Hume says, "Charles himself was certainly deceived by Buckingham, when he corroborated his favourite's narrative by his testimony." But no assertion can be more gratuitous; the supposition indeed is impossible.

[640] Parl. Hist. 193. If the following letter is accurate, the privy-council themselves were against this dissolution: "Yesterday the Lords sitting in council at Whitehall to argue whether the parliament should be dissolved or not, were all with one voice against the dissolution of it; and to-day, when the lord keeper drew out the commission to have read it, they sent four of their own body to his majesty to let him know how dangerous this abruption would be to the state, and beseech him the parliament might sit but two days—he answered not a minute."—15 June, 1626. Mede's Letters, ubi supra. The author expresses great alarm at what might be the consequence of this step. Mede ascribes this to the council; but others, perhaps more probably, to the house of peers. The king's expression "not a minute" is mentioned by several writers.

[641] Rushworth, Kennet.

[642] Mede's Letters—"On Monday the judges sat in Westminster-hall to persuade the people to pay subsidies; but there arose a great tumultuous shout amongst them: 'A parliament! a parliament! else no subsidies!' The levying of the subsidies, verbally granted in parliament, being propounded to the subsidy men in Westminster, all of them, saving some thirty among five thousand (and they all the king's servants), cried 'A parliament! a parliament!' etc. The same was done in Middlesex on Monday also, in five or six places, but far more are said to have refused the grant. At Hicks's hall the men of Middlesex assembled there, when they had heard a speech for the purpose, made their obeisance; and so went out without any answer affirmative or negative. In Kent the whole county denied, saying that subsidies were matters of too high a nature for them to meddle withal, and that they durst not deal therewith, lest, hereafter they might be called in question." July 22, et post. In Harleian MSS. xxxvii. fol. 192, we find a letter from the king to the deputy lieutenant and justices of every county, informing them that he had dissolved the last parliament because the disordered passion of some members of that house, contrary to the good inclination of the greater and wiser sort of them, had frustrated the grant of four subsidies, and three-fifteenths, where they had promised; he therefore enjoins the deputy lieutenants to cause all the troops and bands of the county to be mustered, trained, and ready to march, as he is threatened with invasion; that the justices do divide the county into districts, and appoint in each able persons to collect and receive moneys, promising the parties to employ them in the common defence; to send a list of those who contribute and those who refuse, "that we may hereby be informed who are well affected to our service, and who are otherwise." July 7, 1626. It is evident that the pretext of invasion, which was utterly improbable, was made use of in order to shelter the king's illegal proceedings.

[643] Rushworth's Abr. i. 270.

[644] The 321st volume of Hargrave MSS. p. 300, contains minutes of a debate at the council-table during the interval between the second and third parliaments of Charles, taken by a counsellor. It was proposed to lay an excise on beer; others suggested that it should be on malt, on account of what was brewed in private houses. It was then debated "how to overcome difficulties, whether by persuasion or force. Persuasion, it was thought, would not gain it; and for judicial courses, it would not hold against the subject that would stand upon the right of his own property, and against the fundamental constitutions of the kingdom. The last resort was to a proclamation; for in star-chamber it might be punishable, and thereupon it rested." There follows much more; it seemed to be agreed that there was such a necessity as might justify the imposition; yet a sort of reluctance is visible even among these timid counsellors. The king pressed it forward much. In the same volume (p. 393) we find other proceedings at the council-table, whereof the subject was, the censuring or punishing of some one who had refused to contribute to the loan of 1626 on the ground of its illegality. The highest language is held by some of the conclave in this debate.

Mr. D'Israeli has collected from the same copious reservoir, the manuscripts of the British Museum, several more illustrations, both of the arbitrary proceedings of the council, and of the bold spirit with which they were resisted. Curiosities of Literature, New Series, iii. 381. But this ingenious author is too much imbued with "the monstrous faith of many made for one," and sets the private feelings of Charles for an unworthy and dangerous minion, above the liberties and interests of the nation.

[645] Rushworth, Kennet.

[646] See above, in chap. v. Coke himself, while chief justice, had held that one committed by the privy-council was not bailable by any court in England. Parl. Hist. 310. He had nothing to say when pressed with this in the next parliament, but that he had misgrounded his opinion upon a certain precedent, which being nothing to the purpose, he was now assured his opinion was as little to the purpose. Id. 325; State Trials, iii. 81.

[647] State Trials, iii. 1-234; Parl. Hist. 246, 259, etc.; Rushworth.

[648] At the council-table, some proposing a parliament, the king said, he did abominate the name. Mede's Letters, 30th Sept. 1626.

[649] Rushworth; Mede's Letters in Harl. MSS. passim.

[650] Rushworth's Abr. i. 304; Cabala, part ii. 217. See what is said of this by Mr. Brodie, ii. 158.

[651] A commission addressed to Lord Wimbledon, 28th Dec. 1625, empowers him to proceed against soldiers or dissolute persons joining with them, who should commit any robberies, etc., which by martial law ought to be punished with death, by such summary course as is agreeable to martial law, etc. Rymer, xviii. 254. Another, in 1626, may be found. P. 763. It is unnecessary to point out how unlike these commissions are to our present mutiny-bills.

