THE FAVOURITES
1611-1625
[Sidenote: England and the Crown.]
The dissolution of the first Stuart Parliament marks a stage in our
constitutional history. With it the system of the Tudors came to an end.
The oneness of aim which had carried nation and government alike through
the storms of the Reformation no longer existed. On the contrary the
aims of the nation and the aims of the government were now in open
opposition. The demand of England was that all things in the realm,
courts, taxes, prerogatives, should be sanctioned and bounded by law.
The policy of the king was to reserve whatever he could within the
control of his personal will. James in fact was claiming a more personal
and exclusive direction of affairs than any English sovereign that had
gone before him. England, on the other hand, was claiming a greater
share in its own guidance than it had enjoyed since the Wars of the
Roses. Nor were the claims on either side speculative or theoretical.
Differences in the theory of government or on the relative jurisdiction
of Church and State might have been left as of old to the closet and the
pulpit. But the opposition between the Crown and the people had gathered
itself round practical questions, and round questions that were of
interest to all. Every man's conscience was touched by the question of
religion. Every man's pocket was touched by the question of taxation.
The strongest among human impulses, the passion of religious zeal and
that of personal self-interest, nerved Englishmen to a struggle with the
Crown. What gave the strife a yet more practical bearing was the fact
that James had provided the national passion with a constitutional
rallying-point. There was but one influence which could match the
reverence which men felt for the Crown, and that was the reverence that
men felt for the Parliament; nor had that reverence ever stood at a
greater height than at the moment when James finally broke with the
Houses. The dissolution of 1611 proclaimed to the whole people a breach
between two powers which it had hitherto looked upon as one. Not only
did it disperse to every corner of the realm a crowd of great landowners
and great merchants who formed centres of local opposition to the royal
system, but it carried to every shire and every borough the news that
the Monarchy had broken with the Great Council of the realm.
[Sidenote: James his own minister.]
On Cecil his failure fell like a sentence of doom. Steeped as he was in
the Tudor temper, he could not understand an age when the Tudor system
had become impossible; the mood of the Commons and the mood of the king
were alike unintelligible to him. He could see no ground for the failure
of the Great Contract save that "God had not blessed it." But he had
little time to wonder at the new forces which were rising about him, for
only a year after the dissolution, in May 1612, he died, killed by
overwork. With him died the last check on the policy of James. So long
as Cecil lived the Elizabethan tradition, weakened and broken as it
might be, lived with him. In foreign affairs there was still the
conviction that the Protestant states must not be abandoned in any fresh
struggle with the House of Austria. In home affairs there was still the
conviction that the national strength hung on the establishment of
good-will between the nation and the Crown. But traditions such as these
were no longer to hamper the policy of the king. To him Cecil's death
seemed only to afford an opportunity for taking further strides towards
the establishment of a purely personal rule. For eight years James had
borne with the check of a powerful minister. He was resolved now to have
no real minister but himself. Cecil's amazing capacity for toil, as well
as his greed of power, had already smoothed the way for such a step.
The great statesman had made a political solitude about him. Of his
colleagues some had been removed by death, some set aside by his
jealousy. Ralegh lay in prison; Bacon could not find office under the
Crown. And now that Cecil was removed, there was no minister whose
character or capacity seemed to give him any right to fill his place.
James could at last be his own minister. The treasury was put into
commission. The post of secretary was left vacant, and it was announced
that the king would be his own Secretary of State. Such an arrangement
soon broke down, and the great posts of state were again filled with men
of whose dependence James felt sure. But whoever might nominally hold
these offices, from the moment of Cecil's death the actual direction of
affairs was in the hands of the king.
[Sidenote: The Council set aside.]
Another constitutional check remained in the royal Council. As the
influence of Parliament died down during the Wars of the Roses, that of
the Council took to some extent its place. Composed as it was not only
of ministers of the Crown but of the higher nobles and hereditary
officers of state, it served under Tudor as under Plantagenet as an
efficient check on the arbitrary will of the sovereign. Even the
despotic temper of Henry VIII. had had to reckon with his Council; it
had checked act after act of Mary; it played a great part in the reign
of Elizabeth. In the administrative tradition indeed of the last hundred
years the Council had become all-important to the Crown. It brought it
in contact with public opinion, less efficiently, no doubt, but more
constantly than the Parliament itself; it gave to its acts an imposing
sanction and assured to them a powerful support; above all it provided a
body which stood at every crisis between the nation and the monarchy,
which broke the shock of any conflict, and which could stand forth as
mediator, should conflict arise, without any loss of dignity on the part
of the sovereign. But to the practical advantages or to the traditional
weight of such a body James was utterly blind. His cleverness made him
impatient of its discussions; his conceit made him impatient of its
control; while the foreign traditions which he had brought with him from
a foreign land saw in the great nobles who composed it nothing but a
possible force which might overawe the Crown. One of his chief aims
therefore had been to lessen the influence of the Council. So long as
Cecil lived this was impossible, for the practical as well as the
conservative temper of Cecil would have shrunk from so violent a change.
But he was no sooner dead than James hastened to carry out his plans.
The lords of the Council found themselves of less and less account. They
were practically excluded from all part in the government; and the whole
management of affairs passed into the hands of the king or of the
dependent ministers who from this time became mere agents of the king's
will.
[Sidenote: The Favourites.]
Such a personal rule as this, concentrating as it does the whole
business of government in a single man, requires for its actual conduct
the entire devotion of the ruler to public affairs. The work of
Ferdinand of Aragon or of Frederick the Great was the work of
galley-slaves. It was work which had broken down the strength of Wolsey,
and which was to bow the iron frame of Oliver Cromwell. But James had no
mind for work such as this. His intellect was quick, inventive, fruitful
in device, eager to plan, and confident in the wisdom of its plans. But
he had none of the quality which distinguishes intellectual power from
mere cleverness, the capacity not only to plan, but to know what plans
can actually be carried out, and by what means they can be carried out.
Like all merely clever men, he looked down on the drudgery of details.
The posts which he had held vacant were soon filled up; and before many
months were over James ceased to be his own Treasurer or his own
Secretary of State. But he still claimed the absolute direction of all
affairs; he was resolved to be his own chief minister. Even here however
he felt the need of a more active and practical mood than his own for
giving shape to the schemes with which his brain was fermenting; and he
fell back as of old on the tradition of his house. It was so long since
England had seen a favourite that the memory of Gaveston or De Vere had
almost faded away. But favourites had been part of the system of the
Scottish kings. Hemmed in by turbulent barons, unable to find
counsellors among the nobles to whom the interests of the Crown were
dearer than the interests of their class or their house, Stuart after
Stuart had been driven to look for a counsellor and a minister in some
dependant, bound to them by ties of personal attachment and of common
danger. The Scotch nobles had dealt with such favourites after their
manner. One they had hung, others they had stabbed; the last, David
Rizzio, had fallen beneath their daggers at Mary's feet. But the notion
of a personal dependant through whom his designs might take form for the
outer world was as dear to James as to his predecessors, and the death
of Cecil was soon followed by the appearance of favourites.
[Sidenote: Carr.]
There was an aesthetic element in the character of the Stuarts which had
shown itself in the poems and architectural skill of those who had gone
before James, as it was to show itself in the artistic and literary
taste of his successor. In James, grotesque as was his own personal
appearance, it took the form of a passionate admiration of manly beauty.
It is possible that with the fanciful Platonism of the time he saw in
the grace of the outer form evidence of a corresponding fairness in the
soul within. If so, he was egregiously deceived. The first favourite
whom he raised to honour, a Scotch page named Carr, was as worthless as
he was handsome. But his faults passed unheeded. Without a single claim
to distinction save the favour of the king, Carr rose at a bound to
honours which Elizabeth had denied to Ralegh and to Drake. He was
enrolled among English nobles, and raised to the peerage as Viscount
Rochester. Young as he was, he at once became sole minister. The lords
of the Council found themselves to be mere ciphers. "At the
Council-table," writes the Spanish Ambassador only a year after Cecil's
death, "the Viscount Rochester showeth much temper and modesty without
seeming to press or sway anything; but afterwards the king resolveth all
business with him alone." So sudden and complete a revolution in the
system of the state would have drawn ill-will on the favourite, even had
Rochester shown himself worthy of the king's trust. But he seemed only
eager to show his unworthiness. Through the year 1613 all England was
looking on with wonder and disgust at his effort to break the marriage
of Lord Essex with his wife, Frances Howard. Both had been young when
they wedded; the passionate girl soon learned to hate her cold and
formal husband; and she yielded readily enough to the seductions of the
brilliant favourite. The guilty passion of the two was greedily seized
on by the political intriguers of the court. Frances was daughter of a
Howard, the Earl of Suffolk; and her father and uncle, the Earl of
Northampton, who had already felt the influence of the favourite
displacing their own, saw in the girl's shame a chance of winning this
influence to their side. With this view they resolved to break the
marriage with Essex, and to wed her to Rochester. A charge of impotency
was trumped up against Essex as a ground of divorce, and a commission
was named for its investigation. The charge was disproved, and with this
disproof the case broke utterly down; but a fresh allegation was made
that the Earl lay under a spell of witchcraft which incapacitated him
from intercourse with his wife, though with her alone. The scandal grew
as it became clear that the cause of Lady Essex was backed by the king.
