# Cassell's Illustrated History of England/Volume 3/Chapter 2

CHAPTER II.
The princess Elizabeth was the only surviving daughter of four; she was now about sixteen, and the death of her brother delayed for a short time her marriage with the elector palatine. This match had never been agreeable to queen Anne: she longed to see her daughter queen of Spain, and resigned that prospect with deep regret, to see her the mistress of a petty German state. She had stoutly opposed the match till her son Henry had shown his decided approbation of it, and only vented her chagrin in private, by occasionally calling Elizabeth "goodwife" and "Mrs. Palsgrave." After her son's death she showed more cordiality to the palsgrave. The court was ordered to go into mourning for twelve weeks; but at Christmas James commanded the mourning to be in satin, and on the 27th the young couple were affianced, the bride still in her mourning. The king was present, though he was brought in a chair, for he was too gouty to walk. The queen kept her chamber. On the 14th of February, St. Valentine's day, the marriage took place in Whitehall chapel. Both king and queen were present, the king in a splendid black suit, the queen in white satin. It was the first royal marriage celebrated according to the form of the book of common prayer, and the whole court was in a blaze of splendour. The king, queen, and prince appeared literally covered with the crown jewels; no one under a baron was permitted to it. Elizabeth wore a robe of silver tissue, with a coronet of gold on her head, and her hair flowing in rich luxuriance down her back as low as her knees. Her brother and the earl of ​Northampton acted as her bridesmen, each conducting her by a hand; whilst twenty bridesmaids of her own age, dressed in white and embroidery, followed, bearing her train. The princess appeared smiling as she ascended the platform in the royal chapel, but from some cause, most probably an hysterical excitement, she began to titter, and being unable to restrain herself, soon burst into a loud laugh. The company were startled, and many regarded it as an ill omen, which the events of a few years appeared to confirm. When the bride departed with her husband, the queen sunk into a state of indisposition which threatened serious consequences, and was ordered by her physicians to seek the waters of Bath.
From the death of Cecil we may date the reign of favourites, which continued so long as the king lived. That cautious and able minister was too fond of power himself to allow it to pass into the hands of much weaker men. James, whilst Cecil lived, had indeed no lack of favourites, on whom he lavished affluence and honours; but his cunning minister had the address to prevent him giving them places of real power and responsibility. James therefore, so long as Cecil remained, was content to make his favourites his companions, and left Cecil to conduct public affairs; but no sooner was Salisbury in his grave, than James became the slave of his favourites, who in reality ruled both him and the kingdom.
The first of these was Robert Carr, or Ker, a young border Scot of the Kers of Fernihurst. He had been some years in France, and being a handsome youth, "straight-limbed, well-formed, strong-shouldered, and smooth-faced," he had been led to believe that if he cultivated his personal appearance, and a gaiety and courtliness of address, he was sure of making his fortune at the court of James. Accordingly he managed to appear as page to lord Dingwall at a grand tilting match at Westminster, in 1606. According to chivalric usage, it became his duty to present his lord's shield to his majesty; but in manoeuvring his horse on the occasion it fell, and broke his leg. That fall was his rise. James was immediately struck with the beauty of the youth who lay disabled at his feet, and had him straightway carried into a house near Charing Cross, and sent his own surgeon to him. As soon as he could get away from the tilt-yard, he hastened to him himself. He renewed his visits daily, waiting upon him himself, and displaying to the whole court the greatness of his sudden regard for him. "Lord!" says Weldon, "how the great men flocked then to see him, and to offer to his shrine in such abundance, that the king was forced to lay a restraint, lest it might retard his recovery."
The lad's fortune was made; and though James, in conversing with him, found that he was very ignorant—the whole of his education having been directed to his outside—that did not abate his regard, but he condescended to be at once his nurse and schoolmaster. "The prince," says Harrington, "leaneth on his arm, pinches his cheek, smooths his ruffled garments. The young man doth study much art and device; he hath changed his tailors and firemen many tunes, and all to please the prince. The king teaches him Latin every morning, and I think some one should teach him English too, for he is a Scotch lad, and hath much need of better language."
James found that Carr had been his page in Scotland, and that his father had suffered much in the cause of his mother, Mary Stuart; these were additional causes of favour. On Christmas-day, 1607, he knighted him and made him a gentlemen of the bed-chamber, so as to have him constantly about his person. Such was his favour that every one pressed around him to obtain their suits with the king. He received rich presents; the ladies courted his attention; the greatest lords did him the most obsequious and disgusting homage. Carr, however, had an eye to pleasing the public, and therefore, Scotchman as he was, he turned the cold shoulder to his countrymen, and associated with and favoured the English; probably, too, finding this the most profitable. Those about him were almost wholly English; and his affairs were in the hands of one Sir Thomas Overbury, a man of an evil look, and with a countenance said to be shaped like that of a horse. The dark ability of this man supplied the lack of talent in his patron, and became a mine of wealth to Overbury himself. Even Cecil and the earl of Suffolk strove to avail themselves of his services; and when Cecil quitted the scene, Carr, through Overbury's management, carried all before him. In March, 1611, he was created viscount Rochester, in April, 1612, he became a member of the privy council, and was invested with the order of the garter. The earl of Suffolk succeeding to Cecil's post of lord treasurer, Carr stepped into Suffolk's office of lord chamberlain, at the same time discharging the duties of the post of secretary by the aid of Sir Thomas Overbury. The favourite's favourite, however, was no favourite of the king, who was jealous of having so much of the time and confidence of Carr occupied by Overbury, and this feeling was probably much heightened by the queen, who had an instinctive aversion to the man. On one occasion the queen succeeded in obtaining his expulsion from court, for alleged discourtesy to her, but he soon returned; and though the king appointed Sir Ralph Winwood and Sir Thomas Lake to occupy jointly the office of secretary of state, yet Carr, by the king's favour and Overbury's ability, remained lord paramount in the court; Overbury himself being the avenue to every favour. On the 21st of April, 1613, he boasted to Sir Henry Wotton of his good fortune, and his flattering prospects, yet that very day saw him committed close prisoner to the Tower. Adept as he was in all court intrigues, he had yet committed an irremediable blunder, and awoke a spirit of vengeance which nothing but his blood could quench. This spirit lived in the bosom of a beautiful girl of not yet twenty years of age.
Lady Frances Howard, the daughter of the earl of Suffolk, had been married at the age of thirteen to the Earl of Essex, the son of Elizabeth's unfortunate favourite, who was only a year older. It was a match promoted by the king out of regard, as he said, for the memory of the young earl's father. The ceremony being performed, the bride returned to the care of her mother, and the boy bridegroom proceeded, under care of a tutor, on his travels. At the end of four years he returned, and claimed his wife, whom he found the beauty and pride of the court. But whilst he was enraptured with her loveliness, he was mortified to find that she treated him with every mark of aversion. It was only by the stern command of her father that she consented to live ​with him at all, and he soon discovered that in his absence her affections had been stolen away by the profligate favourite Rochester, who had won her even from another and a royal suitor, Prince Henry. In short, a criminal connection had long existed betwixt her and Rochester.
This discovery, and the constant bickerings which took place betwixt the earl and countess, made Essex willing that a divorce should be obtained. There were others who were glad of this expedient: lady Howard's father, lord Suffolk, and the earl of Northampton, lord privy seal, saw in her marriage with Rochester a mode of putting an end to the rivalry which existed betwixt them, and the king was equally eager for this result. But to Overbury the scheme boded the destruction of his power, which would be at an end if his patron coalesced with his enemies. He therefore commenced a determined opposition to the match. He it was who had written the glowing and eloquent love-letters of Rochester, and had promoted the liaison to the utmost of his power; but he had never dreamt of its leading to a marriage, which must work his own ruin. He therefore represented to Rochester the odium of such a marriage; the base and abandoned character of the woman, who might do for his mistress, but was not to be thought of as a wife. When he found that his arguments did not produce the effect which he wished, he took the dangerous step of menacing, and declared that he could and would throw an insuperable bar in the way of the divorce from Essex, without which there could be no marriage. This bar was undoubtedly his knowledge of the adulterous connection which had existed betwixt the parties, and which must ruin the countess's demand of a separation.
The master of deep policy could not see the rock upon which he was running, and which would have been very clear to him in another person's case. Rochester repeated to the countess all that he said, and the rage of a sinful woman, proverbially fierce as hell, seized upon her. She vowed that she would have his life. In her first fury she offered £1,000 to Sir John Wood to kill him in a duel, but her friends interposed, and suggested a less hazardous and less criminal way to get Overbury out of the way, which was to send him on an embassy to France or Russia. If he accepted the office, he would be detained abroad till the divorce was effected; if he refused, it were easy to construe his conduct into a contempt of the king's service, and get him confined.
Overbury was sounded on the subject of a mission to Russia, and listened to it with apparent pleasure; but the young beauty could not thus satisfy her revenge, and at her instigation Rochester affected to feel his projected absence intolerable. He declared his presence and counsel were indispensable to him, and he promised to satisfy the king, if he agreed to decline the offer. No sooner did Overbury consent than Rochester, so far from excusing him to the king, represented his conduct as not only disobedient to his majesty, but as insolent and intolerable to himself. James was only too glad to clear the court of the hated man; a warrant was immediately issued, and Overbury was committed to the Tower. By the arrangement of Rochester and the earl of Northampton, the Lieutenant of the tower. Sir William Wade, was removed, and a creature of theirs. Sir Jervis Elwes, was installed in his place. Under the care of Elwes, Sir Thomas Overbury was at once cut off from all communication with the outer world. Neither servant nor relative was permitted to see him; he was already dead to the world, and the world was soon to be dead to him.
The dangerous man secured, the measures for the divorce commenced. The countess petitioned for it, alleging serious grounds, and her father signed the petition. But no one was more forward and determined in carrying this disgraceful transaction through than the king. He appointed without delay a commission to try the cause. The commissioners were Abbot, the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops of London, Winchester, Rochester, Ely, Lichfield, and Coventry; Sir Julius Cæsar, Sir John Barry, Sir Daniel Dunne, Sir John Bennet, Francis James and Thomas Edwards, doctors of civil law.
The earl of Essex was only too glad to be rid of his virago, and consented to anything, even to the most humiliating imputations on his manhood. The real causes of the vile business were sufficiently notorious; and the primate, though at the heart of the commission, revolting at being made a tool for the accommodation of aristocratic licentiousness, strongly opposed the divorce. But James took him sharply to task, telling him, in so many words, that it was his duty to resign his own judgment and follow that of his sovereign. "If," he writes, in a most imperative letter, "a judge should have a prejudice in respect of persons, it should become you rather to have a kind of implicit faith in my judgment, as well in respect of some skill I have in divinity, as also that I hope no honest man doubts the uprightness of my conscience; and the best thankfulness that you, that are so far my creature, can use towards me, is to reverence and follow my judgment, and not to contradict it, except where you may demonstrate unto me that I am mistaken or wrong informed."
But James did not content himself with recommending implicit obedience, he influenced and controlled the proceedings, and intimidated the judges by all means in his power. His zeal was quickened by the receipt of twenty-five thousand pounds from Rochester, at a moment when his officers were at their wit's end for money. But do what he would, he could not bond the integrity of the primate, who to the last resisted the divorce, and three of the doctors of law supported him. The bishop of London also voted with him, but the rest of the bishops and civil lawyers voted for the divorce, which was carried by seven voices against five. The bishop of Winchester showed himself so servile on the occasion, that the king knighted his son, who was ever afterwards dubbed by the people Sir Nullity Bilson. The other judges and bishops who voted according to his wish were also rewarded by James, and the sentence of divorce was pronounced on the 25th of September.
The public at large, to whom the facts of the case were no secret, condemned the whole proceeding in no measured terms, and this reprobation rose into actual horror when the news oozed out, that the very day before the verdict for the divorce, Sir Thomas Overbury was found dead in his cell. He was buried in all haste, and with profound secrecy, the officials diligently propagating a report that he died of a loathsome and contagious disease: the public entertained no doubt of his perishing of poison.
​In the face of all this, James proceeded immediately to raise Rochester to the dignity of earl of Somerset, that he might equal in rank, if not iniquity, the murder-breathing countess. The marriage, moreover, was celebrated on the 26th of December, at the royal chapel in Whitehall, the king making it his own affair, being himself present, with prince Charles, and a great crowd of bishops and noblemen. The queen kept herself commendably apart from the whole infamous business. The blood-stained bride, with a shamelessness unparalleled, appeared with her hair hanging loose on her shoulders, in the character of a virgin! Montague, bishop of Bath and Wells, married the guilty couple, and Mountain, dean of Westminster, pronounced a blessing upon them. Then the king gave a series of banquets and masques at Whitehall in honour of them, which continued till the 4th of January, 1614; and, as if all classes of public men were eager to disgrace themselves by sanctioning this court wickedness, the lord mayor and aldermen invited the adulterous couple to a splendid banquet, given at Merchant Tailors' Hall, on the same 4th of January, whither they were accompanied by the duke of Lennox, the earl of Northampton, lord privy seal, the lord chamberlain, and the earls of Worcester, Pembroke, and Montgomery. As it was to do honour to the king's especial favourite, the whole civic body wore arrayed in their robes of office, and the dinner was served by citizens selected out of the twelve companies, in the costumes of those companies. There was, moreover, a masque, a ball, dancing, and a play, and then the guilty and fêted pair returned to Whitehall.
This city ovation was followed by another at Gray's Inn, on Twelfth Night, which the lord chancellor Bacon had forced, in a manner, on the reluctant lawyers. The marriage of the princess Elizabeth, the king's own daughter, had been a most simple and tame affair to this, and the public, of every class and denomination, regarded with horror and indignation this deification of lust and murder. Puritans, churchmen, catholics, people of every and of no religion were equally loud in venting their anathemas on the foolish king, the sycophantic prelates, and compliant ministers. James gave such indulgence to debauch in the midst of these atrocious festivities, that he grew into a most cumbersome and disgusting spectacle. "This year," says Roger Coke, "as it was the meridian of the king's reign in England, so it was of his pleasures. He was excessively addicted to hunting and drinking, not ordinary French and Spanish wines, but strong Greek wines; and though he would divide his hunting from drinking these wines, yet he would compound his hunting with drinking; and to that purpose he was attended with a special officer, who was, as much as could be, always at hand to fill the king's cup in his hunting, when he called for it. Whether it were the drinking these wines, or from some other cause, the king became so lazy and unwieldy, that he was trussed on horseback, and as he was set, so he would ride, without otherwise poising himself in his saddle; nay, when his hat was set on his head, he would not take the pains to alter it, but it sate as it was put on."
From his gaieties James was called, by his eternal want of money, to face his parliament. Since 1611, when he dissolved his last house of commons, he had endeavoured to carry on by any illegal and unconstitutional means that the people would submit to. But the Dutch did not keep their engagement to pay off their debt of upwards of eight hundred thousand pounds by annual instalments of sixty thousand pounds, and James was too pusillanimous to adopt the means which a Cromwell would have done. He threatened war, and threatened only; and therefore became despised by his debtors, who thenceforth made no movement towards paying. Disappointed here, the only alternative was to fleece his own subjects. He resorted to the scandalous measure of selling all the places of honour and trust, and all kind of dignities for money. He sold several peerages for high prices. Every place under government was to be had only for cash; nor did the proceeds of this infamous traffic always reach the king's hands, but fell into those of his minion Somerset, and the Howards, the relatives of Somerset's wife. The wicked countess of Somerset and lady Suffolk, her mother, got four thousand pounds as a bribe from Sir Fulke Greville, for the chancellorship of the exchequer. The example thus set at court, ran through all departments, and the whole management of the country was given up to corruption and venality.
So little of these proceeds of iniquity reached the king, and that little was so foolishly and recklessly given away amongst his hangers-on, that the salaries of all who were not in a situation to be bribed, and thus pay themselves, remained unpaid. In this difficulty, James hit upon a notable scheme, and originated a new order of aristocracy; namely, baronets, or little barons, a link betwixt the barons, or lowest peers, and knights. These new titles he sold at one thousand pounds apiece. Sir Nicholas Bacon was the first created for England, and Sir Francis Blundell for Ireland, in 1619. Baronets for Nova Scotia were added, to extend this source of income, in 1625, of whom Sir Robert Gordon was the first. "Some of these new honourable men," says Arthur Wilson, in his life of James, "whose wives' pride and their own prodigalitics had pumpt up to it, were so drained, that they had not moisture to maintain the radical humour, but withered to nothing. This money thus raised is pretended for the planting of Ireland, but it found many other channels before it came to that sea. And though, at our king's first access to the crown, there was a glut of knights made, yet after some time he held his hand, lest the kingdom should be cloyed with them and the world thrived so well with some, that the price was afterwards brought up to three hundred pounds apiece. But now again, the poor courtiers were so indigent, that sixty pounds would purchase a knighthood."
Lord Northampton died at this crisis, and the iniquitous countess's kith and kin got the benefit. Suffolk, her father, succeeded as lord treasurer; Somerset, her husband, as lord chamberlain; and their dependents rushed in in a stream, all the other offices being sold by them for all they could get. Amongst others lord Knollys was made master of the court of wards, because he had married a sister of the infamous countess.
The attempts upon the constitution at this period were in strict keeping with the base practices just detailed; and in these lord Bacon, as pitiable a time-server as he was a great philosopher, and as base a traitor to liberty as he was a deep lawyer, stood foremost. He had concocted a notable scheme for managing parliaments, and it was the broaching; ​of this scheme which alone indeed James to venture on calling one. Bacon's plan was this, and he had regularly weighed it, and drawn it up for the kings consideration: That, according to a principle afterwards made a maxim by Sir Robert Walpole, every one had his price. That the leaders of the late opposition, Neville, Yelverton, Hyde, Crew, and Sir Dudley Digges, were chiefly lawyers, and there were plenty of means, by prospects of promotion skilfully applied, to bring them zealously to the king's side. That they being once brought over, he had the talking, persuasive power of the house; and that much might be done beforehand also with the city men and country gentlemen each in their own way, and where any obstinate man appeared, means might be used to keep him out. At the same time Bacon assured James that it was necessary to make a show of some concession. That as he had promised to abolish abuses, he should, at least, give up some of the lesser ones; and on his accepting this plan, he and his friends were ready to undertake to manage parliament, and to guarantee his majesty plenty of money and little trouble, provided James would only avoid irritating speeches.
James's necessities were such that there was little use in objecting to the scheme; it was agreed upon, and Bacon, the favourite Somerset, and Neville, an unscrupulous and ambitious man, were made the managers, and very soon, with their coadjutors, acquired the name of undertakers, because they undertook to manage parliament; "a generation," says Wilson, 'about the court, that, to please and humour greatness, undertook a parliament, as men presuming to have friends in every county and borough, who by their power amongst the people would combine to return such members as should comply solely to the king's desires." This base scheme, we shall find, did not succeed well at first, but it was too well suited to arbitrary power to be forgotten; and in after years, and almost to our own time, was in extensive practice by the ministers of the crown.
James's parliament met on the 5th of April, 1614, and he endeavoured to put in practice the Machiavellian instructions of Bacon by delivering a very popular speech,—popular because it promised plentiful persecution for religion, which was the spirit of the day, and a liberal removal of grievances; but, as usual, first of all, he placed the supply of his necessities. But the undertakers had not succeeded in their first out-of-door efforts; there was a sturdy assemblage of popular members, and such faces appeared amongst them, according to a writer of the time, as made the court to droop. The house of commons at once reversed the topics of the king's speech, placing the grievances in the front, and making the supplies conditional on their abolition. The royal party which the undertakers had got together, found their pleas for slavish obedience drowned in a storm of angry demand for justice; and the house demanded a conference with the lords on the subject. The lords asked the opinion of the judges on the question, and especially that of Coke, the lord chief justice. Coke, who remembered the endeavours of Bacon to supplant him in the good graces of the king, and who hoped for no higher preferment, took the opportunity to throw cold water on the conference, asserting that the judges, after consultation among themselves, felt that they were bound by their office to decide betwixt the king and his subjects, and were, therefore, equally bound not to appear as disputants or partisans on either side. The lords, on hearing this, declined the conference, and Neale, who had recently been transferred from the see of Lichfield to the wealthier one of Lincoln, for his services in proclaiming the countess of Essex's divorce, rose and uttered a most unbecoming tirade against the commons, charging them with striking at the root of the royal prerogative, and anticipating that if admitted to a conference, they might use very disloyal and seditious language.
This roused the indignation of the commons: they did not understand the etiquette of our time, which supposes what passes in one house unknown in the other; but they immediately demanded of the lords the punishment of the man who had thus dared to slander their loyalty. On this the bishop, who was as cowardly as he was insolent, and who was hated by the puritans as a merciless persecutor instantly recanted in his place; and with many tears, and fervent declarations of his high respect for the commons, denied many of the offensive expressions attributed to him. But the house was not thus to be appeased. The members were greatly exasperated at the plan of managing them, which had become public, and fell on Bacon as the author of the scheme. The facile lord chancellor pretended to ridicule the very idea of any such scheme being in existence, as the king had done in his opening speech, but the house gave him no credit; they proceeded to question even his right to sit in their house, on his accepting the office of attorney-general, and only permitted it as a special indulgence, which was not to be drawn into a precedent.
The king, who saw no chance of supplies in the present temper of the house, sent them a sharp message, desiring them to proceed to the business of the supplies, attended with a threat of immediate dissolution in case of non-compliance. This produced no effect, and the house was dissolved on the 7th of June. Having thus broken the immediate power of retaliation in the house, he, the next morning, arrested the most refractory members, and committed five of them to the Tower, amongst whom was Wentworth, a lawyer, destined to act a very prominent part in the next reign. These members were not discharged till they had, by their admissions, occasioned the king to arrest others, who were committed in their turn. This parliament obtained the name of the Addle parliament, because it had not passed a single bill, but it had displayed a spirit which was pregnant with the most momentous consequences. It had laid the foundation of the rights of the commons, and at the same time had displayed its rigid temperament, by issuing an order which excluded all catholics, by making it necessary for every member, before taking his seat, to receive the sacrament according to the form of the church of England.
James had indeed received a fright from the determined tone of the house which lasted him nearly seven years. He returned to his usual unconstitutional modes of extorting revenue. Besides the sale of monopolies and privileges, he compelled the payment of benevolences, an odious tax, not only because raised without sanction of parliament, but because its name implied a free gift. Those who resisted these modes of royal robbery were dragged into the star-chamber; and there sentenced to enormous fines. Mr. ​Oliver St. John, a gentleman who had not only refused such payment, but had vindicated his conduct in an able letter, in which he commented freely on the king's violation of magna charta, was fined by the tyrannic star-chamber five thousand pounds, and ordered to be imprisoned during the king's pleasure.
Arrest of Nonconformists.
But the tyranny of the government went far beyond this. It adopted the worst practices of the Spanish inquisition—violation of private houses and desks, the torture of suspected persons, and their punishment without any trial by a jury. James has been described by historians and romancers as an uncouth and ludicrous creature, a sort of learned and pedantic biped to be laughed at; but he was something worse than that, as the whole course of his history shows; a most cruel and arbitrary monarch, who had no belief in the rights of any living thing but himself, and who, with the same licence, seized the property and crushed the consciences of his subjects. He wanted only the martial rashness of his son Charles, to take arms for the enforcement of his win, and he would have reaped the reward of popular vengeance which fell upon his son. Such a king naturally was surrounded by base sycophants, one of the most crawling of whom was that bishop Neale, just mentioned. Waller the poet relates that when a youth he went to James's court, and stood in the circle to see the king dine. At the table with James were bishops Andrews and Neale. James asked them whether it was not lawful for him to take his subjects money without all this formality of parliaments. Neale replied, "God forbid that you should not, for you are the breath of our nostrils." Andrews was silent, but James would not let him escape, but repeated the question to him, and said that he would admit of no evasion; whereupon Andrews said, "Why, then, I think your majesty may lawfully take my brother Neale's money, for he offers it."
ACCIDENT TO ROBERT CARR, THE KING'S FAVOURITE.
This independent act and sentiment of Coke incensed James beyond measure, and prepared a severe punishment for Coke, for judges were not yet independent of the crown. It was not, however, difficult to accomplish the king's will. The chief baron and judge Hobart, who were ready to condemn Peacham, were appointed to the western circuit, and Edmund Peacham was sent down thither to be tried; where, as a matter of course, he was convicted of high treason, but not being immediately executed, died in Taunton gaol soon afterwards. In fact, he was not killed on the scaffold, but by the rack, a mode of dungeon execution, of which thousands have perished by the hands of lawless tyrants and their slaves.
Amongst other cases of wholly illegal punishments, we may select those of Owen and Williams. Owen was charged with saying that "princes being excommunicated by the pope, might be lawfully deposed and killed by any one." For this he was arrested and tried for high treason. He contended that he was guilty of no treason, for the king never having been excommunicated, the words did not apply to him. Coke declared that this was good law, but James took him to task so severely for his opposition, that he gave way, saying that he found the king had been excommunicated, and therefore Owen's words were treason. Consequently he was condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. Williams had gone further, and written a book predicting the king's death in 1621, for which he was also convicted of high treason. These cases, though marking a fatal stretching of the law to flatter the arbitrary will of the king, bore no proportion to the atrocity of the treatment of Peacham.
A new era now arrived in the history of the king's favourites. Though the countess of Somerset was hardened enough to stalk through adultery and poison to the gratification of her desires, and show no remorse, it appears that her new husband was not altogether of so callous a nature. From the moment of the death of Overbury, he was a totally changed man. All pleasure in life had deserted him, he had lost all his gaiety, and went about moody and morose. His person became neglected, his dress disorderly, and even in the king's company he was absent of mind, and took no pains to please him. This was not lost on those courtiers who envied the favour of the Howards, who now enjoyed complete ascendancy through their wicked kinswoman. The earls of Bedford, Pembroke, and Hertford maintained a sharp watch for a new favourite to bring before James, confident that a suitable man once found, the day of Somerset was over. This man soon appeared in a youth of the name of George Villiers, the younger son of Sir Edward Villiers, of Brookesby, in Leicestershire. Sir Edward was dead, and young Villiers had been brought up under the care of his mother, who was at once one of the most beautiful and infamous women of her time. She saw in the beauty and grace of this boy the means of advancing the fortunes of the whole family. She therefore carefully educated him to win the favour of the favourite-loving king, confident that if he once attracted his attention, the result was sure. This far-seeing and ambitious woman therefore sent the lad to France, to acquire the gay and easy manner of that court.
His courtly education being considered perfect, at the age of one-and-twenty, the post of cup-bearer to his majesty was purchased amongst the lavish sale of offices of the time, as one that must unavoidably place him under the eye of the king. Accordingly, he appeared in that employment with a fine suit of French clothes on his back, and as many French graces as any silly modern Solomon could desire. He was a fine tall young fellow, and pre-eminently handsome, at the same time that he was one of the emptiest, haughtiest, and most profligate men that ever lived. Time, however, was yet to display these qualities; they were at present concealed under a garb of finished courtesy and agreeable manners. The Herberts, the Russells, and the Seymours were delighted, and it was planned that young Villers should discharge his office of cup-bearer at a supper entertainment at Baynard's Castle, in such a manner as must strike the imagination of the king. James was, according to expectation, smitten with the looks of the youth, and pointed out his imagined likeness to a beautiful head of St. Stephen at Whitehall, whence he gave him the pet name of "Steenie," which he always after used.
But there was a difficulty to be surmounted by the court cabal who were pushing Villiers forward for their own purposes. James had been so mercilessly twitted by the queen on account of his favourites, that he was afraid of acknowledging a fresh one without her sanction; for, says archbishop Abbot, who played a great part in this affair, "the king would never admit any to nearness about him, but such as the queen should commend to him, that, if she should complain afterwards of the dear one, he might make answer, 'it is long of yourself, for you commended him unto me."
​When, however, Abbot was prevailed on to solicit the queen to recommend Villiers to the king, she replied, with an insight into the young adventurer's nature which was one of her characteristics, "My lord, neither you nor your friends know what you desire. If Villiers once obtain the royal favour, those who have the most contributed to his preferment will be the first sufferers by him. I shall be no more spared than others. The king will teach him to despise us all, and to treat us with pride and scorn. The young favourite will soon fancy that he owes his preferment only to his own merit."
Yet Anne, who hated Somerset and his polluted and mercenary wife, was soon won over to comply, and this she did by stepping out of that prudent non-interference in such matters, making this the first instance of her having endeavoured to influence court movements since her arrival in England. On St. George's day she went with her son Charles into the privy chamber, and telling the king that she had a new candidate for the honour of knighthood, worthy of St. George himself, she asked the prince to reach her his father's sword, which he did, drawing it from the sheath by his side. She advanced with the sword towards James, who professed to be alarmed at her approaching thus armed; but dropping upon her knees, she presented Villiers, and guided the king's hand in giving him the accolade of knighthood. James was, probably, in his wonted condition of ebriety towards evening, for he evidently could not guide his weapon himself, but had nearly thrust it into the new-favourite's eye.
