JAMES I.
1603-1625.
With the death of Elizabeth the greatness of England departed. From
1603 to 1688 she counted for little in the Councils of Europe, save
indeed during the ten years of Cromwell's rule. She became the tool
of foreign powers, sometimes because her rulers were duped, sometimes
because they deliberately sold themselves to the stranger.
[Sidenote: =Character of James I.=]
James of Scotland, the old queen's legitimate heir, was a man of
thirty-seven when the throne fell to him. He had lived an unhappy
life in his northern realm, buffeted to and fro by unruly nobles and
domineering ministers of the Scottish Kirk. But most of his troubles
had been the results of his own failings. Of all the kings who ever
ruled these realms, he is almost the only one of whom it can be said
that he was a coward. From this vice sprang his other defects. Like all
cowards, he was suspicious, capable of any cruelty against those whom
he dreaded, prone always to lean on some stronger man, who would bear
his responsibility for him. He chose these favourites with the rankest
folly: Arran and Lennox, who were the minions of his youth while yet
he reigned in Scotland alone, and Rochester and Buckingham, who ruled
his riper age, were--all four--arrogant, vicious, scheming adventurers.
They had nothing to recommend them save a handsome person and a fluent
and flattering tongue. Each in his turn domineered over his doting
master, and made himself a byword for insolence and self-seeking.
James was unfortunate in his outer man. He was ill-made, corpulent,
and weak-kneed; though his face was not unpleasing, his speech was
marred by a tongue too large for his mouth. But he was grossly and
ridiculously vain and conceited. He possessed a certain cleverness
of a limited kind, and he was well versed in book-learning. But he
imagined that learning was wisdom, and loved to pose as the wisest of
mankind--the British Solomon, as his favourites were wont to call him.
This stuttering, shambling pedant now mounted the throne of the politic
Elizabeth, and in a reign of twenty-two years contrived to wreck the
strong position which the royal power held in England, and to make a
revolution inevitable. The crash would have come in his own day, but
for one thing--James, as we have said before, was a coward, and had not
the courage to fight when affairs came to a crisis.
[Sidenote: =Doctrine of the dispensing power.=]
James based his preposterous claims to override the nation's will and
the rights of Parliament on two theories, which represented to him the
true foundations of all royal power. The first was his "prerogative,"
or power to dispense with ordinary laws and customs at his good
pleasure. He saw that the Tudors had often gone beyond the letter of
the mediaeval constitution, and thought that their action gave him a
full precedent for similar encroachment. He forgot two things: first,
that Henry VIII. and Elizabeth had lived in times of storm and stress,
when firm governance was all-important, and much would be forgiven to
a strong ruler; and secondly, that the two great Tudors had always
taken the people into their confidence, and been careful to get popular
support for their doings. He himself tried to impose an unpopular
policy on an unwilling people, and never condescended to explain his
motives.
[Sidenote: =The "Divine Right" of kings.=]
The second pillar of the king's policy was the theory of "divine
hereditary kingship"--a notion entirely opposed to the old English idea
that the crown was elective. James chose to ignore such precedents
as the elections of Henry IV. or Henry VII., where the natural heir
had been passed over, and wished his subjects to believe that strict
hereditary succession was the only title to the throne, and that
nothing could justify or legalize any divergence from it. He claimed
that kings derived their right to rule from Heaven, not from any
choice by their subjects; hence it was impious as well as disloyal
to criticize or disobey the king's commands. James found many of the
clergy who were ready to accept this theory, partly because they
thought they could justify it from the Scriptures, partly because
they felt that the orderly governance of the Anglican Church was bound
up with the royal supremacy. In Elizabeth's time it had been the
queen's guiding and restraining hand which had prevented the nation
from lapsing into the anarchical misgovernment which characterized
Continental Protestantism.
[Sidenote: =Hopes of the three religious parties.=]
When the new king crossed the Tweed in April, 1603, he was well
received in England, where his weaknesses were as yet little known.
