BUCKINGHAM’S FAVOUR PARAMOUNT—CHANGE IN THE KING’S TEMPER—HIS POETIC FLIGHTS—HIS REIGN A COURSE OF DISSIPATION—THE MASQUES OF BEN JONSON—THEIR GREAT BEAUTY—PATRONIZED BY THE QUEEN—HOW PERFORMED—THE VISION OF DELIGHT—COMPOSED TO CELEBRATE BUCKINGHAM’S BEING MADE A MARQUIS—HIS APPEARANCE AT THIS ERA—THE BANQUET GIVEN FOR THIS OCCASION—GREAT EXTRAVAGANCE OF THE ENTERTAINMENT—RIVALS TO BUCKINGHAM IN JAMES’S FAVOUR—SIR HENRY MILDMAY—BROOKE—YOUNG MORISON—THE DIVERSIONS OF THE COURT—THE METEOR THAT APPEARED—FOOT-RACING—BUCKINGHAM’S PROFUSION—JEALOUSIES BETWEEN PRINCE CHARLES AND HIM, 1617-1618-1619.

Buckingham may now be said, in the words of Lord Clarendon, “to sleep in the arms of fortune.” The King, notwithstanding his failing health, continued his patient sittings in the Star-Chamber, where, groaning under his mortal disease, he found fault with “lawyers’ repetitions,” and sometimes indulged in petulant eloquence, comparing, when he presided at the trial of Sir Thomas Lake, that disgraced courtier to Adam, Lady Lake to Eve, and their daughter, Lady Roos, to the serpent. Whilst encouraging, on the one hand, a treaty of marriage for his son with a daughter of Spain, and ordering, on the other, musters of troops to be ready to keep down the Papists, who might otherwise be emboldened by that project; he still, throughout the whole of these troublesome and often urgent affairs, had one object in view—the gratification and aggrandizement of George Villiers. Sometimes we find the King indulging in poetic flights. After a week or two of hard work in the Star-Chamber, James, in a serious mood, wrote a meditation on the Lord’s Prayer, and dedicated it to Buckingham.^[214] On a festive occasion, in which the favourite entertained him to his heart’s content, the Monarch thought it not beneath him to write a poem and address it also to his young host.^[215]

The latter part of King James’s reign was one perpetual course of what may safely be termed dissipation, but which was then styled “good cheer and jollity.” Amongst the most refined of his pleasures were the Masques of Ben Jonson;^[216] and the monarch showed his appreciation of the merits of those beautiful productions by a pension of a hundred marks to their author. Hitherto, Daniel had been the Laureate of the Court, having been an especial favourite with Queen Elizabeth and her ladies. Though the appointment had hitherto been unpaid, the slight thus passed on Daniel embittered his declining years, and drove him from the Court, where his talents and virtues were, as he fancied, no longer appreciated.

Shakespeare was now in the tomb; and Jonson, who “had hated and feared him through life,” was left without a rival to interfere with his triumph, or to commemorate the actions of the great. The death of Prince Henry had saddened the nation and obscured the gaiety of the Court for a season; but now, especially before the marriage of Villiers, whose settling in life was an event cordially desired by James, no revels were carried on without that most popular feature, a Masque; and no masque could gain applause unless Ben Jonson were the writer. A frequent visitor at Belvoir, at Burleigh on the Hill, and at Windsor, when the Court was at either of these places, Jonson never wrote a masque without exhibiting, in strong colours, qualities that astonished his acquaintance. He delighted in the composition of those productions, which, it has been truly said, were unrivalled except by Comus; of the masque, he was, as he himself remarked, “an artificer;” it began with him, and with him it ended. Pageants and masquerades had long been familiar to the English; and masques, improperly so called, had been carried to a great degree of splendour in the reign of Henry VIII., but neither then, as Gifford observes, nor in that of Elizabeth, did the masque acquire “that unity of design, that exclusive character, which it assumed on the reign of James.”

That monarch had, in the opinion of the same admirable critic, more literature than taste or elegance. What was deficient in him was, however, apparent in the character of his Queen, Anne of Denmark, who delighted in show and gaiety, loved pomp, and understood it; as Sully expresses it, she “aspired to convert Whitehall into a temple of delight.” She assembled around her the most brilliant leaders of fashion among the nobility; and, not well comprehending our language, she delighted in masques and shows which addressed themselves to the senses. She had, however, sufficient discrimination to applaud the poetical talents of Ben Jonson, whose compositions had delighted her at Althorpe; and she called him to her Court, and engaged him “to embody her conceptions,” soon after her arrival in London.^[217]

The masque of Ben Jonson consisted of dialogue, singing, and dancing; worked up into one harmonious whole by the introduction of some striking fable, generally borrowed from the Greek or Roman Mythology. The sister arts were employed to bestow the splendours of moveable scenery, hitherto unknown to the stage; for pomp and expense were essential to the masque; “it could only breathe,” as Gifford observes, “in the atmosphere of a Court;” it was composed for princes, and by princes was it performed. The flower of all that was gay and gallant was collected to constitute a band of royal and noble performers; and perhaps there was never such a display of elegance and beauty as that which graced the masques of Ben Jonson. The songs devolved probably on professional performers, but the dialogues required great care and study to learn them, and skill and practice in their delivery before a courtly and critical audience. The dances were also executed by the Court; so admirably, that Jonson paid to the exquisite performance of the Measures, as he beheld them, in these lines:—

The dialogue in the masques of Ben Jonson is marked by strength and boldness, and the songs are replete with all the luxuriance of the richest fancy. In his dramatic works, and also in his longer poems, there is a compression which produces hardness and severity, but, as Gifford beautifully expresses it, “no sooner has he taken down his lyre, no sooner touched his lighter pieces, than all is changed, as if by magic, and he becomes a new person. His genius awakes at once, his imagination becomes fertile, ardent, versatile, and excursive; his taste pure and elegant; and all his faculties attuned to liveliness and pleasure.”^[218]

The masque was therefore one of the highest intellectual delights of an intellectual age. Whilst Jonson composed the dialogues, in which “the soundest moral lessons came recommended by the charm of numbers,” the chief artists of the realm were employed in decorative scenery, the construction of which was at its climax in the time of James. Lawes, and other noted composers, set the songs to music; the masque was the courtly recreation of gallant gentlemen, and ladies of honour, striving to exceed one another in their measures and changes, and in their repasts of wit. Notwithstanding the efforts of Inigo Jones, under whose guidance many of the accompaniments were framed to preserve it, and those of Aurelius Townshend, the masque fell again into the pageant and masquerade after the death of James, and, in spite of an effort made by Charles II. to revive it, ceased to exist.

