These successive blows at Spain gave England the complete command of the seas. Hence it is not strange that we find the beginnings of colonial enterprise appearing. An attempt to found a settlement on the bleak shore of Newfoundland was a failure. But Sir Walter Raleigh planted a promising colony in the more clement district about the river Roanoke, which he named Virginia, after his mistress, the "Virgin-Queen," as she loved to be called. The first Virginian scheme came to naught—the Indians were hostile, and the improvident settlers planted tobacco instead of corn, and so starved themselves (1590). It was not till seventeen years later that the colony was founded for the second time, and began to flourish. It was from thence that Raleigh brought to England the two products that are always connected with his name, tobacco and potatoes.
Colonial enterprise was accompanied by increased trade with distant lands. The English ships began to appear as far afield as India, China, and even Japan. The merchants who worked the more difficult and dangerous routes, banded themselves into chartered companies, of which the Turkey Company, founded in 1581, the Russian Company, dating from 1566, and the far more famous East India Company (1600) were the most important. By the end of the queen's reign, English commerce had doubled and tripled, and the steady stream of wealth which it poured into the land had done much to end the social troubles and dangers which had marked the middle years of the century.
But nearly all the profit went to the town populations. Ports and markets flourished, merchants and skilled artisans grew rich, and a certain proportion of the wretched vagrant hordes, which had been the terror of the middle years of the century, were absorbed into the new employments which were springing up in the towns. But in the countryside, neither the landholder nor the peasant had nearly such a good position as in the days before the Reformation. The prices both of food and of manufactured goods had gone up about threefold, but rents had not risen perceptibly, and the wages of agricultural labour had only increased about 50 percent. The country gentleman, therefore, was no longer so opulent in comparison to the town-dwelling merchant, and the peasant stood far worse compared with the artisan than in the previous century. We may place in the time of Elizabeth the beginning of that rise of the importance of the urban as compared with the rural population, which has been going on ever since, till, in our own day, England is entirely dominated by her towns. It will be noticed that in the great political struggle of the next century, under the Stuarts, the party which represented the wealth and activity of the cities completely beat that which drew its strength from the peerage and gentry of the purely agricultural districts.
It would be wrong to leave the field of social change without mentioning the celebrated Poor Law of Queen Elizabeth (1601). All attempts to cope with pauperism by voluntary charity having failed, it was finally resolved to make the maintenance of the aged and invalid poor a statutory burden on the parishes. The new law provided that the able-bodied vagrant should be forced to work, and, if he refused, should be imprisoned, but that the impotent and deserving should be fed and housed by overseers, who were authorized to levy rates on the parish for their support. The system seems to have worked well, and we hear no complaints on the subject for three or four generations.
It is most noteworthy to mark the way in which the expansion of England in the spheres of political and commercial greatness was accompanied by a corresponding growth in the realms of intellect. The second half of Elizabeth's reign, a mere period of twenty years, was more fertile in great literary names than the two whole centuries which had preceded it. The excitement of the long religious wars, the sudden opening up of the dark places of the world by the great explorers, the free spirit of individual inquiry which accompanied the growth of Protestantism, all conspired to stir and develop men's minds. The greatest English dramatist, William Shakespeare, born in 1564, and the greatest English philosopher, Francis Bacon, born in 1561, were both children of the days of the long struggle with Spain, and had watched the final crisis of the Armada in their early manhood. Edmund Spenser, a few years older than his mightier contemporaries, shows even more clearly the spirit of the times. All through his lengthy epic of the Faërie Queene he is inspired by the enthusiasm of the struggles of England, and tells in allegory the glories of the great Elizabeth. We have but space to allude to Sir Philip Sydney and his pastoral romances, to Hooker's works on political philosophy, to Marlowe and other dramatists whose fame is half eclipsed by Shakespeare's genius. Never before or since has England produced in a few short years such a crop of great literary names.
The two main subjects of domestic importance in the last years of Elizabeth were the development of fresh forms of division in the English Church, and the troubles caused by the new conquest of Ireland. Both of these movements had begun in the earlier years of the reign, but did not fully expand till its end.
Elizabeth's chief problem in matters religious had for thirty years been that of dealing with the Roman Catholics. But after the death of Mary of Scotland and the defeat of the Armada this question retired somewhat into the background. The vast majority of the Romanists had conformed to the Anglican Church; of the remainder many were loyal, and were therefore tacitly left unharmed by the Government, save when they came into conflict with the Recusancy Laws, as the acts directed against them were called. The small but violent minority who listened to the Jesuits, and were still plotting against the queen, were, on the other hand, treated with the most vehement harshness. At one time and another, a very considerable number of them came to the gallows, though always, as Elizabeth was careful to explain, not as Papists, but as traitors. They were so hated by the nation, who identified them with nothing but assassination plots and intrigues with Spain, that they no longer constituted any danger.
