the story have here been told, but for the suggestion which lies within
it that the rapid breaking up of Sir Robert’s vigorous constitution was
not perhaps due, quite exclusively,—as has been commonly believed[15]—to
the malicious privation inflicted upon him by King CHARLES. For though
he was successful in extracting, from the chief accuser himself, a
confession of the falsehood of the charge, and an acknowledgment that
the object of the conspirators was to extort money, yet the matter
brought him much toil and vexation of spirit. One of the latest acts of
his life was to arrange the proofs of the conspiracy in due and formal
array.[16] [Sidenote: _Cottonian Charters_, &c., i, 3, seqq.; MS.
ADDIT., 14049, ff. 21–43. (B. M.)] When he had done that, and had once
again made an effort—as fruitless as the efforts which had been made
before—for the recovery of his library, he seems to have prepared
himself for death.
[Sidenote: _Domestic Corresp._, Charles I, vol. clxvii, § 45, seqq. (R.
H.).]
Sir Robert’s repeated efforts to regain his Library were not unseconded
by friends powerful at Court. But the King’s stubbornness would not give
way—till concession was too late. The Lord Privy Seal (the
newly-appointed successor of WORCESTER, recently dead), was amongst
those who interceded with CHARLES. [Sidenote: COTTON’S DEATH.] A little
before Sir Robert’s death his Lordship sent to him John ROWLAND—one of
his officers—to tell him that, at length, his mediation had been
successful, and the King was reconciled to him. [Sidenote: Rowland, in
Pref. to the Political Satire entitled _Gondomar’s Transactions_, &c.]
COTTON answered, ‘You come too late. My heart is broken.’
COTTON, when he came to lie on the bed of death, had certain topics of
reflection—of a secular sort—on which he might well look back with some
measure of complacency. As a student of Antiquity he had been
conspicuously successful. [Sidenote: COTTON’S DEATHBED REFLECTIONS.] He
had won the respect and reverence of every man in Europe who had proved
himself competent to judge of such studies. And he had not been a
selfish student. He had made his own researches and collections seed
plots for Posterity. If, as a Statesman, he had missed his immediate
aims more frequently than he had reached them, he had none the less
rendered, on some salient occasions, brilliant public service. He had
shewn, incontestably, that the true greatness of England lay near his
heart.
One of his contemporaries presently said of him—when told of his
death—‘If you could look at Sir Robert COTTON’S heart “_My Library_”
would be found inscribed there;—just as Queen MARY said “_Calais_” was
printed deeply on hers.’ But the character impressed on every volume of
that large collection which he so loved is ‘England.’ To illustrate the
history, and to enlighten the policy, of Englishmen was the object which
made COTTON, from his youth, a Collector.
On the other hand, when the inevitable deathbed reflections passed from
things secular to things sacred,—and also from Past to Future,—there was
very little room for complacency of any sort. A few years before, when a
better and more famous man than COTTON lay in like circumstances, this
thought came into his mind:—‘Godly men, in time of extreme afflictions,
did comfort themselves with the remembrance of their former life, _in
which they had glorified God_. It is not so in me. I have no comfort
that way. All things in my former life have been vain,—vain,—vain.’
Those words were among Sir Robert COTTON’S own early recollections. When
he was sixteen years of age some of the dying words of Philip SYDNEY
were repeated in almost every manor-house of England, and at many a
cottage fireside. Those particular words came under his eye, at the most
impressionable period of his life. The document which has handed them
down to us was preserved by his care.[17] Did the exact thought they
embody, and the very words themselves, come into his mind, as they well
might, when he, too, lay upon his deathbed?
Be that as it may, such words in Sir Robert’s mouth would have had a
special fitness. And he knew it well. Happily, he also knew where to
look for comfort. He found it, just as Philip SYDNEY—in common with many
thousands among the nameless Englishmen who had passed away in the
interval between 1586 and 1631—had found it before him. He could say, as
SYDNEY said:—
‘My Faith is frail; Hope constant never,
Yet this my comfort is, for ever,
God saves not man for merit.’[18]
Not long before he died, COTTON said to a friend (after a long
conference which he had held with Dr. OLDISWORTH, a Divine who spent
many hours, from day to day, at his bedside) such comfort as I would not
want, to be the greatest monarch in the world.’ [Sidenote: THE LAST
SCENE.] Bishop WILLIAMS—who passed the greater part of the last night in
conversation with him—remarked, as he went his way in the morning, ‘I
came to bring Sir Robert comfort, but I carry away more than I brought.’
To the last, however, the ruling passion of COTTON’S nature asserted
itself. He could forgive his persecutors, but he could not shake off the
memory of the bitterness of the persecution. Turning to Sir Henry
SPELMAN, he said: ‘Tell the Lord Privy Seal, and the rest of the
Council, that their so long detaining my books from me has been the
cause of this mortal malady.’ SPELMAN gave his message, and the ‘Lord
Privy Seal’ himself hastened to Sir Robert’s bedside to express his
regrets. The interview was narrated to CHARLES, and presently the Earl
of DORSET was sent, from the King himself. The new comforter came half
an hour too late. The persecuted man had passed to his rest. He died,
trusting in the one, only, all-sufficient, Saviour of sinful men. His
death occurred on the 6th of May, 1631. [Sidenote: John Pory to Sir
Thomas Puckering; MS. HARL., 7000, fol. 310.] His body was removed to
Conington, and was interred with more than the usual demonstrations of
respect. The inscription on his monument is printed at the end of this
chapter.
[Sidenote: THE ROYAL MESSAGE TO SIR THOMAS COTTON, 2nd BART.]
When Lord DORSET, on his arrival at Cotton House with the royal message,
found that Sir Robert was already dead he turned to the heir. If the
Earl has been truly reported, the terms in which he expressed his
master’s condolence and good wishes were ill-chosen: ‘To you, His
Majesty commanded me to say that, as he loved your father, _so_ he will
continue his love to yourself.’ [Sidenote: Pory to Sir T. Puckering, as
above.] The comfort of the promise could not have been great. Sir
Thomas’ experiences of the rubs of life were, however, to come chiefly
from the King’s opponents; not from the King.
His life was a quiet one, up to the time of the outbreak of Civil War.
Until then, its most notable incidents grew out of the circumstance that
it fell to his lot to serve as Sheriff of Huntingdonshire, during the
busy year of ‘Shipmoney.’
Sir Thomas COTTON was in no danger of being tempted to follow the
example of HAMPDEN. The readiness with which he discharged the
troublesome task of collecting the impost throughout his county probably
laid the first foundation of a strong feeling of personal ill-will
towards him, on the part of the lower class of the adherents of the
Parliament, during subsequent years. He never ranged himself with the
King’s party. Neither would he take any prominent part on the side of
the Parliament. He had little taste for public life; and regarded the
quarrel with the aloofness of spirit natural to a man with no dominant
political convictions, and with a decided love for country sports and
for the pleasures of domesticity.
[Sidenote: _Domestic Corresp._, Charles I, vol. cccxliii, § 67; cccxlvi,
§ 115; cccxlv, § 17; cccxlviii, cccl, § 40; cccliv, § 58;
ccclxi, § 104; ccclxvi, § 13; ccclxxi, § 58. (R. H.)]
He had sat in Parliament (for Marlow) during his father’s lifetime, and
in his father’s company. His correspondence shows considerable talent.
The extensive portion of that correspondence—in the years 1636 and
1637—which was imposed on him by the Shipmoney business, shews also
considerable power of dealing with official details, little as he could
have liked them. It exhibits an anxiety to acquit himself
conscientiously of a difficult duty, and not to shirk any of the
incidents of duty merely on account of their distastefulness. In the
‘Short Parliament’ of 1640 he sat as member for his own county. He does
not seem to have sought for any seat in the memorable Parliament which
followed.
[Sidenote: THE COMMITTEE OF SEQUESTRATIONS FOR HUNTINGDONSHIRE.]
His troubles began in 1644. Much to his disgust he was appointed to be
one of the ‘Committee of Sequestrations’ for Huntingdonshire. The duty
was one which any English gentleman might well have disliked without
incurring the reproach either of idleness or of undue fastidiousness.
Sir Thomas’ repugnance to the work was backed by a repugnance, not less
keen, to those who would fain have been his fellows in its performance.
‘This County of Huntingdon’—so he writes not long after his own
nomination to an ungenial office, which he refused to accept on the
ground of an illness, that was far from being feigned for the
occasion—‘is in an unhappy condition by Sequestrators. Only four or five
men, of mean reputation and estate, are “Committees;” and they act (all
of them) as Judges, Jury, and Executioners.’ His own experience was
destined to become a pregnant comment on that pithy text.
His avoidance of all share in the task of punishing, by fine and
imprisonment, those of his old friends and country neighbours who
thought that the duty of loyalty to the Crown was still a duty, however
glaring the faults of the man who, for the time, wore the Crown, was the
primary offence given by Sir Thomas COTTON to the busy patriots who
would fain have had him work with them as a fellow-sequestrator. His
illness (as I have said) was doubtless real enough; but he also disliked
the work, and took no pains to conceal his dislike. Medical advisers
told him that Bedfordshire—where he also had property—was a better
county than Huntingdonshire for a man who suffered from chronic ague and
low fever. But Sir Thomas needed no adviser to tell him that, under the
existing circumstances of the country and the times, Eyworth would be a
much more satisfactory abode than Conington for a quiet-loving man who
had other duties than those of a soldier, who abhorred civil war with
all his soul, and who ardently desired such a solution of the current
issues as would neither make the King a mere dependent on his
Parliament, nor make the Parliament an absolute ruler over the kingdom.
Sir Thomas went into Bedfordshire. Lady COTTON continued to abide at
Conington. Very soon after his departure she received a summons,
addressed to her husband, and couched exactly in these words: ‘You are
assessed eight hundred pounds, according to an Ordinance of Parliament.
[Sidenote: 1643. 16 August.] The King and Parliament hath present use of
these monies. Therefore, we pray you, send it up to us at Huntingdon on
Saturday next.’ Before the receipt of this very summary ‘assessment’
many of Sir Thomas COTTON’S horses, with a good deal of farm produce and
other property, had been already seized, by measures more summary still.
Meanwhile Sir Thomas had committed no act of delinquency; he had simply
removed himself into another county. Payment was refused.
[Sidenote: The Proceedings of the Huntingdonshire Sequestrators at
Conington.]
The sequel of the story depicts, in small, what was then passing at
large over much of the length and breadth of England. The farmers on the
Conington estate were told, in the plainest of words, that if they did
not pay their rents ‘to us at Huntingdon,’ their moveables would be
seized and themselves treated as ‘delinquents.’ Execution, in those
days, followed hard on process; and little difference was made, either
in word or deed, at the farms and at the manor-house. On one morning,
Lady COTTON was visited in her bedchamber—before she could dress—by five
troopers, who, under her own eyes, broke open her drawers and trunks,
and carried off what they thought meet. On another, one of Sir Thomas’
confidential servants received a similar visit; had his papers rifled in
a like fashion, and his apparel stolen. At the stables and out-offices
scarcely any three days passed, during the entire summer of 1643—from
May to August—without some raid or other for plunder. For much of this
there was scarcely the semblance or the pretext of a legal warrant.
During those saturnalia of ‘liberty’ there was, virtually, no judge in
England, and not a few men did whatsoever seemed good in their own eyes.
Sir Thomas COTTON was old enough to remember the early stages of the
long conflict of which—in 1643—this was seemingly the upshot. In the
Parliament at Oxford he had sat beside his father and his father’s
friends. His correspondence at this time—so far as it appears to have
survived—deals merely with the passing events. It contains, I think, no
disclosure of any reflections which may have crossed his mind on the
principles which underlay them. He was probably shrewd enough to see
already that the grossness of the current abuses of popular power
carried with it no scintilla of valid blame upon the first leaders in
that conflict—the real issues of which were still far off. What he, in
common with so many of the best gentlemen in England, was now smarting
under was the consequence rather of the royal triumphs of CHARLES’
earlier years, than of the royal defeats of his later years. Had the
policy of Robert COTTON and of John ELIOT prevailed a quarter of a
century sooner, there would (very probably) have been no county
committees of sequestrators; no political scaffolds at Whitehall; no
ruling of England by brute force under artificers suddenly transformed
into generals; no wholesale massacres in Ireland, fraught with mischief
for the whole empire during centuries to come.