The great object of the court aspirants was accomplished; the king had got the queen's sanction, and gave free loose to his foolish affection. He at once conferred a salary of one thousand pounds a year on Villiers, and admitted him to the most unrestrained familiarity. The queen, who appears to have found the young upstart more respectful to her than she anticipated, entered frankly into the new relations, and endeavoured to make use of Villiers to check the follies of James in his cups. Sir Walter Scott says, that in that condition he was "exceedingly like an old gander, running about and cackling all manner of nonsense." Queen Anne gave him the equally characteristic name of an "old sow," and told Villiers that he was her watch-dog and whenever the king was about to make a fool of himself, he must "lug the sow by the ear." James, so far from resenting this uncomplimentary language, readily adopted the phrase of his "dog Steenie," and we find Villiers writing to the queen that, "in obedience to her desire, he had pulled the king's ear till it was as long as any sow's."
Villers once installed in James's good graces, the fall of Somerset was easy, and no time was lost in effecting it. Somerset was not so lost to observance of what passed around him as to be unaware of some danger; probably his vigilant spouse brought the fact to his attention. He therefore solicited a pardon of the king in full and formal style, of all and everything which he might have done, or should hereafter do, which might subject him to a charge of treason, misprision of treason, felony, or other accusation. James, who had not yet been incited to his destruction, with his usual facility in such matters, especially when under certain genial influences, freely granted it; but the lord chancellor Ellesmere refused to put the great seal to such a document, declaring that it would subject him to a præmunire. After all, it might be a ruse of James to grant this pardon, thus still preserving an appearance of favour to Somerset, as he did to the last moment, knowing that a hint to Ellesmere, who was a very compliant creature of his, would prevent the deed taking effect. James went further; he sent Villiers to Somerset, to assure him that he desired not in any way to interfere betwixt him and the king's favour, but would seek preferment only through his means, and be "his servant and creature:" to which Somerset, with the moroseness which had become his manner, replied, "I will have none of your service, and you shall have none of my favour. I will, if I can, break your neck."
Matters now being ripe, Mr. Secretary Winwood was induced by archbishop Abbot, under promise of protection from the queen, to communicate to James the popular rumour that Overbury had been poisoned in the Tower, and that this had been confirmed by some admissions of Elwes, the lieutenant of that fortress, in conversation with the earl of Shrewsbury. That the old favourite had lost his place in James's heart was immediately evident. He took up the matter with his usual avidity where a mystery was to be probed, he put a number of questions to Elwes in writing, and demanded, on pain of his life, a faithful answer. That answer satisfied James that Somerset and his wife were guilty of this foul murder. He immediately sent for the lord chief justice Coke, and ordered him to arrest them. Coke demurred till the king had named several others in commission with him. This being settled, this extraordinary royal dissembler set out to Royston to hunt, and took Somerset with him, showing him all his old marks of fondness. In the days of his real favour he had refused him not the most iniquitous request. Even when the wife of Sir Walter Raleigh, on his first condemnation for treason, had gone down on her knees to him, to implore him to spare his castle and estate at Sherborne, in Dorsetshire, to his children, he had ruthlessly replied, "Na, na, I maun ha' the land; I maun ha' it for Carr." And at this moment, when he was dooming the same Carr to destruction, he was pretending the same infatuated regard. When the chief justice's messenger arrived at Royston with the warrant, he found the king hanging about Somerset's neck, kissing him in the true Judas style, and saying, "When shall I see thee again? When shall I see thee again?"
When the warrant was delivered to Somerset, in the midst of these disgusting affectations of endearment, he exclaimed that never had such an affront been offered to a peer of England in presence of his sovereign. "Nay, man," replied the royal hypocrite, coaxingly. "if Coke sends for me, I maim go;" and as soon as Somerset's back was turned, he added, "Now the deil go with thee, for I will never see thy face mair." Soon after Coke himself arrived; to whom James indignantly complained that Somerset and his wife had made him a go-between in their adultery and murder. Even his enormous self-conceit was so far overcome, as to compel him to admit that he had been grossly duped. He commanded Coke to search the affair to the bottom, and to spare no man or woman that he found guilty, however great or powerful. "And," added he, "may God's curse be upon you and your ​house if you spare nay of them; and God's curse be upon me and mine, if I pardon any of them."
Coke seemed quite willing to act as vigorously and unsparingly as the king could desire. The commissioners, of whom he was the chief, subjected the adulterous pair to no less than three hundred examinations, and then announced that they found ample proofs of their guilt. That Frances Howard, formerly countess of Essex, had resorted to sorcery to incapacitate her then husband, the earl of Essex, and to procure the love of lord Rochester. That, finding Sir Thomas Overbury an obstacle to their criminal designs, they had, by the assistance of the countess's late uncle, the earl of Northampton, procured the commitment of Sir Thomas to the Tower, and the removal of the lieutenant, and the appointment in his place of their creature Elwes, and of one Weston to be the warder of the prisoner. That this Weston had formerly been the servant of Mrs. Turner, a woman famous for the introduction of yellow starch for ruffs, and an early companion of the said lady Frances Howard; and that through Weston and Mrs. Turner the countess had procured three kinds of poison from one Franklin, an apothecary. That Weston had administered these poisons to his prisoner Overbury, and thus procured his death. Coke added that, from private memorandum books and letters which he had found amongst the papers of the prisoners, he had discovered that Somerset had undoubtedly poisoned prince Henry. The queen is said to have been greatly excited by this intelligence, and had all her former belief of this poisoning revived. She declared her full conviction that Somerset and his clique had planned the removal of herself and her son Charles also, in order to marry the princess Elizabeth to the son of the earl of Suffolk, brother to the countess. But James was too well satisfied by the post-mortem examination of the body of prince Henry, and by the insufficiency of Coke's proofs, to be led into this absurd belief, though he admitted a persuasion that Somerset had received money from Spain on condition of delivering up the prince Charles to that monarch.
The letter of Overbury to Somerset, on which Coke grounded these atrocious charges, has since been published, and bears no such inferences. He, indeed, alludes to certain secrets of Somerset's in his possession, but from the slight manner in which they are referred to, they do not appear to be of any importance; nor does he in any way menace revealing them to the government, but merely says that he has written a history of their whole acquaintance, from which it would be seen with what ingratitude the earl had treated him. What was more curious, if true, as related by Bacon, Wotton, and Weldon, was the fact that Coke, in rummaging after written evidence of the prisoner's guilt, had got hold of the pocket-book of Forman, a conjurer, who had been consulted by the countess of Essex and other ladies of the court, but on the very first page finding the name of his own wife, very quickly put it away.
Weston, Franklin, the apothecary, and Mrs. Turner, were all secured and examined. The facts which came out on their trials were these: Mrs. Turner, who was a remarkably fine woman, had been an early companion of the countess of Exeter. That, whilst a maid in her father's house, this beautiful but bad woman had initiated the young lady Howard into much of the profligacy so rife amongst the courtiers, male and female, of queen Elizabeth. But after being separated for some years, by the marriage of Mrs, Turner to a physician in London, they then again met there, Mrs. Turner now being a widow, and Frances Howard the reluctant wife of Essex. Mrs. Turner, who appears to have been leading a very criminal life, immediately took steps to rid her of her husband, and to secure for her her lover Rochester. She informed her of the means by which she had been successful in her own love affairs. She assured her that Forman, the conjurer of Lambeth, had a wonderful power in compelling love by philter, and was in consequence greatly resorted to by the ladies of the court. That in her own case, she had brought Sir Arthur Mainwaring, spite of himself, to entertain the most violent passion for her, and caused him to ride many miles in night and tempest to her house. She introduced the young countess to this fashionable sorcerer, who thenceforth became in great request with her. By letters of the countess produced in court, it appeared that she called this notorious quack "her dear father," "her very dear father," and "her sweet father;" and had had frequent meetings with Rochester at the conjuror's house.
The court of justice was at once amused and horrified by the production, not of Forman, for with all his supernatural science he was dead, but of his conjuring charms and apparatus; his pictures, diagrams, spells, and images. Such was the effect of this trumpery on the spectators, that a loud crack being heard in the gallery, the whole court was terrified; not by the natural danger of the gallery being too much crowded for its strength, but from an impression that the devil was present along with all that diabolical machinery, and was ready to overwhelm the whole audience in resentment at its exposure. Amongst his papers appeared that pocket-book of the sorcerer—in which was catalogued the court dames who had consulted him, and the lords they sought to win to themselves—which so startled Coke.
It appeared that Mrs. Turner had not only thus led the willing countess into all the arcana of fashionable sin, but had also procured her the instruments for its accomplishment. She had furnished her with the fellow Weston, who had lived with Franklin, the apothecary, who supplied the poison, and who undertook to administer it to Overbury. This wretch confessed to his crimes, and that he had given Sir Thomas poison enough to have killed twenty men, dosing him through a space of several months, to give his illness the appearance of natural disease; and that Somerset, as soon as the victim was dead, ordered him, through the earl of Northampton, to be immediately buried. Franklin also confessed his share in the business.
These inferior criminals were all condemned to be hanged at Tyburn, before the trial of the prime agents. Though they were clearly convicted on suspect evidence, yet there were no few who attributed their condemnation to the court conspiracy against Somerset; and when Weston was on the scaffold, some of Somerset's friends. Sir John Hollis, Sir John Wentworth, Sir Thomas Vavasour, Sir Henry Vane, and Mr. Sackville rode up, and called on him to state honestly whether he were actually guilty of the fact or not. Weston merely replied, "Fact or no fact, I die worthily," and so ​was hanged. These gentlemen were charged in the star-chamber with an attempt to slander the king's justice, by this proceeding, and Hollis and Wentworth were thrown into prison for a year, and condemned to a fine of one thousand pounds each. Weston suffered on the 23rd of October, and Mrs. Turner on the 9th of November. This woman had played such a part amongst the court ladies, that her execution drew a vast crowd, and many great ladies and fashionable men, both noble and commoners, went in their coaches to Tyburn to see her die. She came forth dressed in great splendour, rouged and perfumed as if going to a ball, and wearing round her neck one of her celebrated yellow-starched ruffs. She made a very penitent death, and—her yellow starch went out of fashion with her.
But a circumstance now took place which greatly scandalised the public. Sir Thomas Monson, the king's falconer, was arrested by Coke on a charge of being concerned in these affairs. He was known to have recommended Weston when he was proposed as warder over Overbury, and Coke exhorted him to confess, and throw himself on the mercy of the king. Monson rejected the advice scornfully, and before Coke could reduce him to confession by the means so freely used in that age, the public were surprised by seeing a detachment of the king's guard enter, and carry him away from the very face of the judge, and convey him back to the Tower. Perhaps that is the sole example of such a daring act of arbitrary power attempted in England. The reason assigned was that Monson's evidence was necessary on the trial of Somerset, which was deferred till the arrival of Sir John Digby, afterwards earl of Bristol, the ambassador at the court of Spain, and who, it was asserted, could furnish proofs of Somerset's treasonable dealings with the Spanish court. When the public suprise and indignation at this unexampled transaction had had time to subside, Monson was quietly let out of the Tower, and gradually restored to his offices at court. Roger Coke asserts that Coke and the judges Hyde and Doddridge declared Monson as guilty as any of them.
On the 16th of November, Elwes, the lieutenant of the Tower, was executed. On the trial he strictly denied his guilt, but on the scaffold he confessed it all. The last of this miserable crew, Franklin, the apothecary, was hanged on the 9th of December.
On the plea of the necessity of having Digby present, the trial of Somerset and his wife was deferred till April, 1616. The real cause of delay, however, was probably the fear of bringing a man like Somerset, who had been so long in all James's secrets, to trial, lest he should avow something in his despair to the damage of the royal reputation. Certain it is that, when the time of trial approached, James betrayed the most extreme terror and uneasiness, and omitted no means to induce Somerset to make a full confession in private, offering him both life and restoration to his estates. He sent messenger after messenger to Somerset in prison, the attorney-general Bacon being the principal, James Hay, afterwards earl of Carlisle, another, with whom was employed Somerset's late private secretary. They did all in their power to induce Somerset to accept the king's terms, but he remained obstinate, replying, when offered life and fortune, "Of what use is life when honour is gone?" He demanded earnestly to be permitted to see the king himself, declaring that in half-an-hour's interview he could place all in so clear a light as should perfectly satisfy his majesty. This interview James declined, as well as a proposal to send a private letter to the king. These requests being refused, he assumed an attitude of menace, declaring that whenever he was brought into court, he would make such avowals as would astonish the country, and cause the king to rue his rejection of his offers.
On this James wrote to Sir George More, the lieutenant of the Tower, exhorting him to use his influence to divert the mind of the prisoner from such a course, and adding:— "God knoweis it is only a trikke of his ydle brain, hoaping thairby to shifte his tryall, but is casie to bee scene, that he wold threattin me, with laying an aspersion upon me of being in some sorte accessorie to his cryme." He says if the prisoner wishes to send a message to him it must not be private, for he cannot receive a private message till after his trial, and he holds out the hope of making all right then.
This did not move Somerset, and on the 9th of May the king sent proposals to the sullen prisoner of such a nature, that James informed the lieutenant of the Tower, if there were the least spark of grace left in Somerset, he must accept them. He did not accept them, however, though it was intimated to him that the countess had confessed all, which was the fact. On the 13th, James ordered More to repeat the offer, if he would confess, with a promise that it should even be improved. Not a soul, he added, was to know of this, but if Somerset agreed to confess, the commissioners were to be sent for instantly, but if he remained obstinate, the king desired to hear nothing of it. Nothing further came of all this running to and fro but a letter from Somerset, sent openly, which the king deigned to receive, but which only again demanded a private interview before his trial.
On the 24th of May the countess was brought before the peers, where, as she had already confessed, she had only to plead guilty. She was extremely agitated, pale, spiritless. She trembled greatly all the time that the clerk was reading the indictment, and put her fan before her face at the mention of Weston. Her words were nearly inaudible, through weeping, as she pleaded guilty, and threw herself on the royal mercy. This done, she was removed from the bar before the sentence was pronounced, during which interval Bacon delivered a speech perfectly unnecessary, as she had pleaded guilty, detailing the damning facts which he was prepared to produce, had he been compelled by her denying her guilt. This manœuvre was intended to criminate Somerset, without the hazard of his wife's declaring his innocence on hearing him implicated. Bacon's purpose being served, she was recalled, and the lord chancellor Ellesmere, who acted as high steward on the trials, pronounced sentence of death upon her.
That day Somerset was informed that he would go to trial on the morrow: they had not deemed it safe to try him and his wife together. On hearing this he went into a great rage, declaring that the king had assured him that he should never go to trial, and protesting that if they took him there, it should be by force, and in his bed. He repeated his former threats, adding the king dared not bring him into open court. More, the lieutenant of the ​Tower, was so alarmed at this temper and language, that he hastened away to James at Greenwich, though it was getting late, and was midnight when he reached the palace. He was hastily admitted to the king's chamber, and James, on hearing his statement, burst into an agony of tears, and exclaimed—"On my soul, More, I wot not what to do. Thou art a wise man, hold me in this great strait, and thou shalt find thou dost it for a thankful master."
More promised to do his best, and was afterwards actually rewarded for his services on this occasion with a suit worth to him fifteen hundred pounds, though the earl of Annandale, his great friend, managed to get half of it.
Prince Charles, Son of James I. From a Painting by Vandyke.
The lieutenant hastened back to the Tower, and told Somerset that he had communicated his wishes to the king, who was in the most gracious disposition towards him, and sent him assurance that though for form's sake he must appear in court, he should not be detained there by any proceedings; but whilst he had there an opportunity of seeing his enemies and their malice towards him, the royal power should protect him from any harm.
This appeased the rage of Somerset, and he prepared calmly to make his appearance in the morning. But even then the officers of the court were by no means secure of the result when he should find himself compelled to plead, notwithstanding the royal promise. Bacon had planned all necessary cautions for this emergency, as we find from his "Particular Remembrances for his Majesty," preserved in the State Trials. "It were good," says this protean sage, who ​has been styled "the greatest wit, scholar, and scoundrel of his age," "that after he is come into the hall, so that he may perceive that he must go to trial, and shall be retired to the place appointed till the court call for him, then the lieutenant shall tell him roundly that, if in his speeches he shall tax the king, that the justice of England is that he shall be taken away, and the evidence go on without him; and then all the people will cry away with him, and then it shall not be in the king's power to save his life, the people will be so set on fire."
The lieutenant had carefully acted on this plan, and had provided two servants, each with a cloak on his arm, to stand behind Somerset, so that if More's representations did not after all prevent Somerset speaking out to the discredit the king, they should throw the cloaks instantly over his head, and drag him from the bar, from all consequence of which proceeding he promised to protect them.
"Keeping Sunday," according to King James's Book of Sports.
These singular precautions, which betrayed an awful terror on the part of the king of some withering exposure from the exasperated favourite, so far prevailed, that Somerset stood upon his trial with apparent calmness, but refused steadfastly to plead guilty. Bacon, on his part, was careful in stating the charges against him, to do it so mildly that the prisoner should not be excited to any dangerous pitch. Somerset never mentioned the king, but he defended himself resolutely, and with consummate ability. He analysed the whole string of charges brought against him, explained away whatever appeared to tell most forcibly to his disadvantage, and for eleven hours prolonged the trial, and the of intolerable agony and suspense of the king, who, during the whole time, was in the most pitiable condition of terror. "But who had seen," says Sir Anthony Weldon, in a passage which is fully borne out by the letters of More, the lieutenant, "the king's restless motion all that day, sending to every boat landing at the bridge, cureing all that came without tidings, would have easily judged that all was not right, and that there had been some grounds for his fears of Somerset's boldness; but at last, one bringing his word that he was condemned, all was quiet."
In the course of a few weeks James actually granted a pardon to the murder and adultery-stained countess, on the plea that she was not tried as a principal, but as an accessory before the fact; though all the facts of the case go to show that she was the chief instrument and instigator of the murder of Overbury. He also offered the same grace to Somerset; but the proud, though fallen favourite, haughtily refused it, saying that he was an innocent man, who, therefore, needed no pardon, but expected a reversal of his sentence. Time, however, showed him that the favour of the prince had passed on to others, and that his enemies were working for further injury to him; he therefore condescended in the autumn of 1621 to petition for the pardon formerly rejected. It was granted on the 24th of October, with a promise of the restoration of his property. James, meantime, allowed him an income of four thousand pounds a year, and protected him from the infamy attaching to his condemnation. He would not allow him to be expelled from the order of St. George, nor his arms to be reversed in the chapel of that saint at Windsor.
​The guilty earl and countess are said to have retired together into the country, not to the felicity of innocent affection, but, as it was said, to mutual hatred and recrimination. The countess died in 1632; the earl, who never recovered his estates, lived on thirteen years longer. Their only child. Lady Ann Carr, who was born in the Tower, was married to William, the fifth earl, and afterwards duke of Bedford, and became the mother of the celebrated lord William Russell, who perished on the scaffold under Charles II. Out of such a soil can rise such plants; nay, even the daughter of this infamous couple is declared to have been a woman of the purest and noblest character; and so carefully was the horrible history of her parents kept from her, that it never reached her ears till a few years before her own death. The earl of Essex, so cruelly treated in this revolting affair, lived to lead with high distinction the army of the commonwealth.
Fast on the fall of Somerset followed that of the chief justice Coke. He had rendered distinguished service to James in hunting out the evidence and bringing to punishment the favourite and his wife; but he had neutralised this benefit by his haughtiness and opposition to the royal authority in other respects. Coke and Bacon had pursued two opposite systems of policy in their courses towards the highest honours of the state. Bacon had affected liberalism, and a championship of popular rights, which the higher he rose the more he sacrificed to the pleasure of the monarch. There was a profound flattery in this, for it seemed to give an additional value to his growing attachment to the crown, that it was won from his original bias towards the people. On the other hand, Coke commenced as a thorough-going supporter of the prerogative, and as his abilities were preeminent, and his prosecution of state offenders unrestrained by any scruples of conscience, he did the work of that despotic prince with a gusto and a ruthlessness which highly delighted his employer. No lawyer, except Jefferies, in a later age, ever indulged in the same unsparing abuse of those against whom he was retained. His disposition was not merely unfeeling, it was truculent, and the insolence of his language was beyond all former experience. When let loose on a victim, he certainly was no respecter of persons; an Arabella Stuart or a Raleigh were abused in a style which would not now be tolerated towards the most abject criminals. But when Coke had reached the summit of his ambition, and thought the height to which he had climbed secure, he began to display the inherent pride of his nature, by assuming an independence of manner, and a haughtiness of opinion, exhibited even towards the throne, which astonished and irritated James. In the commons he openly opposed the claims of prerogative, came out in defence of popular rights, and ended where Bacon had begun. From abject servility he rapidly passed to daring opposition. On the subject of the late benevolences, he stood forward as a patriot in the commons; in the case of Peacham, that which was prosecuted as treason. Coke declared was only defamation; and in that of Owen he agreed with the prisoner that he had committed no treason by saying that the king, if excommunicated, might lawfully be killed, because the king not having been excommunicated, the opinion could not apply to him. These declarations, both in parliament and on the bench, roused James to a keen resentment, and this was continually augmented. He set his own court of the king's bench above every other, and threatened with the penalties of a præmniure the judges of the court of chancery, and all other judges who should grant relief in equity after judgment had been pronounced in the king's bench; and he extended the same menace to all suitors who sought for such relief. The judges of the courts of admiralty, of high commission, of requests, of the duchy of Lancaster, and even the president of the councils of the north, and of Wales, felt their jurisdictions invaded and repressed by his pretensions. The court of star-chamber even, hitherto above all law, was called in question by him, and its power to levy fines in many cases denied. He went farther, and, as in the case of Owen and Peacham, dictated to the privy council, and contradicted the very sovereign to his face.
All this was beheld with infinite satisfaction by Bacon, whose eyes were steadily fixed on the chancellorship, which Ellesmere, lately created viscount Brackley, could not, from his age, long retain. Coke once out of it, it must fall to Bacon.
It would seem as if at the very time when Coke was hunting down his former benefactor, Somerset, the secret decree had gone out from the king against himself. Somerset was condemned on the 25th of May, and on the 30th of June Coke received an order from the king to absent himself from the council chamber, and not to proceed on his circuit, but to employ himself in correcting the errors in his book of reports. He had outraged James's sense of his own supreme authority, by opposing him in the matter of commendams and bishoprics, and had, moreover, contended with Villiers, the new favourite, respecting a patent place at court. Long before he received this startling order for the suspension of his diplomatic and judicial functions, the archbishop, the chancellor, and Mr. Attorney-general Bacon, had been employed by royal command to collect charges against him, so that, as we have observed, his fall must have been decreed before or whilst he was working out that of Somerset.
He was now charged with concealing a debt of twelve thousand pounds, due from the late chancellor Hatton to the crown; with contempt of the king's authority in declaring from the bench that the common law would be overthrown by proceedings in equity, or by claims of prerogative; and for disrespect to the crown in the affair of the commendams.
The charge regarding the money Coke refuted when brought before the council, and confirmed his case by a decision at law: as to the second charge, he explained it as in no way reflecting on the king; and for the third, he humbly solicited his majesty's forgiveness. James professed to retain the highest regard for the lord chief justice, and intended, on his showing a proper humility, to continue to him his favour; but when Coke brought in his report on his book, and maintained that he could only find five trivial errors in it, James, in great anger for his "deceit, contempt, and slander of government," dismissed him from the bench, and made Montague, the recorder of London, chief justice in his place. Coke, with all his harshness and cutting style to others, felt for himself keenly, and is said to have wept ​like a child on receiving his supercedeas. Bacon displayed anything but a philosophical magnanimity on the fall of his great rival. He not only joked with Villiers on the disgrace of the great man who had offended the favourite, but he wrote a most insulting letter to the fallen judge, which was particularly odious from being garnished with the cant of piety.
Bacon now looked confidently towards the chancellorship, and in March of the following year Brackley resigning from age, the great seal was transferred to him, with the title of lord-keeper. Sir Francis had reached the elevation to which he had so long and so ardently aspired, by a slavish advocacy of the most unlimited claims of prerogative, and, as far as in him lay, the restriction of constitutional liberty,—a mortifying instance of how completely the most transcendent talents can be united in a nature ignoble and mercenary. Indeed, the conduct of Bacon on this occasion was vain and weak to a pitiable degree. Though be had now reached the mature age of fifty-four, and drew an enormous income from his grants and offices, he was so profuse of expenditure, that he was a needy man, pressed with difficulties, which he saw in the chancellorship an exhaustless means of dispersing. His vanity burst forth to such a surprising extent, that he assumed all the state of a Wolsey. He rode to Westminster Hall on horseback, in a gown of rich purple satin, and attended by a crowd of nobles, judges, great law officers, lawyers, and students, rivalling even the splendour of the king.
Whilst these affairs were progressing at home, the credit of James abroad had sunk very low. At the conference for effecting a truce betwixt Holland and Spain, held at the Hague—a conference which established the independence of the Low Countries—the English ministers had been made to feel the ignominy of their position, compared with the dignity of the ambassadors of Elizabeth. Prince Maurice told them openly that their minster dare not open his mouth in contradiction to the king of Spain; and their allies, the French, in consequence, assumed a superiority throughout the negotiations which mortified deeply the English envoys. Nor was that the only slight which James's truckling policy brought upon him abroad. He was anxious to ally his son to the court of Spain, notwithstanding the intense aversion of his subjects to the idea of a catholic princess. But he was saved from incensing the nation by a Spanish marriage: Spain declined the offer. He next applied for the hand of Madame Christine, sister to Louis XIII. of France; but here again he was met with the contempt which his mean and insecure character merited: France preferred the suit of the duke of Savoy. It was never before the fortune of England to have to go begging to the continental states for wives for its princes: they had hitherto been only too officiously pressed on its acceptance. Yet James, as if incapable of feeling such insults, continued his assiduous and humble court to the courts of France and Spain. Soon after the refusal of the hand of the French princess, the weak king of France, who had been retained in a state of pupilage by his mother, Catherine de Medici, and her favourite Concini, marshal D'Ancre, had the Italian assassinated by Vitry, one of the royal guards. This took place in open day, on the draw-bridge of the Louvre; and Louis, who was watching the proceeding, immediately showed himself at a window of the palace, shouting to the people, "Praised be the Lord, now I am a king!" and the officers of the guard advanced through the streets with a preconcerted cry of "God save the king! The king is king!" Yet James of England, insisted, despised, and rejected by this assassinating king of France, who was too weak to do more than escape out of the hands of one favourite into those of another, and was very soon more completely enthralled than ever by the duke de Luynes, made all haste to congratulate Louis on his black act, and to pay a high compliment to Vitry, the murderer. This we have on the express authority of "Winwood, the secretary of state. Writing to Sir Guy Carleton, the ambassador in Holland, he says:—"But what opinion private particular men, who aim at nothing else but the advancement of their own fortunes, have of this action, his majesty is pleased to approve of it, which doth appear not only by the outward demonstration of his exceeding joy and contentment when first he received the news thereof, but also by letters which, with his own hand, he hath written to the French king. And besides, Mr. Comptroller, who hath charge in all diligence to return into France, hath express orders to congratulate with the marshal de Vitry, for so he now is, that by his hands, the king, his master, was delivered out of captivity."
We must now trace the proceedings of James in Scotland and Ireland, where he was anxious to establish as thoroughly his principles of church and state supremacy as in England, and where the seed he sowed rapidly grew into the same harvest of bloodshed and revolution as in this country.
The church of Scotland, as established by Knox and his contemporaries, was, like the country from which they brought the idea, a republic. It acknowledged no head but Christ; nor any concern which the state had with it, except to furnish the support of the ministers whose lives were devoted to the civilisation and religious improvement of the community. The minister and the lay elders of a parish constituted the parochial assembly, which governed all the spiritual affairs of that little circle: a certain number of these assemblies constituted a presbytery, which heard all appeals from the parochial assemblies, and sanctioned the appointment, suspension, or dismissal of their ministers. Beyond the presbytery extended the provincial synod, and the general assembly claimed the supreme management of the affairs of the church under God.