But a new religious problem was growing up. Many of the Protestants who had conformed to the English Church system in Elizabeth's earlier years were growing out of touch with the National Establishment. Constant intercourse with the Huguenots and the Dutch, both of whom professed violent forms of Calvinism, had made them discontented with the ritual and organization of the English Church. Like their Continental friends, they came to hate bishops and canons, vestments and ritual, even things that seem to us parts of the common decencies of church service, such as the surplice in the reading-desk, the usage of kneeling at Holy Communion, the employment of the ring in marriage, and the sign of the cross at baptism. All these remnants of common Christian practice they considered to be "rags of Popery," vain survivals of the old Romanist days. And since they wished to sweep everything away, they were called in derision "Puritans," in allusion to their constant citation of "the pure Gospel."
Elizabeth detested the Puritan habit of mind. She loved decency and order, and she liked the pomp and splendour of the old church services; indeed, she would have gladly kept much that the Anglican Establishment has rejected. She was proud of her position as head and defender of the national Church, and looked upon the bishops as high and important state officials under her. The Puritan desire to abolish the episcopate, to do away with all ritual, to whitewash the churches and break down all their ornaments, seemed to her to savour of anarchic republicanism and rank disloyalty. She was determined that the Puritan, no less than the Romanist, should suffer if he refused to conform to the usages of the national Church. Hence it came that she dealt very hardly with the Puritans, suppressing their religious meetings for "prophesying"—as they called extempore preaching—and treating their pamphlets as seditious. One very scurrilous set of tracts, issued under the name of Martin Mar-prelate, provoked her wrath so much that John Penry, who was responsible for them, was actually hung for treasonable libel. Puritans who kept quiet did not suffer, any more than the Romanists who kept quiet, but those who resisted the queen were treated with a rigour that showed that the day of freedom of conscience was still far away. The discontented admirers of Calvinism still kept within the Church of England,—it was their ambition to change its doctrine, not to quit it; but already in Elizabeth's reign it was obvious that schism between the moderate and the violent parties was inevitable.
The most miserable and melancholy page of the history of Elizabeth's reign is that which is covered by the records of Ireland. We have already mentioned how Henry VIII. had extended the English influence beyond the borders of "the Pale," and done something towards subduing the whole island to obedience. But the most important share of the work was reserved for Elizabeth. Her intent was shown by her Act of 1569, for dividing the whole land into shires, to be ruled by sheriffs on the English plan—a device for destroying the patriarchal authority of the tribal chiefs, who from time immemorial had governed their clans according to old Celtic law. It was not to be expected that any such scheme could be carried out without causing friction with the natives. They were wholly unaccustomed to obey or respect the royal mandate, and acknowledged no authority higher than that of their own chief: English laws and English manners were alike hateful to them. In many districts they were little better than savages; the "wild Irish," as the more uncivilized tribes were called, dwelt in low huts of mud, wore no shoes or head-gear, and were clothed only in a rough kilt and mantle of frieze. They wore their hair long over neck and eyes, went everywhere armed to the teeth, and looked on tribal war and plundering as the sole serious business of life.
To teach such a race to live under the strict English law was an almost impossible task, requiring the utmost patience, and Elizabeth's ministers and officials were not patient. When the chiefs withstood their orders, they declared them traitors, confiscated the lands of whole tribes, and attempted to settle up the annexed districts with English colonists. This, of course, drove the Irish to desperation, and the incomers were soon slain or driven away. In return, the Lord-Deputy of Ireland or one of the "Presidents" of its four provinces would march against the rebels, slay every male person they met, armed or unarmed, and leave the women and children to starve. In this ruthless, devastating war, whole counties were depopulated and left waste, a few survivors only escaping into woods, bogs, or mountains. The worst feature of the struggle was the cruel double-dealing employed against the Irish chiefs; they were often induced to surrender by false promises of pardon, they were caught and slain by treachery, sometimes they were even poisoned. The intractable nature of the rebels explains, but does not excuse, the conduct of the English rulers. The Irish would never keep an oath or observe a peace; they plundered and murdered whenever the Lord-Deputy's eye was not on them, and they were always trying to get aid from Spain.
