There were many projects for making Sir Robert Cotton’s noble collections, both in literature and antiquities, the foundation of a ‘British Museum,’ before a feasible and successful project was hit upon. |Sloane to Charlett, 7 April, 1707. (Bodleian Library, Oxford).| It is curious to note that one of these schemes embraced, as the groundwork of the projected national Museum, the collections of Sir Robert Cotton, of Prince Henry, and of Lord Arundel; and that some particulars of the plan were narrated—to a country correspondent—by Sir Hans Sloane, almost fifty years before his own conditional bequest gave occasion and means for the eventual union of the collections so spoken of with the vast gatherings of all kinds, in literature and in science, to the procuring of which so large a portion of his own useful and laborious life was to be devoted.
When that occasion came, two of the then Cottonian Trustees framed a Petition to Parliament in which they expressed their acknowledgments for ‘seasonable and necessary care’ of the Cotton Library. They alleged that it had remained ‘almost useless’ to the Public, during many years, for want of a fixed and convenient building to receive it; that it had been exposed to many dangers by frequent removals, and had once run the hazard of ‘a total destruction by fire.’ If, said they, the loss which the Public then sustained proved to be less than had been feared, the Public owed the obligation ‘to a great member of this House’ [of Commons] ‘who powerfully interposed and assisted in its preservation.’ The allusion is to the Right Hon. Arthur Onslow, the then Speaker, who afterwards became one of the first Trustees of the Museum established by the Act of 1753.
The Petitioners proceed to state that their most earnest wishes are accomplished by seeing a Library, famed throughout Europe, with the generous gifts of Major Edwards annexed thereto, placed out of all further dangers from neglect, and that they rejoice to perceive that the Museum of their own Founder is about to be enlarged by other rare and valuable collections. ‘We are,’ say they, ‘fully persuaded that an edifice raised upon such a stately plan will, by degrees, be stored with benefactions and become a common Cabinet for preserving with safety all curiosities and whatsoever is choice or excellent in its kind. Moreover, being a new institution for the service of the learned world it will be an honour to the Nation, an ornament long wanted in this great city, and a distinguished event in the history of our times.’ |Heretofore, p. 3.| Then follows the passage which I have prefixed, by way of motto, to this first division of the volume now in the reader’s hands.
When these Petitioners went on to state to Parliament that ‘no expression of gratitude can be too great ... for doing honour to the memory of Sir Robert Cotton,’ their assertion gave rise to no utterance of hostile feeling. |Recent Charges against the character and fame of Sir R. Cotton.| They were not even charged with undue laudation of their ancestor. People who at that time troubled themselves to think of such matters at all, were agreed in regarding Sir Robert Cotton as unquestionably one of the worthies of England. Nowadays—as I have had occasion to show already—there are many gainsayers. A distinguished historian (Mr. Gardiner) asperses Cotton’s character both for statesmanship and for truthfulness; whilst a distinguished archæologist (Mr. Brewer) charges him with embezzling records.
The first charge has been partly met, in these pages, by the simple apposition and collation of contemporary evidence. The reader has his choice between the cumulative testimony of several English peers and statesmen; and the unsupported testimony of one foreign diplomatist, who made it his boast to be the enemy of Englishmen, and whose hostility was graduated in tolerably exact accordance with the qualities and the deeds which have made England proud of them. The home witnesses gave their testimony whilst the events were still fresh in men’s minds. They gave it in broad daylight, and with open doors. The foreign witness put his evidence into a secret dispatch, to be seen by no human eye, out of the Spanish Cabinet, until our own historian disinterred it, at Simancas, two centuries and a half after date. Nor is this quite all.
