How immensely important at least for England have her relations with the Spanish monarchy been shown to be! She had been formerly its ally, its attacks she had then withstood, and now resisted it at every turn. Only in rivalry with this power, and in opposition to it, was the great Island of the West brought into relations, for which it was suited by its geographical position, with every part of the known world.

NOTES:

[343] Contarini, Relatione 1610: 'Pareva che nelli moti passati col papa havesse la republica aggradito Piu l'offerte dei Inglesi che gli offizii et interpositioni di Franza e da quelle pia che da questi riconosciuto l'accommodamento: il che per tutta la Franza si e potuto comprendere.'

[344] The Lords of the Privy Council to Sir Richard Spencer and Sir Ralph Winwood. Aug. 1, 1608. In Winwood ii. 429.

[345] This is affirmed by Bentivoglio, who as Nuncio at Brussels was closely acquainted with these transactions. Historia della guerra di Fiandra iii. 490.

[346] Winwood to Salisbury, October 7, 1609. Memorials iii. 78.

[347] Molino: 'E huomo astuto sagace e persecutore acerrimo de' suoi nemici ... ne a avuto multi et tutti egli a fatto precipitare.'

[348] Ibid.: 'L'autorita del quale e cosi assoluta, che con verita si puo dire essere egli il re e governatore di quella monarchia'

[349] Alligantia inter regem et electores Germaniae, in Rymer vii. ii. 178.

[350] Francesco Contarini visited him in September 1610 in the country, and joined him in the chase, on which occasion James touched on various topics in conversation: 'De' pensieri di Spagnoli con poca loro laude ... non mostro far alcun conto del Duca di Sassonia suo cognato ni della investitura data li dall'imperatore nel ducato di Cleves.'

[351] Beaulieu to Trumbull, Paris, June 29, 1612: 'Both from this state (France) and the state of England it hath been plainly enough intimated unto them (the Spaniards) that if they would go about to make the Archduke Albert Emperor or king of the Romans, both these states with their allies would set the rest to hinder it.'

[352] Green, Princesses of England v. 180; De la Boderie ii. 248.

[353] This is the report of A. Foscarini, Jan. 20, 1612.

[354] Winwood to Trumbull, Memorials iii. 357.

[355] Correro 1609, May 20: 'Non solo riesce esquisitamente in tutti gli esercitii del corpo, ma si dimostra nelle attioni sue molto giudicioso e prudente.'—Ant. Foscarini 1612: 'Amplissimi erano i suoi concetti; di natura grave severa ritenuta di pochissime parole.'

[356] W. Ralegh: On a marriage between Prince Henry and a daughter of Savoy. Works viii. 237.

[357] Given in French by Levassor, Histoire de Louis XIII, i. 2, 347. So far as I know, the original has not yet been brought to light, although its genuineness cannot be doubted, as Levassor was acquainted with Robert Carr's letter to the Prince, which was first printed by Ellis ii. iii. 229.

[358] Foscarini, to whom we are indebted for information on many of these points: 'teneva mal animo contra Spagna e pretension in Francia.'

[359] It was affirmed that Henry Howard (Earl of Northampton) had been heard to say that 'the prince if ever he came to reign would prove a tyrant.' Bacon: Somerset's Business and Charge. Works vi. 100.

[360] Trumbull to Winwood, March 2, 1613. 'These men are enraged, fearing that we do aim at the wresting of the empire out of the Austrians hand which they say shall never be effected so long as the conjoyned forces of all the Catholiques in Christendom shall be able to maintain them in that right.' Winwood, Mem. iii. 439.

[361] Dispaccio di Antonio Foscarini, 5 Luglio 1612: 'Si aplica il re assai il pensiero a metter in pace li due re di Suecia e Danimarca et hieri fu qui di ritorno uno de' gentilhuomini inviati per tal fine:—poi si camineva immediatamente a stringere unione con tutti li principi di religione riformata.'

[362] A letter of Germigny in Charriere, Negociations de la France dans le Levant iii. 885 n, mentions the representations of the first agent. 'Cet Anglais avait remontre l'importance de l'agrandissement du roy d'Espagne mesmes ou il s'impatroniroit de Portugal et des terres despendantes du dit royaume voisines a ce Seigneur au Levant.'

[363] A. Foscarini 1612, 9 Ag.: 'Preme grandemente a Spagnoli veder sempre Piu stabilirsi la colonia in Virginia non perche stimino quel paese nel quale non e abondanza ne minera d'oro—ma perche fermandovisi Inglesi con li vascelli loro, correndo quel mare impedirebbono la flotte.' 1613 Marzo 8: 'Le navi destinate per Virginia al numero di tre sono passate a quella volta e se ne allestiranno anco altre degli interessati in quella popolatione.'



CHAPTER V.

PARLIAMENTS OF 1610 AND 1614.

For the full occupation of this position in the world, and for maintaining and extending it, nothing was more necessary than internal harmony in Great Britain, not only between the two kingdoms, but also in each of them at home. While Robert Cecil procured full recognition for considerations of foreign policy, he conceived the further design of bringing about such an unity above all things in England itself, as, if successful, would have procured for the power of the King an authority paramount to all the other elements of the constitution.

The greatest standing evil from which the existing government suffered, was the inequality between income and expenditure; and if the lavish profusion of the King was partly responsible for this, yet there were also many other reasons for it. The late Queen had left behind no inconsiderable weight of debt, occasioned by the cost of the Irish war: to this were added the expenses of her obsequies, of the coronation, and of the first arrangements under the new reign. Visits of foreign princes, the reception and the despatch of great embassies, had caused still further extraordinary outlay; and the separate court-establishments of the King, the Queen, and the Prince, made a constant deficit inevitable. Perpetual embarrassment was the result.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1610.]

James I expresses himself with a sort of naive ingenuousness in a letter to the Lords of Council of the year 1607. In this letter he exhorts them not to present to him any 'sute wherof none of yourselves can guess what the vallew may prove,' but rather to help him to cut off superfluous expenses, as far as was consistent with the honour of the kingdom, and to assist him to new lawful sources of revenue, without throwing an unjust burden upon the people. 'The only disease and consumption which I can ever apprehend as likeliest to endanger me, is this eating canker of want, which being removed I could think myself as happy in all other respects as any other king or monarch that ever was since the birth of Christ: in this disease I am the patient, and yee have promised to be the physicians, and to use the best care uppon me that your witte, faithfulnes and diligence can reach unto.'[364]

As Lord Treasurer, Robert Cecil had the task of taking in hand the conduct of this affair also. He had refused to make disbursements which he thought improper, but to which the King had notwithstanding allowed himself to be led away: he would not hear of increasing the revenue by such means as the sale of offices, a custom which seemed to be at that time transplanting itself from France into England. He sought to add to the revenue in the first place by further taxation of the largely increasing commerce of the country. And as tonnage and poundage had been once for all granted to the King, he thought it appropriate and permissible to raise the custom-house duties as an administrative measure. Soon after the new government had come into power it had undertaken the rearrangement of the tariff to suit the circumstances of the time. Cecil, who was confirmed in his purpose by a decision of the judges to the effect that his conduct was perfectly legal, conferred with the principal members of the commercial class on the amount and nature of the increase of duty.[365] The plan which they embraced in accordance with the views prevalent at the time contemplated that the burden should principally fall upon foreigners.

The advantages which were obtained by this means were not inconsiderable. The Custom-House receipts were gradually increased under King James by one-half; but yet this was a slow process and could not meet the wants that likewise kept growing. The Lord Treasurer decided to submit a comprehensive scheme to Parliament, in order to effect a radical cure of the evil. The importance of the matter will be our excuse for examining it in detail.

He explained to them that a considerable increase of income (which he put down at L82,000) was required to cover the regular expenditure, but that a still greater sum was needed for casual expenses, for which in the state, as in every household, certainly a quarter of the sum reached by the regular expenditure was required. He therefore proposed that L600,000 should be at once granted him for paying off the debt, and that in future years the royal income should be raised by L200,000.

This request was so comprehensive and so far beyond all precedent, that it could never have been made without a corresponding offer of concessions on a large scale. The Earl of Salisbury in his proposal formally invited the Parliament to adduce the grievances which it had, and promised in the King's name to redress all such so far as lay in his power. It is affirmed that his clear-sighted and vigorous speech made a favourable impression. Parliament in turn acceded to the proposal, and alleged its most important grievances. They affected both ecclesiastical and financial interests: among the latter class that which concerned the Court of Wards is the most important historically.

Of the institutions by which the Normans and Plantagenets held their feudal state together, none perhaps was more effectual than the right of guardianship over minors, whose property the kings managed for their own advantage. They stepped as it were into the rights of fathers; even the marriage of wards depended on their pleasure. From the time of Henry VIII a court for the exercise of this jurisdiction and for feudal tenures generally had existed, which instituted enquiries into the neglect of prescriptive custom, and punished it. One of the most important offices was that of President of the Court, which was very lucrative, and conferred personal influence in various ways. It had been long filled by Robert Cecil himself.