The “Vision of Delight,” one of the most fanciful and beautiful of Jonson’s masques, was performed on Twelfth Night, and the expenses of the representation were defrayed by Buckingham. It was to celebrate his new dignity as a Marquis, to which James had resolved to elevate him, that the following lines, spoken by Delight, seen afar off, with his attendants, Grace, Love, Harmony, Revel, Sport, Laughter, and followed by Wonder, were composed, and sung in a recitative solo:—

The “Vision” concluded with a dance of ladies, in which Aurora appeared, and this epilogue followed:—

At this masque Buckingham acted, and assumed his place as a Marquis, taking, it appears, a precedence to which he was not entitled. “It is thought strange,” Levingston wrote to Carleton, “amongst the old lords that he should take precedence of them.”^[220]

James had never, since his accession, conferred the dignity of Marquis on any of his subjects. He now very hastily gave it to his favourite, ascribing as the reason for this act that he bestowed that “title for the affection he bore him, more than he did to any man,” and “for the affection, faith, and modesty that he had found in Buckingham.”

A few of the nobility about the Court were hastily summoned to witness the creation, which was by patent, and in private. In the evening great festivities followed, Buckingham presiding as the master of the feast which preceded the masque. His appearance at this era has been delineated by Simon Pass, whose portrait is to be found among the historical collection of prints in the British Museum. He now assumed a deep falling ruff; his doublet was closed with a row of rich pearls, and over it he wore the ribbon of the Garter and the George. A large cloak of rich satin was suspended over one shoulder;—his hands are adorned by a cuff of Vandyck lace. His portrait after this time exhibits two long, very thin wavy curls, suspended from the left ear; his hair, otherwise, is almost always worn rather short, and turned back from the forehead. The slight moustache of his earlier portraits becomes augmented into one of greater consequence, carefully turned up at each corner; and a peaked beard environs the chin, which had before a youthful smoothness. He was now matured in form and perfect in deportment.

In unwonted magnificence Buckingham received his royal guest at a banquet long celebrated in the annals of the Court for its exuberance. As yet, the Marquis owned no house sufficiently spacious for this entertainment, and it appears to have been held in Whitehall. How attractive must have been his deportment at this era, before care sat upon his brow, and ill health, vexation of spirit, a consciousness of deserved unpopularity, and a heart sated with unsatisfactory pleasures, had changed into anxiety the eager enjoyment of his dazzling fortunes! “Carrying his loves and his hatreds in his open forehead,” he presided, careless of the future, full of health and hope, at that noisy and festive board.

The repast on this occasion was served up in the French fashion, under the auspices of Sir Thomas Edmondes, who had recently returned from France. “You may judge,” writes an eye-witness, “of the feast, by this scantling, that there were said to be seventeen dozens of pheasants and twelve partridges in a dish, throughout which, methinks, were more spoil than largesse.”^[221] The entertainment, “in spite of many presents,” cost six hundred pounds.

There were some obstacles, even on this day, to Buckingham’s perfect enjoyment. One of these was the uncertain temper of the King. He had now, in the words of those who watched his varying humour, “become so forward and morose, that few things seemed to please him.” The sight of Buckingham alone appeared to appease him; he was, however, greatly delighted with the banquet, and praised “both the meat and the master.” Yet, in spite of this marked preference, and of these abundant honours, there were rumours that Buckingham’s place in the King’s regard was not secure; Sir Henry Mildmay, young Brooke, the son of Lord Cobham, and a son of Sir William Monson’s, began, it was thought, to come into consideration with the King.

The “Vision of Delight” became the chief theme of public discourse. In this masque, Prince Charles was a principal performer; and the other parts were filled up by Buckingham, the Marquis of Hamilton, the Earl of Montgomery, and some other lords. Among the dancers, Isabel,^[222] the eldest daughter of Sir Thomas Edmondes, “bore away the bell.” She was, as it were, “hanged all over with jewels;” but, notwithstanding the beauty of the piece, and the rank of the actors, the plot of the “Vision of Delight” is said “to have proved dull.” The representation was attended by the Spanish and Venetian ambassadors, to the great affront of the French ambassador; for Buckingham had now planned a deep game, and the apparent frivolity of his pleasures was becoming merely the surface of those political schemes which he had at heart. Soon after these festivities, the King took occasion to affront young Monson, who had been set up by the envious to be an idol in place of Buckingham, by intimating that he did not like his forwardness in presenting himself continually before him. The young man not only took the hint himself, but imparted it to others; so “that all the young Court gallants vanished like mushrooms;” and those who had taken great pains “to set out young Monson to the best advantage, pricking and pranking him up, besides washing his face every day with posset curd, in order that he might rival the handsome Buckingham, received a severe rebuff.”^[223]

Among the favourite diversions of King James was horse-racing. Early in the spring, the Court was aroused by the racing of two footmen from St. Albans to Clerkenwell; “and many came to pass the time,” writes Mr. Chamberlain, merrily, “at“at Newmarket, and the running match ranges all over the country, where they be fit subjects to entertain it, as lately they have been at Sir John Croft’s, near Bury, and in requital, those ladies have invited them to a mask of their own invention (all those fair sisters being summoned for the purpose), so that on Thursday the King, Prince, and Court go thither a shroving.”^[224]