At first the struggle between English and Irish was purely a matter of race, but the religious element was soon introduced. Protestantism made no head in the country, and in 1579 a Papal Legate, Nicholas Sanders, came over to organize the tribes to unite in defence of the old religion. No man could ever persuade Irish parties to join for long, and Sanders's mission was in that respect a failure. But for the future the war was embittered by religious as well as racial hatred. In 1580 the Pope sent over a body of Italian and Spanish mercenaries to aid the rebels; but this force was blockaded by Lord Grey in its camp at Smerwick, a harbour in Kerry, and every man was put to the sword. At a later date Philip of Spain sent similar and equally ineffective help.
The two chief struggles of the Irish against the establishment of the English rule were that of the tribes of Munster in 1578-83, and that of the tribes of Ulster in 1595-1601. The former was led by Garrett Fitzgerald, Earl of Desmond, the greatest lord of the South, the descendant of one of those Anglo-Norman families which had become more Irish than the Irish themselves. In his desperate struggle with Lord-Deputy Grey and the English colonists in Munster, he saw all the land from Galway to Waterford harried into a wilderness, and was killed at last as a fugitive in the hills.
The Ulster rebellion of Hugh O'Neil, Earl of Tyrone, the head of the greatest of the native Irish septs, was far more formidable than that of the Fitzgeralds. The English could for a long time do nothing against him. In 1598 he defeated an army of 5000 men on the Blackwater and slew its leader, Sir Henry Bagenal, and most of his followers. Tyrone sent for aid to Spain, and so moved Queen Elizabeth's fears that she despatched against him the largest English force that ever went over-sea in her reign. An army of 20,000 men was placed under Robert Devereux, the young Earl of Essex, whom the queen loved most of all men in her later years, and sent over to Dublin. Essex, though he had won much credit for courage in Holland, and at the capture of Cadiz, was not a great general. He pacified Central and Southern Ireland, but did not succeed in crushing Tyrone. It would seem that he was disgusted at the cruelty and treachery of his predecessors in the government of Ireland, and wished to admit the rebels to submission on easy terms. At any rate, he made a truce with Tyrone in 1600, promising that the queen should grant him toleration in matters of religion, and leave him his earldom. Essex returned to England to get these terms ratified, but was received very coldly by his mistress and her council, who had sent him to Ireland to suppress, not to condone, the rebellion. His treaty was not confirmed, and the war with Tyrone went on. The earl got 7000 men from Spain, and ravaged all Central Ireland, till he was defeated by Lord Montjoy in an attempt to raise the siege of Kinsale (1601). In the next year he made complete submission to the queen, and was pardoned and given back most of his Ulster lands. But the eight years of war had made Northern Ireland a desert, and the power of the O'Neils was almost broken.
Meanwhile the short stay of Essex in Ireland had led to a strange tragedy in London. The young earl had been so much favoured by the queen in earlier years, that he could not brook the rebuke that fell upon him for his dealings with Tyrone. Presuming on the almost doting fondness which his sovereign had shown for him, the headstrong young man plunged into seditious courses. He swore that his enemies in the council had calumniated him to the queen, and that he would be revenged on them and drive them out of office. With this object he gathered many of the Puritan party about him—for he was a strong Protestant—and resolved to overturn the ministry by force. He caught the Lord Chancellor, and locked him up, and then sallied out armed into the streets of London with a band of his friends, calling on the people to rise and deliver the queen from false councillors. But he had counted too much on his popularity; no one joined him, and he was apprehended and put in prison.
Elizabeth was much enraged with her former favourite, and allowed his enemies to persuade her into permitting him to be tried and executed for treason. When he was dead she bitterly regretted him (February, 1601).
The great queen was now near her end. All her contemporaries, both friends and foes, had passed away already. Philip of Spain had died, a prey to religious melancholy, and racked by a loathsome disease, in 1598. That same year saw the end of the great minister, William Cecil, Lord Burleigh. His colleague Walsingham had sunk into the grave some years earlier, in 1590. Leicester, whom the queen had loved till his death-day, had perished of a fever in 1588, the year of the Armada. A younger generation had arisen, which only knew Elizabeth as an old woman, and forgot her brilliant youth. To them the vivacity and love of pleasure which she displayed on the verge of her seventieth year seemed abnormal and even unseemly.
To the last she kept her talent for dealing with men. There was no greater instance of her cleverness shown in all her life than her management of her Parliament in 1601. The Commons had been growing more resolute and strong-willed as the queen grew older, and though Elizabeth often chid them, and sometimes even imprisoned members who displeased her, yet she knew when to yield with a good grace. The Parliament of 1601 was raging against "monopolies"—grants under the royal seal to individuals, permitting them to be the sole vendors or manufacturers of certain articles of trade. Seeing their resolution, Elizabeth came down in person to the House, and addressed the members at length, so cleverly that she persuaded them that she was as much opposed to the abuse as they themselves, and won enormous applause when she announced that all monopolies were at once to be withdrawn and made illegal.
