UNFORTUNATE RESULT OF THE PRINCIPLES EARLY INSTILLED INTO CHARLES I. BY HIS FATHER--THE AFFAIR OF THE PALATINATE--ITS CONNECTION WITH THE SPANISH MARRIAGE--MAD DESIRE OF CHARLES AND BUCKINGHAM FOR A WAR WITH SPAIN--LETTER FROM THE EARL OF BRISTOL--THE FIRST UNFORTUNATE EXPEDITION TO CADIZ--RESENTMENT OF THE PEOPLE--CHARLES ASSEMBLES A PARLIAMENT--THE SUPPLIES REFUSED--IMPEACHMENT OF BRISTOL--IMPEACHMENT OF BUCKINGHAM--HIS THIRTEEN ANSWERS--RASH CONDUCT OF THE KING--HIS EXPRESSION OF CONTEMPT FOR THE HOUSE OF COMMONS--SIR JOHN ELIOT AND SIR DUDLEY DIGGES SENT TO THE TOWER--THE INTOLERANT SPIRIT OF THE DAY--INFLUENCE OF LAUD--SERMON OF THE VICAR OF BRACKLEY--"TUNING THE PULPITS."
The next mission entrusted to Buckingham was one which, accompanied by the Earl of Holland, he undertook to the States-General, who had bound themselves to restore by force of arms the Palatinate to the King’s only sister, Elizabeth of Bohemia, “whose dowry,” Sir Henry Wotton observes, “had been ravished by the German eagle mixed with Spanish feathers.” “A princess,” he adds, “resplendent in darkness, and whose virtues were born within the chance, but without the power, of fortune.”
This mission occupied a month. The Duke and Lord Holland embarked at Harwich, and after a dangerous passage, in the course of which three ships were foundered, they arrived on the fifth day at Harwich. It was during the absence of Buckingham that the unfortunate expedition to Cadiz failed, and the public expressions of disappointment at that misfortune were the first news to greet him on his return.
It was at this period that the seeds of many of the erroneous and unjustifiable principles of action which were originally implanted in the mind of Charles I. by his father, and which had been fostered by Buckingham, were seen to produce their first effects; and that the long course of mistakes and oppressions which preceded the great Rebellion was commenced.
In order to comprehend the manner in which the complicated questions of foreign policy in those days affected the line of conduct adopted by England, it will be necessary to refer briefly to the question which was the grand theme of the day--the loss of the Palatinate.
The misfortunes of Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, her rare qualities, and her romantic story, are well known by every one conversant with English history. The affairs connected with the Palatinate afford the first instance in which Great Britain was involved in the politics of Germany, and with the various religious parties into which that country was divided.
In 1612, a league had been cemented between this country and the German Protestants, by the marriage of Elizabeth Stuart with Frederic, the Elector Palatine. Bohemia, persecuted by the Emperor Mathias of Austria, had invited the Elector Palatine to accept the crown, which was elective, under a conviction that Frederic, being supported by an alliance with England, would support them in their struggles with the intolerant Catholic Council who governed the kingdom of Bohemia.
A fearful conflict ensued. The German States, entrusting the management of their affairs to thirty directors, composed wholly of Protestant Princes, were opposed by the Catholic League, formed with a view of upholding the Jesuits in opposition to the Hussites, or Protestants, or, as they were sometimes styled, the Evangelical party, by whose preponderance the Elector Palatine had been called to the throne.
Relying upon the cordial sympathy of the English nation, an expectation in which he was not disappointed, the Prince Palatine, believing himself equally sure of the co-operation of King James, accepted the tempting offer of royalty without waiting for the approval of his father-in-law. But he looked to him for support in vain. It was one of King James’s most cherished notions, that monarchs should support monarchs in case of disturbance, how just soever the cause, how unanimous soever the voice of the people by whom a sovereign was deposed. His natural timidity, also, operated in inducing a line of conduct towards his son-in-law and his daughter as pusillanimous as was every other trait of his character and action of his life--and, above all, his project of accomplishing a union between his son Charles and a daughter of Spain militated against a real and effective interference in the affairs of the Palatinate, except, indeed, to confuse and ruin them. He was contented, therefore, with sending ambassadors to Germany, not only to mediate between contending parties, but to induce the new King of Bohemia to relinquish a throne which James pretended to assert that his son-in-law had no right to retain.[289]
The King of Poland, the Elector of Saxony, and the Duke of Bavaria, who was at the head of the Catholic League, sided with Ferdinand, Emperor after the death of Mathias, and the result was the reduction of Bohemia, the loss of the Palatinate, and the flight of the Elector Palatine, or, as he was called, the King of Bohemia, to Holland. The King of Spain, also, sent an army under Spinola into the field, and it was that circumstance which rendered the scheme of marrying Prince Charles to the Infanta so unpopular in England, and which brought so much odium on Buckingham.
