BOOK VI. FROM THE PERIOD OF THE ACCESSION OF JAMES THE FIRST TO THE

RESTORATION OF CHARLES THE SECOND.

CHAPTER THE FIRST. JAMES THE FIRST.

[Illustration: 482]

THE moment the queen died, Cecil and the other Lords of the Council

sneaked out through the back garden gate of the Palace at Richmond at

three o'clock in the morning on the 24th of March, 1603, and posted for

Scotland to James, whom they hailed as the brightest Jem that had ever

adorned the throne. Cecil having long been in correspondence with the

Scotch king, had only been waiting to see which way the cat jumped, or,

in other words, for the death of the queen, and she had lived so long

that he began to think the royal cat had nine lives, whioh delayed her

final jump much longer than her minister desired..

Before posting to Scotland, the Lords of the Council had stuck up

several posters about London, proclaiming James the First amid those

shouts which "the boys" are ever ready to lend to any purpose for which

a mob has been got together. The Scotch king was of course glad to

exchange the miserable cane-bottomed throne of his own country for the

comfortably cushioned seat of English royalty; but he was so wretchedly

poor that he could not even start for his new kingdom till it had

yielded him enough to pay his passage thither. He tried hard to get

possession of the crown jewels for his wife, but the Council would not

trust him with the precious treasures. On his way to his new dominions

he was received with that enthusiasm which a British mob has always on

hand for any new object; but he did not increase in favour upon being

seen; for if a good countenance is a letter of recommendation, James

carried in his face a few lines that said very little in his favour. His

legs were too weak for his body, his eyes too large for their sockets,

and his tongue was too big for his mouth; so that his knees knocked

without making a hit, his pupils could not be restrained by the lash,

while his lingual excrescence caused so many a slip between the cup and

the lip, that his aspect was awkward and disagreeable.

[Illustration: 484]

During his journey to London he rode on horseback, but he was such a

bungling equestrian that he was thrown by a sagacious animal intent on

having his fling at the expense of the sovereign. Besides being ungainly

in his person, he did not set it off to the best advantage, for he

was exceedingly dirty; and thus he appeared to be looking black

at everybody, for his face was encrusted in dust, and though his

predecessor, Elizabeth, was very objectionable, he could not boast of

coming to the throne with clean hands. Power was such a new toy to him

that he could not use it in moderation, and he made knights at the rate

of fifty a day, which caused Bacon so far to forget himself as to utter

the silly sarcasm, that there would be a surfeit of Sirs, if James

proceeded in the manner in which he was beginning.

Conspiracies were soon formed against a monarch so weak, and the

ambitious. Raleigh, who had been in his youth a mere street adventurer,

thought he could vault over official posts as easily as he had vaulted,

over those in the public thoroughfares. His designs being detected, he

was deprived of some of the offices he possessed, and among others

his monopoly of licensing taverns, and retailing, wines, for which his

knowledge of the tobacco business had well fitted him. He plotted with

Grey, a Puritan, Markham, a Papist, and Cobham, a Nothingarian, to seize

the person of the king; but the tables were turned upon them by the

seizure of themselves and their committal to the Tower. Grey, Cobham,

and Markham were condemned to die; but just as they had laid their

heads on the block, they were axed if they would rather live, and having

answered in the affirmative, they were committed to the Tower with

Raleigh for the remainder of their lives.

The Puritans having complained of ecclesiastical abuses. James ordered

a meeting at Hampton Court between the bishops and their opponents, to

talk over their differences. The bishops were allowed the first innings,

and they continued running on for several hours, when James took the

matter up on the same side, and the Puritans were not allowed to utter

a word. After the king had talked himself out of breath, and his hearers

out of patience, Doctor Reynolds was permitted to take a turn on behalf

of the Puritans; but he was insulted, interrupted, and regularly coughed

down before he had spoken twenty words. The king then exclaimed, "Well,

Doctor, is that all you have to say?" Upon which the Doctor, being

abashed by the unfairness shown towards him, admitted that he was

unwilling to proceed. James boasted that he had silenced the Puritans;

and so he had, but it was by intimidation and bluster alone that he had

succeeded in doing so.

Encouraged by his triumph over a few trembling sectarians, the king

called Parliament together, expecting to overcome that body; but he

found he had to deal with some very awkward customers. They questioned

his rights, refused his salary, and turned coldly from a proposition

to unite England with Scotland, which they resisted with a sneering

assertion that oil and vinegar would never agree. Doubting whether he

would get much good out of Parliament in the temper in which he found

it, he abruptly closed the session.

The Catholics, who were subjected to much persecution, became very angry

under it, and a gentleman of the name of Catesby, who had changed his

opinions some three or four times, stuck to the last set with such fury,

that he resolved to assist them at all hazards. His principles had been

a mere matter of toss up, but he had settled down into a Papist at last;

and conceiving the idea of destroying King, Lords, and Commons, at

one blow, he expressed himself on the subject _avec explosion_, as

the French dramatists have it, to Thomas Winter, a gentleman of

Worcestershire, who, having been worsted in all his prospects, cottoned

at once to the scheme. The Catholics had solicited the mediation of the

King of Spain, and Winter passed over to the Netherlands to hear how

matters were going on, when he made himself acquainted at Ostend with a

fellow named Guido Fawkes, who has been equally misinterpreted by "the

boys" and the historians. It has been usual to describe him as a low

mercenary who got his name of Fawkes or Forks, from his way of brutally

demanding everybody to fork out; but however etymology may encourage

such an interpretation of his name, we must denounce it as a cruel libel

on his character. * The eagerness of the juvenile mind to adopt any

malicious absurdity that is proposed to it, has been exhibited in the

boyish extravagance of making Guido Fawkes a man of straw, though

there is little doubt that he was a man of substance, and not the mere

Will-o'-the-Wisp that constitutes his portrait as we see him drawn on

stone along the paved streets of the metropolis. Guido, whose pretended

ugliness has made his abbreviated name of Guy synonymous with a

frightful object, was a gentleman, though a fanatic, and it is not true

that had Fawkes been invited to dinner, it would have been necessary

to look after the spoons as well as the Fawkes with unusual vigilance.

Catesby invited Winter and Guido to his lodgings, where they were met by

Thomas Percy, a distant relation of the Earl of Northumberland, and by

John Wright, an obstinate fellow, who would never own himself wrong.

Grog and cigars--the latter being a novelty recently imported by

Raleigh--were liberally provided, when Catesby suggested that before

business could be regularly gone into, an oath of secresy must be

administered. With a melodramatic desire to give the affidavit all the

advantages of appropriate scenery, it was suggested that a lone house in

the fields beyond Clement's Inn should be the spot where the oath should

be administered.

* Some monster or punster in human form, declares he was

called Fawkes or Forks, because he was ready to con-knive in

anything sanguinary. The atrocity of this assertion needs no

comment.

In the course of a few days the affidavit had been drawn, perused,

settled, and engrossed, when the parties met at the place appointed,

and were all sworn in, with due formality. Catesby, acting as a sort of

chairman, then proceeded to explain to the meeting his views.

He commenced rather in the shape of innuendos, by hinting that he wished

the Parliament further, and he thought he knew a mode of despatching all

the Members at once, by a special train. As his associates did not take

the hint immediately, he proceeded to expatiate on the expediency of a

regular blow up, and getting rid of the whole Parliament "slap bang;"

accompanying his observation by dealing on the deal table a tremendous

thump, that made a noise resembling the explosion of gunpowder. The

action seemed to strike a light in in the eyes of all present, and by

putting this and that together, they perceived that Catesby's intention

was to act the last scene of the _Miller and his Men_, beneath the walls

of Parliament. Percy, who was a gentleman pensioner--though he seems

to have been rather more of the pensioner than the gentleman--had an

opportunity of banging about the Court, and watching the movements of

his intended victims. The first care of the conspirators was to take

a house in the neighbourhood; but no one of the lot, except Percy, had

sufficient credit to justify his acceptance as a tenant, by any prudent

landlord. At length they got hold of a dwelling by the water side,

which was occupied by one Ferris--probably a ferryman--who, for a small

consideration, vacated the premises in Percy's favour. The back of the

house abutted--by means of a water-butt--on the Parliamentary party

wall, and they began picking a hole in the wall as soon as they obtained

possession. At every move they renewed their oath of secrecy, as if they

were mutually better known than trusted among themselves, and a secret

which, even in ordinarily honest hands, is tolerably sure to get wind;

was very soon known to twenty people at least, through the leakiness of

one or more of the conspirators.

Emboldened by their success, they took a coal shed on the Lambeth side

of the river, where one of them, under pretence of going into the potato

business, accumulated as large a quantity of coals, coke, and wood, as

he could with the small means upon which he was enabled to speculate.

The chief scene of their operations was, of course, the house at

Westminster, where they laid in a large supply of hard boiled eggs; "the

better," says Strype, "to be enabled to hatch their scheme, and to

avoid suspicion, by not being compelled to send out for food." The

wall offering considerable resistance to their projects it was found

advisable to send for the keeper of the potato shed, over the way, to

aid in the work, and young Wright, a brother of the same Wright that

never would admit himself to be wrong, was admitted to a partnership in

the secret.

Vainly did these ninny-hammers go hammering on at the walls of

Parliament, which stuck together in a manner very characteristic of

bricks, and no impression seemed to be made upon them; while the mine

from Lambeth, by means of which they intended under-mining the British

Constitution, made scarcely any progress at all. One morning, in the

midst of their labours, they were startled by a rumbling noise overhead,

when Guido Fawkes, who acted as sentinel, ran to ascertain the cause of

the alarming sound. It seemed that one Bright, who carried on the coal

business in a cellar immediately below the Parliament, was clearing out

his stock, at "an alarming sacrifice," with the intention of moving his

business to some more fashionable neighbourhood. Perhaps he was a bad

tenant, and being on the eve of ejection, removed his coals in revenge

for having got the sack from his landlord; but, at all events, he had a

cart into which he was shooting the Wallsend, though he may have had no

intention of shooting the moon at the expense of his creditors.

Percy, knowing the cellar must be vacant, went to look at it, and

pronounced it the very thing; though it might, naturally, have excited

some surprise that one who had hitherto been considered a man of ton

should become a man of chaldrons and hundredweights by going into the

coal business, on a scale somewhat limited. A tenancy was nevertheless

effected, and several barrels of gunpowder were carried into the vault,

under the pretence that the small-beer and bloater business was about to

be commenced by the new lessee, in a style of unusual liberality.

Guy Fawkes was despatched to Flanders, to obtain adherents to the

scheme, but he got no further than to obtain a promise from Owen that he

would speak to Stanley, which seems to have been merely equivalent to

an extension of the secret, without any beneficial result to the

conspirators. On the return of Guido, he found that while he had been

extending the secret abroad, his colleagues had been blabbing--of course

confidentially--at home, so that the secret was becoming a good deal

like an "aside" in a melo-drama, which comes to the ears of every

one but the person most interested in being made acquainted with its

purport.