The resolute protest of Archbishop Abbot against the proceedings was met
by a petulant scolding from James, and when the Commissioners were
evenly divided in their judgement the king added two known partizans of
the Countess to turn their verdict. By means such as these, after four
months of scandal and shame, a sentence of divorce was at last procured,
and Lady Essex set free to marry the favourite.
[Sidenote: Overbury's murder.]
In the foul process of the divorce James had been either dupe or
confederate. But throughout the same four months he had been either
confederate or dupe in a more terrible tragedy. In his rise to greatness
Rochester had been aided by the counsels of Sir Thomas Overbury.
Overbury was a young man of singular wit and ability, but he had as few
scruples as his master, and he was as ready to lend himself to the
favourite's lust as to his ambition. He dictated for him in fact the
letters which won the heart of Lady Essex. But if he backed the
intrigue, he seems, from whatever cause, to have opposed the project of
marriage. So great was his power over Rochester that the Howards deemed
it needful to take him out of the way while the divorce was being
brought about, and with this end they roused the king's jealousy of this
influence over the favourite. James became as resolute to get rid of him
as the Howards; he offered him an embassy if he would quit England, and
when he refused, he treated his refusal as an offence against the state.
Overbury was committed to the Tower, and he remained a close prisoner
while the suit took its course. Whether more than imprisonment was
designed by the Howards, or what was the part the two Earls played in
the deeds that followed, is hard to tell. Still harder is it to tell the
part of Rochester or of the king. But behind the web of political
intrigue lay a woman's passion, and the part of Lady Essex is clear.
Overbury had the secret of her shame to disclose, and she was resolved
to silence him by death. A few days after the sentence of divorce was
pronounced, he died in his prison, poisoned by her agents. The crime
remained unknown; and not a whisper of it broke the king's exultation
over his favourite's success. At the close of 1613 the scandal was
crowned by the elevation of Rochester to the Earldom of Somerset and his
union with Frances Howard. Murderess and adulteress as she was, the girl
moved to her bridal through costly pageants which would have fitted the
bridal of a queen. The marriage was celebrated in the king's presence.
Ben Jonson devised the wedding song. Bacon spent two thousand pounds in
a wedding masque. The London Companies offered sumptuous gifts. James
himself forced the Lord Mayor to entertain the bride with a banquet in
Merchant Taylors' House, and the gorgeous wedding-train wound in triumph
from Westminster to the City.
[Sidenote: Immorality of the Court.]
The shameless bridal was a fitting close to the shameless divorce, as
both were outrages on the growing sense of morality. But they harmonized
well enough with the profusion and profligacy of the Stuart Court. In
spite of Cecil's economy, the treasury was drained to furnish masques
and revels on a scale of unexampled splendour. While debts remained
unpaid, lands and jewels were lavished on young adventurers whose fair
faces caught the royal fancy. Two years back Carr had been a penniless
fortune-seeker. Now, though his ostensible revenues were not large, he
was able to spend ninety thousand pounds in a single twelvemonth. The
Court was as shameless as it was profuse. If the Court of Elizabeth was
as immoral as that of her successor, its immorality had been shrouded by
a veil of grace and chivalry. But no veil shrouded the degrading
grossness of the Court of James. James was no drunkard, but he was a
hard drinker, and with the people at large his hard drinking passed for
drunkenness. When the Danish king visited England actors in a masque
performed at Court were seen rolling intoxicated at his feet. The suit
of Lady Essex had shown great nobles and officers of state content to
play panders to their kinswoman. A yet more scandalous trial was soon to
show them in league with cheats and astrologers and poisoners. James had
not shrunk from meddling busily in the divorce or from countenancing the
bridal. Before scenes such as these the half-idolatrous reverence with
which the sovereign had been regarded throughout the age of the Tudors
died away into abhorrence and contempt. Court prelates might lavish
their adulation on the virtues and wisdom of the Lord's anointed; but
the players openly mocked at the king on the stage, while Puritans like
Mrs. Hutchinson denounced the orgies of Whitehall in words as fiery as
those with which Elijah denounced the profligacy of Jezebel.
[Sidenote: Parliament of 1614.]
But profligate and prodigal as was the Court, Somerset had to face the
stern fact of an empty Exchequer. The debt was growing steadily. It had
now risen to seven hundred thousand pounds, while, in spite of the
impositions, the annual deficit had mounted to two hundred thousand. The
king had no mind to face the Parliament again; but a little experience
of affairs had sobered the arrogance of the favourite, and there still
remained counsellors of the same mind as Cecil, who pressed on him the
need of reconciling the Houses with the Crown. What at last prevailed on
the king were the pledges of some officious meddlers known as
"undertakers" who promised to bring about the return to the House of
Commons of a majority favourable to the demand of a subsidy. But pledges
such as these fell dead before the general excitement which greeted the
tidings of a new Parliament. Never had an election stirred so much
popular passion as that of 1614. In every case where rejection was
possible, the Court candidates were rejected. All the leading members of
the country party, or as we should now term it, the Opposition, were
again returned. But three hundred of the members were wholly new men;
and among them we note for the first time the names of the leaders in
the later struggle with the Crown. Calne returned John Pym; Yorkshire
sent Thomas Wentworth; St. Germans chose John Eliot. Signs of
unprecedented excitement were seen in the vehement cheering and hissing
which for the first time marked the proceedings of the Commons. But,
excited as they were, their policy was precisely that of the Parliament
which had been dissolved three years before. James indeed was farther
off from any notion of concession than ever; he had no mind to offer
again the Great Contract or even to allow the subject of impositions to
be named. But the Parliament was as firm as the king. It refused to
grant supplies till it had considered public grievances, and it fixed on
the impositions and the abuses of the Church as the first grievances to
be redressed. Unluckily the inexperience of the bulk of the House of
Commons led it into quarrelling on a point of privilege with the Lords;
and though the Houses had sate but two months James seized on the
quarrel as a pretext for a fresh dissolution.
[Sidenote: Benevolences.]
The courtiers mocked at the "addled Parliament," but a statesman would
have learned much from the anger and excitement that ran through its
stormy debates. During the session the king had been frightened beyond
his wont by the tone of the Commons, but the only impressions which
remained in his mind were those of wounded pride and stubborn
resistance. He sent four of the leading members of the Lower House to
the Tower, and fell back on an obstinate resolve to govern without any
Parliament at all. The resolve was carried recklessly out through the
next seven years. The protests of the Commons James looked on as a
defiance of the Crown, and he met them in a spirit of counter-defiance.
The abuses which Parliament after Parliament had denounced were not
only continued but carried to a greater extent than before. The
spiritual courts were encouraged in fresh encroachments. Though the
Crown lawyers admitted the illegality of proclamations they were issued
in greater numbers than ever. Impositions were strictly levied. But a
policy of defiance did little to fill the empty treasury. A large sum
was gained by the sale to the Dutch of the towns which had been left by
the States in pledge with Elizabeth; but even this supply was exhausted,
and a fatal necessity drove James on to a formal and conscious breach of
law. Whatever question might exist as to the legality of impositions, no
question could exist since the statute of Richard the Third that
benevolences were illegal. Nor was there any question that the levy of
benevolences would rouse a deep and abiding resentment in the nation at
large. Even in the height of the Tudor power Wolsey had been forced to
abandon a resource which stirred England to revolt. But the Crown
lawyers advised that while the statute forbade the exaction of gifts it
left the king free to ask for them; and James resolved to raise money by
benevolences. At the close of the Parliament of 1614 therefore letters
were sent out to the counties and boroughs in the name of the Council
requesting contributions. The letters remained generally unanswered; and
in the autumn fresh letters had to be sent out in which the war which
now threatened German Protestantism in the Palatinate was used to spur
the loyalty of the country to a response. The judges on assize were
ordered to press the king's demand. But prayer and pressure failed
alike. In the three years which followed the dissolution the strenuous
efforts of the sheriffs only raised sixty thousand pounds, a sum less
than two-thirds of the value of a single subsidy. Devonshire,
Nottinghamshire, and Warwickshire protested against the benevolences,
and Somersetshire appealed to the statute which forbade them. It was in
vain that the western remonstrants were silenced by threats from the
Council, and that the laggard shires were rated for their sluggishness
in payment. Two counties, those of Hereford and Stafford, sent not a
penny to the last.
