Castle, till the Raid of Ruthven took him from his natural protectors,
and placed him in the hands of Gowrie. His escape thence exhibited
both boldness and judgment in a youth of sixteen; and when Frederick
II., of Denmark, gave him the choice of the two Danish princesses for
a wife, no one thought that so gallant a king was undeserving of
the compliment. When it was, however, discovered that the royal Dane
required James either to accept a daughter or surrender the Orkney
and Shetland islands, as property illegally wrested from Denmark,
men began to look upon the Danish king as guilty of uncommonly sharp
practice toward the sovereign of the Scots. A world of trouble ensued,
which it is not my business to relate, although were I inclined to be
discursive--which, of course, I am _not_--I might find great temptation
to indulge therein, upon this very subject. Suffice it then to say,
that a world of trouble ensued before James made his selection, and
agreed to take, rather than prayed to have granted to him, the hand of
Elizabeth, the elder daughter of Frederick II.
How the intrigues of Queen Elizabeth prevented this marriage I must
not pause to relate. The Danish Princess espoused a reigning duke, and
James was on the point of engaging himself to Katherine of Navarre,
when the offer of the hand of Anne the younger daughter of Frederick
being made to him, coupled with the alternative of his either taking
Anne, or losing the islands, he “prayed and advised with God, for a
fortnight,” and wisely resolved to wed with “pretty Anne.”
The matter progressed anything but smoothly for a time. At length,
after endless vexations, the young princess was married by proxy, in
August, 1589, and set sail, soon after, for Scotland under convoy of a
dozen gallant ships, and with prospects of a very unpleasant voyage.
A terrible storm blew bride and convoy on to the inhospitable coast of
Norway, and although two or three witches were executed for raising
this storm out of very spite, the matter was not mended. Disaster
pursued the fleet, and death overtook several who sailed in it, till
the coast of Scotland was fairly in sight. The Scotch witches, or
perhaps other causes not less powerful than witches, in those seas,
in the fall of the year, then blew the fleet back to the mouth of the
Baltic. “I was commissioned,” said Peter Munch, the admiral, “to land
the young queen in Scotland; it is clear, therefore, that I can not
return with her to Denmark. I will put her majesty ashore, therefore,
in Norway.” The conclusion was not logically attained, but the fact
was as we have described it. Letters reached James announcing to him
the deplorable condition in which his queen was lying at Upslo, on the
Norwegian coast--storm-bound and half-famished. After many projects
considered for her relief, James resolved to set forth and seek the
princess himself. It is in this passage of his life that we have an
illustration of the degree in which he surpassed all other kings who
have sat on the English throne--as a gallant knight _es amours_.
Toward the end of October, of this year, in the very stormiest portion
of the season, James went, privately, on board a diminutive vessel,
with a very reluctant party of followers and confederates, leaving
behind him, for the information of the astonished lieges, a promise
to be back in twenty days; and for their especial profit, a solemn
exhortation to live peaceably till he arrived again among them, with
his wife.
The knightly lover landed in Norway, early in November, and made his
way along the coast, now on foot, now on horseback anon in sledges, and
occasionally in boats or on shipboard, until with infinite pains, and
in a sorry plight, he reached Upslo, to no one’s astonishment more than
the queen’s, about the 19th of November. Accoutred and travel-soiled as
he was, he proceeded at once to her presence. He was so well-pleased
with the fair vision before him, that he made as if he would at once
kiss the queen, who stood gazing at him. “It is not the form of my
country,” said pretty Anne, not very violently holding her head aside.
“It’s good old Scottish fashion,” said the young king: and it was
observed that in less than an hour, Anne had fallen very completely
into the pleasant mode from beyond seas, and quite forgotten the forms
of Denmark.