Every one was glad to see the succession question settled without a
war, and every party hoped to gain his favour. The Puritans trusted
that a prince reared in the Calvinism of the Scotch Kirk would do
much for them. The Romanists dreamed that the son of Mary of Scotland
would tolerate his mother's faith. The supporters of the Anglican
establishment thought that the king must needs become a good Churchman
when he realized the position that awaited him as Defender of the
Faith and Supreme Governor of the spiritual hierarchy that embraced
nine-tenths of the nation.
[Sidenote: =James supports the Established Church.=]
James himself had no doubt as to his future behaviour. There was
nothing that pleased him better than the idea of becoming the head of
the English Church. In Scotland he had learnt to hate the dictatorial
manners of the presbyters of the Kirk, and their constant interference
in politics. The well-ordered and obedient organization which he found
south of the Tweed, where every cleric, from the archbishop to the
curate, looked for guidance to the sovereign, filled him with joy and
admiration. He soon became the zealous patron of the Establishment; he
looked upon it as the bulwark of the throne, the best defence against
disloyalty and anarchy. "No bishop, no king," was his answer to the
Puritans, who strove to persuade him into abolishing episcopacy, and
establishing a Presbyterian form of Church government.
[Sidenote: =The Hampton Court Conference.= ]
Before James had been for a year on the English throne, he had shown
his intentions in the matter of Church government. On his first arrival
the Puritan party, both the Dissenters and the Conformists within the
National Church, presented him with the "Millenary Petition,"[35] in
which they complained that they were "overburdened with human rites
and ceremonies" prescribed in the Prayer-book, and besought him to
abolish episcopacy and purify the land from the remnants of Popish
superstition. James invited representative Puritan ministers to meet
him at the Hampton Court Conference (January, 1604), where they were
to dispute with some of his bishops. But the Conference was a mere
farce; the king browbeat and hectored the ministers, and declared
himself wholly convinced by the arguments of the Anglican clergy. He
announced his full approval of the existing Church system, and that he
would have "one doctrine, one discipline, one religion in substance
and ceremony." The Puritans went away in sore displeasure, and from
that moment the large number of them who had hitherto continued in the
body of the National Church, began to desert it and to form various
schismatic sects. We find it hard to-day to realize the fanatical
scruples which made them see snares in a ring or a surplice, or deem
that Episcopacy was a Romish invention; but we can understand that the
real bent of their minds was directed against dictation in matters of
conscience, and the denial of the right of private judgment. With their
theory we may sympathize, but the actual points on which they chose to
secede from the ancient Church of the land were miserably inadequate
to justify schism. It is fair to add, however, that there was much to
repel men of conscience and piety in the condition of the National
Church. The bishops showed an unworthy subservience to the throne,
which seemed peculiarly disgusting when the crown was worn by such a
self-satisfied pedant as King James. A glance at the fulsome praises
heaped upon him in the preface to the Authorized Version of the Bible
will sufficiently serve to make this plain.
[Sidenote: =Administration of the younger Cecil.=]
Almost the only sign of sagacity which the new king showed was that
he kept in office, as his chief minister, Robert, the younger Cecil,
son of the great Lord Burleigh. James made him Earl of Salisbury, and,
first as Secretary of State and afterwards as Lord Treasurer, Cecil
kept a firm hand on the reins of power, and restrained many of his
master's follies. It was not till he died, in 1612, that the king was
able to display his own unwisdom in its full development.