Be that however as it may, things were not yet at so bad a pass, but
that a curb could, now and then, be put on the necks of such busy
patriots as those who sat in perpetual Committee at Huntingdon. Redress
was impossible; seeing that the plunder was dissipated almost as fast as
it was made. But, in Sir Thomas COTTON’S case, it was found practicable
to put a check on its progress. He invoked the aid of a powerful friend,
Henry, Earl of Manchester, who represented the authority of the
Parliament in Huntingdonshire. The Earl summoned the Sequestrators to
show cause for their raids on Conington. He held a court. The new
functionaries were brought—after some ineffectual bluster—to confess
that they knew of no act done by COTTON which brought him within purview
of the Parliamentary Ordinance, nor of any other legal cause to subject
him to sequestration. As the words of confession were on the lips of one
active Committee-man, another functionary blurted out—most
felicitously—‘You are wrong. [Sidenote: _Proceedings in the
Sequestration of the Estate of Sir T. Cotton_; MS. ADDIT., 5012, ff. 34,
seqq.] Master Serjeant Wilde wished it should be done.’ And, in the
sequel, ‘Master Serjeant’ proved to be strong enough to protract the
inquiry, and even to procure its adjournment to London; though his
attempt to maintain the sequestration—on a plea the falsehood of which
was conclusively proved—came at last to be entirely foiled.
When Sir Thomas COTTON came to sum up his losses he found that they
amounted to more than four thousand pounds (in the money of that day).
[Sidenote: _Ib._, ff. 71, seqq.] ‘They have had,’ he wrote, ‘£1500, in
money; besides eleven horses, worth £140; Billeting at Conington,
Eyworth, and other places, which came to £100; spoil made at Sawtrey and
at St. Germans which £300 will not make good; and besides the decay of
my rents to an amount of at least £600 a-year; ... and now the layers
and taxes will take up the whole of Ladyday’s rent.’ [Sidenote: _Ib._,
74.] Meanwhile his unlucky tenants, in Huntingdonshire alone, had been
deprived of a hundred and ninety horses, and their farms had been
stripped both of provisions and of forage.
By way of pleasant diversity to his troubles in Huntingdonshire and
Bedfordshire Sir Thomas received, presently, a letter from John
SELDEN—the old and warmly-attached friend of his family—warning him that
the capabilities of Cotton House in London had caught the eye of certain
other Committee-men, and had made a deep impression on them. [Sidenote:
THE ATTEMPT TO SEIZE ON COTTON HOUSE.] They saw that it would do
capitally both as a lodging house for the entertainment of distinguished
strangers who might come to Westminster, to wait on the Parliament, and
as a State prison for very eminent delinquents. These watchful
Committee-men were also members of the Council of State; and the time
had now come when King JAMES’ sarcastic and well-remembered jest—‘Bring
me sax chairs, for I see sax kings approaching’—was turning itself into
a very awkward fact. These Committee-men, too, (like their humbler
fellows at Huntingdon,) had their Serjeant at hand to give them advice
on elastic points of law. ‘Serjeant DENDY,’ wrote SELDEN, ‘fairly told
me that the Committee and Council were informed that, by the Patent
under which you claim, it was provided that your interest [in Cotton
House] should cease, _during the time of the Parliament_.’ [Sidenote:
Selden to Sir T. Cotton; in an Appendix to Cotton MSS. marked ‘16. l.’
fol. 50 (B. M.)] Certainly, an awkward clause to appear in a man’s
lease, in days when a Parliament, beginning its ‘time’ in 1641 had not
quite ended it until 1660. This claim of the Council of State proved, in
the sequel, to have in it no more of real validity than had that other
claim to procure the Conington rents to be paid ‘to us at Huntingdon’;
but, like that, it gave Sir Thomas COTTON a good deal of annoyance
before he succeeded in getting quit of it.
It is much to his honour that petty but cumulative misfortunes like
these did not sour Sir Thomas COTTON’S temper. When quieter times came,
he showed himself the worthy son of his eminent father, both by the
improvement of his library, at considerable charge, and by the
liberality with which he lent his choicest manuscripts, and, in many
ways, made them and his other collections serviceable to literature. The
still extant acknowledgments of service of this sort from historians and
great scholars are very numerous.[19]
By his first marriage with Margaret HOWARD, daughter of William Lord
HOWARD of Naworth, Sir Thomas had one son and two daughters. By his
second marriage with Alice CONSTABLE he had four sons, two of whom died
without issue. Alice was the daughter and sole heir of Sir John
CONSTABLE of Dromondley in Yorkshire, and the relict of Edmund ANDERSON
of Eyworth and of Stratton in Bedfordshire, and she brought with her a
considerable dowry.
Sir John COTTON, the eldest son of the first marriage, sat in Parliament
for the borough of Huntingdon in the reign of CHARLES THE SECOND, and
for Huntingdonshire in that of JAMES THE SECOND. But he took no
prominent part in public affairs. Like his father he was twice married.
And his first wife became step-daughter as well as daughter-in-law to
his father, being Dorothy, daughter and heir of Edmund ANDERSON of
Eyworth above mentioned. His second wife was Elizabeth HONYWOOD. He
seems to have resembled his father both in his tastes for a quiet
country life, and in the liberality with which he allowed (on reasonable
cause and to proper persons) access to his library. Nor did Sir John,
any more than Sir Thomas, escape animadversion, when he allowed himself
to form his own judgment of the fitness or the timeliness of any
particular application. [Sidenote: _Autobiog. and Corresp._, vol. ii, p.
40.] [Sidenote: _History of the Reformation_, vol. iii, _Introd._, p. 8.
(Edit. of 1714.)] Caustic Symonds D’EWES writes down Sir Thomas COTTON
as ‘unworthy to be master of so inestimable a library.’ Caustic Bishop
BURNET writes in his turn of Sir John COTTON: ‘A great Prelate had
possessed him with such prejudices against me that ... he desired to be
excused’ [from granting BURNET admittance to the Cottonian Library]
‘unless the Archbishop of Canterbury or a Secretary of State would
recommend me as a person fit to have access.’ Against strictures such as
these, it were easy, but is not needful, to adduce a score of
acknowledgments of deep obligation, from writers more eminent by far
than either D’EWES or BURNET.
The eldest son (also John) of Sir John COTTON, by his wife Dorothy, did
not live to inherit either the famous library or the ancestral estates.
He died in 1681, and his later days seem to have been marked by some
stormy incidents. In one point, his troubles resembled those which
disturbed the last year of his great-grandfather’s life;—in so far as
that they were caused by a lady. But whereas Sir Robert had the lady
thrust upon him, to suit the purposes of other men, the misfortunes of
his great-grandson appear to have grown out of an ardent but illicit
passion—as ardently, and not less illicitly, returned by its object.
Some scraps of their correspondence which have chanced to be preserved
read, after two centuries of dusty repose, as if they were still all
aflame with that fierce love which an experienced poet describes as
‘passion’s essence.’[20]
Sir John COTTON survived till nearly the close of the seventeenth
century. He was succeeded in the baronetcy and estates by John, the son
of the last-mentioned John COTTON, who had married Frances, daughter and
heir of Sir George DOWNING of East Hatley in Cambridgeshire. Sir John,
fourth baronet, married Elizabeth HERBERT, one of the grand-daughters of
Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery. Like his ancestors of many
generations, this Sir John COTTON sat in Parliament for Huntingdonshire.
His chief claim to honourable memory is that he settled the Cottonian
Library on the British nation for ever, and thus made its founder, Sir
Robert, the virtual and first FOUNDER OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM. This was
done by Act of Parliament, in the year 1700.
This eminent public benefactor died, in 1731, without surviving issue.
The baronetcy then reverted to Robert the eldest son of the second
marriage of the first Sir John COTTON, grandson of the Founder. From Sir
Robert, fifth baronet, the dignity came, in 1749, to a fourth ‘John
COTTON’ who then became sixth baronet and who was the last surviving
male heir of his honoured line.
Sir John had lost his only son—a fifth John—many years before his
accession to the baronetcy, which, on his own death (27 March, 1752),
became extinct. Conington had long previously passed to a younger son of
Sir Thomas COTTON, second baronet; as shown in the following—
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| CONCLUSION OF THE PEDIGREE OF COTTON OF CONINGTON, |
| SHOWING ALSO THE DESCENT OF THE COTTONIAN TRUSTEESHIP |
| OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM. |
| |
| |
| Sir Robert (BRUCE) COTTON = Elizabeth BROCAS. |
| Founder of the | |
| Cottonian Library. | |
| | |
| | |
| Alice CONSTABLE, = Sir Thomas COTTON, = Margaret HOWARD, |
| daughter and sole heir | (2nd Bart.) | daughter of William, |
| of Sir John CONSTABLE, | of Conington, Hunts, | Lord HOWARD of |
| of Dromondley, in | and of Eyworth, | Naworth [First Wife]. |
| Yorkshire; Relict | Bedfordshire. | |
| of Edmund ANDERSON, | [X] |
| of Eyworth and of | |
| Stratton, in | |
| Bedfordshire. | |
| | |
| +-------------+-------+----------------------+---------------+ |
| | | | | |
| Thomas Sir Robert COTTON = Gertrude Philip COTTON, William COTTON, |
| (died in of Hatley St. | MORRICE. eventually of of Cotton Hall, |
| infancy). George, County | Conington, in Cheshire. |
| of Cambridge, | died without | |
| Knight. | issue, leaving | |
| | Conington to | |
| | Thomas COTTON, | |
| | his nephew. | |
| | | |
| +----------------------+ +---------------------------+ |
| | | |
| Alice = Robert TREFUSIS. Thomas COTTON, |
| | of Conington, |
| | devisee of Philip. |
| | | |
| Robert-Cotton TREFUSIS. Frances = Dingley ASCHAM. |
| | (sole heir). |
| | |
| From whom |
| the present |
| Charles Henry |
| Rolle TREFUSIS, |
| 18th Baron Clinton, |
| of Maxtoke. |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| [X] |
| | |
| +-----------------------------+-------+ |
| | | | |
| Elizabeth HONYWOOD = Sir John COTTON = Dorothy ANDERSON, Lucy. Frances. |
| [Second Wife]. | (3rd Bart.) | daughter and sole |
| | of Conington, | heir of Edmund |
| | and of Eyworth, | ANDERSON, of |
| | succy. M.P. for | Eyworth and of |
| | Borough and | Stratton [First |
| | County of | Wife]. |
| | Huntingdon. | |
| | [Y] |
| | |
| +---------+-----------------------------+------------+ |
| | | | |
| Sir Robert COTTON = Elizabeth WIGSTON. Elizabeth. Mary. |
| of Gedding, in Hunts, | |
| succeeded, as 5th Bart., | |
| on the death, in 1731, | |
| of Sir John COTTON. | |
| | |
| +--------------+ |
| | |
| Sir John COTTON = Jane BURDETT. |
| Succ. as 6th Bart | |
| in 1749. Died, | |
| without surviving | |
| male issue, | |
| 27 March, 1752. | |
| +----------+ |
| | | |
| John, Jane = Thomas HART, |
| died in infancy. of Warfield, |
| Berkshire. First |
| Parliamentary |
| Trustee of the |
| COTTONIAN LIBRARY. |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| [Y] |
| | |
| John COTTON = Frances DOWNING, |
| Died in 1681 | daughter of Sir George |
| in his Father’s | DOWNING, of East |
| lifetime. | Hatley, Cambridgeshire. |
| | |
| | |
| +----------+----------------------+-------+ |
| | | | |
| Sir John COTTON = Elizabeth HERBERT, Thomas Frances = William HANBURY.[21]|
| (4th Bart.) grand-daughter of COTTON. | |
| M.P. for Philip, Earl of | | |
| Huntingdon, Pembroke, &c. | | |
| Donor of COTTON | | |
| Library to | | |
| the Nation. | | |
| +-+ | |
| | | |
| Mary, Mary HANBURY = Martin ANNESLEY.|
| sole heir | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| +----------------+--------+ |
| | | |
| Revd. Francis ANNESLEY, George ANNESLEY,|
| Present COTTONIAN TRUSTEES of |
| the British Museum. |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
The reader who glances at this pedigree will notice that some of the
COTTONS of 1600–1750 were as fortunate in getting heiress-wives as had
been their foregoers of preceding centuries. But their possessions were
scattered almost as rapidly as they had been augmented. Conington, which
was the most valued possession of Sir Robert, was less prized by his
descendants. The Council Books show that some of its appendant manors
and members—notably Glatton and Hulme—gave to the Founder himself a good
deal of trouble. The Sequestration Books show the anxieties and losses
which the busy Parliamentarians of Huntingdonshire inflicted on his next
successor. Other circumstances tended also to bring the place into
disfavour with owners who had a choice of seats. It lay so close to the
great northern road, as to be exposed to undue demands alike from the
movement of troops and from the tramping of professional vagrants. Nor
was it less exposed, from its situation, to injuries by great floods.
