JAMES I., HIS DISAPPROVAL OF THE GENTRY CROWDING INTO LONDON—DISGUST
ENTERTAINED BY THE OLD FAMILIES TO HIM AND HIS COURT—THE CLINTONS,
BLOUNTS, VERES, AND WILLOUGHBY D’ERESBYS SHOW IT—CHARACTER OF SIR
THOMAS LAKE—WILLIAM, EARL OF PEMBROKE, THE EARLY PATRON OF
VILLIERS—ACCOUNT OF THE FIRST INTRODUCTION OF VILLIERS TO
JAMES—AMBITIOUS VIEWS WHICH IT SUGGESTED—HIS ATTACHMENT TO THE
DAUGHTER OF SIR ROGER ASHTON—THEIR ENGAGEMENT BROKEN OFF—ACCOUNT OF
THE KING’S VISIT TO CAMBRIDGE IN 1614-15—SOME DESCRIPTION OF THE
COURTLY LADIES WHO WERE PRESENT THERE—THE QUEEN’S ABSENCE—COUNTESS
OF ARUNDEL—COUNTESS OF SOMERSET—COUNTESS OF SALISBURY—LADY HOWARD OF
WALDEN—PERFORMANCE OF THE PLAY OF “IGNORAMUS” IN CLARE HALL—THE
DESIGN OF THIS COMEDY TO RIDICULE THE COMMON LAW—ADMIRATION
EXPRESSED BY THE KING, DURING THE PERFORMANCE, OF THE PERSONAL
APPEARANCE OF VILLIERS, WHO WAS PRESENT—THE SUBSEQUENT
REPRESENTATIONS REFERRED TO.
=CHAPTER II.=
It might be presumed, from this harangue, that never had the Court of
James been so magnificent, nor such a throng of the high-born and the
opulent clustered in the metropolis as at that time. But the fact was
that whilst obscure country gentlemen brought thither their families,
the old nobility fled from a court which cherished Somerset and
proscribed Raleigh, and where all the real business of the King’s life
consisted in expedients to raise money in order to support an
expenditure from which he derived no dignity. The great and gallant
representatives of the Houses of Clinton, Blount, and Willoughby
D’Eresby sought in continental countries the meed of honour which was
denied them in the service of their own country by the pacific temper of
the King.[39] The Tower entombed some of the noblest spirits. There
still languished the Earl of Northumberland and the Earl of Wilton; the
one beloved, nevertheless, by Henry Prince of Wales, though suspected of
being concerned with his kinsman Percy in the Gunpowder Plot; the other
a “very hopeful gentleman blasted in the bud,” who had been imprisoned
since the Raleigh plot. Others prosecuted schemes of discovery; West,
Earl of Delawarr, in Virginia, attempted to second Raleigh, and
contenting himself with that return and inward satisfaction which a good
mind feels in its own consciousness of virtue, died in the undertaking.
Others, such as the Earl of Arundel, could not tolerate the vulgar
revels, the tasteless prodigality of the Court of James; that nobleman
confined himself, therefore, to the splendours of his stately home, for
his soul was not that of a patriot, nor had he, says Lord Clarendon,
“any other affection for the nation or kingdom than as he has a home in
it, in which, like the great Leviathan, he might disport himself.”[40]
Footnote 39:
Quotation from Birch’s work on the Colonies. See Brydges’ Peers of
England in the Time of James I., p. 171.
Footnote 40:
Clarendon’s History of England, vol. i., p. 55.
Room and opportunity there were, therefore, for fresh aspirants to
compete for royal favour; nevertheless the Earl of Somerset still
reigned pre-eminent, and had then been recently promoted to the highest
office about the King’s person, that of Lord Chamberlain. The reason
assigned for this new display of partiality was also such as to prove
that Somerset was firmly planted in his sovereign’s favour. He succeeded
in the high office the Earl of Salisbury, who, as James expressed it,
was wont to entertain his royal master with “epigrams, discourses, and
learned epistles, and other such nicks and devices.” These, the King
observed, would pay no debts, and he therefore selected in Somerset, he
said, a “plain and honest gentleman, who, if he committed a fault, had
not rhetoric enough to excuse it.”[41] It seemed therefore very
improbable that Villiers should ever hope to rival one who was so rooted
in the King’s regard as the Earl of Somerset, but events which no human
foresight could have anticipated worked for him in the dark secrecy of a
woman’s guilty career.
Footnote 41:
Nichols’s Progresses of James I., vol. iii., page 19, note.
Mature years, precipitated into old age by disease and infirmities, had
brought no increase to James of that practical wisdom which regulates a
Court as well as a family. His imputed wisdom, which was so over
panegyrized in his own time, and which has been too much depreciated in
ours, consisted in shrewd and sensible general notions, which he never
seems to have applied to his private benefit.
So that, though the favour of Somerset, when George Villiers returned
from France, was in its decline, the King could not be deterred from
seeking a new object for his partiality. He might indeed have learned a
lesson which should have taught him that he had disgusted the nation and
lowered himself by his system of favouritism, yet, after recovering from
the perils and vexations of the infamous business which ruined Carr, he
had not a notion that it would be wise to profit by experience, and was
ready to commence a new career of folly, and to sacrifice all the
slender portion of dignity that remained to him—a dignity which
consisted chiefly in the general confidence of his subjects towards
him—by adopting any new object that might chance to cross his path.
