Transcriber’s Note:

The footnotes have been collected at the end of the text, and are linked for ease of reference.

Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please see the transcriber’s [note] at the end of this text for details regarding the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation.

Corrections appear in the text as corrected. The original text will be displayed in-line when the cursor is placed on the corrected text. Except in the advertising matter at the end of the text, the highlighted words also serve as links to explanatory notes.

Corrections appear in the text as corrected. The highlighted words serve as a link to an explanatory note.

The cover image has been created, based on title page information, and is added to the public domain.

THE LIFE AND TIMES
OF
GEORGE VILLIERS
DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.

FROM ORIGINAL AND AUTHENTIC SOURCES.

BY MRS. THOMSON,

AUTHOR OF

“MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF HENRY THE EIGHTH,”

“LIFE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH,”

“MEMOIRS OF SARAH, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH,”

&c., &c.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

LONDON:

HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,

SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN,

13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.

1860.

The right of Translation is reserved.

LONDON:

PRINTED BY R. BORN, GLOUCESTER STREET,

REGENT’S PARK.

CONTENTS OF VOL II.

CHAPTER I.

ANXIETY FELT IN ENGLAND ABOUT THE SPANISH TREATY--CHARLES I. THE FIRST MALE HEIR FOR WHOM A TREATY OF MARRIAGE HAD BEEN SET ON FOOT SINCE HENRY VIII.--QUALITIES OF THE INFANTA--CALLED THE RARE INFANTA--CHARLES’S PERSONAL EXCELLENCE AND ELEGANCE--ALLIANCE RECEIVED WITH INTEREST AS CONCERNING THE PALATINATE--QUESTION OF THE DISPENSATION--THE OBSTACLES--DIFFICULTY IN FITTING OUT A FLEET TO BRING THE PRINCE BACK--JAMES’S APPREHENSIONS--LETTER FROM LORD KENSINGTON--PREPARATIONS AT SOUTHAMPTON FOR THE RECEPTION OF THE PRINCE AND INFANTA--ATTEMPTS MADE IN SPAIN TO CONVERT CHARLES--HIS FIRMNESS, AND THAT OF THE DUKE--BUCKINGHAM’S IMPATIENCE TO RETURN TO ENGLAND--LETTERS OF ENDYMION PORTER FROM SPAIN--THE ROMANTIC ADVENTURE OF PRINCE CHARLES IN A GARDEN--HIS SHORT INTERVIEW WITH THE INFANTA, ACCOMPANIED BY ENDYMION PORTER--HOPES OF THE TREATY BEING FULFILLED--THE BETROTHAL FIXED FOR ST. JAMES’S DAY, BUT NOT ACCOMPLISHED--THE FOOL ARCHY’S SPEECH--BUCKINGHAM’S PECUNIARY DIFFICULTIES--HIS BOLDNESS--UNPOPULARITY--INSANITY OF HIS BROTHER, LORD PURBECK--AMIABLE CONDUCT OF THE DUCHESS OF BUCKINGHAM--GRAND ENTERTAINMENT GIVEN AT MADRID--THE FUEGO DE CANNAS--QUARRELS BETWEEN BUCKINGHAM AND OLIVARES--BRISTOL’S DESPATCHES UNFAVOURABLE TO THE PRINCE--PREPARATIONS FOR THE PRINCE’S DEPARTURE--THE INFANTA’S MARRIAGE DEFERRED--ORIGINAL LETTER FROM BRISTOL--LEAVE-TAKING AT THE ESCURIAL--THE PRINCE REACHES SEGOVIA--VALLADOLID--ST. ANDERO--PERILS IN RETURNING FROM THE FLEET TO THE SHORE--VOYAGE HOME--TOUCHES AT THE SCILLY ISLES--ARRIVES AT PORTSMOUTH--AT YORK HOUSE--AT ROYSTON--PUBLIC REJOICINGS--CHARLES TERMED "ENGLAND’S JOY."

LIFE AND TIMES OF

GEORGE VILLIERS.

CHAPTER I.

The English nation continued, during the spring and summer of the year 1623, in anxious expectation of decisive news from Spain. Nothing could exceed the universal interest which this famous treaty of marriage between Charles and the Infanta inspired; nor had any subject so completely engrossed the public mind since the time of Henry the Eighth, when the ill-omened marriage of that prince with a daughter of Spain was first concerted. For England, be it observed, had known no male unmarried heir-apparent since that period, except the youthful and estimable Edward the Sixth, whose career was closed before he could be made the subject of political alliances.

