Richelieu was the greatest of statesmen, if he who maintains himself by
the greatest power is necessarily the greatest minister. He was called
"the King of the King." After having long tormented himself and France,
he left a great name and a great empire--both alike the victims of
splendid ambition! Neither this great minister nor this great nation
tasted of happiness under his mighty administration. He had, indeed, a
heartlessness in his conduct which obstructed by no relentings those
remorseless decisions which made him terrible. But, while he trode down
the princes of the blood and the nobles, and drove his patroness, the
queen-mother, into a miserable exile, and contrived that the king should
fear and hate his brother, and all the cardinal-duke chose, Richelieu
was grinding the face of the poor by exorbitant taxation, and converted
every town in France into a garrison; it was said of him, that he never
liked to be in any place where he was not the strongest. "The
commissioners of the exchequer and the commanders of the army believe
themselves called to a golden harvest; and in the interim the cardinal
is charged with the sins of all the world, and is even afraid of his
life." Thus Grotius speaks, in one of his letters, of the miserable
situation of this great minister, in his account of the court of France
in 1635, when he resided there as Swedish ambassador. Yet such is the
delusion of these great politicians, who consider what they term
_state-interests_ as paramount to all other duties, human or divine,
that while their whole life is a series of oppression, of troubles, of
deceit, and of cruelty, their _state-conscience_ finds nothing to
reproach itself with. Of any other conscience it seems absolutely
necessary that they should be divested. Richelieu, on his death-bed,
made a solemn protestation, appealing to the last judge of man, who was
about to pronounce his sentence, that he never proposed anything but for
the good of religion and the state; that is, the Catholic religion and
his own administration. When Louis the Thirteenth, who visited him in
his last moments, took from the hand of an attendant a plate with two
yolks of eggs, that the King of France might himself serve his expiring
minister, Richelieu died in all the self-delusion of a great minister.
The sinister means he practised, and the political deceptions he
contrived, do not yield in subtilty to the dark grandeur of his
ministerial character. It appears that, at a critical moment, when he
felt the king's favour was wavering, he secretly ordered a battle to be
lost by the French, to determine the king at once not to give up a
minister who, he knew, was the only man who could extricate him out of
this new difficulty. In our great civil war, this minister pretended to
Charles the First that he was attempting to win the parliament over to
him, while he was backing their most secret projects against Charles.
When a French ambassador addressed the parliament as an independent
power, after the king had broken with it, Charles, sensibly affected,
remonstrated with the French court; the minister disavowed the whole
proceeding, and instantly recalled the ambassador, while at the very
moment his secret agents were, to their best, embroiling the affairs of
both parties.[218] The object of Richelieu was to weaken the English
monarchy, so as to busy itself at home, and prevent its fleets and its
armies thwarting his projects on the Continent, lest England, jealous of
the greatness of France, should declare itself for Spain the moment it
had recovered its own tranquillity. This is a stratagem too ordinary
with great ministers, those plagues of the earth, who, with their
state-reasons, are for cutting as many throats as God pleases among
every other nation.[219]
A fragment of the secret history of this great minister may be gathered
from that of some of his confidential agents. One exposes an invention
of this minister's to shorten his cabinet labours, and to have at hand a
screen, when that useful contrivance was requisite; the other, the
terrific effects of an agent setting up to be a politician on his own
account, against that of his master.
Richelieu's confessor was one Father Joseph; but this man was designed
to be employed rather in state-affairs, than in those which concerned
his conscience. This minister, who was never a penitent, could have
none. Father Joseph had a turn for political negotiation, otherwise he
had not been the cardinal's confessor; but this turn was of that sort,
said the nuncio Spada, which was adapted to follow up to the utmost the
views and notions of the minister, rather than to draw the cardinal to
his, or to induce him to change a tittle of his designs. The truth is,
that Father Joseph preferred going about in his chariot on ministerial
missions, rather than walking solitarily to his convent, after listening
to the unmeaning confessions of Cardinal Richelieu. He made himself so
intimately acquainted with the plans and the will of this great
minister, that he could venture at a pinch to act without orders: and
foreign affairs were particularly consigned to his management. Grotius,
when Swedish ambassador, knew them both. Father Joseph, he tells us, was
employed by Cardinal Richelieu to open negotiations, and put them in a
way to succeed to his mind, and then the cardinal would step in, and
undertake the finishing himself. Joseph took businesses in hand when
they were green, and, after ripening them, he handed them over to the
cardinal. In a conference which Grotius held with the parties, Joseph
began the treaty, and bore the brunt of the first contest. After a warm
debate, the cardinal interposed as arbitrator: "A middle way will
reconcile you," said the minister, "and as you and Joseph can never
agree, I will now make you friends."[220]
That this was Richelieu's practice, appears from another similar
personage mentioned by Grotius, but one more careless and less cunning.