[Sidenote: DESERTION OF THE OLD SEAT OF CONINGTON.] Long before the
extinction of the male line, Conington was deserted, in favour of more
attractive abodes in southern counties. We learn from a passage in
Stukeley’s _Itinerary_ that the house was fast becoming a ruin, even in
the reign of GEORGE THE FIRST; although it had been solidly rebuilt by
Sir Robert himself.
‘I thought it,’ writes that antiquary, ‘a piety to turn half a mile out
of the road, to visit Conington the seat of the noble Sir Robert
COTTON,—where he and Camden have often sat in council upon the
Antiquities of Britain, and where he had a choice collection of Roman
inscriptions picked up from all parts of the kingdom. I was concerned to
see a stately old house of hewn stone, large and handsome, already
falling into ruin.’[22]
By the Statute which established the COTTON Library as a national
institution, it was enacted as follows: ‘The Cottonian Library ... shall
be kept and preserved, in the name and family of the COTTONS, for public
use and advantage. [Sidenote: THE ESTABLISHMENT ACT OF 1700.] And
therefore, according to the desire of the said Sir John COTTON, and at
his request, the said Mansion House, ... and also all the said
Library, ... together with all the Coins, Medals, and other
rarities, ... shall be vested in Trustees ... with a perpetual
succession.’ The first Trustees were the Lord Chancellor SOMERS, Mr.
Speaker HARLEY (afterwards Earl of Oxford), and the Lord Chief Justice,
_ex officio_; together with Sir Robert COTTON, of Hatley St. George,
Cambridgeshire; Philip COTTON, of Conington; Robert COTTON of Gedding,
in Cambridgeshire, and William HANBURY, of the Inner Temple. [Sidenote:
12 & 13 WILL. III, c. 7.] It was provided that on the decease of any one
of the four family trustees the heir male, for the time being, of Sir
Robert COTTON, the founder, should appoint a successor.
The furious party-spirit which at this time divided the country into
hostile camps, the leaders of which were at any moment ready to fly at
each other’s throats, was eminently unfavourable both to the
guardianship and to the growth of the new institution; as it was,
indeed, to all matters of learning or of mental culture. Hardly seven
years had passed before it was found necessary to pass ‘_An Act for the
better securing of Her Majesty’s purchase of Cotton House in
Westminster_.’
This Act recites that since the preceding enactment of 1700 ‘very little
had been done in pursuance thereof to make the said Library useful to
the Public, except what had been lately done at Her Majesty’s charge;’
and that the place wherein the Library then was, being ‘a narrow little
damp room, was improper for preserving the books and papers.’ The Act
then proceeds to declare that an agreement had been made for the
purchase of Cotton House for £4,500, ‘to the intent that it might be in
Her Majesty’s power to make this most valuable collection useful to her
own subjects, and to all learned strangers.’
Within five years, however, this unfortunate Library had to be removed
from Cotton House to Essex House, in the Strand (1712); and thence
again, in 1730, to Ashburnham House, at Westminster (already containing
the Royal collection), where it had not long been lodged, when the fire
occurred by which it was so seriously injured. [Sidenote: THE FIRE AT
ASHBURNHAM HOUSE.] The account which the Parliamentary Committee of
Inquiry gave to the Public, shortly after the occurrence of this
calamity, runs thus:
‘On Saturday morning, October 23, 1731, a great smoke was perceived by
Dr. BENTLEY, and the rest of the family at Ashburnham House, which soon
after broke out into a flame. It began from a wooden mantel-tree taking
fire which lay across a stove-chimney that was under the room where the
MSS. of the Royal and Cottonian Libraries were lodged, and was
communicated to that room by the wainscoat and by pieces of timber, that
stood perpendicularly upon each end of the mantel-tree.’
‘They were in hope, at first,’ continues the Committee, ‘to put a stop
to the fire by throwing water upon the pieces of timber and
wainscoat, ... and therefore did not begin to remove the books so soon
as they otherwise would have done. But, the fire prevailing, Mr. CASLEY,
the Deputy Librarian, took care in the first place to remove the famous
Alexandrian MS. and the books under the head of Augustus’ [twelve of the
Cottonian presses, it will be remembered, were adorned by the heads of
the twelve Cæsars, whence the still existing designations or
press-marks, as for instance, that of the famous _Evangeliary of King
Ethelstan_, NERO D. vi, mentioned on page 132] ‘in the Cottonian
Library, as being esteemed the most valuable amongst the collection.
Several entire presses, with the books in them, were also removed;
but ... several of the backs of the presses being already on fire, they
were obliged to be broke open, and the books, as many as could be,
thrown out of the windows.’ All the MSS. that were saved, and the
remains of what been burnt, were removed to the Dormitory of Westminster
School.
[Sidenote: 1731 October.]
At the time of this disastrous fire, the number of MS. volumes was 958.
Of this number 114 were reported to be ‘lost, burnt, or entirely
spoiled; and 98 damaged so as to be defective.’ Mr. Speaker ONSLOW took
immediate measures, in conjunction with Dr. BENTLEY and Mr. CASLEY, for
the examination of the burnt MSS., and for the repair of such as were
then deemed alone reparable. Three months afterwards the Record Clerk to
whom the task was more particularly committed, thus reports his
progress: ‘One hundred and upwards,’ he says, ‘being volumes of Letters
and State Papers, have been quite taken to pieces, marked, and bound
again.’ [Sidenote: _Report of the Committee appointed to view the
Cottonian Library_ (1732), pp. 11–15; and Casley’s Appendix thereto.]
But he laments that ‘there having no way hitherto been found out to
extend vellum and parchment that has been shrivelled up and contracted
by fire to its former dimensions, part of several of the vellum MSS.
must remain not legible, unless the desideratum can be supplied.’
For nearly a century some of the most precious of the injured MSS.
remained as the fire had left them. But in 1824, by the care of Mr.
FORSHALL, the then Keeper of the MSS. in the British Museum, a
commencement was made towards their restoration, which his successor,
Sir F. MADDEN, zealously and successfully continued. Nearly three
hundred volumes have been repaired, and more or less completely
restored, (a considerable number of which were previously regarded as
beyond all hope of recovery) to a state of legibility.[23]
The calamity of 1731 brought about what may, in a sense, be termed a
partial compensation, by inducing Major Arthur EDWARDS to make an
important bequest, with the view of precluding its recurrence.
[Sidenote: THE BEQUEST OF ARTHUR EDWARDS.] Owing to the protraction of a
life interest in the legacy—the terms of which will be cited in
describing that eventual Act of Incorporation which created the British
Museum—it did not become available until other arrangements had made its
application to building purposes needless. It was, consequently, and in
pursuance of the Testator’s contingent instructions, appropriated to the
purchase of books in the manner, and with results, which will be spoken
of in a subsequent chapter. Major EDWARDS also bequeathed his own
collection of about 2,000 volumes of printed books, by way of addition
to the Cottonian Library of MSS. These, however, were not actually
incorporated with the Museum collections until the year 1769.
For several years, BENTLEY conjoined the Keepership of the Cottonian
with that of the Royal Library. His predecessors in the office were Dr.
Thomas SMITH (hitherto the only biographer of the Founder,) and William
HANBURY, who had married a descendant of the Founder. [Sidenote: THE
KEEPERS OF THE COTTONIAN LIBRARY.] Dr. SMITH was less eminent as a
scholar—though his learning was great—but far more estimable as a man,
than was his successor in the Keepership, the imperious and covetous
Master of Trinity. For conscience sake, SMITH had given up both a good
fellowship and a good living, at the Revolution. Literature profited by
the loss of Divinity. He died in May, 1710. HANBURY—by a very
undesirable plurality—was a Trustee as well as Keeper. That he was not,
in either capacity, strictly faithful to the spirit of the Trust
confided to him seems to be established by incidents which I find
recorded in the MS. Diary of Humphrey WANLEY. The reader will observe
that it is possible to reconcile WANLEY’S statement with the supposition
that the MSS. alienated had never actually been made part of the
Cottonian Library, though it is as plain as sunlight that a really
faithful trustee would have made them part of it. As it turned out, the
sale of them did no actual and eventual mischief. On December 2nd, 1724,
says WANLEY, ‘I had a conversation with Mr. HANBURY, who owned that he
hath still in his possession many original and valuable papers given him
by his wife’s brother, Sir John COTTON, which now lie in different
places. These papers and whatever else happens to be among them—as
books, rolls, &c.—he hath agreed to put into my hands for my Lord’s
[OXFORD’S] use. [Sidenote: _Wanley’s Diary_, MS., ii, 40 (B.M.).] I have
promised that he shall be very well paid and considered for the same.’
WANLEY had already recorded a previous visit in which HANBURY had
delivered ‘for my Lord OXFORD’S use, a small but curious parcel of old
letters,’ adding: ‘I believe he expects a gratuity for them.’ On the
last day of December he received another parcel; and on the 4th January,
1725, he again writes: ‘Mr. HANBURY gave me another parcel of letters
written to Sir Robert COTTON.’
Without endorsing the violent diatribe of Lord OXFORD (the second of the
Harleian Earls) against HANBURY’S successor—as the almost wilful
destroyer of part of the Cotton MSS.—it must be admitted that there is
conclusive evidence that neglect of duty on Dr. BENTLEY’S part was a
moving agent in the disaster. Under his nominal keepership the practical
duties of Cottonian Librarian were discharged by an industrious and
otherwise meritorious deputy, David CASLEY.
[Sidenote: THE PROJECT OF 1707 FOR UNITING THE COTTONIAN, ROYAL, AND
ARUNDEL, LIBRARIES.]
There were many projects for making Sir Robert COTTON’S noble
collections, both in literature and antiquities, the foundation of a
‘British Museum,’ before a feasible and successful project was hit upon.
[Sidenote: Sloane to Charlett, 7 April, 1707. (Bodleian Library,
Oxford).] It is curious to note that one of these schemes embraced, as
the groundwork of the projected national Museum, the collections of Sir
Robert COTTON, of Prince HENRY, and of Lord ARUNDEL; and that some
particulars of the plan were narrated—to a country correspondent—by Sir
Hans SLOANE, almost fifty years before his own conditional bequest gave
occasion and means for the eventual union of the collections so spoken
of with the vast gatherings of all kinds, in literature and in science,
to the procuring of which so large a portion of his own useful and
laborious life was to be devoted.
When that occasion came, two of the then Cottonian Trustees framed a
Petition to Parliament in which they expressed their acknowledgments for
‘seasonable and necessary care’ of the Cotton Library. They alleged that
it had remained ‘almost useless’ to the Public, during many years, for
want of a fixed and convenient building to receive it; that it had been
exposed to many dangers by frequent removals, and had once run the
hazard of ‘a total destruction by fire.’ If, said they, the loss which
the Public then sustained proved to be less than had been feared, the
Public owed the obligation ‘to a great member of this House’ [of
Commons] ‘who powerfully interposed and assisted in its preservation.’
The allusion is to the Right Hon. Arthur ONSLOW, the then Speaker, who
afterwards became one of the first Trustees of the Museum established by
the Act of 1753.
[Sidenote: Petition of Samuel Burroughs and Thos. Hart; MS. in Cottonian
‘Appendix’ (B. M.).]
The Petitioners proceed to state that their most earnest wishes are
accomplished by seeing a Library, famed throughout Europe, with the
generous gifts of Major EDWARDS annexed thereto, placed out of all
further dangers from neglect, and that they rejoice to perceive that the
Museum of their own Founder is about to be enlarged by other rare and
valuable collections. ‘We are,’ say they, ‘fully persuaded that an
edifice raised upon such a stately plan will, by degrees, be stored with
benefactions and become a common Cabinet for preserving with safety all
curiosities and whatsoever is choice or excellent in its kind. Moreover,
being a new institution for the service of the learned world it will be
an honour to the Nation, an ornament long wanted in this great city, and
a distinguished event in the history of our times.’ [Sidenote:
Heretofore, p. 3.] Then follows the passage which I have prefixed, by
way of motto, to this first division of the volume now in the reader’s
hands.
When these Petitioners went on to state to Parliament that ‘no
expression of gratitude can be too great ... for doing honour to the
memory of Sir Robert COTTON,’ their assertion gave rise to no utterance
of hostile feeling. [Sidenote: RECENT CHARGES AGAINST THE CHARACTER AND
FAME OF SIR R. COTTON.] They were not even charged with undue laudation
of their ancestor. People who at that time troubled themselves to think
of such matters at all, were agreed in regarding Sir Robert COTTON as
unquestionably one of the worthies of England. Nowadays—as I have had
occasion to show already—there are many gainsayers. A distinguished
historian (Mr. GARDINER) asperses COTTON’S character both for
statesmanship and for truthfulness; whilst a distinguished archæologist
(Mr. BREWER) charges him with embezzling records.