The following extract from one of Mr. Chamberlain’s letters represents another kind of diversion:—“The King came hither the Saturday before Shrovetide, and the two days following there was much feasting and jollity; and the Christmas mask repeated on Shrove Tuesday night. On Saturday last, the Prince made a ball and a banquet at Denmark House, which he had lost at Tennis to the Marquis of Buckingham,^[225] who invited thither a number of ladies, mistresses, and valentines, a ceremony come lately in request, and grown so costly that it is said he hath cast away this year 2000l. that way, among whom a daughter of Sir John Croft’s that is unmarried, had a carcanet of 800l. for her share; and the King is so pleased with the whole society of those sisters,^[226] that he extols them before all others, and hath bespoken them for the Court against next Christmas. The banquet at Denmark House was so plentiful that it cost 400l., and all the women came away, as it were, laden with sweetmeats; but supper there was none, save what the Lord of Purbeck made to his private friends.”^[227]

Another of those aspirants to royal favour, to whom we have referred, and whom the career of Buckingham drew forth from obscurity, was Sir Henry Mildmay, and a son of George Brooke’s, who had been executed at Winchester, on the supposed Raleigh plot. But James soon discovered that both these young courtiers were the tools of factions directed against Buckingham; and they were banished the Court. Some time afterwards, it was thought that the return of young Monson might be effected through the influence of his friends; but, observes a bystander of this game, these Court resolutions do strangely alter, and for the most part, “the day following gives the lie to that which preceded.”

The King, meantime, continued to amuse himself vastly at Newmarket. The following description of one of his days of pleasure presents a singular picture of the homely diversions of the first of the Stuart monarchs that reigned in this country:—

“We hear nothing from Newmarket, but that they devise all the means they can to make themselves merry, as of late there was a feast appointed at a farm-house not far off, where every man should bring his dish. The King brought a great chine of beef; the Marquis of Hamilton four pigs, garnished with sausages; the Earl of Southampton two turkies; another, some partridges; and one, a whole tray full of buttered eggs: and so all passed very pleasantly.”^[228]

During these diversions, James’s good humour, often interrupted by disease and self-indulgence, was maintained by his partiality for Buckingham. “The King,” writes Mr. Chamberlain, “is never out of tune, but that the sight of the Earl of Buckingham doth settle and quiet all.”

Meantime, one of those meteoric appearances to which the superstition of the day attached some portentous meaning, excited popular alarm, and suspended even the course of public business. “On Wednesday,” writes one of the functionaries of government, “we had no Star Chamber, by reason of the Lord Chancellor’s indisposition; that was the first day we took notice here of the great blazing star, though it was observed at Oxford a full week before. It is now the only subject of discourse, and not so much as little children, but as they go to school, talk in the streets that it foreshows the death of a king or a queen, or some great war towards.”^[229]

At another time a race of two footmen from St. Albans to Clerkenwell diverted the Court. Many money bets were laid upon the result, and Buckingham won three thousand pounds upon that day. “The story,” as the narrator of it well observes, “were not worth telling, but that you may see we have little to do when we are so far affected with these trifles, that all the Court in a manner, lords and ladies, and some further off, and some nearer, went to see this race, and the King himself almost as far as Barnet; and though the weather was sour and foul, yet he was scant fils de bonne mère that went not out to see, insomuch that it is verily thought there was as many people as at the King’s first coming to London; and for the courtiers on horseback, they were so pitifully bewrayed and bedaubed all over, that they could scant be known one from another, besides divers of them came to have falls and other mishaps, by reason of the multitude of horses.”

On some of these occasions, the lavish disposition of Buckingham was exhibited. On St. George’s Day, a festival observed with much solemnity, he presented forty of his gentlemen with fifty pounds a piece “to provide themselves,” and twenty to ten of his yeomen, besides a hundred pounds to treat them with a supper and a play on the following night at the Mitre in Fleet Street. A retinue of fifty persons appears, in modern days, a tolerable attendance for a nobleman even of high rank; but it had recently been found necessary to limit them to that number, owing to the unbounded ostentation and extravagance of many of the nobility.^[230]

Whilst this continued round of pleasures was carried on, some adverse events checked the merriment of those who played a part in the revels. Prince Charles, who was his mother’s favourite, was sometimes the object of his father’s jealousy, although, by the gentleness and prudence of his deportment, he had avoided the almost open state of variance with the King, which, in his brother’s days, had divided the Court into two parties. Still there were occasions on which the conduct of the young Prince was misrepresented.

The difference was soon reconciled; and “my Lord of Buckingham,” as he was called by several annalists of the day, gave a dinner to the King and Queen for the express purpose of reconciling his Highness to his royal father. The King and Queen dined at a separate table, but in the same room as that in which the lords and ladies were feasted: among these, Lady Hatton, Lady Villiers Compton, and Lady Fielding, and several others of the same family, were placed; the King drank to all these separately, and sent them secret messages. At the close of the banquet, he rose, and drank a common health to all the noble family, and declared that he desired them to advance them before all others. “And because,” adds the writer of the letter in which this account is given of himself, “there was no doubt—for, said he, ‘I live to that end;’ be assured we live in their posterity’s name, that they would so far regard their father’s commandments and instructions as to advance that house above all others whatsoever.”^[231]

The King shortly afterwards verified his assertion by creating Lady Villiers Compton, by patent, Countess of Buckingham in her own right for life. The Heralds, it is said, were “posed” to explain how Sir Thomas Compton, himself of a noble and loyal family, should have no part in this patent; but the public could easily comprehend that it was the aim and intention of James to elevate the Villiers family by every mark of especial favour. The newly-made Countess of Buckingham, thus raised by fortune from a low estate, did not escape calumny; rumours, both scandalous and unjust, being set afloat regarding her imputed intimacy with Lord Keeper Williams, who succeeded Bacon on the woolsack.^[232]

Another melancholy event saddened all hearts, and excited a deep and generous resentment. This was the death of Sir Walter Ralegh. In this event, “the sacrifice,” as Hume expresses it, “of the only man in the nation who had a high reputation for valour and military experience,” Buckingham had no doubt some indirect participation. He promoted it, because he promoted the projected alliance with Spain, which had now, for some years, lain the closest at the King’s heart. He was responsible for it, because no intercession that he might have chosen to make for the “gallantest worthie that England ever bred,” would have been proffered in vain. During the early part of his career, Buckingham had, indeed, befriended Ralegh; but little credit is to be assigned for the mediation which, in 1615, had procured the release of the illustrious prisoner, after twelve years of durance, since it was purchased, through the agency of Lady Villiers, for fifteen hundred pounds. On that occasion, Ralegh had addressed a letter of thanks to the all-powerful favourite; but now affairs had undergone a marvellous change. Even money could not avail, and Buckingham, in all the sunshine of his fortunes, stood at all events indifferent, if not accessory, to the infamous sentence, by the revival of which Ralegh was doomed to death.