[Sidenote: Increase of the Peerage.]
In his distress for money the king was driven to expedients which
widened the breach between the gentry and the Crown. He had refused to
part with the feudal rights which came down to him from the Middle Ages,
such as his right to the wardship of young heirs and the marriage of
heiresses. These were now recklessly used as a means of extortion.
Similar abuses of the prerogative alienated the merchant class. London,
the main seat of their trade and wealth, was growing fast; and its
growth roused terror in the government. In 1611 a proclamation forbade
any increase of buildings. But the proclamation remained inoperative
till it was seized as a means of extortion. A Commission was issued in
1614 with power to fine all who had disobeyed the king's injunctions,
and by its means a considerable sum was gathered into the treasury. All
that remained to be done was to alienate the nobles, and this James
succeeded in doing by a measure in which political design went hand in
hand with the needs of his finance. The Tudors had watched the baronage
with jealousy, but they had made no attempt to degrade it. The nobles
were sent to the prison and the block, but their rank and honours
remained dignities which the Crown was chary to bestow even on the
noblest of its servants. During the forty-five years of her reign
Elizabeth raised but seven persons to the peerage, and with the
exception of Burleigh all of these were of historic descent. The number
of lay peers indeed had hardly changed for two centuries; they were
about fifty at the accession of Henry the Fifth and counted but sixty at
the accession of James. In so small an assembly, where the Crown could
count on the unwavering support of ministers, courtiers, and bishops,
the royal influence had through the last hundred years been generally
supreme. But among the lords of the "old blood," as those whose honours
dated from as far back as the Plantagenets were called, there lingered a
spirit of haughty independence which, if it had quailed before the
Tudors, showed signs of bolder life now the Tudors had gone. It was the
policy of James to raise up a new nobility more dependent on the court,
a nobility that might serve as a bridle on the older lords, while the
increase in the numbers of the baronage which their creation brought
about lessened the weight which a peer had drawn from his special and
unique position in the realm. Such a policy fell in with the needs of
his treasury. Not only could he degrade the peerage by lavishing its
honours, but he could degrade it yet more by putting them up to sale. Of
the forty-five lay peers whom he added to the Upper House during his
reign, a large number were created by sheer bargaining. Baronies were
sold to bidders at ten thousand pounds apiece. Ten nobles were created
in a batch. Peerages were given to the Scotch dependants whom James
brought with him, to Hume and Hay, and Bruce and Ramsay, as well as to
his favourites Carr and Villiers. Robartes, of Cornwall, a man who had
risen to great wealth through the Cornish mines, complained that he had
been forced to take a baronage, for which he had to pay ten thousand
pounds to a favourite's use.
[Sidenote: The dismissal of Coke.]
That this profuse creation of peers was more than the result of passing
embarrassment was shown by its continuance under James's successors.
Charles the First bestowed no less than fifty-six peerages; Charles the
Second forty-eight. But in its immediate application it was no doubt
little more than one of those financial shifts by which the king put off
from day to day the necessity of again facing the one body which could
permanently arrest his effort after despotic rule. There still however
remained a body whose tradition was strong enough, if not to arrest, at
any rate to check it. The lawyers had been subservient beyond all other
classes to the Crown. Their narrow pedantry bent slavishly then, as now,
before isolated precedents, while then, as now, their ignorance of
general history hindered them from realizing the conditions under which
these precedents had been framed, and to which they owed their very
varying value. It was thus that the judges had been brought to support
James in his case of the Post-Nati or in the levy of impositions. But
beyond precedents even the judges refused to go. They had done their
best in a case that came before them to restrict the jurisdiction of the
ecclesiastical courts within legal and definite bounds, and their effort
at once brought down on them the wrath of the king. All that affected
the spiritual jurisdiction affected, he said, his prerogative; and
whenever any case which affected his prerogative came before a court of
justice he asserted that the king possessed an inherent right to be
consulted as to the decision upon it. The judges timidly, though firmly,
repudiated such a right as unknown to the law. To a king whose notions
of law and of courts of law were drawn from those of Scotland, where
justice had for centuries been a ready weapon in the royal hand, such a
protest was utterly unintelligible. James sent for them to the royal
closet. He rated them like schoolboys till they fell on their knees and
with a single exception pledged themselves to obey his will. The one
exception was the Chief Justice, Sir Edward Coke, a narrow-minded and
bitter-tempered man, but of the highest eminence as a lawyer, and with a
reverence for the law that overrode every other instinct. He had for
some time been forced to evade the king's questions and "closetings" on
judicial cases by timely withdrawal from the royal presence. But now
that he was driven to answer, he answered well. When any case came
before him, he said he would act as it became a judge to act. Coke was
at once dismissed from the Council, and a provision which made the
judicial office tenable at the king's pleasure, but which had long
fallen into disuse, was revived to humble the common law in the person
of its chief officer. In November 1616, on the continuance of his
resistance, he was deprived of his post of Chief Justice.
[Sidenote: The Crown and the Law.]
No act of James seems to have stirred a deeper resentment among
Englishmen than this announcement of his resolve to tamper with the
course of justice. The firmness of Coke in his refusal to consult with
the king on matters affecting his prerogative was justified by what
immediately followed. As James interpreted the phrase, to consult with
the king meant simply to obey the king's bidding as to what the
judgement of a court should be. In the case which was then at issue he
summoned the judges simply to listen to his decision; and the judges
promised to enforce it. The king's course was an outrage on the growing
sense of law; but his success was not without useful results. In his
zeal to assert his personal will as the source of all power, whether
judicial or other, James had struck one of its most powerful instruments
from the hands of the Crown. He had broken the spell of the royal
courts. If the good sense of Englishmen had revolted against their
decisions in favour of the prerogative, the English reverence for law
had made men submit to them. But now that all show of judicial
independence was taken away, and the judges debased into mere
mouthpieces of the king's will, the weight of their judgements came to
an end. The nation had bent before their decision in favour of the
Post-Nati; it had never a thought of bending before their decision in
favour of Ship-money.
[Sidenote: Fall of Somerset.]
What an impassable gulf lay between the English conception of justice
and that of James was shown even more vividly by the ruin of one who
stood higher than Coke. At the opening of 1615 Somerset was still
supreme. He held the rank of Lord Chamberlain; but he was practically
the King's minister in state affairs, domestic or foreign. He was backed
since his marriage by the influence of the Howards; and his
father-in-law, Suffolk, was Lord Treasurer. He was girt round indeed by
rivals and foes. The Queen was jealous of his influence over James;
Archbishop Abbot dreaded his intrigues with Spain, intrigues which drew
fresh meaning from the Catholic sympathies of the Howards; above all the
older Lords of the Council, whom he ousted from any share in the
government, watched eagerly for the moment when they hoped to regain
their power by his fall. As he moved through the crowd of nobles he
heard men muttering "that one man should not for ever rule them all."
But Somerset's arrogance only grew with the danger. A new favourite was
making way at court, and the king was daily growing colder. But Somerset
only rated James for his coldness, demanded the dismissal of the new
favourite, and refused to be propitiated by the king's craven apologies.
His enemies however had a fatal card to play. In the summer whispers
stole about of Overbury's murder, and of Somerset's part in it. The
charge was laid secretly before the king, and a secret investigation
conducted by his order threw darker and darker light on the story of
guilt. Somerset was still unconscious of his peril, and the news that
some meaner agents in the crime were arrested found him still with the
king and in the seeming enjoyment of his wonted favour. He at once took
horse for London to face his foes, and James parted from him with his
usual demonstrations of affection. "He would neither eat nor drink," he
said, "till he saw him again." He was hardly gone when James added, "I
shall never see him more." His ruin in fact was already settled. In a
few days he was a prisoner with his wife in the Tower; the agents in the
fatal plot were sent to trial and to the gallows; and in May 1616 the
young Countess was herself brought before the Lord Steward's Court to
avow her guilt. Somerset's daring nature made a more stubborn stand. He
threatened the king with disclosures, we know not of what, and when
arraigned denied utterly any share in the murder. All however was in
vain; and he and the Countess were alike sentenced to death.