It was during the year of inaction which Villiers passed at Goadby, that
he became acquainted with the family of Sir Roger Aston. This knight was
the father of four daughters, for one of whom Villiers, in the quiet
hours of his country life, conceived an attachment. One might, on a
first view of this incident, wonder at the want of caution in Lady
Villiers, in detaining her son at Goadby, there to shackle his future
course by an early, and, apparently, unprofitable engagement; but she
was not acting, it appears, inconsistently with her schemes of future
advancement, when she permitted the intimacy which produced this result.
Sir Roger Aston was, it is true, only the base-born son of John Aston,
of Aston, in Cheshire;[42] he could, therefore, derive no lustre from
that ancient family; he had held formerly the office of barber to King
James when in Scotland, where Sir Roger was chiefly educated.[43] He
was, in time, made a groom of the royal chamber, and further promoted to
be master of the wardrobe, and, however humble his birth and education
may have been, became a person of no inconsiderable influence at Court.
During the last twenty years of Elizabeth’s reign, he was the continual
correspondent of Cecil, whom he supplied with details of all that
transpired in Scotland. The powerful minister was not, it appears,
ashamed to owe much important information to the former barber, and,
fortunately for those who rested upon the good offices of Aston, he is
reported to have been a “very honest, plain-dealing man, no dissembler,
neither did he do any ill office to any man.”[44]
Footnote 42:
Court of James I., by Dr. Godfrey Goodman, edited by the Rev. T. S.
Brewer, vol. i., p. 16.
Footnote 43:
Carte’s History of England, vol. ii., p. 42.
Footnote 44:
Bishop Goodman, 1, p. 18.
In addition to these acquired advantages, Sir Roger was enabled to
provide his daughters with portions. It may, therefore, be inferred that
Lady Villiers—who could never have foreseen that her son would have
claimed the hand of an heiress of ducal line, nor have anticipated that
those attractions, of which she could but partially calculate the value,
should captivate in after times even a royal mistress—approved of the
growing affection which sprang up amid the rural scenes of Goadby. It
was permitted, indeed, at first, by both the parents, whose interests
were concerned in it, and it seems, on the part of the lady, to have
been a fervent and disinterested sentiment. But the question of a
settlement intervened: Villiers, in consideration of a handsome dower,
to which the young damsel was entitled, was required to settle upon her
the moderate sum of eighty pounds a-year. The arrangement was
impracticable, for all his fortune at that time, and even after he had
appeared for some time at Court, amounted to only fifty or sixty pounds
annually.[45]
Footnote 45:
Carte, vol. ii., p. 43.
Some opposition to the engagement originated, therefore, with the
friends of the young lady, though she, passionately enamoured, was at
first fixed in her choice, and firm to her professions of affection.
“The gentlewoman,” says Sir Anthony Weldon, “loved him so well as, could
all his friends have made for her great fortune but a hundred marks
jointure, she had married him presently, in despite of all her friends,
and, no question, would have had him without any fortune at all.” But
whilst the affair was under consideration, or probably when it was
partially concluded, but was still cherished in the minds of the parties
most concerned in it, a circumstance occurred which diverted the hopes
of Villiers into another direction; a new stimulus was given to the
energies of his nature, and ambition, as it is known to have done
before, proved mightier than love.
It was at a horse-race in Cambridgeshire that Villiers first attracted
the attention of the King. The poverty of the young man was then such
that even on this notable occasion, when the sovereign, on his annual
progress, was expected, and at a time when the costliness, or, as it was
well styled, the “bravery” of dress was at its height, he could not
afford any new attire. An “old black suit, broken out in divers places,”
was, as Sir Symonds D’Ewes asserts,[46] the garment in which his narrow
means constrained him to appear amid the gay courtiers who composed the
royal train.
Footnote 46:
Life of Sir Symonds D’Ewes, edited by Halliwell, vol. i., p. 86.
As if this were not a sufficient mortification, other inconveniences
arose. The race had taken place near Linton, and most of the company
slept at that town. There was no room in the lodgings of the inn for the
ill-dressed youth in the old black suit, “and he was obliged,” adds the
same writer, “and even glad, to lie on a truckle bed in a gentleman’s
chamber, of mean quality, also, at that time, from whose own mouth I
heard this relation, who was himself an eye-witness of it.”[47]
According to another account, it was at Apthorpe, whither King James, in
the month of August, 1614, had sent his dogs, that the monarch was so
struck by the appearance and deportment of Villiers, that he resolved to
mould him, as it were “platonically, to his own idea.”[48] The
impression produced upon the King was publicly observed by attendants
and courtiers, and the success of Villiers was decided. About this time,
indeed, Villiers formed an acquaintance upon whose counsels he acted, so
as to take the tide of fortune at its height.
Footnote 47:
Life of Sir Symonds D’Ewes.
Footnote 48:
Reliquiæ Wottonianæ, p. 210; and Nichols’s Progresses
Sir Thomas Lake is said to have ushered of James I., vol. iii, p. 19.