Every arrangement was now made for blowing up the Parliament sky-high,

when a prorogation, until the 5th of November, was suddenly announced,

and the conspirators began to fear that the secret, which had

experienced as many extensions as a railway line, had found its way, by

some disagreeable deviation, to the ears of the intended victims. The

expense of the conspiracy had hitherto been borne by Catesby, who paid

for all the hard-boiled eggs, the rent of the coal-cellar, with the

wood and the coals that had been had in; for, the rest being soldiers of

fortune, which means that they were soldiers of no fortune at all, would

not have got credit for even the bull's-eye lanthorn, which has since

cut such a conspicuous figure in the history of the period. Catesby had,

however, spent so much in new-laid eggs and new-laid gunpowder--for he

had to support a numerous train--that he was obliged to take in fresh

capital, and Sir Edward Digby, with Francis Tresham, were admitted

as shareholders in the dangerous secret. Digby put down £1500 on the

allotment of a slice of the mystery to himself, and Francis Tresham, who

did not much like the speculation, though he consented to enter into it,

gave his cheque for £2000, saying that he considered the money thrown

away as completely as if he had wasted it in horse-chestnuts, Venetian

grog, or raspberry vinegar. His givings were accompanied by fearful

misgivings, and he never expected to see the hour when he should have

the honour of being sent up to posterity on the wings of a barrel of

gunpowder.

The 5th of November was the day that the conspirators had agreed to

immortalize, for the benefit of future dealers in squibs, crackers,

Catharine-wheels, and all the other "wheels within wheels," that are so

completely in character with this complicated project. They used to take

blows on the river preliminary to the great blow they had in their eye,

and a house at Erith was their frequent place of rendezvous. They also

held consultations at White Webbs--not Webb's the White Bear--near

Enfield, and here they arranged that Guido Fawkes, after putting matters

in train, should set fire to it, by a slow burning match, which would

give him time to escape, though he often said, half jestingly, that to

find his match would be exceedingly difficult. As the scheme drew near

its intended execution, the "secret" had become so fearfully divided

that every one who possessed a share of it had some friend or other he

wanted to save; and if each had been allowed to withdraw his man, the

residue of the Parliament would scarcely have been worth the powder and

shot it had been determined to devote to them. Tresham, for example,

was seized with a sudden fit of benevolence towards old Lord Monteagle;

while Kay, the seedy and needy gentleman in charge of the house at

Lambeth, wanted to save Lord Mordaunt, who had cashed for poor K. an I

O U, when the money was of great use to him. Catesby, who was not so

tender-hearted, declared it was all very well, but if they were to go on

saving and excepting one after the other, there could be no explosion

at all, unless they could procure some of that celebrated discriminating

gunpowder, which blows up all the villains, in the last scene of a

melo-drama, and spares the virtuous characters. He insisted, therefore,

on the necessity of leaving the result to a toss-up, in which all would

have an equal chance of winning or losing.

Tresham, who combined the wavering of the weathercock with the

tremulousness of the tee-to-tum, was still intent on giving a sort of

general warning to a number of his friends, and when his blabbing was

objected to, he declared the affair had better be put off, as he could

find no more money to carry on the conspiracy. Catesby, Winter, and

Fawkes objected to delay; whereupon it is supposed that Tresham not only

ratted but let the cat out of the bag in a most unwarrantable manner.

Lord Monteagle, who had a country box at Hoxton, was giving a _petit

souper_ to a few friends on the 26th of October, and he was just

finishing the leg of a Welsh rabbit, when his page presented him a

letter that had just been left by a tall man who had refused to leave

his name or wait for an answer. Lord Monteagle, thinking it might be a

bill, desired one of his guests to read it out, when it proved to be a

letter written in the characteristic spelling of the period. "I would

advyse yowe, as yowe tender yower lyf, to devyse some excuse to shift

of vower attendance at this Parleament," said the anonymous scribbler,

which threw Monteagle into such alarm that he took the Hoxton 'bus,

and went off to Whitehall the same evening to see Cecil. The king was

"hunting the fearful hare at Royston," in the most hare-um scare-um

style, and it was resolved that nothing could, would, or should be done

until the return of the sovereign.

Notwithstanding the letter having been delivered as early as the 26th

of October, nothing seems to have been done to stop the conspiracy,

for Fawkes went regularly once a day to the cellar, to count the coals,

snuff the rushlight, and do any other little odd job that the progress

of the conspiracy might require. Cecil and Suffolk having laid their

heads together on the subject of the letter, at last fancied they had

found the solution of the riddle, which for the convenience of the

student, we will throw into the form of a charade, after an approved

model.

My first is a sort of peculiar tea;

My second a lawn or a meadow might be;

My whole's a conspiracy likely to blow

King, Commons, and Lords to a place I don't know.

The "peculiar tea" was gunpowder, the "lawn" or "meadow" was a plot--of

grass, and the whole was the Gunpowder Plot, which, though it went off

very badly at the time, caused an explosion from which the country has

not yet quite recovered. Notwithstanding the solution of the mystery,

no steps were taken to bring the matter, to an issue, and Fawkes was

permitted to be at large about town, paying his diurnal visits to the

cellar without attracting the observation of anyone. Tresham and Winter

talked the matter over in Lincoln's Inn Fields, or wandered amid the

then romantic scenery of Whetstone Park, to consult on the scheme and

its probable completion. The timid Tresham proposed flight, but his

fellow conspirators, who were not so flighty, resolved on persevering,

and the intrepid Fawkes kept up a regular Cellarius, * by dancing

backwards ana forwards about the cellar.

* We may as well state, for the benefit of that posterity

which this work will reach and the Cellarius will not, that

the Cellarius is a dance fashionable in the year 1847, when

this history was written.

The shilly-shallying of all parties with respect to the gunpowder

conspiracy is one of the most remarkable features of the period when it

occurred; for we find the plotters, with detection staring them in the

face, adhering to their old haunts, while the intended victims though

made aware of the plot, were as tardy as possible in taking any steps to

baffle it. Fawkes continued his visits to the cellar just as confidently

as ever; and one would think that ultimately detection was the object

he had in view for he lurked about the premises with such obstinate

perseverance that his escape was impossible. At length Suffolk, the Lord

Chamberlain, took Monteagle down to the House the day before the opening

of Parliament, to see that all was right, and they occupied themselves

for several hours in looking under the seats, unpicking the furniture

of the throne to see if anyone was concealed inside, and searching

into every hole and corner where a conspirator was not likely to secrete

himself. Having taken courage from the fact of there being no signs

of danger, they determined to go down stairs into the cellar, under

pretence of stopping up the rat-holes--for even in those early days rats

found their way into the House--and they had no sooner opened the door

than they saw in one corner a round substance, which they at first took

for a beer barrel. They approached it with the intention of giving it

a friendly tap, when the supposed barrel rose up into the height of a

water-butt.

[Illustration: 490]

Suffolk instantly got behind Monteagle, who stood trembling with fear,

when the phantom cask assumed the form of a "tall, desperate fellow,"

who proved to be Fawkes, and the Chamberlain, affecting a careless

indifference, demanded his "name, birth, and parentage." Guido handed

his card, bearing the words G. Fawkes, and announced himself as the

servant of Mr. Percy, who carried on a trade in coals, coke, and wood,

if he could, in the immediate neighbourhood. "Indeed," said Suffolk,

"your master has a tolerably large stock on hand, though I think there

is something else screened besides the coals, which I see around me."

Without adding another word, he and Monteagle ran off, and Fawkes

hastened to acquaint Percy with what had happened.

Poor Guido seems to have formed a most feline and most fatal attachment

to the place, for nothing could keep him out of the cellar, though he

knew he was almost certain of being hauled unceremoniously over the

coals, and he went back at two in the morning to the old spot, with his

habitual foolhardiness. He had no sooner opened the door than he was

seized and pinioned, without his opinion being asked, by a party of

soldiers. He made one desperate effort to make light of the whole

business, by setting fire to the train, but he had no box of Congreves

at hand, and he observed, with bitter boldness, in continuation of a pun

which he had made in happier days, that he had at last found his match

and lost his Lucifer. Poor Guy Fawkes, having been bound hand and foot,

was taken on a stretcher to Whitehall, having been previously searched,

when his pocket was found filled with tinder, touch-wood, and other

similar rubbish. Behind the door there was a dark lanthorn, or

bull's-eye, that had cowed the soldiers at first glance, by its glazed

look, but it seemed less terrible on their walking resolutely up to it.

Fawkes was taken to the king's bedroom, at Whitehall, and though his

limbs were bound and helpless, he spoke with a thick, bold, ropy voice

that terrified all around him. His tones had become quite sepulchral,

from remaining so long in the vault, and when asked his name, he

scraped out from his hoarse throat the words "John Johnson," which came

gratingly--as if through a grating----on the ears of the bystanders. He

announced himself as John the footman to Mr. Percy, and he threw himself

into an attitude--which was rather cramped by his pinions--which he

found anything but the sort of pinions that would enable him to

soar into the lofty regions of romance to which he had aspired. He

nevertheless boldly announced his purpose, with the audacity of a stage

villain; and with that sort of magnanimity which lasts, on an average,

about five minutes in the guilty breast, he refused to disclose the

names of his accomplices.

One of the Scotch courtiers, who had a natural feeling of stinginess,

asked how it was that Fawkes had collected so many barrels of gunpowder,

when half the quantity would have done. Upon which Fawkes replied, that

his principal had desired him to purchase enough to blow the Scotch back

to Scotland. "Hoot, awa, mon!" rejoined the Scot; "but ken ye not that

ye might have bought half the powder, and put the rest of the siller in

your pocket?" Fawkes sternly intimated that though he would have blown

up the Parliament, he would not defraud his principal. "Hoot, mon!"

cried the Scotchman, who loved his specie under the pretence of loving

his species, and who, it is probable, belonged to the Chambers; "Hoot,

mon!" he whined, "dinna ye ken that there are times when you mun just

throw your preencipal overboard?" *

* A fact!

On the 6th of November Fawkes was sent to the Tower, with instructions

to squeeze out of him whatever could be elicited by the screw, which

was then the usual method of scrutiny. For four days he would confess

nothing at all; but his accomplices began to betray themselves by their

own proceedings. Several of them fled; but Tresham exhibited the very

height of impudence by coming down to the Council and asking if he could

be of any use in the pursuit of the rebels. Nothing but the effrontery

of the boots which ran after the stolen shoes, crying "Stop thief," and

have never returned to this very hour, can be compared with the

coolness of Tresham in offering to aid in effecting the capture of the

conspirators.

Catesby and Jack Wright cut right away to Dunchurch, Percy filled his

purse, and Christopher Wright packed up his kit, to be in readiness for

making off when occasion required, while Keyes made a precipitate bolt

out of London the morning after the plot was discovered.