If ever justice called for the rigorous execution of the law, it was in
the case of Frances Howard. Not only was the Countess a murderess, but
her crime passed far beyond the range of common murders. Girl as she was
when it was wrought, she had shown the coolness and deliberation of a
practised assassin in her lust to kill. Chance foiled her efforts again
and again, but she persisted for months, she changed her agents and her
modes of death, till her victim was slain. Nor was her crime without
profit. She gained by it all she wanted. The secret of her adultery was
hidden. There was no one to reveal the perjuries of her divorce. Her
ambition and her passion were alike gratified. She became the bride of
the man she desired. Her kindred filled the court. Her husband ruled the
king. If crime be measured by its relentless purpose, if the guilt of
crime be heightened by its amazing success, then no woman that ever
stood in the dock was a greater criminal than the wife of Rochester. Nor
was this all. The wretched agents in her crime were sent pitilessly to
the gallows. The guilt of two of them was at least technically doubtful,
but the doubt was not suffered to interfere with their punishment. Only
in the one case where no doubt existed, in the case of the woman who had
spurred and bribed these tools to their crime, was punishment spared. If
life was left to such a criminal, the hanging of these meaner agents was
a murder. But this was the course on which James had resolved, and he
had resolved on it from the first. There was no more pressure on him.
The rivals of Somerset had no need for his blood. The councillors and
the new favourite required only his ruin, and James himself was content
with being freed from a dependant who had risen to be his master. His
pride probably shrank from the shame which the public death of such
criminals on such a charge might bring on himself and his crown; his
good-nature pleaded for pity, and the claims of justice never entered
his head. Before the trial began he had resolved that neither should
die, and the sentence of the Earl and the Countess was soon commuted
into that of an easy confinement during a few years in the Tower.
[Sidenote: Villiers.]
The fall of Somerset seemed to restore the old system of rule; and for a
short time the Council regained somewhat of its influence. But when the
Queen gave her aid in Somerset's overthrow she warned Archbishop Abbot
that it was only the investiture of a new favourite with Somerset's
power. And a new favourite was already on the scene. It had only been
possible indeed to overthrow the Earl by bringing a fresh face into the
court. In the autumn of 1614 the son of a Leicestershire knight, George
Villiers, presented himself to James. He was poor and friendless, but
his personal beauty was remarkable, and it was by his beauty that he
meant to make his way with the king. His hopes were soon realized.
Queen, Primate, Councillors seized on the handsome youth to pit him
against the favourite; in spite of Somerset's struggles he rose from
post to post; and the Earl's ruin sealed his greatness. He became Master
of the Horse; before the close of 1616 he was raised to the peerage as
Viscount Villiers, and gifted with lands to the value of eighty thousand
pounds. The next year he was Earl of Buckingham; in 1619 he was made
Lord High Admiral; a marquisate and a dukedom raised him to the head of
the English nobility. What was of far more import was the hold he gained
upon the king. Those who had raised the handsome boy to greatness as a
means of establishing their own power found themselves foiled. From the
moment when Somerset entered the Tower, Villiers virtually took his
place as Minister of State. The councillors soon found themselves again
thrust aside. The influence of the new favourite surpassed that of his
predecessor. The payment of bribes to him or marriage to his greedy
kindred became the one road to political preferment. Resistance to his
will was inevitably followed by dismissal from office. Even the highest
and most powerful of the nobles were made to tremble at the nod of this
young upstart.
[Sidenote: His character.]
"Never any man in any age, nor, I believe, in any country," says the
astonished Clarendon in reviewing his strange career, "rose in so short
a time to so much greatness of honour, power, or fortune, upon no other
advantage or recommendation than of the beauty or gracefulness of his
person." Such, no doubt, was the general explanation of his rise among
men of the time; and it would have been well had the account been true.
The follies and profusion of a handsome minion pass lightly over the
surface of a nation's life. Unluckily Villiers owed his fortune to other
qualities besides personal beauty. He was amazingly ignorant, his greed
was insatiate, his pride mounted to sheer midsummer madness. But he had
no inconsiderable abilities. He was quick of wit and resolute of
purpose; he shrank from no labour; his boldness and self-confidence
faced any undertaking which was needful for the king's service; he was
devoted, heart and soul, to the Crown. Over James his hold was that of a
vehement and fearless temper over a mind infinitely better informed,
infinitely more thoughtful and reflective, but vague and hesitating
amidst all its self-conceit, crowded with theories and fancies, and with
a natural bent to the unpractical and unreal. To such a mind the
shallow, brilliant adventurer came as a relief. James found all his wise
follies and politic moonshine translated for him into positive fact. He
leant more and more heavily on an adviser who never doubted and was
always ready to act. He drew strength from his favourite's
self-confidence. Rochester had bent before greatness and listened more
than once, even in the hour of his triumph, to the counsels of wiser
men. But on the conceit of Villiers the warnings of Abbot, the counsels
of Bacon, were lavished in vain. He saw no course but his own; and the
showy, audacious temper of the man made that course always a showy and
audacious one. It was this that made the choice of the new favourite
more memorable than the choice of Carr. At a moment when conciliation
and concession were most needed on the part of the Crown, the character
of Villiers made concession and conciliation impossible. To James his
new adviser seemed the weapon he wanted to smite with trenchant edge the
resistance of the realm. He never dreamed that the haughty young
favourite, on whose neck he loved to loll, and whose cheek he slobbered
with kisses, was to drag down in his fatal career the throne of the
Stuarts.
[Sidenote: The Spanish marriage.]
As yet the temper of Villiers was as little known to the country as to
the king. But the setting up of a new favourite on the ruin of the old
had a significance which no Englishman could miss. It proved beyond
question that the system of personal rule which was embodied in these
dependent ministers was no passing caprice, but the settled purpose of
the king. And never had such immense results hung on his resolve. Great
as was the importance of the struggle at home, it was for a while to be
utterly overshadowed by the greatness of the struggle which was opening
abroad. The dangers which Cecil had foreseen in Germany were fast
drawing to a head. Though he had failed to put England in a position to
meet them, the dying statesman remained true to his policy. In 1612 he
brought about a marriage between the king's daughter, Elizabeth, and the
heir of the Elector Palatine, who was the leading prince in the
Protestant Union. Such a marriage was a pledge that England would not
tamely stand by if the Union was attacked; while the popularity of the
match showed how keenly England was watching the dangers of German
Protestantism, and how ready it was to defend it. But the step was
hardly taken when Cecil's death left James free to pursue a policy of
his own. The king was as anxious as his minister to prevent an outbreak
of strife; and his daughter's bridal gave him a personal interest in the
question. But he was far from believing with Cecil that the support of
England was necessary for effective action. On the contrary, his quick,
shallow intelligence held that it had found a way by which the Crown
might at once exert weight abroad and be rendered independent of the
nation at home. This was by a joint action with Spain. Weakened as were
the resources of Spain by her struggle in the Netherlands, she was known
to be averse from the opening of new troubles in Germany; and James
might fairly reckon on her union with him in the work of peace. Her
influence with the German branch of the House of Austria, as well as the
weight her opinion had with every Catholic power, made her efforts even
more important than those of James with the Calvinists. And that such a
union could be brought about the king never doubted. His son was growing
to manhood; and for years Spain had been luring James to a closer
friendship by hints of the Prince's marriage with an Infanta. Such a
match would not only gratify the pride of a sovereign who in his
earlier days in his little kingdom had been overawed by the great
Catholic monarchy, and on whose imagination it still exercised a spell,
but it would proclaim to the world the union of the powers in the work
of peace, while it provided James with the means of action. For poor as
Spain really was, she was still looked upon as the richest state in the
world; and the king believed that the bride would bring with her a dowry
of some half-a-million. Such a dowry would set him free from the need of
appealing to his Parliament, and give him the means of acting
energetically on the Rhine.
[Sidenote: The policy of Spain.]
That there were difficulties in the way of such a policy, that Spain
would demand concessions to the English Catholics, that the marriage
would give England a Catholic queen, that the future heir of its crown
must be trained by a Catholic mother, above all that the crown would be
parted by plans such as these yet more widely from the sympathy of the
nation, James could not but know. What he might have known as clearly,
had he been a wise man instead of a merely clever man, was that, however
such a bargain might suit himself, it was hardly likely to suit Spain.