Eighteen months after this strange scene Elizabeth died, in her seventy-first year. On her death-bed she assented to the designation of James of Scotland as her successor—a thing she would never suffer before, for she held that "an expectant heir is like a coffin always in sight."
In spite of the many unamiable points in her character, Elizabeth was always liked by her subjects, and well deserved their liking. She had guided England through forty-five most troublous years, and left her subjects wealthy, prosperous, and contented. Her failures had always been upon the side of caution, and such mistakes are the easiest to repair and the soonest forgotten. Both in her own day and in ages to come, she received the credit for all the progress and prosperity of her reign. The nation, groaning under the unwisdom of the Stuarts, cried in vain for a renewal of "the days of good Queen Bess." The modern historian, when he recounts the great deeds of the Englishmen of the latter half of the sixteenth century, invariably speaks of the "Elizabethan age." Nor is this wrong. When we reflect on the evils which a less capable sovereign might have brought upon the realm in that time of storm and stress, we may well give her due meed of thanks to the cautious, politic, unscrupulous queen, who left such peace and prosperity behind her.
FOOTNOTE:
| James IV. | = | Margaret of England | = | Earl of Angus. |
| James V. | Margaret Countess of Lennox. |
| Mary Queen of Scots. |
Henry Lord Darnley. |
With the death of Elizabeth the greatness of England departed. From 1603 to 1688 she counted for little in the Councils of Europe, save indeed during the ten years of Cromwell's rule. She became the tool of foreign powers, sometimes because her rulers were duped, sometimes because they deliberately sold themselves to the stranger.
James of Scotland, the old queen's legitimate heir, was a man of thirty-seven when the throne fell to him. He had lived an unhappy life in his northern realm, buffeted to and fro by unruly nobles and domineering ministers of the Scottish Kirk. But most of his troubles had been the results of his own failings. Of all the kings who ever ruled these realms, he is almost the only one of whom it can be said that he was a coward. From this vice sprang his other defects. Like all cowards, he was suspicious, capable of any cruelty against those whom he dreaded, prone always to lean on some stronger man, who would bear his responsibility for him. He chose these favourites with the rankest folly: Arran and Lennox, who were the minions of his youth while yet he reigned in Scotland alone, and Rochester and Buckingham, who ruled his riper age, were—all four—arrogant, vicious, scheming adventurers. They had nothing to recommend them save a handsome person and a fluent and flattering tongue. Each in his turn domineered over his doting master, and made himself a byword for insolence and self-seeking.
James was unfortunate in his outer man. He was ill-made, corpulent, and weak-kneed; though his face was not unpleasing, his speech was marred by a tongue too large for his mouth. But he was grossly and ridiculously vain and conceited. He possessed a certain cleverness of a limited kind, and he was well versed in book-learning. But he imagined that learning was wisdom, and loved to pose as the wisest of mankind—the British Solomon, as his favourites were wont to call him.
This stuttering, shambling pedant now mounted the throne of the politic Elizabeth, and in a reign of twenty-two years contrived to wreck the strong position which the royal power held in England, and to make a revolution inevitable. The crash would have come in his own day, but for one thing—James, as we have said before, was a coward, and had not the courage to fight when affairs came to a crisis.
James based his preposterous claims to override the nation's will and the rights of Parliament on two theories, which represented to him the true foundations of all royal power. The first was his "prerogative," or power to dispense with ordinary laws and customs at his good pleasure. He saw that the Tudors had often gone beyond the letter of the mediaeval constitution, and thought that their action gave him a full precedent for similar encroachment. He forgot two things: first, that Henry VIII. and Elizabeth had lived in times of storm and stress, when firm governance was all-important, and much would be forgiven to a strong ruler; and secondly, that the two great Tudors had always taken the people into their confidence, and been careful to get popular support for their doings. He himself tried to impose an unpopular policy on an unwilling people, and never condescended to explain his motives.
The second pillar of the king's policy was the theory of "divine hereditary kingship"—a notion entirely opposed to the old English idea that the crown was elective. James chose to ignore such precedents as the elections of Henry IV. or Henry VII., where the natural heir had been passed over, and wished his subjects to believe that strict hereditary succession was the only title to the throne, and that nothing could justify or legalize any divergence from it. He claimed that kings derived their right to rule from Heaven, not from any choice by their subjects; hence it was impious as well as disloyal to criticize or disobey the king's commands. James found many of the clergy who were ready to accept this theory, partly because they thought they could justify it from the Scriptures, partly because they felt that the orderly governance of the Anglican Church was bound up with the royal supremacy. In Elizabeth's time it had been the queen's guiding and restraining hand which had prevented the nation from lapsing into the anarchical misgovernment which characterized Continental Protestantism.