When the French ambassador, Leon Brulart, assisted by Joseph, concluded
at Ratisbon a treaty with the emperor's ambassador, on its arrival the
cardinal unexpectedly disapproved of it, declaring that the ambassador
had exceeded his instructions. But Brulart, who was an old statesman,
and Joseph, to whom the cardinal confided his most secret views, it was
not supposed could have committed such a gross error; and it was rather
believed that the cardinal changed his opinions with the state of
affairs, wishing for peace or war as they suited the French interests,
or as he conceived they tended to render his administration necessary to
the crown.[221] When Brulart, on his return from his embassy, found this
outcry raised against him, and not a murmur against Joseph, he explained
the mystery; the cardinal had raised this clamour against him merely to
cover the instructions which he had himself given, and which Brulart was
convinced he had received, through his organ, Father Joseph; a man, said
he, who has nothing of the Capuchin but the frock, and nothing of the
Christian but the name: a mind so practised in artifices, that he could
do nothing without deception: and during the whole of the Ratisbon
negotiation, Brulart discovered that Joseph would never communicate to
him any business till the whole was finally arranged: the sole object of
his pursuit was to find means to gratify the cardinal. Such free
sentiments nearly cost Brulart his head: for once in quitting the
cardinal in warmth, the minister following him to the door, and passing
his hand over the other's neck, observed, that "Brulart was a fine man,
and it would be a pity to divide the head from the body."
One more anecdote of this good father Joseph, the favourite instrument
of the most important and covert designs of this minister, has been
preserved in the _Memorie Recondite_ of Vittorio Siri,[222] an Italian
Abbé, the Procopius of France, but afterwards pensioned by Mazarin.
Richelieu had in vain tried to gain over Colonel Ornano, a man of
talents, the governor of Monsieur, the only brother of Louis XIII.; not
accustomed to have his offers refused, he resolved to ruin him. Joseph
was now employed to contract a particular friendship with Ornano, and to
suggest to him, that it was full time that his pupil should be admitted
into the council, to acquire some political knowledge. The advancement
of Ornano's royal pupil was his own; and as the king had no children,
the crown might descend to Monsieur. Ornano therefore took the first
opportunity to open himself to the king, on the propriety of initiating
his brother into affairs, either in council, or by a command in the
army. This the king, as usual, immediately communicated to the cardinal,
who was well prepared to give the request the most odious turn, and to
alarm his majesty with the character of Ornano, who, he said, was
inspiring the young prince with ambitious thoughts--that the next step
would be an attempt to share the crown itself with his majesty. The
cardinal foresaw how much Monsieur would be offended by the refusal and
would not fail to betray his impatience, and inflame the jealousy of the
king. Yet Richelieu bore still an open face and friendly voice for
Ornano, whom he was every day undermining in the king's favour, till all
terminated in a pretended conspiracy, and Ornano perished in the
Bastile, of a fever, at least caught there:--so much for the friendship
of Father Joseph! And by such men and such means the astute minister
secretly threw a seed of perpetual hatred between the royal brothers,
producing conspiracies often closing in blood, which only his own
haughty tyranny had provoked.