This free form of the Scottish church had always been extremely repugnant to James's despotic notions. Even when he professed to admire its constitution as the purest and most perfect on earth, he was writhing under its authority; and no sooner did he ascend the English throne than he avowed his real opinion of its inconsistency with, monarchy. The hierarchy of England delighted him; he regarded it as the surest bulwark of the throne, and bishops he seemed to regard as the guarantees of royal security. "No bishop no king," was his favourite motto; and the hatred of presbytery which he expressed at Hampton Court led him to seek its utter overthrow in Scotland. He knew the sturdy materials that he had to deal with in the Scottish ministry and people, who had driven out his mother in their hatred of Catholicism; yet this did not deter him from ​endeavouring to plant episcopacy as firmly in Scotland as in England. He looked on the spirit and form of the Scotch church bat as one remove from republicanism in the state; and his first step, taken in 1605, was a bold one, being no less than to assume the right to prorogue the general assembly at will. This was at once annihilating the theocratic constitution of the assembly, and placing the king at its head. This measure was carried out by Sir George Home, the lord treasurer of Scotland, afterwards earl of Dunbar. The ministers, though prorogued, met again in defiance of the royal fiat, but were dissolved again and again. The ministers from nine presbyteries still boldly met in assertion of the paramount right of the church, at Aberdeen, called themselves "an assembly," appointed a moderator, and before dissolving at the command of the council, adjourned their sitting to a fixed time that year.
Thirteen of the most prominent clergymen were immediately arrested on the charge of having violated the act of 1584, "for maintenance of the royal power over all estates." The jury was packed by Dunbar, and six of the most refractory were condemned as guilty of high treason, and banished for life. They retired into Holland and France, and were followed thither by numbers of their admirers. Meantime, at home, undaunted by this lawless exercise of power, the clergy offered up prayers for their exiled brethren, whom they boldly proclaimed from their pulpits as martyrs to the freedom of the faith; and unsilenced by the menaces of the court, loudly warned the people of the impending danger to the church.
But James, with the true blind hardihood of a Stuart, went on, and appointed thirteen clergymen to the ancient abolished bishoprics, and gave them precedency in the synods and assembly. The clergy refused to submit to their authority, and as they were unsupported by the ancient reverence, treated their assumed dignity with contempt. But James went on to repeal the act which had confiscated the episcopal estates, endowed the bishops, and made them moderators of both synods and presbyteries within their own districts. He erected two courts of high commission, and, indeed, gave them a power such as their predecessors had never possessed. In 1610 three of these bishops went to England, and received episcopal ordination from the English prelates, and on their return conferred it on their colleagues. And finally in 1612, it was enacted by parliament that all general assemblies should only be appointed by the crown; that the bishops only should present to livings; that they should admit no one who would not first take the oath of supremacy to the king, and of canonical obedience to the bishop; that they should possess the power of deprivation and the right of visitation, each in his own diocese.
Thus James had suppressed the constitution of the church which he had formerly blessed God that he belonged to, declaring it "the sincerest kirk in the world," and placed over the groaning people that episcopacy which they abhorred, and had destroyed with so much blood and trouble; and as in all such cases, he carried the new rigour far beyond the old. He placed the archbishops of St. Andrews and Glasgow at the head of his tyrannical high commission courts, and either of these prelates, with four colleagues, were to constitute a quorum, from whose decisions there was no appeal. All schools and colleges were subjected, as well as the clergy, to their visitation. The despotism was complete; James thought he had crushed presbyterianism, and fixed episcopacy on a rock for ever. He was never more deceived: he had only closed down the safety valve, ere long to produce an explosion which should hurl his family to destruction.
Yet these changes had not been effected without symptoms of resistance, which would have made a wiser monarch pause. At one time he had summoned to London five prelates and eight ministers, as it appeared, to convince them of the reasonableness of his proposed changes by his presumed invincible eloquence. The ministers refused their consent to any of his proposals, declaring that they were delegated to hear and report, not to decide. He demanded of them that they should ask pardon for praying for the banished ministers; and asked them whether he had not the right, by his royal authority, to appoint, suspend, and prevent their meetings. Whether, in fact, he did not possess absolute power, as king, over their persons and proceedings, both civil and ecclesiastical, as well as the right to summon them at will and punish them.
Andrew Melville, the successor of Knox, boldly though respectfully denied these propositions, asserting the freedom of conscience, and its immunity from the power of any earthly potentate. When pressed by some slavish Scottish lords to conform, he said, "My lords, I am a free subject of Scotland, a free kingdom, that has laws and privileges of its own. By these I stand. No legal citation has been issued against me; nor are you and I in our own country, where such an inquisition, so oppressive as the present, is condemned by parliament. I am bound by no law to criminate or to furnish accusations against myself. My lords, remember what you are; mean as I am, remember that I am a free-born Scotsman, to be dealt with as you would be dealt with yourselves, according to the laws of the Scottish nation."
This was noble and patriotic language; but Melville had to deal with a vain despot, who declared himself above all laws. He insisted on their attending the royal chapel to hear the preaching of his bishops. The plain presbyterian Scots were scandalised at both what they saw and heard there: at the ceremonies, the gilded altar, the chalices, and tapers; but above all, at the slavish doctrines of those courtly preachers. The Scotch ministers did not hesitate to express their contempt and indignation at the whole spectacle, and Melville ridiculed the entire service in a Latin epigram. For this audacity James summoned Melville before his privy council; but the preacher's blood was now chafed beyond restraint, for he and his colleagues, though they were impatient to get away from what they considered this idolatrous scene, where the conduct of the bishops and clergy was by no means edifying, were compelled by him to stay. So far from expressing any regret for his satire on the royal mode of worship, he denounced in the strongest terms the whole system of the Anglican church, and in his excitement seized the surplice of the primate, and shook angrily what he called the Romish rags of the arch, bishop of Canterbury.
James committed him to the Tower for his contumacy, where he kept him four years, and then banished him for ​life. He went to reside at Sedan, and died abroad in 1620. His nephew, James Melville, was shut up at Berwick, and died six years before his uncle; the rest of the preachers were banished to remote districts of Scotland, wide apart from each other.
Soon after the completion of this disgraceful suppression of religious liberty in Scotland, the earl of Dunbar, James's instrument in these proceedings, died, and his different offices were occupied by relatives of Carr, then the favourite, who ruled, so long as Carr was in power, with a rigour more infamous than that of Dunbar himself. Nor was the condition of the catholics one whit better than that of the presbyterians; indeed, the French ambassador, Broderic, declared that it was worse than that of the English catholics. In 1616 a Jesuit of the name of Ogilvie was put to death; the prisons were filled with recusants: every catholic nobleman was compelled to receive a protestant minister into his house, and was informed that unless he conformed to the Anglican church, he must suffer forfeiture of his estates. The persecutions of the earls of Huntley, Angus, Errol, and many others, are related at length by Balfour.
To put the finish to this great and daring change, James determined to make a journey to Scotland himself. On leaving that country he assured his Scottish subjects that he would visit his ancient capital at least once in three years: fourteen years had now elapsed without his redeeming his word, his poverty having hitherto presented an insurmountable obstacle. But he had now consented to yield up the cautionary towns, Brill, Flushing, and Rammekens, for 2,728,000 florins instead of 8,000,000, which were due to him. He had been induced to this by his necessities and the persuasions of secretary Winwood, who was said to have received £29,000 from the Dutch for his services on the occasion. James now discharged some of his most pressing debts, and obtained a loan of £96,000, with which he set forward to Scotland in the spring of 1617.
On the 7th of June parliament assembled, and James, by his sole authority, excluded such of the representatives as he knew were hostile to his great object of establishing the English church in all its forms and in all its authority, as the state church of Scotland for ever. But the peers, alarmed lest he should restore to his pet church all the lands of which they now were in possession, rejected the lords of the articles whom he recommended. To win over these nobles, James invited them to a secret conference, in which he assured them that no revocation of these lands should be made. Reassured on this head, the peers were ready to vote as he pleased, and he opened parliament in one of his vaunting speeches about his power, in which he told them that "he had nothing more at heart than to reduce their barbarity to the sweet civility of their neighbours; and if the Scots would be as docible to learn the goodness of the English as they were teachable to limp after their ill, then he should not doubt of success; for they had already learnt of the English to drink healths, to wear coaches and gay clothes, to take tobacco, and to speak a language which was neither English nor Scottish."
In this insulting speech the king might have included himself both as to clothes and language; but these were small matters in comparison with those which he had in view. He brought in a bill to enact that what the king might determine upon regarding the church, with the concurrence of the bishops and a certain number of the clergy, should be good in Law. At this proposition the clergy were instantly in arms, and presented so determined a remonstrance against it, that he became afraid, and gave it up, saying, it was unnecessary to give him that by statute which was already his by authority of the crown. He managed, however, to carry a bill adding chapters to the bishoprics, regulating the appointment of bishops, and also one for converting the hereditary offices of sheriffs into annual ones, which he would thus be able to influence. Never, surely, with a spirit so cautiously cowardly, was there a monarch so ingrained with the bigotry of absolutism, or who so perseveringly laboured to annihilate every liberty of the subject, and leave the nation a base and soulless heritage of the crown. But the nation had a soul which was not thus to be satrapped and trodden into a horde of serfs; and though James escaped to a quiet tomb, it took a terrible vengeance on his children, whom he had inoculate with his incorrigible lust of absolutism.
As nothing more was to be obtained from parliament, the uncouth tyrant wended his way to St. Andrews, where he had planned a severe retribution for the remonstrant clergy, from a more obsequious tribunal. There the clergy having assembled at his summons, he singled out Simpson, Ewart, and Calderwood, who had signed the remonstrance which baulked him of his full intentions, and brought them before the High Commission Court, and condemned Simpson and Ewart to suspension and imprisonment. Calderwood, who by his influence and ability excited most of all his dread and resentment, he banished for life. Having thus given the clergy a sharp lesson, he now announced to them that it was his will that the whole ritual of the English church should be adopted in Scotland in five articles, the name of which afterwards became famous, namely:—1st, That the eucharist should be received in a kneeling and not in a sitting posture, as had been hitherto the mode in Scotland. 2nd, That the sacrament should be given to the sick at their own houses when they were in danger of death. 3rd, That baptism should, in like cases, be administered in private houses. 4th, That the youth should be confirmed by the bishop. 5th, That the festivals of Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension Day, and Whit Sunday, should be observed in Scotland just as in England. These commands were received with unequivocal marks of displeasure by the clergy, but the fate of the three remonstrants availed to keep them silent for a time, and James regarded his plans as fully accomplished; but anon the clergy fell on their knees and implored him to refer the five articles to the general assembly of the kirk. James for some time refused to listen to them, but on Patrick Galloway assuring him that matters should be so managed that all should go right, he consented.
He then kept his Whitsuntide in the English fashion, with all his crouching prelates and courtiers around him, and afterwards took his way homeward, in the full persuasion that he had succeeded in his object. Time told a very different tale; nor was he himself long in perceiving that though he had overawed, he had not subdued the sturdy Scottish clergy. Scarcely had he reached England when he ​learned that the Scotch, both clergy and laity, were loud in denouncing the administration of the eucharist in private houses as a remnant of popery; the revival of the festivals of Christmas as the return to the ancient Saturnalia; and those of Easter and Whitsuntide as the renewal of the feasts of the Jews. And on the 24th of November the clergy, in their assembly at St. Andrews, confirmed none of the five articles except that of the administration of the sacrament at the houses of the sick, provided that the sick person first took an oath that he or she did not expect to recover. James was highly enraged. He ordered the observance of the five articles to be commanded by proclamation, and withdrew the promised augmentations of stipend from the clergy. Nor did James give way in the slightest degree. The next year he managed the assembly so far, through lord Binning, as to carry the articles by a majority of eighty-six against forty-one; and in 1621, three years later, he obtained an act of parliament enforcing these articles on the repugnant spirit of the people. Dr. Laud, whose name we now meet for the first time, afterwards to become so notorious, even urged James to go further lengths; but his fatal advice was destined to act with more force on the next generation.
Dr. Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. From the original portrait.
BUCKINGHAM, THE KING’S FAVOURITE, PASSING THROUGH THE STREETS IN HIS SEDAN.
​Sundays bull and bear-baitings, interludes, and bowls; the latter, probably, because they led to gambling. He restored all the jollity of may-poles and rash-bearings.
Many of the established clergy were conscientiously opposed to this mode of spending the Sunday, which appeared to them to savour greatly of papacy; but James persisted in his scheme, and not only published his Book of Sports, but ordered the bishops, each in his own diocese, to publish his ordinance regarding the Sunday amusements. Abbot, the primate, is said to have steadfastly refused to read the book in his own church at Croydon, but the other bishops complied. Laud was zealous in its promulgation, and in after years roused the stern and undaunted spirit of the reformers by recommending the revival of the book to Charles I.
In Ireland the same system had been pursued by James from the commencement of his reign, of endeavouring to force the consciences of his subjects into the mould of his own ideas. On the death of Elizabeth the Irish had openly resumed the catholic worship in most of the south of Ireland. Mountjoy, the lord deputy, issued a proclamation for its immediate suppression; but the fear of the old lioness of a queen being removed, they treated his orders with contempt and defiance. Mountjoy marched down upon them, and compelled submission at the point of the bayonet, and then passed over to England, having with him the two great chiefs, Tyrone and O'Donnel, with a number of their followers.
These chieftains being well received by James, Tyrone feeing restored to his honours and estates, and O'Donnel created earl of Tyrconnel, the Irish conceived wonderful hopes of the clemency and liberality of James. They sent a deputation to join the two earls in petitioning for the full enjoyment of their religion, but they found themselves grievously deceived. James declared that he would never consent to anything of the kind, but so long as he had a hundred men left, he would fight to the death to put down so idolatrous a worship. In his anger he committed four of the delegates to the Tower, where he kept them three months; and this practice of committing Irish deputies to prison for daring to present petitions on such subjects, became his regular practice.
The British Solomon never relaxed his war upon the religion of his subjects, if it were not of the same colour and shape of his own, so long as breath was left in him. It was in his eyes akin to the sin against the Holy Ghost to differ from or doubt the infallibility of his wisdom, for he deemed himself, according to his open avowal, a god upon earth. In 1605, two years only after ascending the throne of England, he issued a proclamation, commanding all catholic priests to quit Ireland on pain of death; and he commanded all officers, magistrates, and chief citizens of Dublin to attend the established church, or suffer the fine of twenty pounds a month, and moreover, imprisonment. Once more the heads of the nobility prayed to be permitted the exercise of their religion, but the ill-fated presenters of the petition were thrown into the castle of Dublin, and their spokesman, Sir Patrick Barnewell, was sent over to England and incarcerated in the Tower. Lalor, vicar-apostolic of the dioceses of Dublin, Kildare, and Ferns, was seized and imprisoned for life.
James now hit on a bold scheme for breaking down the clanship of Ireland, and so weakening the opposition of the people to his despotic will. He ordered all possessors of lands to bring in their titles to commissioners appointed for the purpose, on the promise that they should receive them again in a more valid and advantageous form. As, from the disturbed state of the country for ages past, many of those titles were defective, the landowners accepted the offer in good faith, but they found that the commissioners, instead of returning them of the same value, and bearing the same conditions, only returned them freehold titles of such lands as were in their own hands. All such lands as were in the hands of tenants, were made over to these tenants, only subject to the rent charges and dues which they had formerly paid. Thus the great bulk of the tenantry of Ireland was freed from its dependence on the will of the chief in capite, and now set their chieftains and landlords at nought. But though the power of the chiefs was broken, the commonalty showed no more inclination to adhere to a government which oppressed them, and persecuted them on account of their faith. They were now more at liberty, and more ready than ever to follow some bold and defiant leader who promised them protection, and vengeance on their tyrants. The great lords, thus tricked out of their hereditary rights, were converted into deadly enemies of the English government.
Tyrone and Tyrconnel, on taking leave of the English court to return to Ireland, professed extreme gratitude for the kindness of their reception, but in reality they were full of the most hostile sentiments. They looked on this transfer of their seigneurial rights as a measure intended to sever their vassals from them, and thus to subjugate the whole island to the yoke of the English hierarchy. No sooner did they land in Ireland, than Richard Nugent, lord Delvin, invited them to meet him at his castle of Maynooth. They unanimously agreed that the destruction of the hereditary faith of Ireland was planned, and they bound themselves by oath to act together for its defence.
Two years later, intelligence was gathered by some one at Brussels, in the service of the archduke, that Tyrone had renewed his relations with the court of Spain, and in order to decoy him into England, a pretender to a large extent of his lands was set up, and both parties were summoned over to have the cause tried before the privy council. Tyrone, aware of the design, avoided the snare by sending an attorney with full powers to act in his behalf. This stratagem did not succeed. Tyrone received from the lord-deputy information that his presence would be necessary in London to defeat the pretensions of his opponent. Tyrone, feigning to comply, only solicited a delay of a month, in order to settle his affairs and raise money for his journey and sojorun at court. The request being acceded to, he escaped in a vessel sent on purpose from Dunkirk, with two of his sons and nephew, accompanied by Tyrconnel, with his son, and lord Dungannon, his brother, with thirty of their retainers, and reached in a few days Quillebeque, in Normandy.
On the discovery of the escape of these nobles, James was greatly alarmed, believing that they had gone for Spain to join the armada, which during the summer had been ​collecting in the Spanish ports, and to conduct them to Ireland. The news of their real resort abated his fears. He demanded their delivery from France, and then from the Netherlands, whither they betook themselves, describing them as traitors, and men of mean birth, who had been merely ennobled for purposes of state, he accused them of an intention to excite a rebellion, and returning to Ireland with foreign confederates, to put to death all Irishmen of English descent. The court of Brussels declined to give up men exiled only on account of their religion, and admitted them into the Spanish army of Brabant. Tyrone himself proceeded to Rome, where the king of Spain allowed him a pension of six hundred crowns per month, and the pope one hundred.
Active search was made in Ireland for the accomplices of the fugitives; many were arrested in Ulster; some were sent over for trial to England. Lord Delvin, with the eldest son of Tyrone, and Sir Christopher St. Lawrence, were secured and lodged in Dublin Castle. Delvin was tried and condemned as a traitor, but he escaped on the morning fixed for his execution; and no trace of him could be found till he suddenly appeared at the English court, and throwing himself on his knees before the king, presented such a list of real wrongs inflicted on himself and his father, as compelled James to pardon him, and to make him amends by creating him earl of Westmeath; a clemency, as it proved, well bestowed, and which might have taught the king a more successful way to secure obedience and loyalty from his subjects, than those which he unhappily pursued.
Another Irish chief, O'Dogherty of Innishowen, having received a mortal insult from Paulet, the governor of Derry, suprised him at table, and by the aid of his followers succeeded in killing him and five others. The avengers succeeded in capturing alive part, the governor of the fortress of Culmore, and leading him to the gates of the castle, called on the governor's wife to surrender the place, or see her husband murdered on the spot. Conjugal affection prevailed, and O'Dogherty found himself in possession of the stronghold. Possessed by this means of arms and ammunition, O'Dogherty marched with a strong force to Derry, and received the submission of the castle and town. The hopes of the exiles were wonderfully raised by so unexpected an event. They despatched messengers instructing O'Dogherty to hold the place, if possible, till their arrival with foreign aid; but after two unsuccessful attacks, the place was evacuated on the approach of Wingfield, the marshal of the camp, and O'Dogherty fled to the mountains. There, in the month of June, 1608, he was accidentally discovered and shot.
The rebellion of these great chiefs, by throwing into the hands of the crown an immense territory, suggested to James the planting of a new English colony. Undeterred by the failure of Elizabeth's plantation of Ulster, he proceeded to divide the confiscated region, which included nearly the whole of the northern counties of Cavan, Fermanagh, Armagh, Derry, Tyrone, and Tyrconnel, amounting to two millions of acres, into four great divisions. Two of these were again divided into lots of one thousand acres each, a third into lots of fifteen hundred acres, and the fourth into lots of two thousand acres. The two thousand acre lots were appropriated to a class of men called "undertakers and servitors," adventurers of capital from England and Scotland, with the civil and military officers of the crown. The lesser lots went amongst these and the natives of the province; but the natives were only to receive their lots in the plains and open country, not in the hills and fastnesses, where they might become formidable to government. The possessors were bound to pay a mark a year for every sixty acres, and the lesser ones besides to take the oath of supremacy, and engage to admit no recusant as tenant.
By these means some hundred thousand acres were planted; but whole districts in the hills were never divided at all, whilst many of the undertakers managed to get immensely more land than they had any right to. It was at this time that the scheme of creating baronets was proposed to James by Sir Anthony Shirley, as a means of raising money for the support of the army in Ulster. James caught eagerly at the idea, coined upwards of one hunched thousand pounds out of it, but neither sent any of the money to Ireland, nor gave a handsome gratuity to Shirley for the suggestion, as he promised.
After these measures, James ventured to call a parliament in Ireland, in 1613, the first for seven-and-twenty years. He wanted money, and he wanted also to enact new laws. But the catholics were naturally apprehensive of these intended laws, for the whole of James's policy went to crush their religion out of the majority of the inhabitants, and impose on them his own model church. So little had this shallow Solomon profited by the lessons of history, that he expected to convert a whole nation by the sword and confiscation. But Ireland had by all former English monarchs down to Elizabeth, been taught to regard the pope as the lord paramount of the island; it was a doctrine that secured the obedience of the people under all their oppressions. But since Elizabeth had separated from the catholic church, and stood excommunicated by the pontiff, this maxim, so convenient before, was become extremely inconvenient. To the political causes of discontent was now added the far more irritating one of violated religious faith, and has continued so till our time.
Under these circumstances the lord-deputy summoned the parliament, and soon found that though he had a majority of more than twenty protestants, the spirit of the catholics was such that he did not dare to proceed. Since the former parliament no less than seventeen new counties and forty new boroughs had been created, and these had been filled by men devoted to the measures of the crown; the boroughs, the catholics complained, had been put into the hands of attorneys' clerks and servants, and they expected nothing on the projected new plantations but evil affected persons, ready to insult and injure the old inhabitants. They objected to many of the returns; they complained that obsolete statutes had been revived for the purposes of oppression and spoliation; that all the catholics of noble birth were excluded from offices and posts of honour; that they were expelled from the magistracy; forbidden to educate their children abroad; that catholic barristers were not permitted to practise; catholic citizens excluded from all influence in the corporations; and the whole community ​subjected to fines, excommunications, and punishments, which diffused poverty and misery over the whole island.
The lord-deputy prorogued the impracticable assembly, and both parties appealed to the king. The catholics sent as deputies the lords Gormausbury and Dunboyne, and two knights and two barristers to plead their cause. The expense of the mission was defrayed by a general collection, which was made in spite of a severe proclamation against it. James received them at first graciously, but his anger soon broke out when he found them impervious to his controversial eloquence; and, as usual, he threw two of them into prison—Luttrel into the Fleet, and Talbot into the Tower. He soon had Talbot before the star-chamber, and strictly interrogated him on the point of loyalty to the crown, and he severely reprimanded the whole deputation on the same ground; but lord Delvin on his knees declared that he would ever be faithful to the king as his rightful liege, yet that nothing should ever induce him to abandon his religion. James dismissed them, after having appointed a commission of inquiry regarding the representatives of the new Irish boroughs, which decided that none of those four boroughs incorporated after the writs were issued, had a right to sit that session.
As to the religious grievances, no concession was made, and scarcely had the deputies reached home, when a proclamation appeared, ordering all the catholic clergy to quit Ireland on pain of death. When parliament met again, in 1615, there was an outward air of conciliation; the two parties avoided the grand subjects of discord, except that both houses joined in a petition that catholic barristers might be permitted to plead. The attainders of Tyrone, Tyrconnel, and O'Dogherty were confirmed, as well as the plantation of Lister, and all distinctions betwixt the two races of the Irish, that is, the native Irish and the Anglo-Irish, were abolished by statute, and a liberal subsidy was obtained.
We have now brought up the affairs of Ireland to the date of those of England, but to prevent the necessity of recurring to them again during the reign of James, we win proceed with the few additional facts which marked the period.
The conciliatory air did not long continue. The lord-deputy Chichester made a cautions attempt to enforce the fines for absence from church, beginning with a few timid persons in each county, who, by conceding, might influence others. In 1623 lord Falkland, then lord-deputy, repeated the proclamation, ordering all catholic priests to quit the kingdom on pain of death; but they only retired into the mountains and morasses, and defied his authority. James saw that it was useless to hope for success in his scheme of crushing out Catholicism, till he had planted the whole island after the Ulster fashion, and this was set about in good earnest. Commissions were issued for the examination of all grants and titles, and by the most iniquitous proceedings, scarcely a single foot of land was left unexempted from the claim of forfeiture to the crown. It was found that the proprietors of the vast counties of Connaught, Galway, and Clare, had been induced to surrender their titles to Elizabeth, on condition that they should receive fresh ones, and that they had paid three thousand pounds for the enrollment of these titles, but had never got them. On this discovery James was advised to claim the whole island, with the exception of the small portion which he had himself planted; but the owners declared on all hands, that they would defend their lands with their swords rather than admit such a claim; and James, who was no hero, preferred getting a sum of money. His pretensions were commuted for a double annual rent, and a fine of ten thousand pounds. He, however, went on and planted the coast betwixt Dublin and Wexford, then the counties of Leitrim and Longford, and finally those of Westmeath, and King's and Queen's counties. In this procedure all law and justice were set aside. James gave orders that three-fourths of the lands should be settled on the original proprietors, but no regard was paid to this. Few of the old possessors obtained above a quarter of their lands again, and many were stripped of every acre which they had inherited from their fathers. Whole septs were removed to the parts most distant from their native localities. Seven such septs were transported from Queen's county to King's, and menaced with instant death by martial law if they dared return. Sir Patrick Crosby received the seigniory of Tarbert, on condition that he leased out one-fourth of it to those unhappy exiles, but very few of them got anything; and, in a word, Carte declares that the injustice and cruelty then committed, are scarcely to be paralleled in the history of any age or country.
Such was the condition of Ireland as left by James. He imagined that he had pacified it; it was only the sullen lull before the storm, which bluest forth in the days of his successor with a fury only the more terrible from its temporary suppression.
During the king's absence in Scotland, lord Bacon had shown such arrogance in the council, that he had disgusted everybody. He had appeared to imagine himself king, took up his quartet's in Whitehall, and gave audiences in the great banqueting house at Whitehall. Mr. Secretary Winwood was so incensed at his presumption, that he quitted the council-chamber, declaring that he would not enter it again till the king's return; and he wrote at once an account of Bacon's proceedings, assuring the king that it was high time that he returned, for his throne was already occupied. The vain, foolish conduct of the lord-keeper was watched by an eye which owed him no favour, and a spirit smarting with envy, which was relentless in its revenge. Coke, by offending the favourite, lost his position, but he now saw a way to turn this opposition to Buckingham against Bacon. Buckingham, since his rising into favour, had taken care to promote the fortunes of his friends and relatives. He had cast his eyes on the daughter of the fallen chief-justice Coke, by lady Hatton, the widow of queen Elizabeth's dancing chancellor, who was likely to have a large fortune from her mother, and he determined to obtain her for his brother, John Villers, a sickly and nearly idiotic youth. Coke, who despised the favourite, and was at feud with him respecting the already mentioned patents of office, opposed the match, which was neither agreeable to the young lady nor her mother. But when Coke found himself deprived of his office, and his insulting rival. Bacon, advanced, he bethought himself that by the means of his daughter, he had the power of regaining the good-win of the favourite, and pulling down the arrogant lord-keeper. Before Buckingham had left for ​Scotland, Coke had had a private interview with Buckingham, in which he agreed to consent to the marriage on condition of regaining his honours and position in the council and on the bench.
During the absence of the court in Scotland, and whilst Bacon was in the full blow of his assumed greatness, he discovered this compact, which boded him nothing but destruction. Without delay he incited the lady Hatton, who was in almost everything violently opposed to her husband, to make haste and secure her daughter by secreting herself in the house of Sir Edward Withipole, near Oxford, and by contracting her in marriage to Henry de Vere, earl of Oxford, for whom the young lady really entertained a regard. Coke, enraged at this flight, and at the attempt to marry his daughter contrary to his own plans, applied for a search-warrant to enter the house where she was secreted. Bacon refused it, but Winwood was only too happy to grant it. Coke, supported by twelve armed men, made a forcible entry, and carried away his daughter. On this, Bacon procured the new attorney-general, Yelverton, to file an information against Coke in the star-chamber for a breach of the peace. Bacon also wrote to the king and the favourite in Scotland, representing to Buckingham that it was by no means to his honour or interest to ally his family to that of Coke, a fallen, disgraced man, and disliked of the king, and especially as much better matches might be found. To James he represented the trouble which Coke had given to his majesty, his fondness for opposing his wishes, and the disturbances there had been in the kingdom and courts of justice so long as he had been in power. He added that now everything was quiet, and that his majesty knew that he had in him an officer always anxious to do his will.
The answer of the king struck him at once to the earth. The great philosopher was not aware how far the compact with Coke had really gone; and when he read the king's letter, reprimanding his presumption, accompanied by another from Buckingham, in which he rated him for his officious meddling, and telling him that the same hand which had made him could unmake him, he saw the gulf into which he had plunged. At once he wrote off to both monarch and minion, imploring the humblest pardon for his unworthy offence, which he would now do all in his power to wipe away. Accordingly, he stopped the proceedings before the council and in the star-chamber against Coke, and assured lady Hatton and her friends that he could not assist them in a course so opposed to the wishes of the Young lady's father.