The fashion of the day, as well as the wishes of the King, all tended at this time to increase the ascendancy of Spanish counsels in England. James entertained an opinion, peculiar to himself, that any marriage, except with a daughter of France or Spain, would be unworthy of the Prince of Wales, and he would never suffer a princess of any other royal house to be mentioned in his presence as a suitable consort for the heir apparent.^[233] Upon the death of Prince Henry, a negotiation for a marriage between the Prince Charles and the second daughter of France, the Princess Christine, was set on foot, but failed, owing to the death of the Count de Soissons, its chief promoter.^[234] The efforts of the Spanish ambassador, the famous Gondomar, and the long course of intrigues which attended his visitation to England, afterwards effectually set aside for a time all thoughts of prosecuting the scheme of a marriage treaty with either of the French princesses, on the one hand; whilst, on the other, the affairs of Germany were such as to discourage, to all appearance, the exertions which were made by the Spanish party in England to produce a union between the royal families of Great Britain and Spain. Frederic, the Elector, and son-in-law of James, had accepted the tender of the crown of Bohemia, and become, consequently, involved in hostilities with Austria, and these were regarded as a religious war; for Austria, which, throughout her dominions, had always made religion a pretext for her usurpations, now upheld the Catholic faith as her object, whilst the Elector Palatine, a Protestant, ranged himself on the side of liberty. The whole of the English nation were eager to espouse the cause, and to aid the brave exertions of that prince. Sincerely attached to the Princess Palatine, the ill-fated Elizabeth of Bohemia, they considered her interests, and those of her husband, as constituting a sort of crusade, and they were ready to risk plunging the country into all “the chaos of German politics,” considering the contest as between Protestantism and liberty—and Popery and despotism.

On the first introduction of Gondomar to the King, an accident had occurred which was regarded by many as a presage.^[235] As the ambassador was passing from the Council Chamber, along the terrace towards the Great Chamber in Whitehall, a piece of the floor sank, and several persons fell down. The Earl of Arundel hurt his face; the Lord Gerrard and Lord Gray also received some injury from the fall; the ambassador alone escaped, being held up by two of the household guards. This accident seemed ominous of the ultimate rupture between England and Spain; James regarded it in that light, and could never bear to hear it mentioned!

Unwonted honours were indeed shown to Gondomar. He was received with marks of great distinction, and lodged at Ely House, which had been prepared for his use with considerable expense. But the most important deviation from established custom was the appropriation of a cloth of state to this ambassador, an appendage never permitted to any such personage before. That mark of favour, however, which gave the greatest offence to the Puritan party, was the order that the chapel should be renewed and embellished, and an altar placed in it. All the ambassador’s expenses of living were defrayed by the King; although, on being offered some of the royal attendants, Gondomar declined their services. Whilst these things were going on at Court, the populace, cherishing the cause of the distant and deserted daughter of James, Elizabeth of Bohemia, were parading the streets with drums beating, to muster recruits for the Palatinate.^[236]

But James was under the influence of Gondomar, and Spain was connected by the closest ties of blood, and by the still dearer bonds of political interest, with the Emperor of Austria. Gondomar well understood the King, and divined his wishes. He offered, at this juncture, the second daughter of the King of Spain to Prince Charles, and backed his proposal by the promise of an immense sum of money, which he well knew would be acceptable in the present needy circumstances of the British King. The proposal, though entertained by James, was distrusted by the public, and deemed wholly insincere, for it was thought that Spain had no intention of forming any union with a princess of heretical principles.

The fate of Sir Walter Ralegh was therefore sealed. Twenty-three years before, he had acquired for the crown of England a claim to the continent of Guiana; and, in his second expedition, had planned, and executed through his son Walter, the sacking of St. Thomas, a small town which the Spaniards, not acknowledging the British claim to the territory of Guiana, had built on the river Oronooko. The young Walter Ralegh was killed in that attempt. He was a young man more desirous of honour than safety; “with whom,” said the agonized father, on hearing of his loss, “to say truth, all the respects of this world have taken end in me.”^[237]

Ralegh was now to suffer for the results of an enterprise which he had undertaken with the express consent of the King.^[238] Whilst proceedings were carried on against him, Gondomar was entertained, as it will be remembered, with a marked distinction by Buckingham. The extreme youth of the favourite had indeed attracted the witticisms of the artful Spaniard, who had converted that circumstance into a compliment to the King’s penetration, telling his Majesty “that he was the wisest and happiest prince in Christendom, to make privy-counsellors sage at the age of twenty-one, when his master, the King of Spain, could not do it when they were sixty.”^[239] The wily Spaniard dealt out his phrases in points and conceits, a sort of discourse then well received in society, and peculiarly agreeable to the King. He affected, also, to speak false Latin. The King laughed at him, on which the Ambassador rejoined, “Your Majesty speaks like a pedant, but I speak like a gentleman,” and James gloried in his acknowledged superiority in the classics. By these small contrivances had Gondomar insinuated himself into royal favour, so that no boon that he could ask—not even the life of the venerated Ralegh—could be refused.