Villiers into the English Court,[49] and there was, perhaps, not one of
the subordinate personages better calculated to guide, in that sphere,
the first steps of an inexperienced youth than Lake. Patronized
originally by Sir Francis Walsingham, and by him recommended to the
service of Queen Elizabeth, he had acted as Secretary for the French and
Latin tongue to his Royal mistress, and acquired, from his accurate and
rapid writing, the name of “Swiftsure.” In the Court of Elizabeth, where
none but men of ability flourished, he had received his political
education. He had enjoyed the Queen’s confidence, and was reading to her
in French and Latin at the very moment when the Countess of Warwick told
him that the Queen had expired. James made him a Privy Counsellor, and
afterwards appointed him one of his Secretaries of State.[50] Lake
eventually fell into disgrace, not from his own fault, but owing to the
unfortunate marriage of his eldest daughter to the Lord de Roos, son of
the Earl of Exeter, and to the subsequent enmity of the Cecils. But at
the time when Villiers owed his first introduction to him, Lake was in
the height of his influence, and James, even after his downfall,
accorded to him the praise that “he was a Minister of State fit to serve
any greater prince in Europe.”[51]
Footnote 49:
Kennet’s History of England, p. 706.
Footnote 50:
Fuller’s Worthies of Leicestershire.
Footnote 51:
Fuller’s Worthies of Hants. There is a curious account of the
mysterious affair of the Lakes, in Bishop Goodman’s Court and Times of
King James, vol. i., pp. 193-197; also some letters of Lady Lake’s, in
the second volume of that work. The State Paper Office contains more
upon the same subject, as yet, inedited.
Under such auspices, Villiers secured the best introduction to the world
that can be obtained—that afforded by individuals whose high rank was
upheld in public estimation by their personal influence; and it augurs
well of the views which were at that time entertained of his character,
and of the terms on which it was desired to place him with the King,
that those who were real lovers of their country, and patrons of its
best interests, should have presented him to their sovereign.
Lucy Harrington, Countess of Bedford, “led him,” says Fuller, “by the
one hand, and William, Earl of Pembroke, by the other.”
Few women shone in the giddy revels of the Court with a purer lustre
than the Countess of Bedford; her virtues and accomplishments may have
been exaggerated by grateful poets and dependants, but they were such as
to confer a certain dignity on all whom she countenanced. Hence we must
admire the discrimination of Lake in obtaining for the youthful Villiers
the friendship of one whom society estimated so highly. The sister of
Sir John Harrington, the Countess of Bedford, resembled her brother in
his love of letters, and fortune favoured the full indulgence of her
inclinations. By the death of that accomplished brother, she succeeded
to two-thirds of his possessions. She had then been married six months
to Edward, Earl of Bedford; and, at his decease, which happened in 1627,
she was left in the uncontrolled possession of all that nobleman’s
estates. This proof of her husband’s confidence and attachment was not
misapplied. The widowed Countess, resembling somewhat the Mrs. Montagu
of later times, aimed to be the patroness of poets. Of course her
motives have been satirised, and her mode of dispensing her patronage
impugned, for there seems to be, in most biographers, a love of decrying
lettered women of rank. Grainger, for instance, declares that the
Countess of Bedford bought the praise of poets by money, and that they,
in return, were lavish of incense.[52] Her taste for gardening has,
however, met with more indulgence. Sir William Temple, in his “Gardens
of Epicurus,” praises her “most perfect picture of a garden” at Moor
Park, in Surrey, for she was, in truth, the first improver of the
English flower-garden—an honourable distinction. Her education was in
conformity with the practice of the day; she was well read in classics,
and had a knowledge of ancient medals. Such was the lady-patroness of
Villiers. To her Ben Jonson inscribed three of his epigrams:[53] to her
Dr. Donne addressed several poems, whilst Daniel celebrated her in
verse.
Footnote 52:
Grainger’s Biography.
Footnote 53:
He addresses her in one of these in the following terms:—
“Lucy, you brightness of our sphere, who are
Life of the Muses’ day, their Morning Star;
If works [not authors] their own grace should look,
Whose poems would not wish to be your books?”
It is singular that no relics have been discovered of this far-famed
lady’s writings, though numerous allusions are made to them in the works
of others. A marvellous degree of uncertainty even attends many points
of her career; the place of her death is unknown; and she left behind
her no will; the abode on which she spent large sums is long since
levelled to the ground; this was Burleigh-on-the-Hill, which she sold,
eventually, to Villiers, when in the height of his fortunes; he erected
a noble mansion upon it, but it was destroyed in the time of the
Rebellion. Thus, as Mr. Lodge observes, “she has left, by a singular
fatality, as it should seem, a splendid reputation, which can neither be
supported nor depreciated by the evidence of historical facts.”[54]
Footnote 54:
Lodge’s Historical Portraits, Art. Lucy Harrington.
Less exclusive, more patriotic, and far more popular even than the great
Earl of Arundel, William, Earl of Pembroke, stood, on that day, on the
same vantage ground with that lofty nobleman, the pre-eminence of
character. Pembroke, however, was beloved as well as respected; he was
pious, liberal, honourable; a lover of literature and the arts: he
encouraged the ingenious and the learned, not only because he delighted
in their society, but from a higher motive, a sense of duty to the
community. He inherited, indeed, that generous spirit which ennobles the
noble, for he was the nephew of Sir Philip Sydney, and the son of that
Countess of Pembroke whom Ben Jonson has termed “the subject of all
verse.” He was brave and honourable; his abilities were excellent; his
character above all suspicion of the ordinary insincerity of courtiers.