On the return of the court, Bacon hastened to pay his homage to the proud favourite; but he was then made to feel how much it is in the power of a base and little-souled man in favour, to humiliate the most gigantic mind when it forgets its own dignity. The great renovator of science, the proud and vaunting lord-keeper, was made to wait for two whole days in the lobby of the upstart. This is Weldon's account of it:—"He attended two days at Buckingham's chamber, being not admitted to any better place than the room where trencher-scrapers and lackeys attended, there sitting upon an old wooden chest, amongst such as for his baseness were only fit for his companions, although the honour of his place did merit far more respect, with his purse and seal lying by him on that chest. Myself told a servant of my lord of Buckingham, it was a shame to see the purse and seal of so little value or esteem in his chamber, though the carrier without it merited nothing but scorn, being worst amongst the basest. But the servant told me they had command it must be so. After two days he had admittance. At his first entrance he fell down flat at the duke's foot, kissing it, and vowing never to rise till he had his pardon; and thus was he again reconciled. And since that time so very a slave to the duke and all that family, that he durst not deny the command of the meanest of the kindred, nor yet oppose anything. By which you see a base spirit is even most concomitant with the proudest mind; and surely, never so many brave parts, and so base and abject a spirit, tenanted together in any one earthen cottage, as in this one man."
Buckingham condescended to forgive the suppliant lord-keeper: the marriage was accomplished, and Bacon soon after, that is, on the 4th of January, 1618, was raised to the dignity of lord chancellor, with a pension of twelve hundred pounds a year, and the title of baron Verulam. So that he threw no obstacle in the way of the marriage. both James and Buckingham preferred his pliancy to the sturdy spirit of Coke.
The consequences of this forced and unnatural marriage were as deplorable as the means of effecting it were vile. The brother of Villiers was created viscount Purbeck; but no title could give him a sound body or a healthy intellect. It was not long before he was pronounced utterly mad, was shut up in an asylum, and Buckingham took possession of his wife's property under pretence of managing it for lord and lady Purbeck, but spent it for his own purposes; and Coke's daughter, outraged in all her feelings as a woman, and her rights as a subject, became a degraded and abandoned character.
Buckingham now reigned supreme at court. He had rapidly risen from a simple country youth into a baron, viscount, earl, and marquis; he was a member of the privy council, knight of the garter, had been a master of the horse, and was now lord high-admiral; the earl of Nottingham, the brave old Howard, the hero of the Armada, having been compelled to resign to make way for him. He and his mother disposed of all places about court, in the church, in the courts of law, and in the government. Peers, prelates, and men of all degrees courted humbly his favour, and paid him large sums of money for the places they sought, or agreed to annuities out of their salaries and emoluments. The king seemed to rejoice in the wealth which flowed in on his favourite from all these corrupt services, and could not bear him out of his sight.
Let us take Weldon's account of this state of things:—"And now Buckingham, having the chancellor or treasurer, and all great officers his very slaves, swells in the height of pride, and summons up all his country kindred, the old countess providing a place for them to learn to carry themselves in a court-like garb." The old countess, as Weldon calls her, was far from old, but a woman yet in her prime, and of singular beauty, and of as notorious wickedness. She was another Elizabeth Wydville, in looking out for all the rich heirs and heiresses, and marrying her kin to them. The brothers, half-brothers, cousins of Buckingham, were ​all matched to rich women, and the women were matched to the eldest sons of earls, barons, and men of largest estate. And where there was no title, such was soon conferred. The madman that they hung on Coke's daughter, as we have seen, was made lord Purbeck, another brother was created earl of Anglesea. Fielding, who married Buckingham's sister, was made earl of Denbigh, and his brother earl of Desmond. Cranfield, who married a female relative, was made earl of Middlesex. But the most shameful case of all, perhaps, was that of Williams, dean of Westminster, a paramour of the countess's, who was made bishop of Lincoln, and allowed to retain not only the deanery of Westminster, but the rectories of Dinam, Waldgrave, Grafton, and Peterborough; the prebends of Asgarbie and Nonnington, besides other dignities, so that, says Heylin, he was a perfect diocese in himself, being bishop, dean, prebendary, residentiary, and parson, and these all at once. Other livings and bishoprics were sold as highly as these were freely given. Fotherby of Salisbury paid three thousand five hundred pounds for his see, and all other dignities and benefices in the church were equally at the disposal of this upstart and his venal, lascivious mother. "There were books of rates," says Weldon, "on all offices, bishoprics, and deaneries in England, that could tell you what fines and pensions were to pay." He adds, "that Buckingham's female relatives were numerous enough to have peopled any plantation. So that king James, that naturally, in former times hated women, had Ms lodgings replenished with them, and all of the kindred, and little children did run up and down the king's lodgings like little rabbits startled out of their burrows. Here was a strange change. That the king, who formerly would not endure his queen and children in his lodgings, now you would have judged that none but women frequented them. Nay, this was not all; but the kindred had all the houses about Whitehall, as if bulwarks and flankers to that citadel."
Irish Scenery—The Vale of Avoca.
All the relations in turn, as soon as settled thus about the court, commenced selling offices, but the countess surpassed them. Lord Dover, in his comments on the origin of the British peerages, says that all the titles of that date, as those of the Spensers, Fanes, the Petres, the Arundels, Cavendishes, Sackvilles, Montagues, &c., were purchased for sums of money, or were obtained by the vilest favouritism. Where wealthy people were not inclined to buy, they were compelled to it. Such was the case of Richard Robartes, a wealthy merchant of Truro, who was forced to purchase the title of baron Robartes. Even the most distinguished ministers were not safe from the all-absorbing favourite's list of wealth. As he had compelled the old hero of the Armada, Howard earl of Nottingham, to give up his post of high-admiral to him, he now charged the earl of Suffolk, the father of the infamous countess of Somerset, with peculation, and had both the earl and countess thrown into the Tower. The earl petitioned the king, telling him that so far from having enriched himself by peculation, he was forty thousand pounds in debt. This had no effect on Buckingham, who had him fined thirty thousand pounds; but this afterwards was compounded for seven thousand pounds, which was ​pocketed by Ramsay, earl of Haddington, one of James's favourites, and the earl and countess set at large. Lord chief-justice Montague purchased the post of lord-treasurer, but in less than a year it was taken from him, and given to Cranfield, earl of Middlesex, who had married one of the "kindred."
Buckingham himself, in time, seemed to clothe himself with half the offices in the country. He became warden of the Cinque Ports, chief justice in Eyre of all the parks and forests south of the Trent, master of the King's Bench Office, high steward of Westminster, and constable of Windsor Castle. In his person he was lavish and showy even to tawdriness. He was skilled in dancing, and therefore kept the court one scene of balls and masques. He had his clothes trimmed at even an ordinary dance with great buttons of diamond, with diamond hatbands, cockades, and earrings; "he was yoked with manifold ropes and knots of pearl; in short, he was accustomed to be manacled, fettered, and imprisoned in jewels."
Cork River, in which Raleigh was detained by stress of weather.
Whist the silly, doating old king was thus suffering the court to be overran with the vermin of his favourite's relatives and retainers, and all offices of government and religion, and the business and revenues of the country to be thus shamefully sold, or thrown away on them and their customers, he was as keen as ever to discover some petty delinquency. A trial for adultery took place, in which Sir Thomas and lady Lake were accused of defaming lady Exeter. The defendants produced a written instrument, purporting to be a confession of her guilt in the hand writing of the countess of Exeter herself, and that she had given it to them in the presence of lord Ross and his Spanish servant, Diego, at Wimbledon; and Sarah Swarton, a chambermaid, deposed that she had stood behind the hangings at the window where the interview took place, and saw and heard all that passed and that confession. This was a kind of case which called forth all the spirit of the detective in James. He despatched a messenger to lord Ross in Italy, who, with his man Diego, swore on the sacrament that the whole tale was a fabrication. James now professed to have discovered by indubitable signs that the instrument was a forgery, and mounting his horse without informing anyone of his object, he rode to Wimbledon, and satisfied himself, from the shortness of the hangings, that the legs of the maid would have been seen, and that therefore she was not there. The maid Swarton was condemned in the star-chamber to do penance in the church of St. Martin, and to be whipped at the cart's-tail. Sir Thomas and lady Lake were fined ten thousand pounds payable to the king, and five thousand pounds payable to the calumniated countess, and besides to be imprisoned till they made their submission.
But one of the most interesting and painful events of the reign of James, and one which does him little credit, now occurred. Sir Walter Raleigh, deprived of his beautiful estate of Sherborne, in Dorsetshire, "which he had beautified with orchards, gardens, and groves, of much variety and delight," as we have seen, to gratify the favourite Carr, had remained in the Tower from the time of his trial in 1603, that is, thirteen years. His captivity was rendered ​less severe by the presence in the Tower of other prisoners of intelligence, and more than all the rest of the earl of Northumberland, whom we have already noticed as collecting round him in his prison men of science and literature, and thus converting his cell into a palace of knowledge and refined delight. Northumberland was another of those men who delighted in learning, whom a king really wise and learned would have delighted to honour. But James's love was not a love of learning or literature on its own account, it was a love of himself. It was the vanity of passing for a sagacious and learned king which he possessed, and not the sagacity and the learning themselves. Therefore, so far from cherishing science and learning, and loving the possessor of them, James was too shallow to comprehend the one, and so egotistical that he hated the other. Northumberland had been in prison ever since the year of the gunpowder plot, 1605, eleven years, a victim to the suspicions of the king and the tyranny of the star-chamber, for no participation in the plot was ever proved against him. Amongst his visitants and pensioners were, as we have stated, the most profound mathematicians of the age, Allen, Hariot, Warner, "the Atlantes of the mathematical world," Burchill, the celebrated Greek and Hebrew scholar, and other noted characters. Amongst them Sir Walter found the pleasure of cultivating inquiries which his busy public and court life had before kept unknown to him. He commenced a series of chemical experiments, and the celebrated Lucy Hutchinson, who was the daughter of Sir Allen Apsley, lieutenant of the Tower, in the preface to her interesting life of her husband, colonel Hutchinson, says, "Sir Walter Raleigh and Mr. Ruthin, being prisoners in the Tower, and addicting themselves to chemistry, my mother suffered them to make their rare experiments at her cost, partly to comfort and divert the poor prisoners, and partly to gain the knowledge of their experiments and the medicines, to help such poor people as were not able to seek physicians."
In these chemical inquiries, Sir Walter imagined that he had discovered a universal panacea. The queen in an illness had taken it, and appeared cured by it, and afterwards, as we have seen, tried it in the case of prince Henry, but without effect.
Sir Walter next turned his attention to history, and commenced a history of the world, a gigantic undertaking, but no doubt one that offered great consolation to the mind of a prisoner for life, from the very fact of its immensity, thus promising to him a constant forgetfulness of his captivity, and a busy discursiveness amid the peoples of the whole world. Such men as Burchill, who was not only a great classical scholar, but distinguished Latin poet, could furnish him with books and translations, by which means he has displayed so vast an acquaintance with Greek and rabbinical writers. Raleigh commenced his history for the instruction of prince Henry, who had a great regard for the author, and the death of that prince, in 1612, gave a check to the undertaking, and the whole which Raleigh completed, extends from the Creation to about a century and a half before the Christian era.
The fall of Carr, in 1614, and the rise of Buckingham, awoke new hopes of liberty in Raleigh. His friends made zealous applications to the favourite, which for a time produced little effect, because the true persuasive with the greedy Villiers family was not applied. Meantime, Raleigh managed to interest secretary Winwood in a grand scheme which he had for discovering and working gold mines in Guiana Raleigh, as our readers are aware, was of a romantic and adventurous turn. The admirals Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher, with whom he had had the honour of defeating the grand Armada, had brought home immense treasure from the Spanish and Portuguese territories of South America. Raleigh himself had been engaged in the scheme of settling Virginia in North America, in the year 1584, when he procured a patent from Elizabeth—a copy of one granted still earlier to his half-brother. Sir Humphrey Gilbert—with full power to discover and settle any heathen lands not already in the possession of any Christian prince. In consequence, he had equipped various expeditions to the coast of Virginia, which, however, had all proved failures, and Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who conducted one of them, lost his life at sea. Sir Walter's enterprises, which had cost him much money, were immediate failures, failures to himself and his associates, but ultimate successes to the country, for they led to the settlement of that great northern American continent.
But still earlier, in 1595, he had made a voyage to Guiana. The glories of Drake and the other piratical admirals, and the wondrous legend of the golden empire of Guiana, with its inconceivable affluence, and the reported splendour of its capital, Manoa, called by the Spaniards El Dorado, or the golden city, inflamed his imagination. He sailed thither, touching at Trinidad, as if on his way to Virginia; and the Spaniards, deluded by this belief, entered into friendly relations, and bartered various commodities with him. But suddenly Raleigh, watching his opportunity, fell on the garrison, killed the guard, and secured the person of Berrio, the governor, whom he carried away as guide to Guiana, Berrio having already settled a colony there. This transaction, which was in the true spirit of Drake and the rest, who acted in those regions as if the Spaniards were at war, though they were at entire peace with England, was one of the charges afterwards brought against him. To this Raleigh replied that Berrio, at Trinidad, had formerly made prisoners of eight Englishmen, and that to leave him at his back when he was about to ascend the Orinoco, was to have been an ass. Whether the story of the eight Englishmen was true or not, it was clearly no business of Raleigh's, and the real motive was partly the last assigned, to secure so dangerous a person as Berrio, and at the same time so valuable a guide. In fact, Raleigh, with all his genius, was never renowned for very scrupulous ideas of right and wrong, and shared in all the loose maritime notions of the age.
Thus provided, he sailed for the Orinoco, and advanced up it three hundred miles in boats. He seems to have heard many wonderful rumour of gold mines, and cities built of gold and silver, and embossed with precious stones; but he discovered no magnificent Manoa, with pinnacles blazing with diamonds and rubies, nor any gold mines, only signs of gold in the mountains beyond the Spanish town of St. Thomas. He gave out to the natives that he was come to relieve them of the Spaniards, and by their assistance explored the country for a month, when the waters of the mighty Orinoco rose so ​suddenly, and with such impetuosity, that they were carried down at the peril of their lives to their ships.
On his return Raleigh, though he brought no riches, brought marvellous descriptions of them. Though he had seen nothing but a pleasant country and friendly natives, he did not hesitate to publish the most amazing stories to draw fresh colleagues to the enterprise. He described the country and the climate in colours of heaven, and as for its riches, "the common soldier," he said, detailing the discovery of the large, rich, and beautiful empire of Guiana, with relations of the great and golden city, Manoa, "shall here fight for gold, and pay himself, instead of pence, with plates of half a foot broad, whereas he breaks his bones in other wars for provant and penury. Those commanders and chieftains that shoot at honour and abundance, shall find here more rich and beautiful cities, more temples adorned with golden images, more sepulchres filled with treasure, than either Cortez found in Mexico, or Pizarro in Peru."
Probably Raleigh believed all this himself, on the faith of the natives; but though several expeditions went out, nothing of the kind was discovered. But these failures in no degree abated the enthusiasm of Raleigh. He represented to objectors that the adventurers sent out were ignorant alike of the locality and of the art of conciliating the natives. Were he permitted to go, he would make Guiana to England what Peru was to Spain.
His glowing descriptions at length captivated the imagination of Winwood, who did his best to excite the cupidity of James on the subject, and not without effect, for he began to speak of Raleigh as a very clever and gallant fellow. The scheme suited James extremely well, as he was always in want of money, and Raleigh asked for nothing, not even a ship to accomplish the enterprise, but guaranteed to the king one-fifth of the gold. Still there was one obstacle; James dared not issue the desired commission without the approbation of the favourite, and this Raleigh and his friends were obliged to purchase by a present of fifteen hundred pounds to Buckingham's uncles. Sir Edward Villiers and Sir William St. John.
In the month of August, 1616, Sir Walter issued from his thirteen years captivity in the Tower, and commenced preparations for the voyage. Plenty of adventurers and co-operators were found: the countess of Bedford advanced eight thousand pounds, and lady Raleigh sold her estate at Micham for two thousand five hundred pounds. A fleet of fourteen sail was equipped and manned. But before Raleigh could get out to sea, the Spanish ambassador, Gondomar, had caught wind of the real destination of the squadron. The Spaniard was a deep politician, who assumed an air of gaiety and freedom which won on the courtiers, and not less on James, whose vanity he flattered to the utmost; often speaking false Latin, that James might correct him, he would reply, "Ah, your majesty speaks Latin like a pedant, but I only speak it like a gentleman." On making the discovery, Gondomar rushed into the presence of the king, exclaiming, "Pirates! pirates! pirates!"
James, who was always paralysed at the very idea of war, sent in a hurry for Raleigh, took back the patent which he had granted him, and altered it with his own hand. He strictly prohibited the adventurers from invading any territories in possession of his allies, especially of the king of Spain, but commanded that they should confine their enterprise to countries still in the hands of the heathen. They were allowed to trade and to defend themselves if attacked, but not to act on the offensive. He, moreover, demanded from Raleigh a memorial under his own hand, of the places with which he meant to trade, and the force he carried out. All this James is said to have shown to Gondomar, so that, fully forewarned, he despatched a squadron with troops to St. Thomas, of which his brother was governor.
In all this, it is clear that Raleigh was imposing on the king. This Raleigh himself admits in his address to lord Carew:—"'I acquainted his majesty with my intention to land in Guiana, yet I never made it known to his majesty that the Spaniards had any footing there. Neither had I any authority from my patent to remove them thence." But this was a point on which Gondomar could and probably did enlighten James.
After the guarantees given by Raleigh, Gondomar appears to have ceased his opposition; having, moreover, taken measures to guard against any attack in Guiana. On the 28th of March, 1617, the fleet set sail, but owing to bad weather, was obliged to put into Cork, where they lay till August, and did not reach the coast of Guiana till November 12th, after a troublesome voyage of four months On arriving, two of his ships were missing: disease had reduced his men to a state of miserable weakness, forty-two on board Raleigh's own vessel having died. He himself was disabled for active service, and to his mortification he learned that a Spanish fleet was cruising near in order to intercept them. He wrote to his wife, that reduced as they were, he deemed himself in sufficient force to accomplish the enterprise if the care taken at home to let the Spaniards know of their numbers, had not caused all approaches to be fortified against them.
Being unable to proceed immediately, he sent Captain Keymis up the river in boats to discover the mine, whilst he lay at its mouth to ward off the Spanish squadron. Keymis was said to have been at the mine they were in search of in the expedition of 1595. He began the ascent of the river on the 10th of December, under orders to make straight for the mine, and if he found it rich to fix himself there; if but poor, to bring away a basket of the ore to convince the king that they had gone out after a reality. The exploring force landed near St. Thomas, but found the Spaniards prepared for them; a battle ensued, in which the governor, the brother of Gondomar, was killed, but at the same time also fell the eldest son of Sir Walter, Captain Walter Raleigh. This enraged the soldiers, who carried the town of St. Thomas by storm, and set fire to it. They expected to find in it great wealth, but all that they discovered were two ingots of gold and four refining houses, whence any ore that there might have been was carried off. The Spaniards entrenched themselves in formidable positions amongst the hills—as the invaders supposed, betwixt them and the mines; but Keymis was so much discouraged by the death of young Raleigh, and the violent discontent of the men on discovering the emptiness of the place, and the preparations of the enemy, who again fired upon and killed several of them, that he gave up the enterprise, and dropped down the river again.
​When Keymis reached the ships with the news of their ill-success, and of the death of Raleigh's son, Sir Walter was beside himself. Though Keymis had been a faithful officer and friend of his for many years, sharing the dangers and hardships of his former adventures, he upbraided him bitterly with his ruin. Keymis replied that when the young captain was dead, the men set him at defiance, and that to have attempted to reach the mines with them would have been an act of madness; had it succeeded even, it would only have enriched these murderous villains; had it failed, both himself, and probably Sir Walter, would have fallen their victims. Recollecting the feeble condition of his commander-in-chief, he deemed it his duty to return to him.
All was lost on Raleigh, who, feeling the acutest grief for the death of his son, and seeing nothing but destruction await him at home from the wrath of the Spaniards and the disappointed cupidity of the king, raved against Keymis like a madman. The unfortunate officer drew up a statement of the real facts of the case, addressed to the earl of Arundel, and asked Raleigh to sign it in justice to him: he peremptorily refused. Some days passed on, but instead of moderating his bitterness, when Keymis again urged him to sign the statement, he refused, heaping upon him reproaches of imbecility or cowardice. Stung by this ungenerous conduct, the unhappy officer retired to his cabin, and shot himself with a pocket-pistol, and as that had not killed him, finished the bloody deed by a stab with a long knife.
Horror took possession of the fleet at the news of Keymis's suicide, and discord and mutiny broke out on all sides. The officers and men like expressed their indignation. Captain Whitney, in whom Raleigh reposed the most confidence, and who was under great obligations, sailed away for England. Others followed his example, and Raleigh soon found himself with only five ships. Yet still he had a larger fleet, and manned with a stronger force of daring fellows than had done amazing things under Drake, Hawkins, and others, had Raleigh been in a mood to lead them. Death and disgrace awaited his return home; death or the acquisition of wealth capable of appeasing the royal resentment, were the alternatives which lay in the direction of bold onslaught on the Spanish shores. But Raleigh's spirit was crushed. He declared himself in a letter to his wife that "his brains were broken;" and he sailed away to Newfoundland, where he refitted his ships.
He now contemplated the chance of intercepting one of the Spanish treasure-ships, which he felt assured would set all right with James; but fresh mutinies arose, and he took his course homewards. In the month of June, after much hesitation, he entered the harbour of Plymouth, and the first news that met him was that a royal warrant was out for his apprehension. Gondomar, furious at the fate of his brother, demanded condign punishment for his outrages on the subjects of his most catholic majesty in Guiana. There were many reasons why the Spanish court should long for the destruction of Raleigh. He was by far the ablest naval commander that James possessed. He had been one of those who led the English fleet to the triumph over the Armada. He had committed terrible depredations in the Azores and Canary Isles when he sailed with Essex, besides his seizure of the governor of Trinidad.
He was advised by his friends to fly instantly, and escape to France, a vessel lying ready to carry him over. But he seemed to have lost all power of self-direction, or it might be that, as his younger son Carew relates, the earls of Arundel and Pembroke were bound for his return, and it was a point of honour with him to keep faith with them. He landed, and was arrested by his near kinsman, Sir Lewis Stukeley, vice-admiral of Devon, who conducted him to the house of Sir Christoper Harris, near the port, where he detained him for nearly a week, till he received the royal order for his disposal. No sooner was it announced at court that Raleigh was secured, than Buckingham wrote, by direction of the king, to inform the Spanish ambassador of the fact, and to assure him that he would give him up to him to be sent to Spain, and dealt with as his royal master should see fit, unless his most catholic majesty preferred that he should suffer the penalty of his crimes here. Gondomar sent off a special messenger to learn the decision of the king of Spain, and meantime Stukeley was ordered to proceed to London with his prisoner.
Struck now with awe at the prospect of once more being immured in the Tower, and with only the most gloomy prospect of his exit thence. Sir Walter procured some drugs from Manourie, a Frenchman, with which he produced violent sickness, and aqua fortis, with which he produced blisters and excoriations on his face, arms, breast, and legs. He was found in his shirt on all fours, gnawing the rushes on the floor, and affecting madness; the physicians pronounced him to be in considerable danger, and James, who was then at Salisbury, ordered him to be conveyed for a short time to his own house in London, lest he should convey some infection into the Tower.
This was Raleigh's object, and he now employed the time afforded him to effect his escape in earnest. He despatched his faithful friend, captain King, to provide a ship for his purpose. This was arranged, but Raleigh, not aware that Manourie was a spy upon him, confided the secret to him, and it was immediately communicated to Stukeley. Raleigh, observing the strict watch which Stukeley kept over him, and deeming him worthy of his confidence, gave him a valuable jewel, and a bond for one thousand pounds, on condition that he allowed him to escape. Stukeley took the bribe, but whilst pretending to be now his sworn friend, only the more effectually played the traitor. He was commissioned to procure all possible evidence of Raleigh's connection with France, and circumstances favoured him. At Brentford Raleigh received a visit from De Chesne, the secretary of the French envoy in London, offering him, from Le Clerk, his master, the use of a French barque and a safe-conduct to the governor of Calais. On arriving in London, Le Clerk himself waited on him and renewed the offer. Raleigh expressed his gratitude, but concluded to take the vessel engaged by captain King, and lying near Tilbury Fort. All this Stukeley communicated daily to the council.
At the time fixed, Raleigh in disguise, and accompanied by King and Stukeley, who expressed much interest in seeing his relative safely off, took a boat and dropped down the river to reach the vessel at Gravesend. But from the ​moment that they were on the water, the quick eye of Raleigh noticed a wherry which kept steadily in their wake; and the tide failing, it was judged useless to proceed to Gravesend. They went, therefore, into Greenwich; the wherry also lay to there, and Sir Walter found himself immediately arrested by the traitor Stukeley, whose men were in the wherry. King also was arrested, and Sir Walter was, the next morning, conveyed to the Tower. The French envoy was forbidden the court, and soon after ordered to quit the country.
The answer from the king of Spain did not arrive for five weeks, which was, that in his opinion the punishment of Raleigh's offences should take place where his commission—which he had violated—was issued. It was, therefore, necessary to bring him to trial in London. Meantime, he had been subjected to close and repeated interrogations before a commission appointed for the purpose, composed of lord chancellor Bacon, the archbishop of Canterbury, Sir Edward Coke, and several other members of council. He was charged with having imposed upon the king, by representing that his object was to discover a gold mine, when he only wanted to get out of prison and commence pirate; that he had endeavoured to provoke a war with Spain; that he had barbarously deserted his ships' companies, and pushed them into unnecessary danger; that he had ridiculed and maligned the king; had feigned madness to deceive his majesty; and attempted to escape in defiance of his authority.
Raleigh denied the charge of treating the name of the king disrespectfully; asserted that nothing proved his sincerity in expecting to reach mines so completely, as his having expending two thousand pounds in the necessary apparatus for refining the ore; and he had never exposed his men to any danger that he did not share himself, except when illness incapacitated him; and that as to feigning madness and trying to escape, the charges were true, but they were, under the circumstances, perfectly natural and pardonable.
The commissioners, finding that they could establish no real charge against him of sufficient gravity to implicate his life, resorted to the usual stratagem of government in those times, as well as in times long after—to set a spy upon him under the colour of a friend. The individual who accepted this dirty office—such villains are always plentifully at hand—was one Sir Thomas Wilson, keeper of the State Paper Office. He appeared to be hit upon because he had as much learning and ingenuity as he had little principle, and could therefore easily draw out Raleigh to talk by assuming a kindly interest in him. Sir Walter appeared to talk freely, and related his adventures, and also what daily took place before the commission; yet this government pump could bring up nothing very criminating. Raleigh declared that had he fallen in with one of the Spanish galleons, he would have seized it with the same freedom that Drake had done: but his mere intention to do what had won so much fame and favour for other commanders, was not a charge likely to go down with the public. Raleigh remarked that-when he made that avowal before the commission. Bacon said, "Why, you would have been a pirate!" And that he had replied, "Oh, my lord, did you ever know of any that were pirates for millions? They that work for small things are pirates."
Finding that there was nothing in Raleigh's proceedings on this occasion, which had not been done, and far more than done, with high public approbation, by the greatest commanders of the British navy, they dared not attempt to condemn him on that score, and therefore James demanded of his council what other mode they could suggest to take his life. Coke and Bacon proposed that they should fall back simply on the plea of his old sentence, and the king sent an order for his execution to the Tower. The judges, therefore, received an order to issue a warrant for his immediate beheading, but they wisely shrunk back from such a responsibility, declaring that after such a lapse of time neither a writ of privy seal, nor a warrant under the great seal, would be legal without calling on the party to show cause against it. They accordingly summoned him before them by habeas corpus, and Raleigh, who was suffering from fever and ague, real enough this time, was the next day brought before them at the King's Bench, Westminster. Yelverton, the attorney-general, reminded the court that Sir Walter had been sentenced to death for high treason, fifteen years before. That the king, in his clemency, had deferred the execution of the prisoner, but now deemed it necessary to call for it. He observed that Sir Walter had been a statesman, and a man who, in respect to his talents, was to be pitied. That he had been as a star at which the world had gazed; but "stars," he continued, "may fall; nay, they must fall when they trouble the spheres wherein they abide." He called, therefore, at the command of his majesty, for their order for his execution. On being asked what he had to say against it, Raleigh replied that the judgment given against him so many years ago could not with any reason be brought against him then, for he had since borne his majesty's commission, which was equivalent to a pardon; and that no other charge was made against him. The chief-justice told him that this pleading would not avail him; that in cases of treason nothing but a pardon in express words was sufficient. Raleigh then said, if that were the case, he could only throw himself on the king's mercy; but that he was certain that, had the king not been afresh exasperated against him, he might have lived a thousand years, if nature enabled him, without hearing anything more of the old sentence.