If Gondomar’s account be true, not only was Sir Robert Cotton’s life as a statesman a protracted lie, but his duplicity was so superbly cloaked as to deceive the most keen-sighted of his contemporaries. The men who sat habitually at his board in his days of health, and who ministered at his bedside in all the offices of tender friendship in his days of sickness and of death, were all wrong about his character. |A Discours wether yt be fitt for Inglande to make peace with Spaine. MS. Cott. Vespas. C. xiii, ff. 160, seqq. (B. M.).| And there is this other little fact to boot: Sir Robert Cotton began his public life by as open a declaration of anti-Spanish policy in relation to the great question of the Netherlands as ever came from the lips of our Ralegh. He ended his public life with as staunch an adherence to the principles, both in Church and State, which the rulers of Spain abhorred as that which had been shown by Ralegh on the scaffold in Old Palace Yard, or by Eliot in the dungeon of the Tower of London. Meanwhile, just in the mid-channel of his career, and in the prime of his faculties, Sir Robert Cotton threw himself, gratuitously, at the feet of Gondomar. He humbly asked leave to take Spanish service in the guise of a political slave. The historian’s proposition is a bold one. And its evidence needs to be cogent. English readers now know quite enough about Gondomar to judge whether or not his sole testimony is sufficient to damn the fame of such a man as Cotton;—to degrade him from the rank of an English worthy;—to brand him as a criminal virtually convicted of apostacy in religion, and of treason to his avowed convictions in politics?[24]
From the nature of things the second charge cannot be so directly, so compactly, or so effectively met. Almost a third of the manuscripts which form the most important section of the Cotton Library consist of, or contain, Papers of State. Of these a very considerable proportion once belonged to the State. How came they to pass into the hands of Sir Robert Cotton?
By Mr. Brewer the question has been answered, unhesitatingly and exhaustively. Large portions of the Diplomatic Correspondence of Henry the Eighth were, he says, ‘carried off in 1614, if not before, by Sir Robert Cotton.... The original bundles appear to have been broken up under the keepership of Agarde, when the Treasury of the Exchequer was rifled of its most precious contents to augment the collections of Sir R. Cotton.... |Calendar of the State Papers; Reign of Henry VIII, Pref., pp. viii, ix.| For the early years of Henry, his [Sir Robert’s] collections are more numerous, and even more interesting, than the documents in the English, the French, or the Spanish Archives. They are equally authentic.... By what fraud or negligence they found their way into the possession of Sir Robert Cotton it is not for me to inquire.’
No writer can be better qualified to speak with authority on such a topic as this than is Mr. Brewer. Familiar with State Papers and with records of all kinds for a very long period, he has won the deep respect of all students of our history by the uses to which his knowledge has been applied. But the ablest writer will sometimes write hastily. The most impartial inquirer will now and then reach a conclusion by overleaping part of the evidence.
The sweeping passage which I have quoted, like other passages in Mr. Riley’s preface to Liber Custumarum, previously noticed, leaves altogether out of view three or four whole classes of testimony—chains not links—having a vital bearing on the issue. For example—
I. It disregards the fact that certain bundles of State letters and papers were given by the King’s order to Sir Robert Cotton, during the reign of James the First. These, indeed, were commanded to be ‘subscriptions and signatures of Princes and great men, attached to letters otherwise unimportant.’ But who is to tell us what was the estimate of ‘importance’ in papers of State formed, two centuries and a half ago, by James, who gave the order, or by Sir Thomas Wilson, who received it?
II. It disregards the fact that long before, as well as long after, that known order of 1618, Sir Robert’s possession of papers once the property of the Government was so published and so recognized as to imply, by fair induction, that the possession must have been—as far as he was concerned—a lawful one. In his own writings, he iterates and reiterates reference to national documents then in his own collection. His references are specific and minute. Secretaries of State write to him, asking leave to inspect original Treaties (sometimes in order to lay them before the King in person) and promising to return them promptly. |Domestic Corresp., as above, 1621, March; and passim; also Council Books (C. O.).| Law Officers of the Crown desire him kindly to afford them opportunities for collating public instruments, preserved at Cotton House, with public instruments still in the repositories of the Crown.
