before my private, the general acceptation can yield me no other
profit at this time, than doth a fair sunshine day to a sea-man after
shipwreck; and the contrary no other harm, than an outrageous tempest
after the port attained. I know that I lost the love of many, for my
fidelity towards Her,[1] whom I must still honor in the dust; though
further than the defence of her excellent person, I never persecuted
any man. Of those that did it, and by what device they did it, He that
is the Supreme Judge of all the world, hath taken the account: so as
for this kind of suffering, I must say With Seneca, "Mala opinio, bene
parta, delectat."[2] As for other men; if there be any that have made
themselves fathers of that fame which hath been begotten for them, I
can neither envy at such their purchased glory, nor much lament mine
own mishap in that kind; but content myself to say with Virgil, "Sic
vos non vobis,"[3] in many particulars. To labor other satisfaction,
were an effect of frenzy, not of hope, seeing it is not truth, but
opinion, that can travel the world without a passport. For were it
otherwise; and were there not as many internal forms of the mind, as
there are external figures of men; there were then some possibility to
persuade by the mouth of one advocate, even equity alone.
But such is the multiplying and extensive virtue of dead earth, and
of that breath-giving life which God hath cast upon time and dust, as
that among those that were, of whom we read and hear; and among those
that are, whom we see and converse with; everyone hath received a
several picture of face, and everyone a diverse picture of mind;
everyone a form apart, everyone a fancy and cogitation differing:
there being nothing wherein Nature so much triumpheth as in
dissimilitude. From whence it cometh that there is found so great
diversity of opinions; so strong a contrariety of inclinations;
so many natural and unnatural; wise, foolish, manly, and childish
affections and passions in mortal men. For it is not the visible
fashion and shape of plants, and of reasonable creatures, that makes
the difference of working in the one, and of condition in the other;
but the form internal.
And though it hath pleased God to reserve the art of reading men's
thoughts to himself: yet, as the fruit tells the name of the tree; so
do the outward works of men (so far as their cogitations are acted)
give us whereof to guess at the rest. Nay, it were not hard to express
the one by the other, very near the life, did not craft in many,
fear in the most, and the world's love in all, teach every capacity,
according to the compass it hath, to qualify and make over their
inward deformities for a time. Though it be also true, "Nemo potest
diu personam ferre fictam: cito in naturam suam residunt, quibus
veritas non subest": "No man can long continue masked in a counterfeit
behavior: the things that are forced for pretences having no ground of
truth, cannot long dissemble their own natures." Neither can any
man (saith Plutarch) so change himself, but that his heart may be
sometimes seen at his tongue's end.
In this great discord and dissimilitude of reasonable creatures, if we
direct ourselves to the multitude; "omnis honestæ rei malus judex
est vulgus": "The common people are evil judges of honest things, and
whose wisdom (saith Ecclesiastes) is to be despised": if to the better
sort, every understanding hath a peculiar judgment, by which it both
censureth other men, and valueth itself. And therefore unto me it will
not seem strange, though I find these my worthless papers torn with
rats: seeing the slothful censurers of all ages have not spared to tax
the Reverend Fathers of the Church, with ambition; the severest men
to themselves, with hypocrisy; the greatest lovers of justice,
with popularity; and those of the truest valor and fortitude, with
vain-glory. But of these natures which lee in wait to find fault, and
to turn good into evil, seeing Solomon complained long since: and
that the very age of the world renders it every day after other
more malicious; I must leave the professors to their easy ways of
reprehension, than which there is nothing of more facility.
To me it belongs in the first part of this Preface, following the
common and approved custom of those who have left the memories of
time past to after ages, to give, as near as I can, the same right to
history which they have done. Yet seeing therein I should but borrow
other men's words, I will not trouble the Reader with the repetition.