The first charge has been partly met, in these pages, by the simple
apposition and collation of contemporary evidence. The reader has his
choice between the cumulative testimony of several English peers and
statesmen; and the unsupported testimony of one foreign diplomatist, who
made it his boast to be the enemy of Englishmen, and whose hostility was
graduated in tolerably exact accordance with the qualities and the deeds
which have made England proud of them. The home witnesses gave their
testimony whilst the events were still fresh in men’s minds. They gave
it in broad daylight, and with open doors. The foreign witness put his
evidence into a secret dispatch, to be seen by no human eye, out of the
Spanish Cabinet, until our own historian disinterred it, at Simancas,
two centuries and a half after date. Nor is this quite all.
If GONDOMAR’S account be true, not only was Sir Robert COTTON’S life as
a statesman a protracted lie, but his duplicity was so superbly cloaked
as to deceive the most keen-sighted of his contemporaries. The men who
sat habitually at his board in his days of health, and who ministered at
his bedside in all the offices of tender friendship in his days of
sickness and of death, were all wrong about his character. [Sidenote: _A
Discours wether yt be fitt for Inglande to make peace with Spaine._ MS.
Cott. Vespas. C. xiii, ff. 160, seqq. (B. M.).] And there is this other
little fact to boot: Sir Robert COTTON began his public life by as open
a declaration of anti-Spanish policy in relation to the great question
of the Netherlands as ever came from the lips of our RALEGH. He ended
his public life with as staunch an adherence to the principles, both in
Church and State, which the rulers of Spain abhorred as that which had
been shown by RALEGH on the scaffold in Old Palace Yard, or by ELIOT in
the dungeon of the Tower of London. Meanwhile, just in the mid-channel
of his career, and in the prime of his faculties, Sir Robert COTTON
threw himself, gratuitously, at the feet of GONDOMAR. He humbly asked
leave to take Spanish service in the guise of a political slave. The
historian’s proposition is a bold one. And its evidence needs to be
cogent. English readers now know quite enough about GONDOMAR to judge
whether or not his sole testimony is sufficient to damn the fame of such
a man as COTTON;—to degrade him from the rank of an English worthy;—to
brand him as a criminal virtually convicted of apostacy in religion, and
of treason to his avowed convictions in politics?[24]
From the nature of things the second charge cannot be so directly, so
compactly, or so effectively met. Almost a third of the manuscripts
which form the most important section of the Cotton Library consist of,
or contain, Papers of State. Of these a very considerable proportion
once belonged to the State. How came they to pass into the hands of Sir
Robert COTTON?
[Sidenote: MR. BREWER’S ACCOUNT OF SIR R. COTTON’S ACQUISITION OF STATE
PAPERS.]
By Mr. BREWER the question has been answered, unhesitatingly and
exhaustively. Large portions of the Diplomatic Correspondence of HENRY
THE EIGHTH were, he says, ‘carried off in 1614, if not before, by Sir
Robert COTTON.... The original bundles appear to have been broken up
under the keepership of AGARDE, when the Treasury of the Exchequer was
rifled of its most precious contents to augment the collections of Sir
R. COTTON.... [Sidenote: _Calendar of the State Papers_; Reign of Henry
VIII, Pref., pp. viii, ix.] For the early years of HENRY, his [Sir
Robert’s] collections are more numerous, and even more interesting, than
the documents in the English, the French, or the Spanish Archives. They
are equally authentic.... By what fraud or negligence they found their
way into the possession of Sir Robert COTTON it is not for me to
inquire.’
No writer can be better qualified to speak with authority on such a
topic as this than is Mr. BREWER. Familiar with State Papers and with
records of all kinds for a very long period, he has won the deep respect
of all students of our history by the uses to which his knowledge has
been applied. But the ablest writer will sometimes write hastily. The
most impartial inquirer will now and then reach a conclusion by
overleaping part of the evidence.
The sweeping passage which I have quoted, like other passages in Mr.
RILEY’S preface to _Liber Custumarum_, previously noticed, leaves
altogether out of view three or four whole classes of testimony—chains
not links—having a vital bearing on the issue. For example—
[Sidenote: Sir T. Wilson to King James I, _Domestic Corresp._, vol.
xcvi, § 41*, seqq. (R. H.)]
I. It disregards the fact that certain bundles of State letters and
papers were given by the King’s order to Sir Robert COTTON, during the
reign of JAMES THE FIRST. These, indeed, were commanded to be
‘subscriptions and signatures of Princes and great men, attached to
letters _otherwise unimportant_.’ But who is to tell us what was the
estimate of ‘importance’ in papers of State formed, two centuries and a
half ago, by JAMES, who gave the order, or by Sir Thomas WILSON, who
received it?
II. It disregards the fact that long before, as well as long after, that
known order of 1618, Sir Robert’s possession of papers once the property
of the Government was so published and so recognized as to imply, by
fair induction, that the possession must have been—as far as he was
concerned—a lawful one. In his own writings, he iterates and reiterates
reference to national documents then in his own collection. His
references are specific and minute. Secretaries of State write to him,
asking leave to inspect original Treaties (sometimes in order to lay
them before the King in person) and promising to return them promptly.
[Sidenote: _Domestic Corresp._, as above, 1621, March; and _passim_;
also _Council Books_ (C. O.).] Law Officers of the Crown desire him
kindly to afford them opportunities for collating public instruments,
preserved at Cotton House, with public instruments still in the
repositories of the Crown.
III. It leaves out of sight the fact that in the correspondence of Sir
Edward COKE with Sir Robert COTTON there is a passage which also
_implies_—though it does not expressly assert—that Sir Robert had
received from King JAMES a permission to select records, of some kind or
other, from the Tower of London, anterior to the qualified permission,
[Sidenote: Sir E. Coke to Sir R. Cotton; MS. Cott. Julius, ciii
(Undated; probably 1612). (B. M.)] above mentioned, given in 1618, to
select ‘autographs’ from the Paper Office;
IV. It disregards that strong implication of a lawful possession—so far
as Sir Robert COTTON, individually, is concerned—which necessarily
arises out of the fact that at two several periods the Cottonian Library
was under the sole control and custody of Crown officials; [Sidenote:
_Registers of Privy Council_, 1616; 1629; 1630; _passim_ (C. O.)] that
it remained under such control for an aggregate period of more than two
years; that COTTON’S bitter enemies were then at the head of affairs;
that in 1630 a Royal Commission was actually issued [Sidenote: _Signs
Manual_, Charles I, vol. xii, § 15 (R. H.).] ‘to search what Records or
other Papers of State in the custody of Sir Robert COTTON properly
belong to His Majesty, and thereof to certify;’ and that the existing
Cottonian MSS., together with those burned in 1732, were, one year after
the issue of that Commission, restored by the Crown to Sir Robert
COTTON’S heirs;
[Sidenote: _e. g._ MS. Harl., 7002, ff. 120, 122, &c., MS. Cott. Julius
ciii, _passim_ (B. M.).]
V. It overlooks the circumstance, vital to the issue now raised, that
amongst the MSS. which most indubitably were once Crown property many
can still be minutely traced from possessor to possessor, prior to their
reception into the Cottonian Library;
And VI. It disregards the fact, hardly less important, that a patriotic
statesman conversant both with the arcana of government at large, and
with the special arcana of the State Paper Office and Secretary’s
offices, under King JAMES THE FIRST and King CHARLES THE FIRST, might
have cogent reasons for believing that some important classes of State
Papers would be likely to remain much more truly and enduringly the
property of the English nation if stored up at Cotton House—even had no
‘British Museum’ ever been created—than if stored up at Whitehall.
Inferences and implications such as these are far from amounting to
conclusive proof. But most readers, I think, will assent to the
assertion that, cumulatively, they amount to a very strong presumption
indeed that the stigma which has been impressed on Sir Robert COTTON’S
memory is both precipitate and unjust. Precipitate it plainly is, for a
confident verdict has virtually been pronounced—upon a grave
issue,—before hearing any evidence for the accused. Unjust I, for one,
cannot but think it, inasmuch as circumstances which at most are but
grounds of mere suspicion of the greater offence charged, have been so
huddled up with proofs of a minor and (comparatively) venial offence,
that readers giving but ordinary attention to the allegations and their
respective evidence are almost certain to be misled.
For, undoubtedly, Sir Robert COTTON stands convicted of dealing, more
than once, with manuscripts which he had borrowed very much as though
they had been manuscripts which he possessed. Mr. RILEY’S testimony is,
on this point, conclusive. An independent witness, Dr. Sedgwick
SAUNDERS, the able Chairman of the Library Committee of the Corporation
of London, tells me that both the _returned_ MS. of _Liber Custumarum_,
and also that of _Liber Legum Antiquorum_, bear as unmistakable marks of
a claim to ownership on Sir Robert’s part, as those of which the return
was refused.
To such proofs as these I can myself add a new instance. Archbishop LAUD
had procured, from the Principal and Fellows of St. John’s, the loan to
Sir Robert COTTON of a certain ancient Beda MS. of great value. Many
years passed, and the MS. had not returned to St. John’s. The Fellows
cast severe blame on their eminent benefactor. [Sidenote: Archbp. Laud
to Sir R. Cotton, MS. Cott. Julius C., iii, f. 232.] LAUD had to
petition his friend COTTON for the return of Beda, in terms almost
pathetic; and he was so doubtful whether pathos would suffice that he
added bribe to entreaty. If, he said, ‘anything of worth in like kind
come to my hands, I will freely give it you in recompense.’
The reader has seen the abounding proofs of that generous furtherance of
every kind of literary effort which COTTON gave, throughout life, with
an ungrudging heart and an open hand. [Sidenote: Bolton to Camden; MS.
Harl., 7002, f. 396.] Sir ROBERT’S openness made his library—to use the
words of an eminent contemporary—the ‘Common treasury’ of English
antiquities. The reader now sees also the drawback. It remains for him
to strike a true balance; and to strike it with justice, but also with
charity.
CHAPTER III.
THE CHIEF COLLECTOR AND THE AUGMENTORS OF THE OLD ROYAL AND PUBLIC
LIBRARY AT ST. JAMES’.
‘Death never makes such effectual demonstration of his power, as
when he singles out the man who occupies the largest place in public
estimation;—as when he seizes upon him whose loss is felt, by
thousands, with all the tenderness of a family bereavement;—puts a
sudden arrest, ... before the infirmities of age had withdrawn him
from the labours of usefulness;— ... and sends the fearful report of
this his achievement through the streets of the city, where it runs,
in appalling whispers, among the multitude.’—
THOMAS CHALMERS.
_Life of_ HENRY, _Prince of Wales, son of_ JAMES I, _and virtual
Founder of the ‘Royal Library.’—Its Augmentors and
its Librarians.—Acquisition of the Library of the_
THEYERS.—_Incorporation with the Collections of_ COTTON _and of_
SLOANE.
[Sidenote: BOOK I, Chap. III. LIFE OF HENRY, PRINCE OF WALES.]
HENRY, Prince of Scotland, and afterwards of Wales, was born at Stirling
Castle on the 19th of February, 1594. King JAMES had married ANNE of
Denmark more than four years before the Prince’s birth, but a certain
grotesqueness which had marked some of the characteristic circumstances
of the marriage in Norway (in 1589) was not without its counterpart
among the incidents that came to be attendant on the subsequent event at
home. One of these incidents is thus narrated in the quaint narrative of
a Scottish courtier who made it his business to chronicle the movements
of the Court with newsmanlike fidelity:—‘Because the chappell royal was
ruinous and too little, the King concluded that the old chappell should
be utterly rased, and a new [one] erected in the same place that should
be more large, long, and glorious, to entertain the great number of
strangers’ who were expected to be present at the baptism. The interval
demanded for the restoration of this decayed chapel at Stirling entailed
an unusual delay between the child’s birth and his baptism, but it
gratified the King by enabling him to send invitations far and wide. Had
all of them met with acceptance they would have resulted in the presence
of a cloud of witnesses, such as had rarely been seen in Scotland upon
any the most famous occasion of courtly rejoicing.
[Sidenote: PRINCE HENRY’S BAPTISM AT STIRLING.]
For the presence of two guests in particular JAMES was anxious. He
wished to see an ambassador extraordinary from the Court of ELIZABETH,
and another from that of HENRY THE FOURTH. HENRY would not gratify his
wish, and the omission was much resented. ELIZABETH, on the other hand,
was ostentatiously swift to comply, but her willingness was well nigh
defeated by one of the common accidents of life. She had fixed her
choice on the brilliant Earl of CUMBERLAND, whose love of magnificence
was scarcely less prominent than was his love of adventure. He could
grace a royal festivity, as conspicuously as he could lead a band of
eager soldiers, or a crew of daring navigators. Just as the Earl’s
costly preparations for his embassy were completed, he fell sick. Some
days were lost in the hope of his speedy recovery, but the Queen was
soon obliged to nominate the Earl of SUSSEX in his stead. SUSSEX had
then to make preparations in turn. The day fixed for the ceremony in
Scotland had to be more than twice postponed, in order to ensure his
presence. In all, more than six months elapsed before the babe was
really baptized. We will hope that the Court Chronicler exaggerates a
little when he tells us that ‘the time intervening was spent in
magnificent banquetting and revelling.’ [Sidenote: _True Reportarie of
the baptisme of the Prince of Scotland_, MS. ADDIT., 5795 (B. M.).] If
so, the potations at Stirling must have vied with those of Elsinore.