Father Joseph died regretted by Richelieu; he was an ingenious sort of a
_creature_, and kept his carriage to his last day, but his name is only
preserved in secret histories. The fate of Father Caussin, the author of
the "Cours Sainte," a popular book among the Catholics for its curious
religious stories, and whose name is better known than Father Joseph's,
shows how this minister could rid himself of father confessors who
persisted, according to their own notions, to be honest men, in spite of
the minister. This piece of secret history is drawn from a narrative
manuscript which Caussin left addressed to the general of the
Jesuits.[223]
Richelieu chose Father Caussin for the king's confessor, and he had
scarcely entered his office when the cardinal informed him of the king's
romantic friendship for Mademoiselle La Fayette, of whom the cardinal
was extremely jealous. Desirous of getting rid altogether of this sort
of tender connexion, he hinted to the new confessor that, however
innocent it might be, it was attended with perpetual danger, which the
lady herself acknowledged, and, warm with "all the motions of grace,"
had declared her intention to turn "Religieuse;" and that Caussin ought
to dispose the king's mind to see the wisdom of the resolution. It
happened, however, that Caussin considered that this lady, whose zeal
for the happiness of the people was well known, might prove more
serviceable at court than in a cloister, so that the good father was
very inactive in the business, and the minister began to suspect that he
had in hand an instrument not at all fitted to it like Father Joseph.
"The motions of grace" were, however, more active than the confessor,
and Mademoiselle retired to a monastery. Richelieu learned that the king
had paid her a visit of three hours, and he accused Caussin of
encouraging these secret interviews. This was not denied, but it was
adroitly insinuated that it was prudent not abruptly to oppose the
violence of the king's passion, which seemed reasonable to the minister.
The king continued these visits, and the lady, in concert with Caussin,
impressed on the king the most unfavourable sentiments of the minister,
the tyranny exercised over the exiled queen mother and the princes of
the blood;[224] the grinding taxes he levied on the people, his projects
of alliance with the Turk against the Christian sovereigns, &c. His
majesty sighed: he asked Caussin if he could name any one capable of
occupying the minister's place? Our simple politician had not taken such
a consideration in his mind. The king asked Caussin whether he would
meet Richelieu face to face? The Jesuit was again embarrassed, but
summoned up the resolution with equal courage and simplicity.
Caussin went for the purpose: he found the king closeted with the
minister; the conference was long, from which Caussin augured ill. He
himself tells us, that, weary of waiting in the ante-chamber, he
contrived to be admitted into the presence of the king, when he
performed his promise. But the case was altered! Caussin had lost his
cause before he pleaded it, and Richelieu had completely justified
himself to the king. The good father was told that the king would not
perform his devotions that day, and that he might return to Paris. The
next morning the whole affair was cleared up. An order from court
prohibited this voluble Jesuit either from speaking or writing to any
person; and farther, drove him away in an inclement winter, sick in body
and at heart, till he found himself an exile on the barren rocks of
Quimper in Brittany, where, among the savage inhabitants, he was
continually menaced by a prison or a gallows, which the terrific
minister lost no opportunity to place before his imagination; and
occasionally despatched a Paris Gazette, which distilled the venom of
Richelieu's heart, and which, like the eagle of Prometheus, could gnaw
at the heart of the insulated politician chained to his rock.[225]
Such were the contrasted fates of Father Joseph and Father Caussin! the
one, the ingenious _creature_, the other, the simple oppositionist of
this great minister.
THE MINISTER--DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM, LORD ADMIRAL, LORD GENERAL, &c. &c.
&c.
"Had the Duke of Buckingham been blessed with a faithful friend,
qualified with wisdom and integrity, the duke would have committed as
few faults, and done as transcendent worthy actions as any man in that
age in Europe." Such was the opinion of Lord Clarendon in the prime of
life, when, yet untouched by party feeling, he had no cause to plead,
and no quarrel with truth.[226]
The portrait of Buckingham by Hume seems to me a character dove-tailed
into a system, adjusted to his plan of lightening the errors of Charles
the First by participating them among others. This character conceals
the more favourable parts of no ordinary man: the spirit which was
fitted to lead others by its own invincibility, and some qualities he
possessed of a better nature. All the fascination of his character is
lost in the general shade cast over it by the niggardly commendation,
that he possessed "_some_ accomplishments of a courtier." Some, indeed!
and the most pleasing; but not all truly, for dissimulation and
hypocrisy were arts unpractised by this courtier. "His sweet and
attractive manner, so favoured by the graces," has been described by Sir
Henry Wotton, who knew him well; while Clarendon, another living
witness, tells us that "he was the most rarely accomplished the court
had ever beheld; while some that found inconvenience in his nearness,
intending by some affront to discountenance him, perceived he had masked
under this gentleness a terrible courage, as could safely protect all
his sweetnesses."