[652] Bishop Williams, as we are informed by his biographer, though he promoted the petition of right, stickled for the additional clause adopted by the Lords, reserving the king's sovereign power; which very justly exposed him to suspicion of being corrupted. For that he was so is most evident by what follows; where we are told that he had an interview with the Duke of Buckingham, when they were reconciled; and "his grace had the bishop's consent with a little asking, that he would be his grace's faithful servant in the next session of parliament, and was allowed to hold up a seeming enmity, and his own popular estimation, that he might the sooner do the work." Hacket's Life of Williams, pp. 77, 80. With such instances of baseness and treachery in the public men of this age, surely the distrust of the Commons was not so extravagant as the school of Hume pretend.

[653] The debates and conferences on this momentous subject, especially on the article of the habeas corpus, occupy near two hundred columns in the New Parliamentary History, to which I refer the reader.

In one of these conferences, the Lords, observing what a prodigious weight of legal ability was arrayed on the side of the petition, very fairly determined to hear counsel for the Crown. One of these, Serjeant Ashley, having argued in behalf of the prerogative in a high tone, such as had been usual in the late reign, was ordered into custody; and the Lords assured the other house, that he had no authority from them for what he had said. Id. 327. A remarkable proof of the rapid growth of popular principles!

[654] Hargrave MSS. xxxii. 97.

[655] Parl. Hist. 436.

[656] Stat. 3 Car. I. c. 1. Hume has printed in a note the whole statute with the preamble, which I omit for the sake of brevity, and because it may be found in so common a book.

[657] Parl. Hist. 431.

[658] Rushworth Abr. i. 409.

[659] Parl. Hist. 441, etc.

[660] Cawdrey's Case, 5 Reports; Cro. Jac. 37; Neal, p. 432. The latter says, above three hundred were deprived; but Collier reduces them to forty-nine. P. 687. The former writer states the nonconformist ministers at this time in twenty-four counties to have been 754; of course the whole number was much greater. P. 434. This minority was considerable; but it is chiefly to be noticed, that it contained the more exemplary portion of the clergy; no scandalous or absolutely illiterate incumbent, of whom there was a very large number, being a nonconformist. This general enforcement of conformity, however it might compel the majority's obedience, rendered the separation of the incompliant more decided. Neal, 446. Many retired to Holland, especially of the Brownist, or Independent denomination. Id. 436. And Bancroft, like his successor Laud, interfered to stop some who were setting out for Virginia. Id. 454.

[661] Lord Bacon, in his advertisement respecting the Controversies of the Church of England, written under Elizabeth, speaks of this notion as newly broached. "Yea and some indiscreet persons have been bold in open preaching to use dishonourable and derogatory speech and censure of the churches abroad; and that so far, as some of our men ordained in foreign parts have been pronounced to be no lawful ministers."—Vol. i. p. 382. It is evident, by some passages in Strype, attentively considered, that natives regularly ordained abroad in the presbyterian churches were admitted to hold preferment in England; the first bishop who objected to them seems to have been Aylmer. Instances, however, of foreigners holding preferment without any re-ordination, may be found down to the civil wars. Annals of Reformation, ii. 522, and Appendix, 116; Life of Grindal, 271; Collier, ii. 594; Neal, i. 258.

The divine right of episcopacy is said to have been laid down by Bancroft, in his famous sermon at Paul's cross, in 1588. But I do not find anything in it to that effect. It is, however, pretty distinctly asserted, if I mistake not the sense, in the canons of 1606. Overall's Convocation Book, 179, etc. Yet Laud had been reproved by the university of Oxford in 1604, for maintaining, in his exercise for bachelor of divinity, that there could be no true church without bishops, which was thought to cast a bone of contention between the church of England and the reformed upon the Continent. Heylin's Life of Laud, 54.

Cranmer and some of the original founders of the Anglican church, so far from maintaining the divine and indispensable right of episcopal government, held bishops and priests to be the same order.

[662] See the queen's injunctions of 1559 (Somers Tracts, i. 65), and compare preamble of 5 and 6 of Edw. VI. c. 3.

[663] The first of these Sabbatarians was a Dr. Bound, whose sermon was suppressed by Whitgift's order. But some years before, one of Martin Mar-prelate's charges against Aylmer was for playing at bowls on Sundays: and the word sabbath as applied to that day may be found occasionally under Elizabeth, though by no means so usual as afterwards. One of Bound's recommendations was that no feasts should be given on that day, "except by lords, knights, and persons of quality;" for which unlucky reservation his adversaries did not forget to deride him. Fuller's Church History, p. 227. This writer describes in his quaint style the abstinence from sports produced by this new doctrine; and remarks, what a slight acquaintance with human nature would have taught Archbishop Laud, that "the more liberty people were offered, the less they used it; it was sport for them to refrain from sport." See also Collier, 643; Neal, 386; Strype's Whitgift, 530; May's Hist. of Parliament, 16.

[664] Heylin's Life of Laud, 15; Fuller, part ii. p. 76.

