[286] From manuscript letters of the times.
[287] Sloane MSS. 4177. Letter 317.
[288] The king had said in his speech to parliament, "I must let you
know I will not allow any of my servants to be questioned among you,
much less such as are of eminent place, and near unto me;" hence the
security of Buckingham, who showed the most perfect contempt for the
speakers who thus violently attacked him.
[289] Our printed historical documents, Kennett, Frankland, &c., are
confused in their details, and facts seem misplaced for want of
dates. They all equally copy Rushworth, the only source of our
history of this period. Even Hume is involved in the obscurity. The
king's speech was on the _eleventh_ of May. As Rushworth has not
furnished dates, it would seem that the two orators had been sent to
the Tower _before the king's speech_ to the lords.
[290] The king attended the House of Lords to explain his intentions
verbally, taking the minister with him, though under impeachment.
"Touching the matters against him," said the king, "I myself can be
a witness to clear him in every one of them."
[291] They decided on stopping all business till satisfaction was
given them, which ended in the release of Digges and Eliot in a few
days.
[292] Frankland, an inveterate royalist, in copying Rushworth, inserts
"their _pretended_ liberties;" exactly the style of catholic writers
when they mention protestantism by "la religion _pretendue
reformee_." All party writers use the same style!
[293] The strength of the popular hatred may be seen in the articles
on Buckingham and Felton in vol. ii. Satires in manuscript abounded,
and by their broad-spoken pungency rendered the duke a perfect _bete
noir_ to the people.
[294] Manuscript letter.
[295] Rushworth, i. 400. Hume, vi. 221, who enters widely into the
views and feelings of Charles.
[296] The Radicals of that day differed from ours in the means,
though not in the end. They at least referred to their Bibles, and
rather more than was required; but superstition is as mad as
atheism! Many of the puritans confused their brains with the study
of the Revelations; believing Prince Henry to be prefigured in the
Apocalypse, some prophesied that he should overthrow "the beast."
Ball, our tailor, was this very prophet; and was so honest as to
believe in his own prophecy. Osborn tells, that Ball put out money
on adventure; _i.e._, to receive it back double or treble, when
King James should be elected pope! So that though he had no money
for a loan, he had to spare for a prophecy.
This Ball has been confounded with a more ancient radical, Ball, a
priest, and a principal mover in Wat Tyler's insurrection. Our Ball
must have been very notorious, for Jonson has noticed his "admired
discourses." Mr. Gifford, without any knowledge of my account of
this tailor-prophet, by his active sagacity has rightly indicated
him.--See Jonson's Works, vol. v. p. 241.
[297] It is curious to observe that the Westminster elections, in
the fourth year of Charles's reign, were exactly of the same
turbulent character as those which we witness in our days. The duke
had counted by his interest to bring in Sir Robert Pye. The contest
was severe, but accompanied by some of those ludicrous
electioneering scenes which still amuse the mob. Whenever Sir Robert
Pye's party cried--"A Pye! a Pye! a Pye!" the adverse party would
cry--"A pudding! a pudding! a pudding!" and others--"A lie! a lie! a
lie!" This Westminster election of two hundred years ago ended as we
have seen some others; they rejected all who had urged the payment
of the loans; and, passing by such men as Sir Robert Cotton, and
their last representative, they fixed on a brewer and a grocer for
the two members for Westminster.
[298] Extract from a manuscript letter:--"On Friday last I hear, but
as a secret, that it was debated at the council-table whether our
Essex men, who refused to take press-money, should not be punished
by martial-law, and hanged up on the next tree to their dwellings,
for an example of terror to others. My lord keeper, who had been
long silent, when, in conclusion, it came to his course to speak,
told the lords, that as far as he understood the law, _none were
liable to martial law but martial men_. If these had taken
press-money, and afterwards run from their colours, they might then
be punished in that manner; but yet they were no soldiers, and
refused to be. Secondly, he thought a subsidy, new by law, could not
be pressed against his will for a foreign service; it being
supposed, in law, the service of his purse excused that of his
person, unless his own country were in danger; and he appealed to my
lord treasurer, and my lord president, whether it was not so, who
both assented it was so, though some of them faintly, as unwilling
to have been urged to such an answer. So it is thought that
proposition is dashed; and it will be tried what may be done in the
Star-chamber against these refractories."