When the new king crossed the Tweed in April, 1603, he was well received in England, where his weaknesses were as yet little known. Every one was glad to see the succession question settled without a war, and every party hoped to gain his favour. The Puritans trusted that a prince reared in the Calvinism of the Scotch Kirk would do much for them. The Romanists dreamed that the son of Mary of Scotland would tolerate his mother's faith. The supporters of the Anglican establishment thought that the king must needs become a good Churchman when he realized the position that awaited him as Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the spiritual hierarchy that embraced nine-tenths of the nation.
James himself had no doubt as to his future behaviour. There was nothing that pleased him better than the idea of becoming the head of the English Church. In Scotland he had learnt to hate the dictatorial manners of the presbyters of the Kirk, and their constant interference in politics. The well-ordered and obedient organization which he found south of the Tweed, where every cleric, from the archbishop to the curate, looked for guidance to the sovereign, filled him with joy and admiration. He soon became the zealous patron of the Establishment; he looked upon it as the bulwark of the throne, the best defence against disloyalty and anarchy. "No bishop, no king," was his answer to the Puritans, who strove to persuade him into abolishing episcopacy, and establishing a Presbyterian form of Church government.
Before James had been for a year on the English throne, he had shown his intentions in the matter of Church government. On his first arrival the Puritan party, both the Dissenters and the Conformists within the National Church, presented him with the "Millenary Petition," [35] in which they complained that they were "overburdened with human rites and ceremonies" prescribed in the Prayer-book, and besought him to abolish episcopacy and purify the land from the remnants of Popish superstition. James invited representative Puritan ministers to meet him at the Hampton Court Conference (January, 1604), where they were to dispute with some of his bishops. But the Conference was a mere farce; the king browbeat and hectored the ministers, and declared himself wholly convinced by the arguments of the Anglican clergy. He announced his full approval of the existing Church system, and that he would have "one doctrine, one discipline, one religion in substance and ceremony." The Puritans went away in sore displeasure, and from that moment the large number of them who had hitherto continued in the body of the National Church, began to desert it and to form various schismatic sects. We find it hard to-day to realize the fanatical scruples which made them see snares in a ring or a surplice, or deem that Episcopacy was a Romish invention; but we can understand that the real bent of their minds was directed against dictation in matters of conscience, and the denial of the right of private judgment. With their theory we may sympathize, but the actual points on which they chose to secede from the ancient Church of the land were miserably inadequate to justify schism. It is fair to add, however, that there was much to repel men of conscience and piety in the condition of the National Church. The bishops showed an unworthy subservience to the throne, which seemed peculiarly disgusting when the crown was worn by such a self-satisfied pedant as King James. A glance at the fulsome praises heaped upon him in the preface to the Authorized Version of the Bible will sufficiently serve to make this plain.
Almost the only sign of sagacity which the new king showed was that he kept in office, as his chief minister, Robert, the younger Cecil, son of the great Lord Burleigh. James made him Earl of Salisbury, and, first as Secretary of State and afterwards as Lord Treasurer, Cecil kept a firm hand on the reins of power, and restrained many of his master's follies. It was not till he died, in 1612, that the king was able to display his own unwisdom in its full development.
Hence it comes that the nine years 1602-1611 are comparatively uneventful, and show little of the king's worst foibles. A few incidents only deserve mention in this period. Cobham's Plot, which followed almost immediately on the king's accession, was a most mysterious business. It was said that Lord Cobham, Lord Grey, Sir Walter Raleigh the explorer, and certain others, all enemies of Robert Cecil, had formed a plot to kidnap the king, and force him to dismiss his minister—perhaps, even to depose him in favour of his cousin, Arabella Stuart, the child of his father's brother. [36] The whole matter is so dark that it is hard to make out what the conspirators desired, or even whether they conspired at all. Both extreme Puritans and fanatical Roman Catholics are said to have been engaged in the plot, and the wildest aims were ascribed to them. It is only certain that James and Cecil used the affair as a means for crushing those whom they feared. The unfortunate Arabella Stuart was put in confinement for the rest of her life; Raleigh languished twelve years in the Tower; and Grey and Cobham also suffered long imprisonment.