There was another wheel within this closely-contrived political machine. The Countess of Buckingham was inclined to Popery; and became, eventually, a convert to that faith. This circumstance naturally influenced greatly the son, over whose counsels the Countess continued to hold a sway, and to dispose them to the marriage of the heir apparent to a Catholic.

Some time previously, when the affair of the marriage was first broached, the sentiments of the Marquis and his mother were, therefore, generally understood to be favourable, and the Lord Treasurer Cranfield, at that time, under their influence, was zealous in a cause so acceptable to the favourite.

In February, 1617, Nathaniel Brent wrote to Sir Dudley Carleton: “By the Marquis of Buckingham and his mother the Spanish match is much apprehended, though methinks there needs no such haste, the lady being yet scant eleven years old. In the meantime every man hopes or fears as he is affected, and they say the Lord Treasurer is so far possessed, that, like another Cato, that began to learn Greek at threescore years old, he hath got him a Spanish reader, and applies it hard.” The influence of the Countess of Buckingham doubtless, therefore, turned the scale against Ralegh, to the vexation of her son’s best friends. “She was,” writes Bishop Hacket, who knew her well, “mother to the great favourite, but, in religion, became a step-mother. She doated upon him extremely, as the glory of her womb, yet, by turning her coat so wantonly when the eyes of all the kingdom were upon her, she could not have wrought him a worse turn if she had studied a mischief against him.” “Many,” adds the same writer, “marvelled what rumbled in her conscience all that time; for, from a maid to a maiden, she had not every one’s good words for practice of piety.”^[240] “Arthur Wilson complains also that the Countess of Buckingham was the cynosure that all the Papists steered by; but that it was above her ability to bear the weight of that metaphor.”

“The Countess was,” he adds, “a protectress of the Jesuits and Jesuitesses, the females of that order, of whom there were no fewer in England than two hundred English ladies of good families.” Her opinions were well known to affect her son, who now began to be accused by the Puritans of Armenianism, and became the friend and patron of Archbishop Laud. Gondomar saw well to what point to direct his insidious game. The Countess had a share in the management of State affairs; she, with her son, guided the helm, and as much court was paid to her as to Buckingham, whilst both received far more adulation than was thought necessary to bestow on the King himself. Wittily, though somewhat impiously, Gondomar wrote to the Spanish Court that “there never was more hope of the conversion of England than now; for there are more prayers and oblations offered here to the mother than to the son.”^[241]

Under this complication of interests, Ralegh, on the 24th of October, 1618, was given to understand that it was the King’s intent that he should be put to death, and that he should therefore prepare himself for the same.^[242] Between that intimation and the fulfilment of his doom, the courage of the broken-spirited and diseased prisoner, prematurely old with sorrow and disappointment, gave way. He sought to anticipate his fate, and attempted suicide, but the wound which he gave himself by stabbing—a cut, rather than a stab—was not fatal, and he recovered to address to his disconsolate wife one of the most eloquent and heart-rending letters that ever emanated from that tomb of the living in which he passed the close of his days.^[243] How Buckingham could hear of this last act of a mind almost frenzied with misery, of a being, to use Ralegh’s own words, “not tempted with Satan,” but only “tempted with sorrow, whose sharp teeth devour my heart,” and not plead for this ornament of his age, it is scarcely possible to conceive. He would have culled golden opinions for such an interference; he would have established a source of proud and consolatory recollections for his own heart; but he lost that glorious opportunity, and left the illustrious prisoner, to use his own words, to be a “wonder and a spectacle,” and went on in his own perilous career, until the hour of retribution, even to him, arrived.

Ralegh’s execution was fixed to take place—so conscious was Government of the odium which it would incur—on the Lord Mayor’s Day, “that the pageants and fine shows might,” as Aubrey expresses it, “avocate and draw away the people from beholding the tragedie of the gallantest worthie that England ever bred.”^[244]

On the twenty-third of October, a discussion took place in the Privy Council as to the mode in which prisoners who had been condemned for treason, and set at liberty, could be executed. The subject was one of much perplexity, but everything that was subservient and expedient could be accomplished in those days. It was, however, determined to send a Privy Seal to the judges on the King’s Bench, desiring them to try Sir Walter Ralegh “according to law.” The death to which he was doomed, by the hand of the executioner, was already impending over the illustrious prisoner in the form of disease. He had sent to the merciless Cecil his mournful manifesto of privation and sickness; his left side was numbed, his fingers on the same side were beginning to be contracted, his tongue and speech affected; he spoke feebly, and feared he might altogether lose the power of utterance. An application had therefore been made for his removal from his damp, cold lodging in the Tower, to a little room in the garden, which he had himself built, close to his laboratory, or, as it was styled, his stilhouse.^[245]

But the time was at hand when his spirit should breathe in a freer atmosphere; and all that man could do to him should cease to be of a source of dread. “The world,” he calmly observed, “was but a large prison, out of which some were daily selected for execution.”

On the twenty-eighth of October, he was tried, and of course, condemned, in the King’s Bench. Henry Yelverton, then attorney-general, could not help again, in his address for the Crown, describing the prisoner as one who, for his parts and quality, was to be pitied; “one who had been a star, yea, and of such nature, that shineth far; but out of the necessity of state, like stars when they trouble the sphere, must indeed fall.” It is remarkable that Yelverton, who had been patronised by Somerset, did himself, in after days, fall, having incurred the enmity of Villiers.