[299] A member of the house, in James the First's time, called this
race of divines "Spaniels to the court and wolves to the people."
Dr. Mainwaring, Dr. Sibthorpe, and Dean Bargrave were seeking for
ancient precedents to maintain absolute monarchy, and to inculcate
passive obedience. Bargrave had this passage in his sermon: "It was
the speech of a man renowned for wisdom in our age, that if he were
_commanded_ to put forth to sea in a ship that had neither mast nor
tackling, he would do it:" and being asked what wisdom that were,
replied, "The wisdom must be in him that hath power to command, not
in him that conscience binds to obey." Sibthorpe, after he published
his sermon, immediately had his house burnt down. Dr. Mainwaring,
says a manuscript letter-writer, "sent the other day to a friend of
mine, to help him to all the ancient precedents he could find, to
strengthen his opinion (for absolute monarchy), who answered him he
could help him in nothing but only to hang him, and that if he lived
till a parliament, or, &c., he should be sure of a halter."
Mainwaring afterwards submitted to parliament; but after the
dissolution got a free pardon. The panic of popery was a great evil.
The divines, under Laud, appeared to approach to Catholicism; but it
was probably only a project of reconciliation between the two
churches, which Elizabeth, James, and Charles equally wished. Mr.
Cosins, a letter-writer, is censured for "superstition" in this
bitter style: "Mr. Cosins has impudently made three editions of his
prayer-book, and one which he gives away in private, different from
the published ones. An audacious fellow, whom my Lord of Durham
greatly admireth. I doubt if he be a sound protestant: he was so
blind at even-song on Candlemas-day, that he could not see to read
prayers in the minster with less than three hundred and forty
candles, whereof sixty he caused to be placed about the high altar;
besides he caused the picture of our Saviour, supported by two
angels, to be set in the choir. The committee is very hot against
him, and no matter if they trounce him." This was Cosins, who
survived the revolution, and returning with Charles the Second, was
raised to the see of Durham: the charitable institutions he has left
are most munificent.
[300] Rushworth's Collections, i. 514.
[301] I deliver this fact as I find it in a private letter; but it
is noticed in the Journals of the House of Commons, 23 Junii, 4to.
Caroli Regis. "Sir Edward Coke reporteth that they find that,
enclosed in the letter, to be unfit for any subject's ear to hear.
Read but one line and a half of it, and could not endure to read
more of it. It was ordered to be sealed and delivered into the
king's hands by eight members, and to acquaint his majesty with the
place and time of finding it; particularly that upon the reading of
one line and a half at most, they would read no more, but sealed it
up, and brought it to the House."
[302] I have since discovered, by a manuscript letter, that this
_Dr. Turner_ was held in contempt by the king; that he was ridiculed
at court, which he haunted, for his want of veracity; in a word,
that he was a disappointed courtier!
[303] This circumstance is mentioned in a manuscript letter; what
Cooke declared to the House is in Rushworth, vol. i. p. 525.
[304] I refer the critical student of our history to the duke's
speech at the council-table as it appears in Rushworth, i. 525: but
what I add respecting his personal sacrifices is from manuscript
letters. Sloane MSS. 4177. Letter 490, &c.
[305] On this subject, see note to the brief article on Buckingham
in vol. i.
[306] Curiosities of Literature, First Series, vol. iii. p. 438, ed.
1817; vol. v. p. 277, ed. 1823; vol. iii. p. 429, ed. 1824; vol. iv.
p. 148 ed. 1834; p. 301, ed. 1840, or vol. ii. p. 357, of this
edition.