The regulations enacted at various times since the Reformation for the observance of abstinence in as strict a manner, though not ostensibly on the same grounds, as it is enjoined in the church of Rome, may deserve some notice. A statute of 1548 (2 and 3 Edward VI. c. 19), after reciting that one day or one kind of meat is not more holy, pure, or clean than another, and much else to the same effect, yet "forasmuch as divers of the king's subjects, turning their knowledge therein to gratify their sensuality, have of late more than in times past broken and contemned such abstinence, which hath been used in this realm upon the Fridays and Saturdays, the embering days and other days commonly called vigils, and in the time commonly called Lent, and other accustomed times; the king's majesty considering that due and godly abstinence is a mean to virtue and to subdue men's bodies to their soul and spirit, and considering also especially that fishers and men using the trade of fishing in the sea may thereby the rather be set on work, and that by eating of fish much flesh shall be saved and increased," enacts, after repealing all existing laws on the subject, that such as eat flesh at the forbidden seasons shall incur a penalty of ten shillings, or ten days' imprisonment without flesh, and a double penalty for the second offence.

The next statute relating to abstinence is one (5th Eliz. c. 5) entirely for the increase of the fishery. It enacts (§ 15, etc.) that no one, unless having a licence, shall eat flesh on fish-days, or on Wednesdays, now made an additional fish-day, under a penalty of £3, or three months' imprisonment. Except that every one having three dishes of sea-fish at his table, might have one of flesh also. But "because no manner of person shall misjudge of the intent of this statute," it is enacted that whosoever shall notify that any eating of fish or forbearing of flesh mentioned therein is of any necessity for the saving of the soul of man, or that it is the service of God, otherwise than as other politic laws are and be; that then such persons shall be punished as spreaders of false news (§ 39 and 40). The act 27th Eliz. c. 11, repeals the prohibition as to Wednesday; and provides that no victuallers shall vend flesh in Lent, nor upon Fridays or Saturdays, under a penalty. The 35th Eliz. c. 7, § 22, reduces the penalty of three pounds or three months' imprisonment, enacted by 5th of Eliz. to one-third. This is the latest statute that appears on the subject.

Many proclamations appear to have been issued in order to enforce an observance so little congenial to the propensities of Englishmen. One of those in the first year of Edward was before any statute; and its very words respecting the indifference of meats in a religious sense were adopted by the legislature the next year. Strype's Eccles. Memor. ii. 81. In one of Elizabeth's, a.d. 1572, as in the statute of Edward, the political motives of the prohibition seem in some measure associated with the superstition it disclaims; for eating in the season of Lent is called "licentious and carnal disorder, in contempt of God and man, and only to the satisfaction of devilish and carnal appetite;" and butchers, etc., "ministering to such foul lust of the flesh," were severely mulcted. Strype's Annals, ii. 208. But in 1576 another proclamation to the same effect uses no such hard words, and protests strongly against any superstitious interpretation of its motive. Life of Grindal, p. 226. So also in 1579 (Strype's Annals, ii. 608), and, as far as I have observed, in all of a later date, the encouragement of the navy and fishery is set forth as their sole ground. In 1596, Whitgift, by the queen's command, issued letters to the bishops of his province, to take order that the fasting-days, Wednesday and Friday, should be kept, and no suppers eaten, especially on Friday evens. This was on account of the great dearth of that and the preceding year. Strype's Whitgift, p. 490. These proclamations for the observance of Lent continued under James and Charles, as late, I presume, as the commencement of the civil war. They were diametrically opposed to the puritan tenets; for, notwithstanding the pretext about the fishery, there is no doubt that the dominant ecclesiastics maintained the observance of Lent as an ordinance of the church. But I suspect that little regard was paid to Friday and Saturday as days of weekly fast. Rymer, xvii. 131, 134, 349; xviii. 268, 282, 961.

This abstemious system, however, was only compulsory on the poor. Licences were easily obtained by others from the privy-council in Edward's days, and afterwards from the bishop. They were empowered, with their guests, to eat flesh on all fasting-days for life. Sometimes the number of guests was limited. Thus the Marquis of Winchester had permission for twelve friends; and John Sanford, draper of Gloucester, for two. Strype's Memorials, ii. 82. The act above mentioned for encouragement of the fishery, 5th Eliz. c. 5, provides that £1 6s. 8d. shall be paid for granting every licence, and 6s. 8d. annually afterwards, to the poor of the parish. But no licence was to be granted for eating beef at any time of the year, or veal from Michaelmas to the first of May. A melancholy privation to our countrymen! but, I have no doubt, little regarded. Strype makes known to us the interesting fact, that Ambrose Potter, of Gravesend, and his wife, had permission from Archbishop Whitgift "to eat flesh and white meats in Lent, during their lives; so that it was done soberly and frugally, cautiously, and avoiding public scandal as much as might be, and giving 6s. 8d. annually to the poor of the parish." Life of Whitgift, 246.

The civil wars did not so put an end to the compulsory observance of Lent and fish days but that similar proclamations are found after the Restoration, I know not how long. Kennet's Register, p. 367 and 558. And some orthodox Anglicans continued to make a show of fasting. The following extracts from Pepys' diary are, perhaps, characteristic of the class. "I called for a dish of fish which we had for dinner, this being the first day of Lent; and I do intend to try whether I can keep it or no." Feb. 27, 1661. "Notwithstanding my resolution, yet for want of other victuals, I did eat flesh this Lent, but am resolved to eat as little as I can.

[665] Wilson, 709.

[666] Debates in parliament, 1621, vol. i. pp. 45, 52. The king requested them not to pass this bill, being so directly against his proclamation. Id. 60. Shepherd's expulsion is mentioned in Mede's Letters, Harl. MSS. 389.