The young couple were duly married in person, on the Sunday following
the arrival of James. The latter, like any Paladin of romance, had
perilled life, and contended with almost insurmountable obstacles, in
order to win the royal lady after a less easy fashion than marks the
wooing and wedding of kings generally. Such a couple deserved to have
the merriest of marriage banquets, but while such a storm was raging
without as Norway itself had never seen since the sea-wind first blew
over her, such a tempest was raised within, by the Scottish nobles, on
a question of precedence, that the king himself was chiefly occupied
in soothing the quarrellers, and only half succeeded in accomplishing
the desired end. Added to this was the prospect of a long winter
among the melancholy huts of Upslo. James, however, again exhibited
the spirit of a knight of more than ordinary gallantry. He not only
resolved that the young queen should not be thus imprisoned amid the
Norway snows till May, but he resolved to conduct her himself across
the Norwegian Alps, through Sweden, to her Danish home. The idea of
such a journey seemed to partake of insanity, but James proceeded to
realize it, by means of method and judgment. He first performed the
perilous journey alone, as far as Sweden, and finding it practicable,
returned for his wife, and departed a second time, in her company. Much
peril but small accident accompanied them on their way, and when the
wedding party arrived safely at Cronenburg, toward the end of January,
the marriage ceremony was not only repeated for the third time--to
despite the witches who can do nothing against the luck that is said
to lie in odd numbers, but there was a succession of marriage feasts,
at which every gentleman drank deeper and deeper every day, until such
uproar and dissension ensued that few kept their daggers in sheath
except those who were too drunk to draw them. That all were not in the
more disgraceful state, or were not continually in that condition, may
be conjectured from the fact that James paid a visit to Tycho Brahe,
and conversed with the astronomer in his observatory, in very vigorous
Latin. The king, however, was not sorry to leave old Denmark, and when
a Scottish fleet appeared off Cronenburg, to convey his bride and
himself homeward, he could no more be persuaded to stay a day longer,
than Tycho Brahe could be persuaded that Copernicus was correct in
dislodging the earth from its Ptolemaic stand-point as centre of the
solar system. The bridal party set sail on the 21st of April, 1590, and
was safely moored in Leith harbor on May-day. A pretty bride could not
have arrived at a more appropriate season. The royal knight and his
lady deserved all the happiness that could be awarded to the gallantry
of the one and the beauty of the other. But they did not escape the
trials common to much less dignified couples; and here the knightly
character of James may be said to terminate. Exemplary as he had been
as a lover, and faithful as he continued to be as a husband, he was in
all other respects, simply a shrewd man; and not indeed always _that_.
There is little of this quality in a husband who begins and continues
his married life with an indifference upon the matter of borrowing.
With James it was silver spoons to-day, silk stockings to-morrow, and
marks and moidores from any one who would give him credit. The old
French knight who drank broth out of his own helmet rather than sip it
from a borrowed bowl, was moved at least by a good principle. James
rather agreed with Carlo Buffone, in Jonson’s “Every Man out of his
Humor,” that “it is an excellent policy to owe much in these days.” A
policy which, unfortunately, is still deemed excellent, in spite of the
ruin which attends its practice.
The grave chivalry impressed on the face and features of Charles I., is
strikingly alluded to by Ben Jonson in his Masque of “The Metamorphosed
Gypsies;” for example:--
“His brow, his eye, and ev’ry mark of state,
As if he were the issue of each grace,
And bore about him _both his fame and fate_.”
Echard says of him, that he was perfect in all knightly exercises,
“vaulting, riding the great horse, running at the ring, shooting with
cross-bows, muskets, and sometimes great guns; that if sovereignty had
been the reward of excellences in those arts, he would have acquired a
new title to the crown, being accounted the most celebrated marksman,
and the most perfect manager of the great horse, of any in the three
kingdoms.”
It was with reference to the expression of the face, alluded to
by Jonson, that Bernini the sculptor said, on executing the bust
of Charles, that he had never seen any face which showed so much
greatness, and withal such marks of sadness and misfortune. The knight,
Sir Richard Bulstrode, tells us, that when the bust was being carried
across Greenwich Park, it suffered, what Moore calls on another
occasion, some “Tobit-like marks of patronage” from the sparrows.