Spain was asked in effect to supply a bankrupt king with the means of
figuring as the protector of Protestantism in Germany, while the only
consideration offered to her was the hand of Prince Charles. But it
never occurred to James to look at his schemes in any other light than
his own. On the dissolution of the Parliament of 1614 he addressed a
proposal of marriage to the Spanish court. Whatever was its ultimate
purpose, Spain was careful to feed hopes which secured, so long as they
lasted, better treatment for the Catholics, and which might be used to
hold James from any practical action on behalf of the Protestants in
Germany. Her cordiality increased as she saw, in spite of her protests,
the crisis approaching. One member of the Austrian house, Ferdinand, had
openly proclaimed and carried out his purpose of forcibly suppressing
heresy in the countries he ruled, the Tyrol, Carinthia, Carniola, and
Styria; and his succession to the childless Matthias in the rest of the
Austrian dominions would infallibly be followed by a similar repression.
To the Protestants of the Duchy, of Bohemia, of Hungary, therefore, the
accession of Ferdinand meant either utter ruin or civil war, and a civil
war would spread like wildfire along the Danube to the Rhine. But
Matthias was resolved on bringing about the recognition of Ferdinand as
his successor; and Spain saw that the time was come for effectually
fettering James. If troubles must arise, religion and policy at once
dictated the use which Spain would have to make of them. She could not
support heretics, and she had very good reasons for supporting their
foes. The great aim of her statesmen was to hold what was left of the
Low Countries against either France or the Dutch, and now that she had
lost the command of the sea, the road overland from her Italian
dominions along the Rhine through Franche Comte to the Netherlands was
absolutely needful for this purpose. But this road led through the
Palatinate; and if war was to break out Spain must either secure the
Palatinate for herself or for some Catholic prince on whose good-will
she could rely. That the Dutch would oppose such a scheme was
inevitable; but James alone could give fresh strength to the Dutch; and
James could be duped into inaction by playing with his schemes for a
marriage with the Infanta. In 1617 therefore negotiations for this
purpose were formally opened between the courts of London and Madrid.
[Sidenote: Ralegh's death.]
Anger and alarm spread through England as the nation learned that James
aimed at placing a Catholic queen upon its throne. Even at the court
itself the cooler heads of statesmen were troubled by this disclosure of
the king's projects. The old tradition of Cecil's policy lingered among
a powerful party which had its representatives among the royal
ministers; and powerless as these were to influence the king's course,
they still believed they could impede it. If by any means war could be
stirred up between England and Spain the marriage-treaty would fall to
ruin, and James be forced into union with the Protestants abroad and
into some reconciliation with the Parliament at home. The wild project
by which they strove to bring war about may have sprung from a brain
more inventive than their own. Of the great statesmen and warriors of
Elizabeth's day one only remained. At the opening of the new reign Sir
Walter Ralegh had been convicted on a charge of treason; but though
unpardoned the sentence was never carried out, and he had remained ever
since a prisoner in the Tower. As years went by the New World, where he
had founded Virginia and where he had gleaned news of a Golden City,
threw more and more a spell over his imagination; and at this moment he
disclosed to James his knowledge of a gold-mine on the Oronoco, and
prayed that he might sail thither and work its treasures for the king.
No Spanish settlement, he said, had been made there; and like the rest
of the Elizabethans he took no heed of the Spanish claims to all lands
in America, whether settled or no. The king was tempted by the bait of
gold; but he had no mind to be tricked out of his friendship with Spain;
he exacted a pledge against any attack on Spanish territory, and told
Ralegh that the shedding of Spanish blood would cost him his head. The
threat told little on a man who had risked his head again and again; who
believed in the tale he told; and who knew that if war could be brought
about between England and Spain a new career was open to him. He found
the coast occupied by Spanish troops; and while evading direct orders to
attack, he sent his men up the country. They plundered a Spanish town,
found no gold-mine, and soon came broken and defeated back. Ralegh's son
had fallen in the struggle; but, heart-broken as he was by the loss and
disappointment, the natural daring of the man saw a fresh resource. He
proposed to seize the Spanish treasure ships as he returned, to sail
with their gold to England, and like Drake to turn the heads of nation
and king by the immense spoil. But the temper of the buccaneers was now
strange to English seamen; his men would not follow him; and he was
brought home to face his doom. James at once put his old sentence in
force; and the death of Ralegh on the scaffold atoned for the affront to
Spain.
[Sidenote: The troubles in Bohemia.]
The failure of Ralegh came at a critical moment in German history. In
1617, while he was traversing the Southern seas, Ferdinand was presented
by Matthias to the Diet of Bohemia, and acknowledged by it as successor
to that kingdom. As had been foreseen, he at once began the course of
forcible suppression of Protestantism which had been successful in his
other dominions. But the Bohemian nobles were not men to give up their
faith without a fight for it; and in May 1618 they rose in revolt, flung
Ferdinand's deputies out of the window of the palace at Prague, and
called the country to arms. The long-dreaded crisis had come for
Germany; but, as if with a foresight of the awful sufferings that the
struggle was to bring, the Germans strove to look on it as a local
revolt. The Lutheran princes longed only "to put the fire out"; the
Calvinistic Union refused aid to the Bohemians; the Catholic League
remained motionless. What partly accounted for the inaction of the
Protestants was the ability of the Bohemians to hold their own. They
were a match for all Ferdinand's efforts; through autumn and winter they
held him easily at bay. In the spring of 1619 they even marched upon
Vienna and all but surprised their enemy within his capital. But at this
juncture the death of Matthias changed the face of affairs. Ferdinand
became master of the whole Austrian heritage in Germany, and he offered
himself as candidate for the vacant Imperial crown. Union among the
Protestants might have hindered his accession, and with it the terrible
strife which he was to bring upon the Empire. But an insane quarrel
between Lutherans and Calvinists paralyzed their efforts; and in August
1619 Ferdinand became Emperor. Bohemia knew that its strength was
insufficient to check a foe such as this; and two days before his formal
election to the Empire its nobles declared the realm vacant, and chose
Frederick, the young Elector-Palatine, as their king.
[Sidenote: Outbreak of the Thirty Years War.]
Frederick accepted the crown; but he was no sooner enthroned at Prague
than the Bohemians saw themselves foiled in the hopes which had
dictated their choice. They had trusted that Frederick's election would
secure them support from the Calvinist Union, of which he was the
leading member, and from James, whose daughter was his wife. But support
from the Union was cut off by the jealousy of the French Government,
which saw with suspicion the upgrowth of a great Calvinistic power,
stretching from Bohemia to its own frontier, and pushing its influence
through its relations with the Huguenot party into the very heart of
France. James on the other hand was bitterly angered at Frederick's
action. He could not recognize the right of subjects to depose a prince,
or support Bohemia in what he looked on as revolt, or Frederick in what
he believed to be the usurpation of a crown. By envoy after envoy he
called on his son-in-law to lay down his new royalty, and to return to
the Palatinate. His refusal of aid to the Protestant Union helped the
pressure of France in paralyzing its action, while he threatened war
against Holland, the one power which was earnest in the Palatine's
cause. It was in vain that in England both court and people were
unanimous in a cry for war, or that Archbishop Abbot from his sick-bed
implored James to strike one blow for Protestantism. James still called
on Frederick to withdraw from Bohemia, and relied in such a case on the
joint efforts of England and Spain for a re-establishment of peace. But
no consent to his plans could be wrung from Frederick; and the spring of
1620 saw Spain ready to throw aside the mask. The time had come for
securing her road to the Netherlands, as well as for taking her old
stand as a champion of Catholicism. Rumours of her purpose had already
stolen over the Channel, and James was brought at last to suffer Sir
Horace Vere to take some English volunteers to the Palatinate. But the
succour came too late. Spinola, the Spanish general in the Low
Countries, was ordered to march to the aid of the Emperor; and the
famous Spanish battalions were soon moving up the Rhine. Their march
turned the local struggle in Bohemia into a European war. The whole face
of affairs was changed as by enchantment. The hesitation of the Union
was ended by the needs of self-defence; but it could only free its hands
for action against the Spaniards by signing a treaty of neutrality with
the Catholic League. The treaty sealed the fate of Bohemia. It enabled
the army of the League under Maximilian of Bavaria to march down the
valley of the Danube; Austria was forced to submit unconditionally to
Ferdinand; and in August, as Spinola reached the frontier of the
Palatinate, the joint army of Ferdinand and the League prepared to enter
Bohemia.