[667] Vol. ii. 97. Two acts were passed (1 Car. I. c. 1 and 3 Car I. c. 2) for the better observance of Sunday; the former of which gave great annoyance, it seems, to the orthodox party. "Had any such bill," says Heylin, "been offered in King James's time, it would have found a sorry welcome; but this king being under a necessity of compliance with them, resolved to grant them their desires in that particular, to the end that they might grant his also in the aid required, when that obstruction was removed. The Sabbatarians took the benefit of this opportunity for the obtaining of this grant, the first that ever they obtained by all their strugglings, which of what consequence it was we shall see hereafter." Life of Laud, p. 129. Yet this statute permits the people lawful sports and pastimes on Sundays within their own parishes.

[668] Without loading the page with too many references on a subject so little connected with this work, I mention Strype's Annals, vol. i. p. 118, and a letter from Jewel to P. Martyr in Burnet, vol. iii. Appendix 275.

[669] Collier, 568.

[670] Strype's Annals, i. 207, 294.

[671] Strype's Whitgift, 434-472.

[672] It is admitted on all hands that the Greek fathers did not inculcate the predestinarian system. Elizabeth having begun to read some of the fathers, Bishop Cox writes of it with some disapprobation, adverting especially to the Pelagianism of Chrysostom and the other Greeks. Strype's Annals, i. 324.

[673] Winwood, iii. 293. The intemperate and even impertinent behaviour of James in pressing the states of Holland to inflict some censure or punishment on Vorstius, is well known. But though Vorstius was an Arminian, it was not precisely on account of those opinions that he incurred the king's peculiar displeasure, but for certain propositions as to the nature of the Deity, which James called atheistical, but which were in fact Arian. The letters on this subject in Winwood are curious. Even at this time, the king is said to have spoken moderately of predestination as a dubious point (p. 452), though he had treated Arminius as a mischievous innovator for raising a question about it; and this is confirmed by his letter to the States in 1613. Brandt, iii. 129; and see p. 138; See Collier, p. 711, for the king's sentiments in 1616; also Brandt, iii. 313.

[674] Sir Dudley Carleton's Letters and Negotiations, passim; Brandt's History of Reformation in Low Countries, vol. iii. The English divines sent to this synod were decidedly inclined to Calvinism, but they spoke of themselves as deputed by the king, not by the church of England which they did not represent.

[675] There is some obscurity about the rapid transition of the court from Calvinism to the opposite side. It has been supposed that the part taken by James at the synod of Dort was chiefly political, with a view to support the house of Orange against the party headed by Barnevelt. But he was so much more of a theologian than a statesman, that I much doubt whether this will account satisfactorily for his zeal in behalf of the Gomarists. He wrote on the subject with much polemical bitterness, but without reference, so far as I have observed, to any political faction; though Sir Dudley Carleton's letters show that he contemplated the matter as a minister ought to do. Heylin intimates that the king grew "more moderate afterwards, and into a better liking of those opinions which he had laboured to condemn at the synod of Dort." Life of Laud, 120. The court language, indeed, shifted so very soon after this, that Antonio de Dominis, the famous half-converted Archbishop of Spalato, is said to have invented the name of doctrinal puritans for those who distinguished themselves by holding the Calvinistic tenets. Yet the synod of Dort was in 1618; while De Dominis left England not later than 1622. Buckingham seems to have gone very warmly into Laud's scheme of excluding the Calvinists. The latter gave him a list of divines on Charles's accession, distinguishing their names by O. and P. for orthodox and puritan; including several tenets in the latter denomination, besides those of the quinquarticular controversy; such as the indispensable observance of the Lord's day, the indiscrimination of bishops and presbyters, etc. Life of Laud, 119. The influence of Laud became so great that to preach in favour of Calvinism, though commonly reputed to be the doctrine of the church, incurred punishment in any rank. Davenant, Bishop of Salisbury, one of the divines sent to Dort, and reckoned among the principal theologians of that age, was reprimanded on his knees before the privy-council for this offence. Collier, p. 750. But in James's reign the University of Oxford was decidedly Calvinistic. A preacher, about 1623, having used some suspicious expressions, was compelled to recant them, and to maintain the following theses in the divinity school: Decretum prædestinationis non est conditionale—Gratia sufficiens ad salutem non conceditur omnibus. Wood, ii. 348. And I suppose it continued so in the next reign, so far as the university's opinions could be manifested. But Laud took care that no one should be promoted, as far as he could help it, who held these tenets.