The treaty for that match had been originally carried on through the agency of the Earl of Bristol, and hence the jealousy which had already broken out on various occasions between the Duke of Buckingham and that able and experienced ambassador; whilst the failure of the negotiations, which were undertaken with the pretext of gaining the restoration of the Palatinate, was the origin of the rash war with Spain, which Charles, without the usual form of a proclamation, resolved on commencing.
The English, however, delighted as they had been at the rupture of the treaty, were indignant at this informality, as well as averse to a war which seemed to be the result of private passions rather than the well-considered act of a monarch anxious for the dignity of his subjects.
But a worthy representative of James’s style of policy remained in his unhappy son. Supplies for the war with Spain were refused in the first Parliament that Charles called; a compulsory loan was exacted. Whilst the country was burning with resentment at this unequally imposed burden, a fleet of eighty sail, English, and twenty sail supplied from Holland, carrying ten thousand men, was sent to the coast of Spain. This grand armament, raised by the energy of the Lord High Admiral, was an object of pride to the nation, who had never before beheld so glorious a fleet; yet it was entrusted, not to Sir Robert Mansel, a distinguished commander, but to Cecil, Viscount Wimbleton, a favourite of Buckingham’s, and a man neither of talent nor experience. Thus, the fatal vice which has obtained the popular name of jobbery was exhibited at this most critical period.
A signal failure was the result; the fleet reached Cape St. Vincent, and landed the troops; a fort was taken, but there was neither discipline nor decision to restrain the troops, who rushed into a store of wine, and soon abandoned themselves to the most disgraceful excesses. Sickness was the consequence, and the expedition returned ingloriously to England, with the additional discredit of its being known that a stay of two days longer would have sufficed to take all the shipping collected into the bay of Cadiz, and thus to have struck a grand blow, at the very commencement of the war, against the power of Spain.
The blame of this unfortunate attempt rested chiefly on the head of Buckingham, as the undertaking was known to have originated in his advice. Lord Clarendon well observes, in his life of himself, speaking of the Stuart family, that it was their “unhappy fate and constitution” to trust to the “judgments of those who were as much inferior to themselves in understanding as they were in quality, before their own, which was very good, and suffered even their natures, which disposed them to virtue and justice, to be prevailed upon, and altered and corrupted by those who knew how to make use of some one infirmity that they discovered in them, and by complying with that, and cherishing and serving it, they, by degrees, wrought upon the mass, and sacrificed all the other good inclinations to that single vice.”
Parliament was accordingly summoned, and at Candlemas, in 1625, the coronation was celebrated. This ceremonial, which might have assisted in re-establishing good feeling, proved, unhappily, the source of bitter dissension and cavilling. The coronations of Edward VI. and of Queen Elizabeth had been performed according to the rites of the Romish Church. That of James I. was done in haste; and “wanted,” says the biographer of Laud, “many things which might have been considered in a time of leisure.”[290] Amongst the alterations suggested by the prelates who were appointed as commissioners to settle the form, it was decreed that anointing was to be performed in the form of a cross, a point established, which was at that time as fertile a source of invective as the use of that most holy and touching symbol in our churches has since been in these days, even amongst well-intentioned and pious Christians.
Even the ritual of the coronation, therefore, performed as it was, almost for the first time, according to the mode which it has since retained, contributed indirectly to the unpopularity of Buckingham. To Laud, that prelate to whose memory so much injustice has been done, in imputing to him designs and motives of which no proof exists, and yet whose errors bring pain to every thinking mind, was allotted the performance of the great ceremonial.
Formerly it had been the office of the Abbot of Westminster to celebrate the rite; then, for a century, the Dean had held the guardianship of the regalia used by Edward the Confessor, and had kept them in a secret part of Westminster Abbey. These valuables were now disinterred from their hiding-place by Laud, who, finding also the old crucifix, set it up on the altar, as in former times. Everything relating to this coronation wore an ominous appearance; in the first place, it was fixed for the day of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, and the King, whether from compliment to the faith of his wife, or from taste, or, from the supposed influence of Laud, it does not transpire, was dressed in white, instead of purple, used always by his predecessors. “Not,” says Heylyn, with quaint simplicity, “for want of purple velvet enough to make him a suit (for he had many yards of it in his outer garment), but from choice, to declare that virgin purity with which he came to be espoused unto his kingdom.” His laying aside the purple was, however, looked upon as an “ill omen.”[291]
Nor was this the only presage of coming mishaps. Charles was afterwards accused, during the Long Parliament, of having altered the coronation oath; the very sermon, also, preached by the eloquent Penhouse, Bishop of Carlisle, formerly his tutor, seemed to invite fate to do her worst; he chose a text, according to Heylyn, more proper for a funeral than a coronation--"I will give to thee a crown of life"--and engrafted on it a discourse which those who heard it judged might, with great propriety, have been uttered when his Majesty was dead, but not just at the moment when he was about to undertake the government of his people.