The Lower House now proposed in the first place that this right and the machinery created to enforce it, which gave birth to various acts of despotism, should be abolished. How often had the property of wards been ruined by those to whom the rights of the state were transferred. The debts which were chargeable against them were never paid.[366] The Lower House desired that not only the royal prerogatives, but also that the kindred rights of the great men of the kingdom over their vassals should cease, and especially that property held on feudal tenures should be made allodial.

It is evident what great interests were involved in this scheme, which was thoroughly monarchical, and at the same time was opposed to feudalism. Its execution would have put an end to the feudal tie which now had no more vitality, and appeared nothing more than a burden; but at the same time the crown would have been provided with a regular and sufficient income, and, what is more, would have been tolerably independent of the grants of Parliament, so soon as an orderly domestic system was introduced. We can understand that in bringing this matter to an issue a minister of monarchical views might see an appropriate conclusion to a life or rather two lives, his father's and his own, dedicated to the service of the sovereign. And it appeared that he might well hope to succeed, as a considerable alleviation was offered at the same time to the King's subjects as well.

The King reminded them that the feudal prerogative formed one of the fairest jewels of his crown, that it was an heirloom from his forefathers which he could not surrender; honour, conscience, and interest, equally forbade it. The Lower House replied that it would not dispute about honour and conscience, but as to interest, that might be arranged. They were ready by formal contract to indemnify the crown for the loss which it would suffer.[367]

The crown demanded L100,000 as a compensation for the loss it would suffer; and besides this, the L200,000 before mentioned which it required for restoring the balance between income and expenditure. We need not here reproduce the repulsive spectacle presented by the abatement of demands on the one side, and the increase of offers on the other. At last the Lord Treasurer adhered to the demand for L200,000 everything included. He declared that if this was refused the King would never again make a similar offer. On this at last the Parliament declared itself ready to grant the sum; but, even then, set up further conditions about which they could not come to an immediate agreement, so that their mutual claims were not yet definitively adjusted.

On the contrary these negotiations had by degrees assumed a tone of some irritation. Parliament found that the Earl of Salisbury had acted unconstitutionally in proposing to raise the scale of duties without its consent, and would not be content with his reference to the decision of the judges mentioned above, and to the conferences with the merchants. He endeavoured at a private interview with some of the leading members to bring round the opinion to his side: but the House was angry with those who had been present at it, and their good intentions were called in question.[368]

The speeches also, with which the King twice interrupted the proceedings, produced an undesirable effect. He was inclined to meet the general wishes, without surrendering however any part of his prerogatives. But at the same time he expressed himself about these in the exaggerated manner peculiar to him, which was exactly calculated to arouse contradiction.[369] Whilst he was comparing the royal power to the divine, he found that the House on one pretext or another refused even to open a letter which he had addressed to them about the speech of some member which had displeased him: on the contrary he was obliged to receive back into favour the very member who had affronted him. Parliament regarded liberty of speech as the Palladium of its efficiency; foreigners were astonished at the recklessness with which members expressed themselves about the government.

As a rule the investigation of relative rights has an unfavourable result for those who are in actual possession of authority. The prerogative which the King exalted so highly presented itself to the Parliament in an obnoxious aspect. In the debates on the contract the question was raised, how Sampson's hands could be bound, that is to say, how the King's prerogative could be so far restricted as to prevent him from breaking or overstepping the agreement.

During a dispute with the House of Lords the sentiment was uttered, that the members of the Lower House as representing the Commons ranked higher than the Lords, each of whom represented only himself.[370] It is easy to see how far this principle might lead.

Even his darling project of combining England and Scotland into a single kingdom could not be carried out by the King in the successive sessions of Parliament. One of the leading spirits of the age, Francis Bacon, was on his side in this matter as in others. When it was objected that it was no advantage to the English to take the poverty-stricken Scots into partnership, as for example in commercial affairs, he returned answer, that merchants might reckon in this way, but no one who rose to great views: united with Scotland, England would become one of the greatest monarchies that the world had ever seen; but who did not perceive that a complete fusion of both elements was needed for this? Security against the recurrence of the old divisions could not be obtained until this was effected. Owing to the influence of Bacon, who at that time had become Solicitor-General, the question of the naturalisation of all those born in Scotland after James had ascended the English throne, was decided with but slight opposition, in a sense favourable to the union of the two kingdoms, by the Lord Chancellor and the Judges. The decision however was not accepted by Parliament. And when the question was now raised how far the assent of Parliament was necessary in a case like this, the adverse declaration of the Lord Chancellor was exactly calculated to provoke a contest of principle in this matter also.[371] With the advice of the Lord Chancellor and the Council James had declared himself King of Great Britain, and had expressed the wish that the names of England and Scotland might be henceforth obliterated; but his Proclamation was not considered sufficient without the assent of Parliament; and in this case the judges took the side of the Parliament. The dynastic ideas with which James had commenced his reign could not but serve to resuscitate the claim of Parliament to the possession of the legislative power. At other times the precedents adduced by the Lord Chancellor in the debate on the 'post-nati' might have controlled their decision: at the present time they no longer made any impression. The opposition of political ideas came to the surface in this matter as in others. The King held the strongly monarchical view that the populations of both countries were united with one another by the mere fact of their being both subject to him. To this the Parliament opposed the doctrine that the two crowns were distinct sovereignties, and that the legislation of the two countries could not be united. They wished to fetter the King to the old legal position which they were far more anxious to contract than to expand.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1613.]

The consequences must have been incalculable, if the Earl of Salisbury and the Lord Chancellor had succeeded in carrying out their intentions. A common government of the two countries would have held in all important questions a position independent of the two Parliaments, and the person of the sovereign would have been the ruling centre of this government. If besides an adequate income had been definitely assigned to the crown independent of the regularly recurring assent of Parliament, what would have become of the rights of that body? Not only would Elizabeth's mode of government have been continued, but the monarchical element which could appeal to various precedents in its own favour would probably have obtained a complete ascendancy.

But for that very reason these efforts were met by a most decided opposition. It is plain that these rival pretensions, and the motive from which they sprang, paved the way for controversies of the most extensive kind.

The scheme of the contract was as little successful as that of the union of the two kingdoms. The parties were contented with merely removing the occasion for an immediate rupture; and after some short prorogations Parliament was finally dissolved.

The King, who felt himself aggrieved by its whole attitude as well as by many single expressions, was reluctant to call another. In order to meet his extraordinary necessities recourse was had to various old devices and to some new ones; for instance, the creation of a great number of baronets in 1612, on payment of considerable sums: but notwithstanding all this, in the year 1613 matters had gone so far, that neither the ambassadors to foreign courts, nor even the troops which were maintained could be paid. In the garrison of Brill a mutiny had arisen on this account; the strongholds on the coast and the fortifications on the adjacent islands went to ruin. For this as well as for other reasons the death of the Earl of Salisbury was a misfortune. The man on whom James I next bestowed his principal confidence, Robert Carr, then Lord Rochester, later Earl of Somerset, was already condemned by the popular voice because he was a Scot, who moreover had no other merit than a pleasing person, which procured him the favour of the King. The authority enjoyed by the Howards had already provoked dissatisfaction. The Prince of Wales had been their decided adversary, and this enmity was kept up by all his friends. Robert Carr, however, thought it advisable to win over to his side this powerful family to which he had at first found himself in opposition. Whether from personal ambition or from a temper that really mocked at all law and morality he married Frances Howard, whose union with the Earl of Essex had to be dissolved for this object.[372] The old enemies of the Howards, the adherents of the house of Essex, many of whom had inherited this enmity, now became the opponents of the favourite and his government. When at last urgent financial necessities allowed no other alternative, and absolutely compelled the issue of a summons for a new parliament, the contending parties seized the opportunity of confronting one another. The creatures of the government neglected no means of controlling the elections by their influence; but they were everywhere encountered by the other party, who were favoured by the increasing dissatisfaction of the people.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1614.]

At the opening of Parliament in April 1614, and on two occasions afterwards, the King addressed the Lower House. Among all the scholastic distinctions, complaints of the past, and assurances for the future, in which after his usual fashion he indulges, we can still perceive the fundamental idea, that if even the subsidies which he required and asked were granted him, he would notwithstanding agree to no conditions on his side, and take upon himself no distinct pledges. He was resolved no longer to play the game of making concessions in order to ask for something in return, as he had done some years before; he found that far beneath his dignity. Still less could he consent that all the grievances that might have arisen should be heaped up and presented to him, for that would be injurious to the honour of the government. Each one, he said, might lay before him the grievances which he experienced in his own town or in his own county; he would then attend to their redress one by one. In the same way he would deal with each House separately. If he is reproached with endeavouring to extend his prerogatives he denies the charge; but he affirms that he cannot allow them to be abridged, but that, in exercising them, he would behave as well as the best prince England ever had.[373] He has no conception of a relation based on mutual rights; he acknowledges only a relation of confidence and affection. In return for liberal concessions he promises liberal favour.