The very errors and infirmities of Buckingham seem to have started from
qualities of a generous nature; too devoted a friend, and too
undisguised an enemy, carrying his loves and his hatreds on his open
forehead;[227] too careless of calumny,[228] too fearless of danger; he
was, in a word, a man of sensation, acting from impulse; scorning,
indeed, prudential views, but capable at all times of embracing grand
and original ones; compared by the jealousy of faction to the Spenser of
Edward the Second, and even the Sejanus of Tiberius, he was no enemy to
the people; often serious in the best designs, but volatile in the
midst; his great error sprung from a sanguine spirit. "He was ever,"
says Wotton, "greedy of honour and hot upon the public ends, and too
confident in the prosperity of beginnings." If Buckingham was a hero,
and yet neither general nor admiral; a minister, and yet no statesman;
if often the creature of popular admiration, he was at length hated by
the people; if long envied by his equals, and betrayed by his own
creatures,[229] "delighting too much in the press and affluence of
dependents and suitors, who are always the burrs, and sometimes the
briars of favourites," as Wotton well describes them; if one of his
great crimes in the eyes of the people was, that "his enterprises
succeeded not according to their impossible expectation;" and that it
was a still greater, that Buckingham had been the permanent favourite
of two monarchs, who had spoilt their child of fortune; then may the
future inquirer find something of his character which remains to be
opened; to instruct alike the sovereigns and the people, and "be worthy
to be registered among the great examples of time and fortune."
Contrast the fate of BUCKINGHAM with that of his great rival, RICHELIEU.
The one winning popularity and losing it; once in the Commons saluted as
"their redeemer," till, at length, they resolved that "Buckingham was
the cause of all the evils and dangers to the king and kingdom."
Magnificent, open, and merciful; so forbearing, even in his acts of
gentle oppression, that they were easily evaded; and riots and libels
were infecting the country, till, in the popular clamour, Buckingham was
made a political monster, and the dagger was planted in the heart of the
incautious minister. The other statesman, unrelenting in his power, and
grinding in his oppression, unblest with one brother-feeling, had his
dungeons filled and his scaffolds raised, and died in safety and
glory--a cautious tyrant!
There exists a manuscript memoir of Sir Balthazar Gerbier, who was one
of those ingenious men whom Buckingham delighted to assemble about him:
for this was one of his characteristics, that although the duke himself
was not learned, yet he never wanted for knowledge; too early in life a
practical man, he had not the leisure to become a contemplative one; he
supplied this deficiency by perpetually "sifting and questioning well"
the most eminent for their experience and knowledge; and Lord Bacon, and
the Lord Keeper Williams, as well as such as Gerbier, were admitted into
this sort of intimacy. We have a curious letter by Lord Bacon, of advice
to our minister, written at his own request: and I have seen a large
correspondence with that subtle politician, the Lord Keeper Williams,
who afterwards attempted to supplant him, to the same purpose. Gerbier
was the painter and architect, and at the same time one of the
confidential agents of Buckingham; the friend of Rubens the painter,
with whom he was concerned in this country to open a Spanish
negotiation, and became at length the master of the ceremonies to
Charles the Second, in his exile. He was an actor in many scenes.
Gerbier says of himself, that "he was a minister who had the honour of
public employment, and may therefore incur censure for declaring some
passages of state more overtly than becomes such an one; but secrets
are secrets but for a time; others may be wiser for themselves, but it
is their silence which makes me write."[230]
A mystery has always hung over that piece of knight-errantry, the
romantic journey to Madrid, where the prime minister and the heir
apparent, in disguise, confided their safety in the hands of our
national enemies; which excited such popular clamour, and indeed
anxiety, for the prince and the protestant cause. A new light is cast
over this extraordinary transaction, by a secret which the Duke imparted
to Gerbier. The project was Buckingham's; a bright original view, but
taken far out of the line of precedence. It was one of those bold
inventions which no common mind could have conceived, and none but the
spirit of Buckingham could have carried on with a splendour and mastery
over the persons and events, which turned out, however, as unfavourable
as possible.