“It was wiped off immediately,” says Charles’s good knight--“but,
notwithstanding all endeavors, it would not be gotten off, but turned
into blood.” No chevalier in poetic romance meets with more threatening
portent than the above.
The Scotch soldiers of fortune, at this period, were as good
representatives as could be found of the old knight-errant. To them,
Vittorio Siri imputes many of the misfortunes of the period. Some one
tells of an old Scottish knight exclaiming, in a year of universal
peace, “Lord, turn the world upside-down, that gentlemen may make
bread of it.” So, for the sake of furthering their trade of arms, the
Scottish, and, indeed, other mercenary men-at-arms, fanned the flame.
The words of Siri are precise on this point, for he says, “Le Leslie,
le Gordoni, le Duglas ed altri milordi della Scotia, del’ Inghilterra,
e dell’ Irlanda.”
Never had knights of romance worse fare in the dungeons of morose
magicians than they who entered the bloody lists, where was fought out
the quarrel between royalty and republicanism. “I heard a great officer
say,” remarks Blount, “that during the siege of Colchester, he dined at
an entertainment, where the greatest delicacies were roast horseflesh.”
The warlike spirit was, probably, never stronger than in this reign.
It is well illustrated by Hobbes, who remarks that, the Londoners and
citizens of other county capitals, who fought against Charles, “had
that in them which, in time of battle, is more conducing to victory,
than valor and experience both together; and that was _spite_.”
But it is as a lover that Charles I. is chiefly distinguished when we
consider him solely to discover his knightly qualities. In his early
days he was strongly impressed by romance, and possessed of romantic
feelings. This fact is best illustrated by his conduct in connection
with the Spanish Match; and to this matter we will devote a brief
space, and go back to the time when James was king, and Charles was
Prince of Wales.
THE SPANISH MATCH.
This unhappy and ill-advised affair, will ever remain one of the
darkest blemishes on the uniformly pacific but inglorious reign of the
royal pupil of Buchanan;--the whole detail is an ungrateful one of
intrigue and ill-faith, and however justly Buckingham may be accused
of exerting his baleful influence to dissolve the treaty, and that he
did so in the wantonness of his power is now past doubt; the disgrace
which should have attached to him, still hangs round the memory of the
timid king and his weak yet gallantly-disposed son. I am more inclined
to allow a high-mindedness of feeling to Charles than to his father.
The king, who supposed the entire art of reigning lay in dissimulation,
may not be charged with an over-scrupulous nicety in his observations
of the rules of fair dealing; but the young prince, at this period,
had the sentiments without the vanity of a knight-errant, his only
error was in the constitutional weakness which bent to the arrogance
of Buckingham’s somewhat stronger mind. With such a disposition, the
favorite found it as easy to persuade Charles to break off the match,
as he had with facility advised him to the romantic journey--as rash
as it was impolitic. It would be almost an unprofitable occupation to
search for Buckingham’s motives, they are quite unattainable, and,
like hunting the hare in a wagon, conjecture might lead us on, but we
should, at every step, be farther from our object. It is the received
opinion, that the prince’s visit was begun in caprice; and with caprice
it ended. Buckingham viewed it, perhaps, at first as a mere adventure,
and he terminated it, because his wounded pride suggested to him that
_he_ was not the favorite actor in the piece. His terms were, “Ego
et rex meus,” and a less-distinguished station would not satisfy the
haughty insolence of Somerset’s succession in the precarious favor of
the king.
Our British Solomon who willed, but could not restore, the Palatinate
to his son-in-law, had long been accustomed to consider the union of
Charles with the Infanta, as the only available means left by which he
could secure the object he had so much at heart. He was not made of
the stern stuff, which in other kings would have set a whole army in
motion. That “sagacious simpleton” was never in so turbulent a vein.