This was a view of things resting upon a patriarchal conception of kingly power, in favour of which analogies might no doubt have been found in the early state of the kingdoms of the West, but which was now becoming more and more obsolete. What had still been possible under Elizabeth, when the sovereign and her Parliament formed one party, was no longer so now; especially as a man who had attracted universal hatred stood at the head of affairs. Besides this a dispute was already going on which we cannot pass over in silence.

It arose upon the same matter which had caused such grave embarrassment to the Earl of Salisbury, the unlimited exercise of the right of levying tonnage and poundage entirely at the discretion of the government. It was affirmed that the Custom-House receipts had increased more than twentyfold since the commencement of James's reign, and that a great part of the increased returns was enjoyed by favoured private individuals. The Lower House demanded first of all an examination into the right of the government, and declared that without it they would not proceed to vote any grant.[374]

In the Lower House itself on one occasion a lively debate arose on the subject. The opinion was advanced on the part of the friends of the government that, in this respect as in others, a difference existed between hereditary and elective monarchies, that in the first class, which included England, the prerogative was far more extensive than in the latter. Henry Wotton, and Winwood, who had been long employed on foreign embassies, explained what a great advantage in regard to their collective revenues other states derived from indirect taxes and customs. But by this statement they awakened redoubled opposition. They were told that the raising of these imposts in France had not been approved by the Estates and was in fact illegal; that the King of Spain had been forced to atone for the attempt to introduce them into the Netherlands by the loss of the greater part of the provinces. Thomas Wentworth especially broke out into violent invectives against the neighbouring sovereigns, which even called forth remonstrances from the embassies. He warned the King of England that in his case also similar measures would lead to his complete ruin.[375] It was not only urged that England ought not to take example by any foreign country, but the very distinction drawn between elective and hereditary monarchies suggested a question whether England after all was so entirely a hereditary monarchy as was asserted. It was asked if it might not rather be said that James I, who was one of a number of claimants who had all equally good rights, owed his accession to a voluntary preference on the part of the nation, which might be regarded as a sort of election. These were ideas of unlimited range, and flatly contradicted those which James had formed on the rights of birth and inheritance. He felt himself outraged by their expression in the Lower House.

In order to give the force of a general resolution to their assertion, that in England the prerogative did not include the fixing of the amount of taxes and customs without the consent of Parliament, the Commons had made proposals for a conference with the Upper House. But hereupon the higher clergy declared themselves hostile, not only to their opinion, but even to the bare project of a conference. Neil, Bishop of Lincoln, affirmed that the oath taken to the King in itself forbade them to participate in such a conference; that the matter affected not so much a branch of the royal prerogative as its very root; that the Lords moreover would have to listen to seditious speeches, the aim and intention of which could only be to bring about a division between the King and his subjects. The Lord Chancellor had asked the judges for their opinion; but they had declined to give any. The result was that the Upper House did not accede to the proposal of a conference.

The Commons were greatly irritated at the resistance which was offered to their first step. They too in conferences which related to other matters disdained to enter into the subjects brought before them. They complained loudly of the insulting expressions of the bishop which had been repeated to them. An exculpatory statement of the Upper House did not content them; they demanded full satisfaction as in an affair of honour, and until this had been furnished them they declared themselves determined to make no progress with any other matter.

The King however on his side now lost patience at this. He considered that an attack was made on the highest power when the general progress of business was hindered for the sake of a single question, and he appointed a day on which this affair of the subsidy must be disposed of. He said that, if it were not settled, he would dissolve Parliament.

One would not expect such a declaration to change the temper of the Lower House. Speeches were heard still more violent than those previously made. The Scots, to whose influence every untoward occurrence was imputed, were threatened with a repetition of the Sicilian Vespers. There were other members however who counselled moderation; for it almost appeared as if the dissolution of this Parliament might be the dissolution of all parliaments. Commissioners were once more sent to the King in order to give another turn to the negotiations. The King declared that he knew full well how far his rights extended, and that he could not allow his prerogatives to be called in question.[376]

These passionate ebullitions of feeling against the Scots, although they referred to matters of a more alarming, but happily of an entirely different nature, made the King anxious lest the destruction of his favourites, or even his own ruin, might be required to content his adversaries. On the 7th of June he dissolved Parliament. He thought himself entitled to bring up for punishment the loudest and most reckless speakers, as well as some other noted men from whom these speakers had received their impulse, for instance Cornwallis, the former ambassador in Spain. He considered that they had intended to upset the government: not only had they failed, but they themselves must atone for the attempt.[377]

The estrangement was not too great to allow the hope of a reconciliation. It had been represented to the King that he ought not to be ready to regard financial concessions as a compliance unbecoming to the crown, for that in these matters he was at no disadvantage as compared with any person or any foreign power; that on the contrary the decision always proceeded from himself; that he was the head who cared for the welfare of the members. It was said that he need by no means fear that men would make use of his wants to lay fetters on him; that bonds laid by subjects on their sovereigns were merely cobwebs which he might tear asunder at any moment. Even Walter Ralegh had stated this.[378] But the King had no inclination, after the Parliament had repelled his overtures with rude opposition, to expose himself by summoning a new one to new attacks on his prerogatives as he understood them. By the voluntary or forced contributions of different corporations, especially of the clergy and of the great men of the kingdom, he was placed in a condition to carry on his government in the ordinary way. Every measure which would have necessitated a great outlay was avoided.

It is plain however into what a disagreeable position he was thus brought. His whole method of government was based upon the superiority of England. He had at that time brought the system of the Church in Scotland nearer to the English model. The bishops in that country had even received their consecration from the English. But he had not effected this without violent acts of usurpation. He had been obliged to remove his most active opponents out of the country; but even in their absence they kept up the excitement of men's feelings by their writings. The Presbyterians saw in everything which he succeeded in doing, the work of cunning on the one side and treachery on the other, and gave vent to the deepest displeasure at his deviation from their solemn Covenant with God.

Relying on the right of England, but for the first time inviting immigrants from Scotland, James undertook the systematic establishment of colonies in Ireland. The additional strength however which by this means accrued to the Protestant and Teutonic element entirely annihilated all leanings which had been shown in his favour at his accession to the crown, and aroused against him the strongest national and religious antipathies of the native population in that country.

He then met with this opposition in Parliament which hampered all his movements. It was foreign to his natural disposition to think of effecting a radical removal of the misunderstanding that had arisen. On the contrary he kept adding fresh fuel to it on account of the deficiencies of his government, which began to impair his former importance. The immediate consequence was that in foreign affairs he was no longer able to maintain the position which he had taken up as vigorously as might have been wished. His allies pressed him incessantly to bestow help on them: but if even he had wished it, this was no longer in his power. It was not that Parliament in withholding his supplies had disapproved of the object which they were intended to serve. On the contrary the Parliament lamented that this object was not pursued with sufficient earnestness; but it wished above all to extend its right of sanction over the whole domain of the public revenues. But the King was not inclined to treat with Parliament for the supplies of money required; he feared to incur the necessity of repaying its grants by concessions which would abridge the ancient rights of his crown. The centre of gravity of public affairs must lie somewhere or other. The question was already raised in England whether for the future it was to be in the power of the King and his ministers, or in the authority of Parliament.

NOTES:

[364] Letter to the Lords, anno 1607: in Strype, Annals iv. 560.

[365] Antonio Correro, 25 Giugno 1608: 'Con l'autorita ch'egli tiene con li mercanti di questa piazza li ha indutti a sottoporsi ad una nova gravezza posta sopra le merci che vengono e vanno da questo regno.'

[366] Molino: 'La gabella dei pupilli porge materia grande a sudditi di dolorsene e d'esclamare sino al celo studiando ogn'uno di liberasi da simili bene.—Se uno aveva due campi di questa ragione e cento d'altra natura, i due hanno questa forza, di sottomettere i cento alla medesima gravezza.'

[367] Beaulieu to Trumbull. Winwood, Memorials iii. 123.

[368] Carleton to Edmonds: Court and Times of James I, i. 12, 123.

[369] Chamberlain to Winwood. Mem. iii. 175. 'Yf the practise should follow the positions, we should not leave to our successor that freedome we received from our forefathers.'

[370] Tommaso Contarini, 23 Giugno 1610: 'Che le loro persone, come representanti le communita, siano di maggior qualita che li signori titolati quali representano le loro sole persone, il che diede grandissimo fastidio al re.'

[371] Campbell, Lives of the Lord Chancellors ii. 225.