A clearer but not less strange matter was the famous Gunpowder Treason of 1605. A band of fanatical Catholics, disgusted that the king refused to grant the toleration they had expected, or to repeal the Recusancy laws, formed a diabolical scheme for murdering, not only James himself, but his sons and all the chief men of the realm. Their chiefs were Thomas Percy, a relative of the Earl of Northumberland, Catesby, Guy Fawkes, and Sir Everard Digby. Their plan was to hire a cellar which lay under the Houses of Parliament, fill it with barrels of gunpowder, and fire the train when the king was opening Parliament on the 5th of November. Lords, Commons, princes, and king would thus perish in a common disaster, while a Catholic rising and a Spanish invasion were to follow. Garnet, the Provincial of the Jesuits, was informed of the scheme by the conspirators, and kept it secret.
A mere chance saved king and Parliament. When all was ready, and the cellar was charged with its murderous contents, one of the conspirators wrote an anonymous letter to his cousin, Lord Monteagle, a Catholic peer, imploring him not to attend on the 5th of November, on account of a great blow that was impending. Monteagle sent the letter to the king, whose suspicious mind—it will be remembered that his own father had perished by gunpowder—soon read the secret. The cellars were searched on the night of November 4, and Guy Fawkes, who was to fire the train, was discovered lurking there with his great hoard of powder. On the news of his arrest the other conspirators took arms, but their preparations had been ridiculously inadequate for their end, and they were easily hunted down and slain. Fawkes and Garnet the Jesuit were tortured, and then hung, drawn, and quartered. The only result of the Gunpowder Treason was to make the lot of the English Romanists much harder than before, for the nation thought that most of them had been implicated in the plot, and Parliament greatly increased the harshness of the Recusancy laws.
The persecuting of Romanists, however, was about the only point on which the king and Parliament could agree. From the very first, James and the House of Commons were at odds on almost every matter which they had to discuss. When peace was made with Spain in 1604, the House was ill pleased; for a whole generation of Englishmen had grown up who looked upon war with King Philip as one of the natural conditions of life, and thought that the Spanish colonies in America existed solely for the purpose of being plundered by English buccaneers. James, on the other hand, hated all wars with a coward's hatred, and had a great respect for the ancient greatness and autocratic sovereignty of the Spanish kings. Taxation furnished another fertile source of dispute: the court was numerous, profligate, and wasteful, and, in spite of Cecil's economy, the king piled up a mountain of debts, and exceeded his revenue year by year. To fill his purse, he raised the scale of the customs-duties without the consent of Parliament (1608), and then refrained from calling the Houses together for two years. But in 1610 his increasing necessities forced him to summon them, and a sharp dispute about the legality of the increased customs at once began. It grew so bitter that the king dismissed the Parliament without having obtained the money that he wanted, and was constrained to go on accumulating unpaid debts (1611).
Next year the great minister, Robert Cecil, died, and James was left to govern for himself as best he might. A great change was at once apparent. Its chief symptom was the beginning of the system of government by royal favourites. Hitherto James had heaped wealth and favour on his minions, but had not dared to entrust them with affairs of state, so great was his fear of his able Lord Treasurer. When Salisbury was gone, the king fell entirely into the hands of the favourite of the hour, a young Scot named Robert Ker, who had been his page. James made him Viscount Rochester, put him in the Privy Council, and entrusted him with all his confidential business. Ker was a worthless adventurer, whose good looks and ready tongue were his only stock-in-trade. He used his influence purely for personal ends—to fill his pocket and indulge his taste for ostentation. When he meddled in politics, it was to encourage the king in courses which were hateful to the nation—in forming an alliance with Spain, and in persisting in illegal taxation.
Ker's domination in the king's council lasted about three years, and was ended by a shocking crime, which did more to lower the court and the king in the eyes of the people than anything which had yet occurred since James's accession. Ker had become enamoured of Frances Howard, the wife of the young Earl of Essex, son of Elizabeth's unfortunate favourite. The countess returned his passion, became his paramour, and agreed to procure her divorce from her husband by bringing scandalous and indelicate accusations against Essex. But a certain Sir Thomas Overbury, an unscrupulous courtier, who was in the secret of this wicked plot, set himself to hinder the marriage, and threatened to make public what he knew. Rochester got him thrown into the Tower, and there he was poisoned by the revengeful countess, with or without the guilty knowledge of the favourite. Lady Essex brought her suit against her husband, and as the king interfered with the course of justice in her favour, the divorce was accomplished. The guilty pair were married with great state, and James raised Rochester to the earldom of Somerset to celebrate the occasion. But murder will out. Two years later the tale of Overbury's assassination got abroad, and the king learnt the story of his favourite's dishonour. James was not quite dead to all feelings of right and wrong, the revelation greatly shocked him, and, moreover, he was growing tired of Somerset's arrogance and dictatorial ways. Hence it came about that he suffered the law to take its course. The earl and countess were tried and convicted of having poisoned Overbury; their lives were spared, but they suffered long imprisonment, and disappeared into obscurity. It is said that Somerset saved his neck by threatening to reveal some disgraceful secret of the king's, of which he was possessed (1616).