[Illustration: 494]

Rookwood, who had ordered relays of fine horses all along the road, went

at full gallop through Highgate, and never slackened his pace till

he reached Turvey, in Bedfordshire, where he came tumbling almost

topsy-turvy over the inhabitants. Arriving at Ashby, St. Legers, with

a _légèrete_ quite worthy of the race for the St. Leger itself, he had

already travelled eighty miles in six hours; but he nevertheless pushed

along on his gallant steed--a magnificent dun--who always ran as if he

had a commercial dun at his heels, to Dunchurch. Here he found Digby,

enjoying his _otium cum dig._--with a hunting party round him; but the

guests guessed what was in the wind, and fearing they might come in

for the blow, had vanished in the night-time. When Digby sat down

to breakfast the next day, his circle of friends had dwindled to a

triangle, consisting of Catesby, Percy, and Rookwood, who, with their

host, now become almost a host in himself, took speedily to horse, and

rode a regular steeple-chase to the borders of Staffordshire. Here they

arrived on the night of the 7th of November, at Holbeach, where they

took possession of a house; but by this time Sir Richard Walsh, the

sheriff of Worcester, who had got writs out against them all, was close

upon them with his officers.

In the morning their landlord, one Littleton, having been let into their

secret, let himself out of his bedroom window through fear, and Digby

decamped under pretence of going to buy some eggs to suck for breakfast,

as well as to look for some succour. Digby had hardly shut the street

door when its bang was echoed by a bang up stairs, occasioned by

Catesby, Percy, and Rookwood having endeavoured to dry some gunpowder

in a frying pan over the fire. Catesby was burnt and blackened, besides

being blown up for having been the chief cause of the accident; and

shortly afterwards, to add to their misfortunes, the sheriff, with the

_posse comitatus_, surrounded the dwelling. The conspirators endeavoured

to parry with their swords the bullets of their assailants, but this was

a hopeless job, and keeping up their spirits as well as they could,

they exclaimed at every shot fired on the side of the king, "Here comes

another dose of James's powder." Catesby, addressing Thomas Winter,

roared out, "Now then, stand by me, Tom!" and Winter, suddenly taking

a spring to his friend's side, they were both shot by one musket. Their

attendants, not being able to get the bullet out, issued a bullet-in to

say they were both dead, and the brothers Wright were not long left to

bewail the fate of their accomplices. Percy, who had persevered to the

last, got a wound which wound him up, and Rookwood had received such a

home-thrust in the stomach from a rusty pike, that the pike rust sadly

disagreed with him. Digby, whose feelings had run away with him, was

overtaken, caught, and made fast, because he had been too slow, while

Keyes came to a dead-lock, and the prisoners being all brought to

London, were lodged in the Tower.

Tresham, who had never left town, but was strutting about with all the

easy confidence of a man with "nothing out against him," was suddenly

nabbed, in spite of his remonstrances, conveyed in exclamations of "What

have I done?"

"La! bless me! there must be some mistake!" and other appeals of an

ejaculatory but useless character.

Poor Guido Fawkes was examined by Popham, Coke, and Wood, whose names

may now for the first time be noticed as appropriate to the business

they were entrusted with. Popham is surely emblematical of the series

of pops, bangs, and explosions that would have ensued from the Gunpowder

Plot; while Coke and Wood are obviously symbolical of the combustibles

required for fuel. In vain did these sagacious persons attempt to get

anything from Guido, who said "he belonged to the Fawkes and not to

the spoons, who might perhaps be made to convict themselves by cross

questioning." Popham popped questions in abundance; Coke tried to coax

out the truth; and Wood, if he could, would have got at the facts;

but neither threats nor promises could prevent Fawkes from showing his

metal.

Posterity, in altering his name to Guy Fox, has happily hit upon an

appropriately expressed the cunning of his character. He confessed his

own share in the business readily enough, but resolutely refused to

betray his associates. "I will not acknowledge that Percy is in the

plot," he cried; which reminds us of an intimation made by a gentleman

just arrested, to his surrounding friends, that "he did not wish the

bailiff pumped upon." A nod is as good as a wink in certain cases;

and like winking the sheriff's officer was submitted to a course of

hydropathic treatment. In the same manner the declaration of Fawkes

that "Percy had nothing to do with it--oh, dear no, nothing at all!"

was quite enough to put the authorities on the right scent had any such

guidance been required.

[Illustration: 495]

Poor Fawkes was so fearfully damaged by the torture he had undergone,

that his handwriting was entirely spoiled; and specimens of his mode

of signing his name after the torture, contrasted with the copy of his

autograph before the cruel infliction, present the reverse of the result

which writing-masters of our day boast of producing by their six lessons

in penmanship.

Guido Fawkes, however, confessed nothing specifically beyond what the

Government already knew, but Tresham and Catesby's servant Bates, a

man remarkable for his _bêtise_, confessed whatever the authorities

required. Tresham being seized with a fatal illness in prison, retracted

his confession, which he declared had been extorted or "extortured"--as

Strype has it--from him, and he died after placing his recantation in

the hands of his wife to be given to Cecil. The surviving conspirators

were brought to trial after some delay, and though they all pleaded not

guilty, as long as there was a chance of escape, they were no sooner

convicted beyond all hope than they began boasting of their offence, and

were all "on the high ropes" when they came to the scaffold. Garnet the

Jesuit was served up by way of garniture to the horrible banquet that

the vengeance of the Protestants required. This brilliant character

shone with increased lustre as the time for his execution approached,

and however glorious had been his rise, the setting was worthy of Garnet

in his very brightest moments.

Besides those who were executed for an avowal, or at least, a proved

participation in the Gunpowder Plot, several persons were punished very

severely, in the capacity of supplementary victims, who might, or

might not, have been implicated in the conspiracy. Lords Mordaunt and

Stourton, two Catholic nobles, were fined, respectively, £10,000 and

£4000 because they did not happen to be in their places in Parliament,

to be blown up, had Fawkes succeeded in accomplishing his object.

The Earl of Northumberland was sent to the Tower for a few years, and

mulcted of £30,000, because he had made Percy a gentleman pensioner,

some years before; but no trouble was taken to show how this could

have rendered him afterwards a rebel, nor how Northumberland could be

responsible, even if such a result had really arrived. But it was urged

by the apologists for this severity, that the Gunpowder Treason

would have been fatal alike to the good and the bad, and that as the

punishment should correspond with the offence, an indiscriminate dealing

out of penalties among the guilty and the innocent was quite allowable.

CHAPTER THE SECOND. JAMES THE FIRST (CONTINUED).

[Illustration: 497]

THE Parliament that was to have been dissolved in thin air on the 5th

of November, leaving nothing behind but a report in several volumes of

smoke, met for the despatch of business on the 21st of January, 1606.

Laws were passed against the Papists in a most vexatious spirit, and by

one enactment they were positively prohibited from removing more than

five miles from home without an order signed by four magistrates. If

a Catholic had got into a cab, and the horse had run away, without the

driver being able to pull up within the fifth mile, the fare would have

been most unfairly sacrificed.

James, who saw the advantage Scotland would derive from an alliance with

England, began to urge the Union, but the English naturally objected

to such a very unprofitable match; for Scotland had nothing to lose,

nothing to give, nothing to lend, and nothing to teach, except the

art of making bread without flour, joke-books without wit, reputation

without ability, and a living without anything. James felt that the

sarcasms on the Scotch were personal to himself, and he told the

Parliament they ought not to talk on matters they did not understand;

but it was thought that to restrict them to subjects which they did

understand would be equivalent to depriving them of liberty of speech on

nearly every occasion.

James had become somewhat popular on account of the attempt to blow

him up sky-high with all his ministers, and a rumour of his having been

assassinated, sent him up a shade or two higher in the affections of his

people. It is a feature in the character of the English that they always

take into their favour any one who seems to be an object of persecution;

and there is no doubt that if in a crowd there is any one desirous

of rising in public esteem, he has only to ask a friend to give him a

severe and apparently unmerited blow on the head, in order to render him

the idol of the surrounding multitude. If there had been no Gunpowder

Plot, it would have been worth the while of James to have got one up,

for the express purpose of increasing his popularity. His qualities,

as shown in his way of life at this time, do not warrant the esteem in

which he was held; for he divided his time between the pleasures of

the table, the excitements of the chase, and the blackguardism of the

cock-pit. When remonstrated with on the lowness of his pursuits, he

declared that his health required relaxation; and he would declare that

he would rather see one of his Dorking chickens win his spurs, than

witness the grandest tournament. These pursuits, which were expensive,

caused him to do many acts of meanness to obtain the necessary supplies:

and among other things he went to dine with the Clothworkers as well

as with the Merchant Tailors, among both of whom the royal hat was sent

round at the close of the banquet.

At the second of these entertainments his own beaver had just made the

circuit of the table with considerable effect, when, encouraged by the

liberality of the company, he shoved on to the social board a cap, in

the name of his son, Prince Henry. The collection for the child was not

very ample, for many of the guests objected to being called upon for a

trifle towards lining the pockets of the young gentleman's new frock,

more especially when it was obvious that James fully intended to clutch

the whole of the additional assets.

[Illustration: 498]

Among other disreputable methods he took of procuring money, was the

institution of the order of Baronets, whose titles he sold at a

thousand pounds each, without regard to the merit of the purchasers. The

antiquity of a baronetcy is therefore not much in its favour, and those

who can trace the possession of such a distinction in their family down

to the first establishment of the rank, do nothing more than prove the

possession, either honestly or dishonestly, of a thousand pounds by one

of his ancestors. Seventy-five families took advantage of this traffic

in dignities to obtain a sort of spurious nobility, founded on the

necessities of the sovereign. The only qualifications required of

candidates wishing to be elected to the order were "cash down," to pay

the fees, and an ability to trace a descent from at least a grandfather

on the father's side; so that _semble_, as the lawyers say, the maternal

ancestors might have been utterly hypothetical and purely anonymous. The

arms of the baronets have always included those of Ulster, because the

money they contributed was designed for the relief of that province--a

proof that Ireland has been a drain upon England for a long series of

centuries. The emblem of Ulster is a bloody hand, which was only too

appropriate to the place; and the symbol being called in the language of

heraldry a hand gules--or gold--in a field argent--or silver--was also

characteristic of the metallic source from which the baronets derived

their titles.

Prince Henry, the heir to the throne, had long been looked upon as a

pleasing contrast to his odious father, and the people were anticipating

the former's reign with an assurance that the amiable and accomplished

son would compensate for the infliction they had endured in the

ignorance, pride, and selfishness of the parent. Death, however, that

sometimes seizes first on the best, and leaves the worst till the

last--on the principle of the boy who began by picking all the plums out

of the pudding--took the youthful prince before appropriating his papa,

and caused the latter sinfully to exult in being the survivor of his own

offspring. He forgot the maxim that "Whom the gods love, die young," and

the remarks he made upon his own comparative longevity proved that he

at least was one of those whom the gods had not been anxious to adopt at

the earliest opportunity. The young prince died of a malignant fever,

on the 5th of November, 1612, and his father, whose harsh

conduct--especially to Sir Walter Raleigh and other great men--had been

criticised by his heir, allowed no mourning to take place, but made the

unnatural and blasphemous boast that "he should outlive all who opposed

him."