[372] Lorking, writing to Puckering (The Court and Times of James the First i. 254), remarks as early as July 1613 on the first mention of the marriage, that its design was 'to reconcile him (Lord Rochester) and the house of Howard together, who are now far enough asunder.'

[373] The King's second speech. Parliamentary History v. 285.

[374] A. Foscarini 1614, 20 Giugno. 'Il re ha sempre avuto seco (on his side) la camera superiore e parte dell'inferiore: il rimanente ha mostrato di voler contribuir ogni quantita di sussidio ma a conditione che si vedesse prima qual fosse l'autorita del re, sull'impor gravezze.'

[375] Chamberlain to Carleton, May 28. Court and Times of James I, i. 312.

[376] According to a report furnished by A. Foscarini: 'Elessero 40 d'essi a quali diede Lunedi audienza S. M.—dissero che la supplicavano per tanto lasciar per ultima da risolvere la materia di danari.' Unfortunately we have only very scanty information about this Parliament.

[377] Extract from a letter of Winwood to Carleton, June 16. Green, Calendar of State Papers, James I, vol. ii. 237.

[378] The Prerogative of Parliaments. Works viii. 154.



CHAPTER VI.

SURVEY OF THE LITERATURE OF THE EPOCH.

The times in which great political struggles are actually going on are not the most favourable for production in the fields of literature and art. These flourish best in the preceding or following ages, during which the impulse attending those movements begins or continues to be felt. Just such an epoch was the period of thirty or forty years between the defeat of the Armada and the outbreak of the Parliamentary troubles, a period comprising the later years of Queen Elizabeth and the earlier years of King James I. This was the epoch in which the English nation attained to a position of influence on the world at large, and in which at the same time those far-reaching differences about the most important questions of the inner life of the nation arose. The antagonism of ideas which stirred men's minds generally could not but reproduce itself in literature. But we also see other grand products of the age far transcending the limits of the present struggle. Our survey of the history will gain in completeness if we cast even but a transient glance, first at the former and then at the latter class of these products.

In Scotland the studies connected with classical antiquity were prosecuted with as much zeal as anywhere else in Europe; not however in order to imitate its forms in the native idiom, which no one at that time even in Germany thought of doing, but in order to use it in learned theological controversies, and to maintain connexion with brother Protestants of other tongues. S. Andrew's was at one time a centre for Protestant learning: Poles and Danes, Germans and French visited this university in order to study under Melville. Even Latin verse was written with a certain elegance. A fit monument of these studies and their direction is to be found in Buchanan's History of Scotland, a work without value for the earlier period, and full of party spirit in describing his own, as Buchanan is one of the most violent accusers of Mary Stuart, but pervaded by that warmth and decision which carry the reader along with it: at that time it was read all over the world. Buchanan and Melville were among the champions of popular ideas on the constitution of states and the relations between sovereign and people. It cannot be affirmed that classical studies were without influence upon their views, but the doctrine to which they adhered grew out of a different root. It rests historically upon the doctrine of the superiority of the Church, and the councils representing the Church, over the Papacy, as it was put forth in the fifteenth century at Paris. A Scottish student there, John Major, made this doctrine his own, and after his return to his native country, when he himself had obtained a professorship, he applied it to temporal relations. The positions of the advocates of the councils affirmed that the Pope, it was true, received his authority from God, but that he might be again deprived of it in cases of urgent necessity by the Church, which virtually included the sum of all authority in itself. In the same way John Major taught that an original power transmitted from father to son pertained to kings, but that the fundamental authority resided in the people; so that a king mischievous to the commonwealth, who showed himself incorrigible, might be deposed again. His scholars, who took so large a part in the first disturbances in Scotland, and their scholars in turn, firmly maintained this doctrine. They differed from their contemporaries the Jesuits, who considered the monarchy to be an institution set up by the national will, in ascribing to it a divine right, but they urged that a king existed for the sake of the people, and that as he was bound by the laws agreed on by common consent, resistance to him was not only allowed, but under certain circumstances might even be a duty. We must also remark the opposite view, which was developed in contradiction to this, but yet rested on the same foundation. It was admitted that the king, if the people were considered as a whole, existed for their sake, and not the people for his; but the king, it was said, was at the same time the head of the people; he possessed superiority over all individuals: there was no one who could say in any case that the contract between king and people had been broken: no such general contract existed at all; there could be no question at all of resistance, much less of deposition, for how could the members rebel against the head? King James maintained that the legislative power belonged to the king by divine and human right, that he exercised it with the participation of his subjects, and always remained superior to the laws. His position rests on these views, in the development of which he himself had certainly a great share; he, like his opponents, had his political and ecclesiastical adherents. In the Scottish literature of the time both tendencies are embodied in important historical works; the latter principally in Spottiswood's Church History, which represents the royalist views and is not without merit in point of form, so that even at the present day it can be read with pleasure; the former in contemporary notices of passing events which were composed in the language and even in the dialect of the country, and which in many places are the foundation even of Buchanan's history. They are the most direct expression of national and religious views, as they found vent in the assemblies of preachers and elders; in them we feel the life-breath of Presbyterianism. Calderwood and the younger Melville, who collected everything which came to hand, espoused the popular ideas; for information on facts and their causes they are invaluable, although in respect of form they do not rival Spottiswood, who, like them, employs the language of the country.

It might perhaps be said that it was in Scotland that the two systems arose which since that time, although in various shapes, have divided Britain and Europe. In the historians just mentioned we might see the types of two schools, whose opposite conceptions of universal and especially of English history, set forth by writers of brilliant ability, have exercised the greatest influence upon prevailing ideas.

In England these ideas certainly gained admission, but they did not make way at that time. When Richard Hooker expresses the popular ideas as to the primitive free development of society, this is done principally in order to point out the extensive authority of the legislative power even over the clergy, and to defend the ecclesiastical supremacy of the English crown, which had been established by the enactments of that very power. The question was mooted how far the sovereign was above the laws. Many wished to derive these prerogatives from the laws; others rejected them. Among those who maintained them unconditionally Walter Ralegh appears, in whose works we find a peculiar deduction of them in the statement that the sovereign, according to Justinian's phrase, was the living law: he derives the royal authority from the Divine Will, which the will of man could only acknowledge. He says in one place that the sovereign stands in the same relation to the law, as a living man to a dead body.

What a remarkable work would it have been, had Walter Ralegh himself recorded the history of his time. But the opposition between parties was not so outspoken in England as in Scotland; it had not to justify itself by general principles, to which men could give their adhesion; it contained too much personal ill-feeling and hatred for any one who was involved in the strife to have been able to find satisfaction in expressing himself on this head. The history of the world which Walter Ralegh had leisure to write in his prison, is an endeavour to put together the materials of Universal History as they lay before him from ancient times, and so make them more intelligible. He touches on the events of his age only in allusions, which excited attention at the time, but remain obscure to posterity.

In direct opposition to the Scots, especially to Buchanan, Camden, who wrote in Latin like the former, composed his Annals of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth. His contemporary, De Thou, borrowed much from Buchanan. Camden reproaches him with this, partly because in Scotland men preached atrocious principles with regard to the authority of the people and their right of keeping their kings in order. The elder Cecil had invited him to write the history of the Queen, and had communicated to him numerous documents for this purpose, which were either in his own possession or belonged to the national archives. Camden set cautiously to work, and went slowly on. He has himself depicted the trouble it cost him to decipher the historical contents of these scattered and dusty papers. He has certainly not surmounted all the difficulties which stand in the way of composing a contemporary history. Here and there we find even in his pages a regard paid to the living, especially to King James himself, which we would rather see away. But such passages are rare. Camden's Annals take a high rank among histories of contemporary transactions. They are of such authenticity in regard to facts, and show so intimate an acquaintance with causes gathered from trustworthy information, that we can follow the author, even where we do not possess the documents to which he refers. His judgments are moderate and at the same time in all important questions they are decided.

When we read Camden's letters we become acquainted with a circle of scholars engaged in the severest studies. In his Britannia, which gives a more complete and instructive picture of the country than any other work, they all took a lively interest. Their works are clumsy and old-fashioned, but they breathe a spirit of thoroughness and breadth which does honour to the age. With what zeal were ecclesiastical antiquities studied in Cambridge, after Whitaker had pointed the way! Men sought to weed out what was spurious, and in what was genuine to set aside the part due to the accidental forms of the time, and to penetrate to the bottom of the sentiments, the belief, and activity of the writers. The constitution of the Church naturally led them to devote special study to the old provincial councils. For the history of the country they referred to the monuments of Anglo-Saxon times, and began even in treating of other subjects to bring the original sources to light. Everywhere men advanced beyond the old limits which had been drawn by the tradition of chroniclers and the lack of historical investigation hitherto shown.