The King, and of course Buckingham, were at this time in Hertfordshire, on the Royal progress, which was always a scene of festivity and amusement. The warrant for Ralegh’s execution was, however, produced directly after the sentence had been passed, dated the same day, signed, and addressed to Lord Bacon. The sentence was commuted from hanging to beheading: but no other favour was granted. James and his courtiers feared the effect of public indignation; no time, therefore, was allowed; on the day after his sentence, Ralegh met his death with simple, decorous tranquillity; as one who was going to take a long journey, for which he was well prepared. The streets were then thronged with the gay followers of the annual pageantry; and, amid the din of trumpets, and shouts of the people, the noble spirit of Ralegh passed to a better world. Perhaps, had he sued for life to Gondomar, as his friend Lord Clare recommended, the boon might have been granted. But those who loved his memory had not this act of humiliation to recall, as casting one shadow over the brightness of his departure from among them. “I am neither so old, nor so infirm,” was his reply, when urged to make this appeal to the Spaniard, “but that I should be content to live; and, therefore, this would I do, were I sure it would do my business; but if it fail, then I shall lose both my life and my honour; and both those I will not part with.”^[246]

Since it was understood that Ralegh’s death was a sacrifice to Spanish councils, owing to a disputed territory, there can be no doubt but that this event embittered the minds of the public against the cherished schemes which James and Villiers had for some time conceived with regard to the Spanish alliance. Whilst all bore a smiling aspect, various sources of discontent were ready to break forth; and it was generally reported that James had, to his infinite disgrace, somewhat insisted on the sentence of hanging being put into execution, and that he could with difficulty be brought to consent to its being commuted.^[247]

One circumstance which somewhat disturbed the minds of the Court revellers, yet seemed not to lessen the number of the revels, was the fatal illness of the Queen. At the Christmas of 1618-19, the physicians began to speak doubtfully, and the courtiers to plot for leases for her lands, for the keeping of Somerset House, and for a division of the spoil of her furniture and personalities, whenever her death should take place, so confidantly was it expected. Meantime, the festivities of the season went on as usual, Hatton House being the centre of all that was gay and great, and the lady of the mansion the deepest of domestic politicians. During the Christmas she gave a grand supper, with a play, and invited all the gallants and great ladies about the Court to grace it; but the Howards, especially, were solicited and caressed, for it was Lady Hatton’s aim to “solder and link them fast again” with the Marquis of Buckingham; and to see if he would cast an eye towards Diana Cecil,^[248] the second daughter of William, second Earl of Salisbury. This young lady was made, in order to attract the greater notice, Mistress of the Feast; but the bait proved unsuccessful. Many, doubtless, were the parents who were not unwilling to match even the fairest of their daughters with the young Marquis, “for it is like,” writes Mr. Chamberlain, “there will be much angling after it, now it is decided the King wishes him to take a wife, which of divers is diversely constructed.”^[249]

Twelfth Night was celebrated with a masque, in which Prince Charles, Buckingham, and several young noblemen and gentlemen, to the number of twelve—amongst whom young Maynard “bore away the bell” for dancing—enacted. This masque was one of Ben Jonson’s compositions; but whether it was the “Vision of Delight” repeated, or “Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue,” is not determined.^[250] Six days afterwards, the Banqueting House at Whitehall, in which these revels had taken place, was burned down, owing, it was supposed, to the neglect of women who were appointed to sweep the room, and who held their candles too near to some of the oiled cloths and devices for the masque, which had been left by the King’s orders to be ready for Shrove Tuesday.^[251]

The Queen had been some time ill, but hopes were entertained of her recovery until within a very short period of her death. When the danger increased, Dr. Mayerne, according to a promise he had given her, told her, twenty-four hours before her decease, that she could not recover. It was then too late for the Queen to make a will; but she wished to leave all that she possessed, with the exception of a jewel to the King of Denmark, and a casket to the Princess Elizabeth, to her son Charles, adding an assurance that her faith was free from Popery. Although, when asked if she wished to leave all she had to her son, she answered, and had again, “Yes,” her possessions were so valuable, that the people about the Court did not expect that her wishes would be followed out without the usual formalities. Meantime, whilst her body lay at Denmark House, her funeral was delayed, because the Master of the Wardrobe would not pay double prices, usually then charged when ready money could not be produced. Crowds thronged round Denmark House; and far more curiosity was expressed to see her after her death than had ever been testified during her life. The ladies were weary of waiting till the money could be raised to carry to the grave one who had left 400,000l. in jewels, 90,000l. in plate, 80,000 Jacobuses in ready money, besides a costly wardrobe.^[252] “The will,” says the precise Mr. Chamberlain, in a letter to Sir Dudley Carleton, “proves to be nothing.”^[253] The King, meantime, was dangerously ill, of an agonising disease, and obliged to be carried part of the way to Theobalds in a Neapolitan portative chair, given him by Lady Hatton; weak as he was, and even whilst the Queen was unburied, he would have his deer brought before him, that he might enjoy his wonted pleasures. The lady mourners were, meantime, quarrelling by the funeral bier for precedency at the approaching ceremonial; and, amongst the foremost of the combatants was the Countess of Nottingham, who claimed, as one of the two conditions of Nottingham’s giving up the post of Lord High Admiral, that he should be the first Earl of England, and that she, as first Countess, should step out before all others on this occasion. The expenses of the funeral were to exceed those of Queen Elizabeth’s, although money was so scarce, that some of Queen Anne’s plate would have to be coined three times to pay them. There was not even money to put the King’s and Prince’s servants in mourning; and, though Anne died on the twenty-first of March, the twenty-seventh of March found her still in ghastly state at Denmark House.^[254] At length, on the fourteenth of May, the corpse, with Prince Charles riding before it, was carried to its resting place. The chariot and six horses, on which the Queen’s effigy was placed, and the hearse itself, were very stately, yet the funeral was pronounced to be a “poor, drawling sight.” Two hundred and fifty indigent women followed the hearse. The Countess of Arundel claimed and obtained her privilege to follow as first Countess; whilst Buckingham’s place, as pall-bearer, was supplied by the Earl of Rutland.