Montague, the chief -justice, admitted this by saying that "new offences had stirred up his majesty's justice to revive what the law had formerly decreed;" and he ended with the fatal words—"Execution is granted."
Thus Raleigh was in reality put to death to oblige the king of Spain, with whom James was anxious to form an alliance by his son's marriage to the Infata. The old sentence was but the staging-horse for the occasion, the court not daring to allege as the real charge that he died for having invaded the territories of the king of Spain; the public having a strong repugnance to both Spain and any matrimonial alliance with it, which must introduce a popish queen, and would have gloried in any real chastisement of that nation, and the capture of its treasure ships.
Sir Walter then prayed for a short time to settle some matters of worldly trust, assuring the court that he desired not to prolong his life one minute; "for now," he said, ​"being old, sickly, disgraced, and certain to go to death, life is wearisome to me." The time was, refused, but pen, ink, and paper were allowed him.
Instead of being taken back to the Tower, he was lodged in the gate-house in Westminster, and that evening his wife was allowed to take her last farewell of him, and on going away she told him that they had granted her the disposal of his body. Sir Walter smiled, saying, "It is well, Bess, that thou mayest dispose of that dead, that thou hadst not always the disposing of when alive."
Having made up his mind to meet death, Sir Walter no longer evinced any shrinking from it. He was calm, courageous, and even cheerful. Tounson, dean of Westminster, was sent to him in the morning to administer to him the sacrament, which he received reverently, and declared that he sincerely forgave all men, even Stukeley, who had so basely betrayed him. "He was," said Tounson, "the most fearless of death that was ever known, and the most resolute and confident, yet with reverence and conscience. When I began to encourage him against the fear of death, he made so slight of it that I wondered at him. When I told him that the dear servants of God, in better causes than his, had shrunk back and trembled a little, he denied not, but gave God thanks that he never feared death, and much less then; for it was but an opinion and an imagination; and the manner of death, though to others it might seem grievous, yet he had rather die so than of a burning fever." And this was the testimony of a clergyman sent to him by the crown, not the one whom he wished himself.
Meeting of the Assembly in the Settlement of Virginia.
He then proceeded to take his breakfast, which he seemed to enjoy as if it were an ordinary morning of his life, did not omit to take his customary pipe after it in most perfect composure; and when they brought him a cup of sack, and asked how he liked it, he replied gaily, that it was good drink if a man might tarry by it.
At eight o'clock on the 29th of October, he was conducted to the scaffold in Old Palace Yard. There was such a crowd assembled, including numbers of the chief nobility, that it was difficult for the sheriffs to get him through. He saluted the lords, knights, and gentlemen whom he found upon the scaffold pleasantly; and perceiving the lords Arundel, Northampton, and Doncaster, at a window not far off, he said that he would strain his feeble voice so that they might hear what he had to say. But lord Arundel said they would come down to him, which they did; and after saluting them one after another, he proceeded with his address, speaking from notes which he held. He denied ever having any plot with France, or that he had spoken disloyally of his sovereign; and as to his going to Guiana, his sole object had been to benefit his majesty, his country, his associates, and himself, by the gold which he knew to exist there, and some of which he had actually handled. At that point he turned to the earl of Arundel, and reminded him that on his taking leave of him on board of his ship, the earl had made him pledge himself neither to turn pirate nor omit to return faithfully; and he appealed to him whether he had not kept his pledge. The earl admitted that he had.
FIRST INTERVIEW OF PRINCE CHARLES WITH THE PRINCESS HENRIETTA AT PARIS.
​lost him the favour of the people. "It doth make my heart bleed," he declared, "to hear such an imputation should be laid upon me; for it is said that I was a prosecutor of the death of the earl of Essex, and that I stood in the window over against him, when he suffered in the Tower, and puffed out tobacco in disdain of him. I take God to witness that I had no hand in his blood, and was none of those who procured his death. I shed tears for him when he died, and, as I hope to look God in the face hereafter, my lord of Essex did not see my face when he suffered, for I was afar off in the armoury, where I saw him, but he saw not me. I was heartily sorry for him, though I confess I was of a contrary faction, and helped to pluck him down. But in respect of his worth I loved him, and I knew that it would be worse for me when he was gone, for I got the hate of those that wished me well before; and those that set me against him, afterwards set themselves against me, and were my greatest enemies. My soul hath many times since been grieved, that I was not nearer to him when he died, because I understood afterwards that he asked for me at his death, to have been reconciled to me."
The sheriff, as the morning was cold, offered, before he said his prayers, to take him down to a fire to warm himself; but this courtesy he declined, saying, that within a quarter of an hour his ague would come upon him, and then his enemies would say that he quaked for fear. He made a most beautiful prayer, and then rising and clasping his hands, said, "Now I am going to God." He took the axe, passed it on his hand, felt the edge of it, and said with a smile, "This is a sharp medicine, but it will cure all diseases." He took a friendly leave of all the nobles and gentlemen present, and entreated the earl of Arundel to pray the king that no abusive writings might be published to defame him after death. Then laying his head on the block, he waited for the stroke. But the executioner delaying, he said to him, "What dost thou fear? Strike, man!" At two strokes his head was severed, and thus the mean, pedantic James, destroyed one of the most remarkable men of his age and nation.
Sir Walter Raleigh was a genius of that universal character, which seems capable of almost any achievement to which it aspires. He was equally distinguished as a scholar, an eloquent orator, a beautiful lyrical poet, an historian of wonderful scope and industry, a warrior, a traveller, a statesman and a courtier. He had charmed the heart of the great queen Bess, and long shone in the midst of her brilliant court as one of its gayest, most graceful, and gallant cavaliers. He had shared in the glory of dispersing the Armada, had explored the secrets of chemical art, had been the friend of Sidney and Spenser, and the patron of other men of merit. But with all his brilliant qualities, he had great and undoubted defects. He was capable, in the rivalries of ambition, of petty jealousy and vindictive feeling. That he compared himself to Mordecai as he marched out of the Tower on his liberation, preparatory to his last adventure, and Carr, the fallen earl of Somerset, whom he left a captive in it to Haman, was, perhaps, pardonable, for Carr had robbed him and his children of their patrimonial estate. But his conduct to Essex was a lasting stain, and he was made to feel it so by the true estimate of the people. In his last hour he expressed his profound regret for his conduct, and solemnly protested that he had no hand in his death. Yet there remains a letter addressed by him to Sir Robert Cecil, which proves positively that he contributed a in his power to his fall, and that he confessed "he helped to pluck him down."
Whilst, however, we cannot avoid perceiving the blots on the character of Sir Walter, we should be unjust to him not to remember the extreme looseness of moral principle of the age, and especially of the courts in which he lived. The hollow and murderous policy of Elizabeth, the mean, shuffling nature of James, were not things likely to act favourably on those who immediately surrounded them. The narrow spirit, the cold, dissolute, and grasping diplomatists and courtiers which abounded under such monarchs, were prolific of corruption even to superior natures; and we may assert that Raleigh, under more elevated and pure influences, would have risen to a much nobler tone of mind. Had James, instead of cooping him up in prison, and chilling him by its ominous shade, given a fair and honourable field to such a man, we should have undoubtedly to narrate splendid deeds and a fairer fame, as the natural fruit of them. Judged by the pure and lofty standard of morality of the gospel. Sir Walter Raleigh was marked by serious faults; judged by the morality of his age, we must pass upon him a milder judgment.
It is to the honour of queen Anne that she always pleaded for justice and liberal treatment to Sir Walter. As she was the friend of Jonson and Bacon, so she, as well as her son Henry, always admired the chivalric character and brilliant talents of Raleigh. One of her last efforts was to save his life. Though she was herself fast sinking, she was not insensible to the earnest appeal—
   "Save him, who would have died for your defence! Save him, whose thoughts no treason ever stained!"
She not only implored James to pardon him, but even condescended to write with her failing, feeble hand, to Buckingham, entreating him to use his far more effectual influence with James.
"TO THE MARQUIS OF BUCKINGHAM.
"My kind Dog,—If I have any power or credit with you, I pray you let me have a trial of it at this time, in dealing sincerely and earnestly with the king, that Sir Walter Raleigh's life may not be called in question. If you do it so that the success answer my expectation, assure yourself that I will take it extraordinarily kindly at your hands, and rest one that wisheth you well, and desires you to continue still, as you have been, a true servant to your master.
"Anna R."
A fac-simile of this letter, which is still preserved in the Advocate's Library, Edinburgh, has been published by the Maitland Club, and does the highest honour to queen Anne of Denmark; who, whatever may have been the foibles of her character, displayed many fine qualities, which would have refined into still nobler strength, had she been yoked to a fitting husband. She only lived about four months after this; she had been rapidly declining, and died at Hampton Court, March 2nd, 1619.
The death of the queen was speedily followed by other and graver family troubles. James had contrived, with much ​shuffling and loss of honour, to avoid war for sixteen years. He now saw himself dragged into a hopeless contest by the folly of his son-in-law, the elector of the Palatinate. Frederick, the elector, was a protestant of the Calvinistic school, and the protestants of Bohemia, anxious to prevent the catholic emperor of Austria acquiring their crown, offered it to him, which he was imprudent enough to accept. James was thunderstruck by the news, and instantly avowed that the elector had entered on an enterprise which would involve him in utter ruin. To enable the reader, however, to understand the question, we must take a brief review of the antecedents of the case. Bohemia, a country inhabited by a branch of the great Selavonic race called Ctechcs, had early imbibed the doctrines of protestantism. These protestants had been visited by the vengeance of the pope, and their most distinguished leaders, Stekna, Milicz, and Janowa, had, in the fourteenth century, been compelled to escape into Poland. But persecution there, as everywhere else, only augmented the zeal and numbers of the protestants. At the close of that century, Anne, queen of Richard II. of England, a Bohemian princess, dying, many of her countrymen who had attended her in this country returned, carrying thither the Bible and the principles of Wycliffe. John Huss set about to translate all the writings of our great reformer into Bohemian, and is supposed to have been assisted in this by Hieronymus, or, as he is more commonly called, Jerome of Prague, who had studied in Oxford. These distinguished men were burnt at the stake in 1414, but their death only added fresh intensity and fresh disciples to their doctrines. In 1526, Bohemia, which had till then been an independent kingdom, became united to Austria by the marriage of Ferdinand I. to the daughter of Lewis II. From that moment there were bitter persecutions, for the house of Austria was bigotedly catholic. The people resisted the imposition of the papal yoke by the Austrian princes, and insurrection and carnage were the consequences. At length the emperor Rudolph was obliged to cede to the sturdy Bohemians the right of enjoying their own religious faith; and it was stipulated that they should be at liberty to erect churches on the crown lands. The Calvinists, the most resolute sect of the Bohemian protestants—for they were divided into Calvinists and Lutherans—declared the church lands were, in fact, crown lands, and began to build churches on estates belonging to the archbishop of Prague and the abbot of Braunau. These prelates appealed to the emperor Matthias, who decided against the protestants; and an order was issued to pull down again the churches both at Prague and Braunau. At Braunau the people made resistance, and some of their leaders were thrown into prison. This created a great excitement, and count Henry Matthias von Thurn, the head of the evangelical church, called an assembly of the protestants at Prague, on the 6th of March, 1618, to take measures for the maintenance of their privileges; but the enthusiasm with which this step was attended, from all parts of the country, greatly alarming the Austrians, menaces of punishment were issued by imperial brief against those who took part in it. This roused the wrath of the people, who, headed by count Thurn, on the 23rd of May, 1618, marched to the royal palace, and seized Martinitz and Slawata, the viceroys, and their secretary Fabricius, and hurled them out of the window of the council chamber, which was eighty feet from the ground. These men, and Martinitz especially, had been the servile tools of the Austrian court, and had thereby excited the hatred of the people. They refused the rites of marriage, baptism, and burial to all who would not consent to become catholics; they were accused of having drawn up the menacing letter which came signed by the emperor, and of hunting the protestants into the catholic churches with dogs. Luckily for them there was plenty of mud in the palace ditch, and they escaped with their lives.
This bold deed kindled a flame throughout all Bohemia, Moravia, Lusatia, and Silesia. Thurn sent forth a proclamation, assuring the protestants that the die was cast; that they had nothing but vengeance and oppression to expect from Austria; and therefore the time was come to throw off the Austrian yoke, to resume the independence of Bohemia, and make common cause with the protestants of Germany and the Netherlands. The people flocked to Prague; the palace was occupied by the troops of the different provinces; an oath was taken from the magistrates and officials to obey the states alone; the taxes were ordered to be paid only to those appointed by them; the Jesuits were chased from the country; a council of thirty members was elected to assume the government, and Thurn placed at their head. All this passed with lightning rapidity, and caused the utmost consternation in Vienna.
Matthias was sickly and feeble both in body and mind, but his cousin Ferdinand, who was named as his successor to the empire, a bigot of the very first water, and whose name soon became the rallying cry of all bigotry in Europe, caught at the opportunity as one sent by Heaven, to enable him to exterminate protestantism in Austria. Aided by the archduke Maximilian, the brother of the emperor Matthias, he sent off to the Spanish court in the Netherlands demands for co-operation in this great work, and armies were prepared in Austria; whilst Thurn and the Bohemians, on their part, mustered with all eagerness their forces. Matthias, the emperor, proposed to settle the difference by arbitration, but Ferdinand and Maximilian rejected any such means, seized cardinal Klesel, the emperor's adviser, and sent him prisoner into the Tyrol, so that the poor invalid Matthias remained a puppet in their hands. He died in March, 1619. Ferdinand, the prince of bigots, to whom whole nations of lives were only as so much dust in comparison with the sacredness of his dogmas, mounted the throne, being elected emperor in August of that year; and all Europe stood in expectation of the bloody decision of this quarrel,—a quarrel which was destined to spread over all Germany, draw into its vortex Sweden, Denmark, Holland, France, and England, and to be forever remembered in the world as the most terrible of contests, the "Thirty Years War."
At this moment, when all the protestants of Germany were united in a Union for the maintenance of their principles, but were opposed by the far more powerful League of the catholic princes, when Ferdinand, emperor of Austria, supported by the able and active elector Maximilian of Bavaria, the head of the League in Germany, and by the arch-duke of Austria, was promised the co-operation of Spain, ​the crown of Bohemia was offered to Frederick the palgrave, and he fatally accepted it. He was a mere youth of twenty, with more ambition than ability; and he was spurred on by his wife, Elizabeth of England, who told him he had courage enough to aspire to the hand of a king's daughter, but not to grasp a crown when offered, and who, when reminded by him of the electoral province which they possessed in safety, exclaimed, "Better a crown with a crust, than a petty electorate with abundance."
Balsas, or Boat of Skin, used by the Natives on the American Coast.
This fatal crown, which Elizabeth came to wear, and to have the crust speedily afterwards, had been already offered to George, elector of Saxony, who was too shrewd to accept it. Court Thurn had for a time carried all before him, and had even marched into Austria and besieged the emperor in Vienna; but this success was soon over. The catholic princes had armed in defence of the emperor; the students of Vienna and fifteen hundred citizens volunteered in his cause; the distinguished Spanish general Spinola was already on his march to invade the palgrave's hereditary state, so despised by the princess Elizabeth; and count Mansfield, the general of the German protestants, was defeated on the Bohemian soil, when Frederick the palgrave was crowned king of that country in Prague, on the 25th of October, 1619. He reigned only till the 8th of November of the following year, when he was expelled from his capital by the Austrian and Bavarian forces under Maximilian and general Boucquoi. They had defeated the protestant generals in Upper Austria and Bohemia, whilst Frederick, who obtained the name of the "winter king," because he only reigned one winter, had lost the confidence of his subjects by his luxurious effeminacy, his inattention to government, his impolitic treatment of the native nobles and generals, and his bigoted partiality to the Calvinistic party. Even the protestant George of Saxony, who had refused the crown, allied himself to the catholic emperor against him. He was roused from table only by the news of the battle before his walls, rushed out only to see his army scattered, and fled. The counts Thurn and Hohenlohe counselled him still to make a stand in Glaz, but he was no hero to fight even for a kingdom; he continued his flight to Breslau, thence to Berlin, and did not stop till he reached Holland. Elizabeth, his queen, now reduced to the crust, accompanied him in his ignominious flight, far advanced in pregnancy, and deeply pitied by all generous and chivalric minds.
Meantime, James had been a prey to the most conflicting interests. His protestant subjects, as ill-informed of the ​state of parties on the Continent, as the unfortunate Frederick himself, had received with an outburst of joy the news of the palgrave being crowned king of Bohemia; and arch-bishop Abbot gave the very text from the Apocalypse in which this event, so favourable to the reformed faith, was predicted. James was urged to send an army to his son-in-law's support, but he saw no chance of keeping him on the Bohemian throne. The Bohemians were divided into three violent parties—Calvinists, Lutherans, and catholics. The protestants of Germany were equally divided; some of them had voluntarily offered their aid to the emperor, and others had submitted to his victorious generals. Spinola was marching on the Palatinate, and James was distracted by the fear of his daughter and son-in-law being reduced to beggary. Yet if he attempted to prop the king of Bohemia on his tottering throne, he should offend the catholic king of Spain, the sworn ally of the emperor, and with whom he was at this very time seeking an alliance. Without being able to save his protestant son-in-law, he should thus lose a catholic daughter-in-law. If he lay still, all men would call him an unnatural father, all protestants would declare him an apostate to his religion. Never was man in such a strait. One moment he declared to the Spanish ambassador that the palgrave was a fool and a villain, and that he would abandon him to his fate; at another he assured the protestant envoys from Germany that he would support him to the utmost. At length he hit upon the only rational course; which was, not to attempt an impossibility, the support of Frederick on the baseless throne of Bohemia, but to send a force to defend his patrimonial territories from the Spaniards. The first enterprise was, in fact, soon out of the question: Prague had fallen, his son-in-law and daughter were fugitives; but the second object was still possible, and more necessary than ever.
He sent an army of four thousand men under the earls of Oxford and Essex to the rescue of the Palatinate. This force was altogether inadequate to cope with the numerous army of the able Spinola; and yet James had exhausted all his means and all his efforts in raising it. Money he had none, and had been compelled to seek a loan and a voluntary subscription. By the autumn the lower Palatinate was overrun by the Spaniards, Lusatia had submitted to George of Saxony for the emperor, and Bohemia had sought and received pardon from the imperial court.
In this state of affairs James was compelled to summon a parliament. It assembled on the 30th of January, 1621, the king having used all the unconstitutional means in his power to influence the return of members. In his opening speech he now admitted what he had so stoutly denied before, the existence of undertakers in the last parliament, "a strange kind of beasts which had done mischief." In that shallow, wheedling tone, that rather showed the hollowness of the man than conciliated, as it was meant to do, he even went on in his confession, and admitted that he had been swayed by evil counsellors. He then demanded liberal supplies to carry on the war in the Palatinate, for which the people had indeed loudly called. The commons expressed their readiness, but first demanded that the king should enforce the penalties against the papists with additional rigour, observing that they were the papists in Germany who had deprived the elector palatine of his crown, and were now seeking to deprive him of his hereditary domains. They recommended that no recusants should be allowed to come within ten miles of London, that they should not be permitted to attend mass in their own houses, or in the chapels of ambassadors; and they offered to pass a bill, giving to the crown two-thirds of the property of recusants. They then granted him two subsidies, but no tenths or fifteenths—a sum wholly inadequate to the necessities of the war, much less of his expenditure in general. Yet James, to keep them in good humour—hoping to obtain more before the close of the session—professed to be more satisfied with it than if it had been millions, because it was so freely granted.
The commons showed more alacrity in complaining of the breach of their privileges. They reminded the king of the four members of their house whom he had imprisoned after the last session of parliament, and insisted that such a practice rendered the liberty of speech amongst them a mere fiction. As it was James's policy to remain on good terms with them, he made a solemn assurance that he would respect their freedom in that matter. Yet, the next day, the house, as if to show that they themselves were ready to destroy the liberty within, which they so warmly contended against being infringed from without, expelled one of their members named Shepherd, for declaring, in a speech against a bill for restraining the abuses of the Sabbath, that the Sabbath was Saturday, and not Sunday; that the Scriptures recommended dancing on the Sabbath day, and that this bill was in direct opposition to the king's ordinances for the keeping of Sunday.
From their own members they next extended their prosecutions to public officers. They had appointed a committee of inquiry into public abuses, and now summoned witnesses. The conduct of public officers, judges, and their dependents, was subjected to a severe scrutiny. They first examined into the abuses of patents, and three of these incurred particular censure: the one for the licensing of ale-houses, another for the inspection of inns and hostelries, and the third for the exclusive manufacture of gold and silver thread. Patents, to secure to inventors the fruits of their discoveries in arts and manufactures, are beneficial, stimulating to improvement and extending traffic. But these patents were of a directly contrary nature, being grants, for money or through court favour, to individuals to monopolise some particular business; thus checking competition, and defrauding the fair trader of his legitimate profits. The inquiry laid open a scene of the most extraordinary fraud, corruption, and oppression. The three patents just mentioned were denounced as national injuries, and Sir Giles Mompesson and Sir Francis Mitchell, a justice of the peace, his partner in them, were arrested as offenders. The culprits sought protection from the government, Buckingham having sold them the patents, and divided the profits with his half-brother, Sir Edward Villiers. The court was in a great tremor, and it was proposed to dissolve parliament to save the patentees. But Williams, dean of Westminster, represented this as a very imprudent measure, and another course was adopted at his recommendation. Buckingham affected a patriotic air, as if he himself had been no way concerned in it, and said if ​his brother had shared the emolument, let him also share the punishment. But this was safely said, for Villiers was already abroad out of the reach of parliament; and means were not long wanted to let Mompesson escape out of the custody of the sergeant-at-arms. Mitchell was not so fortunate; he was secured and lodged in the Tower.
In these prosecutions Coke was extremely active, for he saw a prospect of taking a signal revenge on Bacon, who had not only supplanted him, but insulted him in his fall. Bacon was notoriously mixed up with the corruptions of the court of chancery; and Coke informed the commons that it was not within their jurisdiction to punish offenders not of their own house, and that they could punish all offences against the state in co-operation with the lords. Accordingly they invited the upper house to take cognisance of these offences, with which they readily coupled, and sentenced Mompesson and Mitchell to be degraded from their knighthood, fined, and imprisoned. James, who had done his best to screen the offenders, then, in a fit of affected patriotism, expressed his indignation at having had his credulity imposed on by these men, and by an illegal stretch of prerogative converted Mompesson's sentence into perpetual banishment. Buckingham, the guiltiest party of all, did not quite escape observation. Yelverton, the attorney-general, who was accused of participation in these illegal practices, and who was condemned to severe fines and imprisonment for life, boldly accused Buckingham, before the house of lords, of his master share in them. But that favourite was too strongly fortified by the royal favour, and by those who must have fallen with him, to be seriously endangered. But lesser men did not escape so well. Sir John Burnet, judge of the prerogative court, was impeached, as well as Dr. Field, bishop of Llandaff, for bribery and corruption. Burnet was charged with having granted administration of wills for money, contrary to law; but he escaped his punishment by obtaining time to prepare his defence, during which parliament was prorogued; but he was afterwards fined twenty thousand pounds in the star-chamber, for which, however, he obtained a pardon. Field of Llandaff had bound a suitor in chancery to pay him over six thousand pounds, if he obtained his suit for him, through Buckingham. At the entreaty of the arch-bishop, however, he, too, escaped, under pretence of being left to the dealing of the church.
Moorish Pirates of the Mediterranean attacking an English Vessel, in the time of James I.
But the great offender, at whom Coke and others were directing their main efforts, was the lord chancellor Bacon. Bacon had managed to make his way from an obscure position to the highest honours of the state. He was not only lord chancellor of the kingdom, and a baron, but of late was become lord viscount St. Albans. Besides this elevation, he possessed a far higher one in the fame of his philosophical works; and had he possessed as much real greatness of mind as talent, might have stood in the admiration of posterity as Milton does—poor, but glorious beyond the tinsel glory of courts; and it might have been said of him as of the great poet—
   His soul was like a star and dwelt apart.
THE ENGLISH JESTER AND THE SPANISH LADIES DURING THE VISIT OF PRINCE CHARLES TO MADRID.
​by his abilities; and he had continued, whilst rising, to make enemies on all sides. The king and Buckingham had both conceived a deep dislike to him. James hated all men of genius with the jealousy of a pedant, and was only rendered tolerant of Bacon by his abject adulation, and his services in punishing Coke, and carrying out relentlessly the fiats of prerogative. Buckingham probably never forgot what he had done in the matter of Coke's daughter. The lords hated him for his upstart vanity and ostentation, and the commons for his desertion of the public cause for that of the despotic king. But perhaps not all these causes together would have availed to pull him down, if Buckingham had not wanted the great seal for his creature Williams, now bishop of Lincoln.
The parliamentary committee inquiring into the abuses of office, recommended the house of commons to impeach the lord chancellor for bribery and corruption in the court over which he presided; and the commons accordingly presented to the upper house a bill of impeachment against him, consisting of two-and-twenty instances of bribery and corruption in his own person, and of allowing the same in his officers. The corruption of the chancellor was notorious; and out of doors it was asserted that he had received in presents no less than one hundred thousand pounds in the three years of his chancellorship. This he denied in a letter to Buckingham; but the charges brought against him by the commons, who were prepared to support them, were so formidable that they completely struck down the guilty man. He felt that his ruin was at hand, and either feeling or feigning sickness, he took to his bed, he had not perceived sufficient indications of his impending fate from other quarters, the conduct of the king left him in no doubt. James informed the lords that he trusted the chancellor might clear himself, but that if he did not he would punish him with the utmost severity.
It must not be supposed, however, that Bacon was the first to introduce bribery into the court of chancery; it was an old and well-known practice, which had been both familiar to Elizabeth, and sanctioned by her. But Bacon ought to have had a soul above it, whereas he had indulged in the villainous custom the more profusely because his mode of living was so extravagant and ostentatious, that be saved not a penny of his enormous gain, but was always in need.
Bacon, on the presentation of the bill of impeachment, on the 21st of March, prayed for time to prepare his defence, and this was granted him, the house adjourning till the 17th of April. On the 24th of that month, the humbled statesman presented a general confession of his guilt, which was presented by prince Charles. In his letter he threw himself on the mercy of the house and the king, and pleaded, with a strange mixture of humility and ingenuity, his very crimes as meritorious, inasmuch as their punishment would deter others from them. He represented his spirit broken, his mind overwhelmed by his calamities; but he added that he found a certain gladness in the fact that "hereafter the greatness of a judge or magistrate shall be no sanctuary or protection to him against guiltiness; which is the beginning of a golden work—the purgation of the courts of justice. And," he added, "in these two points, God is my witness, though it be my fortune to be the anvil upon which these two effects are broken and wrought, I take no small comfort." After this edifying spectacle of exhibiting his punishment, as a public benefit, he proceeded to apply that unctuous adulation to the sovereign and to the peers in which he was so unabashed a master. He implored mercy at the hands of the king—"a king of incomparable clemency, whose heart was inscrutable for wisdom and goodness—a prince whose like had not been seen these hundred years!" And then the lords were equally incensed, "compassion ever beating in the veins of noble blood;" not forgetting the bishops, "the servants of Him who would not bruise the broken reed, nor quench the smoking flax."
But all this creeping, to the crown, the coronet, and the mitre, did not serve him; he was required by the peers to make a separate and distinct answer to each charge. He complied fully with the demand, confessing everything; and when a deputation from the lords waited on him to know whether this was his own voluntary act—for they excused him the humiliation of appearing at the bar of the house—he replied with tears, "It is my act—my hand—my heart. Oh, my lords, spare a broken reed!" This full and explicit confession being read in the house, on the 3rd of May the commons, headed by their speaker, attended to demand judgment, which the lord chief justice, acting as speaker of the upper house, declared to this effect:—That the lord chancellor being found guilty of many acts of bribery and corruption, both by his own confession and the evidence of witnesses, he was condemned to pay a fine of forty thousand pounds, to be imprisoned in the Tower during the king's pleasure, to be dismissed from all his offices, and deemed incapable of either holding office again or sitting in parliament, and to be prohibited from coming within twelve miles of the seat of parliament.