The ceremonial being concluded, the King walked in his robes from Westminster Abbey to the Hall, and delivered to Laud, who represented the Dean of Westminster, the crown, sceptre, and the sword called cortena. Laud, after receiving the regalia, returned to the Abbey, and, placing them on the altar, offered them up in his Majesty’s name; after which they were again locked up, never to see the light until after the stirring season of the Rebellion, and the more placid years of the Commonwealth. They were again displayed at the Restoration.[292]
All these forms were regarded as next to impious by the Puritan party; and, since there was now a cordial alliance between Laud and Buckingham, the popular hatred was divided between them both. Two years had now passed since Buckingham, in the miseries of an ague, had sent for Laud to console and advise him. Laud was, in truth, one of the most agreeable of companions, and carried with him to his grave an apprehension quick and sudden--"a sociable wit and pleasant humour."[293] So that, even in the crisis of a malady, then of a far more severe character than in the present day, Buckingham forgot his sufferings, or bore them with a patience unwonted to his irritable nature; and, “by that patience, did so break their heats and violences, that at last they left him.”
After this period, Laud became, Heylyn tells us, “not only a confessor, but a councillor to the Duke;” and to his advice it was owing that the endowments of the Charter-house were not appropriated by the Duke to the maintenance of the war, a plan which had been contemplated by the Duke, but applied to those of education. Laud, we must in gratitude recall, opposed all alienations of that nature; and to his firmness, as well as to that of the honest-hearted Sir Edward Coke, who, as trustee to the estates called Sutton’s Lands, resisted the attempts of the Crown to seize them, we owe the preservation of many colleges and hospitals.
During his intimacy with Buckingham, Laud succeeded in imbuing him with those opinions which he himself advocated during his life, and died to support. These were opposed to what was then called “Doctrinal Puritanism,” a term which Buckingham expressed a wish to comprehend, and which Laud undertook to expound. These doctrinal points related to the observance of the Lord’s Day; to the “indiscrimination,” says Heylyn, “of bishops and presbyters, the power of sovereigns in ecclesiastical matters, the doctrine of confession and of sacerdotal absolution, and the five points which had, for the last twenty years, been agitating the churches of Holland.”[294] Those points, which have unhappily raised so many bitter resentments, were now beginning to inflame the public mind in England with that fever of intolerance which is so contagious, and so inimical to true religion. These controversies, in the time of Buckingham, were carried on between the party called Arminians and the Calvinists. “A swarm of books,” as Heylyn calls them, came over from Holland, and awoke out of “that dead sleep,” as he terms the then state of the Church, the learned divines of Oxford. Laud had been one of the first, on the publication of these works, to espouse and to advocate what was then styled Arminianism, so called from a famous professor of Leyden, Von Armene. Whatever was the standard of Laud’s opinions, and whatsoever merit may be attached to their sincerity, or what blame soever to their virulence, it is, at all events, satisfactory to believe that the attention of Buckingham was, during the latter years of his life, directed to subjects of mightier import than the sublunary interests which had hitherto solely engrossed his attention.
Laud had, indeed, those qualities which form the man of piety into the missionary of social life--a mission much required in all ages. The rigid, uncompromising priest, who gives no latitude to opinion, no indulgence to error, generally does far more harm than good. The lax man of the world, with weak purpose, and flickering notions of right and wrong, is a scandal to the faith he professes, and lends a hand to indifference, if not to infidelity. But Laud, an enthusiast, perhaps a zealot, was the most agreeable of bigots. Born at Reading, the son of a clothier, he had been reproached, like Buckingham, with the meanness of his origin. Like most men, he felt the imputation; and even in his garden at Lambeth, when in the height of his greatness, he is stated by his biographer, Doctor Heylyn, to have shewn no ordinary degree of vexation on his countenance, after reading a libel in which he was reproached with his parentage, “as if,” he said, “he had been raked out of a dung-hill.” He owned that he had not the good fortune “to be born a gentleman,” but he had the happiness to be descended from honest parents. The beautiful, old-fashioned College of St. John’s, at Oxford, had received him as a commoner, and he entered there at a period when Calvinism influenced, strange to say, the tone and spirit of that university. All that had once been held sacred was decaying or disused; and the Reformed Church of England had become eclipsed by the doctrines and writings of Zuinglius, introduced by Dr. Humphrey, the then Vice-Chancellor, who had received his impressions, when deprived of his fellowship by Queen Mary, at Zurich, the very hot-bed of Calvinism.
The use of the surplice, the custom of bowing at the name of Jesus, commanded by Queen Elizabeth in 1559, and the distinctive dress of the priests, had been laid aside, when Laud, in 1604, performed his exercise for Bachelor of Divinity, into which treatise he introduced those tenets which were soon conceived, or misconceived, to be tainted with Romanism.