There were many who looked with sentiments which state matters did not influence upon the proposed marriage of two individuals whose rank was their least merit. According to report, the Infanta was possessed of qualities not inferior in excellence to those of Katherine of Arragon, whilst in other attributes she was infinitely more attractive than that ill-starred princess. Her beauty, her accomplishments, her piety, had acquired for her the appellation of the “Rare Infanta;” and hence she was esteemed to be a fitting consort for one whose elegance of mind, whose courtesy, and princely grace were transcended by the purity of his moral conduct, the firmness of his religious opinions, and the affectionate disposition of his heart.

In his position as a private individual, Charles was pre-eminently amiable; and, at that period, the public could only judge of him as they would of any other irresponsible youth of great expectations. The vital faults of his heart, and the real weakness of his character, soft and infirm, yet incrusted with obstinacy and prejudice, were not only not apparent, but unsuspected.

The majority of the nation, however, viewed the Spanish alliance with interest, chiefly as affecting the long agitated question of the Palatinate, which James pretended, and, perhaps, believed, it was destined to settle to the satisfaction of the people.

It was therefore with something like consternation at first, although the event was afterwards hailed with joy, that the rupture of the treaty was seen afar off, by signs which appeared at first gradually, and afterwards plainly, upon the political horizon.

The question of the dispensation was the first known impediment; and the news from Spain were inauspicious. To the surprise of everyone, almost the next letter from the Prince and Duke announced their intention to return home, even should the expected dispensation not arrive before they could sail; “wherefore,” they wrote, “it was fitting that no time nor charge should be spared” in sending out the fleet which was to convey them to England; and begged that it might “be well chosen,” because they thought that the King, Queen, and all the Court of Spain would see it.

This letter was dated on the twenty-third of March, the anniversary of King James’s coronation.

“My sweete boyes,” the King wrote, on the following day, “God bless you both, and reward you for the comfortable news I resaived from you yesterday[^[1]] (quhiche was my coronation daye), in place of a tilting. My shippe is readdie to make saile, and onlie stayes for a faire winde; God send it her! But I have, for the honour of Englande, curtailed the traine that goes by sea of a number of raskalls.”[^[2]]

There was, meantime, much difficulty, from the inefficient state of the navy, in furnishing even a small fleet to fetch home the heir-apparent. Not only ships, but mariners, were wanting; the sailors had gone away, and hidden themselves. In vain were two proclamations issued to call them home; for proclamations and commissions had become so frequent that no one attended to their purport. At length, on the twenty-eighth of June, a small fleet of ten or twelve ships was equipped, and appeared in the Downs, ready to depart; but the expense of supporting them, which exceeded three hundred pounds a day, was loudly complained of by those at the head of affairs.

The King, meantime, was harassed with debts, and disturbed by apprehensions. He begged “his babie” to be as sparing as possible, since his agents had great difficulty in raising the five thousand pounds required for his use. The Prince’s “tilting stuff” was to come to three thousand pounds more, and those employed to get that sum knew not how to procure it. “God knows,” wrote the King, “how my coffers are alreadie drained.” He could think of no remedy, he added, except to obtain in advance the payment of the hundred and fifty thousand pounds promised as the Infanta’s dower, which he thought “his sweete gossepe, that is now turned Spaniarde, with his golden keye,”[^[3]] would be able to get, and then he should have a fine ship speedily to bring him home to his “deare dade.”

The tender father was too full of fears lest his “babie” should be hurt in tilting. He also begged of his “sweete boyes to keep themselfs in use of dawincing privatlie, though they showlde quhaffsell and sing one to another, like Gakke (Jack) and Tom, for faulte of bettir musike.”

Finally, James desired them, even should the dispensation not arrive, to press the Prince’s suit bravely, and to get him married without it, since numbers of "Catholic Romans and Protestants married in the worlde without the Pope’s dispensation," as he had been informed by the Austrian ambassador.