[Sidenote: The Parliament of 1621.]
On James the news of these events burst like a thunderbolt. He had been
duped; and for the moment he bent before the burst of popular fury
which the danger to German Protestantism called forth throughout the
land. The cry for a Parliament, the necessary prelude to a war,
overpowered the king's secret resistance; and the Houses were again
called together. But before they could meet the game of Protestantism
was lost. Spinola beat the troops of the Union back upon Worms, and
occupied with ease the bulk of the Palatinate. On the 8th of November
the army of the League forced Frederick to battle before the walls of
Prague; and before the day was over he was galloping off, a fugitive, to
North Germany. Such was the news that met the Houses on their assembly
at Westminster in January 1621. The instinct of every Englishman told
him that matters had now passed beyond the range of mediation or
diplomacy. Armies were moving, fierce passions were aroused, schemes of
vast ambition and disturbance were disclosing themselves; and at such a
moment the only intervention possible was an intervention of the sword.
The German princes called on James to send them an army. "The business
is gone too far to be redressed with words only," said the Danish king,
who was prepared to help them. "I thank God we hope, with the help of
his Majesty of Great Britain and the rest of our friends, to give unto
the Count Palatine good conditions. If ever we are to do any good for
the liberty of Germany and religion now is the time." But this appeal
met offers of "words only" and Denmark withdrew from the strife in
despair. James in fact was as confident in his diplomatic efforts as
ever; but even he saw at last that they needed the backing of some sort
of armed force, and it was to procure this backing that he called for
supplies from the Parliament.
[Sidenote: Impeachment of the monopolists.]
The Commons were bitterly chagrined. They had come together, trusting
that their assembly meant such an attitude on the part of the Crown as
would have rallied the Protestants of Germany round England, and have
aided the enterprise of the Dane. Above all they hoped for war with the
power which had at once turned the strife to its own profit, whose
appearance in the Palatinate had broken the strength of German
Protestantism, and set the League free to crush Frederick at Prague.
They found only demands for supplies, and a persistence in the old
efforts to patch up a peace. Fresh envoys were now labouring to argue
the Emperor into forgiveness of Frederick, and to argue the Spaniards
into an evacuation of Frederick's dominions. With such aims not only was
no war against the Spaniard to be thought of, but his good-will must be
sought by granting permission for the export of arms from England to
Spain. The Commons could only show their distrust of such a policy by a
small vote of supplies and refusal of further aid in the future. But if
their resentment could find no field in foreign affairs, it found a
field at home. The most crying constitutional grievance arose from the
revival of monopolies, in spite of the pledge of Elizabeth to suppress
them. To the Crown they brought little profit; but they gratified the
king by their extension of the sphere of his prerogative, and they put
money into the pockets of his greedy dependants. A parliamentary right
which had slept ever since the reign of Henry the Sixth, the right of
the Lower House to impeach great offenders at the bar of the Lords, was
revived against the monopolists; and James was driven by the general
indignation to leave them to their fate. But the practice of monopolies
was only one sign of the corruption of the court. Sales of peerages,
sales of high offices of State, had raised a general disgust; and this
disgust showed itself in the impeachment of the highest among the
officers of State.
[Sidenote: Fall of Bacon.]
At the accession of James the rays of royal favour, so long looked for
in vain, had broken slowly upon Francis Bacon. He became successively
Solicitor and Attorney-General; the year of Shakspere's death saw him
called to the Privy Council; he verified Elizabeth's prediction by
becoming Lord Keeper. At last the goal of his ambition was reached. He
had attached himself to the rising fortunes of Buckingham, and in 1618
the favour of Buckingham made him Lord Chancellor. He was raised to the
peerage as Baron Verulam, and created, at a later time, Viscount St.
Albans. But the nobler dreams for which these meaner honours had been
sought escaped Bacon's grasp. His projects still remained projects,
while to retain his hold on office he was stooping to a miserable
compliance with the worst excesses of Buckingham and his master. The
years during which he held the Chancellorship were, in fact, the most
disgraceful years of a disgraceful reign. They saw the execution of
Ralegh, the sacrifice of the Palatinate, the exaction of benevolences,
the multiplication of monopolies, the supremacy of Buckingham. Against
none of the acts of folly and wickedness which distinguished James's
government did Bacon do more than protest; in some of the worst, and
above all in the attempt to coerce the judges into prostrating the law
at the king's feet, he took a personal part. But even his protests were
too much for the young favourite, who regarded him as the mere creature
of his will. It was in vain that Bacon flung himself on the Duke's
mercy, and begged him to pardon a single instance of opposition to his
caprice. A Parliament was impending, and Buckingham resolved to avert
from himself the storm which was gathering by sacrificing to it his
meaner dependants.
To ordinary eyes the Chancellor was at the summit of human success.
Jonson had just sung of him as one "whose even thread the Fates spin
round and full out of their choicest and their whitest wool" when the
storm burst. The Commons charged Bacon with corruption in the exercise
of his office. It had been customary among Chancellors to receive gifts
from successful suitors after their suit was ended. Bacon, it is
certain, had taken such gifts from men whose suits were still unsettled;
and though his judgement may have been unaffected by them, the fact of
their reception left him with no valid defence. He at once pleaded
guilty to the charge. "I do plainly and ingenuously confess that I am
guilty of corruption, and do renounce all defence. I beseech your
Lordships," he added, "to be merciful to a broken reed." Though the
heavy fine laid on him was remitted by the Crown, he was deprived of the
Great Seal and declared incapable of holding office in the State or
sitting in Parliament. Fortunately for his after fame Bacon's life was
not to close in this cloud of shame. His fall restored him to that
position of real greatness from which his ambition had so long torn him
away. "My conceit of his person," says Ben Jonson, "was never increased
towards him by his place or honours. But I have and do reverence him for
his greatness that was only proper to himself, in that he seemed to me
ever by his work one of the greatest men, and most worthy of admiration,
that had been in many ages. In his adversity I ever prayed that God
would give him strength; for greatness he could not want." Bacon's
intellectual activity was never more conspicuous than in the last four
years of his life. He began a digest of the laws and a history of
England under the Tudors, revised and expanded his essays, and dictated
a jest-book. He had presented "Novum Organum" to James in the year
before his fall; in the year after it he produced his "Natural and
Experimental History." Meanwhile he busied himself with experiments in
physics which might carry out the principles he was laying down in these
works; and it was while studying the effect of cold in preventing animal
putrefaction that he stopped his coach to stuff a fowl with snow and
caught the fever which ended in his death.
[Sidenote: James clings to Spain.]
James was too shrewd to mistake the importance of Bacon's impeachment;
but the hostility of Buckingham to the Chancellor, and Bacon's own
confession of his guilt, made it difficult to resist his condemnation.
Energetic too as its measures were against corruption and monopolists,
the Parliament respected scrupulously the king's prejudices in other
matters; and even when checked by an adjournment, resolved unanimously
to support him in any earnest effort for the Protestant cause. A warlike
speech from a member at the close of the session in June roused an
enthusiasm which recalled the days of Elizabeth. The Commons answered
the appeal by a unanimous vote, "lifting their hats as high as they
could hold them," that for the recovery of the Palatinate they would
adventure their fortunes, their estates, and their lives. "Rather this
declaration," cried a leader of the country party when it was read by
the Speaker, "than ten thousand men already on the march." For the
moment indeed the energetic declaration seemed to give vigour to the
royal policy. James had aimed throughout at the restitution of Bohemia
to Ferdinand, and at inducing the Emperor, through the mediation of
Spain, to abstain from any retaliation on the Palatinate. He now freed
himself for a moment from the trammels of diplomacy, and enforced a
cessation of the attack on his son-in-law's dominions by a threat of
war. The suspension of arms lasted through the summer of 1621; but
threats could do no more. Frederick still refused to make the
concessions which James pressed on him, and the army of the League
advancing from Bohemia drove the forces of the Elector out of the upper
or eastern portion of the Palatinate. Again the general restoration
which James was designing had been thrown further back than ever by a
Catholic advance; but the king had no mind to take up the challenge. He
was only driven the more on his old policy of mediation through the aid
of Spain. An end was put to all appearance of hostilities. The
negotiations for the marriage with the Infanta, which had never ceased,
were pressed more busily. Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, who had
become all-powerful at the English Court, was assured that no effectual
aid should be sent to the Palatinate. The English fleet, which was
cruising by way of menace off the Spanish coast, was called home. The
king dismissed those of his ministers who still opposed a Spanish
policy; and threatened on trivial pretexts a war with the Dutch, the one
great Protestant power that remained in alliance with England, and was
ready to back the Elector.