III. It leaves out of sight the fact that in the correspondence of Sir Edward Coke with Sir Robert Cotton there is a passage which also implies—though it does not expressly assert—that Sir Robert had received from King James a permission to select records, of some kind or other, from the Tower of London, anterior to the qualified permission, |Sir E. Coke to Sir R. Cotton; MS. Cott. Julius, ciii (Undated; probably 1612). (B. M.)| above mentioned, given in 1618, to select ‘autographs’ from the Paper Office;
IV. It disregards that strong implication of a lawful possession—so far as Sir Robert Cotton, individually, is concerned—which necessarily arises out of the fact that at two several periods the Cottonian Library was under the sole control and custody of Crown officials; |Registers of Privy Council, 1616; 1629; 1630; passim (C. O.)| that it remained under such control for an aggregate period of more than two years; that Cotton’s bitter enemies were then at the head of affairs; that in 1630 a Royal Commission was actually issued |Signs Manual, Charles I, vol. xii, § 15 (R. H.).| ‘to search what Records or other Papers of State in the custody of Sir Robert Cotton properly belong to His Majesty, and thereof to certify;’ and that the existing Cottonian MSS., together with those burned in 1732, were, one year after the issue of that Commission, restored by the Crown to Sir Robert Cotton’s heirs;
V. It overlooks the circumstance, vital to the issue now raised, that amongst the MSS. which most indubitably were once Crown property many can still be minutely traced from possessor to possessor, prior to their reception into the Cottonian Library;
And VI. It disregards the fact, hardly less important, that a patriotic statesman conversant both with the arcana of government at large, and with the special arcana of the State Paper Office and Secretary’s offices, under King James the First and King Charles the First, might have cogent reasons for believing that some important classes of State Papers would be likely to remain much more truly and enduringly the property of the English nation if stored up at Cotton House—even had no ‘British Museum’ ever been created—than if stored up at Whitehall.
Inferences and implications such as these are far from amounting to conclusive proof. But most readers, I think, will assent to the assertion that, cumulatively, they amount to a very strong presumption indeed that the stigma which has been impressed on Sir Robert Cotton’s memory is both precipitate and unjust. Precipitate it plainly is, for a confident verdict has virtually been pronounced—upon a grave issue,—before hearing any evidence for the accused. Unjust I, for one, cannot but think it, inasmuch as circumstances which at most are but grounds of mere suspicion of the greater offence charged, have been so huddled up with proofs of a minor and (comparatively) venial offence, that readers giving but ordinary attention to the allegations and their respective evidence are almost certain to be misled.
For, undoubtedly, Sir Robert Cotton stands convicted of dealing, more than once, with manuscripts which he had borrowed very much as though they had been manuscripts which he possessed. Mr. Riley’s testimony is, on this point, conclusive. An independent witness, Dr. Sedgwick Saunders, the able Chairman of the Library Committee of the Corporation of London, tells me that both the returned MS. of Liber Custumarum, and also that of Liber Legum Antiquorum, bear as unmistakable marks of a claim to ownership on Sir Robert’s part, as those of which the return was refused.
To such proofs as these I can myself add a new instance. Archbishop Laud had procured, from the Principal and Fellows of St. John’s, the loan to Sir Robert Cotton of a certain ancient Beda MS. of great value. Many years passed, and the MS. had not returned to St. John’s. The Fellows cast severe blame on their eminent benefactor. |Archbp. Laud to Sir R. Cotton, MS. Cott. Julius C., iii, f. 232.| Laud had to petition his friend Cotton for the return of Beda, in terms almost pathetic; and he was so doubtful whether pathos would suffice that he added bribe to entreaty. If, he said, ‘anything of worth in like kind come to my hands, I will freely give it you in recompense.’
The reader has seen the abounding proofs of that generous furtherance of every kind of literary effort which Cotton gave, throughout life, with an ungrudging heart and an open hand. |Bolton to Camden; MS. Harl., 7002, f. 396.| Sir Robert’s openness made his library—to use the words of an eminent contemporary—the ‘Common treasury’ of English antiquities. The reader now sees also the drawback. It remains for him to strike a true balance; and to strike it with justice, but also with charity.
‘Death never makes such effectual demonstration of his power, as when he singles out the man who occupies the largest place in public estimation;—as when he seizes upon him whose loss is felt, by thousands, with all the tenderness of a family bereavement;—puts a sudden arrest, ... before the infirmities of age had withdrawn him from the labours of usefulness;— ... and sends the fearful report of this his achievement through the streets of the city, where it runs, in appalling whispers, among the multitude.’—
Life of Henry, Prince of Wales, son of James I, and virtual Founder of the ‘Royal Library.’—Its Augmentors and its Librarians.—Acquisition of the Library of the Theyers.—Incorporation with the Collections of Cotton and of Sloane.