True it is that among many other benefits for which it hath been
honored, in this one it triumpheth over all human knowledge, that it
hath given us life in our understanding, since the world itself had
life and beginning, even to this day: yea, it hath triumphed over
time, which besides it nothing but eternity hath triumphed over: for
it hath carried our knowledge over the vast and devouring space of
many thousands of years, and given so fair and piercing eyes to our
mind; that we plainly behold living now (as if we had lived then) that
great world, "Magni Dei sapiens opus," "The wise work (saith Hermes)
of a great God," as it was then, when but new to itself. By it (I say)
it is, that we live in the very time when it was created: we behold
how it was governed: how it was covered with waters, and again
repeopled: how kings and kingdoms have flourished and fallen, and
for what virtue and piety God made prosperous; and for what vice and
deformity he made wretched, both the one and the other. And it is
not the least debt which we owe unto history, that it hath made us
acquainted with our dead ancestors; and, out of the depth and darkness
of the earth, delivered us their memory and fame. In a word, we may
gather out of history a policy no less wise than eternal; by the
comparison and application of other men's fore-passed miseries with
our own like errors and ill deservings. But it is neither of examples
the most lively instruction, nor the words of the wisest men, nor the
terror of future torments, that hath yet so wrought in our blind and
stupified minds, as to make us remember, that the infinite eye and
wisdom of God doth pierce through all our pretences; as to make us
remember, that the justice of God doth require none other accuser than
our own consciences: which neither the false beauty of our apparent
actions, nor all the formality, which (to pacify the opinions of men)
we put on, can in any, or the least kind, cover from his knowledge.
And so much did that heathen wisdom confess, no way as yet qualified
by the knowledge of a true God. If any (saith Euripides) "having
in his life committed wickedness, thinks he can hide it from the
everlasting gods, he thinks not well."
To repeat God's judgments in particular, upon those of all degrees,
which have played with his mercies would require a volume apart: for
the sea of examples hath no bottom. The marks, set on private men,
are with their bodies cast into the earth; and their fortunes, written
only in the memories of those that lived with them: so as they who
succeed, and have not seen the fall of others, do not fear their own
faults. God's judgments upon the greater and greatest have been left
to posterity; first, by those happy hands which the Holy Ghost hath
guided; and secondly, by their virtue, who have gathered the acts and
ends of men mighty and remarkable in the world. Now to point far off,
and to speak of the conversion of angels into devils; for ambition: or
of the greatest and most glorious kings, who have gnawn the grass of
the earth with beasts for pride and ingratitude towards God: or of
that wise working of Pharaoh, when he slew the infants of Israel,
ere they had recovered their cradles: or of the policy of Jezebel, in
covering the murder of Naboth by a trial of the Elders, according to
the Law, with many thousands of the like: what were it other, than to
make an hopeless proof, that far-off examples would not be left to the
same far-off respects, as heretofore? For who hath not observed, what
labor, practice, peril, bloodshed, and cruelty, the kings and princes
of the world have undergone, exercised, taken on them, and committed;
to make themselves and their issues masters of the world? And yet
hath Babylon, Persia, Syria, Macedon, Carthage, Rome, and the rest,
no fruit, no flower, grass, nor leaf, springing upon the face of
the earth, of those seeds: no, their very roots and ruins do hardly
remain. "Omnia quae manu hominum facta sunt, vel manu hominum
evertuntur, vel stando et durando deficiunt": "All that the hand of
man can make, is either overturned by the hand of man, or at length
by standing and continuing consumed." The reasons of whose ruins, are
diversely given by those that ground their opinions on second causes.
All kingdoms and states have fallen (say the politicians) by outward
and foreign force, or by inward negligence and dissension, or by a
third cause arising from both. Others observe, that the greatest have
sunk down under their own weight; of which Livy hath a touch: "eo
crevit, ut magnitudine laboret sua":[4] Others, That the divine
providence (which Cratippus objected to Pompey) hath set _down_ the
date and period of every estate, before their first foundation and
erection. But hereof I will give myself a day over to resolve.
For seeing the first hooks of the following story, have undertaken the
discourse of the first kings and kingdoms: and that it is impossible
for the short life of a Preface, to travel after, and overtake far-off
antiquity, and to judge of it; I will, for the present, examine
what profit hath been gathered by our own Kings, and their neighbour
princes: who having beheld, both in divine and human letters, the
success of infidelity, injustice, and cruelty; have (notwithstanding)
planted after the same pattern.