[676] Winwood, vol. i. pp. 1, 52, 388; Lettres d'Ossat, i. 221; Birch's Negotiations of Edmondes, p. 36. These references do not relate to the letter said to have been forged in the king's name, and addressed to Clement VIII. by Lord Balmerino. But Laing, Hist. of Scotland, iii. 59, and Birch's Negotiations, etc. 177, render it almost certain that this letter was genuine, which indeed has been generally believed by men of sense. James was a man of so little consistency or sincerity that it is difficult to solve the problem of this clandestine intercourse. But it might very likely proceed from his dread of being excommunicated, and, in consequence, assassinated. In a proclamation, commanding all jesuits and priests to quit the realm, dated in 1603, he declares himself personally "so much beholden to the new bishop of Rome for his kind office and private temporal carriage towards us in many things, as we shall ever be ready to requite the same towards him as Bishop of Rome in state and condition of a secular prince." Rymer, xvi. 573. This is explained by a passage in the memoirs of Sully (l. 15). Clement VIII., though before Elizabeth's death he had abetted the project of placing Arabella on the throne, thought it expedient, after this design had failed, to pay some court to James, and had refused to accept the dedication of a work written against him, besides, probably, some other courtesies. There is a letter from the king addressed to the pope, and probably written in 1603, among the Cottonian MSS. Nero B. vi. 9, which shows his disposition to coax and coquet with the Babylonian, against whom he so much inveighs in his printed works. It seems that Clement had so far presumed as to suggest that the Prince of Wales should be educated a catholic; which the king refuses, but not in so strong a manner as he should have done. I cannot recollect whether this letter has been printed, though I can scarcely suppose the contrary. Persons himself began to praise the works of James, and show much hope of what he would do. Cotton, Jul. B. vi. 77.

The severities against catholics seem at first to have been practically mitigated. Winwood, ii. 78. Archbishop Hutton wrote to Cecil, complaining of the toleration granted to papists, while the puritans were severely treated. Id. p. 40; Lodge, iii. 251. "The former," he says, "partly by this round dealing with the puritans, and partly by some extraordinary favour, have grown mightily in number, courage, and influence."—"If the gospel shall quail, and popery prevail, it will be imputed principally unto your great counsellors, who either procure or yield to grant toleration to some." James told some gentlemen who petitioned for toleration, that the utmost they could expect was connivance. Carte, iii. 711. This seems to have been what he intended through his reign, till importuned by Spain and France to promise more.

[677] 1 Jac. I. c. 4. The penalties of recusancy were particularly hard upon women, who, as I have observed in another place, adhered longer to the old religion than the other sex; and still more so upon those who had to pay for their scruples. It was proposed in parliament, but with the usual fate of humane suggestions, that husbands going to church, should not be liable for their wives' recusancy. Carte, 754. But they had the alternative afterwards, by 7 Jac. I. c. 6, of letting their wives lie in prison or paying £10 a month.

[678] Lingard, ix. 41, 55.

[679] From comparing some passages in Sir Charles Cornwallis's despatches, (Winwood, vol. ii. pp. 143, 144, 153, with others in Birch's account of Sir Thomas Edmondes's negotiations, p. 233, et seq.) it appears that the English catholics were looking forward at this time to some crisis in their favour, and that even the court of Spain was influenced by their hopes. A letter from Sir Thomas Parry to Edmondes, dated at Paris, 10 Oct. 1605, is remarkable: "Our priests are very busy about petitions to be exhibited to the king's majesty at this parliament, and some further designs upon refusal. These matters are secretly managed by intelligence with their colleagues in those parts where you reside, and with the two nuncios. I think it were necessary for his majesty's service that you found means to have privy spies amongst them, to discover their negotiations. Something is at present in hand amongst these desperate hypocrites, which I trust God shall divert by the vigilant care of his majesty's faithful servants and friends abroad, and prudence of his council at home." Birch, p. 233. There seems indeed some ground for suspicion that the nuncio at Brussels was privy to the conspiracy; though this ought not to be asserted as an historical fact. Whether the offence of Garnet went beyond misprision of treason has been much controverted. The catholic writers maintain that he had no knowledge of the conspiracy, except by having heard it in confession. But this rests altogether on his word; and the prevarication of which he has been proved to be guilty (not to mention the damning circumstance that he was taken at Hendlip in concealment along with the other conspirators), makes it difficult for a candid man to acquit him of a thorough participation in their guilt. Compare Townsend's Accusations of History against the Church of Rome (1825), p. 247, containing extracts from some important documents in the State Paper-Office, not as yet published, with State Trials, vol. ii.; and see Lingard, ix. 160, etc. Yet it should be kept in mind that it was easy for a few artful persons to keep on the alert by indistinct communications a credulous multitude whose daily food was rumour; and the general hopes of the English Romanists at the moment are not evidence of their privity to the gunpowder-treason, which was probably contrived late, and imparted to very few. But to deny that there was such a plot, or, which is the same thing, to throw the whole on the contrivance and management of Cecil, as has sometimes been done, argues great effrontery in those who lead, and great stupidity in those who follow. The letter to Lord Monteagle, the discovery of the powder, the simultaneous rising in arms in Warwickshire, are as indisputable as any facts in history. What then had Cecil to do with the plot, except that he hit upon the clue to the dark allusions in the letter to Monteagle, of which he was courtier enough to let the king take the credit? James's admirers have always reckoned this, as he did himself, a vast proof of sagacity; yet there seems no great acuteness in the discovery, even if it had been his own. He might have recollected the circumstances of his father's catastrophe, which would naturally put him on the scent of gunpowder. In point of fact, however, the happy conjecture appears to be Cecil's. Winwood, ii. 170. But had he no previous hint? See Lodge, iii. 301.

The Earl of Northumberland was not only committed to the Tower on suspicion of privity in the plot, but lay fourteen years there, and paid a fine of £11,000 (by composition for £30,000), before he was released. Lingard, ix. 89. It appears almost incredible that a man of his ability, though certainly of a dangerous and discontented spirit, and rather destitute of religion than a zealot for popery, which he did not, I believe, openly profess, should have mingled in so flagitious a design. There is indeed a remarkable letter in Winwood, vol. iii. p. 287, which tends to corroborate the suspicions entertained of him. But this letter is from Salisbury, his inveterate enemy. Every one must agree, that the fine imposed on this nobleman was preposterous. Were we even to admit that suspicion might justify his long imprisonment, a participation in one of the most atrocious conspiracies recorded in history was, if proved, to be more severely punished; if unproved, not at all.