His immense fortune was employed worthily, not lavished, for his
expenses were limited only by his “great mind,” and occasions, to use it
nobly. His personal qualities were such as to make even the Court itself
respectable, and “better esteemed in the country,” and he had the
happiness, in spite of envy, to have more friends than any public
character of his time No man dared to avow himself the enemy of one who
was beloved equally at the Court of James and in the retirement of a
home circle at Wilton; who sought for neither office nor honours, and
yet was lenient to the faults from which his noble nature was exempt.
Such was the nobleman who took by the hand a poor youth, whose present
integrity and innocence might, he perhaps believed, vanquish the
degrading influence of Somerset and his wife, to whose fame report
already attached the darkest rumours. In the patron who was moved to
second by his well-earned influence the fortunes of an obscure country
youth, Villiers was thus no less fortunate than in the favour of Lucy
Harrington. Happy had it been for him had he modelled his own conduct
and rectified his notions by the standards now placed before his view;
for there was nothing in the bearing of Pembroke to lower the dignity of
virtue. That nobleman had been termed “the very picture and _viva
effigies_ of nobility.”[55] In person, majestic, in his manners, full of
stately gravity, which characterised him, whether in repose or when
animated, his easy wit, free from every taint of malice, his habitual,
unconscious good-breeding, might have assisted that young and unformed
mind in the formation of good taste, a property which rarely flourishes
without the aid of refined associates. Some defects there were, and
those of a vital nature, which, in looking closely into any character of
that time, cannot but be discovered. These were materially owing to the
bartering marriages of the middle and early modern times—the selling
one’s dearest hopes and interests in this life for an estate, or an
honour, or a reversion. The standard of morality was, of course,
lowered, as it still is in France, by the excuse that fidelity to a wife
could hardly be expected under the circumstances of enforced unions,
sometimes contracted while the parties were children. William, Earl of
Pembroke, was one of the many who exhibited this doctrine in his
practice. United to an heiress, for whose fortune even the grave Lord
Clarendon observes, he paid “too dear by taking her person into the
bargain,”[56] he devoted himself publicly to Christian, the daughter of
Lord Bruce, afterwards Countess of Devonshire. To her he addressed those
beautiful lines which were, with other poems, edited by Dr. Donne,
prefixed with a fulsome dedication to the Countess.[57]
Footnote 55:
Clarendon, vol. i., p. 85; also, Lodge’s Portraits.
Footnote 56:
Clarendon, vol. i., p. 85; also, Lodge’s Portraits.
Footnote 57:
Peck’s Desiderata Curiosa, xiv., p. 541; Grainger’s Biographical
History of England, Art. Pembroke.
To Pembroke, Buckingham was, perhaps, indebted for that love of the arts
and taste for building and embellishments which afterwards distinguished
the lordly proprietor of York House and Burleigh. It is, however,
painful to reflect that not three years after the good offices performed
by Lord Pembroke to Villiers, a coolness took place upon some matters of
little moment compared with the debt of gratitude due to the Earl by the
favourite.[58]
Footnote 58:
The death of this nobleman was remarkable. It had been foretold by his
tutor and Lady Davis that he should not outlive his fiftieth birthday.
The fatal day arrived; it found his Lordship very “pleasant and
healthful,” and he supped that evening at the Countess of Bedford’s;
he was then heard to remark that he should never trust a lady
prophetess again. He went to bed in the same good spirits; but was
carried off by a fit of apoplexy in the night. Before his interment it
was resolved to embalm his body; when one of the surgeons plunged his
knife into it, the Earl is said by a tradition in the family to have
lifted up one of his hands. The Lady Davis, who had foretold the death
of this nobleman, was imprisoned for some time. The Earl died in 1630.
Notwithstanding the countenance of the Countess of Bedford, and of the
Earl of Pembroke, those who detailed the smallest incidents of the Court
observed that the favour of Villiers appeared to be stationary; even his
appointment as a Groom of the Bedchamber was deferred in favour of one
Carr, a baseborn kinsman of the Earl of Somerset; and it began to be
thought that the King’s preference for Villiers was declining.[59] But
the game was begun—the hopes of future power, of wealth, perhaps of
rank, cherished by maternal counsels, were now working upon the mind of
the young adventurer, and he resolved upon one sacrifice to obtain the
objects at which he grasped—the sacrifice was, his youthful attachment
to old Sir Roger Aston’s daughter.[60]
Footnote 59:
Inedited letter in the State Paper Office, from Mr. Chamberlain to Sir
Dudley Carlton, September 22nd, 1619.
Footnote 60:
Letter from Mr. Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carlton, November, 1614,
given in Nichols’s Progresses of James I., vol. iii., p. 26.