True it is, that the judgments of all men are not agreeable; nor
(which is more strange) the affection of any one man stirred up alike
with examples of like nature: but every one is touched most, with that
which most nearly seemeth to touch his own private, or otherwise best
suiteth with his apprehension. But the judgments of God are forever
unchangeable: neither is He wearied by the long process of time, and
won to give His blessing in one age, to that which He hath cursed in
another. Wherefor those that are wise, or whose wisdom if it be not
great, yet is true and well grounded, will be able to discern the
bitter fruits of irreligious policy, as well among those examples that
are found in ages removed far from the present, as in those of latter
times. And that it may no less appear by evident proof, than by
asseveration, that ill doing hath always been attended with ill
success; I will here, by way of preface, run over some examples, which
the work ensuing hath not reached.
Among our kings of the Norman race, we have no sooner passed over the
violence of the Norman Conquest, than we encounter with a singular and
most remarkable example of God's justice, upon the children of Henry
the First. For that King, when both by force, craft, and cruelty, he
had dispossessed, overreached, and lastly made blind and destroyed his
elder brother Robert Duke of Normandy, to make his own sons lords
of this land: God cast them all, male and female, nephews and nieces
(Maud excepted) into the bottom of the sea, with above a hundred and
fifty others that attended them; whereof a great many were noble and
of the King dearly beloved.
To pass over the rest, till we come to Edward the Second; it is
certain, that after the murder of that King, the issue of blood then
made, though it had some times of stay and stopping, did again break
out, and that so often and in such abundance, as all our princes of
the masculine race (very few excepted) died of the same disease. And
although the young years of Edward the Third made his knowledge of
that horrible fact no more than suspicious; yet in that he afterwards
caused his own uncle, the Earl of Kent, to die, for no other offence
than the desire of his brother's redemption, whom the Earl as then
supposed to be living; the King making that to be treated in
his uncle, which was indeed treason in himself, (had his uncle's
intelligence been true) this I say made it manifest, that he was
not ignorant of what had past, nor greatly desirous to have had it
otherwise, though he caused Mortimer to die for the same.
This cruelty the secret and unsearchable judgment of God revenged on
the grandchild of Edward the Third: and so it fell out, even to the
last of that line, that in the second or third descent they were all
buried under the ruins of those buildings, of which the mortar had
been tempered with innocent blood. For Richard the Second, who saw
both his Treasurers, his Chancellor, and his Steward, with divers
others of his counsellors, some of them slaughtered by the people,
others in his absence executed by his enemies, yet he always
took himself for over-wise to be taught by examples. The Earls of
Huntingdon and Kent, Montagu and Spencer, who thought themselves as
great politicians in those days as others have done in these: hoping
to please the King, and to secure themselves, by the murder of
Gloucester; died soon after, with many other their adherents, by the
like violent hands; and far more shamefully than did that duke. And
as for the King himself (who in regard of many deeds, unworthy of his
greatness, cannot be excused, as the disavowing himself by breach of
faith, charters, pardons, and patents): he was in the prime of his
youth deposed, and murdered by his cousin-german and vassal, Henry of
Lancaster, afterwards Henry the Fourth.