Meantime, the university of Oxford was vying with the metropolis in demonstrations of joy for the Prince’s safe arrival in Spain. In the beautiful church of St. Mary’s, now chiefly appropriated to deep theological discourses, a sermon was preached in honour of that event, and an oration to the same effect delivered in the schools.[^[4]] Yet, even now, the feeling of the country began to appear. It was rumoured, and only too truly, that things were not going well in Spain; whilst the enormous sums of money taken out of the treasury and regalia in jewels excited general indignation. As everything familiar, as well as important, became, in those times, the theme of preachers, even from pulpits, the draining of the kingdom of money was blamed. Dr. Everard, the rector of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, was committed for “saying too much;” and another preacher was, in the midst of his unpleasant strictures on the same subject, “sung down with a psalm before he had half done his sermon.”

On the twenty-sixth of May, the Earl of Rutland, Buckingham’s father-in-law, received James’s private instructions to have the “ships sweet, and well provided with victuals, to chuse good captains, and to defer to the authority of Buckingham as Lord Admiral, should he come on board; to avoid quarrels, which the King thought very dangerous when persons were crowded together on shipboard;--in going, to make for the Groyne, in returning to land at in returning to land at Southampton,”[Southampton,”][^[5]] the high-ways of which were even then being repaired for the reception and convenience of the expected bride. Yet still the fleet was unaccountably detained in port, and nothing was really done.

The Court, at this time, was gratified by a letter from Lady Kensington, commending the resistance of the Prince and Duke to proposals made by the Spanish Court, derogatory to them; and stating, after extravagant encomiums on the newly-made Duke, that Buckingham “shed tears” on account of his absence from the King.[^[6]] Complaints, however, were made at home, not only of the export of so many valuables to Spain, but of the expense of supporting the table of the Spanish ambassador, who was treated here as a guest, during Charles’s sojourn in Spain. Eighty pounds a day was the charge to which the ambassador’s table at first amounted. His repasts were eventually cut down to thirty dishes--all that King James permitted himself to display on his own table--and the cost was thus reduced to twenty pounds daily.[^[7]]

Reports, indeed, came to console the anxious minds at home, stating that the Prince and Duke were “royally treated,” but it was soon surmised that Charles was becoming weary of his detention. June had arrived; the Duke of Richmond, and six other noblemen, as commissioners, had already gone to Southampton to prepare a reception, with pageants, for the Prince; yet still Lord Rochford, who was expected to arrive with news of the wedding-day being fixed, did not make his appearance.

The Duke of Richmond was accompanied to Southampton by Inigo Jones and old Alleyn, the player, who were to employ their talents for the occasion; but who could, as the great news-teller writer of that period, Chamberlain, observes, “have done just as well without so many Privy Counsellors;” “but we must,” he adds, “shew our obsequiousness in all that concerns her” (the Infanta). At Gravesend, Lord Kelly, in the King’s barge, went to meet the new Spanish ambassador, the Marquis Inojosa, to whom cloths of estate, an honour never permitted to ambassadors in Queen Elizabeth’s time, were conceded, and when the haughty grandee landed at Dover, and was saluted with shot from the castle, he vouchsafed a nod from his coach, but, Spaniard-like, gave not one penny of money.[^[8]]

In spite of all the journeyings to and from Spain, nothing was done, whilst the Prince, whose firmness met with the highest commendations, was written to by the Pope, and “nibbed at with orations by the English seminaries in Spain, in order to effect his conversion.” The expenses at home and abroad could now only be supported by extraordinary devices, such as knighting a thousand gentlemen at a hundred pounds a-piece; ten or twelve serjeants-at-law at five hundred pounds a-piece; but the fees arising from the elevation of these luminaries were to be given to the Lord Keeper or to Sir Francis Crane, to further his tapestry works at Mortlake, or to pay off some scores owed him by Buckingham.[^[9]]

Whilst all these minor difficulties were harassing the King at home, Charles was beset with a far greater difficulty. When the Puritans were blaming him for answering in a polite and conciliatory tone the Pope’s letters, without the permission of his royal father, he was displaying the firmness which could only be the result of a careful and learned education; for faith in those times was, as in ours, feeble without sound knowledge; and it was requisite for him to repel zealous efforts to convert him at all convenient times. Between the dazzling scenes of splendid shows and diversions, made at such times and intervals of repose, Olivares was attacking the Prince with the argument best suited to the character of the romantic youth, telling him how sure a way to the Infanta’s heart his conversion would be; and by hinting that difference of creed could not but be a great obstacle to their union. And when answered that such an apostasy would raise a rebellion in Protestant England, the embarrassed but steadfast Prince was assured that if such were the case, he should have an army from Spain to quell such an insurrection. Even Lord Bristol, who was a great friend and favourite of Charles’s, “strove, with a gentle hand, to allure him that way,” by the specious argument that none but Roman Catholic monarchs had ever been great as sovereigns; whilst the Pope, encouraged by all this subtle working of a hidden machinery, wrote a letter to the Bishop of Conchen, Inquisitor-General of Spain, desiring him not to let such an opportunity of conversion slip out of his hands.[^[10]]