[Sidenote: =Cobham's Plot.=]
Hence it comes that the nine years 1602-1611 are comparatively
uneventful, and show little of the king's worst foibles. A few
incidents only deserve mention in this period. _Cobham's Plot_, which
followed almost immediately on the king's accession, was a most
mysterious business. It was said that Lord Cobham, Lord Grey, Sir
Walter Raleigh the explorer, and certain others, all enemies of Robert
Cecil, had formed a plot to kidnap the king, and force him to dismiss
his minister--perhaps, even to depose him in favour of his cousin,
Arabella Stuart, the child of his father's brother.[36] The whole
matter is so dark that it is hard to make out what the conspirators
desired, or even whether they conspired at all. Both extreme Puritans
and fanatical Roman Catholics are said to have been engaged in the
plot, and the wildest aims were ascribed to them. It is only certain
that James and Cecil used the affair as a means for crushing those whom
they feared. The unfortunate Arabella Stuart was put in confinement for
the rest of her life; Raleigh languished twelve years in the Tower; and
Grey and Cobham also suffered long imprisonment.
[Sidenote: =The Gunpowder Plot.=]
A clearer but not less strange matter was the famous _Gunpowder
Treason_ of 1605. A band of fanatical Catholics, disgusted that the
king refused to grant the toleration they had expected, or to repeal
the Recusancy laws, formed a diabolical scheme for murdering, not only
James himself, but his sons and all the chief men of the realm. Their
chiefs were Thomas Percy, a relative of the Earl of Northumberland,
Catesby, Guy Fawkes, and Sir Everard Digby. Their plan was to hire a
cellar which lay under the Houses of Parliament, fill it with barrels
of gunpowder, and fire the train when the king was opening Parliament
on the 5th of November. Lords, Commons, princes, and king would thus
perish in a common disaster, while a Catholic rising and a Spanish
invasion were to follow. Garnet, the Provincial of the Jesuits, was
informed of the scheme by the conspirators, and kept it secret.
A mere chance saved king and Parliament. When all was ready, and the
cellar was charged with its murderous contents, one of the conspirators
wrote an anonymous letter to his cousin, Lord Monteagle, a Catholic
peer, imploring him not to attend on the 5th of November, on account
of a great blow that was impending. Monteagle sent the letter to the
king, whose suspicious mind--it will be remembered that his own father
had perished by gunpowder--soon read the secret. The cellars were
searched on the night of November 4, and Guy Fawkes, who was to fire
the train, was discovered lurking there with his great hoard of powder.
On the news of his arrest the other conspirators took arms, but their
preparations had been ridiculously inadequate for their end, and they
were easily hunted down and slain. Fawkes and Garnet the Jesuit were
tortured, and then hung, drawn, and quartered. The only result of the
Gunpowder Treason was to make the lot of the English Romanists much
harder than before, for the nation thought that most of them had been
implicated in the plot, and Parliament greatly increased the harshness
of the Recusancy laws.
[Sidenote: =Strife between king and Parliament.=]
The persecuting of Romanists, however, was about the only point on
which the king and Parliament could agree. From the very first, James
and the House of Commons were at odds on almost every matter which
they had to discuss. When peace was made with Spain in 1604, the House
was ill pleased; for a whole generation of Englishmen had grown up who
looked upon war with King Philip as one of the natural conditions of
life, and thought that the Spanish colonies in America existed solely
for the purpose of being plundered by English buccaneers. James, on
the other hand, hated all wars with a coward's hatred, and had a great
respect for the ancient greatness and autocratic sovereignty of the
Spanish kings. Taxation furnished another fertile source of dispute:
the court was numerous, profligate, and wasteful, and, in spite of
Cecil's economy, the king piled up a mountain of debts, and exceeded
his revenue year by year. To fill his purse, he raised the scale of
the customs-duties without the consent of Parliament (1608), and then
refrained from calling the Houses together for two years. But in 1610
his increasing necessities forced him to summon them, and a sharp
dispute about the legality of the increased customs at once began. It
grew so bitter that the king dismissed the Parliament without having
obtained the money that he wanted, and was constrained to go on
accumulating unpaid debts (1611).
[Sidenote: =Death of Cecil.--Rise of Rochester.=]
Next year the great minister, Robert Cecil, died, and James was
left to govern for himself as best he might. A great change was at
once apparent. Its chief symptom was the beginning of the system of
government by royal favourites. Hitherto James had heaped wealth
and favour on his minions, but had not dared to entrust them with
affairs of state, so great was his fear of his able Lord Treasurer.