The restoration of the imprudent Palatine, the son-in-law of James the
First, to the Palatinate which that prince had lost by his own
indiscretion, when he accepted the crown of Bohemia, although warned of
his own incompetency, as well as of the incapacity of those princes of
the empire, who might have assisted him against the power of Austria and
Spain, seemed, however, to a great part of our nation necessary to the
stability of the protestant interests. James the First was most bitterly
run down at home for his civil pacific measures, but the truth is, by
Gerbier's account, that James could not depend on one single ally, who
had all taken fright, although some of the Germans were willing enough
to be subsidised at £30,000 a month from England; this James had not to
give, and which he had been a fool had he given; for though this war for
the protestant interests was popular in England, it was by no means
general among the German Princes: the Prince Elector of Treves, and
another prince, had treated Gerbier coolly; and observed, that "God in
these days did not send prophets more to the protestants than to others,
to fight against nations, and to second pretences which public
incendiaries propose to princes, to engage them into unnecessary wars
with their neighbours." France would not go to war, and much less the
Danes, the Swedes, and the Hollanders. James was calumniated for his
timidity and cowardice; yet, says Gerbier, King James merited much of
his people, though ill-requited, choosing rather to suffer an eclipse of
his personal reputation, than to bring into such hazard the reputation
and force of his kingdoms in a war of no hopes.
As a father and a king, from private and from public motives, the
restoration of the Palatinate had a double tie on James, and it was
always the earnest object of his negotiations. But Spain sent him an
amusing and literary ambassador, who kept him in play, year after year,
with merry tales and _bon mots_.[231] These negotiations had languished
through all the tedium of diplomacy; the amusing promises of the courtly
Gondomar were sure, on return of the courier, to bring sudden
difficulties from the subtle Olivarez. Buckingham meditated by a single
blow to strike at the true secret, whether the Spanish court could be
induced to hasten this important object, gained over by the proffered
alliance with the English crown, from the lips of the prince himself.
The whole scene dazzled with politics, chivalry, and magnificence; it
was caught by the high spirit of the youthful prince, who, Clarendon
tells us, "loved adventures;" and it was indeed an incident which has
adorned more than one Spanish romance. The panic which seized the
English, fearful of the personal safety of the prince, did not prevail
with the duke, who told Gerbier that the prince ran no hazard from the
Spaniard, who well knew that while his sister, the fugitive Queen of
Bohemia, with a numerous issue, was residing in Holland, the protestant
succession to our crown was perfectly secured: and it was with this
conviction, says Gerbier, that when the Count-Duke Olivarez had been
persuaded that the Prince of Wales was meditating a flight from Spain,
Buckingham with his accustomed spirit told him, that "if love had made
the prince steal out of his own country, yet fear would never make him
run out of Spain, and that he should depart with an equipage as fitted a
Prince of Wales." This was no empty vaunt. An English fleet was then
waiting in a Spanish port, and the Spanish court, inviting our prince to
the grand Escurial, attended the departure of Charles, as Hume expresses
it, with "elaborate pomp."
This attempt of Buckingham, of which the origin has been so often
inquired into, and so oppositely viewed, entirely failed with the
Spaniard. The catholic league outweighed the protestant. At first, the
Spanish court had been as much taken by surprise as the rest of the
world. All parties seemed at their first interview highly gratified. "We
may rule the world together," said the Spanish to the English minister.
They were, however, not made by nature, or state interests, to agree at
a second interview. The Lord Keeper Williams, a wily courtier and subtle
politician, who, in the absence of his patron Buckingham, evidently
supplanted him in the favour of his royal master, when asked by James
"whether he thought this knight-errant pilgrimage would be likely to win
the Spanish lady," answered with much political foresight, and saw the
difficulty: "If my lord marquis will give honour to the Count-Duke
Olivarez, and remember he is the favourite of Spain; or, if Olivarez
will show honourable civility to my lord marquis, remembering he is the
favourite of England, the wooing may be prosperous: but if my lord
marquis should forget where he is, and not stoop to Olivarez; or, if
Olivarez, forgetting what guest he hath received with the prince, bear
himself like a Castilian grandee to my lord marquis, the provocation may
cross your majesty's good intentions."[232] What Olivarez once let out,
"though somewhat in hot blood, that in the councils of the king the
English match had never been taken into consideration, but from the time
of the Prince of Wales's arrival at Madrid," might have been true
enough. The seven years which had passed in apparent negotiation
resembled the scene of a _fata morgana_,--an earth painted in the air,
raised by the delusive arts of Gondomar and Olivarez. As they never
designed to realise it, it would of course never have been brought into
the councils of his Spanish majesty. Buckingham discovered, as he told
Gerbier, that the Infanta, by the will of her father, Philip the Third,
was designed for the emperor's son,--the catholic for the catholic, to
cement the venerable system. When Buckingham and Charles had now
ascertained that the Spanish cabinet could not adopt English and
protestant interests, and Olivarez had convinced himself that Charles
would never be a Catholic, all was broken up; and thus a treaty of
marriage, which had been slowly reared during a period of seven years,
when the flower seemed to take, only contained within itself the seeds
of war.[233]
Olivarez and Richelieu were thorough-paced statesmen, in every respect
the opposites of the elegant, the spirited, and the open Buckingham. The
English favourite checked the haughty Castilian, the favourite of Spain,
and the more than king-like cardinal, the favourite of France, with the
rival spirit of his island, proud of her equality with the continent.