Nevertheless, from the time when he was president of his own college, St. John’s, to the moment of his promotion to the see of Canterbury, there was little real obstruction to Laud’s elevation, notwithstanding that the whole of his career was one of controversy and contention, until he rose to the highest pinnacle of ecclesiastical greatness, and fell, subsequently, into the very depths of adversity.
This slight sketch is necessary to show how naturally Laud might be expected to succeed in gaining an influence over Buckingham, since he had been always engaged in winning over those of opposite opinions, and in the great battle of controversy. Cheerful, not too severe, nor even sufficiently strict, in his notions of morality, as appears from his conduct relative to Mountjoy, Earl of Devonshire--a short, stout man, with a plump and merry visage, the very opposite of a Puritan or Calvinist minister--no man knew better than Laud how to lay aside the gravity which was unseasonable; accessible in his manners, staunch as a churchman to the interests of his order, but perfectly indifferent, personally, to the gifts of fortune, Laud delighted the great Duke, weary of fame, and perhaps of life, by the sweetness of manner and vivacity of temper which become so well men of high attainments. They were henceforth friends, until the thread of Buckingham’s existence was cut short by the assassin’s blow.
It is impossible to estimate too highly the effects of this intimacy upon the character of the Duke. He seems to have yielded readily to the remonstrances of Laud against the misappropriation of church revenues; and indeed, according to another authority, his own disposition accelerated the effect produced by these impressions. Buckingham was not the rapacious oppressor described by the contemporary slanderers of his time. “Oppression and avarice,” observes Nichols, in his history of Leicestershire, “he knew not.”
Williams, Lord Keeper, the early friend of Buckingham, was now wholly discarded from the Duke’s friendship, and from his presence, as appears from a letter addressed by Williams to Sir George Goring, and written from Foxley. The mixture of servility with religious professions; the evident desire to retain the favour of the Duke, and his own place, of course, and yet to make his case good;--and the dexterity with which all this is managed, lessen the regret that would otherwise be felt that Buckingham had lost in Williams an acute adviser, whose counsels were safer, at that juncture, than those of the earnest and fearless, but intemperate and prejudiced, Laud.
No benefit to the disgraced courtier and prelate resulted from this appeal, and the new parliament was opened in the month of February, 1626, not by Williams, but by Sir Thomas Coventry, as Lord Keeper, in a strain of fulsome adulation to the King.
But this address, followed as it was by an oration from Sir Heneage Finch, the Speaker, in terms still more exaggerated, was little regarded by the Commons, who immediately formed themselves into a committee of grievances, in which the evil resulting from bad counsellors about the King, the misappropriation of the revenue, the failure of the expedition against Cadiz, and the expenditure of the subsidy granted to the late King, formed the main points of consideration.
In vain did Charles, confirming but too closely the observations recently quoted by Lord Clarendon, resolve to defend his favourite. He addressed a letter to the Speaker, bidding him hasten the supplies. Forty ships, he stated, were ready for a second voyage, and, without an immediate grant of money, the object of that armament must be abandoned, and the navy disbanded. The Commons were adverse to any scheme founded by him whom they regarded as the very source of all the evils of which the country now complained. Buckingham was the object at whom every expression of discontent was aimed. Clement Coke, one of Sir Edward’s numerous family, observed that it would be better to die from an enemy abroad than to be destroyed at home. Dr. Turner, a physician whom Sir Henry Wotton styles “a travelled doctor of physick, of bold spirit and able elocution,” asked ministers whether it were not true that the loss of the King’s dominions over the narrow seas were not owing to the Duke’s mismanagement? Whether the enormous gifts of land and money to the Duke had not impoverished the Crown? Whether the multiplicity of offices which he held, and those whom he patronized, were not the cause of the bad government in the kingdom? Whether he did not connive at recusants, the Duke’s mother and father-in-law being both papists? Whether the sale of offices, honours, places of judicature, with ecclesiastical livings and preferments, were not owing to the Duke?
Such was the dread of court influence in that day, that courage to put these questions implied in Dr. Turner a perfect independence of action and character very unusual at that period. Clement Coke was severely reproved by his father for his boldness, and the old lawyer refused to see his son for some time; but Dr. Turner, one of the very few of his profession who have sat in the House of Commons, not only escaped censure, but gained credit by his boldness, upon which the subsequent impeachment of the Duke was grounded.