When Salisbury was gone, the king fell entirely into the hands of the
favourite of the hour, a young Scot named Robert Ker, who had been
his page. James made him Viscount Rochester, put him in the Privy
Council, and entrusted him with all his confidential business. Ker was
a worthless adventurer, whose good looks and ready tongue were his only
stock-in-trade. He used his influence purely for personal ends--to fill
his pocket and indulge his taste for ostentation. When he meddled in
politics, it was to encourage the king in courses which were hateful
to the nation--in forming an alliance with Spain, and in persisting in
illegal taxation.
[Sidenote: =Murder of Sir T. Overbury.--Fall of Rochester.=]
Ker's domination in the king's council lasted about three years, and
was ended by a shocking crime, which did more to lower the court and
the king in the eyes of the people than anything which had yet occurred
since James's accession. Ker had become enamoured of Frances Howard,
the wife of the young Earl of Essex, son of Elizabeth's unfortunate
favourite. The countess returned his passion, became his paramour, and
agreed to procure her divorce from her husband by bringing scandalous
and indelicate accusations against Essex. But a certain Sir Thomas
Overbury, an unscrupulous courtier, who was in the secret of this
wicked plot, set himself to hinder the marriage, and threatened to make
public what he knew. Rochester got him thrown into the Tower, and there
he was poisoned by the revengeful countess, with or without the guilty
knowledge of the favourite. Lady Essex brought her suit against her
husband, and as the king interfered with the course of justice in her
favour, the divorce was accomplished. The guilty pair were married with
great state, and James raised Rochester to the earldom of Somerset to
celebrate the occasion. But murder will out. Two years later the tale
of Overbury's assassination got abroad, and the king learnt the story
of his favourite's dishonour. James was not quite dead to all feelings
of right and wrong, the revelation greatly shocked him, and, moreover,
he was growing tired of Somerset's arrogance and dictatorial ways.
Hence it came about that he suffered the law to take its course. The
earl and countess were tried and convicted of having poisoned Overbury;
their lives were spared, but they suffered long imprisonment, and
disappeared into obscurity. It is said that Somerset saved his neck by
threatening to reveal some disgraceful secret of the king's, of which
he was possessed (1616).
[Sidenote: =Ascendency of Buckingham.=]
It might have been supposed that Ker's scandalous end would have
weaned King James from his propensity for favourites. But this was
not so. He replaced the Earl of Somerset by another minion, George
Villiers, the son of a Leicestershire squire. Villiers was as handsome
and insinuating as Ker, and possessed far greater ability. He not
only acquired an entire ascendency over James himself, but mastered
as completely the heir to the throne, Prince Charles. The king's
elder son, Henry, Prince of Wales, had died four years before, during
Somerset's day of power. He had been a very promising youth, and hated
his father's ways; hence some suspected that Somerset had poisoned him,
though there seems to have been no foundation for the charge.
For the nine years which James had yet to live, he was completely in
the hands of Villiers. The young favourite was vain, arrogant, and
ambitious; but worse men than he have lived; he had the saving vice
of pride, which kept him from many of the meaner sins. He was not
cruel, avaricious, or revengeful, as his predecessor Somerset had been.
But his influence on the realm was all in the direction of evil; in
his headstrong self-confidence, he thought that he was a Heaven-sent
statesman, and led his weak and doting master into many follies.
[Sidenote: =James's subservience to Spain.=]
The days of his domination are filled with the miserable story of the
"Spanish Marriage." King James, as we have already had to remark,
was filled with a great respect for the ancient power and wealth of
Spain, and never realized how much the foundations of its strength had
been sapped by the long and ruinous Dutch and English wars of Philip
II. Spain was at this moment represented by a very able ambassador,
Sarmiento, Count of Gondomar, who systematically misled the king as
to the views and intentions of his master, Philip III. His influence
induced James to look to Spanish aid for a solution of all his
financial troubles, for he thought that, in return for his alliance,
Spain would lend or give him money to cover his annual deficits.