As it often happens, the relinquishment of fondly-cherished hopes was
owing, in part, to the advice of a friend: the disposition of Villiers
was naturally so generous, that, to abandon all his pretensions to one
who was willing to forego the gifts of fortune for his sake, would,
probably, not otherwise have occurred to his mind. It happened, however,
that whilst he was lingering about the Court, a young companion, Sir
Robert Graham, one of the Gentlemen of the Bedchamber, professed himself
to be greatly interested in his advancement. Villiers soon constituted
Graham his “familiar friend,” and, being brought into what Sir Henry
Wotton terms “intrinsical society” with him, was naturally led to speak
of his hopes and fears, and to unfold to the young courtier, who could
boast more experience than he might pretend to possess, his projected
marriage. That bond was disapproved of by Graham. “I know not,” remarks
Wotton, “what luminaries he spied in his face;” but they were, at all
events, sufficient to indicate success at Court. Impressed with this
conviction, Graham dissuaded Villiers from his love-match, and
encouraged him rather to “woo fortune,” by still further improving the
King’s favourable sentiments towards him. It is not improbable that
Graham was the tool of that party who earnestly desired Somerset’s
downfall, and who gladly availed themselves of the attractions of young
Villiers to accomplish their desires. The advice given by Graham “sank,”
it is said, into the young man’s “fancy.” He may have remembered the
auspicious meeting at Abthorpe, when, in his old black suit, he had
charmed even the regard of a Monarch who rarely dispensed with the
display of costly garments in others, how slovenly soever he might, in
his royal pleasure, be in his own attire. A love-suit to a country
damsel, richly endowed, even if fond and faithful, seemed but a poor
exchange for a courtly career. Villiers, therefore, wavered; and perhaps
the obstacles thrown in his way by the Aston family added to his
irresolution. It is probable, too, that the prospect of aiding hereafter
his many relations and connections may have had an influence over his
decision. How great the struggle may have been, must be left to the
imagination, for no documents are at hand to reveal it. The step was
momentous; for it threw upon the world, to buffet with all the turmoils
of a conspicuous station, a man who, otherwise, would probably have
lived and died in respectable obscurity, existing upon his wife’s
fortune.
Villiers, however, in time, adopted the advice of Sir Robert Graham. He
abjured the thoughts of an early marriage, and devoted himself to
ambition.[61]
Footnote 61:
Reliquiæ Wottonianæ, p. 210.
An opportunity was soon found of bringing him again before the King,
under a more advantageous aspect than in his black suit, and those who
sought his advancement henceforth supplied him with the means of
appearing conformably to the fashion of the day, by affording him a
present income far above his poor patrimonial inheritance.[62] Thus
assisted, the young man prepared to meet the King at Cambridge, where,
in the month of March, 1614-15, the honour of a royal visit was
conferred upon that University.
Footnote 62:
Fuller’s Worthies of Leicestershire.
The influence of the Somerset family had, in a great measure, procured
this distinction to Cambridge, in preference to Oxford; for the Earl of
Suffolk, the father of the Countess of Somerset, had been chosen
Chancellor of Cambridge during the preceding year;[63] and to honour
this nobleman,—who had also been recently constituted Lord Treasurer, an
office from which he was eventually degraded—James announced that he
purposed to fulfil an intention which he had held for some years, but
had deferred, as the good fortune of Villiers decreed, until this
critical period. For a powerful cabal was now concentrated against the
hateful sway of this branch of the Howard family, and Villiers was the
anchor on which the hopes of the adverse party rested.
Footnote 63:
1613. To the sagacity of the Earl of Suffolk, and not to that of James
I., was the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot ascribed. See Winwood’s
Memorials, vol. ii., p. 186.
On the seventh day of the month, King James made his entry into
Cambridge with as much solemnity and as great a concourse of “gallants
and great men as the hard weather and extremely foul ways would permit.”
He was accompanied by Prince Charles, who had previously visited the
University; and these royal personages were met at the boundaries of the
town by the Corporation, and welcomed by the Recorder with an address
setting forth the loyalty of the Mayor and Burgesses of Cambridge, and
insisting upon the antiquity of the town, which “was builded ‘as
historians testifie, and as these worthy personages now certified,’
before Christ’s Incarnation, with a castle, tower, and walls of defence,
by Duke Cantaber.” “The Muses,” pursued the Recorder, “did branch from
Athens to Cambridge, and were lovinglie lodged in the houses of citizens
until ostles and halls were erected for them without endowments.” Two
cups were then presented, one to the King, the other to Prince Charles,
who was addressed as “a peerless and most noble Prince, our morning
starre,” and the procession moved onwards.[64] Among the gallants who
followed through the “foul ways” of the outskirts of the town was George
Villiers, no longer in his black and worn suit, but decked out with all
the advantages which the pride and ambition of his mother could command.
It is worthy of remark that at that time a plan for forming a public
library at Cambridge, similar to that at Oxford, was entertained by the
Heads of the College. The scheme was abandoned until many years
afterwards, when it was adopted by the very youth who passed along amid
a throng of others far more wealthy and important than himself, when he
was himself Chancellor of the University.[65]
Footnote 64:
Winwood’s Memorials, vol. ii., p. 48.
Footnote 65:
It was checked by the death of the Duke of Buckingham, whose project
had been to erect a Library between the Regent’s Walk and Caius
College. See Nichols’s Progresses, p. 40, note.
The whole body of the collegians was drawn out in their appropriate
costume, in order to receive the King. From some of the regulations for
this occasion, it appears that the habits of the University were not at
that time the most refined, nor their taste in attire the most modest.