Francis Bacon was attracted by the task of depicting at length a modern epoch, the history of the Tudors, with the various changes which it presented and the great results it had introduced, in which he saw the unity of a connected series of events. Yet he has only treated the history of the first of that line. He furnishes one of the first examples of exact investigation of details combined with reflective treatment of history, and has exercised a controlling influence on the manner and style of writing English history, especially by the introduction of considerations of law, which play a great part in his work. The political points of view which are present to the author are almost more those of the beginning of the seventeenth than those of the beginning of the sixteenth century. But these epochs are closely connected with each other. For what Henry VII established is just what James I, who loved to connect himself immediately with the former monarch, wished to continue. Bacon was a staunch defender of the prerogative.

The dispute which arose between Bacon as a lawyer and Edward Coke deserves notice.

Coke also has a place in literature. His reports are, even at the present day, known without his name simply as 'The Reports,' and his 'Institutes' is one of the most learned works which this age produced. It is rather a collection provided with notes, but is instructive and suggestive from the variety of and the contrast of its contents. Coke traced the English laws to the remotest antiquity; he considered them as the common production of the wisest men of earlier ages, and at the same time as the great inheritance of the English people, and its best protection against every kind of tyranny, spiritual or temporal. Even the old Norman French, in which they were to a great extent composed, he would not part with, for a peculiar meaning attached itself, in his view, to every word.

On the other hand Bacon as Attorney-General formed the plan of comprising the common law in a code, by which a limit should be set to the caprice of the judges, and the private citizen be better assured of his rights. He thought of revising the Statute-Book, and wished to erase everything useless, to remove difficulties, and to bring what was contradictory into harmony.

Bacon's purpose coincided with the idea of a general system of legislation entertained by the King: he would have preferred the Roman law to the statute law of England. Coke was a man devoted to the letter of the law, and was inclined to offer that resistance to the sovereign which was implied in a strict adherence to the law as it was. In the conflict that arose the judges, influenced by his example, appealed to the laws as they were laid down, according to the verbal meaning of which they thought themselves bound to decide. Bacon maintained that the Judges' oath was meant to include obedience to the King also, to whom application must be made in every matter affecting his prerogative. This is probably what Queen Elizabeth also thought, and it was the decided opinion of King James. He made the man who cherished similar views his Lord Chancellor, and dismissed Coke from his service. Bacon when in office was responsible for a catastrophe which, as we shall see, not only ruined himself, but reacted upon the monarchy. The English, contemporaries and posterity alike, have taken the side of Coke. Yet Bacon's industry in business is not therefore altogether to be despised. He urged the King, who was disposed to judge hastily, to take time and to weigh the reasons of both parties. He gave the judges who went on circuit through the country the most pertinent advice. The directions which he drew up for the Court of Chancery have laid the foundations of the practice of that court, and are still an authority for it. His scheme of collecting and reforming the English laws still, even at the present day, appears to statesmen learned in the law to be an unavoidable necessity; and the opinion is spreading that steps must be taken in this matter in the direction already pointed out by Bacon.

Bacon was one of the last men who identified the welfare of England with the development of the monarchical element in the constitution, or at all events with the preponderance of the authority of the sovereign within constitutional limits. The union of the three kingdoms under the ruling authority of the King appeared to him to contain the foundation of the future greatness of Britain. With the assertion of the authority of the sovereign he connected the hope of a reform of the laws of England, of the establishment of a comprehensive system of colonisation in Ireland, and of the assimilation of the ecclesiastical and judicial constitution of Scotland to English customs. He loved the monarchy because he expected great things from it.

But it cannot be denied that he brought his ideas into a connexion with his interests, which was fatal to the acceptance of the former. His is just a case in which we feel relieved when we turn from the disputes of the day to the free domain of scientific activity, in which his true life was spent. He has indeed said himself that he was better fitted to hold a book in his hands than to shine upon the stage of the world. In his studies he had only science itself and the whole of the world before his eyes.

The scholastic system founded on Aristotle, the inheritance of centuries of ecclesiastical supremacy, had been assailed some time before he took up the subject; and the inductive method which he opposed to that system was not anything quite new. But the idea of Bacon had the most comprehensive tendency: it tended to free the thoughts and enquiries of men of science from the assumptions of a speculative theology which regulated their spiritual horizon. The most renowned adversaries of scholasticism he had to encounter in turn, because they covered things with a new web of words and theories which he could not accept. He thought to free men from the deceptive notions by which their minds are prepossessed, from the fascination of words which throw a veil over things, and of tradition consecrated by great names, and to open to them the sphere of the certain knowledge of experience. Nature is in his eyes God's book, which man must study directly for His glory and for the relief of man's estate; he thought that men must start from sense and experience, in order that by intercourse with things they might discover the cause of phenomena. He would have preferred for his own part to have been the architect of an universal science, an outline of which he had already composed; but he possessed the self-restraint to hold back from this in the first instance, to work at details, and to make experiments, or, as he once says, to contribute the bricks and stones which might serve for the great work in the future. He only wanted more complete devotion and more adequate knowledge for his task. His method is imperfect, his results are untrustworthy in points of detail; but his object is grand. He designates the insight for which he labours by the Heraclitean name of dry light, that is, a light which is obscured by no partiality and no subordinate aim. He would place the man who possesses it as it were upon the mountain top, at the foot of which errors chase one another like clouds. And in his eyes the satisfaction of the mind is not the only interest at stake, but such discoveries as rouse the activity of men and promote their welfare. Nature is at the same time the great storehouse of God: the dominion over nature which men originally possessed must be restored to them.

In these speculations the philosopher became aware that there was a risk lest men should imagine that by this means they could also discover the nature of God. Bacon lays down a complete separation of these two provinces; for he thinks that men can only attain to second causes, not to the first cause, which is God; and that the human mind can only cope with natural things; that divine things on the contrary confuse it. He will not even investigate the nature of the human soul, for it does not owe its origin to the productive powers of nature, but to the breath of God.

It had been from the beginning the tendency of those schools of philosophy erected on the basis of ancient systems, in which Latin and Teutonic elements were blended, to transfuse faith with scientific knowledge; but Bacon renounces this attempt from the beginning. He puts forward with almost repulsive abruptness the paradoxes which the Christian must believe: he declares it an Icarian flight to wish to penetrate these secrets: but so much stronger is the impulse he seeks to give the human mind in the direction of enquiry into natural objects.[379]

Among these he ranks the state of human society, to which all his life long he devoted a careful and searching observation. His Essays are not at all sceptical, like the French essays, from which he may have borrowed this appellation: they are thoroughly dogmatic. They consist of remarks on the relations of life as they then presented themselves, especially upon the points of contact between private and public life, and of counsels drawn from the perception of the conflicting qualities of things. They are extremely instructive for the internal relations of English society. They show wide observation and calm wisdom, and, like his philosophical works, are a treasure for the English nation, whose views of life have been built upon them.

What better legacy can one generation leave to another than the sum of its experiences which have an importance extending beyond the fleeting moment, when they are couched in a form which makes them useful for all time? Herein consists the earthly immortality of the soul.

But another possession of still richer contents and of incomparable value was secured to the English nation by the development of the drama, which falls just within this epoch.

In former times there had been theatrical representations in the palaces of the kings and of great men, in the universities, and among judicial and civic societies. They formed part of the enjoyments of the Carnival or contributed to the brilliancy of other festivities; but they did not come into full existence until Elizabeth allowed them to the people by a general permission. In earlier times the scholars of the higher schools or the members of learned fraternities, the artisans in the towns, and the members of the household of great men and princes, had themselves conducted the representation. Actors by profession now arose, who received pay and performed the whole year round.[380] A number of small theatres grew up which, as they charged but low entrance-fees, attracted the crowd, and while they influenced it, were influenced by it in turn. The government could not object to the theatre, as the principal opposition which it had to fear, that of the Puritans, shut itself out from exercising any influence over the drama, owing to the aversion of their party to it. The theatres vied with one another: each sought to bring out something new, and then to keep it to itself. The authors, among whom men of distinguished talent were found, were not unfrequently players as well. All materials from fable and from history, from the whole range of literature, which had been widely extended by native productions and by appropriation from foreign sources, were seized, and by constant elaboration adapted for an appreciative public.

While the town theatres and their productions were thus struggling to rise in mutual rivalry, the genius of William Shakspeare developed itself: at that time he was lost among the crowd of rivals, but his fame has increased from age to age among posterity.