[680] 3 Jac. I. c. 4, 5.

[681] Carte, iii. 782; Collier, 690; Butler's Memoirs of Catholics; Lingard, vol. ix. 97; Aikin, i. 319. It is observed by Collier, ii. 695, and indeed by the king himself, in his Apology for the Oath of Allegiance (edit. 1619), p. 46, that Bellarmine plainly confounds the oath of allegiance with that of supremacy. But this cannot be the whole of the case; it is notorious that Bellarmine protested against any denial of the pope's deposing power.

[682] Lingard, ix. 215. Drury, executed in 1607, was one of the twelve priests who, in 1602, had signed a declaration of the queen's right to the crown, notwithstanding her excommunication. But, though he evidently wavered, he could not be induced to say as much now in order to save his life. State Trials, ii. 358.

[683] Lord Bacon, wise in all things, always recommended mildness towards recusants. In a letter to Villiers, in 1616, he advises that the oath of supremacy should by no means be tendered to recusant magistrates in Ireland; "the new plantation of protestants," he says, "must mate the other party in time." Vol. ii. p. 530. This has not indeed proved true; yet as much, perhaps, for want of following Bacon's advice, as for any other cause. He wished for a like toleration in England. But the king, as Buckingham lets him know, was of a quite contrary opinion; for, "though he would not by any means have a more severe course held than his laws appoint in that case, yet there are many reasons why there should be no mitigation above that which his laws have exerted, and his own conscience telleth him to be fit." He afterwards professes "to account it a baseness in a prince to show such a desire of the match [this was in 1617] as to slack anything in his course of government, much more in propagation of the religion he professeth, for fear of giving hinderance to the match thereby."—Page 562. What a contrast to the behaviour of this same king six years afterwards! The Commons were always dissatisfied with lenity, and complained that the lands of recusants were undervalued; as they must have been, if the king got only £6000 per annum by the compositions. Debates in 1621, vol. i. pp. 24, 91. But he valued those in England and Ireland at £36,000. Lingard, 215, from Hardwicke Papers.

[684] The absurd and highly blamable conduct of Buckingham has created a prejudice in favour of the court of Madrid. That they desired the marriage is easy to be believed; but that they would have ever sincerely co-operated for the restoration of the Palatinate, or even withdrawn the Spanish troops from it, is neither rendered probable by the general policy of that government, nor by the conduct it pursued in the negotiation. Compare Hardwicke State Papers, vol. i.; Cabala, 1, et post; Howell's Letters; Clarendon State Papers, vol. i. ad initium, especially p. 13.

A very curious paper in the latter collection (p. 14) may be thought, perhaps, to throw light on Buckingham's projects, and account in some measure for his sudden enmity to Spain. During his residence at Madrid in 1623, a secretary who had been dissatisfied with the court revealed to him a pretended secret discovery of gold mines in a part of America, and suggested that they might be easily possessed by any association that could command seven or eight hundred men; and that after having made such a settlement, it would be easy to take the Spanish flotilla, and attempt the conquest of Jamaica and St. Domingo. This made so great an impression on the mind of Buckingham, that, long afterwards in 1628, he entered into a contract with Gustavus Adolphus, who bound himself to defend him against all opposers in the possession of these mines, as an absolute prince and sovereign, on condition of receiving one-tenth of the profits; promising especially his aid against any puritans who might attack him from Barbadoes or elsewhere, and to furnish him with four thousand men and six ships of war, to be paid out of the revenue of the mines.

This is a very strange document, if genuine. It seems to show that Buckingham, aware of his unpopularity in England, and that sooner or later he must fall, and led away, as so many were, by the expectation of immense wealth in America, had contrived this arrangement, which was probably intended to take place only in the event of his banishment from England. The share that Gustavus appears to have taken in so wild a plan is rather extraordinary, and may expose the whole to some suspicion. It is not clear how this came among the Clarendon papers; but the indorsement runs: "Presented, and the design attempted and in some measure attained by Cromwell, anno 1652." I should conjecture therefore that some spy of the king's procured the copy from Cromwell's papers.

I have since found that Harte had seen a sketch of this treaty, but he does not tell us by what means. Hist. Gust. Adolph. i. 130. But that prince, in 1627, laid before the diet of Sweden a plan for establishing a commerce with the West Indies; for which sums of money were subscribed. Id. 143.

[685] Hardwicke Papers, pp. 402, 411, 417. The very curious letters in this collection relative to the Spanish match are the vouchers for my text. It appears by one of Secretary Conway's, since published (Ellis, iii. 154), that the king was in great distress at the engagement for a complete immunity from penal laws for the catholics, entered into by the prince and Buckingham; but, on full deliberation in the council, it was agreed that he must adhere to his promise. This rash promise was the cause of his subsequent prevarications.

[686] Hardwicke Papers; Rushworth.