[Sidenote: =Execution of Raleigh.=]
This beginning of subservience to Spain is marked by one of the
blackest spots in the reign of James--the execution of Sir Walter
Raleigh. The old explorer had now lingered for twelve years in the
Tower, but got a temporary release by persuading James that he knew
of rich gold-mines in Guiana, on the banks of the Orinoco, from which
he could bring back a great ransom. He was permitted to sail, but the
king informed Gondomar of the matter. Now, the Spaniards still looked
on any interference in America as a trespass on their monopoly of the
trade of the West. The ambassador sent news of Raleigh's approach to
the governors of the West Indies, and preparations were made to give
him a hot reception. When he reached South America, Sir Walter was
easily drawn into hostilities with the Spaniards, and had to return,
after failing to force his way up the Orinoco. When he reached England
he was arrested, at Gondomar's request, for having engaged in fighting
with a friendly power. But instead of trying him for this misdemeanour,
the dastardly king beheaded him without giving him a hearing or an
opportunity of defence, on the old charge of having been engaged in
Cobham's Plot[37] fifteen years before. He fell a victim to Spanish
resentment, not to any crime committed against his own king (1618).
[Sidenote: =Marriage of Princess Elizabeth.--The Thirty Years' War.=]
The year of Raleigh's death saw the opening of a new set of troubles
for King James. He had married his daughter Elizabeth to Frederic of
the Palatinate, the most rash and venturesome of the Protestant princes
of Germany. When the great religious struggle known as the Thirty
Years' War broke out, Frederic took the lead among the Protestants, and
seized the kingdom of Bohemia, one of the possessions of the Emperor
Ferdinand, the bigoted and fanatical head of the Romanist party (1619).
Frederic, however, was beaten, and lost not only Bohemia, but his own
dominions in the Palatinate (1620). Concerned to see his favourite
daughter lose her crown and lands, King James conceived a hope that
he might induce his Spanish friends to restore his son-in-law to his
Rhenish electorate. He forgot that Philip III., as a devout Catholic,
was much pleased to see the headstrong Frederic stripped of house and
home. But while intriguing with Spain, James, with great duplicity,
tried to persuade his subjects that he was ready to make war on the
Emperor, in order to restore the elector by force of arms.
[Sidenote: =Impeachment of Bacon.=]
A Parliament was again summoned. It gave the king a liberal grant for
the proposed war in Germany, but it then proceeded to investigate
abuses. The most notable scandal which it discovered was that the Lord
Chancellor--the great philosopher, Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam--had
been accepting gifts from corrupt suitors in his court--a misdemeanour
so flagrant that it struck at the roots of all justice. Bacon pleaded
guilty, and was removed from office (1621). The Parliament then began
to discuss internal politics, praying for a more rigorous suppression
of the Jesuits, and petitioning the king to marry his heir to a
Protestant princess; for it was already rumoured that a Spanish match
was being proposed for Prince Charles. After much angry debating on
what he considered an invasion of his prerogative, James had to dismiss
the two Houses (1622).
[Sidenote: =The Spanish Marriage.=]
The reports which had reached the ears of the Commons about the
marriage of the Prince of Wales were quite correct. The king and
Villiers, who had lately been created Earl of Buckingham, had formed a
chimerical plan for persuading the King of Spain to restore the elector
to the Palatinate, by means of a marriage treaty. If Prince Charles
were to offer to wed one of the Infantas, the sisters of Philip IV.,
they thought that the Spaniard would interfere in Germany in order to
oblige his brother-in-law. Moreover, the rich dowry of the princess
would serve to pay some of James's debts. They forgot that the King
of Spain had no interest or inducement to attack the Emperor, his own
cousin and co-religionist, and that the only thing which Philip really
wanted to secure by a treaty with England, was toleration for the
English Catholics.