Henry, Prince of Scotland, and afterwards of Wales, was born at Stirling Castle on the 19th of February, 1594. King James had married Anne of Denmark more than four years before the Prince’s birth, but a certain grotesqueness which had marked some of the characteristic circumstances of the marriage in Norway (in 1589) was not without its counterpart among the incidents that came to be attendant on the subsequent event at home. One of these incidents is thus narrated in the quaint narrative of a Scottish courtier who made it his business to chronicle the movements of the Court with newsmanlike fidelity:—‘Because the chappell royal was ruinous and too little, the King concluded that the old chappell should be utterly rased, and a new [one] erected in the same place that should be more large, long, and glorious, to entertain the great number of strangers’ who were expected to be present at the baptism. The interval demanded for the restoration of this decayed chapel at Stirling entailed an unusual delay between the child’s birth and his baptism, but it gratified the King by enabling him to send invitations far and wide. Had all of them met with acceptance they would have resulted in the presence of a cloud of witnesses, such as had rarely been seen in Scotland upon any the most famous occasion of courtly rejoicing.
For the presence of two guests in particular James was anxious. He wished to see an ambassador extraordinary from the Court of Elizabeth, and another from that of Henry the Fourth. Henry would not gratify his wish, and the omission was much resented. Elizabeth, on the other hand, was ostentatiously swift to comply, but her willingness was well nigh defeated by one of the common accidents of life. She had fixed her choice on the brilliant Earl of Cumberland, whose love of magnificence was scarcely less prominent than was his love of adventure. He could grace a royal festivity, as conspicuously as he could lead a band of eager soldiers, or a crew of daring navigators. Just as the Earl’s costly preparations for his embassy were completed, he fell sick. Some days were lost in the hope of his speedy recovery, but the Queen was soon obliged to nominate the Earl of Sussex in his stead. Sussex had then to make preparations in turn. The day fixed for the ceremony in Scotland had to be more than twice postponed, in order to ensure his presence. In all, more than six months elapsed before the babe was really baptized. We will hope that the Court Chronicler exaggerates a little when he tells us that ‘the time intervening was spent in magnificent banquetting and revelling.’ |True Reportarie of the baptisme of the Prince of Scotland, MS. Addit., 5795 (B. M.).| If so, the potations at Stirling must have vied with those of Elsinore.
When the long-expected day arrived (30 August, 1594) the child lay ‘on a bed of estate richly decored ... with the story of Hercules.’ The old Countess of Mar lifted him into the arms of Lennox, and by him the babe was transferred to those of the English ambassador who held him during baptism. Then Patrick Galloway, we are told, learnedly entreated upon a text from the 21st chapter of Genesis.
The Bishop of Aberdeen taught, in his turn, upon the Sacrament of Baptism—first in the vulgar tongue and then in Latin—and his discourse was followed by the twenty-first Psalm, ‘sung to the great delectation of the noble auditory,’ and also by a panegyric upon the Prince, delivered in Latin verse, from the pulpit. Then came a banquet, at which ‘six gallant dames’ had the cruel task assigned them of performing ‘a silent comedy.’ To the banquet succeeded a ‘desart of sugar,’ drawn in upon a triumphal chariot. The original programme had provided that this richly-laden chariot should be drawn by a lion, for whose due tameness the projector had pledged himself. But to King James a lion, like a sword, was at all times an unpleasant object. He said that it would affright the ladies, and that ‘a black-moore’ would be a more safe propeller. Banquet and dessert together lasted from eight o’clock in the evening until three of the following morning. At intervals, the cannon of Stirling Castle roared, until, says our chronicler, ‘the earth trembled therewith.’