When the long-expected day arrived (30 August, 1594) the child lay ‘on a
bed of estate richly decored ... with the story of HERCULES.’ The old
Countess of MAR lifted him into the arms of LENNOX, and by him the babe
was transferred to those of the English ambassador who held him during
baptism. Then Patrick GALLOWAY, we are told, learnedly entreated upon a
text from the 21st chapter of Genesis.
The Bishop of ABERDEEN taught, in his turn, upon the Sacrament of
Baptism—first in the vulgar tongue and then in Latin—and his discourse
was followed by the twenty-first Psalm, ‘sung to the great delectation
of the noble auditory,’ and also by a panegyric upon the Prince,
delivered in Latin verse, from the pulpit. Then came a banquet, at which
‘six gallant dames’ had the cruel task assigned them of performing ‘a
silent comedy.’ To the banquet succeeded a ‘desart of sugar,’ drawn in
upon a triumphal chariot. The original programme had provided that this
richly-laden chariot should be drawn by a lion, for whose due tameness
the projector had pledged himself. But to King JAMES a lion, like a
sword, was at all times an unpleasant object. He said that it would
affright the ladies, and that ‘a black-moore’ would be a more safe
propeller. Banquet and dessert together lasted from eight o’clock in the
evening until three of the following morning. At intervals, the cannon
of Stirling Castle roared, until, says our chronicler, ‘the earth
trembled therewith.’
Thus was ushered in a brief but remarkable life. It lasted less than
nineteen years. [Sidenote: _Ibid._, pp. 6–17, verso.] Then to the cradle
which had been so richly emblazoned with the labours of HERCULES, in all
the colours of embroidery, there succeeded the hearse of black velvet
thickly set with its plumes of sombre feathers. One half, however, of
those nineteen years that stood between cradle and hearse were years
passed upon an arena to which the course of events had given almost
world-wide importance and conspicuousness. The Prince’s career was, by
the necessity of his position still more than by reason of his youth, a
career of promise, not of performance. But every year which passed after
the removal from Scotland seems to have intensified the promise in the
eyes of those who watched it, as well as to have deepened a conviction
in the minds of nearly all thoughtful bystanders that to a grand
ambition there were about to be proffered, in GOD’S due time, means and
appliances more than usually large, and a grand field of action. So it
seemed to human expectation. And because, in those long-past years, it
reasonably seemed so, there is still somewhat of a real human interest
attaching to incidents which, otherwise, would be trivial and barren.
EARLY DISSENTIONS AT COURT.
One unhappy circumstance which occurred before HENRY was eighteen months
old testified to the existence, even at that date, of unhappy domestic
relations of the kind which on many subsequent occasions brought
bitterness into his daily life. Queen ANNE was deprived of the care of
her child very soon after his baptism. The Earl of MAR was appointed to
be his governor, and the Earl’s mother assumed that place in the
upbringing of the royal infant which, in most cases, custom no less than
nature would have assigned to the Queen herself. Her natural resentment
brought about more than one angry discussion at Court. After one of
those scenes of turbulence, JAMES gave to MAR, in writing, this
characteristic command: ‘Because in the surety of my son consisteth my
surety, I have concredited unto you the charge of his keeping.... This I
command you out of my own mouth, _being in the company of those I like_.
Otherwise, for [_i. e._ notwithstanding] any charge or necessity that
can come from me, you shall not deliver him.’
In 1599, Adam NEWTON became Prince HENRY’S tutor; and the choice seems
to have been a happy one. The boy had a most towardly inclination to
learn. The tutor had both a genuine love of letters and a real delight
in teaching. He had also the wisdom which shuns extremes. Under NEWTON’S
care the child remained, in spite of an obliging offer from Pope CLEMENT
THE EIGHTH to have him educated at Rome under the papal eye.
At the death of ELIZABETH, and after receiving the news of his own
proclamation as her successor, the delighted father wrote to his
son—then just entering on his tenth year—a letter which depicts its
writer in a way as lifelike as does the warrant addressed to MAR.
[Sidenote: JAMES’ LETTER TO PRINCE HENRY ON THE ACCESSION TO THE ENGLISH
CROWN.] I quote it, literally, from the hurriedly-written original, as
it now lies before me: ‘My Sonne, That I see you not before my pairting,
impute it to this greate occasion, quhairin tyme is so precious. But
_that_ I[25] shall, by Goddes grace, shortlie be recompenced by your
cumming to me shortlie, and continuall residence with me ever after.
Lett not this news make you proude or insolent. For a Kings sonne and
heire was ye before, and na maire are ye yett. The augmentation that is
heirby lyke to fall unto you is but in caires and heavie burthens. Be
therefore merrie, but not insolent. Keepe a greatness, but _sine fastu_.
Be resolute, but not willfull. Keeye your kyndness, but in honorable
sorte. Choose none to be your play fellowis but thaime that are
well-borne. And above all things, give never good countenance to any but
according as ye shall be informed that thay are in estimation with me.
Looke upon all Englishmen that shall cum to visit you as among youre
loving subjects; not with that ceremonie as towardis straingers, and
yett with such hartines as at this tyme they deserve.’ And so forth.
For, notwithstanding the King’s haste to set out on his journey, his pen
ran on. But all his advice is in one strain. The variations are for
ornament. In me, he says (only not so briefly), you see a model king.
Mould yourself after that pattern, and you will be a model prince. ‘I
send you my booke,’ he adds—referring to Βασιλικον δωρον— ... ‘ye must
level everie mannis opinions or advices unto you, as ye finde thaime
agree or discorde with the rules thaire sett down.’ Near as they
commonly were in person, in the after years, JAMES still found occasion
to write to HENRY a good many letters. This one theme runs through them
all. But no amount of hortatory discourse could hinder the new metal
from overrunning the worn and antiquated mould.
[Sidenote: PRINCE HENRY IN ENGLAND.]
Prince HENRY came into England in the June of 1603. He was invested with
the Garter on the 2nd of July at Windsor. Sir Thomas CHALONER (son of
ELIZABETH’S well-known ambassador to the Emperor) succeeded MAR in the
office of Governor. He was a man of many accomplishments, and had a
strong bias for some of the physical sciences. But it does not seem that
he possessed that force of character which in the elder Sir Thomas
CHALONER was a conspicuous quality.
From a very early age, HENRY showed that in him were combined in happy
proportions a strong relish for the pleasures of literature with a
relish not less keen for the pursuits and employments of an active and
out-of-doors life. He could enjoy books thoroughly, without being
absorbed by them. He had a manly delight in field sports, without
falling under the temptation to become a slave to his pastime. If in
anything his enjoyments tended to excess, as he grew towards maturity,
it was seen in his devotion to warlike exercises. So that even the
excess testified to that real manliness of spirit which keeps the body
in subjection, instead of pampering its pleasures and its aptitudes. He
seems to have learnt, unusually early in life, that the natural
instincts of youth will have their truest gratification, and will retain
their fullest zest, when made, by deliberate choice, steps towards a
conscious fitness for the duties of manhood. Alike in what we have from
his own pen, and in the testimonies of those who were the closest
observers of his brief career, we see evidence that he had formed a due
estimate of the responsibilities that, to human view, lay close before
him. Of his thoughts about kingship we possess only fragments. Of his
father’s thoughts on that subject we enjoy an exhaustive exposition. The
contrast in the thinking is curiously significant.
Some of the best known anecdotes of HENRY’S life exhibit the interest he
felt in naval matters. That tendency may, perhaps, have taken its birth
in a London incident of March, 1604. The Earl of NOTTINGHAM, Lord High
Admiral, was then in the flush of Court favour. The Prince had been but
for a few months in England, and his sight-seeing had not, as yet,
included the baptism[26] of a ship. [Sidenote: ORIGIN OF HENRY’S
INTEREST IN NAVAL AFFAIRS.] The Admiral prepared that novelty to please
him. It was at the Tower that the Prince first examined the ‘_Disdain_’
(15 March, 1604). Whether at the same time he made his first
acquaintance with the most famous inhabitant of the Tower is matter of
mere conjecture. [Sidenote: _Life of Pett_, MS. HARL., vol. 6279 (B.
M.). (Cited by Birch, p. 39.)] RALEGH, at all events, was there[27] on
the day when Phineas PETT moored his new vessel off Tower Wharf, for the
Prince’s delight. Before any long time had passed, RALEGH was busy in
the composition of a _Discourse of a maritimal voyage, and of the
passages and incidents therein_, with a like object. The acquaintance,
however began, was improved with every passing year. Of the many hopes
which came to a sudden end eight years afterwards, few, it is probable,
were more sanguine or more far-reaching than those of the King’s keenly
watched and dreaded prisoner. [Sidenote: HENRY AND RALEGH.] For England,
RALEGH saw in Prince HENRY a wise and brave king to come. For himself,
he saw not only a generous friend, but a man who might be the means of
giving shape and substance to many patriotic schemes with which a brain
that could not be imprisoned had long been teeming.
There is evidence that on more than one topic of public policy RALEGH’S
counsel made a deep impression on HENRY. One instance of it will be seen
presently. But apart altogether from such positive results as admit of
testimony, their intercourse is memorable. It must have been by virtue
of some congeniality of nature that a youth in HENRY’S position so
quickly leapt—across many obstacles—to an appreciation, alike of the
circumstances and of the character of RALEGH, which still commends
itself to those who have looked into them most searchingly. The estimate
has been many times confirmed by the investigations of history, long
afterwards, but it was strongly opposed to the broad current of
contemporary opinion. A heart larger than the average may have its
divinations, as well as the intellect that is more acute and better
furnished than the average.
[Sidenote: THE INVESTIGATION INTO THE NAVAL DOCKYARDS.]
But the generous heart is often allied with a hasty temper. The
impression made on the Prince by RALEGH’S writings on naval matters had,
amongst other results, that of increasing both his interest in the
management of the royal dockyards, and his familiar intercourse with
Phineas PETT. PETT was master shipwright at Chatham, and, as we have
seen, the designer of the prince’s first vessel _Disdain_. [Sidenote:
1608. April. See Chap. ii, pp. 62, 63.] When Sir Robert COTTON had
induced the King to issue that Commission of Inquiry into the Navy, of
the results of which some account has been given in the preceding
Chapter, PETT was one of the persons whose official doings were brought
into question. HENRY took a warm interest in the inquiry and testified
openly his anxiety on PETT’S behalf. A specific charge about an alleged
disproportion between timber paid for and the vessels built therewith
was investigated at Woolwich. Both the King and the Prince were present.
HENRY stood by PETT’S side. [Sidenote: MS. Life of Phineas Pett, in MS.
HARL. 6279 (B. M.) p. 45.] When the evidence was seen to disprove the
charge, the Prince cried with a loud voice—disregarding alike the royal
presence and the forms of law—‘Where be now those perjured fellows that
dare thus abuse His Majesty with false informations? Do they not
worthily deserve hanging?’
The warmth of HENRY’S friendship seems to have suffered little
diminution by the absence of its objects. [Sidenote: HENRY’S FOREIGN
CORRESPONDENCE.] When his friends went to far-off countries he
encouraged them to be active correspondents by setting them a good
example. He welcomed all sorts of real and worthy information. About the
government and affairs of foreign countries his curiosity was
insatiable. When important letters came to him he not only read them
with care but made abstracts of their contents. When the labour-loving
Lord Treasurer SALISBURY noticed, with regret, in his son CRANBORNE
certain indications of a turn towards indolence, it was by an appeal to
Prince HENRY’S example that he strove to correct the failing. HENRY
evinced eagerness to learn by all methods. Books, letters, conversation,
personal insight into notable things and new inventions,—were alike
acceptable to him.
[Sidenote: HIS PURCHASE OF LORD LUMLEY’S LIBRARY.]
In April, 1609, the death of John, Lord LUMLEY, without issue, enabled
the Prince to gratify his love of books by purchasing a Library which
probably was more valuable than any other collection then existing in
England, with the exception of that of Sir Robert COTTON.