The Queen’s death took away all chance of that counter-influence which it is possible that Anne might have sought to exercise when the conduct of Buckingham became, as it eventually did, oppressive and overbearing. It left, also, her son, whose affectionate nature had found a return in his mother’s partiality for him, dependent wholly upon Buckingham as a mediator with his father. Shortly afterwards, one of the effects of this state of affairs was exhibited. The King, upon the Prince’s suit, granted the Marquis of Buckingham an estate of twelve hundred a year, that had belonged to the Queen; and to requite this service, Buckingham sued the King for an addition of 5,000l. a year to the Prince’s former allowance, which was also granted. It appears, however, that the estate assigned to Buckingham was given, ostensibly, for the care which the favourite had bestowed on His Majesty during a severe illness which had followed closely upon the death of Queen Anne.^[255]

Hitherto, the young favourite had proved himself possessed of no higher qualities than those which a courtier’s life requires. He was now placed in a situation which drew forth abilities of which his enemies and his friends were alike ignorant. On the thirtieth day of January, 1618-19, Buckingham was created Lord High Admiral; a post which he at first refused to accept on account of his youth and inexperience. James would, however, admit of no excuse, and the aged Earl of Nottingham resigned that pre-eminent place, alleging as a reason, his advanced years, but, actually, for a “consideration.” According to one authority, the compensation was a pension of six hundred a year to his lady, of five hundred to his son, Charles Howard, and of two hundred and fifty to his daughter, to commence from the death of the Earl; or, as another statement gives it, the compact was made for certain benefits; namely, “a good round sum of ready money, and 3,000l. yearly pension during the Earl’s life; and after his decease, 1,000l. pension to his lady, and 500l. a year to his eldest son by her, which was to be doubled to him at his mother’s death.”^[256]

The office of High Admiral was enjoyed by Buckingham to the close of his short life; and was maintained by energy such as had not been witnessed in the administration of naval affairs since the days of Queen Elizabeth. Little credit has been assigned to him hitherto by historians for his unwearied endeavours, not only to restore, but actually to create a navy; but the recent discoveries in the State Paper Office place his merits in this important sphere beyond dispute, as will hereafter be shown.^[257]

He served, indeed, a master, whose confidence in him, based, perhaps, on more solid grounds than have been allowed, it was no easy task to disturb.

Buckingham would have acted wisely, had he, at this most critical period of his life, remembered the counsels given by Bacon in his famous “Letter to Sir George Villiers.” “You are as a new risen star, and the eyes of all men are upon you; let not your own negligence make you fall like a meteor.” But his youth, his sudden rise to fortune, his mother’s influence, and his own desire to elevate his family—an aim which militated against disinterested conduct—all contributed to smother the naturally generous impulses of his heart.

The King’s partiality was manifested both publicly and privately. Buckingham had been his attendant in illness; he was now his consoler in affliction; for the King was not insensible to the loss of a wife to whom, in spite of “some matrimonial wrangling,”^[258] he had been an indulgent husband. Accordingly, when the funeral made for the Queen took place, Buckingham remained at Theobalds with his royal master.^[259] His great object appears, at this period of his career, to have been the aggrandisement of his family. He had secured the prosperity of his elder brother, Sir John Villiers, by his marriage with the daughter of Sir Edward Coke; he now determined to effect that of his youngest brother, Sir Christopher Villiers, not by marrying him to the niece of a rich alderman, but by other methods. Already had he availed himself of his empire over the actions of Bacon,^[260] to procure for his relatives one of those profitable sinecures which abounded in that reign. This was a monopoly for the licensing of ale houses, which Buckingham desired to engross, conjointly with Mr. Patrick Maule, for his brother. But there was an impediment—the monopoly had been deemed a grievance, and in 1617, Bacon had replied to Buckingham’s application for it in the following terms:—

“I have conferred with my Lord Chief Justice and Mr. Solicitor thereupon, and there is a scruple in it that it should be one of the grievances put down in Parliament; which, if it be, I may not, in my duty and love to you, advise you to deal in it; if it be not, I will mould in the best manner and help it forward.”^[261] In a subsequent letter, three years afterwards, Bacon again discourages the continued solicitude expressed by Buckingham for the patent; for, in alluding to the patents “as like to be stirred in the lower house of parliament,” he mentions among them that of the ale houses; and recommending, through the “singular love and affection he bore to Buckingham,” that his Lordship, “whom God hath made in all things so fit to be beloved, would put off the envy of these things,” which, according to Bacon’s judgment, “would bear no great fruit, and rather take the means for ceasing them, than the note for maintaining them.”^[262]

It was probably, on finding his first application, though assisted by his mother, useless, that Buckingham contrived a match between Sir Sebastian Harvey’s^[263] only daughter and Sir Christopher Villiers. “The match,” writes Mr. Chamberlain, “being not to the joy of the poor father, so much against the old man’s stomach, as the conceit thereof hath brought him near his grave already, if at least the world mistake not the true cause of his sickness.”^[264]

The marriage was urged on, nevertheless, by the Countess of Buckingham, who found, however, that Sir Sebastian, then the Lord Mayor, a wilful and dogged man, could not by any means, either foul or fair, be brought to yield; in the agony of his spirit, the old man wished himself and his daughter dead, rather than be compelled to comply. The truth is, the young lady was only in her fourteenth year, and very small in stature, and her father did not wish her to be married until four or five years afterwards. He was, nevertheless, incessantly annoyed with messages from the King; and these he took so much to heart that he was brought to death’s door, although Buckingham and others were sent to comfort him. The Lord Mayor and aldermen had not been present at the Queen’s funeral; and the King, wishing to please Harvey, and to atone for this apparent insult, ordered that St. Paul’s Cross should mourn on Trinity Sunday, and that the Mayor and Corporation should go there as mourners; but Harvey, “sick and surfeited”surfeited”, declined attendance; nor, when his Majesty, on the fifth of June, made his triumphant entry into London, was he well enough to receive him. In truth, the honest pride of Englishmen began to revolt against having the relatives of the favourite forced upon them as sons-in-law. The King, however, entered in state, attended by Prince Charles and all the nobility—Buckingham, of course, a conspicuous object amid the throng. James, on this melancholy occasion, looked “more like a wooer than a mourner.” He had already laid aside his weeds for Queen Anne. A fresh suit of “watchet satin, laid with a blue and white feather,” rejoiced the eyes of the company, who were glad to see him so gallant; and ill accorded with the expected appearance of an embassy of condolence from the Duc de Lorraine, with two or three thousand persons all in deep mourning.^[265] And when it was remembered that the King had, not long ago, formally recommended, as on his death-bed, his son, his favourite, and Lord Digby—who had suffered, he said, in popularity, for the Spanish match—to his council, and had expected his decease shortly, there was something almost ludicrous in the contrast.