His most powerful weapon was an ambassador, and the best of these were
but sad specimens of diplomacy, and thus, weak as he was, both in the
cabinet and field, we may guess at his rapture when the marriage was
agreed to by the Court of Spain--the restoration of the Palatinate
talked of as a wedding present, and the bride’s dowry two millions of
eight.
It was at the expiration of five years of negotiation, that James at
length saw the end of what had hitherto been an ever-continuing vista.
The dispensation of the Pope, an indispensable preliminary to the union
of a Most Catholic princess, with a Protestant heir-apparent, had been
held up as a difficulty; James immediately loosened the reins with
which he had held in the Catholic recusants--he set them at liberty,
for the good of the reformed religion, _he said_; then apologized
to his subjects for having so set them at liberty--for the benefit
of Protestantism; and finally, he exulted in having accomplished so
honorable an end for England, as making her the first to enter the
path of moderation. He, moreover, sent to Spain, Digby, the good and
great Lord Bristol, and while _he_ was negotiating with Philip IV., the
Infanta’s brother, George Gage, “a polite and prudent gentleman,” was
employed at Rome to smooth down the obstacles which the zeal of the
Fourteenth Gregory raised in behalf of his mother-church. The parties
were a long time at issue as to what period the presumed offspring of
this marriage should remain under the guardianship of their mother;
that is to say, under the Catholic tuition of her confessors. The
period of “fourteen years,” was suggested by the Pope, and agreed to
by the Court of Spain. Now, George Gage, we are told, was both polite
and prudent; George made some slight objection. The father of the
faithful and the descendant of Roderic now named twelve years as the
stipulated period of maternal or ecclesiastical rule. Mr. Gage, without
losing sight of his prudence, retained all his civility; he treated
the Pope courteously. Gregory, in return, granted the dispensation,
condescended even to agree to the term of nine years, and merely asked
a few privileges for the Catholic suite of the Infanta, which were
not hard to grant, and would have been impolitic to refuse. James’s
advisers counselled him to demand the restitution of the Palatinate by
a preliminary treaty. This he wisely refrained from doing; he saw that
his desired object was considered inseparable from the marriage, and
he was content to trust to the existing treaty which, probably, would
not have been changed, had he so expressed his wish. There is a curious
item in all these diplomatic relations; beside the public treaty
there were various private articles, passed between and signed by the
parties concerned, agreeing that more toleration should be granted to
the papists, and that more of the penal laws against them should be
repealed than was expressed in the public document. There appears also
to have existed a yet more private treaty, of even more restricted
circulation, whereby James was not to be required to act up to the very
letter of that article, by which his royal word pledged what was then
considered--emancipation to the Catholics.
Thus far had proceeded this tedious affair of state; the nation was
beginning to consider its accomplishment with diminished aversion,
and a few months would have brought a Spanish Princess of Wales to
England, when all this goodly and fair-wrought edifice was destroyed by
the temerity of the man who was the evil spirit of the age. Charles’s
youth and inexperience readily lent a willing ear to the glowing
description which Buckingham recounted of the celebrated journey.
His young melancholy was excited into cheerfulness, when he dwelt on
the hoped-for and surprised rapture with which his destined bride
would receive a prince whose unusual gallantry spurned at the laws of
political interest, and whose chivalric feeling had broken through
state negotiation, and, despising to woo by treaty, had brought him to
her feet to win her by his merits. His blood warmed at the popularity
he would acquire by such a step, from a nation famed for its knightly
devotion to the fair, and whose watch-word, according to one of its
poets, has ever been, “love and the ladyes.” Charles would have been
a dull lover, indeed, had he only, like other princes, thought his
bride not worth the fetching. He would have been doubly dull and
undeserving had he paused to consider the bearings, the risks, or the
probable absurdity of the act. There was a certain political danger;
but Charles, young, and a lover, refused to see it; he was tearing
the bonds which might bind more ignoble princes, but were too weak
to confine him; he rent the shackles which proxies force on their
principals, and stood in his own princely strength to win a prize which
has often lost the world.