[Sidenote: Dissolution of the Parliament.]
But he had still to reckon with his Parliament; and the first act of the
Parliament on its reassembling in November was to demand a declaration
of war with Spain. The instinct of the nation was wiser than the
statecraft of the king. Ruined and enfeebled as she really was, Spain to
the world at large still seemed the champion of Catholicism. It was the
entry of her troops into the Palatinate which had widened the local war
in Bohemia into a struggle for the suppression of Protestantism along
the Rhine; above all it was Spanish influence, and the hopes held out of
a marriage of his son with a Spanish Infanta, which were luring the king
into his fatal dependence on the great enemy of the Protestant cause.
But the Commons went further than a demand for war. It was impossible
any longer to avoid a matter so perilous to English interests, and in
their petition the Houses coupled with their demands for war the demand
of a Protestant marriage for their future king. Experience proved in
later years how dangerous it was for English freedom that the heir to
the Crown should be brought up under a Catholic mother; but James was
beside himself at the presumption of the Commons in dealing with
mysteries of State. "Bring stools for the Ambassadors," he cried in
bitter irony as their committee appeared before him. He refused the
petition, forbade any further discussion of State policy, and threatened
the speakers with the Tower. "Let us resort to our prayers," a member
said calmly as the king's letter was read, "and then consider of this
great business." The temper of the House was seen in a Protestation with
which it met the royal command to abstain from discussion. It resolved
"That the liberties, franchises, privileges, and jurisdictions of
Parliament are the ancient and undoubted birthright and inheritance of
the subjects of England; and that the arduous and urgent affairs
concerning the king, State, and defence of the realm, and of the Church
of England, and the making and maintenance of laws, and redress of
grievances, which daily happen within this realm, are proper subjects
and matter of council and debate in Parliament. And that in the handling
and proceeding of those businesses every member of the House hath, and
of right ought to have, freedom of speech to propound, treat, reason,
and bring to conclusion the same." The king answered the Protestation
by a characteristic outrage. He sent for the Journals of the House, and
with his own hand tore out the pages which contained it. "I will
govern," he said, "according to the common weal, but not according to
the common will." A few days after, on the nineteenth of December, he
dissolved the Parliament.
[Sidenote: Spain holds back.]
"It is the best thing that has happened in the interests of Spain and of
the Catholic religion since Luther began preaching," wrote the Count of
Gondomar to his master, in his joy that all danger of war had passed
away. "I am ready to depart," Sir Henry Savile on the other hand
murmured on his death-bed, "the rather that having lived in good times I
foresee worse." In the obstinacy with which he clung to his Spanish
policy James stood indeed absolutely alone; for not only the old
nobility and the statesmen who preserved the tradition of the age of
Elizabeth, but even his own ministers, with the exception of Buckingham
and the Treasurer, Cranfield, were at one with the Commons in their
distrust of Spain. But James persisted in his plans. By the levy of a
fresh benevolence he was able to keep Vere's force on foot for a few
months while his diplomacy was at work in Germany and at Madrid. The
Palatinate indeed was lost in spite of his despatches; but he still
trusted to bring about its restitution to the Elector through his
influence with Spain. It was to secure this influence that he pressed
for a closer union with the great Catholic power. What really bound him
to such a foreign policy was his policy at home. If James cared for the
restoration of the Palatinate, he cared more for the system of
government he had carried out since 1610; and with that system, as he
well knew, Parliaments were incompatible. But a policy of war would at
once throw him on the support of Parliaments; and the experience of 1621
had shown him at what a price that support must be bought. From war too,
as from any policy which implied a decided course of action, the temper
of James shrank. What he clung to was a co-operation with Spain in which
the burden of enforcing peace on the German disputants should fall
exclusively on that power. Of such a co-operation the marriage of his
son Charles with the Infanta, which had so long been held out as a lure
to his vanity, was to be the sign. But the more James pressed for this
consummation of his projects, the more Spain held back. She too was
willing to co-operate with James so long as such a co-operation answered
her own purposes. Her statesmen had not favoured the war in Germany;
even now they were willing to bring it to a close by the restoration of
the Palatinate. But they would not abandon the advantages which the war
had given to Catholicism; and their plan was to restore the Palatinate
not to Frederick but to his son, and to bring up that son as a Catholic
at Vienna. Of such a simple restoration of the religious and political
balance in the Empire as James was contemplating, the statesmen of
Madrid thought no more than they thought of carrying out the scheme of a
marriage with his son. Spain had already gained all she wanted from the
marriage-negotiations. They had held James from action; they had now
made action even less possible by supplying a fresh ground of quarrel
with the House of Commons. Had the match been likely to secure the
conversion of England, or even a thorough toleration for Catholics, it
might have been possible to consent to the union of a Spanish princess
with a heretic. But neither result seemed probable: and the Spanish
Court saw no gain in such a union as would compensate it for the loss of
the Palatinate or the half-million which James counted on as the dowry
of the bride.
[Sidenote: End of the Spanish marriage.]
But the more Spain hung back the hotter grew the impatience of
Buckingham and James. At last the young favourite proposed to force the
Spaniard's hand by the appearance of Prince Charles himself at Madrid.
To the wooer in person Buckingham believed Spain would not dare to
refuse either Infanta or Palatinate. James was too shrewd to believe in
such a delusion, but in spite of his opposition the Prince quitted
England in disguise in 1623, and at the beginning of March he appeared
with Buckingham at Madrid to claim his promised bride. It was in vain
that the Spanish Court rose in its demands; for every new demand was met
by fresh concessions on the part of England. The abrogation of the penal
laws against the worship of Catholics in private houses, a Catholic
education for the Prince's children, a Catholic household for the
Infanta, the erection of a Catholic church for her at Court, to which
access should be free for all comers, were stipulations no sooner asked
than they were granted. "We are building a chapel to the devil," said
James when the last condition was laid before him; but he swore to the
treaty and forced his councillors to swear to it. The marriage, however,
was no nearer than before. The one thing which would have made it
possible was a conversion of Charles to Catholicism; and though the
Prince listened silently to arguments on the subject he gave no sign of
becoming a Catholic. The aim of the Spanish ministers was to break off
the match without a quarrel. They could only throw themselves on a
policy of delay, and with this view the court theologians decided that
the Infanta must in any case stay in Spain for a year after its
conclusion till the conditions were fully carried out. Against such a
condition Charles remonstrated in vain. And meanwhile the influence of
the new policy on the war in Germany was hard to see. The Catholic
League and its army under the command of Count Tilly won triumph after
triumph over their divided foes. The reduction of Heidelberg and
Mannheim completed the conquest of the Palatinate, whose Elector fled
helplessly to Holland, while his Electoral dignity was transferred by
the Emperor to the Duke of Bavaria. But there was still no sign of the
hoped-for intervention on the part of Spain. At last the pressure of
Charles on the subject of the Palatinate brought about a disclosure of
the secret of Spanish policy. "It is a maxim of state with us," the
Count of Olivares confessed, as the Prince demanded an energetic
interference in Germany, "that the King of Spain must never fight
against the Emperor. We cannot employ our forces against the Emperor."
"If you hold to that," replied the Prince, "there is an end of all."
Quitting Madrid he found a fleet at Santander, and on the fifth of
October he again landed with Buckingham on the shores of England.
[Sidenote: Prince Charles.]
His return was the signal for a burst of national joy. All London was
alight with bonfires in her delight at the failure of the Spanish match,
and of the collapse, humiliating as it was, of a policy which had so
long trailed English honour at the chariot-wheels of Spain. War seemed
at last inevitable; for not only did James's honour call for some effort
to win back the Palatinate for his daughter's children, but the
resentment of Charles and Buckingham was ready to bear down any
reluctance of the king. From the moment of their return indeed the
direction of English affairs passed out of the hands of James into those
of the favourite and the Prince. Charles started on his task of
government with the aid of a sudden burst of popularity. To those who
were immediately about him the journey to Madrid had revealed the
strange mixture of obstinacy and weakness in the Prince's character, the
duplicity which lavished promises because it never purposed to be bound
by any, the petty pride that subordinated every political consideration
to personal vanity or personal pique. Charles had granted demand after
demand till the very Spaniards lost faith in his concessions. With rage
in his heart at the failure of his efforts, he had renewed his betrothal
on the very eve of his departure only that he might insult the Infanta
by its contemptuous withdrawal as soon as he was safe at home. But to
England at large the baser features of his character were still unknown.