Thus was ushered in a brief but remarkable life. It lasted less than nineteen years. |Ibid., pp. 6–17, verso.| Then to the cradle which had been so richly emblazoned with the labours of Hercules, in all the colours of embroidery, there succeeded the hearse of black velvet thickly set with its plumes of sombre feathers. One half, however, of those nineteen years that stood between cradle and hearse were years passed upon an arena to which the course of events had given almost world-wide importance and conspicuousness. The Prince’s career was, by the necessity of his position still more than by reason of his youth, a career of promise, not of performance. But every year which passed after the removal from Scotland seems to have intensified the promise in the eyes of those who watched it, as well as to have deepened a conviction in the minds of nearly all thoughtful bystanders that to a grand ambition there were about to be proffered, in God’s due time, means and appliances more than usually large, and a grand field of action. So it seemed to human expectation. And because, in those long-past years, it reasonably seemed so, there is still somewhat of a real human interest attaching to incidents which, otherwise, would be trivial and barren.
Early Dissentions at Court.
One unhappy circumstance which occurred before Henry was eighteen months old testified to the existence, even at that date, of unhappy domestic relations of the kind which on many subsequent occasions brought bitterness into his daily life. Queen Anne was deprived of the care of her child very soon after his baptism. The Earl of Mar was appointed to be his governor, and the Earl’s mother assumed that place in the upbringing of the royal infant which, in most cases, custom no less than nature would have assigned to the Queen herself. Her natural resentment brought about more than one angry discussion at Court. After one of those scenes of turbulence, James gave to Mar, in writing, this characteristic command: ‘Because in the surety of my son consisteth my surety, I have concredited unto you the charge of his keeping.... This I command you out of my own mouth, being in the company of those I like. Otherwise, for [i. e. notwithstanding] any charge or necessity that can come from me, you shall not deliver him.’
In 1599, Adam Newton became Prince Henry’s tutor; and the choice seems to have been a happy one. The boy had a most towardly inclination to learn. The tutor had both a genuine love of letters and a real delight in teaching. He had also the wisdom which shuns extremes. Under Newton’s care the child remained, in spite of an obliging offer from Pope Clement the Eighth to have him educated at Rome under the papal eye.
At the death of Elizabeth, and after receiving the news of his own proclamation as her successor, the delighted father wrote to his son—then just entering on his tenth year—a letter which depicts its writer in a way as lifelike as does the warrant addressed to Mar. |James’ Letter to Prince Henry on the Accession to the English Crown.| I quote it, literally, from the hurriedly-written original, as it now lies before me: ‘My Sonne, That I see you not before my pairting, impute it to this greate occasion, quhairin tyme is so precious. But that I[25] shall, by Goddes grace, shortlie be recompenced by your cumming to me shortlie, and continuall residence with me ever after. Lett not this news make you proude or insolent. For a Kings sonne and heire was ye before, and na maire are ye yett. The augmentation that is heirby lyke to fall unto you is but in caires and heavie burthens. Be therefore merrie, but not insolent. Keepe a greatness, but sine fastu. Be resolute, but not willfull. Keeye your kyndness, but in honorable sorte. Choose none to be your play fellowis but thaime that are well-borne. And above all things, give never good countenance to any but according as ye shall be informed that thay are in estimation with me. Looke upon all Englishmen that shall cum to visit you as among youre loving subjects; not with that ceremonie as towardis straingers, and yett with such hartines as at this tyme they deserve.’ And so forth. For, notwithstanding the King’s haste to set out on his journey, his pen ran on. But all his advice is in one strain. The variations are for ornament. In me, he says (only not so briefly), you see a model king. Mould yourself after that pattern, and you will be a model prince. ‘I send you my booke,’ he adds—referring to Βασιλικον δωρον— ... ‘ye must level everie mannis opinions or advices unto you, as ye finde thaime agree or discorde with the rules thaire sett down.’ Near as they commonly were in person, in the after years, James still found occasion to write to Henry a good many letters. This one theme runs through them all. But no amount of hortatory discourse could hinder the new metal from overrunning the worn and antiquated mould.
Prince Henry came into England in the June of 1603. He was invested with the Garter on the 2nd of July at Windsor. Sir Thomas Chaloner (son of Elizabeth’s well-known ambassador to the Emperor) succeeded Mar in the office of Governor. He was a man of many accomplishments, and had a strong bias for some of the physical sciences. But it does not seem that he possessed that force of character which in the elder Sir Thomas Chaloner was a conspicuous quality.