The committee to redress grievances was followed by another, which was to inquire into religious matters, more especially into the number of indulgences granted by his Majesty to recusants; for the bitterness of bigotry was not confined to the party who owned Laud as their spiritual chief; and this blow was aimed at Buckingham, whose alleged partiality to the Romish Church was one of the false and factious allegations of the day. At that time, it must be remembered, a penalty of twenty pounds a month, by law, could be levied upon every person who frequented not divine worship.[295] The King, unhappily, ill judging, ill-advised, and therefore ill-fated, and finding himself opposed for the first time, summoned the Lords and Commons to Whitehall, and, addressing them, said, that whilst he was sensible of the grievances of his people, he was much more sensible of his own. He issued his express command that henceforth the two houses would desist from such unparliamentary proceedings, and leave the reformation of what was amiss to his "Majesty’s care, wisdom, and justice."[296] This harangue produced no effect on the two houses, and the King and Buckingham, feeling that they had lost ground, adopted another course, and rushed into perils, from the effect of which the Duke was saved by an untimely death, but which were felt in after years with terrible force by Charles.
So long as James I. lived, the Earl of Bristol, confiding in his favour, had borne the blame of that failure in the Spanish treaty which had so greatly incensed the nation. For some time after the accession of Charles, he waited, hoping to regain his footing at the court. But when, upon the meeting of parliament, he received no writ to serve as a member, in his place, he appealed to the Lords. The writ was then sent, but the Earl was ordered on no account to appear in his place. Moreover, during the vacation, in the month of March, the Duke, certain that Bristol would impeach him, prepared articles of impeachment against the Earl, in order to be the first in the field, and to anticipate the accusations which he expected would shortly be levelled at himself. The impeachment did indeed anticipate, literally, that soon framed and delivered against the Duke.[297] The feeling of the times rendered nothing so odious to the nation as any wish or attempt to subvert the religion of the country. One of the charges against Bristol was that he assisted to introduce Popery into England; that he was the cause of the Prince’s journey into Spain, and had there wished him to change his religion; that he advised that the son of the Elector Palatine should be brought up in the court of Spain--a project which, from a letter of Bristol’s, appears to have been stated, but not suggested by Bristol. Bristol replied that these charges were merely intended to defeat those which he now formally preferred against the Duke, which seemed almost like duplicates of the impeachment which the Duke had preferred against him. First, that he had conspired with Gondomar to take the Prince into Spain, there to convert him to the Romish faith; that, whilst in Spain, the Duke had flattered the King of Spain with the hopes of this conversion; that he had absented himself from Divine service at the embassy, and had attended the Romish rites, adoring their sacraments--a course which induced the Spanish court to ask greater concessions from King James.[298] These articles, with others of less import, were followed by an impeachment from the House of Commons, who were fearful that Bristol might not be able to substantiate the charge of treason, of which they clearly saw the weakness, from the absence of motives and of proofs.[299] On the eighth of May, therefore, “a large impeachment” was drawn up against him; it was framed by six of the ablest lawyers in the house;[300] and related to the Duke’s engrossing of offices--his holding at the same time the posts of Lord Admiral and of Warden of the Cinque Ports--his not guarding the narrow seas--his lending a ship called the “Vanguard” to the French King--his selling offices and honours--his waste of the Crown revenues--and, finally, his giving physic to King James at the time of his sickness,[301] applying a plaster to his chest; and that both the potion and the plaster were of a nature unknown “to surgeons, apothecaries, and physicians, and had been followed by dangerous consequences.”
Of these charges, which were styled by Hume “either frivolous, or false, or both,” only one or two articles can, with any certainty, be refuted. To commence with that made by the Earl of Bristol, relating to the conversion of Charles whilst in Spain, it appears from a letter addressed by Sir George Calvert to Secretary Conway, that the Marquis Inojosa, the Spanish Ambassador, was directed by the Countess Olivarez, in the Infanta’s name, to obtain all possible indulgences for Catholics. But no other more formal application on the subject, nor any trace of information confirming the alleged designs of Buckingham to convert Charles, have been found amongst the correspondence of that period; nor has any substantial proof of this charge been adduced by historians.[302] With regard to the charge of engrossing offices, the importance, if not the absolute necessity, of rescuing all maritime affairs from the ruin and neglect in which they had been suffered to remain by a former High Admiral, was so obvious at the very moment when it became necessary to assert the honour of England, that it is a matter of wonder that it should have been attempted to allege against Buckingham that which constituted his greatest merit. That the Duke had fearlessly applied himself to the restoration of the navy, has been shown by a reference to documents which have fully and completely exonerated him from that censure. It would have been of little avail for Buckingham to restore our navy, without securing the ports; in taking upon himself that office, he did not accept it as a mere dignity, to be performed by deputy, but he discharged its duties with an energy and a fidelity that very soon effected the desired end.