Though having little or no affection for his own children, James

delighted in having about him some low and sneaking favourite who would

flatter his ridiculous vanity, and help to cheat him into the belief

that he was a good and amiable character. As no one of spirit and

honesty would consent to become the despicable parasite that James

required, some mean and unprincipled vagabond was of necessity selected

as the depositary of that confidence which a son, with the feelings of

a gentleman, could not of course participate. Henry had therefore been

excluded from that free communication which should exist between child

and parent in every station, and an uneducated humbug named Robert Carr

had wormed his way into the heart, or rather into the favour of James,

who was drawn toward the other by a sympathy with congenial littleness.

Carr was such a wretched ignoramus as to be unable to speak ten

consecutive words of grammar, and it flattered the egregious vanity of

James to be able to impart some of that education of which he had

just about enough to enable him to show his superiority over his most

unlettered pupil. Carr played his cards so successfully that he was soon

not only knighted but created Viscount Rochester; and though his future

career proved him worthier of the rope, he actually obtained the Garter.

It was to be presumed that this disreputable scapegrace would soon do

something or other to prove how far James had been right or wrong in

the selection of a friend, adviser, companion, and favourite. The

necessities of Carr were so well supplied by sponging on his royal

patron that it was not necessary for the former to commit any pecuniary

swindle; but he very rapidly got into a most disgraceful connection with

the Countess of Essex, a vile person who obtained a divorce from her own

husband, to enable her to marry Rochester. The latter had a friend named

Sir Thomas Overbury, who advised him to have nothing to do with the

profligate woman in question. This so irritated the countess that she

persuaded her paramour to join her in poisoning the party who had given

the advice, and after trying the homoeopathic principle for some weeks

without effect, they at length gave him one tremendous dose which did

the atrocious business. Carr had received the title of Earl of Somerset

on his infamous marriage, but the favourite was getting already a little

out of favour when the affair of the murder happened. James being one

of those who promptly turned his back on those who were "down in the

world," and had smiles for those only who were prosperous, began to

estrange himself from Somerset, and to transfer his worthless friendship

to George Villiers, afterwards Duke of Buckingham.

The king first saw this young scamp at the Theatre Royal, Cambridge,

where a five-act farce called _Ignoramus_ was being represented by a

party of distinguished amateurs, with the applause that usually attends

these interesting performances. Villiers was appointed cupbearer--a

grade immediately under that of bottle-holder--to the king, and the

influence of the new favourite was soon felt by the old, who found

himself arrested one fine morning on the charge of having been concerned

in Sir Thomas Overbury's murder. The steps taken for the punishment of

this atrocity were perfectly characteristic of the period. By way of

a preliminary offering to Justice, some half dozen of the minor and

subordinate parties to the crime were executed off-hand, while the two

principal delinquents, Somerset and his countess, having been tardily

condemned, were immediately afterwards pardoned. The infamous couple

subsequently received a pension of £4000 a year from the king, who no

doubt felt that Somerset could show him up, and was just the sort of

scoundrel to do so unless he could be well paid for his silence. The

annuity allowed to the ex-favourite must be looked upon as hush-money,

rendered necessary by the mutual rascalities of the donor and the

recipient, who, being in each other's power, were under the necessity of

effecting a compromise. The fall of Somerset was followed by the rise of

Villiers, who rushed through the entire peerage with railroad rapidity,

passing the intermediate stations of Viscount, Earl, and Marquis, till

he reached the terminus as Duke of Buckingham.

Poor Raleigh, who had been thirteen years in the Tower, where he was

writing the History of the World, began to feel a very natural anxiety

to get out of his prison, and describe, from ocular demonstration, the

subject of his gigantic labours. He accordingly spread a report that he

knew of a gold mine in Guiana where the stuff for making guineas could

be had only for the trouble of picking it up, and the king was persuaded

to let him go and try his luck in America. Raleigh had no sooner

got free than he published a prospectus and got up a company with

a preliminary deposit sufficient to start him off well on his new

enterprise. He proved with all the clearness of figures--which the

reader must not think of confounding with facts--that a hundred per

cent, must be realised; and the shares in Raleigh's gold mine rose to

such a height that he was enabled to rig a ship after having rigged the

market. Plans were published, with great streaks of gamboge painted all

over, to represent the supposed veins of gold that were waiting only to

be worked; and through the medium of these veins the British public bled

very rapidly.

The extent of the mining mania got up by Sir Walter may be imagined when

we state that he arrived with twelve vessels at Guiana, a portion of

which had already been taken possession of by Spain; and the English

speculators declared with disgust, that they had come for the gold,

and had not expected to meet the Spanish. The town of St. Thomas

being already in the possession of the latter, was boldly attacked and

ultimately taken, but instead of finding a mine there were only two

ingots of gold in the whole place, which Raleigh clutched, exclaiming

"These are mine," immediately on landing. It was evident to the whole

party that Raleigh's story of the gold mine was a mere "dodge" to get

himself released from the Tower; and when they came to look for the

boasted vein, they found it was literally in vain that they searched for

the precious metal. A mutiny at once broke out, and as Raleigh deceived

them in his promise of introducing them to abundance of gold, they made

him form a very close connection with a large quantity of iron. They in

fact threw him into fetters, a species of treatment that, had it been

applied to every projector of a bubble company during the railway mania

of 1846, would have hung half the aldermen of London in chains, and

linked society together by a general concatenation of nearly every

rank as well as every profession. Poor Raleigh arrived safe in Plymouth

Sound, but he found a proclamation out against him, accusing him of a

long catalogue of crimes, and inviting all the world to take him into

custody.

The Spanish ambassador was at the bottom of this affair, for the

Spaniards had a score of old scores against Sir Walter, who had no

sooner landed at Plymouth than he was made a prisoner. With considerable

ingenuity he pretended to be very ill, and even feigned insanity; but

the latter was a plea that could not so easily be established in the

time of Raleigh as it has been in our own days, when it has been found a

convenient and effective excuse for those who, having committed murder,

escape on the ground of their being given to eccentricity. Raleigh tried

it on very hard, by talking incoherently, playing the fool, dancing

fandangos in his prison, sending a potato to his tailor to be measured

for a new jacket, and feigning other acts of madness, but to the writ

_de lunatico inquirendo_, there was no other return than _nullum iter_,

or no go, when the investigation into his state of mind was concluded.

In order to save the trouble and expense of a fresh conviction, the old

outstanding judgment was again brought up, and it was determined to kill

him by a bill of reviver--if such an anomaly could be permitted. He grew

ponderously facetious as his end drew nigh, and made one or two jokes

that might have saved him had they been heard in time, for they gave

evidence of an amount of mental imbecility that should have released

him from all responsibility on account of his actions. Among other

lugubrious levities of Raleigh before his death, was the well-known

but generally-execrated remark in reference to a cup of sack which was

brought to him: "Ha!" said he, "I shall soon have the sack without

the cup;" an observation that elicited, as soon as it was known, an

immediate order for his execution. "That head of Raleigh's must come

off," cried the king, "for it is evident the poor fellow has lost the

use of it." On the 29th of October, 1618, poor Raleigh joked his last,

upon the scaffold, where he stood shivering with cold, when the sheriff

asked him to step aside for a few minutes and warm himself. "No," said

Sir Walter, "my wish is to take it cool;" and then looking at the axe,

he balanced it on the top of his little finger--some say his chin--and

observed, "This is a great medicine, rather sharp, but it cures all

diseases." At this the headsman, no doubt irritated by the maddening

mediocrity of the intended witticism, let fall the fatal blade, and

Raleigh, with his head cut off, never came to--or rather never came

one--again.

We ought, perhaps to shed a tear over the fate of this great, though

unprincipled man; but it is not so easy to turn on the main of sentiment

to the fountains of pity, after the water has been cut off during more

than two centuries by Time, in the capacity of turncock. Besides, in

going through the history of our native land there are so many victims,

all more or less worthy of a gush of sympathy, that we should literally

dissolve ourselves in tears before we had got half through our labours,

if we began giving way to what old King Lear has ungallantly termed a

woman's weakness.

On the 16th of June, 1621, James, being "hard up," and finding that

the circulation of the begging-box produced no effect, was compelled to

summon a Parliament. Some cash to go on with was voted to the king, but

the Commons then proceeded to investigate some cases of gross corruption

that had been discovered among the Ministers. The Testes, the Cubieres,

and other official swindlers of modern France, who, in the midst of

meanness, deception, and theft, were still blatant about their "honour,"

might have found, in the England of 1621, a precedent for their

venal rascality. Sir John Bennet, Judge of the Prerogative Court of

Canterbury, and Field, Bishop of Llandaff, were convicted of bribery.

Yelverton, the Attorney-General, was found guilty of having aided in

an extensive swindle in the Patent Office, and Bacon, the great "moral

philosopher," was found to have been fleecing the public in the Court of

Chancery, to such a degree, that he might have stuffed the woolsack over

and over again from the produce of the shearing to which he submitted

the flocks of suitors who appealed to him. He would take bribes in open

court, and he would pretend to consider, that as all men should be equal

in the eye of the law, the equality could only be achieved by emptying

the pockets of every party that came into court, as a preliminary to

giving him a hearing. It has been said by his apologists, that though he

took bribes, his decisions were just, for he would often give judgment

against those who had paid him for a decree in their favour. The excuse

merely proves that he was sufficiently unscrupulous to follow up one

fraud by another, and to cheat his suitors out of the consideration upon

which they had parted with their money. Bacon endeavoured to effect a

compromise with his accusers by a confession of about one per cent, of

his crimes, but the Peers insisted on making him answerable in full for

all his delinquencies. He then acknowledged twenty-eight articles, which

seemed to satisfy the most ravenous of his enemies, who were hungering

to see his reputation torn to pieces by the million mouths of rumour.

The great seal was taken away from a man of such a degraded stamp,

he was flned £40,000--a mere bagatelle out of what he had bagged--was

declared incapable of holding office or sitting in Parliament, and was

sent off to the Tower.

[Illustration: 503]

There were thoughts of beheading him, but happily for England, her Bacon

was saved to devote the remainder of his life to literary compositions,

which have greatly redeemed his name from obloquy. We must regard the

character of our Bacon as streaky, for the dark is intermingled with the

fair in the most wonderful manner. "Bacon was undoubtedly rash, but he

might have been rasher," says the incorrigible Strype, whose name is

continually suggestive of the lashing he merited.

The Commons having been instrumental in bringing to light a considerable

quantity of corruption, seemed determined to continue on the same scent,

and every one who had a grievance was invited to lay it at once before

Parliament. The waste-paper baskets of the House were of course soon

overflowing with popular complaints, for there is scarcely a man,

woman or child that cannot rake up a grievance of some kind, upon the

invitation of persons professing to be able and willing to supply a

remedy. James, fearful that his prerogative would be entrenched

upon, wrote a letter to the Speaker, advising the Commons not to

form themselves into an assembly of gossips, to listen to all the

tittle-tattle that an entire nation of scandal-mongers would be ready to

collect; but the House would not be diverted from its honest purpose by

the sneers or threats of the sovereign. A good deal of polite and other

letter-writing ensued between the king and the Parliament, until the

latter entered on its journals a protestation, claiming the freedom of

speech and the right of giving advice as the undoubted "inheritance of

the subjects of England."