It especially concerns us to notice that he brought on the stage a number of events taken from English history itself. In the praise which has been lavishly bestowed on him, of having rendered them with historical truth, we cannot entirely agree. For who could affirm that his King John and Henry VIII, his Gloucester and Winchester, or even his Maid of Orleans, resemble the originals whose names they bear? The author forms his own conception of the great questions at issue. While he follows the chronicle as closely as possible, and adopts its characteristic traits, he yet assigns to each of the personages a part corresponding to the peculiar view he adopts: he gives life to the action by introducing motives which the historian cannot find or accept: characters which stand close together in tradition, as they probably did in fact, are set apart in his pages, each of them in a separately developed homogeneous existence of its own: natural human motives, which elsewhere appear only in private life, break the continuity of the political action, and thus obtain a twofold dramatic influence. But if deviations from fact are found in individual points, yet the choice of events to be brought upon the stage shows a deep sense of what is historically great. These are almost always situations and entanglements of the most important character: the interference of the spiritual power in an intestine political quarrel in King John: the sudden fall of a firmly seated monarchy as soon as ever it departs from the strict path of right in Richard III: the opposition which a usurping prince, Henry IV, meets with at the hands of the great vassals who have placed him on the throne, and which brings him by incessant anxiety and mental labour to a premature grave: the happy issue of a successful foreign enterprise, the course of which we follow from the determination to prepare for it, to the risk of battle and to final victory; and then again in Henry V and Henry VI, the unhappy position into which a prince not formed by nature to be a ruler falls between violent contending parties, until he envies the homely swain who tends his flocks and lets the years run by in peace: lastly the path of horrible crime which a king's son not destined for the throne has to tread in order to ascend it: all these are great elements in the history of states, and are not only important for England, but are symbolic for all people and their sovereigns. The poet touches on parliamentary or religions questions extremely seldom; and it may be observed that in King John the great movements which led to Magna Charta are as good as left out of sight; on the contrary he lives and moves among the personal contrasts offered by the feudal system, and its mutual rights and duties. Bolingbroke's feeling that though his cousin is King of England yet he is Duke of Lancaster reveals the conception of these rights in the middle ages. The speech which Shakspeare puts into the mouth of the Bishop of Carlisle is applicable to all times. The crown that secures the highest independence appears to the poet the most desirable of all possessions, but the honoured gold consumes him who wears it by the restless care which it brings with it.

Shakspeare depicts the popular storms which are wont to accompany a free constitution in the plots of some of his Roman dramas: of these Plutarch instead of Holinshed furnishes the basis. He is right in taking them from a foreign country: for events nearer to his audience would have roused an interest of a different kind, and yet would not have had so universal a meaning. What could be more dramatic, for example, and at the same time more widely applicable than the contrast between the two speeches, by the first of which Caesar's murder is justified, while by the second the memory of his services is revived? The conception of freedom which the first brings to life is set in opposition to the thought of the virtues and services of the possessor of absolute power, and thrust by them into the background; but these same feelings are the deepest and most active in all ages and among all nations.

But the attested traditions of ancient and modern times do not satisfy the poet in his wish to lay bare the depths of human existence. He takes us into the cloudy regions of British and Northern antiquity only known to fable, in which other contrasts between persons and in public affairs make their appearance. A king comes on the stage who in the plenitude of enjoyment and power is brought by overhasty confidence in his nearest kin to the extremest wretchedness into which men can fall. We see the heir to a throne who, dispossessed of his rights by his own mother and his father's murderer, is directed by mysterious influences to take revenge. We have before us a great nobleman, who by atrocious murders has gained possession of the throne, and is slain in fighting for it: the poet brings us into immediate proximity with the crime, its execution, and its recoil: it seems like an inspiration of hell and of its deceitful prophecies: we wander on the confines of the visible world and of that other world which lies on the other side, but extends over into this, where it forms the border-land between conscious sense and unconscious madness: the abysses of the human breast are opened to view, in which men are chained down and brought to destruction by powers of nature that dwell there unknown to them: all questions about existence and non-existence; about heaven, hell, and earth; about freedom and necessity, are raised in these struggles for the crown. Even the tenderest feelings that rivet human souls to one another he loves to display upon a background of political life. Then we follow him from the cloudy North into sunny Italy. Shakspeare is one of the intellectual powers of nature; he takes away the veil by which the inward springs of action are hidden from the vulgar eye. The extension of the range of human vision over the mysterious being of things which his works offer constitutes them a great historical fact.

We do not here enter upon a discussion of Shakspeare's art and characteristics, of their merits and defects: they were no doubt of a piece with the needs, habits, and mode of thought of his audience; for in what case could there be a stronger reciprocal action between an author and his public, than in that of a young stage depending upon voluntary support? The very absence of conventional rule made it easier to put on the stage a drama by which all that is grandest and mightiest is brought before the eyes as if actually present in that medley of great and small things which is characteristic of human life. Genius is an independent gift of God: whether it is allowed to expand or not depends on the receptivity and taste of its contemporaries.

It is certainly no unimportant circumstance that Shakspeare brought out King Lear soon after the accession of James I, who, like his predecessor, loved the theatre; and that Francis Bacon dedicated to the King his work on the Advancement of Learning in the same year 1605.

Of these two great minds the first bodied forth in imperishable forms the tradition, the poetry, and the view of the world that belonged to the past: the second banished from the domain of science the analogies which they offered, and made a new path for the activity displayed by succeeding centuries in the conquest of nature, and for a new view of the world.

Many others laboured side by side with them. The investigation of nature had already entered on the path indicated by Bacon, and was welcomed with lively interest, especially among the upper classes. Together with Shakspeare the less distinguished poets of the time have always been remembered. In many other departments works of solid value were written which laid a foundation for subsequent studies. Their characteristic feature is the union of the knowledge of particulars, which are grasped in their individuality, with a scientific effort directed towards the universal.

These were the days of calm between the storms; halcyon days, as they have well been named, in which genius had sufficient freedom in determining its own direction to devote itself with all its strength to great creations.

As the German spirit at the epoch of the Reformation, so the English spirit at the beginning of the seventeenth century, took its place among the rival nationalities which stood apart from one another on the domain of Western Christendom, and on whose exertions the advance of the human race depends.

NOTES:

[379] In a letter to Casaubon he says 'vitam et res humanas et medias earum turbas per contemplationes sanas et veras instructiores esse volo.' (Works vi. 51).

[380] Sam. Cox in Nicolas' Memoirs of Hatton, App. XXX.



BOOK V.

DISPUTES WITH PARLIAMENT DURING THE LATER YEARS OF THE REIGN OF JAMES I AND THE EARLIER YEARS OF THE REIGN OF CHARLES I.

It has been my wish hitherto in my narrative to suppress myself as it were, and only to let the events speak and the mighty forces be seen which, arising out of and strengthened by each other's action in the course of centuries, now stood up against one another, and became involved in a stormy contest, which discharged itself in bloody and terrible outbursts, and at the same time was fraught with the decision of questions most important for the European world.

The British islands, which in ancient times had been the extreme border-land, or even beyond the extreme border-land of civilisation, had now become one of its most important centres, and, owing to the union just effected, had taken a grand position among the powers of the world. But it is nevertheless clear at first sight that the constituent elements of the population were far from being completely fused. In many places in the two great islands the old Celtic stock still existed with its original character unaltered. The Germanic race, which certainly had an indubitable preponderance and was sovereign over the other, was split into two different kingdoms, which, despite the union of the two crowns, still remained distinct. The hostility of the two races was increased by a difference of religion, which was closely connected with this hostility though it was not merged in it. As a general rule the men of Celtic extraction remained true to the Roman Catholic faith, while the Germanic race was penetrated by Protestant convictions. Yet there were Protestants among the former, and we know how numerous and how powerful the Catholics were among the latter. Besides this, moreover, opposite tendencies with regard to ecclesiastical forms struck root in the two kingdoms. It was now the principal aim of the family by whose hereditary claim the two kingdoms and the islands had been united, not only to avert the strife of hostile elements, but also to reconcile them with one another, and to unite them in a single commonwealth under its authority, which all acknowledged and which it was desired to extend by such an union. This was a scheme which opened a great prospect, but at the same time involved no inconsiderable danger. Each of the two kingdoms watched jealously over its separate independence. They would not allow the dynasty to bring about a common government, which would thus have set itself up above them, and would have established a new kind of sovereignty over them. While the crown sought to enforce prerogatives which were contested, it had to encounter in both kingdoms the claims advanced by the holders of power in the nation, whom in turn it endeavoured to repress. The quarrel was complicated by a conception of the relations of the crown to foreign powers answering to its new position, and running counter to the national view. At the same time very perceptible analogies to this state of things were offered by the religious wars, which began to convulse the continent more violently than ever, and aroused corresponding feelings in the British isles. The dynasty which tried to appease the prevailing opposition of principles might find that, on the contrary, it rather fomented the strife, and was itself drawn into it. This in fact took place. Springs of action of the most opposite nature and antagonisms growing out of nationality, religion, and politics, which could not be understood apart from one another, co-operated in giving rise to events which do not form a single continuous course of action, but rather present a varied and changing result, due to elements which were grand and full of life, but still waited for their final settlement. It is clear how much this depended on the character and discernment of the king.



CHAPTER I.

JAMES I AND HIS ADMINISTRATION OF DOMESTIC GOVERNMENT.