The king remitted the fine, for the best of reasons—that Bacon had nothing to pay it with; he also liberated him from the Tower after a mere pro forma imprisonment of a few days, and Bacon retired to hide his dishonour at his house at Gorhambury, near St. Albans. Nor had his fall extinguished all admiration for him as a great lawyer and philosopher. Even in the house Sir Robert Philips, Sir Edward Sackville, and others, reminded the public of the lord chancellor's wonderful genius and acquirements, and as prince Charles returned from hunting one day, he beheld "a coach accompanied by a goodly troop of horsemen," whom he found were escorting the ex-chancellor to his house at Gorhambury.
In that beautiful retreat, it was in Bacon's power to have so lived and so written, that his disgrace as a statesman would have been soon lost in the splendour of his genius and the dignified wisdom of his latter years. But unfortunately Bacon was stamped to the core with the love of worldly greatness, and the five years that he lived were rendered still more miserable and still more contemptible, by his incessant hankering after restoration to place and honour, and his persevering and cringing importunities to the king and Buckingham for these objects. To such a length did the wretched man proceed, that his letters became actually impious. He told the prince that as the king, his father, had been his creator, he had hoped that he would be his redeemer. The works which he completed after his disgrace ​were only such as could result from so miserable a condition of mind. They were suggested to him by the king, but were not executed with the zest of his own inclination. They consisted chiefly of a life of Henry VII., a revision of his former works, and the superintendence of a Latin translation of them. At length, finding all his efforts vain to move the king towards his restoration, his health and temper have way, and be died on the 9th of May, 1626, the melancholy victim of an unworthy ambition.
The commons had rendered a great public service by these impeachments of public men, and one which has since then operated as a precedent in the hands of parliament to check and punish on a large scale the too daring and unprincipled servants of the crown. But, as if carried beyond themselves by their success, they now fell into a grievous error, and displayed a spirit as aggressive in themselves, as it was cruel, bigoted, and unconstitutional. One Edward Floyde, a catholic barrister, a prisoner in the Fleet, was reported to have exulted in the success of the catholics in Germany over the elector palatine. This being mentioned in the commons, that august body took immediately such violent offence, that it was proposed by members to nail him by the ears, bore him through the tongue, set him in the pillory, &c. On inquiry, all that could be substantiated against him was, that he had said "that goodman palsgrave and goodwife palsgrave had been driven from Prague."
For this paltry offence—which would not now attract a passing notice in a newspaper—the commons adjudged Floyde to pay a fine of one thousand pounds, to stand in the pillory in three different places, and to be carried from place to place on a horse without a saddle, and with his face to the tail. The commons had clearly stepped out of their jurisdiction to adjudge a man who was no member of their house, and Floyde instantly appealed to the king against the proceeding. James, who had so often been checked in his prerogative by the commons, did not neglect this grand opportunity of rebuking their error. He sent the very next morning to demand by what authority they condemned one who did not belong to them, nor had committed any breach of their privileges; and still more, by what right they sentenced him without evidence taken on oath?
This was a posing inquiry: the house was greatly disconcerted, for they were clearly in the wrong, and the king in the right. It was a hard matter, however, to confess their fault: the case was debated warmly for several days; but at length it was agreed to confer with the peers, who asserted that the commons had invaded their privilege of pronouncing judgment in such cases. The commons still contended that they had a right to administer an oath, and therefore to pass judgment. But the lords would not admit this, and it was agreed that the lords should sentence Floyde, which they proceeded to do, as exercising their own exclusive right, the commons contending that the lords now judged him by a similar right by which they had already judged him. The sentence was severe enough to satisfy the commons, for it augmented the fine from one to five thousand pounds, to be flogged at the cart's tail from the Fleet to Westminster Hall, to sit in the pillory, to be degraded from the rank of a gentleman, to be held infamous, and to be imprisoned in Newgate for life.
Perhaps so atrocious a sentence was never pronounced for so trivial an offence. It showed how little either the lords or commons were yet to be trusted with the lives and liberties of the subject, and how ill-defined were still their functions. The public expressed its abhorrence of the barbarous proceeding, and prince Charles exerted himself to procure a mitigation of the punishment, but could only succeed in obtaining the remission of the flogging. The commons having executed so much justice and so much injustice, but making no approach to a vote of further supplies, James adjourned parliament on the 4th of June to November. Vehement as had been the wrath of the commons against a disrespectful allusion to the palsgrave, they had done nothing towards the defence of his territory. As the public were by no means so indifferent on this point, the fear of their constituents suddenly flashed on the commons, and they then made a declaration that if nothing effectual was done during the recess for the restoration of the prince palatine and the protestant religion, they would sacrifice their lives and fortunes in the cause. This was not only carried by acclamation, but Coke, falling on his knees, with many tears and signs of deep emotion, read aloud the collect for the king and royal family from the book of common prayer.
Parliament being adjourned, James proceeded to appoint a new lord chancellor in the place of Bacon. There were three public candidates for the office—Ley and Hobart, the two chief-justices, and lord Cranfield, the treasurer, who had been originally a city merchant, but had risen by marrying a relative of Buckingham's. But there was another and still more extraordinary occupant, determined on by Buckingham and James for the chancellorship—no other than a clergyman— Williams, late dean of Westminster, and now bishop of Lincoln. That a clergyman should be placed at the head of the court of chancery instead of a lawyer, was enough to astonish not only the members of the legal profession, but the whole public. Williams himself was openly professing to support the claims of Cranfield, and expressed astonishment when the post was offered to him. He declared his sense of his incapacity for the office, being inexperienced in matters of law, so strongly, that he would only accept of it on trial for eighteen months, and on condition that two judges should sit with him to assist him. Yet this most extraordinary appointment was actually made, the real cause out of doors being assigned that "his too grate familiarity with Buckingham's mother procured him these grate favors and preferments one a suddaine." It was some time ere the barristers would plead before him.
But not the less did another event confound the dignitaries of the church. Abbot, the archbishop of Canterbury, hunting with lord Zouch in Bramshill Park, in Hampshire, accidentally shot the keeper of the park in aiming at a buck. The verdict of the coroner's inquest was unintentional homicide; but still the clergy contended that by the canon law the shedding of blood had disqualified him for discharging any ecclesiastical functions. Much censure was also expressed on his engaging in hunting at all; and as there were just then four bishops elect who awaited consecration, they refused to receive it at his hands. Amongst these were Williams, the lord-keeper, and Laud, bishop of St David's, who were supposed to be partly influenced by a hope of ​securing the primacy, if Abbot were pronounced disqualified. A commission, however, of prelates and canonists proposed that the archbishop should be absolved from all irregularity, and James, as head of the church, granted him a pardon, and appointed eight bishops to give him absolution; but from this time forward he seldom appeared at court.
During the recess, the king performed an act calculated to conciliate the commons. By the advice, as it was said, of Williams, the lord-keeper, he had abolished thirty-seven of the most oppressive of the patents and monopolies, of which the commons had so long complained. But the effect of this was totally neutralised by other measures of a contrary tendency. Complaints had been made of the growing audacity of the Algerine pirates, who had not only seized several English merchant ships in the Mediterranean, but even on the British coast. James solicited Spain, which also was a sufferer from these robbers, to join in an expedition to burn all their ships and destroy Algiers itself. Sir Robert Monsell was sent with a squadron for this purpose, but the Spaniards did not join him, and he was said to have a royal order not to risk his ships. Under such circumstances, nothing very vigorous was to be expected, yet on the 24th of May Monsell sailed up to the fort, and the sailors set fire to the ships, and then retired. No attack was made on the town, and the firing of the vessels was so imperfectly done, that the Algerines soon put out the flames, and threw booms across the harbour to prevent the re-entrance of the English. Only two of the pirate vessels were consumed, and the Algerines, like a swarm of hornets irritated in their nest, but not injured, rushed forth soon afterwards in such force and fury, that they speedily captured no less than five-and-thirty English merchantmen. Loud and bitter were the complaints in the country of this worse than useless proceeding.
To add to the ill-humour generated by this imbecile transaction, the public had been greatly incensed by the arrest of a number of liberal-minded men—the earls of Oxford and Southampton, Sutcliffe, dean of Exeter, Brise, a puritan preacher, Sir Christopher Neville, Sir Edward Sandys, and Selden, the great lawyer and antiquary; and a prosecution had been commenced against Sir Edward Coke, on no less than eleven charges of misdemeanour during the time that he was a judge. Coke, unlike Bacon, had amassed great wealth during his official life, and it was understood that these charges of peculation and bribery had been got up at the suggestion of Bacon and Coke's own wife, lady Hatton.
The commons took up zealously the cause of their members, Sandys and Coke. Sandys had been examined on some secret charge before the council, and after a month's detention was discharged. Being confined to his bed at the commencement of the session, two members were appointed to wait on him and learn the cavise of his arrest, notwithstanding the assurance of the secretary of state that it had no connection with his conduct in the house. They also ordered the serjeant-at-arms to take into custody the accusers of Coke, and appointed a committee to examine witnesses. They felt assured that the proceedings against these gentlemen originated with their popular conduct in parliament.
At the same time Coke, in the commons, proposed a petition to the king against the increase of popery and the marriage of the prince of Wales to a catholic. It represented that the success in Germany against the prince palatine had so encouraged the papists, that they flocked in crowds to the chapels of the foreign ambassadors; sent their children abroad for education, and were treated with so much lenity that, if not prevented, they would soon again be in the ascendant. Spain was represented, without directly naming it, as the worst enemy of this country, and the king was implored to recall all the children of catholic noblemen and gentlemen from abroad, marry his son to a protestant princess, and enforce the laws with rigour against the papists.
James received a private copy of this petition, and was thrown into a paroxysm of rage at its perusal. To dictate to him how he should marry his son; that he should invade the territories of Spain, as it recommended; and to reflect on the honour of his ally, the Spanish king, were examples of intolerable interference with his dearly valued prerogative. He wrote at once to the speaker, denouncing certain "fiery, popular, and turbulent spirits " in the house, and desiring them not to concern themselves about such matters as were included in the petition. Adverting to Sandys, he denied that his offence was connected with the house of commons, but at the same time declared that the crown possessed a right to punish subjects, whether members of parliament or not, and would not fail to exercise it.
The house received this missive with high dissatisfaction, but with dignity, and vindicated their right of liberty of speech in a firm memorial. James replied that though their privileges were no undoubted right, but were derived from the grace of his ancestors on the throne, yet so long as they kept them within the limits of duty, he should not exercise his prerogative and withdraw those privileges. The house expressed its high resentment at this language, which reduced their right into mere matter of royal favour, and the expression of feeling ran so high that James became alarmed, and wrote to secretary Calvert, instructing him to qualify his assertions a little. But the house was not thus to be satisfied where the question of its privileges was directly raised, and on the 18th of December it drew up the following protest:—"That the liberties and jurisdictions of parliament are the most ancient and undoubted birthright and inheritance of the subjects of England; that arduous and urgent affairs concerning the king, the state, and defence of the realm, and the church of England, the making and maintenance of laws, and the redress of grievances, are proper subjects of counsel and debate in parliament; that in the handling of these businesses, every member hath and ought to have freedom of speech; that the commons in parliament have like liberty to treat of these matters in such order as they think proper; that every member hath like freedom from all impeachment, imprisonment, and molestation, other than by the censure of the house itself, concerning any bill, speaking or reasoning touching parliament matters; and that if any be complained of for anything said or done in parliament, the same is to be showed to the king by assent of the commons before the king give evidence to any private information."
​This was speaking out; the parliament threw down the gage, and James, in his wrath, took it up. Forgetting that he was represented as ill, he rode up to London in a fury, ordered the clerk of the commons to bring him the journals of the house—according to Rushworth, tore the obnoxious protest out of it with his own hands, in full council, and in presence of the judges; at all events he cancelled it; had what he had done entered in the council-book, and on the 6th of January, 1622, by an insulting proclamation, dissolved parliament; assuring the public that it was on account of its evil temper that he had dissolved the house of commons, and not with any intention of doing without one; that he should soon call another; and in the meantime the country might rest assured that he would endeavour to govern well.
The first proofs of his notions of governing well were the summoning of the earls of Oxford and Southampton from the house of peers, and of Coke, Philips, Pym, and Mallory, from the commons, to appear before the council, some of whom were committed to the Tower, some to the Fleet, and others to the custody of private individuals. It was pretended that nothing in either house had occasioned these arrests, and various reasons were assigned; amongst others, that Selden was not a member of the commons, and he therefore could have incurred no blame there. But Selden was the legal adviser of Sandys and others, who had made themselves prominent in the popular cause, and he was known as one of the ablest legal advocates of parliamentary and public rights. The two peers were also at the head of a popular party, which had sprung up in the lords, and the whole matter was too palpable for mistake. Nothing could, however, be fixed on any of the prisoners which the government dared to charge as a crime, and after a sharp rebuke, they were liberated. There were still other members whose conduct had excited the anger of the court, but against whom no specific charge could be established. These were Sir Dudley Digges, Sir James Parrott, Sir Nathaniel Rich, and Sir Thomas Carew. To punish them a singular mode was devised. They were appointed to a commission in Ireland to inquire into the state of the army and navy, into the condition of the church and of public schools, into the abuses in the collection of revenue and in the settlement of the plantations, and into the existence of illegal and mischievous patents. As it was extremely inconvenient for these gentlemen to absent themselves on such business, they protested decidedly against it; but they were told that the king had a right to the services of his subjects, in any way that he pleased; and though these gentlemen had stood boldly with their fellows in a collective capacity for the rights of the subject, they were not sufficiently screwed up to the pitch of martyrdom, to stand upon their individual freedom, and refuse at all costs. Coke, who had now taken the lead in the popular cause, because the court had repelled and dismissed him, offered to accompany them, and assist them with his legal advice and experience, but his offer was declined. The subjects of inquiry, of themselves, were of a nature to furnish much strength and intelligence to the reformers, and the mode of punishing these men was as short-sighted as it was arbitrary. But the great contest was now full begun, in which the blindness and tyranny of the Stuarts, and the firm intelligence of the people, were to fight out the great question of constitutional government. Those who regard this as a matter only of Charles I.'s reign, have strangely overlooked the doings and doctrines of James, who was the great author of the conflict, and opened it himself with all the blind dogmatism which distinguished the royal side to the end. This very session prince Charles had been a diligent attender of the house of lords, but seems to have had no perception whatever of the spirit which was dominant in the house of commons, and rapidly diffusing its electric fire through the nation. The names of Pym, Coke, Wentworth, and Laud, were already in men's mouths, the heralds of that mighty host, which, for good or for evil, were soon to engage in terrible combat; whose victory was to be the morning-star of governmental science to the nations, determining the true powers, uses, and limitations of governments, and the liberty of the people protected by its own popular safeguards, from licence and anarchy.
On the very day of the dissolution of parliament, James very nearly finished his mortal career. "The same day," says Meade, in Ellis's Original Letters, "his majesty rode by coach to Theobalds to dinner, not intending, as the speech is, to return till Easter. After dinner, riding on horseback abroad, his horse stumbled, and east his majesty into the New River, when the ice brake; he fell in, so that nothing but his boots were seen. Sir Richard Young was next, who alighted, went into the water, and lifted him out. Then came much water out of his mouth and body. His majesty rid back to Theobalds, went into a warm bed, and, as we hear, is well, which God continue."
In foreign affairs James was placed in particular difficulties. The two objects which he had more than all others at heart, were the marriage of his son, the prince of Wales, to the Infanta of Spain, and the restoration of the elector palatine to his hereditary possessions. He had tried too late to secure the princess Christine of France. She was already affianced to Philip of Spain. He had since negotiated for the hand of Donna Maria of Spain. If he could accomplish this marriage, he should be at once able to secure by it his other grand desire, the restoration of the palsgrave, for Spain would then be induced to withdraw its forces from the assistance of the emperor against the Palatinate, and to add its earnest co-operation in arranging for the palsgrave's re-instatement.
But against this project of marriage—the stepping-stone to these measures in Germany—stood the aversion of the public in England to a match with so bigotedly catholic a country as Spain, and equally bigoted a family as that of its sovereign. Just as adverse were the Spaniards, and especially the priests, to the young Infanta coming into an heretical country, and to any impediment thrown in the way of the emperor of Germany exterminating the protestants there. During the life of Philip III., the father of Donna Maria, little progress could be made, but on the accession of his son, Philip IV., in 1621, a more promising prospect opened. Both James and Charles wrote to the new king and his favourite Olivarez. In England Gondomar, the Spanish minister, was warmly in favour of the alliance, seeing in it a guarantee for the relief of the catholics here, and of increased strength against France. Lord Digby, now earl of Bristol, late ambassador at Madrid, was ​equally zealous for the marriage; and James was the more eager for it as he saw no hope of aid in his German project from France. There the feeble monarch, Louis XIII., was wholly in the hands of a despicable favourite, De Lnynes, who was insolently opposed to the English interests, though the French people, from their hereditary hatred of the house of Austria, would have gladly marched against the invaders of the Palatinate.
The Duke Olivarez. From the Original Portrait by Velasquez.
The affairs of Frederick, the prince palatine, were desperate. The Palatinate, in fact, was already lost. Count Mansfeldt, the ablest general who had fought for the elector's interests, and the prince Christian of Brunswick, had evacuated the Palatinate—Heidelberg and Mannheim were in the hands of the enemy—and these generals had entered the service of the Dutch. The emperor, in reward for the successful services of Maximilian of Bavaria, had conferred on him the electorate of the Palatinate, with the greater part of the territory.
James himself, to get rid of the maintenance of the garrison, had given up Frankenthal to the Spaniards, on condition that if, within eighteen months, a satisfactory peace were not made, it should be returned. Everything, therefore, was lost, and James fondly hoped that this Spanish match might yet recover everything.
PRINCE CHARLES SURPRISING THE INFANTA IN THE ORCHARD.
​cardinals Ludovisio and Bandini; and Buckingham, to complete the intercession, sent Bennet, a catholic priest, on the same errand.
The pope was not likely to grant the favour to James without a quid pro quo, and therefore, as might have been expected, replied that the canons of the church could only be suspended for the benefit of the church; that the king of England had been very liberal of his promises to the late king of Spain, but had performed nothing; he must now give proof of his sincerity by relieving the English catholics from the pressure of his penal laws, and the request would be accorded. This was a demand in limine, which would have shown to any prudent monarch the dangerous path he was entering upon; but James trusted to his tortuous art of king-craft, and rashly set to work to undo all that he had done throughout his reign against the catholics. He caused an order under the great seal to be issued, granting pardons to all recusants who should apply for them within five years; and the judges were commanded to discharge from prison all such as gave security for then: compliance with these terms.
There was a glad and universal embrace of the proffered lenity by the catholics. The doors of the prisons were opened, and the astonished puritans saw thousands on thousands of the dreaded papists once more coming abroad. There was instantly a cry of terror and indignation from John O'Groats to the Land's End. The pulpits resounded with the execrations of enthusiastic preachers on the traitorous dealing of the court, and the depicted horrors of catholic and Spanish ascendancy. James trembled, but ordered the lord-keeper Williams and the bishop of London to assure the public that he was only seeking to gain better treatment for the protestants abroad, whom the continental princes declared they would punish with the same rigour as James had punished the catholics in England, unless the British severity was somewhat mitigated. That, moreover, there was no danger; for the recusants, though out of prison, had still the shackles about their heels, and could at any moment be remanded. This, without satisfying the puritans, undid all confidence amongst the catholics. They recalled the habitual duplicity of James, and felt no longer any security; and when Gondomar boasted in Spain that four thousand catholics had been released in England, those catholics only remarked, "Yes; but we have still the shackles about our heels, and may at any moment be thrust again into our dungeons."
To silence the vehement outcries of the preachers against his release of the catholics, he issued orders that no preachers should indulge in abuse of either catholics or puritans, fondly hoping that the latter part of the prohibition would appease the reformers. But the puritans were too knowing to be caught with so poor a bait; and they were too able to reply to any attacks on them to need any other protection from mere invective. They therefore denounced more loudly than ever the royal leaning to popery. Harassed on this side, James was as unmercifully goaded on another. Abroad, the protestants cursed his miserable neglect, or more miserable support of his son-in-law; who, with his wife, James's daughter, was existing on a Dutch pension at the Hague; and the catholics ridiculed him as freely. They introduced him into burlesque plays in the theatres, and at Antwerp, according to Howell's Letters, a player enacting a courtier, rushed hastily on the stage, crying—"News! news!" On being asked what news, he replied "that the count palatine was likely to have a tremendous force in the field; for the king of Denmark had engaged to send him a thousand, the Dutch ten thousand, and the king of England a hundred thousand." "Thousands of what?" demanded those who acted the spectators. "Oh!" replied the courier, "the king of Denmark's are red herrings, those of the Dutch are Dutch cheeses, and the king of England's are ambassadors." They exhibited all kinds of caricatures of the unfortunate monarch. In one he had his pockets and his purse turned inside out, in another ho was fighting with an empty scabbard instead of a sword, in a third with a sword that a whole crowd tugging at could not draw, and in a fourth James was carrying a cradle after his daughter, the ex-queen of Bohemia, who was wandering homeless with her child on her back.
His only consolation was that the Spanish match now seemed really to progress. On the 5th of January, 1623, the twenty articles securing the freedom of her worship to the Infanta in England, the cessation of persecution of the catholics, and the exercise of their religious rites in their own houses, were signed by James and prince Charles. The dower of the princess was to be two millions of ducats. The espousals were to take place at Madrid by proxy, within forty days from the receipt of the dispensation; and the princess was to set out for England within three weeks, under the care of Don Duartre of Portugal. The time for the final consummation of the marriage, and the intervals betwixt the several payments of the dower, were all fixed, and Gondomar and Bristol congratulated themselves on the completion of their arduous negotiation.
At this crisis, however, arrived two Englishmen at the earl of Bristol's residence at Madrid, under the names of John and Thomas Smith. To the ambassador's astonishment and chagrin, on appearing before him, they turned out to be no other than the prince of Wales and Buckingham, who had arrived in disguise, and with only three attendants. But how this extraordinary and imprudent journey had come about and been carried out, requires detail. It was said to have orientated with Gondomar; that it had been planned on his visit to London the preceding summer, and had since been stimulated by his letters. He is said to have represented to the prince, who complained of delay, that all obstacles would vanish at once if he were to suddenly appear and press his own suit. The idea caught the imagination of the prince, and was warmly seconded by Buckingham, who not only longed to seek adventures amongst the beauties of Madrid, but also hoped to snatch the accomplishment of the match out of the hands of Bristol, whom he hated. If it were really the scheme of the wily Spaniard, he must have prided himself greatly on its success; a success, however, which produced its own ruin.
When the plan was first opened to James by Charles and Buckingham, he gave in to them without much hesitation, so much did he desire to have the affair settled. But on thinking it over alone, he was immediately sensible of the hazards and the impolitic character of the enterprise. He therefore desired the prince and the favourite to give it up, pointing ​out, with great justice, how much they would put themselves in the power of the Spaniards, what advantages they would give them over them, and what a storm of anger and alarm would break out at home as soon as it became known. The two knights-errant bade him dismiss his fears, that all would go well, and that they had selected Sir Francis Cottington and Sir Endymion Porter to attend them. James approved their choice, but commanded Cottington to tell him plainly what he thought of the project. Cottington, who did not seem yet to have been let into the secret, on hearing it, fell into a violent trembling, and declared that it was a rash and perilous adventure; whereupon James threw himself upon his bed in an agony, crying—"I told you so, I told you so before. I shall be undone, and lose baby Charles."
The prince and Buckingham were outrageous at the behaviour of Cottington, and handled him severely, but after all, James, with his usual weakness, gave his consent, and the travellers set forward on the 17th of February, 1623.
They had a number of adventures. Besides Cottington and Porter, they were attended by Sir Richard Graham, master of the horse to Buckingham. They gave a piece of gold to the ferryman at Gravesend, which immediately made him suspect something of the quality of his fare. At Rochester they came again into difficulty; and scarcely were they beyond it, when they saw the French ambassador approaching in the king's coach, and to avoid him, leaped the hedges and cut across the fields. At Canterbury the mayor was not satisfied with their appearance, and Buckingham, taking off a false beard, confessed who he was. Their post-boy, on the way to Dover, discovered whom he was driving, for he had been at court, and they were obliged to purchase his silence. Betwixt Boulogne and Paris they were again recognised by two German gentlemen, who had seen them with the king at Newmarket. At Paris they went boldly to the court and saw the royal family at a masque without any one knowing them. Charles wrote and told the king this, and that the queen of France was the handsomest lady at court, which made him the more anxious to see her sister, the princess of Spain. He and Buckingham had also walked all about Paris unrecognised, except by an English maid who had been in London, and said, "Certainly that is the prince of Wales," but did not follow him, or attract notice to him.
Sir Edward Herbert, afterwards the celebrated lord Herbert of Cherbury, the English ambassador, was greatly astonished to hear that the prince had been in Paris, and was gone forward on his way towards Spain. He hastened to inform the French secretary of state of the fact, and take measures for his security. No sooner did the secretary see him, than he said, "I know your business before you tell me it—your prince has this morning departed for Spain." He said that he should suffer no molestation, but he trusted that he "would hold no communication with the discontented Huguenots by the way. Herbert begged that no one might be sent after him, but the secretary replied that that would not be polite, that some one must follow to see how the prince had fared on his journey. This was enough for Herbert: he lost no time in despatching a courier after Charles, to warn him to avoid all intercourse with the protestants, and to make the best of their way out of France; for that their presence there was well known at court, and a watch was dogging their steps, though the minister had promised no interruption should take place. At Bayonne, on the frontiers, they had some little difficulty, being stopped and examined, but were suffered to pass, and reached Madrid safely towards the end of March. The next day their attendants, whom they had outridden, arrived.
Lord Bristol had despatched a messenger immediately on the prince reaching his house, informing the king that his son and friend were safe in Madrid, after a journey of sixteen days. Meantime, strange rumors began to run about the Spanish capital, that some great man from England had arrived, supposed to be the king himself, and it was deemed best to make the fact known to the court themselves. They sent for Gondomar, who hurried off to court with the welcome news. There were first private but stately interviews, and then a public reception. The prince was first privately conducted to the monastery of St. Jerome, from which the Spanish kings proceed to their coronation, and was then brought back publicly by the king, his two brothers, and the élite of the Spanish nobility. Charles rode at the king's right hand through the whole city to the palace, when he was conducted to the apartments appropriated to him. He had then a formal introduction to the queen and Infanta. Charles had two keys of gold given him, by which he could pass into the royal apartments at all hours, yet Spanish etiquette did not allow him to converse with the Infanta except in public. Tired of this restraint, Charles determined to break through the court formality, and speak unceremoniously with his proposed wife; wherefore, hearing that Donna Maria used to go to the Casa de Campo on the other side of the river to gather May-dew, he rose early and went thither also. He passed through the house and garden, but found that the princess was in the orchard, and betwixt him and her a high wall, and the door strongly bolted. Without further ceremony he got over the wall, dropped down, and seeing the princess at a distance, hastened towards her. But the princess, on perceiving him, gave a shriek and ran off; and the old marquis, her guardian, falling on his knees before the prince, entreated him to retire, as he should lose his head if he permitted it. Accordingly he let him out and rebolted the door.
Great were the public rejoicings, however, on account of this chivalric visit. The king professed to feel himself greatly complimented by the reliance of the English prince on the Spanish honour, on the earnestness it evinced in the prosecution of his suit; and the people as firmly calculated on his conversion to the catholic faith. The prisons were thrown open; presents and favours were heaped upon him; the king insisted on his taking precedence of himself, and assured him that any petition which he presented to him for a whole month, should be granted. There were bull-fights, tournaments, fencing matches, feasts, and religious processions, held in his honour and for his amusement.
But meantime at home, dire was the consternation when it was known that Charles had gone off with slight attendance to Spain. It was stoutly declared that he would never escape alive from amongst the inquisitions and monks of that priest-ridden country, or if he did, it would only be as a papist. The freedom of comment on the occasion in the ​pulpits, caused James to issue an order through the bishop of London, that the clergy should not in their prayers "prejudicate the prince's journey, but only pray to God to return him home in safety again to us, and no more."
Wbereupon a preacher, with an air of great simplicity, prayed that the prince might return in safety again, and no more—that is, as it was understood, without a catholic wife. Yet to pacify his subjects, the king informed them that he had sent after them two protestant chaplains, together with all the stuff and ornaments fit for the service of God. And he added, "I have fully instructed them, so as all their behaviour and service shall, I hope, prove decent and agreeable to the purity of the primitive church, and yet so near the Roman form as can lawfully be done. For," says this stern persecutor of Catholicism, "it hath ever been my way to go with the church of Rome usque ad aras."