James was furious at what had occurred, and ordering the Journals of the

Commons to be brought to him, he contemptuously tore out the page; and

then, sending back the book, advised the House to turn over a new leaf

as soon as possible. "Tell your master," said Coke, in a whisper that

nobody heard, "tell him he will do well to take a leaf out of our book,

but not in the style in which this leaf has been taken." Parliament was

first prorogued, and then dissolved by the king, who declared it would

do no good as long as it lasted, and Coke, who was charged with adding

fuel to the Parliamentary fire, was sent to the Tower with several

others. On the day of the dissolution James nearly met with his own

dissolution, for while taking a ride on a spirited horse, who had

perhaps a certain instinctive sympathy with the popular cause, he was

thrown into the New River.

[Illustration: 504]

This was on the 6th of January, 1622, when the water was frozen; and

James had just been saying to himself, "I'm glad I have made the plunge,

and broken the ice with these turbulent Commons," when he found himself

plunging and breaking the ice after another fashion. Fortunately his

boots were buoyant--perhaps they had cork soles--and Sir Richard Young,

seizing a boat-hook, which he converted for the moment into a boot-hook,

drew the sovereign by the heels from what he afterwards declared was

decidedly not his proper element.

Buckingham, as we have already seen, was the sole successor to Somerset

in the office of royal favourite; but Charles, the Prince of Wales, had

taken rather an aversion than otherwise to the person whom his father

patronised. The friends of the latter were generally so disreputable,

that his son could not go wrong in avoiding them; but Buckingham

beginning to look upon Charles as the better speculation of the two,

resolved on making himself as agreeable as possible to the more faithful

and therefore more promising branch of royalty. The duke being fond

of scampish adventure, proposed a plan better suited to be made the

incident of a farce, than to be ranked as an event in history. He

suggested that Charles and himself should travel to Spain under the

assumed names of Jack Smith and Tom Smith, in order that the prince

might introduce himself to the Infanta of Spain, whom it had been

proposed he should marry. For such a wild-goose scheme to succeed, an

Infanta of Spain must have been much more accessible in those days than

in ours; for though Jack Smith and Tom Smith might find their way into

a public-house parlour, and make love to the landlord's daughter, they

would assuredly never be allowed to carry their gallantries into any

European palace, or even to obtain admittance into any respectable

private family. James, when the scheme was proposed to him, discouraged

it at first, but being taken by the scapegrace couple in "a jovial

humour," which means when the trio happened to be disgracefully drunk,

the consent of the king was given to the farcical enterprise.

Having arrived at Madrid, the two hopeful youths rode up on mules to the

door of Sir Thomas Digby, the British ambassador, and sent in the names

of John and Thomas Smith; but Digby, knowing no less than half a hundred

Smiths, declined seeing the "party" unless a more special description

was sent up to him. Without waiting for further formality,

Buckingham--_alias_ Tom Smith--walked with his portmanteau straight into

the ambassador's presence, after a series of scuffles on the staircase

and in the passages, accompanied by shouts of "Keep back, fellow!"

"You can't come up!" and other exclamations that had prepared Digby to

give Tom Smith a reception by no means encouraging. When tne ambassador

recognised his visitor, his manner completely changed, and his

politeness knew no bounds, when in Jack Smith, who entered next,

Digby saw no less a person than the heir to the throne of England. The

_incognito_ was of course at an end in an instant, and the next day

Buckingham and the prince were presented to the royal family of Spain,

though the farce of the disguise was still kept up to a certain extent;

and the Infanta was sent out in her father's carriage, "sitting in

the boot," says Howell, "that Charles might get a sight of her." The

position of a young lady looking from the boot of a carriage could

not have been very becoming, and she does not seem to have made

a particularly favourable impression on her intended suitor. He

nevertheless expressed his readiness to have another look at her, and he

played the part of lover at Buckingham's instigation, for the purpose of

getting a variety of presents from the young lady's family.

Her brother Philip was anxious for the match, and did everything to

encourage it, by giving some valuable article to Charles whenever

he evinced anything like affection for the young Infanta. One day he

pretended to be in a particularly tender mood, and at every piece of

gallantry he displayed Philip gave him something costly to take away

with him. By a series of smirks, leers, and pretty speeches, he secured

some original pictures by Titian and Correggio, but when he rushed up to

the Infanta with amorous playfulness, pinking her in the side with his

cane, and giving the Spanish version of "Whew, you little baggage!" the

queen of Spain was so delighted that she emptied her reticule, which was

full of amber, into the pocket of the Prince, while the word "Halves"

was whispered in a sepulchral tone into his ear by the crafty and

avaricious Buckingham.

When they had got all they could out of the Spanish royal family, the

English prince and his companion made up their minds that the Infanta

was a failure, and that they had better get home with all possible

celerity. Buckingham began treating Philip with the most disrespectful

familiarity, slapping him boisterously on the back, alluding to him

curtly, but not courteously, as Phil., ana otherwise offending the

royal dignity. At length Prince Charles and his companion called to take

leave, when the former played his old part of a devoted lover, beating

in the crown of his hat, stamping on the floor, and giving the numerous

signs of devotion that a practice of several weeks under a popular actor

had made him completely master of. He had no sooner turned his back upon

Madrid, and commenced moving towards home, than he made up his mind to

cut the matrimonial connection; and he announced his determination by

a messenger, who was instructed to say to Philip, that, for the good of

both parties, and decidedly for the happiness of one, the abandonment of

the marriage was much to be desired. Philip, upon whom the Infanta was

a drag he would have been glad to get off his hands, became angry at the

tampering that had taken place with the young lady's affections; but as

these were no doubt pretty tough, the damage was not material.

A proxy had been left in the hands of Digby, Earl of Bristol, the

British Ambassador at Madrid, and the royal family sent nearly every

day, with their compliments, begging to know when the proxy was to be

acted upon; but finding at last, that, notwithstanding the proxy, there

was no approximation to a satisfactory result, a most unpleasant feeling

was created. Bristol, who was a man of honour, felt very uncomfortable

at the evasive replies he was compelled to give, and was not sorry

to return to England; though he had, as he naturally observed, "not

bargained for the warrant which, in the most unwarrantable manner,

awaited his arrival, and sent him straight to the Tower." He was soon

afterwards released, but was not allowed by Buckingham, the favourite,

to approach the king, and a recommendation to Bristol to go to Bath,

or to retire to his country seat, was the only reply the ex-ambassador

could obtain to his solicitations to be allowed to offer explanations to

his sovereign.

Charles had given the Infanta scarcely time to recover from the jilting

she had just undergone, when, with a cruel disregard of that young

person's feelings, he made up to Mademoiselle Henrietta of France, and a

marriage with the latter was speedily concluded. The dowry, amounting

to about £100,000, was paid partly down, but the nuptial ceremony was

performed by proxy; and the English Government wrote over to say that

there was no hurry about the bride, provided some of the cash was

transmitted to England as speedily as possible.

With some of the cash thus obtained, and with money squeezed out of the

people, an expensive engagement was formed with Count Mans-feldt,

an adventurer from the Low Countries, who undertook to recover the

Palatinate, if an English army of twelve thousand men were placed under

him. The troops were put at his disposal, and embarked at Dover; but

on reaching Calais the governor had no orders to let them pass, and in

consequence of the loss of the city in Mary's time, the free list, of

which the English had been in the habit of taking advantage, was of

course suspended. In vain did Mansfeldt inform the door-keeper that it

was all right, and insist that the name of Mansfeldt and party should

have been left with the authorities; for the man resolutely declared he

had a duty to perform, which prevented him from admitting the earl

and his followers. While they were waiting outside the bar of Calais,

several of the troops suffered severely from sea-sickness, and being

obliged to go round by the back way, they had become so attenuated, that

instead of being fit for marching into the Palatinate, they were much

better adapted for marching into Guy's Hospital.

The failure of this expedition was the last event of importance in

the reign of James, who was fast sinking under gout and tertian ague,

produced by a long indulgence in rums, gins, brandies, and other

compounds. He died, at the age of fifty-nine, on the 27th of March,

1625, having reigned upwards of two-and-twenty years, during which he

showed himself fully deserving of the title bestowed on him by Sully,

who said of James the First that he was the "wisest fool in Europe." He

was learned, it is true, but his acquirements, such as they were,

became a bore, from his disagreeable habit of thrusting them at most

inappropriate times upon all who approached him. He was weak, mean, and

pusillanimous, while his excessive vanity caused him to select for his

companions those pitiful sycophants who would affect admiration for

those miserable qualities, which, had he cultivated the friendship of

honest and intelligent men, he might have been eventually broken of. He

lost, and indeed he did not desire the society of his children, because

they could not sympathise with those littlenesses of character which,

the older they grew, their judgment caused them more and more to despise

and deplore in their unfortunate parent.

Happily only two out of seven survived to endure that alienation which

must have been painful while it would have been unavoidable; and they

were thus spared the humiliation of seeing a father vain, selfish, and

unrepentant to the last, while their deaths in rapid succession gave

him happily no uneasiness. For his eldest son he had, as we have

already seen, prohibited the wearing of mourning, thus giving a proof

of combined malice and stupidity, since his insults to the dead were of

course as impotent as they were wicked and infamous. He was suspicious

in the extreme, and always fancied he was going to be done or done for.

To guard against the latter contingency he wore a quilted doublet that

was proof against a stiletto, and under the apprehension of being taken

advantage of, he obstinately excluded every one from his confidence. The

result was that he never had a friend, through his constant dread of an

imaginary enemy. It has been said of him by one of his historians, that

he was fond of laughing at his own conceits; but the wretch who can even

smile at a joke of his own must be such a libel upon human nature

that not even Hume-an(d) Smollett (ha! ha! mark the pun) shall make us

believe that an individual so abject could ever have existed.

Though the sovereign himself was not calculated to inspire respect,

there were many events in his reign which rendered it useful if not

glorious. Sir Hugh Middleton commenced at Amwell that now venerable New

River, by dabbling in which he swamped himself and secured a stream of

health and prosperity to those who came after him. The immortal Hicks

finished his memorable Hall; Lord Napier invented logarithms, to the

extreme disgust of the school-boys of every generation; and Dr. Harvey

made the magnificent discovery that the blood is a periodical enjoying

the most unlimited circulation. Two Dutch navigators contrived to double

Cape Horn; which the reader must not imagine was twice its present size

before that operation was performed, for Cape Horn, like any other cape,

is not larger when doubled. Bill Baffin, an Englishman (you all know

Bill Baffin) discovered Baffin's Bay in the year 1616, and a patent

for the fire engine, granted two years afterwards, has been stated as a

proof that steam power was first known in England in 1618, though upon

inquiry we are inclined to think there was more of smoke than steam in

the invention spoken of.

The wealth and extravagance of the nobles, among whom corruption and

bribery were practised "wholesale, retail, and for exportation," may be

imagined from the statement, that on the marriage of the French king,

the horse of the English ambassador wore silver shoes so loosely

fastened on, that they fell off, and were instantly replaced, for

distribution among the populace. We can scarcely believe that any

English horse could have walked in these silver shoes or slippers in the

time of James, however skilfully they could have substituted sliding for

walking, since the Wood Demon, coming to London, caused the introduction

of wooden pavements.