It was found necessary not only to forbid the graduates, scholars, and
students of the University to frequent ale-houses and taverns during His
Majesty’s sojourn, but also not to presume to take tobacco in St.
Marie’s Church, or in Trinity College Hall “upon pain of expulsion.”
These young gentlemen, too, were prone to indulge themselves in strange
“pekadivelas, vast bands, huge cuffs, shoe-roses, tufts, locks, and
topps of hair,” unbecoming that modesty and carriage suitable to the
students of so renowned a University, and it was therefore determined to
enforce the dress fixed by Statute, upon a penalty of 6s. 8d. for every
default; and in case of contempt of this warning, of a month’s
imprisonment.[66] Thus restricted, the undergraduates and their
superiors appeared in all the advantage of academic attire, and the King
and his youthful son, passing through their well-disciplined ranks,
proceeded to Trinity College, where they were domiciled.
Footnote 66:
Nichols’s Progresses, p. 45.
One or two circumstances were wanting, nevertheless, to complete the
magnificence of this reception:—the first was the presence of the Queen,
who was not invited—an omission for which the Chancellor, and not the
University, was blamed—another, the scarcity of ladies, there being only
seven present, and those entirely of the Howard family. Such was the
pride or policy of that haughty and rapacious faction.
The Countess of Arundel, wife of Philip, Earl of Arundel, the
half-brother of the Chancellor, was one of the seven present on that
occasion. She was scarcely less exalted as the wife of the great Earl of
Arundel, than as the daughter of Gilbert, Earl of Shrewsbury, Earl
Marshal of England, whose co-heiress she was. Not only were her
possessions large, but her virtues great; she was beloved for her
excellence of character and conjugal virtues. Upon this lady’s brow, as
she passed along, a cloud of sadness may perhaps have been traced for
the loss of her son, James, Lord Maltravers, a young nobleman of great
promise, whose death, happening a few years previously, she had
incessantly deplored. By her side came the Lady Elizabeth Grey, her
sister.
The Countess of Suffolk was, of course, an object of considerable
attention. This lady was the second wife of the Chancellor, and was
equally celebrated for her beauty and her rapacity. At the time of her
marriage with the Earl of Suffolk she was a widow, having been united to
the eldest son of Lord Rich. Her birth was not noble, but she had
inherited a portion of the estate of her father, Sir Henry Knevit, a
Wiltshire Knight. The Countess acquired a great ascendancy over her
husband, and there is too much reason to suppose that he succumbed to
the influence of her talents and her beauty, and, although he did not
share in the fruits of her peculation, permitted her to indulge her
avarice. So notorious were the bribes of which this lady accepted, that
Lord Bacon compared her to an exchange woman who kept a shop, in which
Sir John Bingley exclaimed “What do ye lack?” At length the small-pox
destroyed the beauty which had been so fatal to the Countess’s peace and
honour, and which had wrought much misery and disgrace to all who
yielded to its influence.
But if the career of this busy female courtier were reprehensible, that
of her young and beautiful daughter, the Countess of Somerset, who
accompanied her mother that day, was tinged with guilt of a far deeper
dye. It is difficult, in modern times, to realise to one’s mind two such
women—the one availing herself of her high station and her personal
attractions to enrich her family at the expense of every delicate
sentiment and lofty principle; the other infuriated by a mad passion,
until every womanly attribute departed, and the vengeance of a fiend
alone characterised her dark career. The Countess of Somerset was, at
this time, still in the bloom of her youth, being about twenty-four
years of age, and the crimes which afterwards brought infamy and
retribution on her, were then known only to her corrupt and remorseless
heart. The Court, to use the expression of a contemporary historian,
“was her nest, and she was hatched up by her mother, whom the sour
breath of the age had already tainted, from whom the young lady might
take such a tincture, that ease, greatness, and Court glories would more
disdain and impress on her, than any way wear out and diminish.” Such
was the loveliness of this guilty woman, that those who saw her face
might, it has been said, “challenge nature for harbouring so wicked a
heart under so sweet and bewitching a countenance:”[67] nor were the
arts fashionable at the time forgotten; they heightened the attractions
of the Countess of Somerset. “All outward adornments,” we are told, “to
present beauty in her full glory, were not wanting;” among the rest,
yellow starch, “the invention and foyl of jaundiced complexions, with
great cut-work bands and piccadillies,” were adopted by the unhappy Lady
Somerset, and were, doubtless, produced on this, as upon other festive
occasions.
Footnote 67:
Wilson’s Reign of James I., p. 63.
The Countess of Suffolk and her retinue proceeded to Magdalen College,
which had been founded by Lord Chancellor Audley, the grandfather of the
Earl of Suffolk.[68]
Footnote 68:
Lord Audley is said to have given this College the name of Magdalen,
or rather Maudleyn, in allusion to his own name, adding one letter at
the beginning and at the end. M AUDLEY N. See Nichols’s Progresses, p.
45, note.