From a very early age, Henry showed that in him were combined in happy proportions a strong relish for the pleasures of literature with a relish not less keen for the pursuits and employments of an active and out-of-doors life. He could enjoy books thoroughly, without being absorbed by them. He had a manly delight in field sports, without falling under the temptation to become a slave to his pastime. If in anything his enjoyments tended to excess, as he grew towards maturity, it was seen in his devotion to warlike exercises. So that even the excess testified to that real manliness of spirit which keeps the body in subjection, instead of pampering its pleasures and its aptitudes. He seems to have learnt, unusually early in life, that the natural instincts of youth will have their truest gratification, and will retain their fullest zest, when made, by deliberate choice, steps towards a conscious fitness for the duties of manhood. Alike in what we have from his own pen, and in the testimonies of those who were the closest observers of his brief career, we see evidence that he had formed a due estimate of the responsibilities that, to human view, lay close before him. Of his thoughts about kingship we possess only fragments. Of his father’s thoughts on that subject we enjoy an exhaustive exposition. The contrast in the thinking is curiously significant.
Some of the best known anecdotes of Henry’s life exhibit the interest he felt in naval matters. That tendency may, perhaps, have taken its birth in a London incident of March, 1604. The Earl of Nottingham, Lord High Admiral, was then in the flush of Court favour. The Prince had been but for a few months in England, and his sight-seeing had not, as yet, included the baptism[26] of a ship. |Origin of Henry’s interest in Naval affairs.| The Admiral prepared that novelty to please him. It was at the Tower that the Prince first examined the ‘Disdain’ (15 March, 1604). Whether at the same time he made his first acquaintance with the most famous inhabitant of the Tower is matter of mere conjecture. |Life of Pett, MS. Harl., vol. 6279 (B. M.). (Cited by Birch, p. 39.)| Ralegh, at all events, was there[27] on the day when Phineas Pett moored his new vessel off Tower Wharf, for the Prince’s delight. Before any long time had passed, Ralegh was busy in the composition of a Discourse of a maritimal voyage, and of the passages and incidents therein, with a like object. The acquaintance, however began, was improved with every passing year. Of the many hopes which came to a sudden end eight years afterwards, few, it is probable, were more sanguine or more far-reaching than those of the King’s keenly watched and dreaded prisoner. |Henry and Ralegh.| For England, Ralegh saw in Prince Henry a wise and brave king to come. For himself, he saw not only a generous friend, but a man who might be the means of giving shape and substance to many patriotic schemes with which a brain that could not be imprisoned had long been teeming.
There is evidence that on more than one topic of public policy Ralegh’s counsel made a deep impression on Henry. One instance of it will be seen presently. But apart altogether from such positive results as admit of testimony, their intercourse is memorable. It must have been by virtue of some congeniality of nature that a youth in Henry’s position so quickly leapt—across many obstacles—to an appreciation, alike of the circumstances and of the character of Ralegh, which still commends itself to those who have looked into them most searchingly. The estimate has been many times confirmed by the investigations of history, long afterwards, but it was strongly opposed to the broad current of contemporary opinion. A heart larger than the average may have its divinations, as well as the intellect that is more acute and better furnished than the average.
But the generous heart is often allied with a hasty temper. The impression made on the Prince by Ralegh’s writings on naval matters had, amongst other results, that of increasing both his interest in the management of the royal dockyards, and his familiar intercourse with Phineas Pett. Pett was master shipwright at Chatham, and, as we have seen, the designer of the prince’s first vessel Disdain. |1608. April. See Chap. ii, pp. 62, 63.| When Sir Robert Cotton had induced the King to issue that Commission of Inquiry into the Navy, of the results of which some account has been given in the preceding Chapter, Pett was one of the persons whose official doings were brought into question. Henry took a warm interest in the inquiry and testified openly his anxiety on Pett’s behalf. A specific charge about an alleged disproportion between timber paid for and the vessels built therewith was investigated at Woolwich. Both the King and the Prince were present. Henry stood by Pett’s side. |MS. Life of Phineas Pett, in MS. Harl. 6279 (B. M.) p. 45.| When the evidence was seen to disprove the charge, the Prince cried with a loud voice—disregarding alike the royal presence and the forms of law—‘Where be now those perjured fellows that dare thus abuse His Majesty with false informations? Do they not worthily deserve hanging?’