It might have been supposed that Ker's scandalous end would have weaned King James from his propensity for favourites. But this was not so. He replaced the Earl of Somerset by another minion, George Villiers, the son of a Leicestershire squire. Villiers was as handsome and insinuating as Ker, and possessed far greater ability. He not only acquired an entire ascendency over James himself, but mastered as completely the heir to the throne, Prince Charles. The king's elder son, Henry, Prince of Wales, had died four years before, during Somerset's day of power. He had been a very promising youth, and hated his father's ways; hence some suspected that Somerset had poisoned him, though there seems to have been no foundation for the charge.
For the nine years which James had yet to live, he was completely in the hands of Villiers. The young favourite was vain, arrogant, and ambitious; but worse men than he have lived; he had the saving vice of pride, which kept him from many of the meaner sins. He was not cruel, avaricious, or revengeful, as his predecessor Somerset had been. But his influence on the realm was all in the direction of evil; in his headstrong self-confidence, he thought that he was a Heaven-sent statesman, and led his weak and doting master into many follies.
The days of his domination are filled with the miserable story of the "Spanish Marriage." King James, as we have already had to remark, was filled with a great respect for the ancient power and wealth of Spain, and never realized how much the foundations of its strength had been sapped by the long and ruinous Dutch and English wars of Philip II. Spain was at this moment represented by a very able ambassador, Sarmiento, Count of Gondomar, who systematically misled the king as to the views and intentions of his master, Philip III. His influence induced James to look to Spanish aid for a solution of all his financial troubles, for he thought that, in return for his alliance, Spain would lend or give him money to cover his annual deficits.
This beginning of subservience to Spain is marked by one of the blackest spots in the reign of James—the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh. The old explorer had now lingered for twelve years in the Tower, but got a temporary release by persuading James that he knew of rich gold-mines in Guiana, on the banks of the Orinoco, from which he could bring back a great ransom. He was permitted to sail, but the king informed Gondomar of the matter. Now, the Spaniards still looked on any interference in America as a trespass on their monopoly of the trade of the West. The ambassador sent news of Raleigh's approach to the governors of the West Indies, and preparations were made to give him a hot reception. When he reached South America, Sir Walter was easily drawn into hostilities with the Spaniards, and had to return, after failing to force his way up the Orinoco. When he reached England he was arrested, at Gondomar's request, for having engaged in fighting with a friendly power. But instead of trying him for this misdemeanour, the dastardly king beheaded him without giving him a hearing or an opportunity of defence, on the old charge of having been engaged in Cobham's Plot [37] fifteen years before. He fell a victim to Spanish resentment, not to any crime committed against his own king (1618).
The year of Raleigh's death saw the opening of a new set of troubles for King James. He had married his daughter Elizabeth to Frederic of the Palatinate, the most rash and venturesome of the Protestant princes of Germany. When the great religious struggle known as the Thirty Years' War broke out, Frederic took the lead among the Protestants, and seized the kingdom of Bohemia, one of the possessions of the Emperor Ferdinand, the bigoted and fanatical head of the Romanist party (1619). Frederic, however, was beaten, and lost not only Bohemia, but his own dominions in the Palatinate (1620). Concerned to see his favourite daughter lose her crown and lands, King James conceived a hope that he might induce his Spanish friends to restore his son-in-law to his Rhenish electorate. He forgot that Philip III., as a devout Catholic, was much pleased to see the headstrong Frederic stripped of house and home. But while intriguing with Spain, James, with great duplicity, tried to persuade his subjects that he was ready to make war on the Emperor, in order to restore the elector by force of arms.
A Parliament was again summoned. It gave the king a liberal grant for the proposed war in Germany, but it then proceeded to investigate abuses. The most notable scandal which it discovered was that the Lord Chancellor—the great philosopher, Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam—had been accepting gifts from corrupt suitors in his court—a misdemeanour so flagrant that it struck at the roots of all justice. Bacon pleaded guilty, and was removed from office (1621). The Parliament then began to discuss internal politics, praying for a more rigorous suppression of the Jesuits, and petitioning the king to marry his heir to a Protestant princess; for it was already rumoured that a Spanish match was being proposed for Prince Charles. After much angry debating on what he considered an invasion of his prerogative, James had to dismiss the two Houses (1622).