[687] Hardwicke Papers, p. 452, where the letter is printed in Latin. The translation in Wilson, Rushworth, and Cabala, p. 214, is not by any means exact, going in several places much beyond the original. If Hume knew nothing but the translation, as is most probable, we may well be astonished at his way of dismissing this business; that "the prince having received a very civil letter from the pope, he was induced to return a very civil answer." Clarendon saw it in a different light. Clar. State Papers, ii. 337.

Urban VIII. had succeeded Gregory XV. before the arrival of Charles's letter. He answered it, of course, in a style of approbation, and so as to give the utmost meaning to the prince's compliments, expressing his satisfaction, "cum pontificem Romanum ex officii genere colere princeps Britannus inciperet," etc. Rushworth, vol. i. p. 98.

It is said by Howell, who was then on the spot, that the prince never used the service of the church of England while he was at Madrid, though two chaplains, church-plate, etc., had been sent over. Howell's Letters, p. 140. Bristol and Buckingham charged each other with advising Charles to embrace the Romish religion; and he himself, in a letter to Bristol, Jan. 21, 1625-6, imputes this to him in the most positive terms. Cabal p. 17, 4to edit. As to Buckingham's willingness to see this step taken, there can, I presume, be little doubt.

[688] Rushworth; Cabala, p. 19.

[689] Parl. Hist. 1375. Both houses, however, joined in an address that the laws against recusants might be put in execution (Id. 1408); and the Commons returned again to the charge afterwards. Idem, 1484.

[690] Rushworth.

[691] See a series of letters from Lord Kensington (better known afterwards as Earl of Holland), the king's ambassador at Paris for this marriage-treaty; in the appendix to Clarendon State Papers, vol. ii. pp. v. viii. ix.

[692] Hardwicke Papers, i. 536. Birch, in one of those volumes given by him to the British Museum (and which ought to be published according to his own intention), has made several extracts from the MS. despatches of Tillieres, the French ambassador, which illustrate this negotiation. The pope, it seems, stood off from granting the dispensation, requiring that the English catholic clergy should represent to him their approbation of the marriage. He was informed that the cardinal had obtained terms much more favourable for the catholics than in the Spanish treaty. In short, they evidently fancied themselves to have gained a full assurance of toleration; nor could the match have been effected on any other terms. The French minister writes to Louis XIII. from London, October 6, 1624, that he had obtained a supersedeas of all prosecutions, more than themselves expected, or could have believed possible; "en somme, un acte très publique, et qui fut résolu en plein conseil, le dit roi l'ayant assemblé exprès pour cela le jour d'hier." The pope agreed to appoint a bishop for England, nominated by the King of France. Oct. 22. The oath of allegiance, however, was a stumbling-block; the king could not change it by his own authority, and establish another in parliament, "où la faction des puritains prédomine, de sorte qu'ils peuvent ce qu'ils veulent." Buckingham, however, promised "de nous faire obtenir l'assurance que votre majesté désire tant, que les catholiques de ce pais ne seront jamais inquiétés pour le raison du serment de fidélité, du quel votre majesté a si souvent ouï parler." Dec. 22. He speaks the same day of an audience he had of King James, who promised never to persecute his catholic subjects, nor desire of them any oath which spoke of the pope's spiritual authority, "mais seulement un acte de la reconnoissance de la domination temporelle qui Dieu lui a donnée, et qu'ils auroient en considération de votre majesté, et de la confiance que vous prenez en sa parole, beaucoup plus de liberté qu'ils n'auroient eu en vertu des articles du traité d'Espagne." The French advised that no parliament should be called till Henrietta should come over, "de qui la présence serviroit de bride aux puritains." It is not wonderful, with all this good-will on the part of their court, that the English catholics should now send a letter to request the granting of the dispensation. A few days after, Dec. 26, the ambassador announces the king's letter to the archbishops, directing them to stop the prosecution of catholics, the enlargement of prisoners on the score of religion, and the written promises of the king and prince to let the catholics enjoy more liberty than they would have had by virtue of the treaty with Spain. On the credit of this, Louis wrote on the 23rd of January to request six or eight ships of war to employ against Soubise, the chief of the Hugonots; with which, as is well known, Charles complied in the ensuing summer.

The king's letter above mentioned does not, I believe, appear. But his ambassadors, Carlisle and Holland, had promised in his name that he would give a written promise, on the word and honour of a king, which the prince and a secretary of state should also sign, that all his Roman catholic subjects should enjoy more freedom as to their religion than they could have had by any articles agreed on with Spain; not being molested in their persons or property for their profession and exercise of their religion, provided they used their liberty with moderation, and rendered due submission to the king, who would not force them to any oath contrary to their religion. This was signed 18th Nov. Hardw. Pap. 546.

Yet after this concession on the king's part, the French cabinet was encouraged by it to ask for "a direct and public toleration, not by connivance, promise, or écrit secret, but by a public notification to all the Roman catholics, and that of all his majesty's kingdoms whatsoever, confirmed by his majesty's and the prince's oath, and attested by a public act, whereof a copy to be delivered to the pope or his minister, and the same to bind his majesty and the prince's successors for ever." Id. p. 552. The ambassadors expressed the strongest indignation at this proposal, on which the French did not think fit to insist. In all this wretched negotiation, James was as much the dupe as he had been in the former, expecting that France would assist in the recovery of the Palatinate, towards which, in spite of promises, she took no steps. Richlieu had said, "donnez-nous des prêtres, et nous vous donnerons des colonels." Id. p. 538. Charles could hardly be expected to keep his engagement as to the catholics, when he found himself so grossly outwitted.

