Dutch clergyman named Vorstius had written a treatise on the nature and attributes of the Deity. In fact, religious controversy was running high in the Low Countries. Arminius, the pastor of the cathedral at Amsterdam, and afterwards professor at Leyden, had broached the doctrine of free-will in opposition to the predestinarianism of Calvin. The whole country came divided into two hostile sections on these points, which no human intellect has ever been able to settle to the satisfaction of all parties. The Arminains acquired the name of Remonstrants, from the remonstrance of Arminius against Calvinism. Barneveldt, the patriot, stood at the heart of the remonstrants, prince Maurice of Nassau at the head of the anti-remonstrants, or Gomarists. On the death of Arminius, Vorstius was elected to his chair at Leyden, and put forth a treatise in defence of his predecessor's opinions. This treatise was put into James's hands whilst he was in the country hunting, and in the space of a single hour he had picked out of it a long list of what he termed damnable heresies. Forthwith he conceived that it rested with him to settle the fierce controversy which had whirled in its vortex all the intellects of Holland. He wrote to Winwood, his ambassador there, to accuse Vorstius before the states of heresy and infidelity, charging him with denying the omniscience of the godhead and the divinity of Christ.
The Dutch wore by no means pleased with this foreign interference in their affairs, and in a respectful manner made answer to that effect. But James wrote them back with his own hand that he could not be thus put by; that he was willing, "if the professor could excuse his blasphemies, he should escape the stake, though no heretic ever deserved it better." He bade them remember that the king of England was the defender of the faith, and that if they would not separate from the heretic, he would separate from them; and he warned them that in that case "he would call in other foreign powers to remand to hell such abominable doctrines."
The states still obstinately ignoring James's interference, he published a declaration against Vorstius in French, and the Gomarists combining with the king's friends, at length succeeded in getting Vorstius expelled from his professorship, and banished from Leyden. James had thus succeeded in ruining a worthy and distinguished man for his religious opinions, and caused him to be driven into banishment ​For about seven years Vorstius concealed himself from his bigoted enemies in Tergau, but James would not let him rest there; he sent a number of English and Scotch divines to the Synod of Dort, in 1619, who loudly demanded the further proscription of Vorstius.
The Fifth of November, 1611.
They succeeded, and the unfortunate advocate of Arminianism was expelled from Holland. After wandering about in poverty and obscurity, hiding from the face of his enemies, who would well have liked to kill him, the duke of Holstein, in 1622, offered him an asylum in his states, with seven hundred families of his adherents, who had been exiled with him. But the persecuted man was now sinking under his miseries, and died in the autumn of that year. The king's hand was now in for persecution, and he the proceeded to practise all that he had preached to the Dutch. He set up the flaming stake again in Smithfield, and has the grim distinction of being the last English monarch who signed the writ de heretico comburendo.
His first victim was Bartholomew Legate, an Arian, or unitarian, who, after being examined by James himself and ​his bishops, was sentenced by the Consistory Court to be burnt, and suffered accordingly in Smithfield, on the 18th of March 1612. Next came Edward Wightman, an enthusiast or lunatic, who was burnt at Lichfield on the 11th of April, 1613; and other victims were in preparation, when the indignation of the public scared the merciless bigots from their prey.
Ben Jonson, Poet Laureate at the Court of James I.