At one period of his youth James I had been accustomed to vary his application to his lessons with bodily exercises. At that age he had divided his days between learned studies and the chase of the smaller game in Stirling Park, accompanied in both pursuits by friends and comrades of the same age; and he retained during all his life the habits he had then formed.[381] He spent only a couple of months in the year in London, or at Greenwich: he preferred Theobald's, and still more distant country seats like Royston and Newmarket, where he could give himself up to hunting. Even before sunrise he was in motion, surrounded by a small number of companions practised in the chase and selected for that object, amongst whom he was himself one of the most skilful. He thought that he might vie with Henry IV even in field sports; but he was not hindered by his fondness for these amusements from continuing his studies with unwearied application. He was impelled to these not, strictly speaking, by thirst for general knowledge, although he was not deficient in this, but principally by interest in the theological controversies which engaged the attention of the world. He more than once went through the voluminous works of Bellarmin; and, in order to verify the citations, he had the old editions of the Fathers and of the Decrees of the Councils sent him from Cambridge. In this task a learned bishop stood at his side to assist him. He endeavoured with many a work of his own to thrust himself forward in the conflict of opinions. He had the vanity of wishing to be regarded as the most learned man in the two kingdoms, but he could only succeed in passing for a storehouse of all sorts of knowledge; for a man who overestimates himself is commonly punished by disregard even of his real merits. These may not meet with recognition until later times. The writings of James I wore the pedantic dress of the age; but in the midst of scholastic argumentation we yet stumble upon apt thoughts and allusions. The images which he frequently employs have not that delicacy of literary feeling which avoids what is ungraceful, but they are original and sometimes striking in their simplicity. Naturally thorough and acute, he labours not without success to prove to his adversaries the untenableness of the grounds on which they proceed, or the logical fallacy of their conclusions. Here and there we catch the elevated tone of a consciousness that rests upon firm conviction. Even in conversation he sought to turn away from particulars as soon as they came under discussion, and to pass to general considerations, a province in which he felt most at home. In his incidental utterances which have been taken down, he displays sound sense and knowledge of mankind. It is especially worth noticing how he considers virtue and religion to be immediately connected with knowledge—the confusions in the world appear to him for the most part to arise from mediocrity of knowledge[382]—and how highly moreover he estimates a sense for truth. He finds the most material difference between virtue and vice in the greater inward truthfulness of the former. King James delivers many other well-weighed principles of calm wisdom: it is only extraordinary how little his own practice corresponded with them.[383] When in one of his earlier writings we mark the seriousness with which he speaks of the duty incumbent on a king of testing men of talent, of measuring their capacity, and of appointing his servants not according to inclination but according to merit, we should expect to find him in this respect a careful and conscientious ruler. Instead of this we find that he always has favourites, whose merits no one can discover; to whom he stands in the extraordinarily compound relation of father, teacher, and friend, and to whom he allows a share in the power which he possesses. He could never free himself from a ruinous prodigality towards those about him, in spite of resolutions of amendment. How soon were the costly objects flung away which Elizabeth had collected and left behind at her death![384] How many possessions or sources of revenue accruing to the crown did he allow to pass into private hands! Any regulation of his household expenditure was as little to be expected from him in England as in Scotland. Like the princes of the thirteenth century he considered that the royal power assigned him privileges and advantages in which he had a full right to allow his favourites and servants to share. Not seldom the most scandalous abuses were connected with these: for instance, when the court was to be provided with the common necessaries of life during its journeys, it was required that they should be delivered to it at low prices: the servants exacted more supplies than were wanted, and then sold the surplus for their own profit. In grotesque contrast with the disgraceful cupidity of his attendants is the exaggerated conception which James had formed for himself of the ideal importance of the royal authority, which at that time some persons attempted with metaphysical acuteness to lay down almost in the same terms as the attributes of the Deity. He had similar notions about his dignity and the unconditional obligation of his subjects. Even in his Parliamentary speeches he did not refrain from expressing them. He made no secret of them in his life in the country, where he met with unbounded veneration from every one. It was remarked as a point of contrast between him and Elizabeth, that while she had always spoken of the love of her subjects, James on the contrary was always talking of the obedience which they owed him on the ground of divine and human right. And people recognised many other points of contrast between them besides this.[385] When the Queen had formed a resolution, she had never shrunk from the trouble of directing her attention to its execution even in the minutest details. King James did not possess this ardour; for he could not descend from the world of studies and general views in which he lived, to take a searching interest in the business of the government or of justice. He had indeed been known to say that it was annoying to him to hear the arguments on both sides quietly discussed in a question of right submitted to him; for that in that case he was unable to come to any conclusion. The Queen loved gallant men and characters distinguished for boldness: the King was without any sense of military merit, and felt uncomfortable in the presence of men of enterprising spirit. He thought that he could only trust those whom he had chained to himself by favours, presents, and benefits. The Queen served as a pattern of everything which was proper and becoming. James, who restricted himself to the intercourse of a few intimate friends, formed attachments which he thought were to serve as the rule of life. He himself was slovenly; in England, as formerly in Scotland, he neglected his appearance, and indulged in eccentricities which appeared repulsive to others, and were taken amiss from him. Even at that time there was a common feeling in England in favour of what is becoming in good society; and although the feeling was for a long time less deeply engraved on men's minds, and less sensitive to every outrage than it became at a later period, men did not pardon the King for coming into collision with it.

Hence this sovereign appeared in complete contradiction with himself. Careless, petty, and at the same time most unusually proud; a lover of pomp and ceremony, yet fond of solitude and retirement; fiery and at the same time lax; a man of genius and yet pedantic; eager to acquire and reckless in giving away; confidential and imperious; even in little matters of daily life not master of himself, he often did what he would afterwards rather have left undone. With all his knowledge and acuteness, the high flight of his thoughts was often allied to a moral weakness which among all circles did serious injury to that reverence which had hitherto been reserved for those who held the highest authority, and which was partly bestowed even on him. It could not seem likely that such a man should be able to exercise great influence on the fortunes of Britain.

He did however exercise such an influence. He gave the tone to the policy of the Stuart dynasty, and introduced the complication in which the destiny of his descendants was involved.

In the first years of his reign in England, so long as Robert Cecil was alive, King James exercised no deep influence. The Privy Council possessed to the full the authority which belonged to it by old custom. James used simply to confirm the resolutions which were adopted in the bosom of the Council under the influence of the Treasurer: he appears in the reports of ambassadors as a phantom-king, and the minister as the real ruler of the country.[386] After the death of Cecil all this was changed. The King knew the party-divisions which prevailed in the Council: he let its members have their own way, and even connived at the relations they formed with foreign powers for their own interest; but he knew how to hold the balance between them, and in the midst of their divisions to carry out his own views. In those country seats, where no one seemed to take thought for anything except the pleasures of the chase and learned pursuits, the business of the state also was carried on in course of time with ever-increasing ardour.[387] The secretaries about the King were incessantly busy, while the secretaries' chambers in London were idle. Great affairs were generally transacted between the King and the favourite in the ascendant at the time, in conferences to which only a few others were admitted, and sometimes not even these. The King himself decided; and the resolutions which were taken were communicated to the Privy Council, which gradually became accustomed to do nothing more than invest them with the customary forms. If it be asked what the object of the King's efforts was, the answer must be that it was to set the exercise of the supreme power free from the controlling influence of the men of high rank to whom the King had deferred on his first accession. This was generally the aim of the great rulers of that century. This had been the principal end of the policy of Philip II of Spain during his long political life: however the Kings and Queens of France may have differed on other points, they were all, both Henry III and Henry IV, Mary de' Medici while she was regent, and Lewis XIII so soon as he succeeded to the exercise of power, at one in this endeavour. James, who was a new sovereign in one of his kingdoms, and almost always absent from the other, had more difficulties in his way than other monarchs. Wherever it was possible he proceeded with energy and rigour. People were astonished when they reckoned up the number of considerable men who served him in high offices, and were then deprived of them. He laboured incessantly to make way for the impartial exercise of justice in the King's name throughout Scotland, in spite of the privileges of the great Scottish nobles as its administrators. In his ecclesiastical arrangements in that country, he was fond of insisting on his personal wishes: in cases of emergency indeed he made known that all the treasures of India were not of so much value in his eyes as the observance of his ordinances; and he threatened the opponents of the royal will with the King's anger, to which he then gave unbridled indulgence.[388] As he looked upon the Church of England as the best bulwark against the influence of the Jesuits which he feared on the one side, and that of the Puritans which he hated on the other, it was naturally his foremost endeavour to fortify his power, and to unite the two kingdoms with one another by the promotion and spread of the forms of that Church. The essential motive of his system of colonisation in Ireland was the wish to establish the Church, by the aid of which he designed to subjugate or to suppress hostile elements. In England he imparted to it a character still more clerical and removed from Presbyterianism than that which had previously distinguished it: he wished it to be as much withdrawn as possible from the action of civil legislation. But in proportion as he supported himself on the Church he fell out with the Parliament, in which aristocratic tendencies and sympathies with popular rights and with Puritanism were blended with a feeling of independence that was hateful to him. He once said that five hundred kings were assembled there, and he thought that he was fulfilling a duty in resisting them. The most momentous questions affecting constitutional rights in regard to the freedom of elections, freedom of speech, the limits of legislative power, and above all the right of granting taxes, were brought forward under King James. And on every other side he saw himself involved in a struggle with hostile privileges and proud independent powers, from whose ascendancy both in Church and State he was careful to keep himself free, while at the same time he did not proceed to extremities or come to an absolute rupture. He was naturally disposed, and was moreover led by circumstances, to make it a leading rule of conduct, to adhere immovably to principles which he had once espoused, and never to lose sight of them; but, having done this, to appear vacillating and irresolute in matters of detail. His position abroad involved the same apparent contradiction. Placed in the midst of great rival powers, and never completely certain of the obedience of his subjects, he sought to ensure the future for himself by crafty and hesitating conduct. All the world complained that they could not depend on him; each party thought that he was blinded by the other. Those however who knew him more intimately assure us that we must not suppose that he did not apprehend the snares which were laid for him; that if only he were willing to use his eyes, he was as clear-sighted as Argus; that there was no prince in the world who had more insight into affairs or more cleverness in transacting them. They say that if he appeared to lack decision, this arose from his fine perception of the difficulties arising from the nature of things and their necessary consequences; that he was just as slow and circumspect in the execution as he was lively and expeditious in the discussion of measures; that he knew how to moderate his choleric temperament by an intentional reserve,[389] and that even his absence from the capital and his residence in the country were made to second this systematic hesitation; that, if a disputed point awaited decision, instead of attending a meeting with the Privy Councillors who were with him, he would take advantage of a fine day to fly his falcons, for he thought that something might happen in the meanwhile, or some news be brought in, and that the delay of an hour had often ere now been found profitable.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1613.]