In so very complying a mood was James at this moment, that when these chaplains asked him what they were to do if they met the host in the streets, he replied they must avoid meeting it whenever they could; when they could not, they must do as the people did there. And poor James soon found that he had need of all his moral pliability. The Spanish court, as might have been foreseen, once having the prince in their power, resolved to benefit by it. They soon let the prince and Buckingham know that the pope made great difficulty about the dispensation, and the papal nuncio was sternly set against it, and it was inquired how far the prince could go in concession. Buckingham wrote, therefore, to the king, in these ominous words:—"We would gladly have your directions how far we may engage you in the acknowledgment of the pope's special power, for we almost find, if you will be contented to acknowledge the pope chief head under Christ, that the match will be made without him."
This was asking everything, and James was brought to a stand. He wrote in reply, that he did not know what they meant by acknowledging the pope's spiritual supremacy. He was sure they would not have him renounce his religion for all the world. "Perhaps," he wrote, "you allude to a passage in my book against cardinal Bellannine, where I say that if the pope would quit his godhead and usurping over kings, I would acknowledge him for chief bishop, to whom all appeals of churchmen ought to lie en dernier ressort. That is the farthest my conscience would permit me to go; for I am not a monsieur who can shift his religion as easily as he can shift his shirt when he cometh from tennis."
That Buckingham would have advised Charles to abandon his religion for the achievement of his object, had he dared, there is little question, for his mother was an avowed papist, and was his constant prompter in his course. Before leaving London, the two adventurers had obtained the king's solemn promise in writing, that whatever they agreed to with the Spanish monarch, he would ratify; so that well might James be alarmed at their suggestion. Charles, in fact, did not hesitate, in reply to a letter from the pope, to pledge himself to abstain from every act hostile to the catholic religion, and to seek every opportunity of accomplishing the reunion of the church of England with that of Rome. The letter—which lord Clarendon truly says, "is, by your favour, more than a compliment"—may be seen in the Hardwicke papers. Charles afterwards said that it was only a promise that he never meant to keep; we may therefore see that already his father's notions of king-craft had taken full possession of him, and, with a naturally serious and conscientious disposition, produced that fatal mixture of determination and unscrupulous insincerity which ruined him. Instead of a firm resistance to the palpable schemes of the pope and the Spaniard, and a truthful candour which would have convinced them that they had no chance of moving him, he led them, by his apparent acquiescence, to believe that they could win him over; and when they had carried him beyond the bounds of prudence, and much beyond those of honesty, he had no alternative but to steal away and repudiate his own solemn words and acts. Is it at all to be wondered at that neither foreign nations nor his own could ever after put faith in him? The Jesuitry of absolutism of the father had already destroyed the son, by perverting his moral constitution. It is very probable that Charles also acquired a strong taste for ecclesiastical pomp and circumstance during this visit, and its religious shows and ceremonies, which falling in afterwards with the ambitious taste of Laud, also tended to direct him towards the same "facilis decensus Averni."
James had despatched after the prince a great number of people, to form a becoming attendance on the heir of England. Others flocked thither of themselves, and especially catholic refugees, who swarmed in the prince's court, and particularly about Buckingham. The Jesuits did their best to convert them, and certainly were encouraged by every appearance of success. Though James had sent what he called the "stuff and ornaments" for public protestant worship, we are informed that these were never used; for though he had the earl of Carlisle, and the lords Mountjoy, Holland, Rochfort, Andover, Denbigh, Vaughan, and Kensington, besides a great number of other courtiers, and their dependents around him, they had no public worship, as if they were ashamed of their heretical faith, or feared to offend their catholic friends. The prince contented himself with bed-chamber prayers. The consequence was, as Howell, who was there, wrote, that the Spaniards, hardly believing the English Christians, and seeing no evidence of worship, set them down for little better than infidels. This occasioned great discontent amongst the more conscientious of the retinue, and they did not hesitate to avow their religious belief, and their contempt of the popish mummery which they saw around them, which led to much scandal and anger. Archy, or Archibald Armstrong, the famous court fool, whom oddly enough James had sent as well as the church plate and vestments, seemed to think himself privileged by his office to say what he pleased, and he did not hesitate to laugh at the religious ceremonies, and argue on religious points with all the zeal of a Scotch presbyterian, as he was. Others even proceeded to blows. Sir Edward Varney, finding a priest at the bedside of a sick Englishman, struck him under the ear, and they fell to fighting till they were thrust asunder.
This state of things would not have been tolerated so near the inquisition except for the great end in view—the belief that Charles would become a catholic. Gregory XV. had written to the inquisitor-general to this effect:—"We ​understand that the prince of Wales, the king of Great Britain's son, is lately arrived there, carried with a hope of catholic marriage. Our desire is that he should not stay in vain in the courts of those to whom the defence of the pope's authority, and care of advancing religion, hath procured the renowned name of catholic. Wherefore, by apostolic letters, we exhort his catholic majesty that he would gently endeavour sweetly to reduce the prince to the obedience of the Roman church, to which the ancient kings of Great Britain have, with Heaven's approbation, submitted their crowns and sceptres. Now, to the attaining of this victory, which to the conquered promiseth triumphs and principalities of heavenly felicity, we need not exhaust the king's treasures, nor levy armies of furious soldiers, but we must fetch from heaven the armour of light, whose divine splendour may allure the prince's eye, and gently expel all errors from his mind. Now, in the managing of these businesses, what power and art you have, we have well known long ago; wherefore, we wish you to go like a religious counsellor to the catholic king, and to try all ways which, by this present occasion, may benefit the kingdom of Britain and the church of Rome. The matter is of great weight and moment, and therefore not to be amplified with words. Whoever shall inflame the mind of this royal youth with the love of the catholic religion, and breed a hate in him of heretical impiety, shall begin to open the kingdom of heaven to the prince of Britain, and to gain the kingdom of Britain to the apostolic see."
It was easy to foresee that this absurd journey would lead to these determined attempts to regain the rich islands of Great Britain to the catholic church. The catholics everywhere regarded the rupture to have been occasioned by Henry VIII.'s protestant marriage, and nothing appeared so likely as that a catholic marriage would heal it. It was not so easy to foresee that Charles, at the age of twenty-three, should so consummately act the hypocrite. He wrote to the pope, in reply to a most gracious and paternal letter from his holiness, calling him "Most Holy Father," telling him how much he deplored the division of the churches, and longed to restore union. Gregory was dead before this extraordinary epistle arrived at Rome, but Urban VIII., the new pope, lifted up his hands in joyful astonishment on reading it, and "gave thanks to the Father of Mercies, that on the very entrance of his reign a British prince performed this kind of obeisance to the pope of Rome." Having apparently so favourable a subject to operate upon, Olivarez now told Charles that the treaty entered into through the earl of Bristol had been rather for show than use, and that now, as the prince and his able adviser were there themselves, they would make a real and effective compact. Accordingly, in spite of the strenuous remonstrances of the two British ambassadors against re-opening the question already settled, Charles and Buckingham permitted it; and the Spanish minister found little difficulty in introducing several new and more favourable clauses. There was, in fact, a public and a private treaty agreed to. By the public one the marriage was to be celebrated in Spain, and afterwards in England; the children were to remain in the care of their mother till ten years of age; the Infanta was to have an open church and chapel for the free exercise of her religion. and her chaplains were to be Spaniards under the control of their own bishops. By the private treaty it was engaged that the penal laws against catholics should be suspended; that catholic worship should be freely performed in private houses; that no attempts should be made to seduce the princess from her hereditary faith; and that the king should swear to obtain the repeal of the penal statutes by parliament.
When this treaty was sent home, James was struck with consternation. He had pledged himself to Charles and Buckingham not to communicate any of their proceedings to the council; but the present responsibility was over-whelming, and he therefore opened his difficulty to the council. After making what the secretary of the council calls "a most sad, fatherly, kind, wise, pious, manly, stout speech as ever was heard," the lords of the council came to the conclusion, though reluctantly, and with fear, that the prince's honour must be maintained, and the oath to keep the treaty taken. This, however, was only the public treaty; James kept the private one to himself, and swore to it separately.
Having got the English court, as they supposed, thus secured, both the pope and the Spaniard raised their heads still higher, and showed that they meant to exact the utmost possible concession. In Spain the papal dispensation for the marriage was already in the hands of the nuncio, but he refused to deliver it till the king of England, according to his oath, had obtained the repeal of the penal statutes by parliament; whilst in England James refused to go a step further till the marriage was celebrated, and the first installment of the dower paid. When the king's resolve was known, it was conceded that the marriage should at once take place, but that the princess and the dower should remain in Spain till the stipulated indulgence to the English catholics was obtained from parliament. James refused this, and sent word that the marriage must be celebrated and the prince bring home his bride, or come without the wedding: this brought the Spaniards down a little. The ambassadors in London assured James that a royal proclamation would satisfy them; but he replied that a proclamation without the added sanction of parliament was no law; that, however, he would issue an order for catholic indulgence under the great seal. This they were obliged to be satisfied with; but when it came to the lord-keeper Williams, he refused to put the great seal to it, as a most dangerous act, without precedent.
As there was no prospect of a speedy settlement, Charles, who had probably grown tired of a princess surrounded by such a hedge of difficulties and delays, desired his father to send him an order for his recall. It would appear as if the prince had planned the mode of his retreat, for the preparations for the marriage of the Infanta went on, on the understanding that she was to continue in Spain till spring. James was apparently occupied in preparing grand wedding presents for the bride, and a small fleet to bring her home. This, if carried out, must have been very onerous to him; for he had made already doleful representations to Charles and Buckingham, of the exhaustion of his treasury by his remittance of five thousand pounds, and three, thousand pounds for their "tilting stuff," &c. At ​Madrid the marriage articles were signed and confirmed by oath, the Infanta assumed the title of princess of England, and had a court formed of corresponding importance.
Never was the marriage so far off. Charles and Buckingham had resolved to steal away and abandon the whole affair. They felt that they were regularly entrapped through their folly; and other causes rendered a speedy exit necessary. Buckingham—vain, empty, and sensual—had given way without caution or control to his licentiousness and love of parade. To make him more fitting for the companion of his son, James had raised him to the rank of duke since his departure. His extravagance, his amours, his haughty bearing, and unceremonious treatment of both his own prince and the grandees of Spain, astonished all Madrid. He introduced the very worst people, men and women, into the palace, and would sit with his hat on when the prince himself was uncovered. His behaviour in the presence of the king of Spain was just as irreverent, and the minister Olivarez was so incensed at his insolence that he detested him. He had the sold of an upstart lackey under the title of a duke, and was never easy unless he could outshine all the grandees at the Spanish court. He was perpetually importuning the king to send over orders, jewels, and money. Georges and garters were sent over in numbers to confer on different courtiers, and the constant cry of Buckingham's letters was Jewels, jewels, jewels. He represented how rich the Spaniards were in jewels, and how poor those looked which they themselves already had. He described the prince as quite poor in his appearance, compared with the Spanish splendour. "Sir, he hath neither chain nor hatband, and I beseech you consider first how rich they are in jewels here; then in what a poor equipage he came in; how he hath no other means to appear like a king's son; how they are usefullest at such a time as this, when you may do yourself, your son, and the nation honour; and lastly, how it will neither cost nor hazard you anything. These reasons, I hope, since you have already ventured your chiefest jewel, your son, will serve to persuade you to let loose these more after him:—first, your best hatband, the Portugal diamond, the rest of the pendent diamonds to make up a necklace to give his mistress, and the best rope of pearl, with a rich chain or two for himself to wear, or else your dog must want a collar, which is the ready way to put him into it. There are many other jewels, which are of so mean quality as deserve not that name, but will save much in your purse, and serve very well for presents," &c.
The Palace at Guadalajara, near Madrid, as it appeared in the 17th Century.
THE CASTLE OF SEGOVIA.
​fulfil the marriage according to the articles; nay, appearing most eager for its accomplishment before Christmas, they were permitted to take their leave, loaded with valuable presents. The king gave the prince a set of fine Barbary horses, a number of the finest pictures by Titian and Correggio, a diamond-hilted sword and dagger, and various other arms of the richest fashion and ornament. The queen gave him a great many bags of amber, dressed kid-skins, and other articles; and Olivarez also presented him with a number of fine Italian pictures and costly articles of furniture. In return, Charles gave the king diamond-studded hilts for a sword and dagger, to the queen a pair of rich earrings, and to the Infanta the string of pearls recommended by Buckingham, to which was attached a diamond anchor, as an emblem of his constancy. He affected the utmost distress at leaving his bride only for a short time, and the princess ordered a mass for his safe journey home.
Never did appearances show more real, never were they more hollow. The Spaniards had endeavoured by every act, into which the sacred name of religion had been dragged, to make the most of their advantage in the presence of the prince, and to extort terms beyond the original contract, they were, therefore, justly punished. But nothing could justify the deep and deliberate falsehood, and repeated perjury of a young protestant prince, whose conduct stamped a deep stain on his country and on protestantism itself. The protestants had long and loudly denounced the Jesuitry of the catholics, and asserted that no faith could be put in their most solemn engagements. Here, however, was a voluntary surrender of the pure and lofty morality of protestantism, a willing abasement of its honour to the level of the worst catholic duplicity. We shall see that the whole of Charles's conduct was lamentably in keeping with this unprincipled beginning.
Buckingham was impatient to be in England, from news which he received that certain courtiers were busily at work in endeavouring to undermine his credit with the king. Behind him he left nothing but detestation, which Olivarez, the chief minister, took no pains to conceal. When the prince and he set out they were attended by the king himself, and a brilliant assemblage of the nobles, who added to the prince's presents a number of fine Andalusian horses and mules They halted for several days at the Escurial, where they were splendidly entertained, and then the king rode on with them as far as Campillo. The parting of the affianced brothers-in-law was of the most affectionate kind, and the king ordered a column to be erected on the spot, as a lasting monument of it. So Charles rode on, attended by several nobles, and entertained most honourably at their castles. He visited the cell of a celebrated nun at Carrion, who was held to be a saint, and to whom Donna Maria had given him a letter.
Arrived at the port where the English fleet was waiting for him, he no sooner stepped on board than he laughed at the credulity of the Spaniards, called them fools, and wondered at his easy escape from them. They landed at Portsmouth on the 5th of October, and there and all the way to and through London, their reception was one piece of exultation at the safe return of the prince from the clutches of the dreaded Spaniards. The country resounded with the ringing of bells, firing of cannon, the whizzing of fireworks, and the shouts of the people. The clergy, without waiting for royal orders, put up thanksgiving in the churches for the prince's happy arrival.
Meantime, the prince's perfidy was awaking the Spaniards from a trance of astonishment to a tempest of rage. From Segovia, he had sent back Clerk, a creature of Buckingham's, to the earl of Bristol. Calculating that the papal dispensation would by that time have arrived, Clerk was to hand to Bristol an order from the prince not to present the proxies left in his hands—which were to be given up immediately after the delivery of the dispensation—till he received further orders from home. The reason alleged by Charles was that he feared on the marriage by proxy the Infanta would retire into a convent. The idea was so absurd, that Bristol saw at once that it was a mere pretence to break off the match. As his honour as well as the honour of the nation was implicated, he at once hastened to the king and laid the doubts of the prince before him. The astonishment of the king may be conceived. He had fixed the 29th of November for the espousals, the 29th of December for the marriage: orders for public rejoicings were already issued, a platform covered with tapestry was erected from the palace to the church, and the nobility had been summoned to attend. He gave Bristol every assurance that the princess should be delivered to the English without delay, and Bristol despatched these assurances in all haste to James. Meantime, the countess Olivarez communicated privately to the Infanta the prince's message, at which she laughed heartily, saying that she never, in all her life, had a mind to be a nun, and thought she should hardly turn one now, merely to avoid the prince of Wales.
Only four days before the one appointed for the espousals, three couriers on the heels of each other arrived from England, bearing from James the message that he was perfectly willing for the marriage to proceed, on conviction that the king of Spain pledged himself, under his own hand, to take up arms for the restoration of the palatine, and fixed the day for hostilities to commence. At an early period of the negotiation, Philip had declared that on the completion of the agreement for the marriage, he would give James a carte blanche regarding the affairs of the prince palatine, and whatever terms James required, he pledged himself to accede to. Now he repeated that although he could not in honour proclaim war against his nephew, the emperor—being engaged as mediator betwixt him and the palsgrave, at the instance of James—yet he would pledge himself in writing never to cease, by intercession or by warfare, till he had restored the palatine to his hereditary dominion. Bristol and his fellow ambassador thought this assurance amply satisfactory; they sent off a messenger in hot haste, bearing their assurances that all possible difficulty was removed; and they went on putting their households into velvet and silver lace, to do honour to the marriage ceremony, as if it were really to take place. Bristol wrote more earnestly to the king, reminding him that the honour of both king, prince, and ambassadors, was most solemnly pledged; that the matters of the palsgrave had been treated of separately, and that his majesty load always represented to Bristol himself that he regarded the marriage as a certain pledge ​of the palatine's restoration. He added that the prince and my lord duke had also acted entirely on that opinion during their stay there. Charles and Buckingham, in fact, seem to have taken very little trouble about the ex-king and queen of Bohemia.
But all was in vain; the prince had determined not to complete the marriage. It was believed that the view which he had had of the princess Henrietta at Paris had, even before his reaching Spain, changed his intentions; and a courier brought from James an order for Bristol not to deliver the proxy till Christmas, "because that holy and joyful time was best fitting so notable and blessed an action as the marriage." When we add, that the proxy was well known to the king and prince to expire before Christmas, we can duly estimate this awful language of hypocrisy. The king of Spain saw at once that he had been imposed upon; he gave instant orders to cease the preparations for the marriage, for the Infanta to drop the title of princess of England, which she is said to have done with tears, and to return to her usual state. The fury of indignation against the English in Spain may readily be conceived.
The earl of Bristol had acted too much the part of a faithful and honourable servant of the crown to escape the censure of such a court, and the vengeance of such a man as Buckingham. He had not hesitated, in spite of the remonstrances of the prince, to represent to James, during their sojourn in Madrid, the disgraceful conduct of that despicable libertine. James had the folly or the wickedness to show to the favourite these letters, and he received his recall. The ambassador wrote to James, requesting a remittance sufficient to bear him home, having pledged all his lady's jewels, and incurred a debt of fifty thousand crowns for prince Charles, so that he had not funds even for his journey.
It does not appear that James or Charles took any notice of this most reasonable appeal; but Philip not only exonerated Bristol from any share in the disgraceful proceedings, but warned him of the danger which threatened him at home, and offered to make him one of the most distinguished men of his own realm, if he would take up his abode in Spain. Bristol, however, declined the noble offer, saying that he would rather lose his head in England, conscious as he was of innocence, than live a duke of Infantado in Spain, with the imputation of treason, which was sure in such a case to be cast on him. Though he was ordered to quit Spain without delay, he was instructed to travel slowly, and on his landing he was commanded to retire to his house in the country, and consider himself a prisoner. The malicious Buckingham did his best to have him committed to the Tower, but the duke of Richmond and the earl of Pembroke opposed this injustice with effect.
James had got his baby Charles and his dog Steenie home again, but he soon found that they had involved him in troubles and debts, which very much abated the pleasure of their company. They had brought home neither wife nor her much desired money; on the contrary, they had spent his last shilling, involved him in debt, thrown away the greater part of his jewels, had left the cause of his daughter and son-in-law in a worse position than before, and now were vehement to engage him in a war with Spain. Under the gloomy oppression of these embarrassments, he lost even his appetite for hunting and hawking, shut himself up alone at Newmarket, and wrote to the palatine, recommending him to make his submission to the emperor; offer his eldest son, who was to be educated in England, to him for his daughter; accept the administration of his hereditary territory, and allow the duke of Bavaria the title of elector for his life. Under the advice of Charles and Buckingham the palsgave positively declined any such arrangement.
The only resource now was to call a parliament, but it was one which had rarely brought him any satisfaction. Before doing this he took the opinion of the privy council during the Christmas holidays on these points:—Whether the king of Spain had acted sincerely in the negotiations for the marriage? and whether he had given sufficient provocation to call for a war? The council unanimously supported the idea of the king of Spain's sincere dealing, and a majority declared that there was no just cause for a war.
This result, so hostile to the wishes of Buckingham, filled him with chagrin, and his wrath fell with especial weight on Williams, the lord-keeper, and Cranfield, the treasurer. These men had been his most service creatures; they were, in fact, altogether his creatures; but during his absence they had seen such evidences of displeasure in the king towards him, that they imagined his power was about at an end, and they were emboldened to oppose him. But his fierce displeasure, and the symptoms of even growing popularity which showed themselves round him, terrified them, and they made the most humble submission.
On the 2nd of February, 1624, Williams wrote a most crawling letter to Buckingham, begging him to forgive his past conduct, "to receive his soul in gage and pawn:" they were reconciled. People who before hated Buckingham, now looked upon him as a patriot, for having broken off the papist match, and for seeking to punish Spain by a war. The heads of the opposition in the house of commons, the earl of Southampton, the lord Say and Sele, and others came over to him; and through Preston, a puritan minister and chaplain to the prince, he was brought in favour with many other members of the country party. Buckingham and Charles assured James that the demand of war with Spain was the only cry for him, as nothing would so readily draw money from the commons. Accordingly, though trembling and reluctant, James summoned parliament, which met on the 19th of February.
He opened it in much humbler tones than ever before. He expressed a great desire to manifest his love for his people. He then informed them that he had long been engaged in treaties with different countries for the public good, and had actually sent his son and the man whom he most trusted to Spain, and all that had passed there should be laid before them; and he begged them to judge him charitably, and to give him their advice on the whole matter. One thing he begged to assure them of, that in everything, public and private, he had always made a reservation for the cause of religion; and though he had occasionally relaxed the penal statutes against catholics a little, yet as to suspending or altering any of them, "I never," he exclaimed, "promised or yielded; I never thought it with my heart nor spoke it with my mouth!" And this ​whilst, on the 20th of July previous, he had positively sworn in the Spanish treaty to procure the abolition of all those laws from parliament; a fact notorious not only to Charles, Buckingham, and Bristol, but to all the lords of the council, and the Spanish ambassadors, still in London. He concluded by begging them to remember that time was precious, and to avoid all impertinent and irritating inquiries.
On the 24th of February, a conference of both houses was held at Whitehall, at which Buckingham went into the detail of the journey of the prince and himself to Spain. Bristol was prohibited attending parliament, and the duke gave his own version of the whole affair. According to him—for he produced only such despatches as had been in a private conference with the lord-keeper Williams deemed safe; "his highness wishing," said Williams, "to draw on a breach with Spain Without ripping up of private despatches"—the Spaniards behaved in a most treacherous manner. what after long years of negotiation the king could bring the court of Spain to nothing. That the earl of Bristol had merely got from them professions and declarations; and that though the prince had gone himself to test their sincerity, he had met with nothing but falsehood and deceit. That as to the restitution of the Palatinate, he had found it hopeless from that quarter.
Perhaps no minister bronzed in impudence by years of crooked dealing, ever presented such a tissue of base and arrant fictions to the commons of England. The despatches, had they been produced, would have crowned the king, the prince, and the favourite, with utter confusion. Bristol could have proved, had he been allowed, that he had actually completed the treaty when the prince and Buckingham came and put an end to it. So indignant were the Spanish ambassadors at this shameful misrepresentation of the real facts, that they protested vehemently against the whole of the statement, and declared that had any nobleman in Spain spoken thus of the king of England, he would have paid with his head for the slander.
Buckingham was not only defended but applauded. The prince during the whole time stood at his elbow, and aided his memory or his ingenuity. Coke declared that Buckingham was the saviour of his country; and out of doors the people kindled bonfires in his honour, sung songs to his glory, and insulted the Spanish ambassadors. The two houses, in an address to the throne, declared that neither the treaty for the marriage, nor that for the restitution of the Palatinate, could be continued with honour or safety with Spain.
Of all things, James dreaded war: he complained of his poverty, his debts, of his desire of quietness at his years; but he had not the resolution to resist the importunities of Buckingham and the prince, backed by a strong cry from the deluded people, especially as he saw no other mode of obtaining the money so necessary to him. In addressing parliament, he stated candidly the many reasons against the war; the emptiness of his exchequer, and the impoverished condition of his allies; that Ireland would demand large sums, and the repairs of the navy more; and then put to them these questions—whether he could with honour engage in a war which concerned his own family exclusively? and whether the means would be found for prosecuting it vigorously?
A deputation from both houses answered these queries by calling for war, and offering to support him in it with their persons and fortunes. This address was read by Abbot, the archbishop of Canterbury, who but six months before had most reluctantly sworn to the Spanish treaty. This was, indeed, a triumph to the archbishop, but did not make the singularity the less of putting an address for war into the hands of a clergyman; and one, moreover, who had so lately fallen into great difficulty on account of his own accidental shedding of blood. When the archbishop came to the passage where James was consolidated on "his having become sensible of the insincerity of the Spaniards," "Hold!" he exclaimed; "you insinuate what I have never spoken. Give me leave to tell you that I have not expressed myself to be either sensible or insensible of their good or bad dealing. Buckingham hath made you a relation on which you are to judge; but I never yet declared my mind upon it."
James, indeed, knew very well to the contrary; the Spaniards had been too grasping, and had thus overshot themselves, but they meant to complete the marriage; and it was a most unjustifiable thing in James to go to war with them, on the ground of their insincerity, if he did not believe in its existence. But James was desirous that as Buckingham had so strenuously called for war to avenge his own petty, private piques, he should bear the blame of it.
James told them plainly that if he went to war he should demand ample advances, and when five days afterwards the question of supplies came on, he demanded seven hundred thousand pounds to commence the war with, and an annual sum of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds towards the liquidation of his debts. The amount startled the commons, in spite of their magniloquent offer of supporting him with life and fortune; but Buckingham and the prince, who were as mad for war as they had before been for their foolish adventure, let the commons know that a much less sum would be accepted, and they voted three hundred thousand pounds for the year, which the king consented should be put into the hands of the treasurers appointed by the house, who were to pay money only on a warrant from the council of war. James also agreed that he would not end the war without their consent. The vote was accompanied by another address, vindicating Buckingham from the censures of the Spanish ambassadors, and then the king issued a proclamation, announcing that both the treaties with Spain were at an end.
Thus was James, after twenty years of peace, except in the character of an ally of his son-in-law, launched into a war. The Spaniards ridiculed the idea; for on the authority of Gondomar, they had conceived not only a very contemptible idea of James, but that the kingdom was poor, torn with religious factions, and feeble from the timid and vacillating character of the king. Only one peer, the earl of Rutland, had the good sense to oppose the vote for the war.
The restraint of the desire to please Spain during the negotiations for the marriage being removed, the houses of parliament indulged their old hatred of the catholics by uniting in a petition to the king to renew their persecution. ​James again protested that he never intended to abolish those laws, and would never consent to the insertion of a clause in any treaty whatever, binding him to an indulgence of catholics. And Charles also bound himself by an oath, that "whenever it should please God to bestow upon him any lady that were popish, she should have no further liberty but for her own family, and no advantage to any recusants at home."
Accordingly a proclamation was issued, ordering all missionaries to quit the kingdom by a certain day under penalty of death; judges and magistrates were ordered to enforce the laws as aforetime; the lord mayor was enjoined to arrest all persons coming from mass in the houses of the ambassadors, and the bishops were called upon to advise the king how the children of the papists might be brought up protestants. The commons called on every member to name all catholics holding office in his town or county, and prepared a list of them, which they sent to the lords; but the lords declared that before they could unite in a prayer for the dismissal of any one, they must have evidence of his guilt; and thus the vindictive scheme fell to the ground.
The commons, checked in this quarter, turned their attention to their more legitimate prosecution of jobbers and holders of injurious patents. They presented a list of eleven such grievances to the king, who replied that he had his grievances too: they had encroached on his prerogatives; they had condemned patents of unquestionable usefulness; and had been guided in their quest after them by lawyers, who, he would say it to their faces, were in the whole kingdom the greatest grievances of all; for where a suit was of no benefit to either litigant, they took care to make it so to themselves. But this did not prevent them flying at high game. Buckingham had never forgiven Cranfield, earl of Middlesex, and lord treasurer, for turning against him in his absence; and the opposition party, with whom the duke was now connected, took the lead in prosecuting him on a charge of bribery, oppression, and neglect of duty. James was indignant at this attack, but had not resolution enough to ward it off; though he told Buckingham that he was a fool, and making a rod for his own breech, and Charles that he would live to have his bellyful of impeachments.
Cranfield denied the charges stoutly, and defended himself with much vigour, loudly complaining of the overbearing position of the persons who were really pitched against him. He complained, too, very justly, of the unfairness practised towards him. That his enemies had taken three weeks to prepare the charges against him, but that he was only allowed three days for his defence; that they relieved each other in pressing the examination, and employed the most eminent lawyers, whilst he was not allowed a single counsel, but was compelled to stand at the bar for eight hours together. Certainly a more barefaced piece of oppression had rarely been seen. Many believed him innocent, and prosecuted from private malice; but the lords condemned him to a fine of fifty thousand pounds, to be imprisoned during his majesty's pleasure, and for ever excluded from office, from parliament, and the verge of the court. Having refused justice to Cranfield, the peers immediately took measures to protect themselves from the reaction of their conduct. They passed a resolution that, in future, the accused should be furnished in good time with the articles of his impeachment, and be allowed counsel learned in the law. Cranfield procured from the king the reduction of the fine to twenty thousand pounds, and his release in the course of the following summer.