In the answer which he afterwards addressed to Parliament, the Duke denied having lent the ship called the “Vanguard,” and six others, to the King of France--knowing that they were intended to be employed against Rochelle; he stated that he had been overreached, as the French King had pretended that he wished to make an attack on Genoa; that, so soon as he was aware of the deception, he did all he could to save Rochelle from destruction.[303] It appeared, also, that a promise had been made by James I. to lend a ship to Louis XIII., for the reduction of Genoa. The charge of neglecting his duty as Admiral, and of having suffered the coast to be infested with pirates, has been met by those statements in a former chapter, drawn from original sources, which plainly show that the energy of this ill-fated Minister was untiring, his efforts meritorious, and that, whatever had been his former errors, they had been retrieved in his management of naval affairs. So active were his habits, that he took a personal share in every affair.[304] From the accusation of corruption, it would be as difficult to defend the Duke, as it was to exculpate, in this grave point, many public men in office at that period. The House of Commons was still writhing under the remembrance of the affair of Lord Middlesex, Lord Treasurer in the time of James I., who had taken two bribes, of five hundred pounds each, from the farmers of customs, without which douceur he refused to sign their warrants.[305] For that offence, Middlesex had been punished with fine and imprisonment; but King James, whilst he was eager to sell the offending Earl’s lands for the payment of the fine, had said that he would “review the sentence of the Parliament, and confirm it as he saw cause;” he even made a speech in behalf of the dishonest treasurer, stating that, “in such cases, the nether house was but as informers, the Lords as the jury, and himself the judge;” giving them likewise to understand “that he took it not well, nor would endure it hereafter, that they should meddle with his servants, from the highest place down to the lowest skull in the kitchen; but if they had ought against any, they should complain to him, and he would see it redressed according to right.”[306]
It was not, therefore, a matter of surprise that the Commons should, in a case considered still more flagrant, lose their moderation, knowing from experience how little justice their well-grounded complaints might receive at the hands of a monarch who had imbibed from his cradle such sentiments as those expressed by James I.
It was publicly known that offices, both about the person of the King and in the state, were sold. In the last reign, the mastership of the jewels had been bought by Sir Henry Caire for 2,000l. or 3,000l., from Sir Henry Mildmay, who was “thought too young a man, and of too mean a state” to be safely entrusted with the King’s jewels.[307] Buckingham, however, seems to have had no direct interest in this transaction. Other instances were also adduced; and proofs of corruption somewhere were open to every mind. Lord Middlesex, when Sir Lionel Cranfield, was stated to have given the Duke 6,000l. for his place as keeper of the wardrobe;[308] but it seems that he purchased that post from Lord Hay, and not from Buckingham, as the following extract from the State Papers, of the year 1618, implies:--
“Sir Lionel Cranfield is not yet master of the wardrobe, nor likely to be, unless he give a viaticum to the Lord Hay, who, they say, stands upon 9,000l.”[309] It does not, therefore, appear certain that Buckingham received either of the bribes; although it is not improbable that, since nothing could take place without his concurrence, he might have accepted some part of the spoil. Of the other two allegations--namely, that he received from Lord Roberts 10,000l. for his title, and that he sold the office of treasurer to Lord Manchester for 20,000l., there seems no certainty; but no letters are to be found in the very minute daily correspondence of that period, between the members of the Duke’s household and the Court, which either take the burden of the charge from him, or remove it to any other person.
The Duke was also stated, in the impeachment, to have purchased the offices of Lord High Admiral, and of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. Such was the colour given to a transaction which is generally recognized as a matter of compensation. “To the Earl of Nottingham, the old and incompetent admiral, the pension of 3,000l. yearly was allotted, together with a good round sum of ready money;” to Margaret, Countess of Nottingham, according to one account, a pension of 1,000l., to commence at the death of the Earl, and 500l. to his eldest son by her.[310] According to another statement, the pension to the Countess was not to exceed 600l.; to her son, Charles Howard, 500l. a year; and to her daughter, Anne Howard, 200l. a year--after the death of their father.[311]
Lord Zouch, meantime, the former Warden of the Cinque Ports, was perfectly satisfied with the compensation of 500l. a year, secured on lands, and 1,000l. ready money, in lieu of his office.[312] Surely, if arrangements like these, completed without secrecy, and known to every gossip of the Court, be deemed corrupt and illegal, every minister of modern times might be liable to a similar imputation.
Another charge was that Buckingham had procured titles of honours for his allies, and pensions to support them; had embezzled the King’s money, and obtained grants of Crown lands to an enormous value.[313] A list of his titles and offices proves, indeed, the blind and almost insane partiality which had placed the favourite on the pinnacle of power.
The statement of his possessions is equally amazing, more especially when we consider his origin and his early difficulties. Crown lands, to the value of 284,895l., had been allotted to the Duke, "besides the Forest of Layfield--the profit made out of the strangers’ goods--and the moiety of the customs in Ireland." And yet the Duke avowed before Parliament that his debts amounted to 100,000l.,[314] and we find, as a sad confirmation of the charge, among the documents in the State Paper Office, a warrant of payment of 2,500l. to Sir William Russell, for interest of 30,000l. advanced to the Duke of Buckingham by his Majesty’s orders.[315] Even the money given him, it was justly alleged, was a small sum compared with that which the Duke had derived from other sources. “How then,” asked Mr. Sherland, one of the managers of the impeachment, “can we hope to satisfy his prodigality, if this be true? If false, how can we hope to satisfy his covetousness? And, therefore, your lordships need not wonder if the Commons desire, and that earnestly, to be delivered from such a grievance.”