The luxury and display that stand prominently forward among the

characteristics of the period, were discountenanced by James when

seen in others, though he would have spared nothing tor the selfish

gratification of his own extravagance. Bacon, whose tendency to flattery

justifies the popular analogy between butter and bacon, remarked of the

king that he would recommend the country gentlemen to remain at their

seats, by saying to them, "In London you are like ships in a sea, which

show like nothing; but in your country villages you are like ships in

a river, which look like great things." * This, after all, was a funny

idea, but a bad argument; for a ship in a river, like a storm in a

puddle, is somewhat out of its element. Many would prefer being wrecked

in the ocean of a busy but tempestuous life, to remaining aground in the

dismal swamp of rural obscurity. The thing to be desired, is the art of

keeping a steady course, and steering in the right direction; but it is

mere pusillanimity to accept a recommendation to shirk the voyage. Among

the inventions of the reign of James, we must not omit to mention the

sedan, a contrivance of the lazy and luxurious Buckingham. On its first

appearance in public, the mob hooted the machine as it passed, declaring

that their fellow-creatures should not do the service of beasts; but the

"fellow-creatures," being paid for and liking the job, were the first

to beat off their friends, the people. The friends of humanity were,

however, not content till they had broken in the top and knocked out

the bottom of the machine, leaving Buckingham to walk home in a most

uncomfortable case, with his head peering out at the top, and his feet

appearing at the bottom of his novel equipage.

The literary characters who flourished in the reign of James were very

numerous; and we must, of course, place at the head of them our old

acquaintance the "Swan of Avon," as some goose has most irreverently

christened him. Shakespeare adorned the time of James by dying in it,

as, by living in it, he shed a lustre on that of Elizabeth. One of our

predecessors * in the gigantic task we have undertaken--and, by the way,

it is said that Mr. Macaulay, fired by our shining example, is preparing

himself to follow it by a retirement from public life--one of our

predecessors, we repeat, has thrown cold water upon the warm admiration

which is felt for Shakespeare to this day, and which at this very moment

is urging the whole nation to buy his house at Stratford, though the

town was burnt, great at first for the possession of this relic, has, we

confess, a little abated since our research put us in possession of the

unpleasant fact, that the bard must have been burnt out, notwithstanding

the assurance of the auctioneer, who acts, of course, on what he

considers the best policy. Whatever we may think of the house the poet

left or did not leave behind him, the houses he still draws by the magic

of his genius are sufficient to refute the argument of the hypercritical

Hume, that Shakespeare appeared greater than he really was, because

he happened to be irregular. We are not aware that irregularity and

grandeur must necessarily seem to be combined, and indeed, irregularity

in payment, which considerably aggrandises an account, is the only

instance we can call to mind in which we see some ground for our

fellow-historian's strange hypothesis, ** down at about the time when

the poet lived in it. Our own enthusiasm, which was Fletcher, the

dramatist, and his partner Beaumont, belonged to the reign of James; but

when the latter died, in 1616, the firm was broken up; and as each had

been nothing by himself, Fletcher fell into wretched insignificance. His

name had only been known in connection with that of Beaumont, and if

he attempted to play the lion afterwards at an evening party, a cool

inquiry of "Fletcher! Fletcher! who's Fletcher?" was the only sensation

the announcement of his name elicited. Some say he died of the plague in

1625, but it is more probable that the plaguy indifference shown towards

him everywhere, after he lost poor Beaumont, was in reality the death of

him.

* Home.

** Stratford-upon-Avon was all destroyed by fire in

September, 1614, two years before Shakespeare's death.

Honest Jack Stowe, the antiquarian, ought not to be overlooked, though

time has long since stowed away his works among the lumber of our

libraries. His Survey of London was his greatest literary labour, and he

was preparing a new edition in 1605, when he was obliged to "Stow it" by

an attack of illness that unhappily proved fatal.

Donne, the poet, can hardly be mentioned among the literary dons of the

age; but Bacon is a luminary that must not be snuffed out in a single

sentence. It has been said that his wit was far-fetched, but a thing is

certainly not the less valuable for having been brought from a long way

off; for if it were so, the diamond would lose much of its value in the

London market. If Bacon's wit was far fetched, it was not only worth

the carriage, but it has been found sufficiently valuable to warrant

its being forwarded on from generation to generation: and it will, we

suspect, find its way to a still remote posterity, before it arrives at

the terminus of its journey.

James himself was but a contemptible writer, and would have been

scarcely worth his five pounds a week in these days, as the London

correspondent of a country newspaper. His imagination would not have

been vigorous enough to supply him with the "latest intelligence," which

must always be in type at least two days before the date on which

the facts it professes to impart are stated to have happened. As an

industrious chronicler of early gooseberries, new carrots, gigantic

cabbages, irruptions of lady-birds, and showers of frogs, he would

have been useful in his way, or he might have undertaken that branch of

periodical literature which embraces the interesting recollections--or

non-recollections rather--of the oldest inhabitant.

CHAPTER THE THIRD. CHARLES THE FIRST.

On the afternoon of Monday, the 28th of March, 1625, Charles the First

was proclaimed at Charing Cross, amid a tremendous shower of rain and

hail, so that the commencement of his reign was hailed in a somewhat

disagreeable manner. His first care was to turn out the fools and

buffoons that his father had kept at Court, or rather, as Buckingham

called it, to get rid of the comic and pantomimic company which had been

established in the palace. He next determined to send over for his new

bride, who appeared to have been forgotten in the hurry of business, and

who was waiting at Paris, "to be left till called for." Buckingham was

despatched to take charge of the precious cargo; but his behaviour at

the French Court was so disreputable that he received some very broad

hints as to the propriety of his speedy return to England. He made love

to the young Queen Anne of Austria, and flirted with every female member

of the royal family, to the extreme disgust of Cardinal Richelieu, who

told him, plainly, that such conduct could not be permitted, at any

price.

Buckingham took his departure, with the young Henrietta, on the 23rd

of May; but there must have been pretty goings on, or dreadful standing

stills, during the journey, for it was the 27th of June before they

arrived at Dover. Charles, who had naturally begun to wonder what had

become of his minister and his bride, set off to meet them, and having

slept at Canterbury on the 27th of June, he reached Dover on the 28th,

and found his intended, who had "put up" at the Castle.

The first interview was very dramatic, for Charles extended both

his arms, and Henrietta, taking a hop, a skip, and a jump, tumbled

gracefully into them. Finding her a little taller than he expected, he

looked at her feet, when the young Princess coquettishly pulled off her

shoe, to prove that there was no imposition practised, and that it

was impossible there could be any deception through the medium of high

heels, for she and, in reality, a sole above it. The newly married

couple started for Canterbury at once, and making another day of it to

Rochester, they came _via_ Gravesend to London, where they arrived in

the midst of one of those pelting showers which have been graphically

compared to a _mêlée_ of cats, dogs, and pitchforks.

Charles being in want of money had assembled a Parliament, which

opened for business on the 18th of June, and he at once asked for

some supplies; but as he stammered in his speech, there was a sort of

hesitation in his demand, which some took for modesty. With real,

or affected delicacy, he declined mentioning any specific sum, but

requested his faithful Commons to give what they pleased, and they were

thus placed in the embarrassing position of a gentleman, who, on asking

"what's to pay?" finds it left to that dreadfully sliding scale, his

"own generosity." This dishonest manouvre, for such it usually is,

succeeds frequently in extracting twice the proper amount from the

pockets of him whose liberality is thus artfully invoked; but the

Commons, being apparently "up to the dodge," voted Charles £112,000, to

meet liabilities to the tune of some £700,000 per annum, for the war,

to say nothing of his father's debts and other contingencies. Pocketing

this miserably inadequate contribution, he adjourned the Parliament, on

account of the Plague, and having met it again at Oxford, in August of

the same year, he told the Commons, plainly, that he "must have cash,"

for he was being dunned by the King of Denmark, who held his promissory

note, and that his private creditors would allow him no peace in his own

palace. He protested solemnly that he had not the means of paying his

way for the subsistence of himself and his family, and, throwing a

quantity of tradesmen's accounts, unsettled, before the Speaker's chair,

asked, imploringly, if those were the sort of bills that could be got

rid of by ordering them to be read that day six months, or by their

being suffered to lie on the table? The Commons shook their heads,

expressed their regret, buttoned up their pockets, and declared they

could do nothing. The matter now became serious, for Charles had changed

his butcher already three or four times, and was having his bread of

nearly the last of a confiding batch of bakers. "Something must be

done," he said, with much solemnity, to himself, and he wrote off a

polite note to the Corporations of Salisbury and Southampton, requesting

the loan of £3000, which was loyally granted him. Angry at being baffled

and left insolvent by his Parliament, he declared that he would,

at least, prove himself solvent in one respect, by dissolving the

Parliament who had so rudely resisted his demands.

Finding that he had got nothing by begging, and very little by

borrowing, he was thrown upon the expedient of stealing, as a last

resort. With the money lent him by some of his subjects he resolved on

fitting out a fleet, under Cecil, to attack some Spanish ships, which he

understood were lying at Cadiz, with some valuable cargoes on board. He

reached the bay, and being kept at bay by the enemy for a short time, he

at last landed very silently, the leaders exclaiming, "_Piano, Piano_,"

and took a fort. The troops, finding a quantity of wine in the garrison,

partook so freely of it that they lost all their ammunition, and spoiled

several pounds of best canister, by making too free with the juice

of the grape. Cecil, finding that the longer they remained the more

intoxicated they got, resolved on re-shipping as many as could be got

to stand upon their legs, and to return to England. The British sailors

were, however, in those days, such delicate creatures that half of them

died of sea-sickness, and a very few of them returned home alive.

Charles, having been foiled in his last hope of recruiting his exhausted

resources by plunder, resolved to try another Parliament, and a new one

was manufactured with a view to give every chance to the experiment. He

endeavoured to weaken the opposition by putting several of its members

into offices which would prevent them from sitting in the House of

Commons; but, this artful manouvre having been seen through, only served

to put the people more on their guard.

The new Parliament was in its principles the _fac simile_ of its

predecessor, and on the 6th of February, 1626, voted to Charles just

about one-tenth of what he really wanted, and one-twentieth of what he

asked. Notwithstanding the smallness of the subsidy, he took it, and

resolved to pay his creditors something on account, as far as the

money would go, and trust to the future to enable him to make up the

deficiency. Having shown a pretty resolute disposition in dealing with

the king, it is not surprising that the Commons should at length have

determined to take a turn at the minister. Buckingham had long been

very obnoxious, and one Dr. Turner--remarkable for his straightforward

conduct, and his determination not to turn--moved a question, "Whether

Common Report was a good ground of proceeding?" Though Common Report has

generally been accounted a common story-teller, she had been tolerably

right about the Duke of Buckingham, and the resolution to proceed

against him on the faith of Common Report was at once approved.