This King, whose title was weak, and his obtaining the Crown
traitorous; who brake faith with the lords at his landing, protesting
to intend only the recovery of his proper inheritance, brake faith
with Richard himself; and brake faith with all the kingdom in
Parliament, to whom he swore that the deposed King should live. After
that he had enjoyed this realm some few years, and in that time
had been set upon all sides by his subjects, and never free from
conspiracies and rebellions: he saw (if souls immortal see and discern
anythings after the bodies' death) his grandchild Henry the Sixth,
and his son the Prince, suddenly and without mercy, murdered; the
possession of the Crown (for which he had caused so much blood to
be poured out) transferred from his race, and by the issues of
his enemies worn and enjoyed: enemies, whom by his own practice he
supposed that he had left no less powerless, than the succession of
the Kingdom questionless; by entailing the same upon his own issues
by Parliament. And out of doubt, human reason could have judged no
otherwise, but that these cautious provisions of the father, seconded
by the valor and signal victories of his son Henry the Fifth, had
buried the hopes of every competitor, under the despair of all
reconquest and recovery. I say, that human reason might so have
judged, were not this passage of Casaubon also true; "Dies, hora,
momentum, evertendis dominationibus sufficit, quae adamantinis
credebantur radicibus esse fundatae:" "A day, an hour, a moment, is
enough to overturn the things, that seemed to have been founded and
rooted in adamant."
Now for Henry the Sixth, upon whom the great storm of his
grandfather's grievous faults fell, as it formerly had done upon
Richard the grandchild of Edward: although he was generally esteemed
for a gentle and innocent prince, yet as he refused the daughter of
Armagnac, of the House of Navarre, the greatest of the Princes
of France, to whom he was affianced (by which match he might have
defended his inheritance in France) and married the daughter of Anjou,
(by which he lost all that he had in France) so in condescending to
the unworthy death of his uncle of Gloucester, the main and strong
pillar of the House of Lancaster; he drew on himself and this kingdom
the greatest joint-loss and dishonor, that ever it sustained since the
Norman Conquest. Of whom it may truly be said which a counsellor of
his own spake of Henry the Third of France, "Qu'il estait tme fort
gentile Prince; mais son reigne est advenu en une fort mauvais
temps:" "He was a very gentle Prince; but his reign happened in a very
unfortunate season."
It is true that Buckingham and Suffolk were the practicers and
contrivers of the Duke's death: Buckingham and Suffolk, because the
Duke gave instructions to their authority, which otherwise under the
Queen had been absolute; the Queen in respect of her personal wound,
"spretaeque injuria formae,"[5] because Gloucester dissuaded her
marriage. But the fruit was answerable to the seed; the success to
the counsel. For after the cutting down of Gloucester, York grew up so
fast, as he dared to dispute his right both by arguments and arms;
in which quarrel, Suffolk and Buckingham, with the greatest number of
their adherents, were dissolved. And although for his breach of oath
by sacrament, it pleased God to strike down York: yet his son the Earl
of March, following the plain path which his father had trodden out,
despoiled Henry the father, and Edward the son, both of their lives
and kingdom. And what was the end now of that politic lady the Queen,
other than this, that she lived to behold the wretched ends of all her
partakers: that she lived to look on, while her husband the King, and
her only son the Prince, were hewn in sunder; while the Crown was set
on his head that did it. She lived to see herself despoiled of her
estate, and of her moveables: and lastly, her father, by rendering up
to the Crown of France the Earldom of Provence and other places, for
the payment of fifty thousand crowns for her ransom, to become a
stark beggar. And this was the end of that subtility, which Siracides
calleth "fine" but "unrighteous:" for other fruit hath it never
yielded since the world was.
And now it came to Edward the Fourth's turn (though after many
difficulties) to triumph. For all the plants of Lancaster were rooted
up, one only Earl of Richmond excepted: whom also he had once bought
of the Duke of Brittany, but could not hold him. And yet was not
this of Edward such a plantation, as could any way promise itself
stability. For this Edward the King (to omit more than many of his
other cruelties) beheld and allowed the slaughter which Gloucester,
Dorset, Hastings, and others, made of Edward the Prince in his own
presence; of which tragical actors, there was not one that escaped the
judgment of God in the same kind And he, which (besides the execution
of his brother Clarence, for none other offence than he himself had
formed in his own imagination) instructed Gloucester to kill Henry the
Sixth, his predecessor; taught him also by the same art to kill his
own sons and successors, Edward and Richard. For those kings which
have sold the blood of others at a low rate; have but made the market
for their own enemies, to buy of theirs at the same price.