It was then through no mere weakness on King James's part that he conceded power to a favourite. In a letter to Robert Carr he describes what he thought he had found in him, viz. a man who did not allow himself to be diverted a hair's-breadth from his service,[390] who never betrayed a secret, and who had nothing before his eyes but the advantage and good name of his sovereign. The greater share that he secured for such a man in the management of affairs the greater the power which he believed that he himself exercised in them. The favourite who depended entirely on the will of the king and knew his secrets, he supposed would be both feared and powerful as a first minister, and would pave the way by his influence upon the state for the carrying out of the views of the sovereign. He thought that he could combine the government of the state and the advance of monarchical ideas, with the comfort of a domestic friendship with an inferior.

James himself brought about the alliance, which we noticed, between Robert Carr, whom he raised to the earldom of Somerset, and the house of Howard. By the union of the hereditary importance of an old family that had almost always held the highest and most influential offices, with the favour of the King which carried with it the fullest authority, a power was in fact consolidated which for a while governed England. Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, the Lord Treasurer Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, and Robert Carr were considered the triumvirs of England.[391] In the midst of this combination appears Lady Frances Howard, the daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, whose divorce from Essex and marriage with Somerset had sealed the political alliance between the two families. She was young and beautiful, with an expression of modesty and gentleness, but at the same time stately and brilliant, a fit creature to move in a society that revelled in the enjoyment of life, in the culture of the century, and in the possession of high rank. But what an abyss of dark impulses and unbridled passion sometimes lies hid under such a shining exterior! The Lady Frances had once sought to draw Prince Henry into her net. Many said that she had employed magic for this purpose; indeed they assumed that the early death of the Prince had been brought on partly by this means.[392] Her marriage with the king's favourite was, if this be true, only a secondary satisfaction of her ambition, but yet a satisfaction which she could not forego. Somerset had an intimate friend, whose advice and services at a former period had been very useful to him, but who opposed this marriage and fell out with him on account of it—his name was Overbury.[393] Lady Frances swore to effect his death. We are revolted at the licence which personal hate enjoyed of misusing the power of the state, when we read that Overbury was first brought to the Tower, and then had creatures who could be relied on set about him there, with whose help the victim was removed out of the way by means of poison. Lady Frances was not the only female poisoner among the higher classes of society. This mode of assassination had spread in England as it had done in Italy and at times in France. In these transactions the most abandoned profligacy allied itself with the brilliancy and the advantages of a high position, but they foreboded a speedy ruin. The authority of Somerset awakened discontent and secret counterplots. He was naturally turbulent, obstinate, and insolent, and had the presumption to behave in his usual manner even to the King whom he set right with an air of intellectual superiority which revived in the King's breast bitter recollection of the years of his childhood. James put up with this conduct for a while; he then, against the will of the favourite, set his hand to raise to a level with him another young man, for whom he entertained a personal liking: at last the misunderstanding came to an open rupture. And at the same time an accident brought to light the circumstances of Overbury's death.[394] All Somerset's old enemies raised their heads again, and proceedings were instituted against him and his wife which terminated in their condemnation.[395] The King pardoned them, to the extent of allowing them to lead a life secluded from the world; they resided afterwards in the same house, but, as far as is known, in complete separation without even seeing one another.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1615.]

Shortly before this event Henry Howard had died. Thomas Howard, whose wife was accused of exercising a pernicious and corrupt influence upon affairs, lost his office of High Treasurer. The place of Carr was occupied by the young man above referred to, whom Carr's adversaries had combined to push forward, George Villiers, a native of Leicestershire, where his family had lived upon their own ancestral property from the time of the Conquest. After the early death of his father, his mother, a Beaumont by birth, a lady still young and full of ambition and knowledge of the world, had educated him not only in the training of English schools but in French ways and manners, and had then brought him to court. He differed from Carr in being naturally good-tempered, and of a courteous obliging disposition, which won the heart of every one.[396] Although no one doubted that he would be spoilt by a higher position, yet people thought that he could never become malicious like Somerset. Lord Pembroke and Archbishop Abbot both gave him a helping hand in his rise: the latter moved the Queen also, although she was not without scruples, to aid in it. Villiers was a man after the King's own heart, well-formed, capable of intellectual cultivation, devoted: in consequence of the favour and confidence of the King the youth, who after a time was created Duke of Buckingham, acquired a ruling position in the English state. The old Admiral Effingham, Earl of Nottingham, resigned his office in order to make room for him: some other high officials were appointed under his influence and according to his views; in a short time the white wands of the royal household and the under-secretaryships and subordinate offices had been transferred to the hands of his adherents and friends.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1617.]

But foreign as well as domestic relations were affected by this change. Somerset had stood in the most confidential relations with the Spanish ambassador: he was accused of having betrayed to him the secrets of the state from his office.[397] His wife, if not himself, was thought to have drawn money from Spain. Probably the intelligence of this behaviour, which came to the King's ears, contributed most to the downfall of Somerset. This event did not in itself involve a change of policy. In the advice which was given to the young favourite from a well-informed source, it is presupposed that the good understanding with Spain would continue: but it was now possible for the adversaries of this power to bestir themselves again. Some of the most conspicuous men of the other party, such as Winwood, the Secretary of State, would even have been glad if open war with Spain had immediately broken out.

The mutual opposition between these powerful tendencies, and the men who made them their own, brought the career of Walter Ralegh to a close.

Somerset was Ralegh's personal enemy, and had gained possession of his best estate. After his fall Ralegh was liberated from the Tower. He still lay under the weight of a sentence which had been pronounced against him on the occasion of the plot which bears his name. He might have purchased its removal; but he was assured by the most influential voices that he had nothing more to fear from it; and he thought that he could apply the money more profitably to the execution of the great design which he had long ago formed, and which he had never for an instant lost sight of during his captivity. A story was then afloat that after the destruction of the kingdom of Peru the descendants of the Incas had founded another kingdom between the Amazon and the Orinoco, the Dorado of the Spaniards. It was Ralegh's ambition to open to his countrymen this region which would be easily accessible from the coasts, of which he had formerly taken possession in the name of England. The old reputation of Ralegh's name procured him sufficient support for his expedition, not only from the merchants, but also from wealthy private individuals; and the King gave him a patent which empowered him to sail to the ports of America still in possession of the heathen, in order to open commercial intercourse with them, and to spread the Christian, especially the Reformed, faith among them.[398] In July 1617 Ralegh set sail from Plymouth harbour for this object, with seven ships of war and a number of small transports carrying about 700 men.

It was presupposed that in such an enterprise all hostilities against the Spaniards would be avoided. When the Spanish ambassador complained of this expedition undertaken by a man who had already on one occasion been very troublesome to the Spanish colonies, the Privy Council answered that Ralegh was pledged by his instructions to do no damage to the Spaniards; and that 'if he violated them his head was there to pay for it.'[399] The King himself repeated this answer to him.