The warmth of Henry’s friendship seems to have suffered little diminution by the absence of its objects. |Henry’s foreign Correspondence.| When his friends went to far-off countries he encouraged them to be active correspondents by setting them a good example. He welcomed all sorts of real and worthy information. About the government and affairs of foreign countries his curiosity was insatiable. When important letters came to him he not only read them with care but made abstracts of their contents. When the labour-loving Lord Treasurer Salisbury noticed, with regret, in his son Cranborne certain indications of a turn towards indolence, it was by an appeal to Prince Henry’s example that he strove to correct the failing. Henry evinced eagerness to learn by all methods. Books, letters, conversation, personal insight into notable things and new inventions,—were alike acceptable to him.
In April, 1609, the death of John, Lord Lumley, without issue, enabled the Prince to gratify his love of books by purchasing a Library which probably was more valuable than any other collection then existing in England, with the exception of that of Sir Robert Cotton.
Thirty years before, Lord Lumley had inherited the fine library of his father-in-law, Henry Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, who had been a collector of choice manuscripts at a time when the reckless dispersion of monastic treasures impoverished the nation, but gave, here and there, golden opportunities to openhanded private men. When the estates of the Fitzalans came to Lumley—in virtue of an entail made by the Earl of Arundel during Lady Lumley’s lifetime—the splendid succession had lost its best charm. The wife who had thus enriched him was dead, and he was childless. His wife’s sister, the Duchess of Norfolk, was also dead, but had left a son. |Muniments at Norf. House (Sussex, Box 7), as cited in Tierney’s Arundel, p. 19.| Lumley sold his life interest in the broad lands, and forests, and in the famous castle of Arundel, to the next heir, but he kept the library and found one of the chief pleasures of his remaining term of life in liberally augmenting it. Henry’s first care, after his purchase, was to have a careful catalogue made of the collection. And he soon gave evidence that he had bought the books for use; not for show. |Privy Purse Book; in Domestic Correspondence, James I, vol. lvii, § 87, p. 4. (R. H.)| He also made many important additions, from time to time, during his three years’ ownership.
Perhaps the most festive days of that brief span were the sixth of January, 1610, and the sixth of June of the same year, on both of which Whitehall again witnessed a gay tournament. |The Tournaments of 1610.| On twelfth-day, at the head of a band of knights which included Lennox, Arundel, Southampton, Hay, Sir Thomas Somerset, and Sir Richard Preston, Henry kept his barriers against fifty-six assailants, and before a brilliant court, for whose pleasure the long mimic fight was diversified by the gay devices of Inigo Jones, and the graceful verses of Ben Jonson. Next day the jousting was followed by a banquet not less splendid. |Chronicle of England, p. 898. The Speeches at Prince Henries Barriers; and Oberon, a Masque. (Jonson’s Works, vol. v, pp. 965–974, 1st edit.)| At Whitehall,—as at Stirling sixteen years before,—the banquetting lasted seven hours, but it was enlivened by a comedy in which the ladies were not condemned to silence. In the following June, Henry’s creation as Prince of Wales was celebrated by tiltings on a more extensive scale, as well as by masques and dances, and by an elaborate naval battle upon the Thames. But the prince himself seems to have taken more pleasure in witnessing from time to time, at Woolwich or at Chatham, the launching of real ships fitted for real warfare. Nor are indications wanting that during his ponderings on the many advices which he received of the course of public events in Europe, he had occasional presentiments that a crisis was drawing near which would make the adoption of a warlike policy to be alike the duty of the King, and the recognized interest of the nation.