It was during this marriage-treaty of 1624, that the archbishop of Embrun, as he relates himself, in the course of several conferences with the king on that subject, was assured by him that he was desirous of re-entering the fold of the church. Wilson in Rennet, p. 786, note by Wellwood. I have not seen the original passage; but Dr. Lingard puts by no means so strong an interpretation on the king's words, as related by the archbishop. Vol. ix. 323.

[693] Rennet, p. vi.; Rushworth; Lingard, ix. 353; Cabala, p. 144.

[694] "God alloweth (it is said in this homily, among other passages to the same effect) neither the dignity of any person, nor the multitude of any people, nor the weight of any cause, as sufficient for the which the subjects may move rebellion against their princes." The next sentence contains a bold position. "Turn over and read the histories of all nations, look over the chronicles of our own country, call to mind so many rebellions of old time, and some yet fresh in memory; ye shall not find that God ever prospered any rebellion against their natural and lawful prince, but contrariwise, that the rebels were overthrown and slain, and such as were taken prisoners dreadfully executed." They illustrate their doctrine by the most preposterous example I have ever seen alleged in any book, that of the Virgin Mary; who "being of the royal blood of the ancient natural kings of Jewry obeyed the proclamation of Augustus to go to Bethlehem. This obedience of this most noble and most virtuous lady to a foreign and pagan prince doth well teach us, who in comparison of her are both base and vile, what ready obedience we do owe to our natural and gracious sovereign."

In another homily entitled "On Obedience," the duty of non-resistance, even in defence of religion, is most decidedly maintained; and in such a manner as might have been inconvenient in case of a popish successor. Nor was this theory very consistent with the aid and countenance given to the United Provinces. Our learned churchmen, however, cared very little for the Dutch. They were more puzzled about the Maccabees. But that knot is cut in Bishop Overall's Convocation Book, by denying that Antiochus Epiphanes had lawful possession of Palestine; a proposition not easy to be made out.

[695] Collier, 724; Neal, 495; Wood's History of the University of Oxford, ii. 341. Knight was sent to the Gate-house prison, where he remained two years. Laud was the chief cause of this severity, if we may believe Wood; and his own diary seems to confirm this.

[696] Parl. Hist. 877, 395, 410, etc.; Kennet, p. 30; Collier, 740, 743. This historian, though a non-juror, is Englishman enough to blame the doctrines of Sibthorp and Mainwaring, and, consistently with his high-church principles, is displeased at the suspension of Abbot by the king's authority.

[697] State Trials, ii. 1449. A few years before this, Abbot had the misfortune, while hunting deer in a nobleman's park, to shoot one of the keepers with his cross-bow. Williams and Laud, who then acted together, with some other of the servile crew, had the baseness to affect scruples at the archbishop's continuance in his function, on pretence that, by some contemptible old canon, he had become irregular in consequence of this accidental homicide; and Spelman disgraced himself by writing a treatise in support of this doctrine. James, however, had more sense than the antiquary, and less ill-nature than the churchmen; and the civilians gave no countenance to Williams's hypocritical scruples. Hacket's Life of Williams, p. 651; Biograph. Britann. art. Abbot; Spelman's Works, part 2, p. 3; Aikin's James I., ii. 259. Williams's real object was to succeed the archbishop on his degradation.

It may be remarked that Abbot, though a very worthy man, had not always been untainted by the air of a court. He had not scrupled grossly to flatter the king: (see his article in Biograph. Brit. and Aikin, i. 368) and tells us himself, that he introduced Villiers, in order to supplant Somerset; which, though well-meant, did not become his function. Even in the delicate business of promising toleration to the catholics by the secret articles of the treaty with Spain, he gave satisfaction to the king (Hardwicke Papers, i. 428), which could only be by compliance. This shows that the letter in Rushworth, ascribed to the archbishop, deprecating all such concessions, is not genuine. In Cabala, p. 13, it is printed with the name of the Archbishop of York, Matthews.

[698] The bishops were many of them gross sycophants of Buckingham. Besides Laud, Williams, and Neile, one Field, Bishop of Landaff, was an abject courtier. See a letter of his in Cabala, p. 118, 4to edit. Mede says (27th May 1626), "I am sorry to hear they (the bishops) are so habituated to flattery that they seem not to know of any other duty that belongs to them." See Ellis's Letters, iii. 228, for the account Mede gives of the manner in which the heads of houses forced the election of Buckingham as Chancellor of Cambridge, while the impeachment was pending against him. The junior masters of arts, however, made a good stand; so that it was carried against the Earl of Berkshire only by three voices.

[699] Those who may be inclined to dissent from my text, will perhaps bow to their favourite Clarendon. He says that in the three first parliaments, though there were "several distempered speeches of particular persons, not fit for the reverence due to his majesty," yet he "does not know any formed act of either house (for neither the remonstrance nor votes of the last day were such), that was not agreeable to the wisdom and justice of great courts upon those extraordinary occasions; and whoever considers the acts of power and injustice in the intervals of parliament, will not be much scandalised at the warmth and vivacity of those meetings." Vol. i. p. 8, edit. 1826.