The desired match did not, however, prosper, not withstanding a visit from James to the Lord Mayor’s own residence, soon afterwards, to expostulate with the old man. He also sent for Sir Sebastian, his wife, and daughter, from their dinner, in Merchant Taylor’s Hall, in order to recommend Sir Christopher as a suitor; but all was in vain, Buckingham was defeated, and the young lady was eventually united to the eldest son of Sir Francis Popham.^[266]

Disappointed in this matter, Buckingham now manifested his intentions of improving his own fortunes by a successful marriage; various objects of attraction had been offered to his gaze, but they wanted, probably, that which his extravagance rendered essential—fortune. On one occasion, we find him, with the King, visiting a house in order to admire the beauty of one of his god-daughters, but no result followed. The world, too, now talked loudly of the marriage of Lady Diana Cecil with the Earl of Oxford, whilst a richer bride was given, by common report, to Buckingham. This was the Lady Katherine Manners, the only daughter of Francis, sixth Earl of Rutland, a nobleman of great wealth; the lady was also endowed with other attractions besides fortune, proving a woman of many attainments and great spirit.

This marriage was, in every respect, desirable. It produced, amongst one of its advantages, an alliance in blood with the illustrious Sydneys. Roger, fifth Earl of Rutland, the brother of Earl Francis, having married Sir Philip Sydney’s daughter and heiress.^[267] It cemented a union with a house already favoured by King James, who visited Belvoir Castle repeatedly, and who had constituted its two last lords successively Chief Justices in Eyre of all his forests and chases north of the Trent, beside conferring other distinctions; lastly, it offered to Buckingham a prospect of domestic happiness with a lady of considerable wit and spirit, and one whose affectionate attachment to her husband was amply testified by her letters and conduct during their union.

One drawback, however, existed. The Lady Katherine was a Roman Catholic; and, although passionately attached to Buckingham, she, for some time, refused to go to church. Through the exertions, however, of the celebrated Williams, then Dean of Salisbury, and afterwards Lord Chancellor, she was ultimately converted. It was for her benefit that he composed his work, entitled, “A Manual of the Elements of the Orthodox Religion, by an old Prebend;” only twenty copies of which were printed, and these were all presented to the Marquis of Buckingham.^[268] Such was the success of Williams’s arguments, or the influence of the young lady’s affection for her suitor, that, shortly before her marriage, a public profession of the reformed faith was made by Lady Katherine, on her partaking of the Holy Communion at the altar of a Protestant church.^[269]

Various were the rumours at Court concerning the progress of the engagement, which went on “untowardly;” amongst others, that the Countess of Buckingham, having taken the young lady away from her home, the Countess of Rutland, Lady Katherine’s step-mother, had refused to receive her back: the King was said to be in the plot.^[270]

The future Duchess of Buckingham was the only child of the Earl of Rutland, by his first wife, Frances, the widow of Sir William Bevile, of Kilkhampton, Cornwall;^[271] and, during the lifetime of her mother, she was regarded as the sole heiress of all the wealth of her father. Upon the death of the first Countess of Rutland, the Earl married again, his second lady being the daughter of the Earl of Thanet, and the widow of Sir Henry Hungerford. Two sons were the offspring of this union, but before the courtship of Buckingham, death removed them from being obstacles to Lady Katherine’s prosperity. They died in their infancy, from the effects, as it was believed in those credulous days, of wicked practices and sorcery.^[272] It was this celebrated case which is said to have convinced King James, before sceptical on the subject, of the existence of witchcraft, of the real agency of the power of darkness.^[273] The instruments of the foul fiend were three women in the service of the Earl of Rutland, Joan Flower, and her two daughters, who were stated to have entered into a formal contract with the devil, and to have become “devils incarnate themselves.” Being dismissed from Belvoir Castle, on account of bad conduct, they made use of all the enchantments, spells, and charms that the black art comprised.

Henry Lord Roos, the eldest born of the house of Rutland, sank under the effects of these demoniacal influences, or rather, probably, from childish terrors, in 1613.^[274]

The Lady Katherine did not escape their machinations, having, with her brother Francis, been tortured by Flower and her accomplices.^[275] Five years after the supposed exercise of their witchcraft, these wretched women were apprehended, and upon being rigidly examined by Lord Willoughby d’Eresby, Sir George Manners, and others, were committed to Lincoln gaol. Joan died on her way to prison, whilst wishing the bread and butter which she was eating, might choke her if she were guilty. The two daughters were tried, confessed their guilt, and were executed at Lincoln.

By the death of her brother, Lady Katherine, whose more advanced years, and probably, whose courage and sense enabled her to master the dark terrors of the wicked Joan and her daughters, became a personage of no little importance in those venal times, when even a show of affection was scarcely thought necessary for the preliminary arrangements of the nuptial tie. Belvoir, her father’s proud possession, stands upon the eminence, the fine prospect from which gave it the name it bears, in all its stately antiquity.^[276] It was built in the time of the Conqueror, by Robert de Belvedeir, standard-bearer to the monarch. The edifice is seated on the confines of the counties of Lincoln and Leicester, Nottingham and Rutland, and it commanded, in the time of Francis Manners, until the present day, fourteen lordships.^[277] Of this domain, Lady Katherine was now sole heiress. Repeated visits had been made by King James to it, and, indeed, a sojourn at Belvoir was always a principal feature in a royal progress. A singular custom was formerly observed on the occasion of a royal visit to this castle. A family in Nottinghamshire, who held the Manor of Staunton, by the office of castle guard of the strong hold of Belvoir Castle, called the Staunton Tower, were required to present the keys of that tower to the monarch, in the same manner as the keys of a town are offered. The tenure required, in feudal times, that—