Thirty years before, Lord LUMLEY had inherited the fine library of his
father-in-law, Henry FITZALAN, Earl of ARUNDEL, who had been a collector
of choice manuscripts at a time when the reckless dispersion of monastic
treasures impoverished the nation, but gave, here and there, golden
opportunities to openhanded private men. When the estates of the
FITZALANS came to LUMLEY—in virtue of an entail made by the Earl of
ARUNDEL during Lady LUMLEY’S lifetime—the splendid succession had lost
its best charm. The wife who had thus enriched him was dead, and he was
childless. His wife’s sister, the Duchess of NORFOLK, was also dead, but
had left a son. [Sidenote: Muniments at Norf. House (Sussex, Box 7), as
cited in Tierney’s _Arundel_, p. 19.] LUMLEY sold his life interest in
the broad lands, and forests, and in the famous castle of Arundel, to
the next heir, but he kept the library and found one of the chief
pleasures of his remaining term of life in liberally augmenting it.
HENRY’S first care, after his purchase, was to have a careful catalogue
made of the collection. And he soon gave evidence that he had bought the
books for use; not for show. [Sidenote: _Privy Purse Book_; in _Domestic
Correspondence_, JAMES I, vol. lvii, § 87, p. 4. (R. H.)] He also made
many important additions, from time to time, during his three years’
ownership.
Perhaps the most festive days of that brief span were the sixth of
January, 1610, and the sixth of June of the same year, on both of which
Whitehall again witnessed a gay tournament. [Sidenote: THE TOURNAMENTS
OF 1610.] On twelfth-day, at the head of a band of knights which
included LENNOX, ARUNDEL, SOUTHAMPTON, HAY, Sir Thomas SOMERSET, and Sir
Richard PRESTON, HENRY kept his barriers against fifty-six assailants,
and before a brilliant court, for whose pleasure the long mimic fight
was diversified by the gay devices of Inigo JONES, and the graceful
verses of Ben JONSON. Next day the jousting was followed by a banquet
not less splendid. [Sidenote: _Chronicle of England_, p. 898. _The
Speeches at Prince Henries Barriers_; and _Oberon, a Masque_. (Jonson’s
_Works_, vol. v, pp. 965–974, 1st edit.)] At Whitehall,—as at Stirling
sixteen years before,—the banquetting lasted seven hours, but it was
enlivened by a comedy in which the ladies were not condemned to silence.
In the following June, HENRY’S creation as Prince of WALES was
celebrated by tiltings on a more extensive scale, as well as by masques
and dances, and by an elaborate naval battle upon the Thames. But the
prince himself seems to have taken more pleasure in witnessing from time
to time, at Woolwich or at Chatham, the launching of real ships fitted
for real warfare. Nor are indications wanting that during his ponderings
on the many advices which he received of the course of public events in
Europe, he had occasional presentiments that a crisis was drawing near
which would make the adoption of a warlike policy to be alike the duty
of the King, and the recognized interest of the nation.
Be that as it may, the broad contrasts of character which existed
between the wearer of the crown and its heir apparent became
increasingly obvious during the long negotiations and correspondence
about the projects of marriage for the prince himself and for his
sister. [Sidenote: THE PROJECTS FOR ROYAL MARRIAGES.] [Sidenote:
1611–1612.] Something, indeed, of the difference in character between
JAMES and HENRY was indicated when, in 1611, the prince directed RALEGH
to draw up, in his prison, a paper of advice on the scheme of a double
marriage with Savoy and on the relations between Savoy and Spain. It
came out more forcibly when, on occasion of the proposal from France for
his own marriage with CHRISTINA (the elder sister of HENRIETTA MARIA),
he wrote to his father in these words: ‘The cause which first induced
your Majesty to proceed in this proposition by your Ambassador was the
hope which the Duke of BOUILLON gave your Majesty of breaking their
other match with Spain. If the continuance of this treaty hold only upon
that hope, and not upon any desire to effect a match with the second
daughter, in my weak opinion I hold that it stands more with your
Majesty’s honour to stay your Ambassador from moving it any more than to
go on with it. Because no great negotiation should be grounded upon a
ground that is very unsure and uncertain, and depends upon their wills
who were the first causers of the contrary.’ For this letter the Prince
was rebuked. Two months afterwards, it was found indispensable to desire
him to express again his opinion upon a new stage of the negotiation. He
did so in words to which the events of the next few years were destined
to give significance. I quote from the original letter, preserved (with
a large mass of other letters from the same hand) amongst the Harleian
MSS.[28]
‘As for the exercise of the princess’ religion,’ wrote HENRY, on the 5th
of October, 1612, ‘your Majesty may be pleased to make your Ambassador
give a peremptory answer that you will never agree to give her greater
liberty in the exercise of it than that which is agreed with the
Savoyeard, which is—to use his own word—_privatemente_; or, as Sir Henry
WOTTON did expound it, “in her most private and secret chamber.”’ Then
he touches on the delicate question of dowry, and the relative
preferability of the alliance proffered by France and that proffered by
Savoy; adding,—with an obvious mental reference, I think, to the advice
given him by RALEGH in the preceding year,—these pregnant words: ‘If
your Majesty will respect rather which of these two will give the
greatest contentment to the general body of the Protestants abroad, then
I am of opinion that you will sooner incline to France than to Savoy.’
[Sidenote: 1612. Oct. 5. Henry to James; MS. HARL., 6986, f. 180.]
The writer then hints a fear that he may, unwittingly, have incurred a
renewal of the paternal displeasure which some expressions of opinion in
his former letter on the same subject had excited. Let his father kindly
remember, he entreats, that his own special part in the business,—‘which
is to be in love with any of them, is not yet at hand.’
Death, not love-making, was at hand. One month afterwards, the arm that
penned this letter was stretched out,—still and rigid.
The Prince was seized with sudden illness on the 10th of October, five
days after its date. [Sidenote: DEATH. 1612. November.] The first
appearances were such as are wont to follow upon a great chill, after
excessive exercise—to which HENRY was always prone. In spite of much
pain and some alarming symptoms, he persisted in removing from Richmond
to St. James’ on the 16th, in order to receive the Elector Palatine,
soon to become the husband of his sister. Within very few days it was
apparent that his illness was of the most serious nature. He left his
apartment at St. James’ on the morning of the 25th, to hear a sermon at
the Chapel Royal. The text was from the fourteenth of Job, ‘_Man, that
is born of a woman, is of short continuance_.’ Afterwards he dined with
the King, but was obliged to take his leave, being seized with faintness
and shivering fits. These continued to recur, at brief intervals, until
his death, on the evening of the sixth of November. Almost the only
snatch of quiet sleep which he could obtain followed upon the
administration of a cordial, prepared for him in the Tower by RALEGH, at
the Queen’s earnest request. It was not given until the morning of the
last day.
HENRY died calmly, but under total exhaustion. For many hours before his
death he was unconscious, as well as speechless. The last words to which
he responded were those of Archbishop ABBOT:—‘In sign of your faith and
hope in the blessed Resurrection, give us, for our comfort, a sign by
the lifting up of your hands.’ HENRY raised both hands, clasped
together. It was his last conscious act.
Here, to human ken, was a life all seed-time. The harvest belonged to
the things unseen. Contemporaries who had treasured up, in memory, many
of those small matters which serve to mark character, were wont
sometimes to draw contrasts between the prince and his brother. And many
have been the speculations—natural though unfruitful—as to the altered
course of English history, had HENRY lived to ascend the throne. One
fact, observable in the correspondence and documentary history of the
times, will always retain a certain interest. Some of those who were to
rank among the staunchest opponents of CHARLES were men who thought
highly of HENRY’S abilities to rule, and who held his memory in
affectionate reverence.
[Sidenote: DISPOSAL OF THE PRINCE’S LIBRARY.]
HENRY had died intestate. The library which he had purchased from the
Executors of Lord LUMLEY fell to the disposal of the King. The greater
part of it went to augment the remains of the old royal library of
England, portions of which had been scattered during JAMES’ reign, as
well as before it. By that disposal of a collection, in which the prince
had taken not a little delight during his brief possession, he became
virtually, and in the event, a co-founder of the British Museum.
[Sidenote: UNION OF THE ST. JAMES’ AND WHITEHALL LIBRARIES.]
The library remained at St. James’ under the charge, for a time, of the
prince’s librarian, Edward WRIGHT. The relics of the royal collection at
Whitehall were then in the keeping of the eminent scholar and
theologian, Patrick YOUNG. Eventually they too were brought to St.
James’, and YOUNG took the entire charge. It was by his exertions that
the combined collection was augmented by a valuable part of the library
of Isaac CASAUBON. [Sidenote: Roe, _Negotiations_, pp. 335; 618.] It was
to his hands that Sir Thomas ROE delivered the ‘Alexandrian Manuscript’
of the Greek Bible, the precious gift to King CHARLES of Cyril LUCAR,
Patriarch of Constantinople.
YOUNG survived until 1652, but he was deprived of his office in 1648. In
that turbulent time the library narrowly escaped two perils. Some of the
soldiers of the triumphant party sought to disperse it, piecemeal, for
their individual profit. Some of the leaders of that party formed a
scheme to export it to the Continent for a like purpose. It stands to
the credit of a somewhat fanatical partisan—Hugh PETERS, one of the many
men who are doomed to play in history the part of scapegoats, whatever
their own sins may have really been—that his hasty assumption of
librarianship (1648) saved the library from the first danger. [Sidenote:
Comp. _Order-Book of Council of State_, vol. v, p. 454, and vol. xxiv,
p. 604. (R. H.)] A like act on the part of Bulstrode WHITELOCKE, in the
following year (July, 1649), saved it from the second. Probably, it was
at his instance that the Council of State made or designed to make it a
Public Library. [Sidenote: WHITELOCKE’S _Embassy to Sweden_, vol. i, p.
273. (Reeve’s edit.)] Four years afterwards, WHITELOCKE held at
Stockholm a curious conversation with Queen Christina about its
manuscript treasures, of some of which, he tells us, she was anxious to
possess transcripts.
Under the Commonwealth, the librarianship had been combined, first with
the keepership of the Great Seal, and then with an Embassy to Sweden.
Under the Restoration, it was held in plurality with an active
commission in the Royal Navy. [Sidenote: ACQUISITION OF THE THEYER
LIBRARY.] CHARLES II, however, caused some valuable additions to be made
to the library. Of these the most important was the manuscript
collection which had belonged, successively, to John and Charles THEYER.
The sum given was £560. The collection came to St. James’ Palace in
1678. It was rich in historical manuscripts and in the curiosities of
mediæval science. It embraced many of the treasured book-possessions of
a long line of Abbots and Priors of Llanthony,[29] and the
common-place-books of Archbishop CRANMER.
At CHARLES THE SECOND’S death the number of works in the royal
collection had increased to more than ten thousand. No doubt, in that
reign, the books could have brought against their owner the pithy
complaint to which PETRARCH gave expression, on behalf of some of their
fellows, at an earlier day: ‘Thou hast many books tied in chains which,
if they could break away and speak, would bring _thee_ to the judgment
of a private prison.... [Sidenote: Petrarch, _De remediis utriusque
fortunæ_.] They would weep to think that one man—ostentatious of a
possession for which he hath no use—should own a host of those precious
things that many a passionate student doth wholly lack.’
No true lover of books, for their own sake, indeed, was ever to possess
that rich collection, until it passed into the ownership of the nation.
Its entail, so to speak, as a heirloom of the Crown, was cut off, just
as it was about to pass into the hands of the one English King who
alone, of all the Monarchs since CHARLES THE FIRST, cared about books.
That it should pass to the Nation had been proposed by Richard BENTLEY,
when himself royal librarian, sixty years before the proposal became a
fact. ‘’Tis easy to foresee,’ said BENTLEY, ‘how much the glory of our
Nation will be advanced by erecting a Free Library of all sorts of
books.’ In his day, he saw no way to such an establishment, otherwise
than by transfer of the royal collection.
There is a reasonable, perhaps it might be said a strong, probability
that when BENTLEY gave expression to this wish, at the close of the
seventeenth century, he was unconsciously reviving one among many
projects for the public good which had been temporarily buried in the
grave of Prince HENRY. For under the Commonwealth, the Library at St.
James’ had been ‘Public’ rather in name than in fact.
[Sidenote: THE ULTIMATE INCORPORATION OF THE ROYAL LIBRARY WITH THE
COLLECTIONS OF SLOANE AND OF COTTON.]
When the time came, the number of volumes of the Royal Collection which
remained to be incorporated with the Museum of SLOANE and with the
Library of Sir Robert COTTON was somewhat more than twelve thousand. The
number of separate works—printed and manuscript together—probably
exceeded fifteen thousand.