There is a story that the war between England and France was occasioned
by the personal disrespect shown by the Cardinal-Duke Richelieu to the
English Duke, in the affronting mode of addressing his letters. Gerbier
says, the world are in a ridiculous mistake about this circumstance. The
fact of the letters is true, since Gerbier was himself the secretary on
this occasion. It terminated, however, differently than is known.
Richelieu, at least as haughty as Buckingham, addressed a letter, in a
moment of caprice, in which the word Monsieur was level with the first
line, avoiding the usual space of honour, to mark his disrespect.
Buckingham instantly turned on the cardinal his own invention. Gerbier,
who had written the letter, was also its bearer. The cardinal started at
the first sight, never having been addressed with such familiarity, and
was silent. On the following day, however, the cardinal received Gerbier
civilly, and, with many rhetorical expressions respecting the duke: "I
know," said he, "the power and greatness of a high admiral of England;
the _cannons_ of his great ships make way, and prescribe law more
forcibly than the _canons_ of the church, of which I am a member. I
acknowledge the power of the favourites of great kings, and I am content
to be a minister of state, and the duke's humble servant." This was an
apology made with all the _politesse_ of a Gaul, and by a great
statesman who had recovered his senses.
If ever minister of state was threatened by the prognostics of a fatal
termination to his life, it was Buckingham; but his own fearlessness
disdained to interpret them. The following circumstances, collected from
manuscript letters of the times, are of this nature. After the sudden
and unhappy dissolution of the parliament, popular terror showed itself
in all shapes; and those who did not join in the popular cry were
branded with the odious nickname of _the dukelings_.
A short time before the assassination of Buckingham, when the king,
after an obstinate resistance, had conceded his assent to the "Petition
of Right," the houses testified their satisfaction, perhaps their
triumph, by their shouts of acclamation. They were propagated by the
hearers on the outside, from one to the other, till they reached the
city. Some confused account arrived before the occasion of these
rejoicings was generally known. Suddenly the bells began to ring;
bonfires were kindled; and in an instant all was a scene of public
rejoicing. But ominous indeed were these rejoicings; for the greater
part was occasioned by a false rumour that the duke was to be sent to
the Tower. No one inquired about a news which every one wished to hear;
and so sudden was the joy, that a MS. letter says, "the old scaffold on
Tower-hill was pulled down and burned by certain unhappy boys, who said
they would have a new one built for the duke." This mistake so rapidly
prevailed as to reach even the country, which blazed with bonfires to
announce the fall of Buckingham.[234] The shouts on the acquittal of the
seven bishops, in 1688, did not speak in plainer language to the son's
ear, when, after the verdict was given, such prodigious acclamations of
joy "seemed to set the king's authority at defiance; it spread itself
not only into the city, but even to Hounslow Heath, where the soldiers,
upon the news of it, gave up a great shout, though the king was then
actually at dinner in the camp."[235] To the speculators of human
nature, who find its history written in their libraries, how many plain
lessons seem to have been lost on the mere politician, who is only such
in the heat of action!