The youngest daughter of the Earl of Suffolk accompanied her sister and
mother. This was Catherine, married to William Cecil, second Earl of
Salisbury. By this union long enmities between the two families of
Howard and of Percy were partially reconciled; a daughter of the house
of Cecil marrying eventually Algernon Percy, Earl of Northumberland,
“whose blood,” it had been said by the Earl of Salisbury, “would not
mingle in a basin,” so inborn was the hereditary hatred between the two
races. This union had been one of policy alone; for the Earl of
Salisbury inherited no traits of his ancestry but their titles; and his
weak and abject nature revived the remembrance of only the worst parts
of his father’s character; “a man,” adds Clarendon, who sums up the
whole, “of no words, except in hunting and hawking.”
Lady Howard of Walden, the daughter of George Hume, Earl of Dunbar, and
wife of the eldest son of the Earl of Suffolk, and Lady Howard, the wife
of Thomas, Lord Howard of Charlton, his second son, completed the family
array. The latter of these two ladies was a Cecil, but her claims to
celebrity rest chiefly upon her being the mother of Lady Elisabeth
Howard, who married the great Dryden; her two sons, Sir Robert and
Edward Howard, enjoyed some portion of literary fame in their day.[69]
Footnote 69:
Brydge’s Peers of England, p. 260.
The first night’s entertainment at Cambridge was a comedy, acted by the
gownsmen of St. John’s College. This was a sort of burlesque, ridiculing
Sir Edward Radcliffe, the King’s physician; it proved, according to
public opinion, but “a lean argument, and though it was larded with
pretty shows at the beginning and end, and with somewhat too broad
speech for such a presence, still it was dry.”
On the following evening there was performed in Clare Hall the famous
play of “Ignoramus” a burlesque. This production was attributed to
George Buggle, a Fellow of Clare Hall. It was written and spoken in
Latin, nor was it even printed at the time when it agitated the polite
and learned society by which its points and satire were so keenly
enjoyed. The manuscript was, it appears, destroyed; and it was not until
ten years after the death of its reputed author that it was thought
prudent to print it, having been taken down from the mouth of the
author. The design of this popular comedy was to ridicule the Common
Law, and no one enjoyed the satire more than the august individual whose
office it was to uphold the laws. Never, it has been said, did anything
fascinate the King’s attention or suit his taste so much as this
representation, and he commanded several repetitions by the same
performers. “Ignoramus” was not, however, readily forgiven or forgotten
by that body whom it attacked; and, whilst the King and his Court
derived the most lively pleasure from its mingled invective and
burlesque, the lawyers were greatly offended by its pungent satire.
Successive publications afterwards appeared, taxing the justice of this
attack upon the legal profession, and written with much bitterness.
During the performance of this play, the King’s attention was not,
however, wholly riveted upon “Ignoramus” and his associates; among the
audience in Clare Hall, George Villiers, decorated with all the care
that his mother’s pride and affection could suggest, appeared,
resplendent in beauty. “The King,” to use the expression of a
contemporary writer, “fell into admiration of him,” so that he became
confounded between his delight at the appearance of Villiers and the
pleasure of the play. To both of these contending emotions, James, with
his usual absence of dignity, gave a free expression. “This,” says Roger
Coke, “set the heads of the courtiers at work how to get Somerset out of
favour, and to bring Villiers in.”[70]
Footnote 70:
Coke’s Detention, p. 82.
Ample time was permitted during the tedious performance for the King to
observe the young adventurer who sought his favour, and for busy
politicians to build upon the absurd partiality of the weak old King.
The representation of “Ignoramus,” with its dull pedantic jests, and its
personalities, long since passed away and forgotten, lasted eight hours;
the second time it commenced at eight in the evening, and was not
concluded until one in the morning.
The performers were chiefly Fellows of Clare Hall and of Queen’s
College, and their efforts met with the greatest applause. Thus, in
Bishop Corbet’s “Grave Poem,” written in 1614, to celebrate the
occasion, it is said:—
Nothing did win more praise of mine,
Than did these actors, most divine.
And, alluding to the clerical character of these much-approved
individuals, he adds:—
Their play had sundry wise factors,
A perfect diocess of actors
Upon the stage, for I am sure that
There was both bishop, pastor, curate,
Nor was their labour light and small,
The charge of some was pastoral.[71]
Footnote 71:
Nichols’s Progress of James I., vol. iii., p. 70.
Several of the younger men who figured on the stage of Clare Hall were
associated in their subsequent career with some of the most important
events of the period in which they lived. At the last hour, a boy of
thirteen was called upon to act the part of Surda, in which it was
necessary to assume female attire. This youth was, even at that early
age, an undergraduate; and he was thus summoned hastily to learn a new
part in addition to that of Venica, which had been allotted to him, from
the scruples of his tutor, the Rev. Mr. Fairclough, who had been
selected to undertake the character of Surda on account of his low
stature; but Mr. Fairclough was a Puritan, and, deeming it a species of
deception to wear women’s clothes, abjured the degrading task. The boy
who now supplied his place was Spencer Compton, afterwards Lord Compton,
an early favourite and attendant of Charles I., whom he accompanied into
Spain. His loyal exertions in the cause of his unfortunate master shed,
in after life, honour upon his name. Mr. Fairclough was not the only
person who objected to lower the dignity of man’s estate by the
assumption of a woman’s gown. The Head of Emmanuel College, then
esteemed a Puritanical house, objected also to one of its undergraduates
accepting the part of a girl; but these scruples were overruled by the
guardian of the youth.[72]
Footnote 72:
Sir Walter Mildmay, the founder of Emmanuel College, being at the
Court of Queen Elizabeth, she said to him:—“Sir Walter, I hear you
have erected a Puritan Foundation.” “No, madam,” he replied; “far be
it from me to countenance anything contrary to your established laws;
but I have set an acorn, and when it becomes an oak, God alone knows
what will be the fruit thereof.”—Fuller’s History of Cambridge, p.