Amongst the acquisitions so gained by the nation the first place of
honour belongs to the _Codex Alexandrinus_. It stands, by the common
consent of biblical palæographers, in a class of manuscripts of the Holy
Scriptures into which only two or three other codices in the world can
claim to be admitted. Of early English chronicles there is a long series
which to their intrinsic interest as primary materials of our history
add the ancillary interest of having been transcribed—sometimes of
having been composed—expressly for presentation to the reigning Monarch.
Here also, among a host of other literary curiosities, is the group of
romances which John TALBOT, Earl of Shrewsbury, caused to be compiled
for MARGARET of Anjou; and the autograph _Basilicon_, written for Prince
HENRY. Among the innumerable printed treasures are choice books which
accrued as presentation copies to the sovereigns of the House of TUDOR,
beginning with a superb series of illuminated books on vellum, from the
press of Anthony VERARD of Paris, given to HENRY THE SEVENTH. For large
as had been the losses sustained by the original royal library, and
truly as it may be said that Prince HENRY’S acquisitions amounted
virtually to its re-foundation, many of the finest books of long
anterior date had survived their varied perils. And some others have
rejoined, from time to time, their old companions, after long absence.
The royal collection has also an adventitious interest—in addition to
the main one—from another point of view. It includes results of the
strong-handed confiscations of our kings, as well as of the purchases
they made, and the gifts they received. Both the royal manuscripts and
the royal printed books contain many memorials of careers in which our
poets no less than our historians have found, and are likely to find, an
undying charm.
CHAPTER IV.
THE COLLECTOR OF THE ARUNDELIAN MSS.
‘The English nobles are high-spirited, active, educated men, born to
wealth and power, who have run through every country and have kept,
in every country, the best company; have seen every secret of art
and nature; and—when men of any ability or ambition—have been
consulted in the conduct of every important action. You cannot wield
great agencies without lending yourself to them. When it happens
that the spirit of the Earl meets his rank and his duties, we have
the best examples.... These are the men who make England that
strong-box and Museum it is; who gather and protect works of art,
dragged from amidst burning cities and revolutionary countries, and
brought hither, out of all the world.... When I saw that, besides
deer and pheasants, these men have preserved ARUNDEL MARBLES,
TOWNLEY GALLERIES, HOWARD and SPENCER LIBRARIES, WARWICK AND
PORTLAND VASES, SAXON MANUSCRIPTS, MONASTIC ARCHITECTURES, AND
MILLENIAL TREES, I pardoned their high park-fences.’—
R. W. EMERSON, (_English Traits_, § xi).
_Political Exile and Foreign Travel under Elizabeth, and under
James.—Life of Thomas_ HOWARD, _Earl of Arundel_.—_The
Consolations of Connoisseurship.—Vicissitudes of the Arundel
Museum.—The gifts of Henry_ HOWARD _to the Royal Society_.
[Sidenote: BOOK 1, Chap. IV. THE COLLECTOR OF THE ARUNDELIAN MSS.]
The Collector of the Arundel Marbles and Founder of the Arundel Library
was the great-grandson of that twenty-first Earl of ARUNDEL (Henry
FITZALAN) by whom had been collected the choicest portion of the library
which passed, in 1609, from the possession of John, Lord LUMLEY, to that
of HENRY, Prince of Wales. [Sidenote: chap. iii, p. 162] That Earl had
profited by the opportunities which the dissolution of the monasteries
presented so abundantly to collectors at home. The new Earl profited, in
his turn, by larger and far more varied opportunities, offered to him
during a long course of travel abroad. For himself, his travels ripened
and expanded a somewhat crude and irregular education. He attained, at
length, and in a much greater degree (as it seems) than any of his
contemporaries, to that liberal culture which enabled him to appreciate,
and to teach his countrymen to appreciate, the arts from which Greece
and Italy had derived so much of their glory; whilst in England those
arts had, as yet, done very little either to enhance the enjoyments and
consolations of human life, or to call into action powers and aptitudes
which had long lain dormant. It is not claiming too much for the Earl of
ARUNDEL to say that of whatever, upon a fair estimate, England may be
thought to owe to its successful cultivation of the Arts of Design, he
was the first conspicuous promoter. Nor is his rank as a pioneer in the
encouragement of the systematic study of archæology—a study so fruitful
of far-reaching result—less eminent.
[Sidenote: FOREIGN TRAVEL, UNDER TUDORS AND STUARTS.]
He may also be regarded as setting, by the course he took with his own
children, the fashion of foreign travel, as a necessary complement of
the education of men of rank and social position. The example became
very influential, and in a sphere far broader than the artistic one.
Under ELIZABETH, the Englishmen best known on the Continent had been
political exiles. Most of them were men self-banished. Many of them
passed their lives in defaming and plotting against the country they had
left. The jealous restrictions upon the liberty of travel imposed by the
Government rarely kept at home the men of mischief, but were probably
much more successful in confining men whose free movements would have
been fruitful in good alike to the countries they visited and to their
own. The altered circumstances which ensued upon the accession of JAMES
notoriously gave facilities to wider Continental intercourse; and it was
by men who followed very much in Lord ARUNDEL’S track that some of the
best social results of that intercourse were won.
Thomas HOWARD, Earl of Arundel, Surrey, and Norfolk, was twentieth in
lineal descent from that William de ALBINI who, in the year 1139, had
acquired the Castle and Earldom of Arundel by virtue of his marriage
with the widow of King HENRY THE FIRST. He was born at Finchingfield, in
Essex, in 1585,—a date which nearly marks the period of lowest
depression in the strangely varied fortunes of an illustrious family.
[Sidenote: Thomas, D. of Norfolk to his son Philip, &c., MS. Harl.,
787.] Philip, Earl of ARUNDEL, the father of Earl Thomas, was already in
the Tower, and was experiencing, in great bitterness, the truth of words
written to him by his own father, when in like circumstances:—‘Look into
all Chronicles, and you shall find that, in the end, high degree brings
heaps of cares, toils in the State, and most commonly (in the end) utter
overthrow.’ Before Thomas HOWARD had reached his fifth year his
mother—co-heiress of the ‘DACRES of the North’—had to write to the Lord
Treasury BURGHLEY: ‘Extremytye inforceth me to crave succour,’ and to
illustrate her assertion by a detail of miseries.
The hopes with which the STUART accession was naturally anticipated by
all the HOWARDS, were by some of them more than realized, but the heir
of Arundel was not of that number. He was, indeed, restored in blood to
such honours as his father, Earl Philip, had enjoyed, and also to the
baronies forfeited by his grandfather, Thomas, Duke of NORFOLK, in 1572.
But the dignities were restored without the lands. His nearest relations
profited by their influence at Court to obtain grants of his chief
ancestral estates. The Earls of NOTTINGHAM, NORTHAMPTON,[30] and SUFFOLK
had each of them a share in the spoil;—salving their consciences,
probably, by the reflection that, despite his poverty, their young
kinsman had made a great marriage. For his alliance, in 1606, with Lady
Aletheia TALBOT, daughter and co-heir of Gilbert, Earl of SHREWSBURY,
had already brought to him considerable means in hand, and a vast estate
in prospect. The marriage, in higher respects, was also a happy one. But
a natural and eager desire to recover what his father had forfeited cast
much anxiety over years otherwise felicitous. He could not regain even
Arundel House in London, until he had paid £4000 for it to the Earl of
NOTTINGHAM.
[Sidenote: ARUNDEL AT COURT.]
Lord ARUNDEL made his first appearance at Court in 1605. In May, 1611,
he was created a Knight of the Garter. Thirteen years of JAMES’ reign
had passed before the Earl was admitted to the Privy Council. This
honour was conferred upon him in July, 1616. Five years more were to
pass before his restoration to his hereditary office of Earl Marshal of
England, although he had been made one of six Commissioners for the
discharge of its duties in October, 1616. The baton was at length (29th
August, 1621) delivered to him at THEOBALDS. [Sidenote: _Domestic
Corresp._, James I, 1621, 21 July. (R. H.)] ‘The King,’ wrote John
CHAMBERLAIN to Sir Dudley CARLETON, when communicating the news, ‘would
have given him £2000 a year pension withal, but—whatsoever the reason
was—he would accept but the ordinary fee, which is twenty pounds per
annum.’ It is plain, however, that this assertion was an error.
According to the ancient constitution of the Earl Marshal’s office there
were certain fees accruing from it which were now, under new
regulations, to cease. The question arose, Shall the Earl Marshal be
compensated by pension, or (according to a pernicious fashion of the
age) by the grant, or lease, of a customs duty upon some largely vended
commodity? [Sidenote: Minutes of Correspondence in Sec. Conway’s Letter
Book; (R. H.) and Council Books (C. O.).] The ‘impost of currants’ was
eventually fixed upon. But the Earl had subsequent occasion to adduce
evidence before a Committee of the Privy Council, that the rent paid to
the King sometimes exceeded the aggregate duty collected from the
merchants.[31]
There is some uncertainty as to the date of the earliest of Lord
ARUNDEL’S many visits to the Continent. According to Sir Edward WALKER,
he was in Italy in 1609. But that statement is open to doubt. There is
proof that in 1612 he passed some time in Florence and in Siena. With
Siena, as a place of residence, he was especially delighted. Of the
foundation of his collections—to which his Italian journeys largely
contributed—there are no distinct records until the following year.
[Sidenote: Arundel to Rochester, MS. Cott. Titus, B. vii, f. 463.]
The tour of 1613, followed immediately upon the marriage of the Princess
ELIZABETH with FREDERICK, Count Palatine of the Rhine. The royal pair
were escorted into Germany by both Lord and Lady ARUNDEL, who soon left
the Rhine country on a new visit to Italy, and remained there until
nearly the close of 1614. [Sidenote: BEGINNINGS OF THE ARUNDELIAN
COLLECTIONS.] During that long residence the Earl established a wide
intercourse with the most distinguished artists and archæologists of
Italy, and made extensive purchases. The fame of his princely tastes was
spread abroad. It soon became notorious that by this open-handed
collector marbles, vases, coins, gems, manuscripts, pictures, were
received with equal welcome. And from this time onwards many passages
occur in his correspondence which indicate the keen and minute interest
he took in the researches of the agents who, in various parts of the
Continent, were busy on his behalf. The pursuit did not lack the special
zest of home rivalry, as will be seen hereafter.
Not the least singular incident in the early part of Lord ARUNDEL’S life
was his commitment to the Tower, at a moment when his favour with King
JAMES was at its height.
[Sidenote: 1621, May.]
[Sidenote: THE QUARREL BETWEEN LORDS ARUNDEL AND SPENCER.]
In one of the many impassioned parliamentary debates which occurred
during the session of 1621 an allusion was made by Lord SPENCER to the
unhappy fate of two famous ancestors of the Earl of ARUNDEL, and it was
made in a way which induced the Earl to utter an unwise and unjust
retort. The matter immediately under discussion was a very small one,
but it had grown out of the exciting question of monopolies, and it was
mixed up with the yet more exciting question of the overweening powers
entrusted by the King to BUCKINGHAM. In the course of an examination at
the bar of the House of Lords about the grant of a patent for licensing
inns, Sir Henry YELVERTON had made a furious attack upon the Duke. The
attack was still more an insult to the House, than to the King’s
favourite, and it had been repeated. It was proposed, on a subsequent
day, to call YELVERTON to the bar for the third time, in order to see if
he would then offer the apology which before he had refused. ARUNDEL
opposed the motion. ‘We have his words; we need hear no more,’ he said.
Lord SPENCER rose to answer: ‘I remember that two of the Earl’s
ancestors—the Earl of SURREY, and the Duke of NORFOLK, were unjustly
condemned to death, without being heard.’ The implied parallel was a
silly one, but its weakness and irrelevancy did not restrain ARUNDEL’S
anger. ‘My Lords,’ said he, ‘I do acknowledge that my ancestors have
suffered. It may be for doing the king and the country good service; and
at such time, perhaps, as when the ancestors of the Lord that spake last
kept sheep.’ The speaker failed to see that by using such words he had
committed exactly the same offence as that for which he had, but a
moment before, censured the late Attorney-General, and had moved the
House to punish him. On all sides, he was advised to apologise. He
resisted all entreaty. When committed to the Tower, he still refused
submission. Both the King and the Prince of Wales had to intercede for
him with the House before he could regain his liberty.
With rare exception, the public incidents of LORD ARUNDEL’S life during
the remainder of the reign of JAMES are such as offer little interest,
save as illustrations of character. In that respect, many of them
testify to the failing which appears so strikingly in the story of the
quarrel with Lord SPENCER. Some noble qualities lost part of their real
lustre when pride was so plainly seen in their company. All that was
best in Lord ARUNDEL revolted at the grossness of the Stuart court. He
often increased his own disgust by contrasting what he saw at Whitehall
with the memories of his youth. His office of Earl Marshal precluded him
from very long absences. Sometimes, when forced to mingle with courtiers
for whose society he had little liking, he rebuked their want of dignity
by exaggerating his own dignity into haughtiness. Against failings of
this kind we have to set many merits, and amongst them a merit eminently
rare in that age. ARUNDEL was free from covetousness—save in that
special sense in which covetousness, it may be feared, cleaves to all
‘collectorship.’