Finally, the Duke was charged with having either intentionally, or unintentionally, accelerated the death of King James.
The imprudent interference of Buckingham, under the influence of his mother, with the medical treatment of the King, was adduced as a proof of guilt. The absurdity of this charge, which was afterwards taken up with much bitterness by both parties in that time of violent discussion, seems to throw a doubt upon the whole impeachment.
The same members who had before recited the enormous gifts and lavish generosity of King James to his favourite, now taxed the very man who had only to ask, to obtain, with the murder of one who was loading him with benefits. The disease of King James, Heylyn reports, “was no other than an ague, which, though it fell on him in the spring, crossed the proverb, and proved, not medicinal, but mortal.”[316] The King was old, not indeed in years, but in constitution; the wonder was not that he died before the full span of age was complete, but that he lived so long. The appearance of the body after death has been insisted upon by Whitelocke as a proof of poison; but it is well known that in many diseases this appearance occurs, especially in affections of the heart, a class of complaint but little understood in those times, but a malady that is not unfrequently the result of rheumatic affections, to which James seems to have been liable.
Wandesford, one of the chief speakers on this occasion, declares that the “poor and loyal Commons of England were troubled at hearing that great distempers followed the drink and plaisters which Buckingham had pressed on the King--droughts, raving, faintness, and intermitting pulse;” these are, however, the usual concomitants of that passage through the valley of the shadow of death which precedes a final dissolution; the plaister was declared to have driven the complaint inwards; both the administration of the drink or posset, and the application of the plaister, were avowed by Buckingham, who protested that neither of these intended remedies had been used without the permission of the physicians; on hearing a rumour that he had done so, Buckingham affirmed that he went to the dying king, “who“who exclaimed, ‘They are worse than devils who say so.’”[317]
On the whole, this part of the impeachment seems to have fallen to the ground; and we are disposed to credit Clarendon, who states that though “investigated in a time of great licence, ‘no criminality was discovered.’” King Charles also became afterwards the subject of aspersions on this point--one of those slanderous and impossible accusations that weaken all the previous charges, and taint them with the hue of malice.
It is remarkable, as Hume observes, that the most vulnerable point in Lord Bristol’s attack was altogether ignored by the Commons in this “large impeachment.” The most blamable circumstance in Buckingham’s whole life, as the same historian observes, was the Duke’s conduct in breaking the Spanish treaty, and in hurrying the nation into a war in order to gratify his private passions. But there was a general conviction of the insincerity of Spain; and the unjustifiable conduct of the Duke, in the affairs relative to that country, was suffered to escape unnoticed, whilst charges, almost untenable, were got up in the hope of ruining him with the King.
Charles was, however, infatuated. His youth and inexperience, the pernicious example set him by his father, plead for him, but nothing can extenuate the want of manly boldness in Buckingham, in not facing his foes and demanding a trial. His answers to the impeachment, thirteen in number, were, it is true, to borrow the words of Sir Henry Wotton, “very diligently and civilly couched,” and “savoured of an humble spirit, though his heart was big.” One consideration swayed with the public, which was, that in the “bolting and sifting of near fourteen years of such power and favour, all that came out could not be expected to be pure and white, and fine metal; but must needs have withal among it a certain mixture of padars and bran in this lower range of humane fragility.”[318]
The Duke’s answers were very clear and satisfactory,[319] and his address to the Lords appears to have been ingenuous and courteous. He reminded them how full of danger and prejudice it was to give too ready an ear, too easy a belief, to reports and testimony not upon oath; upon such allegations none ought, he argued, to be condemned. Then, with a grace that was natural to him, he acknowledged, with humility, “how easy a thing it was for him in his younger years, when inexperienced, to fall into thousands of errors in these two years wherein he had the honour to serve so great and so open-hearted a master.”[320] He concluded with professions of attachment to the Church of England, hoping that for the future “he might watch over all his actions, public and private, so as not to give cause of just offence to any one.” And such was probably his sincere determination; and Buckingham, had he lived, might have proved an excellent and, as times went, an honest minister.
The answer of Buckingham, as well as the speech of the King to his Commons, on the 29th of March, was ascribed to the pen of Laud; but Heylyn disavows that statement. Yet there is little doubt that Laud prompted the Duke’s cautious and submissive reply on the one hand, and encouraged, if he did not prompt, the King’s arbitrary and unconstitutional conduct to the Commons.