[307] I find this speech, and an account of its reception, in
manuscript letters; the fragment in Rushworth contains no part of
it. I. 526. Sloane MSS. 4177. Letter 490, &c.
[308] Modern history would afford more instances than perhaps some
of us suspect. I cannot pass over an illustration of my principle,
which I shall take from two very notorious politicians--Wat Tyler
and Sir William Walworth!
Wat, when in servitude, had been beaten by his master, Richard
Lyons, a great merchant of wines, and a sheriff of London. This
chastisement, working on an evil disposition, appears never to have
been forgiven; and when this Radical assumed his short-lived
dominion, he had his old master beheaded, and his head carried
before him on the point of a spear! So Grafton tells us, to the
eternal obloquy of this arch-jacobin, who "was a crafty fellow, and
of an excellent wit, but wanting grace." I would not sully the
patriotic blow which ended the rebellion with the rebel; yet there
are secrets in history! Sir William Walworth, "the ever famous mayor
of London," as Stowe designates him, has left the immortality of his
name to one of our suburbs; but having discovered in Stowe's
"Survey," that Walworth was the landlord of the stews on the
Bank-side, which he farmed out to the Dutch _vrows_, and which Wat
had pulled down, I am inclined to suspect that private feeling first
knocked down the saucy ribald, and then thrust him through and
through with his dagger; and that there was as much of personal
vengeance as patriotism, which crushed the demolisher of so much
valuable property!
[309] I have formed my idea of Sir Francis Nethersole from some
strange incidents in his _political_ conduct, which I have read in
some contemporary letters. He was, however, a man of some eminence,
had been Orator for the University of Cambridge, agent for James I.
with the Princes of the Union in Germany, and also Secretary to the
Queen of Bohemia. He founded and endowed a free-school at Polesworth
in Warwickshire.
[310] Manuscript letter.
[311] These speeches are entirely drawn from those manuscript letters
to which I have frequently referred. Coke's may be substantially
found in Rushworth, but without a single expression as here given.
[312] The popular opinion is well expressed in the following lines
preserved in Sloane MS. 826:--
When only one doth rule and guide the ship,
Who neither card nor compass knew before,
The master pilot and the rest asleep,
The stately ship is split upon the shore;
But they awaking start up, stare, and cry,
"Who did this fault?"--"Not I,"--"Nor I,"--"Nor I."
So fares it with a great and wealthy state
Not govern'd by the master, but his mate.
[313] This last letter is printed in Rushworth, vol. i. p. 609.
[314] The king's answer is in Rushworth, vol. i. p. 613.
[315] This eloquent state paper is in Rushworth, vol. i. p. 619.
[316] This interview is taken from manuscript letters.
[317] Manuscript Letters: Lord Dorset to the Earl of Carlisle.--Sloane
MSS. 4178. Letter 519.
[318] Manuscript Letter.
[319] I have given (vol. ii. p. 336) the "Secret History of Charles
the First and his Queen," where I have traced the firmness and
independence of his character. In another article will be found as
much of the "Secret History of the Duke of Buckingham" as I have
been enabled to acquire.
[320] "To conclude," said the king; "let us not be jealous one of
the other's actions."
[321] Monday, 2nd of March, 1629.
[322] It was imagined out of doors that swords had been drawn; for a
Welsh page running in great haste, when he heard the noise, to the
door, cried out, "I pray you let hur in! let hur in! to give hur
master his sword!"--_Manuscript Letter._
[323] At the time many undoubtedly considered that it was a mere
faction in the house. Sir Symonds D'Ewes was certainly no
politician--but, unquestionably, his ideas were not peculiar to
himself. Of the last third parliament he delivers this opinion in
his Diary: "I cannot deem but the greater part of the house were
morally honest men; but these were the least guilty of the fatal
breach, being only misled by _some other Machiavelian politics, who
seemed zealous for the liberty of the commonwealth_, and by that
means, _in the moving of their outward freedom_, drew the votes of
those good men to their side."
[324] Since the publication of the present article, I have composed
my "Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles the First," in
five volumes.