Buckingham did not, it appears, escape the zeal of the Jesuits, but acquitted himself, in reply to the energetic attacks upon his faith, with a prompt decision; and, as far as he was concerned, the attempt seems to have ceased, although he was afterwards incessantly reproached with a leaning to Romanism.

Like others, Buckingham became, at length, weary of the subject of the Palatinate, and not only still more weary of his long residence in Spain, but anxious to leave the political management of the affairs to those who best understood those intricate matters.[^[11]] To his precipitate conduct, and his impatience of delay, it was said the whole failure might be ascribed; and that, had it not been for his impetuous temper, Charles and the Infanta would have been married before the Christmas of 1623.

Whilst all went smooth, or appeared to do so, with the treaty, the diplomatists were at variance among themselves.

“When we were here in the heighth of discontents,” wrote Simon Digby,[^[12]] “nothing so much spoken of as the Prince, his sudden departure, reinfectâ, all our wranglings and disputes were, when no man suspected and expected any such matter,[^[13]] shut up like a comedy, and the match declared and published for concluded.”

At home, the Marquis Inojosa was making representations which he was ordered to lay before the King, through Don Carlos Colonna, complaining of the East India Company’s ships at the taking of Ormus. In the ship called the London, were, it was alleged, goods stolen from the King of Spain to the amount of five hundred thousand pounds. The very dishes used by the lowest men in that ship were of silver, taken from some of the very best families in Portugal, whom the English had plundered and slain, and had then stamped their plate with their own arms. Jewels of inestimable value had also been seized. It was therefore demanded that these ships should be put into sequestration. It is a curious proof how completely a feeling against the Spanish marriage had, by this time, possessed every class, that, upon the arrival of these vessels in port, the crews, hearing a report that the marriage with the Infanta was to be broken off, shot off their artillery, and threw their caps into the sea for joy.[^[14]]

Whilst the wooer, as the Prince was still styled, was murmuring at delays and obstacles, others less lofty were sending complaints to England, coupled with assurances of conjugal fidelity, which were more suspicious than satisfactory. Amongst Buckingham’s most confidential servants was Endymion Porter, who generally acted as his interpreter. Porter, according to Arthur Wilson, "had been bred up in Spain when he was a boy, and had the language, but found no other fortune there than brought him to be Mr. Edward Villiers’s man in Fleet Street, before either his master or the Marquis was acceptable at Whitehall." “It is not intended,” adds the historian, "to vilify the persons, being men (in this world’s lottery) as capable of advancement as others; but to shew in how poor a bark the King ventured the right freight his son, having only the Marquis to steer his course."

It was, indeed, remarkable that the agents most employed in the Duke’s service were men who had raised themselves from all but menial stations. Sir Robert Graham, whose name so often occurs in the correspondence of this period, was “an underling of low degree” in Buckingham’s stable. Cottington was originally a clerk to Sir Charles’s Cornwallis’s secretary, when Cornwallis was ambassador in Spain. The letters of Endymion Porter, also raised from mediocrity, are very characteristic of the confidential servant of a great man, who, like himself, was of easy principles. Among expressions of affection and grief for absence from his wife, Olive, and allusions to their little son George, are mingled a protestation that Endymion did not kiss the innkeeper’s daughter at Boulogne. “Alas! alas! sweet Olive!” thus he writes, "why should you go about to afflict me! Know that I live like a dying man, and as one that cannot live long without you. My eyes grow weary in looking upon anything, as wanting that rest they take in thy company and sight of thee.

"We live very honest, and think of nothing but our wives. I thought to have sent you a token of some value, but find my purse and my goodwill could not agree, and considering that my letter would be welcome to you, I leave to do it only this ring, which I hope you will esteem, if it be not for love, I think for charity. The conceit is that it seems two as you turn it, and ’tis but one.