To Edward the Fourth succeeded Richard the Third, the greatest master
in mischief of all that fore-went him: who although, for the necessity
of his tragedy, he had more parts to play, and more to perform in his
own person, than all the rest; yet he so well fitted every affection
that played with him, as if each of them had but acted his own
interest. For he wrought so cunningly upon the affections of Hastings
and Buckingham, enemies to the Queen and to all her kindred, as he
easily allured them to condescend, that Rivers and Grey, the King's
maternal uncle and half brother, should (for the first) be severed
from him: secondly, he wrought their consent to have them imprisoned:
and lastly (for the avoiding of future inconvenience) to have their
heads severed from their bodies. And having now brought those his
chief instruments to exercise that common precept which the Devil hath
written on every post, namely, to depress those whom they had grieved,
and destroy those whom they had depressed; he urged that argument
so far and so forcibly, as nothing but the death of the young King
himself, and of his brother, could fashion the conclusion. For he
caused it to be hammered into Buckingham's head, that, whensoever the
King or his brother should have able years to exercise their power,
they would take a most severe revenge of that cureless wrong, offered
to their uncle and brother, Rivers and Grey.
But this was not his manner of reasoning with Hastings, whose fidelity
to his master's sons was without suspect: and yet the Devil, who never
dissuades by impossibility, taught him to try him. And so he did. But
when he found by Catesby, who sounded him, that he was not fordable;
he first resolved to kill him sitting in council: wherein having
failed with his sword, he set the hangman upon him, with a weapon
of more weight. And because nothing else could move his appetite,
he caused his head to be stricken off, before he ate his dinner. A
greater judgment of God than this upon Hastings, I have never observed
in any story. For the selfsame day that the Earl Rivers, Grey, and
others, were (without trial of law, of offence given) by Hastings'
advice executed at Pomfret: I say Hastings himself in the same day,
and (as I take it) in the same hour, in the same lawless manner had
his head stricken off in the Tower of London. But Buckingham lived a
while longer; and with an eloquent oration persuaded the Londoners
to elect Richard for their king. And having received the Earldom of
Hereford for reward, besides the high hope of marrying his daughter
to the King's only son; after many grievous vexations of mind, and
unfortunate attempts, being in the end betrayed and delivered up
by his trustiest servant; he had his head severed from his body at
Salisbury, without the trouble of any of his Peers. And what success
had Richard himself after all these mischiefs and murders, policies,
and counter-policies to Christian religion: and after such time
as with a most merciless hand he had pressed out the breath of his
nephews and natural lords; other than the prosperity of so short a
life, as it took end, ere himself could well look over and discern
it? The great outcry of innocent blood, obtained at God's hands the
effusion of his; who became a spectacle of shame and dishonor, both to
his friends and enemies.
This cruel King, Henry the Seventh cut off; and was therein (no doubt)
the immediate instrument of God's justice. A politic Prince he was if
ever there were any, who by the engine of his wisdom, beat down and
overturned as many strong oppositions both before and after he wore
the Crown, as ever King of England did: I say by his wisdom, because
as he ever left the reins of his affections in the hands of his
profit, so he always weighed his undertakings by his abilities,
leaving nothing more to hazard than so much as cannot be denied it in
all human actions. He had well observed the proceedings of Louis the
Eleventh, whom he followed in all that was royal or royal-like, but
he was far more just, and begun not their processes whom he hated or
feared by the execution, as Louis did.
He could never endure any mediation in rewarding his servants, and
therein exceeding wise; for whatsoever himself gave, he himself
received back the thanks and the love, knowing it well that the
affections of men (purchased by nothing so readily as by benefits)
were trains that better became great kings, than great subjects. On
the contrary, in whatsoever he grieved his subjects, he wisely put it
off on those, that he found fit ministers for such actions. Howsoever
the taking off of Stanley's head, who set the Crown on his, and the
death of the young Earl of Warwick, son to George, Duke of Clarence,
shows, as the success also did, that he held somewhat of the errors
of his ancestors; for his possession in the first line ended in his
grandchildren, as that of Edward the Third and Henry the Fourth had
done.