The reports which had reached the ears of the Commons about the marriage of the Prince of Wales were quite correct. The king and Villiers, who had lately been created Earl of Buckingham, had formed a chimerical plan for persuading the King of Spain to restore the elector to the Palatinate, by means of a marriage treaty. If Prince Charles were to offer to wed one of the Infantas, the sisters of Philip IV., they thought that the Spaniard would interfere in Germany in order to oblige his brother-in-law. Moreover, the rich dowry of the princess would serve to pay some of James's debts. They forgot that the King of Spain had no interest or inducement to attack the Emperor, his own cousin and co-religionist, and that the only thing which Philip really wanted to secure by a treaty with England, was toleration for the English Catholics.
From this foolish plan sprang the rash expedition of Buckingham and Prince Charles to Madrid. Thinking to win the consent of the Spanish king by appearing in person, and using the weight of his own attractions, Buckingham persuaded the prince to accompany him, and crossed the Channel. Charles seems to have formed a romantic affection, on hearsay evidence, for the Infanta, and followed his mentor with enthusiasm. They travelled rapidly and in disguise, and were able to present themselves at Madrid before the Spanish court had any idea of their having started. Their presence put Philip IV. in no small perplexity, for he had not really intended to complete the match. His sister, the Infanta Maria, was dismayed at the prince's arrival, and threatened to retire into a nunnery rather than marry him. There followed an interminable series of negotiations, in which the Spaniards attempted to scare off the unwelcome suitor, by proposing hard conditions to him. But Charles at once accepted every proposal made, even offering to grant complete toleration to Catholics in England, which he knew that the nation and Parliament would never permit. Buckingham, meanwhile, made himself much hated by the haughty Spanish court, owing to his absurd arrogance and self-complacency. At last, discovering that the Spaniards did not mean business, he persuaded the prince to take a ceremonious leave of King Philip, and brought him back to England. When they were well out of Spain, they sent back an intimation that nothing more could be done till the king promised to recover the Palatinate for the Elector Frederic—a polite way of breaking off the match.
Highly indignant with the Spanish court for its blindness to his own charms and attractions, the headstrong Buckingham resolved to revenge himself on them. This was most easily done by forming an alliance with France, the eternal enemy of Spain. Accordingly, the favourite, on his return to England, began to urge the king and the prince to declare war on Philip IV., and to take up the cause of Lewis XIII. For once Buckingham had public opinion on his side, for war with Spain was always popular in England. The Parliament voted liberal subsidies for an army to be sent to Germany, and a French alliance was easily concluded. Prince Charles, quite cured of his infatuation for the Infanta, offered his hand to Henrietta Maria, the sister of Lewis XIII. She was at once betrothed to him, and the preliminaries for marriage were in progress when the old king suddenly died—worn out by slothful living and hard drinking, to which he had grown much addicted of late years (February, 1625).
In two spheres only was the inglorious reign of James I. redeemed by some measure of success. The first was the realm of trade and colonial expansion. All through the early years of the century, English commerce was steadily growing, especially with the remote regions of Africa, China, India, and the Spice Islands. At the same time, the first successful English colonies were planted. The second plantation of Virginia was completed in 1607, the Bermudas were settled in 1616, Barbados in 1605. The far more important New England colonies date from 1620-28; they were founded by groups of nonconformist Puritans, who left their native country to escape the harassing laws against schism to which they found themselves subject. It is only fair to add that, when they had settled down in North America, they established a church system quite as intolerant and oppressive as that from which they had fled.
The other sphere in which the reign of James showed a certain success was Ireland. When O'Neil, Earl of Tyrone, the old adversary of Queen Elizabeth, rebelled for a second time in 1607, his dominions in Ulster were confiscated, and carefully portioned out among English and Scotch settlers, who undertook never to resell them to natives. Many thousands of colonists crossed St. George's Channel, and by 1625 Ulster had a large and firmly rooted Protestant population, though its prosperity was founded on the systematic oppression of the native Irish.
FOOTNOTES:
So called because it was supposed to be signed by 1000 ministers. As a matter of fact, it bore less than 800 names.
| Margaret, Countess of Lenox. | |||||||||
| Henry, Lord Darnley = Mary, Queen of Scots. | Charles, Earl of Lennox. | ||||||||
| James VI. and I. | Arabella Stuart. | ||||||||