[Sidenote: ADVENTURE OF LADY ARUNDEL AT VENICE.]
In 1622 some anxiety was occasioned to Lord ARUNDEL by a singular
adventure which befell his wife during her residence in the Venetian
territory, whither (in the course of a long Italian tour) she had gone
to watch over the education of their sons; little anticipating, it may
well be supposed, that her name and that of Lord ARUNDEL, would be made
to figure in Venetian records in connection with the strange story of
the conspirator Antonio FOSCARINI.
After making some stay in Venice, Lady ARUNDEL had taken a villa on the
Brenta, about ten miles from the City.
In April, 1622, she was on her way from this villa to the Mocenigo
Palace, her residence in Venice, when she was met by the Secretary of
Sir Henry WOTTON, English ambassador to the Republic. The secretary said
that he was sent by the ambassador to inform her that the Venetian
Senate had resolved to command her ladyship to leave their city and
territory within a few days, on the ground of a discovery that FOSCARINI
had carried on some of his traitorous intrigues with foreign
ministers—and more especially with those of the Pope and Emperor—at her
house. [Sidenote: 1622, April.] To this the messenger added, that it was
Sir Henry WOTTON’S most earnest advice that Lady ARUNDEL should not
return to Venice, but should remain at Dolo, until she heard from him
again. Having listened to this strange communication in private, she
desired the secretary to repeat it in the presence of some of the
persons who attended her. Then she hastened to the ambassador’s house at
Venice. Her interview with WOTTON is thus, in substance, narrated by
Lord ARUNDEL, when telling the story to his friend the Earl of CARLISLE,
then ambassador to the Court of France.
‘Lady ARUNDEL went immediately to my Lord Ambassador [WOTTON], telling
him she came to hear from his own mouth what she had heard from his
servant’s.’ When Sir Henry had repeated the statement of his secretary,
the Lady asked him how long the accusation and the resolution of the
Senate had been known to him. He replied that reports of the alleged
intercourse with FOSCARINI had reached him some fifteen days before, or
more; but that of the resolution of the Senate he had heard only on that
morning. ‘She asked him why he did never let her understand of the
report all that time? He said because she spake not to him of it.’ To
Lady ARUNDEL’S pithy rejoinder that it would have been hard for her to
speak of a matter of which she had never heard the least rumour until
that day, and to her further protestation that she had not even seen
FOSCARINI since the time of his visit to England, some years earlier,
Sir Henry replied, ‘I believe there was no such matter;’ but he refused
to disclose the name of the person who had first spoken to him of the
accusation. To his renewed advice that her ladyship should not stir
farther in the matter, she declined to accede. [Sidenote: MS. ADDIT.,
4176, § 156. (B. M.)] It concerned her honour, and her husband’s honour,
she said, to have public conference with the Doge and Council without
delay. From carrying out this resolve the ambassador found it impossible
to dissuade her.
That conference took place on the following day with the remarkable
result of a public declaration by the Doge that no mention had ever been
made of Lady ARUNDEL’S name, or of the name of any person nearly or
remotely connected with her, either at any stage of the proceedings
against FOSCARINI, or in any of the discussions which had arisen out of
his conspiracy.
When the audience given to Lady ARUNDEL by the Doge had been made the
subject of a communication to the Senate, that body instructed the
Venetian Ambassador in England to confer with Lord ARUNDEL. [Sidenote:
_Deliberations of the Senate of Venice_; printed by Hardy, in _Report on
Venetian Archives_, pp. 78–84 (1866).] ‘You are,’ said they, ‘to speak
to the Earl Marshal in such strong and earnest language that he may
retain no doubt of the invalidity of the report, and may remain
perfectly convinced of the esteem and cordial affection entertained
towards him by the Republic; augmented as such feelings are by the open
and dignified mode of life led here by the Countess, and in which she
hastens the education of her sons in the sciences to make them—as they
will become—faithful imitators of their meritorious father and their
ancestors.’
Sir Henry WOTTON’S motive in the strange part taken by him in this
incident is nowhere disclosed. He had to listen to several indirect
reproofs, both from the Doge and from the Senate, which were none the
less incisive on account of the courtly language in which they were
couched.
Two years afterwards, the Earl was himself hastily summoned to the
Continent to attend the death-bed of his eldest son, James, Lord
MALTRAVERS, who is described by a contemporary writer as a ‘gentleman of
rare wit and extraordinary expectation.’ [Sidenote: DEATH OF ARUNDEL’S
ELDEST SON.] The Countess and her two elder sons, James and Henry, were
then returning from Italy to England. [Sidenote: _Royal license to
travel_, July, 1624.] They passed through Belgium in order to visit the
Queen of BOHEMIA. Whilst at Ghent, upon the journey, Lord MALTRAVERS was
seized with the smallpox. He died in that city in July, 1624. The
affliction was acutely felt. [Sidenote: _Domestic Corresp._ James I,
vol. cxlix, § 67; vol. clii, § 55.] ‘My sorrow makes me incapable of
this world’s affairs,’ wrote the Earl to one of his political
correspondents, in the autumn of the year. To the outer world, reserved
manners and a stately demeanour often gave a very false impression of
the man himself. Throughout his life, ARUNDEL’S affectionate nature was
so evinced in his deeds, and in his domestic intercourse, as to stand in
little need of illustration from his words. Mainly, as it seems, to this
characteristic quality he was soon to owe a second imprisonment in the
Tower of London.
[Sidenote: THE STUART MARRIAGE AND ITS RESULTS.]
The new Lord MALTRAVERS shortly after his return to England fell in love
with the Lady Elizabeth STUART, daughter of Esme, Duke of LENNOX.
ARUNDEL had formed other wishes and plans for the son who was now his
heir, and there is evidence that he was reluctant to give his consent to
the prosecution of the suit. Nor did the kinship of the prospective
bride with King CHARLES appear to him, it seems, at all an inviting
circumstance in the matter. So long as BUCKINGHAM stood at the helm of
affairs ARUNDEL was likely to have a very small share in the new king’s
affections, so that pride and policy as well as inclination stood in the
way of his approval. He knew also that it was CHARLES’ eager wish that
his kinswoman should marry Lord LORNE, the eldest son of the Earl of
ARGYLE. But the young lover was ardent, and his entreaties
unintermitting. At length, we are told, he not only wrung from the Earl
the words ‘You may try your fortune with the lady that you seem to love
so well,’ but prevailed upon him to confer paternally on the subject
with the lady’s aunt and guardian, the Duchess of RICHMOND. MALTRAVERS,
meanwhile, had resolved to incur no risk of defeat by waiting for a
royal assent to his marriage. He had long before won his cause with the
lady, but had kept the secret. Two passionate lovers[32] went gravely
through the ceremony of a formal introduction to each other.
MALTRAVERS then induced her to consent to a private marriage. When Lord
ARUNDEL was informed of the fact he immediately disclosed his knowledge
to the King, and besought pardon for the culprits. But CHARLES’ wrath
was unbounded. He placed the new-married pair under restraint in London.
He committed ARUNDEL himself to the Tower. He commanded Lady ARUNDEL to
remain at Horsley, in Surrey, a seat belonging to the Dowager Countess,
her mother-in-law.
When Lord ARUNDEL was thus imprisoned Parliament was sitting. The Lords
declared his arrest to be an infringement of their privileges. The King
replied that ‘the Earl of ARUNDEL is restrained for a misdemeanour which
is personal to the King’s Majesty, and has no relation to matters of
Parliament.’ The Lords still insisted that it was the Earl’s
unquestionable right ‘to be admitted to come, sit, and serve in
Parliament.’ CHARLES released ARUNDEL from the Tower, and then confined
him to Horsley. Royal evasion did but provoke increased earnestness and
firmness from the Peers. At length they resolved that they would suspend
public business until the Earl presented himself in his place.
[Sidenote: _Secretary Conway’s Letter Book_, pp. 251 seqq. (R. H.)]
Nearly three months had been spent in debate and altercation before
Secretary CONWAY was directed to write to ARUNDEL in these terms: ‘It is
the King’s pleasure that you come to the Parliament, but not to the
Court.’
[Sidenote: _Lords’ Journals_, vol. iii, p. 653, &c.]
The sequel of the story, as it tells itself in the State Papers, affords
an early and eminent illustration of the qualities in CHARLES THE FIRST
which, as they ripened, brought about his ruin. The King resolved that
his concession should as far as was possible be retracted. Directly the
sitting of Parliament was suspended, the King commanded CONWAY to
apprise the Earl that his restraint to Horsley was renewed, ‘as before
the Earl’s leave to come to Parliament.’ [Sidenote: _Domestic Corresp._,
Charles I, vol. xxxv, p. 16 (R. H.).] ARUNDEL on his part made courtly
and even lavish declarations of submission. ‘I desire to implore the
King’s grace by the humblest and best ways I can.’ This was written in
September, 1626. Whenever it was indispensable that he should obtain
leave to visit the capital a petition had to be prepared. In March,
1627, he writes: ‘The King has limited my stay in London until the 12th
of March. I will obey, but I beg you to represent to His Majesty that I
have necessary business to transact ... and that I have so carried
myself as to shew my desire to give His Majesty no distastes. If now,
after a year has passed, the King will dissolve this cloud, and leave me
to my own liberty, I will hold myself to be most free when living in
such place and manner as may be most to His Majesty’s liking.’ It was
all in vain. Another whole year passes. ARUNDEL has still to write: ‘I
beseech the King to give life to my just desires, and after two years of
heavy disfavour to grant me the happiness to kiss his hands and to
attend him in my place.’ To this humble representation and entreaty it
was replied by Secretary CONWAY: ‘His Majesty’s answer is that the Earl
has not so far appeased the exceptions which the King has taken against
unkindness conceived, as yet to take off his disfavour. [Sidenote:
_Ibid._, vol. lvi, p. 86; vol. xcv, pp. 51, 85, &c. _Conway’s Letter
Book_, pp. 295, &c. (R. H.)] As for the Earl’s proffered duty and
carriage in the King’s service, the King will judge of that as he shall
find occasion.’
He found occasion ere long; but not until after BUCKINGHAM’S death.
ARUNDEL rendered useful service, on some conspicuous occasions, both at
home and abroad. If his successive diplomatic missions to Holland in
1632, and to Ratisbon in 1638, on the affairs of the Palatinate, failed
of their main object, it was from no miscarriage of the ambassador. In
the unostentatious labours of the Council Board he took during a long
series of years a very honourable share. And it is much to his honour
that by the men to whom the chief scandals of a disastrous reign are
mainly ascribable, ARUNDEL was, almost uniformly, both disliked and
feared.
[Sidenote: ARUNDEL AND STRAFFORD.]
[Sidenote: 1641. March and April.]
As Lord High Steward of England, ARUNDEL had to preside at the trial of
the Earl of STRAFFORD. He acquitted himself of an arduous task with
eminent ability, and with an impartiality which won respect, alike from
the managers of the impeachment and from the friends of the doomed
statesman. The only person who expressed dissatisfaction with ARUNDEL’S
conduct on that critical occasion was the King. The historians who have
most deeply and acutely scanned the details of that most memorable of
all our State Trials are agreed that in order to have satisfied CHARLES,
the Earl of ARUNDEL must have betrayed the duty of his high office.
Shortly after the trial of STRAFFORD, it became ARUNDEL’S duty as Earl
Marshal to attend the mother of the queen (MARY of Medicis), on her
return to Holland; and he received the King’s license to remain beyond
the seas during his pleasure. [Sidenote: LATEST EMPLOYMENTS.] He
returned however to England in October of the same year. [Sidenote:
Rushworth, vol. iv, pp. 317, 318.] In the following February, a similar
ceremonial mission was his last official employment. He then conducted
Queen HENRIETTA MARIA on her journey into France, and took his own last
farewell of England. [Sidenote: 1642. February.] It was an unconscious
farewell. [Sidenote: Sir E. Walker, in MS. Harl., as before.] Nor does
his departure appear to have been dictated by any desire to shrink from
sacrifices on behalf of the cause with which—whether rightly or
wrongly—all his personal sympathies, as well as the political views of
his whole life, were bound up. At the hands of the first STUART he had
met with capricious favour, and with enduring injustice. By the second,
during several years, he was treated with marked and causeless
indignity; and then, during several other years, rewarded grudgingly for
zealous service. In exile, his contributions in support of the royal
cause were upon a scale which impoverished both himself and his
family.[33]