The stately reserve, the personal dignity and decency of manners which
distinguished the Prince, contrasted favourably with the gabble and
indecorum of his father. The courtiers indeed who saw him in his youth
would often pray God that "he might be in the right way when he was set;
for if he were in the wrong he would prove the most wilful of any king
that ever reigned." But the nation was willing to take his obstinacy for
firmness; as it took the pique which inspired his course on the return
from Spain for patriotism and for the promise of a nobler rule.
[Sidenote: The Parliament of 1624.]
At the back of Charles stood the favourite Buckingham. The policy of
James had recoiled upon its author. In raising his favourites to the
height of honour James had looked to being at last an independent king.
He had broken with parliaments, he had done away with the old
administrative forms of government, that his personal rule might act
freely through these creatures of his will. And now that his policy had
reached its end, his will was set aside more ruthlessly than ever by the
very instrument he had created to carry it out. In his zeal to establish
the greatness of the monarchy he had brought on the monarchy a
humiliation such as it had never known. Church, or Baronage, or Commons
had many times in our history forced a king to take their policy for his
own; but never had a mere minister of the Crown been able to force his
policy on a king. This was what Buckingham set himself to do. The
national passion, the Prince's support, his own quick energy, bore down
the hesitation and reluctance of James. The king still clung desperately
to peace. He still shrank from parliaments. But Buckingham overrode
every difficulty. In February 1624 James was forced to meet a
Parliament, and to concede the point on which he had broken with the
last by laying before it the whole question of the Spanish negotiation.
Buckingham and the Prince gave their personal support to a demand of the
Houses for a rupture of the treaties with Spain and a declaration of
war. A subsidy was eagerly voted; and as if to mark a new departure in
the policy of the Stuarts, the persecution of the Catholics, which had
long been suspended out of deference to Spanish intervention, began with
new vigour. The favourite gave a fresh pledge of his constitutional aims
by consenting to a new attack on a minister of the Crown. The Lord
Treasurer, Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, had done much by his management
of the finances to put the royal revenues on a better footing. But he
was the head of the Spanish party; and he still urged the king to cling
to Spain and to peace. Buckingham and Charles therefore looked coldly on
while he was impeached for corruption and dismissed from office.
[Sidenote: Buckingham's plans.]
Though James was swept along helplessly by the tide, his shrewdness saw
clearly the turn that affairs were taking; and it was only by hard
pressure that the favourite succeeded in wresting his consent to
Cranfield's disgrace. "You are making a rod for your own back," said the
king. But Buckingham and Charles persisted in their plans of war. That
these were utterly different from the plans of the Parliament troubled
them little. What money the Commons had granted, they had granted on
condition that the war should be exclusively a war against Spain, and a
war waged as exclusively by sea. Their good sense shrank from plunging
into the tangled and intricate medley of religious and political
jealousies which was turning Germany into a hell. What they saw to be
possible was to aid German Protestantism by lifting off it the pressure
of the armies of Spain. That Spain was most assailable on the sea the
ministers at Madrid knew as well as the leaders of the Commons. What
they dreaded was not a defeat in the Palatinate, but the cutting off of
their fleets from the Indies and a war in that new world which they
treasured as the fairest flower of their crown. A blockade of Cadiz or a
capture of Hispaniola would have produced more effect at the Spanish
council-board than a dozen English victories on the Rhine. But such a
policy had little attraction for Buckingham. His flighty temper exulted
in being the arbiter of Europe, in weaving fanciful alliances, in
marshalling imaginary armies. A treaty was concluded with Holland, and
negotiations set on foot with the Lutheran princes of North Germany, who
had looked coolly on at the ruin of the Elector Palatine, but were
scared at last into consciousness of their own danger. Yet more
important negotiations were opened for an alliance with France. To
restore the triple league of France, England, and Holland was to restore
the system of Elizabeth. Such a league would in fact have been strong
enough to hold in check the House of Austria and save German
Protestantism, while it would have hindered France from promoting and
profiting by German disunion, as it did under Richelieu. But, as of old,
James could understand no alliance that rested on merely national
interests. A dynastic union seemed to him the one sure basis for joint
action; and the plan for a French alliance became a plan for marriage
with a French princess.
[Sidenote: The French marriage.]
The plan suited the pride of Charles and of Buckingham. But the first
whispers of it woke opposition in the Commons. They saw the danger of a
Roman Catholic queen. They saw yet more keenly the danger of pledges of
toleration given to a foreign government, pledges which would furnish it
with continual pretexts for interfering in the civil government of the
country. Such an interference would soon breed on either side a mood for
war. Before making these grants therefore they had called for a promise
that no such pledges should be given, and as a subsidy hung on his
consent James had solemnly promised this. But it was soon found that
France was as firm on this point as Spain; and that toleration for the
Catholics was a necessary condition of any marriage-treaty. The pressure
of Buckingham and Charles was again brought to bear upon the king. The
promise was broken and the marriage-treaty was signed. Its difficulties
were quick to disclose themselves. It was impossible to call Parliament
again together at winter tide, while such perfidy was fresh; and the
subsidies, which had been counted on, could not be asked for. But a
hundred schemes were pushed busily on; and twelve thousand Englishmen
were gathered under an adventurer, Count Mansfield, to march to the
Rhine. They reached Holland only to find themselves without supplies and
to die of famine and disease.
[Sidenote: Death of James.]
If the blow fell lightly on the temper of the favourite, it fell heavily
on the king. James was already sinking to the grave, and in the March of
1625 he died with the consciousness of failure. Even his sanguine temper
was broken at last. He had struggled with the Parliament, and the
Parliament was stronger than ever. He had broken with Puritanism, and
England was growing more Puritan every day. He had claimed for the Crown
authority such as it had never known, and the Commons had impeached and
degraded his ministers. He had raised up dependants to carry out a
purely personal rule, and it was a favourite who was now treading his
will under foot. He had staked everything on his struggle with English
freedom, and the victory of English freedom was well-nigh won. James had
himself destroyed that enthusiasm of loyalty which had been the main
strength of the Tudor throne. He had disenchanted his people of their
blind faith in the monarchy by a policy both at home and abroad which
ran counter to every national instinct. He had alienated alike the
noble, the gentleman, and the trader. In his feverish desire for
personal rule he had ruined the main bulwarks of the monarchy. He had
destroyed the authority of the Council. He had accustomed men to think
lightly of the ministers of the Crown, to see them browbeaten by
favourites, and driven from office for corruption. He had degraded the
judges and weakened the national reverence for their voice as an
expression of law. He had turned the Church into a mere engine for
carrying out the royal will. And meanwhile he had raised up in the very
face of the throne a power which was strong enough to cope with it. He
had quarrelled with and insulted the Houses as no English sovereign had
ever done before; and all the while the authority he boasted of was
passing without his being able to hinder it to the Parliament which he
outraged. There was shrewdness as well as anger in his taunt at its
"ambassadors." A power had at last risen up in the Commons with which
the monarchy was to reckon. In spite of the king's petulant outbreaks
Parliament had asserted with success its exclusive right of taxation. It
had suppressed monopolies. It had reformed abuses in the courts of law.
It had impeached and driven from office the highest ministers of the
Crown. It had asserted its privilege of freely discussing all questions
connected with the welfare of the realm. It had claimed to deal with
the question of religion. It had even declared its will on the sacred
"mystery" of foreign policy. The utter failure of the schemes of James
at home can only be realized by comparing the attitude of the Houses at
his death with their attitude during the last years of Elizabeth. Nor
was his failure less abroad than at home. He had found England among the
greatest of European powers. He had degraded her into a satellite of
Spain. And now from a satellite he had dropped to the position of a
dupe. In one plan alone could he believe himself successful. If his son
had missed the hand of a Spanish Infanta, he had gained the hand of a
daughter of France. But the one success of James was the most fatal of
all his blunders; for in the marriage with Henrietta Maria lay the doom
of his race. It was the fierce and despotic temper of the Frenchwoman
that was to nerve Charles more than all to his fatal struggle against
English liberty. It was her bigotry--as the Commons foresaw--that
undermined the Protestantism of her sons. It was when the religious and
the political temper of Henrietta mounted the throne in James the Second
that the full import of the French marriage was seen in the downfall of
the Stuarts.