The only step subsequent to the prince’s acquiescence, was to obtain
the king’s permission, a matter of little difficulty. They attacked
the good-natured and simple James at a moment when his jovial humor
would not have denied a greater boon. He had sense, however, to see
something of the impropriety of the absence of Charles and Buckingham
from England; but his obtusity of intellect was overpowered by the
craft of his favorite, and the petitioners at length obtained his
unadvised sanction to the wild enterprise, less by the strength of
their arguments, than the persisting urgency of its expression. The
prince and his companion further obtained a promise of secrecy; and
they saw nothing more wanting than the ordinary preparations for
their departure. Left to his own reflections, however, the poor king
reproached his own weakness; he saw with terror that his subjects would
not readily forgive him for committing so invaluable a pledge into the
hands of a Catholic sovereign, who might detain Charles in order to
enforce new exactions or demands; and with equal terror he saw that
even success could not possibly justify the means; for there was no
advantage to be obtained, and no unprejudiced censurer would consider
the freak otherwise than as one played for the gratification of the
will of the duke, and of an enthusiastic prince, whose abstract idea of
chivalrous love had overcome his character for prudence.
There ensued, on the return of Charles and Buckingham to the
royal presence for despatches, a melancholy scene. There were the
objurgations and schoolboy blubbering of the monarch, the insolent
imperiousness of the favorite, and the silent tears and submission
of the prince. The audacious threats of the duke wrung from James
the assent which Buckingham required--a second permission for their
journey. A knight, Sir Francis Cottington, the prince’s secretary, and
Endymion Porter, a gentleman of the bedchamber, were selected as the
attendants of the Prince. The duke was, however, also to be accompanied
by his master of the horse, a man of knight’s degree, Sir Richard
Graham. There was a recapitulation of the crying scene when the two
former gentlemen were appointed, for Sir Francis boldly pointed out the
danger of the proceeding. Charles’s countenance showed his displeasure;
but Buckingham was completely carried away by his overwhelming passion.
James cried, the duke swore, and the king had nothing left to do, but
to wish them God speed on their amorous and knight-errant mission.
There is a work, known to many and read by few, the “Epistolæ
Howelianæ,” consisting of a collection of familiar letters on many
subjects, by a certain James Howell. The author was a cadet of a noble
family, several members of which had been on the roll of knighthood. He
pushed his fortunes with all the vigor of an aspiring younger brother.
His letters exhibit him as agent to a glass factory at Vienna--a
tutor--a companion--a clerk--secretary to an embassy--agent again,
and finally an attaché to the privy council. Master Howell, in these
epistles, continually rings the changes on the importance of attending
to the main chance; bewails the stagnation which non-employment throws
round his fortunes; or congratulates himself on the progress they
are making, through his industry. At the period of Charles’s visit
to Madrid, he was agent there for the recovery of a vessel taken
by unlawful seizure, and he contemplates the prince’s arrival with
delight, viewing him as a powerful adjunct to his cause. He complains
bitterly of the prince as showing more condescension to the needy
Spanish poor, than politeness to the accredited agent of an English
company. The agent’s honor or ruin depended on the success of his
mission, hence good Master Howell is occasionally and ill at ease.
The success of his mission, too, hung upon the happy termination
of the match; a marriage he considers as the avant-courier of his
appointments, but should some unlucky reverse prevent the end he hopes
for, why then, to use one of the worshipful agent’s most favorite
figures of speech--then “my cake is dough.” His letters are the chief
authority for what follows.
It is quite consistent with the whole character of this drama, that
the journey should be prosecuted through France. Charles and his suite
travelled incognito it is true, but Buckingham was rash enough to
introduce the prince at a court-ball in Paris, where he perhaps saw and
admired the lovely Henrietta Maria. From the gay court of France the
errant company speedily decamped, hurried rapidly toward the south,
and crossed the frontier just in time to escape the strong arm of the
governor of Bayonne, stretched out to arrest their progress.