“Sweet Olive! remember what it is to be sad, and forget not home. In our poverty, we will live as richly as they that have the greatest plenty, and bread with thy company shall please me better than the greatest dainties in the world without it.”[^[15]]

Olive Porter was, it seems, a humble relation of the Duchess of Buckingham, who addresses her as “Cousin,” and who appears, by Endymion’s letters, to have provided for Mistress Porter, since, in one of his singular epistles, after hoping that there may be nothing more said of any unkindness between them, Endymion sends his wife a jewel worth some hundred pounds, telling her that “she might pawn it if she had no more credit, but that Lady Buckingham had promised to supply her wants.” Certain conduct of Mrs. Porter’s prompts jealousy, and Endymion hints that, in his absence, “his wife has been merry with other young men,” a charge which not even the most scandalous could adduce against the pensive and irreproachable Duchess of Buckingham.

It was the lot of Endymion Porter to accompany Prince Charles on a very interesting occasion; in the month of July, whilst the dispensation was daily expected, Charles grew weary of the uniform Court gaieties, during which he saw nothing but the Infanta, on whom his eyes were incessantly fastened, as the inquisitive courtiers remarked.

“I have seen,” James Howell wrote from Madrid to Captain Porter, the brother of Endymion, “the Prince have his eyes immovably fixed upon the Infanta half an hour together, in a thoughtful, speculative posture, which sure would needs be tedious, if affection did not succeed it.” Lord Bristol, not very elegantly, remarked that Charles “watched her as a cat does a mouse.” Still the royal pair were not allowed to be on the terms of lovers; and the possibility, even at this last stage, of the treaty never being concluded, kept these young persons apart. Nothing could exceed the magnificence and courtly hospitality continually shown to the “wooer;” everything was done to satisfy the Prince and his suite. Nevertheless, whilst King Philip’s own servants waited upon the royal guest at the palace, there were some among the English “who did jeer at the Spanish fare, and use other slighting speeches and demeanour,” which, of course, were reported, and occasioned ill will. Once a week comedians came to the palace where the Prince was lodged, and Charles, seated, with Don Carlos, on the right hand of the Queen, the Infanta being in the middle, between her brother and his consort, taking the chief place as Prince of England, feasted his eyes upon that fair but soon forgotten face. The youthful King Philip was then under twenty, and his brother, Don Fernando, a boy of twelve, nevertheless Archbishop of Toledo and a Cardinal, was of all this royal family the only one who had the true Spanish complexion; and seems to have been, on that account, more beloved by the people, who were often heard to sigh and say:--"Oh, when shall we have a king again of our own colour?"

Marked out thus for popularity by the true Spanish type, Don Carlos was endowed with no office, dignity, nor title; he was only the King’s “individual companion, dressed in similar garments, from top to toe,” with the King, and when the King had new robes, others were always provided for him; he was, in short, His Spanish Majesty’s shadow.[^[16]]

Thus fenced round with guardians and etiquette, the Infanta could only publicly converse with Charles, and that through an interpreter, the Earl of Bristol, “Our cousin, Archy” (King James’s fool) “hath,” says the writer in Howell’s letters, “more privilege than any, for he goes with his fool’s coat where the Infanta is with her meninas and maidens of honour, and keeps a blowing and a blustering, and flirts out what he lists. One day they were discoursing what a marvellous thing it was that the Duke of Bavaria, with less than 15,000 men, after a long toylsome march, should dare to encounter the Palsgower’s army, consisting of about 25,000, and give them an utter discomfiture, and take Prague presently after; wherefore he archly answered, that he would tell them a stranger thing than that. ‘Was it not a stranger thing,’ quoth he, ‘that in the year eighty-eight, there should come a fleet of one hundred and forty sails from Spain to invade England, and that ten of these should not go back to tell what became of the rest.’”[^[17]]

At last Charles was resolved to gain a private interview with her whom he supposed to be his destined wife. Understanding that the Infanta was in the habit of going early in the morning to the Caso del Campo, on the other side of the river, to gather May-dew, he rose early, and went thither, accompanied by Endymion Porter. “They were,” says Howell, “let into the house, and into the garden, but the Infanta was in the orchard, and there being a high partition wall between, and the door doubly bolted, the Prince got on the top of the wall, and sprung down a great height, and so made towards her; but she, spying him first of all the rest, gave a shriek, and ran back. The old Marquis that was then her guardian, came towards the Prince and fell on his knees, conjuring him to retire, in regard he hazarded his head if he admitted him to her company; so the door was opened, and he came out under that wall under which he had got in.”