On the 8th of May a still more resolute step was taken with reference to

the "favourite," as this generally detested person was absurdly called,

by articles of impeachment being preferred against him. The duke and

his master seemed to treat the matter rather as a joke, and Charles even

went down to the House of Lords to speak in favour of Buckingham. These

proceedings were so clearly unconstitutional and irregular, that if the

British Lion had taken to roaring, and only roared out in time, he

might have saved many of the disagreeable consequences that unhappily

followed. Considering how very intrusive this animal has sometimes been

on occasions when he really was not wanted, it is lamentable to think

that "the squeak in time," which might have saved nine times nine

hundred and ninety-nine, was not forthcoming at the exact moment when

its value would have been extreme.

Notwithstanding the impeachment of Buckingham, he was still loaded with

fresh honours, and he became Chancellor of the University of Cambridge,

at which the Commons vainly expressed their disgust. They nevertheless

continued boldly enough remonstrating against this, and that, and the

other, until the king regularly shut them up by a dissolution, without

their having passed a single act.

Charles, sympathising with nature in an utter abhorrence of a vacuum,

which he found in the royal treasury, devoted all his energies to

filling it. "Must have cash," was the motto adopted by his majesty; who

was not particular whether he begged, borrowed, or stole, so that he

succeeded in replenishing his pockets. He looked up every outstanding

liability, and routed out a lot of recusants who had fallen into arrear

with their penalties.

[Illustration: 514]

He borrowed money from the nobility--if it can be called borrowing to go

up to a person, exclaiming, "Lend me your money," and at the same time

take it forcibly away from him. But the most tremendous swindle of all

was the demand of ship-money; a tax he laid upon all seaports, under the

pretence of their contributing a certain number of ships to the defence

of the country. He, of course, pocketed the proceeds without supplying

the ships, so that, if the country had been attacked, there would not

have been a sail to resist the assailants. Charles and his favourite,

Buckingham, declared, with disreputable frivolity, that the ship-money

was appropriately applied; for it was, in fact, floating capital, and

helped to keep them above water just as much as if it had been devoted

to the purchase of a navy.

Something having been said during the sitting of Parliament about a

subsidy, which had never been granted, Charles thought he might as

well collect it at any rate, though the Commons had declined voting it.

Promises were held out that it should all be paid back out of the next

supplies, or, in fact, that though the king helped himself from the

right-hand pockets of his subjects, he would return the money out

of their left-hand pockets--some day or another. A great many of the

people, who objected to this remote reversionary interest, were thrown

into prison, or sent to serve in the navy, where they became British

Tars in spite of themselves, and some of them having received a

classical education, introduced, no doubt, the College Hornpipe into the

fleet, as an elegant and scholarly pastime.

Even the church was made the medium of extortion, for the popular

preachers recommended from their pulpits the propriety of cashing up to

any extent that the sovereign might require. By way of economising at

home, Charles went one afternoon to the queen's apartments and dismissed

every one of her tribe of French servants, who were dancing and

curvetting in the presence of their mistress. This ballet of private

life was summarily brought to a close by a general _chassez_ of the

whole crew, who had been dancing attendance on her majesty since her

marriage, and she was so enraged at their dismissal that she broke the

windows with her fist, which shows the panes she was at to mark her

displeasure. The French women howled very piteously, so that, between

their lamentations in broken English, and the queen's expostulations in

broken glass, the hubbub was truly terrible. These disturbances fomented

the ill-feeling between France and England, which Buckingham desired to

increase, and he actually had the excessive vanity to put himself at

the head of a fleet, which sailed to Rochelle, where he "carried himself

nobly," to use the words of the king, but where, in fact, he carried

himself off as speedily as his legs would allow, for he ran away

after having made a desperate failure. Charles was now, once more, as

completely cleaned out as a young scamp in a farce, who arrives

"without sixpence in his pocket," just like "love among the roses;" and

Buckingham was the roguish valet who is usually in attendance on the

eccentric light comedian under the circumstances alluded to. The worthy

couple discussed the best method of raising the wind, and it was agreed

that there was nothing left but to try it on again with a Parliament.

"We shall have writs out against ourselves," said Charles, "if we do not

get the writs out for summoning the Commons." They met on the 17th of

March, 1628, and several of the most determined opponents to ship-money

were found in the new house, which included Bradshaw, the brewer, who

was ready to brew the storm of revolution, as well as Maurice, a grocer,

who suited the times to a T with his liberal sentiments. The king made

a haughty speech, but the Parliament determined to proceed with address,

and, upon the grand piscatorial principle of throwing a sprat to catch

a herring, five subsidies were hinted at for the purpose of securing

concessions of the utmost value to English liberty. The Petition

of Right was accordingly drawn up, which declared the illegality of

collecting money except by the authority of Parliament. It next referred

to our old friend, your old friend, and everybody else's old friend,

Magna Charta, or Carter, as some people call it--perhaps because a

broad-wheeled waggon has been frequently driven through it--and this

document was recited to prove that people could not be imprisoned

without cause; though, unfortunately for them, they had been imprisoned

very frequently, in spite of the arrangement that made such a

circumstance quite impossible. The Petition of Right next alluded to the

billeting of soldiers on private houses, which had grown into such an

abuse, that scarcely a family could sit down to tea without half a dozen

troopers dropping in during the meal, and pocketing the spoons, cribbing

the cups, or saucily appropriating the saucers, when the entertainment

was concluded.

The Bill of Rights, having been drawn by the Commons, and endorsed by

the Lords, was offered to Charles for his acceptance. Without either

rejecting it or adopting it, he wrote under the petition a few vague

generalities, which meant nothing at all, and the Commons, retiring to

their Chamber, vented their indignation in a very spirited manner. Sir

Robert Phillips uttered several severe Philippics against the sovereign;

Sir D. Digges followed, with some tremendous digs at the throne,

declaring it was quite _infra dig_. for the Commons to sit still and

do nothing; while Mr. Kurton, or, as that miscreant Strype calls him,

Curtain, * threw off the veil; and even old Coke gave symptoms of having

caught the revolutionary flame. Selden, whose table-talk is much more

amusing than his talk at the table of the House of Commons, proposed a

strong declaration under four heads, and was in the midst of a powerful

harangue, when Finch, the Speaker, who had got the name of Chaff-Finch,

from the badinage in which he indulged, ran breathless into the House

with a message from the king, recommending, as well as his puffing

and blowing would permit, an adjournment until the next morning.

Notwithstanding the valour that had been displayed in words, the Commons

had not yet learned how to act with courage, and they quietly adjourned

at the suggestion of the sovereign. The next day, however, they met

again, and having plucked up all their pluck, they continued to demand

an explicit answer to the Petition of Right, to which the assent of

Charles was, one fine afternoon in June, 1628, somewhat unexpectedly

given. Buckingham, who could never keep quiet, resolved to make another

warlike venture at Rochelle, and had got as far as Portsmouth, where, on

the 23rd of August, says Howell, "he got out of bed in good-humour, and

cut a caper or two" in his nightcap and dressing-gown. These capers were

soon destined to be cut very short, for as the duke was passing to his

carriage in the course of the day, he received a stab from somebody in

a crowd of gesticulating Frenchmen, who were all suspected of being the

assassins, and instead of being taken into custody were, oddly enough,

kicked down stairs. Buckingham was as dead as the British and Foreign

Institute, when a number of captains and gentlemen rushed into the

kitchen of the house, exclaiming--"Where is the villain?"

* We regret to say, that the motive of Strype in calling

this person Curtain, instead of Kurton, is too obvious. A

_jeu de mot_ is at the bottom of this baseness. We forbear

from saying more, and, according to the accounts of the

period, his majesty rolled himself about on his bed in an

agony of tears, until nothing but a wet blanket seemed to

hang over all his prospects. He nevertheless continued his

attention to business, but he never had another favourite

like Buckingham, whom his majesty used to apostrophise

familiarly as "my Buck," and hence that term of amiability

no doubt has its origin. He admitted Laud to be in many

respects laudable; and of Wentworth he acknowledged the

worth, while Noy, whose maxims contain the maximum of

wisdom, was so far appreciated as to get the place of

Attorney-General.

"_Ou est le boucher!_" Upon this a gentleman of the name of Felton, who

had been screening himself in the meat-screen, stood forth, and struck

an attitude, vociferating "Here I am."

[Illustration; 517]

He then handed over his hat, in the crown of which he had stitched the

full and true particulars of his own crime, which he requested might be

read out, while he did the appropriate pantomime to the confession in

the centre of a group of listeners. Felton gloried in the act he had

committed, and when put upon his trial there was a good deal of badinage

between himself and Judge Jones, whom the prisoner politely thanked for

the announcement that he was to be hanged until he was dead, at Tyburn.

The king was greatly affected on hearing of Buckingham's death.

On the 30th of January, 1629, the Parliament met once more, and Charles

turning out both his pockets, urged the necessity of supplies. He

declared that as to his balance at his bankers, it had become like

"linked sweetness," for it had been "long drawn out," and the public

treasury had been swept up several times, in the hope of finding an odd

coin or two; but there was not a shilling to be found, and Charles was

running up bills in all directions with his tradespeople. The Commons,

instead of giving him the money to pay his debts, brought against him

all their own old scores, and there were several stormy discussions, the

storminess of which may be accounted for by the long-windedness of many

of the orators.

Among those who took part in these debates, was a clownish-looking

person of about thirty years of age, with a slovenly coat, and a hat

so bad that Strype hints it was perhaps without a crown, to mark the

republican objection to crowns which was entertained by the owner. This

individual was Mr. Oliver Cromwell, the new member for Huntingdon,

who brewed beer and political storms until the country itself became

Cromwell's entire, the Crown his butt, and the Constitution his

mash-tub.

[Illustration: 518]

Charles finding the Parliament in a very unaccommodating humour, desired

Sir John Finch, the Speaker, to adjourn the House, but the House refused

to be adjourned, and when he was about to leave the chair, he found

himself suddenly knocked back into it, with his arms pinioned, which

rendered him incapable of putting any motion whatever, for he was quite

motionless. A few privy councillors rushing in, endeavoured to release

him, but the opposite party bound him again to the chair, and the trial

of strength between the two factions ended in a tie--as far as poor

Finch was concerned--for he remained fastened in the seat of dignity. At

length the Speaker, who could not dissolve the House, began dissolving

himself in tears, and the king who had been waiting for him to come and

tell the news, was so impatient, that messengers were dispatched to know

what had become of him. Hearing that Finch was caged, or in other words

locked in, the king could only leave the poor bird to his fate; but he

despatched a messenger to tell the sergeant to slip out of the House

quietly with his mace, which would dissolve the sitting. The sergeant

may perhaps have forgotten the right cue, but he had got the right mace,

and had walked nearly to the door, when he was stopped and pushed back,

the key of the House taken from him and placed in the hands of one of

the members, who promised to keep tight hold of it.