Williams, the lord-keeper, had also a narrow escape. Notwithstanding his supple cringing at the feet of Buckingham, that haughty favourite had by no means forgiven him; petitions against him were presented to the committee of inquiry, but he again sued humbly to Buckingham, and having had the opportunity during the session of doing him a service, he let him off with the proud remark, "I shall not seek your ruin, but I shall cease to study your fortune."
The Spanish ambassadors, smarting under the insults and injuries to their country which Buckingham had inflicted, ans was still seeking to inflict, made a daring effort to open the eyes of the king. For three months the ambassadors, the marquis Ynoiosa and Don Carlos Coloma, had found all their efforts vain to procure a private audience of the king. Buckingham or Charles always took care to be present. At length Coloma hit upon the expedient of engaging both the prince and Buckingham in conversation, whilst Ynoiosa slipped a note adroitly into James's hand. The king pocketed it without being observed, and the consequence was that the same evening he sent the earl of Kelly to bring to him secretly Carendolet, the secretary of the legation. Carendolet informed James that what the Spanish ambassadors wished was to make his majesty aware that he was a prisoner in his own palace; that he was surrounded by spies and informers, and that no person on business could approach but such as it pleased Buckingham to admit. That, in consequence, to gratify the private spite of Buckingham, the kingdom was rushing on great miseries, and making enemies of those who desired to be real friends.
James was struck with astonishment, promised secrecy, and three days after admitted Carendolet again, who this time brought from the ambassadors their statement in writing, which was to the following effect:—"1. That the king was no more a free man at this time than king John of France when he was prisoner in England, or king Francis when he was at Madrid, being besieged and closed up with the servants and vassals of Buckingham. 2. That the ambassadors knew very well, and were informed four months ago, that his majesty was to be restrained, and confined to his country house and pastimes, and the government of the state to be assumed and disposed of by others; and that this was not concealed by Buckingham's followers. 3. That the duke had reconciled himself to all the popular men of the state, and drawn them forth out of prisons, restraints, and confinements, to alter the government of the state at this parliament, as Oxford, Southampton, Say, and others, whom he met at suppers and ordinances, to strengthen his popularity. 4. That the duke, to breed an opinion of his own greatness, and to make the king grow less, hath oftentimes bragged openly in parliament that he had made the king yield to this and that, and that he mentioned openly before the house his majesty's private oath, which the ambassadors have never spoken of to any creature to this hour. 5. That these kingdoms are not now governed by a monarchy, but by a triumviri, whereof Buckingham was the ​first and chiefest, the prince the second, and the king the last, and that all looked towards solem orientem. 6. That his majesty should show himself to be, as he was reputed, the ablest and wisest king in Europe, by freeing himself from this captivity and imminent danger wherein he was, by cutting off so dangerous and ungrateful an affector of greatness and popularity as the duke was."
This paper was admirably adapted to work on the vanity and self-love of the king, and had he possessed any real wisdom and firmness, might have produced great consequences. But unfortunately it was addressed to a mere babbling and incontinent pretender to these qualities, and was certain to miscarry.
Interview of James I. with Prince Charles and Buckingham.
BUCKINGHAM BEFORE THE COUNCIL.
​but now he was strangely carried away with rash and youthful councils, and followed the humour of Buckingham, who had he knew not how many devils within him since that journey." Still he was staggered at the belief that Buckingham was courting popularity at his expense, for he said he had tried him many times, by setting him to make unpopular motions in the house, which he had always done freely. He begged Carendolet, however, to procure him from the ambassadors specific grounds for a charge against him, and that he would then take a course with him; confessing so far the truth of their assertion, that he had no servant of his own who would dare to do it. So sincere did he appear in this purpose, that he sent father Maestro, a Jesuit, to the ambassadors, to urge them forward in this business.
So far all was promising, but neither Buckingham nor Charles were yet aware of the storm brewing. So soon as they found something amiss they would speedily worm out the secret, and the danger would recoil on the heads of the daring Spaniards.
Accordingly, the next morning James appeared with a lowering aspect, and a confused manner. His conversation was broken and enigmatical, and soon after taking coach for Windsor, he bade his son accompany him and the duke stay behind. Buckingham was thunderstruck, and coming to the carriage door with tears in his eyes, implored the king to say in what he had offended him; vowing that he would in the name of Christ clear himself, or make a faithful confession. James made no reply, but drove off blubbering like a schoolboy, and lamenting that in his old age he was betrayed by those who were dearest to him. He went on and let out enough to Charles to put him and Buckingham upon the track of a full discovery. There was no lack of spies and detectives in their service, and Williams, the lord-keeper, the most subtle and powerful of them, was soon in possession of the whole secret. He had a mistress, who was also the mistress of Carendolet, and he had seen enough of the Spanish movement of late to suspect the quarter whence the trouble came. He soon, therefore, made his appearance at Buckingham's house, where he found the duke in the utmost despair, conscious that he had for some time been losing the favour of James. He had pumped sufficient out of the woman to be able to seize a catholic priest in Dury Lane, who she said was in the full confidence of her lover, Carendolet. As this priest by the late proclamation was liable to be put to death for being found in the country, Williams quickly terrified him out of the whole secret, and with the draft of the paper in his hand which had been given to the king, at once enlightened Buckingham on the whole matter.
By Williams's advice Buckingham instantly posted to Windsor, and closeted himself with Charles, to whom the indefatigable Williams had already sent a string of answers to the whole of the Spanish charges.
With this in their hands the work with James was easy. Charles introduced Buckingham to his father, and expressed the intensest grief at the monarch's anger: the favourite then undertook to explain everything. James read the document drawn up by Williams with great deliberation, and Charles commented and elucidated as seemed requisite: and James, ever and anon saying, "Well, very well," at length rose up, declaring the Spaniards malicious scoundrels, embraced Charles and Buckingham tenderly, and expressed much concern for having unjustly suspected them. "But," he continued, "I ask no more from you than you tell me who struck the sparks for this light." This was a posing question, and seeing their hesitation, he added, "Well, I have a good nostril, and will answer mine own question: my keeper had the main finger in it. I dare swear he bolted the flour and made it up into paste." When Charles, in his turn, asked Williams—who be it remembered was also a bishop—how he made the discovery, "Truly," replied this exemplary right reverend father in God, "another would blush to tell you what heifer he ploughed with, but all my intelligence comes out of a lady's chamber, and I have found this maxim in my studies of divinity—Alieno peccato uti licet."
But though James professed to his son and the duke to be perfectly satisfied, there were matters in the communications of the Spaniards which were not likely to be soon forgotten by him. He was assured that Buckingham had proposed to marry his daughter to the eldest son of the palsgrave, so that the palsgravine being the real heir to his son Charles, he might pave the way for his own posterity to the English throne. The Spaniards asserted this confidently, as the cause of Buckingham breaking off the Spanish match. They declared that "on the same day that he received letters from the most illustrious princess palatine, he caused the procurative to be revoked; and a few days after, on the coming of the aforesaid princess's secretary, and the confirmation of his hope of having his daughter married to her highness's son, all things were utterly dashed to pieces."
James resolved to satisfy himself further, and put an oath to each of the privy councillors seriatim, as to his knowledge of any plans such as the Spanish ambassadors had warned hull of. But the imagined shrewdness of James was no match for the eyes and influences with which he was surrounded. Charles procured a copy of the questions to be put by James, and instantly despatched the following letter to Buckingham:—"Steenie,—I send you here inclosed the interrogatories that the king thinks fit should be asked concerning the malicious accusations of the Spanish ambassadors. As for the way: my father is resolved, if you do not gainsay it, and show reason to the contrary, to take the oaths himself, and to make secretary Calvert and the chancellor of the exchequer to take the examinations in writing under their hands that are examined: this much is by the king's command. Now for my opinion. It is this:—That you can incur no danger in this but by opposing the king's proceedings in it, to make him suspect that you have spoken somewhat that you are willing he should hear of; for I cannot think that any man is so mad as to call his own head in question, by making a lie against you, when all the world knows me to be your friend. And if they tell but the truth I know they can say but what the king knows that you have avowed to the world; which is that you think, as I do, that the continuance of those treaties with Spain might breed much mischief. Wherefore, my advice to you is, that you do not oppose or show yourself discontented at the king's course herein; for I think it will be so far from doing you hurt. ​that it will make you trample under your feet those few poor rascals that are your enemies. Now, sweetheart, if you think I am mistaken in my judgment in this, let me know what I can do in this or anything else to serve thee."
All being thus prepared to defeat the king's scheme, he appeared on the following Sunday in the council-chamber with a Bible in his hand, and demanded of every one on their oaths to answer the interrogatories prepared. The councillors affected surprise, and pleaded ignorance of any such designs; on the contrary, averring that they believed Buckingham one of the most faithful servants that the king had. Buckingham, on his part, affected to be so wounded at this suspicion of his loyalty, that he fell sick, or pretended to be so, and kept his chamber for a fortnight. This was the certain way to work on the weak mind of James. He felt sorry for his proceeding, and demanded from the Spanish ambassadors the names of their informers. Ynoiosa demanded an audience of the king, but this so alarmed Charles and Buckingham, that they prevailed on James, though not without much difficulty, to refuse this, and to desire that the ambassador should make his communications to a minister.
The evident fear of Charles and Buckingham of any fair and open interview was proof enough that there were matters requiring the dark. Ynoiosa declined giving such important disclosures to any but the king, on which James declared that that was sufficient evidence that he had wrongfully accused his son and the duke, and then refused to produce his proofs. Ynoiosa deemed this such an insult to his ambassadorial character, that he demanded a ship to leave the country, and this being refused, he quitted the kingdom without the usual presents. On reaching Madrid, he found an accusation already lodged against him with the crown by the British ambassador. He, however, boldly reasserted the truth—all that Carendolet, on his command, had submitted to the king—that the privy councillors were either silenced by the fear of the prince and the duke, or were in league with them. His statement was fully accepted, and after a few days' formal restraint, he was restored to his place in the royal favour.
The reluctance of the king to the war with Spain, and the occurrence just mentioned, convinced many that the favour of Buckingham was fast expiring in the bosom of James. The words which he had used to Carendolet, and still stronger circumstances, were striking proofs of it. So disgusted was he, as well as his subjects, with the arrogance and the mischievous policy of the duke, that he had sincerely entertained the project of again calling the fallen Somerset to his former position. So far had Somerset been encouraged by this, that he had written to the king through a private medium, informing him of the general odium in which Buckingham was with the people, and supporting the same view as that of the Spanish ambassadors—that the king was really a prisoner in the hands of this upstart. So revolting a project as that of recalling Somerset from an obscurity the most suitable to his crime-stained character did not succeed. But Buckingham was aware that his security lay not in the goodwill of the king, but in that of Charles, which he had taken care to cultivate with all diligence. The king's health was failing, Charles must soon be on the throne; and therefore Buckingham went hand in hand with him, regardless of king or public.
The war was resolved on by these two really ruling men. They sent envoys all over Europe, to engage the different powers by any argument and by rich presents to cooperate in the war against Spain and Austria for the restitution of the palatinate. To Sweden, Denmark, and the protestant states of Germany, they urged the necessity of reducing the power of the catholic princes on the Continent. Promises of liberal subsidies were added, and the concurrence of these states was pledged. It was a more difficult matter to influence the catholic countries of France, Venice, and Savoy to a war which was actually aimed at the existence of their own religion. But the ancient enmity of these states against Austria prevailed over their religious scruples, and they undertook to assist indirectly, by making a show of hostilities against Spain, so as to prevent her giving effectual aid to Austria, and by allowing soldiers to be raised within their territories, as well as by furnishing money.
With Holland they had effected a league, and had undertaken to send troops to resist the invasion of Spain and Austria, when the news of a frightful tragedy, perpetrated by the Dutch in the East, upon the English there, arrived in England. This was what has become so well known in history as the massacre of Amboyna.
Since the Dutch had enjoyed their long truce with Spain, they had been zealously colonising and trading to the East. Besides Batavia, they laid claim to all the Spice Islands in the Indian Archipelago, from which they had expelled the Portuguese. On one of these islands, Amboyna, the English East India Company had, in 1612, established a small settlement, to trade with the natives for cloves. The Dutch compelled them to retire, but in consequence of a treaty in 1019, the English had returned thither, and established a settlement at Cambeho. In the whole island there were only about twenty English, about thirty Japanese, whilst there were two hundred Dutch soldiers, besides other Dutchmen in the civil service. Yet, on pretence of a conspiracy betwixt the English and Japanese to suprise the garrison and expel the Dutch, they seized Captain Towerson and nine other Englishmen, nine Japanese, and one Portuguese, and after torturing them into a confession, cut off their heads.
The horror with which the news of this atrocious deed was received, threatened to ruin Buckingham's plans. But the English minister made a strong complaint on the subject; the States made humble apologies, and promises of ample redress, and thus it was contrived for the moment to smooth over the difficulty. It was the more readily done because the unpopular Spaniards had already laid siege to Breda; and six thousand troops were despatched from England to enable prince Maurice of Orange to cope with the able Spanish general, Spinola. Spinola carried Breda in defiance of the Dutch and English; and the prince of Orange hearing that Antwerp had been left without a sufficient garrison, marched thither to surprise it, but with equally ill success. To obtain fresh men and money, count Mansfeldt, the palatine's old auxiliary general, came over to England to the autumn. He was promised twenty thousand pounds a month, and twelve thousand Englishmen were pressed into ​his service. With these he set sail, to reach as soon as possible his army of French and German mercenaries, on the borders of the Palatinate. But the French, who had agreed to allow this force to pass through their territory, refused, on account of their disorderly character; for they were the scum of their own country, and several, on their march through it, had been hanged for their outrages. Mansfeldt conducted them to the island of Zealand, but there the authorities were equally averse to their landing; and whilst remaining cooped up in small miserable transports, in bad weather, and on a swampy shore, they began to perish of fever. Five thousand of them had died before they reached the borders of the Palatinate, and the united force was still too feeble to accomplish anything. Maurice of Orange, meantime, having done nothing at Antwerp, retired into winter quarters, and soon after died at the Hague; whereupon the earl of Southampton and other English officers returned home. Such was the miserable result of the campaign into which James had been hurried by the folly of Charles and Buckingham.
The melancholy thoughts of James were diverted from dwelling on these miserable affairs by the prospect of the marriage of Charles and Henrietta Maria, the youngest sister of the king of France.
It was a curious fact at the time of Charles's looking out for a wife from one of the principal houses of Europe, that the prospect of an English royal marriage was made gloomy by the most awful reflections to both France and Spain. The last Spanish queen of England was Catherine of Arragon, who had found such a tyrant in the sanguinary Henry VIII., and suffered divorce and severe usage; the last French queen was Margaret of Anjou, who had been driven from the country after the most heroic endeavours to maintain her husband on the throne. Besides these sombre memories, the question presented formidable difficulties from the temper of the English people regarding popery. Politically the alliance was attractive, and this is generally all-sufficient in regal matrimony. But it was singular that the present marriage with a French princess was followed by similar and even more fearful results than the former. Henrietta Maria married Charles only to engage in a similar contest for the retention of the throne as Margaret of Anjou, and not only to see her husband deposed, but put to death.
Charles is supposed by many to have been struck by the young princess of France at his visit to the French court on his way to Spain, and that he went there prepared to break off the match. It is probable, however, that the thought of Henrietta came back more strongly upon him after he found himself disappointed in Donna Maria of Spain; for independent of the other difficulties already related attending Charles's Spanish courtship, it is very likely that he was not extremely fascinated by the Infanta. On the way to Spain, Henrietta, as seen by him, was merely a girl of little more than fourteen years of age, of short stature, and seen but for a brief space. The impression which she left could not be very vivid; but the queen of France, the elder sister of Donna Maria, was strikingly beautiful, and, as Charles himself said, in his letters to bis father at the time, had so much struck him, as to inspire him with a greater desire to see her sister." There can be little doubt that Charles was disappointed in his expectation, for he was of that romantic turn that had he been strongly fascinated by the lady, he would have broken through all difficulties for her sake. But at the court of Spain he met with another queen, the sister of Louis of France and of Henrietta, who not only cast the Infanta into the shade by her beauty and grace, but actually suggested to Charles the more desirable union with her sister of France. The rigid etiquette of the Spanish court prevented much intercourse betwixt Charles and the queen; she dared not even converse with him in French without express permission, and that one opportunity obtained, she begged him never to speak to her again, for that it was the custom in Spain to poison all gentlemen who were very marked in their attentions to the queen. But she seized that one opportunity to say that she wished he would marry her sister Henrietta, which indeed he would be able to do, because his engagement with the Infanta would be certainly broken."
On the other hand, there was a decided desire in the French court for this alliance, spite of past experience. Mary de Medici, the queen-mother of France, had acquired a predominating influence in the government of her son Louis XIII., by means of her clever and intriguing almoner, Richelieu, who soon mounted into vast power in the state. She entertained a strong hope of effecting a marriage for her daughter with the heir of England, and was no doubt early informed of the probability of the failure of the Spanish courtship. It was soon conveyed to Charles by the English ambassador at Paris, that Henrietta had said, "The prince of Wales need not have gone so far as Madrid to look for a wife." This following the suggestion of the queen of Spain, left no doubt of the wishes of the court of France, and the bait seems to have been soon taken. Buckingham would certainly promote the idea to spite the Spaniards; and Henry Rich, lord Kensington, appeared in Paris before the Spanish match was formally broken off, to open the subject to the queen-mother.
The object of the envoy was instantly divined, and the Spanish ambassador exclaimed at court, "How! does the prince of Wales, then, mean to wed two wives, since he is nearly married to our Infanta?"
Mary de Medici, though extremely anxious for the marriage, played the part of the politician well under Richelieu, and gave no decided encouragement to the hints of the English envoy, till he assured her plainly that the match with Spain was positively broken off. Even then, she assured lord Kensington that "she could not consider the matter seriously, as she had received no intimation of such proposal from the king of England, and that the princess could not make advances; she must be sought." On this Kensington spoke out on authority, and received a favourable answer. We are assured that a great sensation was excited at the French court, and the ladies crowded round lord Kensington to have a new of the prince's portrait, which he carried in a locket; and the locket was soon privately borrowed by the princess, and kept for a good long observation, she expressing her satisfaction with the looks of the royal lover. Kensington, by his courtly assiduity at Paris, and his letters to Charles, endeavoured to create a strong personal interest in the prince and princess towards each ​other. Hay, earl of Carlisle, one of James's favourites, a handsome, empty fop, who prided himself on adorning his person with lace and jewels to the amount of forty thousand pounds, was sent as a formal ambassador for the marriage negotiation, the real conductor of it still being Kensington. A miniature portrait of Henrietta was sent to Charles, who appeared to be enraptured with it.
So far all went well. But notwithstanding the anxious desire for the marriage on the part of the French court, it was not likely that so crafty a diplomatist as Richelieu would make an easy bargain for the English. The portion of the princess was settled at eight hundred thousand crowns. She was pledged to renounce all claims for herself and her descendants on the crown of France. Then came the subject of religion. James and Charles had lately bound themselves by the most solemn oaths that no catholic wife of the prince should have more indulgence in that respect than of her own private worship; and that no toleration should be extended to the English catholics whatever, on account of such a marriage. But this was not likely to pass. The pope Urban, in the first place, was extremely inimical to the match. He augured little good from a prince who had shown such duplicity in the Spanish courtship; and he predicted that the union, if effected, would be disastrous; being fully informed by the seminary priests who were in England, secretly prosecuting the support of Catholicism, of the determined temper of the people on that score, and assured by them that if the king dared to relax the penal laws, he would not be king long; and if he did not, the pope argued, what prospect of happiness could there be for a catholic queen? He was, therefore, extremely averse to grant a dispensation.
Under these circumstances the negotiation appeared for some time at a stand. On the part of the English people, the opposition was scarcely perceptible. They perceived that they were pretty certain to have a catholic queen; the Stuart family did not incline to stoop to the alliance of any further petty protestant princes; the experiment of the Palatinate was not encouraging. The people of England, therefore, were far more disposed to receive a daughter of great Henry IV., who had been a protestant at heart even when he had yielded the profession of his faith to political necessity, than a granddaughter of Philip II., who had rendered his memory so odious in England and all over the world by bloody persecutions of the protestants. On the part of the French, however, the proceedings every day seemed involved in growing difficulties.
Richelieu, who, up to the time of the breaking off the Spanish match, was most compliant, now insisted on the concession to the catholics of all the advantages stipulated for by Spain. He asserted that it would be an affront to his sovereign to offer less. James, spite of his recent oath, signed a paper, promising indulgence to the catholics, which Kensington and Carlisle assured Richelieu was quite sufficient; but it had no effect on the astute French minister.
"We did sing a song to the deaf," wrote the ambassadors, "for he would not endure to hear of it." In vain did they remind him that the French court had promised that if they gave toleration to the catholics, it would send soldiers to the Palatinate, and unite their interests with those of England entirely. Richelieu did not deny this, but contended that the security was not sufficient; they must have an actual treaty. Meantime lord Nithsdale, a catholic, was sent post haste to Rome, to make great promises of favour to the English catholics in order to procure the dispensation.
At length the French court agreed to accept the secret agreement of James, which was to the effect that the English catholics should enjoy a greater freedom of religion than had been guaranteed by the Spanish contract. This was signed by James, Charles, and the secretary of state, on the 8th of November, and Louis placed his signature on the 12th to the treaty of marriage. By this treaty it was provided, not expressly, as many historians have asserted, that the children of the marriage should be brought up Roman catholics till their thirteenth year, but that they should remain under her care till that age; a stipulation amounting very much to the same thing; for though Charles chose to construe the article in his own way, the mother used her opportunity thus guaranteed to fix the catholic faith firmly in the hearts of her sons, as was too well and too disastrously shown in the end.
If the English court thought the difficulties all now surmounted, they were greatly mistaken; for the French ministers now expressed themselves as not satisfied with James's secret engagement. It was, they contended, too vague, and they called upon him to specify precisely the indulgences which he intended towards the catholics. Both James and Charles, it must be confessed, had established a character for easily slipping through their most solemn engagements; and the princes who could so soon forfeit their oaths to parliament to continue the penalties on their catholic subjects, might as readily forfeit these now made to relieve themselves from them. No precautions could in reality bind such men, but the French ministers were resolved to obtain all the guarantees possible.
At this proposition Carlisle expressed his astonishment, and wrote to James in a tone of unequivocal indignation. He advised the king to make no farther concessions; feeling sure that if he were firm, the French would give way rather than hazard the failure of the match. But to preach firmness to James was to expect solidity from a mist. He was far more afraid of endangering the match than of perjuring himself to accomplish it. He was alarmed at the obstinacy of the pope; at the declaration of Philip of Spain, that he held the marriage contract with Charles as still valid, from a private agreement betwixt the prince and himself; and at the strenuous efforts making by Philip to bring the court of France to this persuasion. To complete his dismay, the Huguenots of France, just at this moment, made a rising under the conduct of Soubise, who had formerly been on terms of close intimacy with some members of the English government. They demanded a better observance of the edicts in favour of the protestants, seized the isle of Rhé, near Rochelle, placed it in a state of defence, sent out a fleet to range the coast, and vowed not to lay down their arms till their demands were granted. James consented to add these express stipulations to his secret bond: That all catholics imprisoned on account of their religion, since the rising of parliament, should be liberated; that all fines levied on recusants since that period should be repaid; and that ​for the future they should suffer no interruption to the free exercise of their religious faith.
All obstacles on the part of the French court were now removed, and the young princess prepared for her journey to England. But the pope continued his opposition, still presaging misfortune from the marriage, and refusing to deliver the dispensation. The patience of the queen-mother was exhausted; the ministers of France proposed to proceed on a dispensation from the ecclesiastic authorities in their own realm; but to this James demurred, lest the validity of the marriage might hereafter be called in question. At length the pope was satisfied by an oath taken by Louis, binding himself and his successors to compel James and his son, by all the power of France if necessary, to keep their engagement. The dispensation was delivered by Spada, the papal nuncio; the duke of Chevreuse, a prince of the house of Guise, and therefore a near relative of James and Charles, through the queen of Scots, was appointed proxy by Charles, and Buckingham was ordered to go over and receive the bride. But James was still destined not to see the completion of the marriage, after all his trouble through nine years of matrimonial negotiations, nor what would equally have delighted him, the receipt of the money.
THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.
KING JAMES I. AND THE SPANISH AMBASSADOR
​that it required no fierce attack of sickness to carry him off. He had always had a strong repugnance to doctors and physic, but now the court physicians were hurried to his bedside. At this moment appeared the mother of Buckingham with an infallible specific, a plaster and a posset obtained from an Essex quack, named Remington. These were pronounced marvellous in the cure of ague; and though the physicians protested against their use, they were applied. They did not delay, if they did not accelerate the catastrophe. On the eleventh day of his illness, James received the sacrament in the presence of Charles, Buckingham, and the court attendants, in a mood of zealous devotion that is said to have drawn tears from all eyes. Williams, bishop and lord-keeper, preached his funeral sermon, and said, that having told the king "that holy men in holy orders in the church of England doe challenge a power as inherent in their functions, and not in their person, to pronounce and declare remission of sins to such as being penitent, doe call for the same, he had answered suddenly, 'I have ever believed there was that power in you that be in orders in the church of England, and therefore I, a miserable sinner, doe humbly desire Almighty God to absolve me my sinnes, and you, that are his servant in that high place, to affoard me this heavenly comfort.' And after the absolution read and pronounced, he received the sacrament with that zeal and devotion, as if he had not been a fraile man, but a Christian cloathed with flesh and blood."
On Sunday, the 27th of March, the fourteenth day of his illness, Charles was hastily called before daylight to go to him, but before he reached the chamber the king had lost the power of speech. He appeared extremely anxious to communicate something to him, but could not, and soon after expired. He was in the fifty-ninth year of his age, and the twenty-third of his reign. Two only of his seven children, three sons and four daughters, Charles and the ex-queen of Bohemia, survived him.
The character of James has been pretty clearly portrayed in the relation of the events of his reign. Had he been born to a private station, he might have passed through life with the reputation of a learned, shrewd, amiable, and even able man: but the whole caste of his mind was superficial; and his intense vanity meeting with none of the checks which it would have done in a private station, converted him at once into a ridiculous boaster and a pitiless tyrant. He deemed that all men ought to bow to his superior judgment, especially in learning and theology, and he could bear no question of his infallibility. Those who ventured to have a will, an opinion, or a conscience of their own, he brow-beat, insulted without mercy or delicacy, and persecuted to the death. As there was no depth or breadth in the constitution of his mind, he could not penetrate into the strong under-current of the age; he could not even perceive the ominous agitation of its surface; but with an obstinacy which at once indicated his shallow genius and the intensity of his egotism, he struggled against the rising tide of liberty and free thought, as if they were but a temporary over-flowing of a petty stream, which he might almost turn aside with his foot, but which in the end swept away his race.
James was not naturally inhuman, though in his rage against heresy, he perpetrated such atrocities against the lives and properties of catholics and puritans. He was amiable in his family, constant to his wife, and too indulgent to his children. But his good feeling unfortunately demonstrated itself too commonly in lavish favours and fortunes on the base. He was, like all weak monarchs, perpetually surrounded by favourites, base, rapacious, and profligate, who absorbed his wealth, and insulted and oppressed his subjects. His manners were often coarse, and not seldom disgusting. His language in moments of passion was at once violent, despicable, and obscene. In his fury he would scream and foam at the mouth, and when the paroxysm had passed, he descended to the opposite extreme of self-abasement and repentance. At such moments, whether raging with ire, or offering recompense to injustice, he was most undignified and unkingly. On one occasion, he demanded of Gibb, the messenger, some papers which should have been delivered to his care. Gibb, on his knees, protested that he had never received them. James, in his fury, cursed and kicked him, and Gibb, in a just indignation, left the court. It was soon afterwards found that the papers had been intrusted to another person, whereupon James sent for Gibb to do him right; but instead of confessing his error, and his regret for the wrong, he fell on his knees and implored his pardon.
That he had considerable learning, is evidenced by the works which he has left; but they evince the same want of profundity as his actions, the same lack of temper and genuine philosophy. Buchanan, his tutor, being reproached for having made such a learned simpleton of him, replied that "if they had known the mind he had to work on, they would have wondered that he made of him anything at all." Sully, the French minister, described him with the most perfect accuracy, when he said he was the most learned fool in Christendom. Unfortunately, his descendants had to pay the penalty of his folly.