Often did the Prince watch “a long hour together,” in a close coach in an open street, to see the Infanta, as she went abroad; and this conduct appears to have been either the curiosity felt by a young man who earnestly desires to love the individual chosen to be his wife, or a gallantry natural to the age, and then the fashion in both nations, for Charles soon either forgot the Infanta, or became indifferent to the marriage. His affections were destined to rest ultimately upon one of a very different character, as far as we can gather from the perhaps too flattering accounts given by historians of the Infanta, to that of the Spanish Princess.

Still, both the Prince and Buckingham sent encouraging accounts of the progress of the treaty, and even inspired the poor King with a hope that they should bring the Infanta over to England at Michaelmas. This was almost the last letter in which such expectations were held out: it was dated on the fifteenth of July. On that very day, the Archbishop Laud stated in his diary of a violent and destructive tempest, which many, says Camden, “took occasion to interpret as an ill-omen, but God forbid.” It was a “very fair day,” the Archbishop records, "till towards five at night; then great extremity of thunder and lightning, and much hurt done; the lanthorn at St. James’s House blasted, the vane heading the Prince’s arms beaten to pieces."

The Prince was then in Spain. It was Tuesday, and St. James’s day (N.S.)[^[18]]

It appears, however, from Mr. Chamberlain’s letters,[^[19]] that although “Spanish tidings” were kept “very close,” the Prince had even then written to the Duke of Richmond to procure him the King’s permission to return home, as he was anxious to leave Spain.[^[20]] About the same time a letter from Endymion Porter, dated July twelfth, to his wife Olive, intimated that the Prince was to be contracted in three weeks, but the Infanta, than whom, he added, there never was a better creature, was to follow in the following March.[^[21]]

Meantime the articles of agreement for the marriage were read publicly by Secretary Calvert at Court, when the King of Spain swore to observe them. The Infanta was to have an Archbishop and twenty-four priests in her suite, and a chapel for her Spanish household, but no English were to attend it. She was to be allowed the training of her children only until they were ten years old. The Prince and Infanta were to sign the contract of marriage on St. James’s day; that day which Laud had noted in his Diary as one of storms and destruction.[^[22]] At the same time that a Romanist Archbishop and twenty-four priests were to be admitted into the very heart of the Court, three Jesuits were imprisoned at Dover for bringing over pictures and books; a subject of the British crown was prosecuted in the Ecclesiastical court for not standing up at the creed, or kneeling down at the Lord’s Prayer, in church; and a poor woman, passing over from Calais, was brought up before the Commissioners of Passage for having beads, which, she said, were bought to make bracelets, and Popish books in her possession,[^[23]] which, she asserted, were for the use of the Spanish ambassador.

When the articles of the Spanish match were read at the English Court, then at Theobald’s, it was the Scottish lords who “stuck most” on points of religion, but they were silenced by being told that there "must be no disputing, the Prince being in the hands of the Spaniards, and the restoration of the King’s children to be effected either by them or by a war which would set all Christendom by the ears." Then the articles were sworn to. The Archbishop of Spalato’s Jesuit confessor put on his hat whilst the prayer for King James was being read. There was afterwards a “gay and plentiful banquet;” but the Court had become very “rude,” as Secretary Conway wrote to Sir George Goring, “for want of its ornaments, which are in Spain; and but for the Earl of Carlisle, wearing of ruffs and gartering of silk stockings would be forgotten.”