147.
In the “Grave Poem” of Bishop Corbet, Emmanuel College is thus
satirised:—
But th’ poor house of Emmanuel
Would not be like proud Jesabel,
Nor shew herself before the King,
An hypocrite, or painted thing;
[And images she would have none,
For fear of superstition, or]
But that the ways might seem more fair,
Conceived a tedious mile of prayer.[73]
Footnote 73:
Nichols’s Progresses, vol. iii., p. 67.
The plot of “Ignoramus” was borrowed from the Trappolaria of
Giamballista Porta, an Italian dramatist, but the characters were taken
from life. “Ignoramus” was designed to personify Mr. Francis Brakyn, the
Recorder of Cambridge, who had rendered himself obnoxious to the
University in a dispute about precedence between the Mayor of the town
and the Vice-Chancellor. Mr. Brakyn was a barrister, and the ridicule
cast upon him was as much enjoyed by the dignified heads of houses as by
noisy undergraduates.[74]
Footnote 74:
A list of the _dramatis personæ_ in the play of “Ignoramus” is
preserved in Emmanuel College; it was once in the possession of
Archbishop Sancroft; and an elaborate edition of the play, with
valuable notes, has been printed by T.S. Hawkins.
Amongst the performers was John Cole, afterwards Earl of Clare,
distinguished for his moderation in the Civil Wars. The youth who was
nearly being precluded from acting by the tutors of Emmanuel College,
was the Rev. John Towers, afterwards Bishop of Peterborough, one of the
twelve loyal Prelates imprisoned by Parliament. Fuller says of him, “He
was a great actor when young, and a great sufferer when old, dying rich
only in children and patience.” “Ignoramus” was translated into English
in the year 1678, and a mutilated version of it was produced at the
Royal Theatre in the same year, called the “English Lawyer.” This was
written by Edward Ravenscroft.[75]
Footnote 75:
Nichols’s Progresses of James I., vol iii., p. 50.
Another play, entitled “Albumazar,” followed the successful
representation of “Ignoramus;” this, and a Latin pastoral, were the
“action or invention of Trinity College, and met with a gracious
approval from the King, who, even at his repasts, was now heard loudly
to extol Cambridge above Oxford; and yet an awkward incident occurred
during the royal visit. During the acts and disputations, in which James
delighted, the University orator addressed Prince Charles, who stood
beside his father, as Prince Jacobissime Carole;” it was also said that
he called him Jacobule, too, which, observed an eye-witness, “neither
pleased the King nor anybody else.”[76] Buckingham, who possibly
understood no Latin, must have found the dramas, the pastoral, the acts
and disputations insufferably tedious; but he was now the tool of a
party, and therefore, doubtless, remained to witness all these various
exhibitions, little dreaming that one day he was to be installed
Chancellor of that very University. Dark and contemptuous looks were
discerned on the faces of sundry jealous Oxonians, who had gone to see
and to ridicule their rivals, the Cambridge men, who were continually,
as a contemporary relates, “applauding themselves, and the Oxford men as
fast condemning and detracting all that was done.”[77] The best comment
upon the exploits of the boastful collegians was that returned by Mr.
Corbet, afterwards Bishop Corbet, who, “being seriously dealt withal by
some friends to say what he thought, answered that he had left his
malice and judgment at home, and came thither only to commend.”[78]
Footnote 76:
Nichols’s Progresses, vol. iii., p. 59.
Footnote 77:
Nichols’s Progresses. Letter from Mr. Chamberlain to Mr. D. Carleton,
State Papers, Domestic, James I.
Footnote 78:
Ibid.
King James, however, expressed such unqualified admiration of what he
saw, that fears were entertained by those who had had to entertain him
that he would have repeated his visit privately; apprehensions were felt
also lest he should order the performers of the “Ignoramus,” a band
chiefly composed of ghostly preachers and learned bachelors of divinity,
to repair to London; but the panic was groundless, and neither of these
dreaded events took place. Great, indeed, was the expense of the
reception and provision considered suitable to the grandeur of the
occasion. Nor was it long before events still more ruinous to the Earl
of Suffolk and his family than their enormous expenditure to grace the
King’s visit at Cambridge scandalized the public mind. The jealousy of
the Earl of Somerset was now aroused by the favour shown at Court to his
young rival. Slight occurrences warned the sinking favourite of his own
unpopularity. An entertainment was given at Baynard’s Castle by three
great families—those of Herbert, Hertford, and Bedford; as the company
were repairing to the appointed place, they discerned Somerset’s
portrait hanging out of a limner’s shop. Sanderson, the historian, who
happened to be a bystander, took occasion to inquire “on what score that
was done?” The reply was, “that this meeting at Baynard’s Castle was to
discover;” for there it appears the scheme to elevate Villiers was
concocted by those who viewed with disgust the ascendancy of Somerset.