Be that as it may, the broad contrasts of character which existed between the wearer of the crown and its heir apparent became increasingly obvious during the long negotiations and correspondence about the projects of marriage for the prince himself and for his sister. |The projects for Royal Marriages.| |1611–1612.| Something, indeed, of the difference in character between James and Henry was indicated when, in 1611, the prince directed Ralegh to draw up, in his prison, a paper of advice on the scheme of a double marriage with Savoy and on the relations between Savoy and Spain. It came out more forcibly when, on occasion of the proposal from France for his own marriage with Christina (the elder sister of Henrietta Maria), he wrote to his father in these words: ‘The cause which first induced your Majesty to proceed in this proposition by your Ambassador was the hope which the Duke of Bouillon gave your Majesty of breaking their other match with Spain. If the continuance of this treaty hold only upon that hope, and not upon any desire to effect a match with the second daughter, in my weak opinion I hold that it stands more with your Majesty’s honour to stay your Ambassador from moving it any more than to go on with it. Because no great negotiation should be grounded upon a ground that is very unsure and uncertain, and depends upon their wills who were the first causers of the contrary.’ For this letter the Prince was rebuked. Two months afterwards, it was found indispensable to desire him to express again his opinion upon a new stage of the negotiation. He did so in words to which the events of the next few years were destined to give significance. I quote from the original letter, preserved (with a large mass of other letters from the same hand) amongst the Harleian MSS.[28]
‘As for the exercise of the princess’ religion,’ wrote Henry, on the 5th of October, 1612, ‘your Majesty may be pleased to make your Ambassador give a peremptory answer that you will never agree to give her greater liberty in the exercise of it than that which is agreed with the Savoyeard, which is—to use his own word—privatemente; or, as Sir Henry Wotton did expound it, “in her most private and secret chamber.”’ Then he touches on the delicate question of dowry, and the relative preferability of the alliance proffered by France and that proffered by Savoy; adding,—with an obvious mental reference, I think, to the advice given him by Ralegh in the preceding year,—these pregnant words: ‘If your Majesty will respect rather which of these two will give the greatest contentment to the general body of the Protestants abroad, then I am of opinion that you will sooner incline to France than to Savoy.’
The writer then hints a fear that he may, unwittingly, have incurred a renewal of the paternal displeasure which some expressions of opinion in his former letter on the same subject had excited. Let his father kindly remember, he entreats, that his own special part in the business,—‘which is to be in love with any of them, is not yet at hand.’
Death, not love-making, was at hand. One month afterwards, the arm that penned this letter was stretched out,—still and rigid.
The Prince was seized with sudden illness on the 10th of October, five days after its date. |Death. 1612. November.| The first appearances were such as are wont to follow upon a great chill, after excessive exercise—to which Henry was always prone. In spite of much pain and some alarming symptoms, he persisted in removing from Richmond to St. James’ on the 16th, in order to receive the Elector Palatine, soon to become the husband of his sister. Within very few days it was apparent that his illness was of the most serious nature. He left his apartment at St. James’ on the morning of the 25th, to hear a sermon at the Chapel Royal. The text was from the fourteenth of Job, ‘Man, that is born of a woman, is of short continuance.’ Afterwards he dined with the King, but was obliged to take his leave, being seized with faintness and shivering fits. These continued to recur, at brief intervals, until his death, on the evening of the sixth of November. Almost the only snatch of quiet sleep which he could obtain followed upon the administration of a cordial, prepared for him in the Tower by Ralegh, at the Queen’s earnest request. It was not given until the morning of the last day.
Henry died calmly, but under total exhaustion. For many hours before his death he was unconscious, as well as speechless. The last words to which he responded were those of Archbishop Abbot:—‘In sign of your faith and hope in the blessed Resurrection, give us, for our comfort, a sign by the lifting up of your hands.’ Henry raised both hands, clasped together. It was his last conscious act.
Here, to human ken, was a life all seed-time. The harvest belonged to the things unseen. Contemporaries who had treasured up, in memory, many of those small matters which serve to mark character, were wont sometimes to draw contrasts between the prince and his brother. And many have been the speculations—natural though unfruitful—as to the altered course of English history, had Henry lived to ascend the throne. One fact, observable in the correspondence and documentary history of the times, will always retain a certain interest. Some of those who were to rank among the staunchest opponents of Charles were men who thought highly of Henry’s abilities to rule, and who held his memory in affectionate reverence.