The tempest, violent as it seemed, “did,” as Sir Henry Wotton remarks, “only shake and not rent” the Duke’s sails. Charles, taking as a plea that many of the accusations were not within the compass of his own reign, and also that nothing had been proved against Buckingham on oath, resolved to brave the storm in such a manner as to bring down its force upon himself.
He lost, therefore, no opportunity of showing his contempt for the House of Commons. “No one,” Hume observes, “was at that time sufficiently sensible of the great weight which the Commons bore in the balance of the Constitution.” Nothing but “fatal experience could induce the English princes to pay a due regard to the inclinations of that formidable assembly.”[321]
“This was indeed,” Lord Campbell remarks, “the great crisis of the English Constitution. Had our distinguished patriots then quailed, Parliaments would thenceforth have been merely the subject of antiquarian research, or perhaps occasionally summoned to register the edicts of the Crown”Crown”[322] “The state,” as Sir Edward Coke declared in Parliament, “was in a consumption, yet not incurable.” It was his courage and honesty that helped to effect a cure.
Charles, considering that he was himself aimed at in the allegations against the Duke, commanded the House expressly not to interfere with his servant Buckingham, and ordered it to conclude the bill for the subsidies which they had begun, intimating that if that were not done it should sit no longer. Instead of referring the case to the Lords, and insisting on the affair being brought to a trial before that body, he went himself to the House of Lords, and declared his intention of clearing the Duke by his own testimony. The Commons had, on that very day, moved that the Duke should be committed to the Tower until the issue of his trial should be known. That motion was rejected; in vain did Buckingham attempt to explain and soften down this conduct in a speech to the Lords. Sir Dudley Digges and Sir John Eliot were thrown into prison, and although they were soon liberated, the Commons immediately declared that they would not proceed with any business whatsoever until satisfaction should be given for this breach of privilege.
Unhappily, all these discords were aggravated nearly to frenzy by the bitterest of all passions--religious intolerance. Whilst we must applaud, with all gratitude, the lofty and honest spirit which opposed acts of despotism--a spirit to which we owe our present pre-eminence as a free and powerful nation--we must deprecate the remorseless oppressions which the friends of liberty scrupled not to inflict on those who thought on religious matters differently from themselves.
It was an expensive matter in those days to have a conscience. Although the penalty of twenty pounds per month, enacted during the reign of Elizabeth, had been mitigated according to the circumstances of families, or suffered in some instances to run on for years, it was occasionally levied all at once, to the ruin of the unhappy Romanist families who conscientiously refused to attend the worship of the Established Church. James I. had mercifully relaxed the severity of these penalties; but his successor was now called upon by the Puritan party in the House of Commons to restore them to their original force. The Church was at this epoch far more induced to grant indulgence than the laity, who, it is strange to say, were the most intolerant among the persecutors of the depressed body of Roman Catholics. Disappointed in their impeachment of Buckingham, the Commons now presented to the King a list of recusants who had been entrusted with offices in the State.
This petition was aimed, of course, at Buckingham, whose mother was a Catholic, and whose wife had been long suspected of holding the tenets of the Romish Church. It was thought sufficient in those times to have a near relation a Romanist, to be disqualified for office.[323]
Queen Elizabeth, as we have before observed, when she had any point to gain with her people, used “to tune the pulpits,” as she termed it. It was her practice to have a reserve of preachers ready to extol her designs in or near London, to influential congregations, whenever she required the help of their eloquence.[324] This plan was now adopted by Charles, and Laud was employed to call the attention of the public to the cause of the King of Denmark, who had been driven to the last extremity by Count Tilly. The King of Denmark being a Protestant, it was hoped that this scheme would propitiate the party who so vehemently endeavoured to compass the downfall of Buckingham, and who were, for the most part, Puritans.
Unhappily the plan did more harm than good; its motives and signification were suspected, nay, even proclaimed by some of the simple clergy; and Sibthorpe, the Vicar of Brackley, in Northamptonshire--at an assize sermon--gave out plainly that the burden of those instructions which had been distributed among the priesthood was "to show the lawfulness of the general loan which the King now contemplated raising, in lieu of the supplies; to prove the King’s right to impose taxes without the consent of Parliament; and to insist that the people ought cheerfully to submit to such loans and taxes."
The publication of this sermon was forbidden by Archbishop Abbot,[325] for it was then illegal to print any book without a permission from the Archbishop of York, the Bishop of London, or the Vice-chancellor of one of the Universities, or some person appointed by them;[326] and two fearful Courts of Star-chamber and High Commission threatened any delinquent who attempted to do then what now requires merely the consent of a publisher. Although Abbot had so wisely prohibited Sibthorpe’s discourse, he could not save the King whom Buckingham and Laud counselled. The audacious sermon was published during the following year, under the almost impious title of “Apostolic Obedience.”