Charles, hearing that the door was bolted, went down, determined to

force it open; but happily, he found the Commons had bolted instead of

the door, or at least, they were on the point of doing so. The king,

nevertheless, ordered several of the ringleaders to be arrested, and he

intimated pretty plainly to the Commons that he would not trouble them

again for a very considerable period. He had, in fact, resolved to take

all matters of Government entirely into his own hands; and though Magna

Charta, with a few other trifles of the kind, stood in his way, he did

not scrapie to trample on rights and liberties, which he knew were being

continually renewed, as occasion required.

On the 10th of March, 1629, the day to which the Commons had

adjourned themselves, Charles came down to the House of Lords with the

proclamation of dissolution in his pocket. His majesty began by saying,

that this was "really a very unpleasant business," that "he had no fault

to find with the Lords," but "there were some vipers among the Commons";

whom, according to the unhappy Strype, he expressed his determination

of "viping out"--observe the paltry evasion of the W for the sake of

the pun--"with the utmost energy." Thus, by flattering the Lords

and threatening the Commons, or, to continue the language of Strype,

"soaping the Upper House, and lathering the Lower," did Charles dissolve

his Parliament. Several members had already been placed in custody,

among whom were Eliot, Holies, and Selden, the last of whom was such

an inveterate table-talker, that his tongue was always getting him into

scrapes of the most serious character. An information was exhibited

against them in the Star-Chamber, but they were subsequently offered

their release, on promising to be of good behaviour, which they refused

to do, for they felt they would have been good for nothing had they

entered into such a disgraceful compact. Eliot died in prison, and the

rest were adjudged to be detained during the pleasure of the king, and

as he took great pleasure in persecuting his refractory Commons,

there was every chance that their "durance vile" would be unpleasantly

durable.

The 29th of May, 1630, was signalised by the birth of Prince Charles,

and it is said that a bright star shone in the east at midday, which

some have considered ominous. To us, the appearance of the star by

daylight, on the birth of this dissolute scapegrace, denotes nothing

more than a propensity for not going home till morning, or till daylight

did appear. About the same time that severities were being practised on

the Commons, one Richard Chambers refused to pay more than legal duty

on a bale of silk, and the Custom-house officers going at him rather

fiercely, he declared that "merchants were more screwed in England than

they were in Turkey." His audience hearing him use the word "screwed,"

at once nailed him to the expression, and he was fined £2000 for the

_lapsus lingua_ he had fallen into. Unhappily, political martyrdom was

not, in those days, so good a trade as it has subsequently become, and

poor Chambers had neither a subscription opened to pay his fine, nor a

testimonial to reimburse him for the expense of resistance. A struggle

for principle was then a struggle indeed, and not an eligible medium

for advertisements. A Chambers of the present day would have made

his principles pay him an enormous percentage, and would have made a

handsome fortune for himself by what he would have termed his exertions

for the happiness and liberty of the people. Poor Chambers, however--the

real martyr of 1630--died in a prison at last, after waiting for

redress from the Long Parliament, which was a little too long in making

reparation to the victim of oppression, Charles had apparently made up

his mind to get on as well as he could without any Parliament at all,

and having bribed some of the cleverest fellows in the kingdom, he

thought that as one fool proverbially makes many, one or two knaves

would also be found to fructify. Among the shameless apostates of that

day were of course many who had been mouthing most energetically on the

popular side; and Wentworth, who had been originally one of the very

noisiest of the people's friends, became the meanest and most inveterate

of the people's enemies. Having brawled for some years against

aristocracy, his purpose at length peeped out in his acceptance of a

peerage for himself, and the man who had been continually bullying the

Court, became its fawning favourite. Digges, who had been, as we have

already intimated, digging away most energetically at the constituted

authorities, accepted the post of Master of the Bolls, for he had, as he

said, made the discovery on which side his bread was buttered.

It would be tedious to the reader, and difficult to ourselves, to give

a catalogue of the exactions and impositions which were practised by

Charles between the years 1629, when the Parliament was dissolved, and

1640, the year marked by the assembly of a new one. He revived, among

other cruelties, the old practice of making knights of all persons

possessing forty pounds a year, and either charging ruinous fees for

imposing the so-called honour, or imposing a heavy fine for declining

it. Knighthood became such a fearful drug in the market of dignities,

that it is not surprising it should even up to this day have failed

to recover its position. The cry of "Dilly, dilly," was never more

ferociously addressed to the ducks who were invited to "come and be

killed," than was the command to "come and be knighted," enforced

against the unwilling victims, who were selected either to pay the

penalty for declining, or the fees on receiving this unenviable

distinction.

While guilty of wholesale persecution, Charles did not, however, neglect

the retail branch, and a Puritan preacher named Leighton--a blind

fanatic, but, notwithstanding his blindness, no relation we believe to

Leighton Buzzard--was exposed to the utmost cruelty for writing some _ad

captandum_ trash against the queen and the bishops; a bombastic little

work, which neither repaid perusal, nor repaid the printer who brought

it forward. Poor Leighton was fined for his coarseness, and flogged for

his flagellation of the authorities, besides being compelled to undergo

a variety of other barbarisms, the narration of which we would have

attempted, but we found our very ink turning pale at the bare prospect

of our doing so. The Puritans now began to emigrate in great numbers to

America, and they no doubt laid the foundation of that drawl which has

ever since distinguished the tone of the model republicans.

We now arrive at the tragical story of poor Mr. William Prynne, a

barrister of Lincoln's Inn, who, in the utter absence of briefs, finding

himself at a dead stand-still for want of a motion, had started a

trumpery little work with one Sparkes, a publisher. The volume had

the unattractive title of "_Histrio Mastric_, the Players' Scourge, or

Actors' Tragedie," in which he made an attempt to write down the stage

in particular, and all amusements in general. He denounced all who went

to the play as irredeemably lost, and he neither exempted the free list,

the half-price, or those who went in with the orders of the Press, from

the anathema, which he hurled indiscriminately against the "brilliant

and crowded audiences" nightly honouring such-and-such an establishment

with a succession of overflows. The queen not only patronised the drama,

but sometimes appeared herself as a distinguished amateur, and the whole

of Prynne's book was taken to apply to her, though she was not even

mentioned in any part of it. Poor Prynne was declared to be a wolf in

sheep's clothing, and, considering that he was a barrister who had

turned author, the alleged mixture of wolfishness and sheepishness may

be fairly attributed to his character. He was found guilty, of course,

and upon sentence being passed, the Chief Justice expressed his regret

that a gentleman, who had handed in on two or three occasions a compute,

and was a promising junior of twenty years' standing--without ever

being on his legs--should have brought himself into such an unpleasant

predicament.

He was condemned to be degraded from the profession, or in fact to be

dishonoured; to pay a fine of £5000, which was by no means feasible,

when we consider his fees, and to be kept from the use of pen, ink, and

paper, which was perhaps the most humane part of the sentence, for

he was thus prevented from proceeding with his wretched trade of

authorship. The poor fellow, however, contrived to write humorous

articles on the soles of his boots; and "Prynne on the Understanding,"

though it was rubbed out as mere rubbish by the man who cleaned his

boots, might have taken its place by the side of many more lofty

productions of the period. His sentence was exceedingly cruel, and

comprised "branding on the forehead," as if his enemies would have it

believed "there was nothing inside to hurt," while his nose was savagely

maltreated, to prevent its being again poked into that which did not

concern its owner. His ears were cropped under the pretext of their

being a great deal too long, and indeed Prynne was so altered, as a

punishment for rushing into print, that his own clerk would not have

known him again in the abridged edition which the Government reduced him

to.

We have now to treat of the great civil war; but the magnitude of the

subject requires us to take breath, which we cannot do unless we break

off and begin a fresh chapter.

CHAPTER THE FOURTH. CHARLES THE FIRST (CONTINUED).

[Illustration: 522]

THE great civil war was brought on by a series of incidents we will now

briefly explain; but we must premise that the turncoat Noy had been long

hunting for precedents to justify Charles in any course of despotism

that he might resolve upon. It never was very difficult to find

precedents in the legal records for anything, however cruel, tyrannical,

or absurd, and Noy was not the man to be over nice in putting upon the

case in "the books" whatever construction would be most favourable to

the views of his master. The ingenious Noy took care to discover that

the supplying of ship-money by sea ports was a custom as old as the

hills, and giving a large interpretation to the word hills, he assumed

that land as well as water should supply ships, and that inland places

as well as those on the coast were consequently liable to the impost.

He argued that almost every town, however far from the shore, had marine

interests, for there was always a dealer in marine stores, and in fact

he urged that a town being unable to float a ship, might nevertheless be

made to build or at least to pay for one.

In the midst of these ingenious theories and perplexing points of law,

Noy died, which is no matter of astonishment to us, for the idea of

looking up such a subject as ship-money, and having "case for opinion"

continually on his desk, is sufficiently formidable to reconcile with

it the decease of the barrister to whom the business had been confided.

London was selected as the first place on which the demand for

ship-money was made, and an attempt to excite the fears of the citizens,

by getting up a cry very like that of "Old Bogie" was resorted to.

A proclamation was issued declaring that a set of "thieves, pirates,

robbers of the sea, and Turks," were expected by an early boat, though

a sharp look-out along the offing at Gravesend and Richmond, through one

of which the pirates must pass, would have convinced the greenest of

the green that a corsair was not likely to be eating his white-bait

at Blackwall, nor was England in danger of an invasion by a horde of

ruffians coming up from the other side of the world at the Chelsea end

of the metropolis. Several ships were ordered, but the citizens would

have been quite at sea had they attempted to supply a ship, and a

composition in money was demanded as an easier method of satisfying

the wants of the Government. Considerable resistance was made to this

gigantic swindle, and the celebrated John Hampden immortalised himself

by the part he took in the struggle. This true patriot had consulted his

legal advisers on the subject of ship-money, and hearing from them that

it could not be justly claimed, he determined that he would resist the

impost at any sacrifice. The matter came on for argument upon demurrer,

in the Court of Exchequer, on the 6th of November, 1637, and lasted till

the 18th of December, when their lordships were unable to agree in their

judgment. The majority, however, ultimately decided against Hampden, but

two of the judges continuing to differ from the rest, it was felt that

the imposition was seen through, and that the public would have the

sanction of at least some of the legal dignitaries for resisting it.

Wentworth would have whipped Hampden like poor Prynne, but not all the

black rods, white rods, and rods in pickle the Court could muster, would

have been sufficient for the flagellation of so great a character.

The dissatisfaction of the people, and the unconstitutional practices of

the king, were not confined to England, for Scotland, after having

been taken--or rather having been merged in the English monarchy--was

destined to be well shaken by political convulsions. The proximate cause

of the dissatisfaction of the Scotch, who are not a remarkably excitable

race unless their pockets are threatened, was the introduction of the

English service into their churches; and when the Dean of Edinburgh

began to read it on Sunday, the 23rd of July, 1637, he was assailed with

shouts of the most indecorous character. The populace clapped with their

hands, kicked with their heels, and bellowed with their lungs till the

Bishop of Edinburgh, who had ascended the pulpit to entreat that order

might be preserved, was compelled to bob down his head to avoid a

three-legged stool that was thrown with savage force by one of the

assembled multitude.

[Illustration: 524]