About a month before the duke was assassinated, occurred the murder, by
the populace, of the man who was called "the duke's devil." This was a
Dr. Lambe, a man of infamous character, a dealer in magical arts, who
lived by showing apparitions, or selling the favours of the devil, and
whose chambers were a convenient rendezvous for the curious of both
sexes. This wretched man, who openly exulted in the infamous traffic by
which he lived, when he was sober, prophesied that he should fall one
day by the hands from which he received his death; and it was said he
was as positive about his patron's. At the age of eighty, he was torn to
pieces in the city; and the city was imprudently heavily fined
£6000[236] for not delivering up those who, in murdering this hoary
culprit, were heard to say, that they would handle his master worse, and
would have minced his flesh, and have had every one a bit of him. This
is one more instance of the political cannibalism of the mob. The fate
of Dr. Lambe served for a ballad; and the printer and singer were laid
in Newgate.[237] Buckingham, it seems, for a moment contemplated his own
fate in his wretched creature's, more particularly as another omen
obtruded itself on his attention; for, on the very day of Dr. Lambe's
murder, his own portrait in the council-chamber was seen to have fallen
out of its frame,--a circumstance as awful, in that age of omens, as the
portrait that walked from its frame in the "Castle of Otranto," but
perhaps more easily accounted for. On the eventful day of Dr. Lambe's
being torn to pieces by the mob, a circumstance occurred to Buckingham,
somewhat remarkable to show the spirit of the times. The king and the
duke were in the Spring Gardens, looking on the bowlers; the duke put
on his hat; one Wilson, a Scotchman, first kissing the duke's hands,
snatched it off, saying, "Off with your hat before the king."
Buckingham, not apt to restrain his quick feelings, kicked the
Scotchman; but the king interfering, said, "Let him alone, George; he is
either mad or a fool." "No, sir," replied the Scotchman, "I am a sober
man; and if your majesty would give me leave, I will tell you that of
this man which many know, and none dare speak." This was, as a
prognostic, an anticipation of the dagger of Felton!
About this time a libel was taken down from a post in Coleman-street by
a constable and carried to the lord-mayor, who ordered it to be
delivered to none but his majesty. Of this libel the manuscript letter
contains the following particulars:--
/P Who rules the kingdom? The king. Who rules the king? The
duke. Who rules the duke? The devil. P/
Let the duke look to it; for they intend shortly to use him
worse than they did the doctor; and if things be not shortly
reformed they will work a reformation themselves.
The only advice the offended king suggested was to set a double watch
every night! A watch at a post to prevent a libel being affixed to it
was no prevention of libels being written, and the fact is, libels were
now bundled and sent to fairs, to be read by those who would venture to
read to those who would venture to listen; both parties were often sent
to prison.[238] It was about this time, after the sudden dissolution of
the parliament, that popular terror showed itself in various shapes,
and the spirit which then broke out in libels by night was assuredly the
same, which, if these political prognostics had been rightly construed
by Charles, might have saved the eventual scene of blood. But neither
the king nor his favourite had yet been taught to respect popular
feelings. Buckingham, after all, was guilty of no heavy political
crimes; but it was his misfortune to have been a prime minister, as
Clarendon says, "in a busy, querulous, froward time, when the people
were uneasy under pretensions of reformation, with some petulant
discourses of liberty, which their great impostors scattered among them
like glasses to multiply their fears." It was an age, which was
preparing for a great contest, where both parties committed great
faults. The favourite did not appear odious in the eyes of the king, who
knew his better dispositions more intimately than the popular party, who
were crying him down. And Charles attributed to individuals, and "the
great impostors," the clamours which had been raised.
But the plurality of offices showered on Buckingham rendered him still
more odious to the people:[239] had he not been created lord high
admiral and general, he had never risked his character amidst the
opposing elements, or before impregnable forts. But something more than
his own towering spirit, or the temerity of vanity, must be alleged for
his assumption of those opposite military characters.[240]
A peace of twenty years appears to have rusted the arms of our soldiers,
and their commanders were destitute of military skill. The war with
Spain was clamoured for; and an expedition to Cadiz, in which the duke
was reproached by the people for not taking the command, as they
supposed from deficient spirit, only ended in our undisciplined soldiers
under bad commanders getting drunk in the Spanish cellars, insomuch
that not all had the power to run away. On this expedition, some verses
were handed about, which probably are now first printed, from a
manuscript letter of the times; a political pasquinade which shows the
utter silliness of this "Ridiculus Mus."