[Sidenote: =Buckingham and Prince Charles in Spain.=]
From this foolish plan sprang the rash expedition of Buckingham
and Prince Charles to Madrid. Thinking to win the consent of the
Spanish king by appearing in person, and using the weight of his own
attractions, Buckingham persuaded the prince to accompany him, and
crossed the Channel. Charles seems to have formed a romantic affection,
on hearsay evidence, for the Infanta, and followed his mentor with
enthusiasm. They travelled rapidly and in disguise, and were able to
present themselves at Madrid before the Spanish court had any idea
of their having started. Their presence put Philip IV. in no small
perplexity, for he had not really intended to complete the match.
His sister, the Infanta Maria, was dismayed at the prince's arrival,
and threatened to retire into a nunnery rather than marry him. There
followed an interminable series of negotiations, in which the Spaniards
attempted to scare off the unwelcome suitor, by proposing hard
conditions to him. But Charles at once accepted every proposal made,
even offering to grant complete toleration to Catholics in England,
which he knew that the nation and Parliament would never permit.
Buckingham, meanwhile, made himself much hated by the haughty Spanish
court, owing to his absurd arrogance and self-complacency. At last,
discovering that the Spaniards did not mean business, he persuaded
the prince to take a ceremonious leave of King Philip, and brought
him back to England. When they were well out of Spain, they sent back
an intimation that nothing more could be done till the king promised
to recover the Palatinate for the Elector Frederic--a polite way of
breaking off the match.
[Sidenote: =Alliance with France.=]
Highly indignant with the Spanish court for its blindness to his own
charms and attractions, the headstrong Buckingham resolved to revenge
himself on them. This was most easily done by forming an alliance
with France, the eternal enemy of Spain. Accordingly, the favourite,
on his return to England, began to urge the king and the prince to
declare war on Philip IV., and to take up the cause of Lewis XIII. For
once Buckingham had public opinion on his side, for war with Spain
was always popular in England. The Parliament voted liberal subsidies
for an army to be sent to Germany, and a French alliance was easily
concluded. Prince Charles, quite cured of his infatuation for the
Infanta, offered his hand to Henrietta Maria, the sister of Lewis XIII.
She was at once betrothed to him, and the preliminaries for marriage
were in progress when the old king suddenly died--worn out by slothful
living and hard drinking, to which he had grown much addicted of late
years (February, 1625).
[Sidenote: =Commercial and colonial expansion.=]
In two spheres only was the inglorious reign of James I. redeemed by
some measure of success. The first was the realm of trade and colonial
expansion. All through the early years of the century, English commerce
was steadily growing, especially with the remote regions of Africa,
China, India, and the Spice Islands. At the same time, the first
successful English colonies were planted. The second plantation of
Virginia was completed in 1607, the Bermudas were settled in 1616,
Barbados in 1605. The far more important New England colonies date from
1620-28; they were founded by groups of nonconformist Puritans, who
left their native country to escape the harassing laws against schism
to which they found themselves subject. It is only fair to add that,
when they had settled down in North America, they established a church
system quite as intolerant and oppressive as that from which they had
fled.
[Sidenote: =Ireland.--Ulster colonized.=]
The other sphere in which the reign of James showed a certain success
was Ireland. When O'Neil, Earl of Tyrone, the old adversary of Queen
Elizabeth, rebelled for a second time in 1607, his dominions in Ulster
were confiscated, and carefully portioned out among English and Scotch
settlers, who undertook never to resell them to natives. Many thousands
of colonists crossed St. George's Channel, and by 1625 Ulster had a
large and firmly rooted Protestant population, though its prosperity
was founded on the systematic oppression of the native Irish.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] So called because it was supposed to be signed by 1000 ministers.
As a matter of fact, it bore less than 800 names.
[36]
Margaret, Countess of Lennox.
____________________|___________________________
| |
Henry, Lord Darnley = Mary Queen of Scots. Charles, Earl of Lennox.
| |
James VI. and I. Arabella Stuart.
[37] See p. 354.