King James now began to be painfully eager for the fleet, which was to fetch back his son and the Duke, to sail. “No impediment in the power of man,” he decreed, should detain it. Every letter written by his Secretaries of State to Lord Middlesex was to end with, “His Majesty cries, haste away the ships, as you tender the life of himself and his son.” Good tidings still arrived from Madrid; more liberty of communication between the Prince and the Infanta was allowed; but the contract, fixed for St. James’s Day, was not fulfilled, and the ill-omen was, in the minds of the superstitious, confirmed.[^[24]]

Meantime, whilst such was the state of things at the Spanish Court, their ambassadors here were in vain endeavouring to obtain indulgence for recusants. Whilst these conflicting interests were thus impeding a speedy settlement of the Spanish match, Buckingham had other reasons, besides weariness of foreign life, to induce him to wish to return home. His affairs were greatly involved, and he found it, indeed, necessary, at this time, to employ several of his friends, among whom was Sir John Suckling, to examine into them. Their answers were far from satisfactory. His revenue, they stated in reply, from land, offices, &c., was 15,213l. 6s. 8d. a year. His expenditure was 14,700l. Out of this, 3,000l. was allowed to the Duchess for housekeeping, 2,000l. was allowed to his mother, the Countess of Buckingham; the costly diversion of tilting cost 1,000l. a year, about as much as a yacht in modern times. Then his friends gave him no very pleasant intelligence about his debts; they had amounted, when the Duke went to Spain, to 24,000l., and were now increased by 29,400l.--money having been advanced to him whilst shining at the Court of Madrid. His friends had cleared off 17,300l. by selling land, and were to apply 2,500l. to be paid from his Irish revenues, and they now proposed similar means of discharging the remainder, which, they said, would otherwise ruin his estate. His income, they gravely told him, but little exceeded his expenditure; whereas, those who wish to leave a patrimony behind them do not spend more than two-thirds of their income[^[25]]--an excellent rule, but not much better observed in those days than in ours. Half the nobility appear to have been deeply involved in debt, and hence their tendency to corrupt practices. Even the honest-hearted Sir Edward Coke was, we are told, “half-crazied” by his debts, which amounted to 26,000l.[^[26]] In consequence, it may be presumed, of these embarrassments, the King, at this time, wrote to his “sweete Steenie,” announcing a present to him of 2,000l. from the East India Company by way of consolation.[^[27]]

The Duke was also made now fully aware of the responsibility he had incurred in taking the Prince to Spain. Reports were often circulated that he had been made a prisoner there. Shortly afterwards James, being agitated with this fear, was assured that, “if there be trust on earth,” the Prince and Infanta were to be moving home on the twenty-eighth of August.

The King, meantime, wrote plaintively to his “sweete boyes.” He kept what he called the “feaste,” on the anniversary of the Gowry plot, at Salisbury, on the fifth of August, where the Spanish ambassador and all the corps diplomatique were conveyed, at the King’s expense, in coaches, which cost twenty pounds a day; and here, besides a brace of bucks and a stag every day, the provision made for these Spanish grandees was so plentiful that, not being able to use it, they were stated to have buried it under dunghills, rather than bestow it upon heretics. “And though,” says Mr. Chamberlain, referring to this report, “I took it for a scandal or slander, yet I have heard it verified more than once; and that the neighbours were forced to complain, though to little purpose, for, I know not how, the Spaniard hath got such a hand everywhere, that he carries more away, when he comes, than all other ambassadors together.”[^[28]]

Buckingham, we are told, “lay at home under a million of maledictions.”[^[29]] The poor King, indifferent to public opinion, and now visibly declining in health, was nevertheless constantly writing to Madrid in such terms as these:--"If ye haisten not hoame, I apprehende I shale never see you, for my longing will kill mee." To the Prince individually, he expressed himself in terms which left Charles no alternative but to return. “The necessitie of my affaires,” the King wrote, “enforced me to tell you that ye must preferre the obedience to a father to the love ye carrie to a mistresse.” Eager to do away with every possible impediment to the marriage, the King, on the seventh of August, signed, whilst at Salisbury, the “declaration, touching the pardons, suspensions, and dispensations of the Roman Catholics.”[^[30]]

The Prince had, it appears, at this very time, “been packed up,” and ready to depart, leaving matters to be arranged afterwards. Yet the Spanish ambassadors at home expressed themselves contented, and ready to fulfil all promises. Sir Edward Herbert, speaking to the Marquis Inojosa, of a report in France that the Prince was detained a prisoner in Spain, received an answer that it was the Prince whose virtues had captivated the King of Spain;[^[31]] and for some time compliments and assurances continued to be exchanged.

On the twenty-first of August, the King visited the ships which were to go to Spain, under the command of the Earl of Rutland, who was unfortunately absent, upon the earnest entreaty of his daughter, the Duchess of Buckingham, and of his grandchild, Lady Mary, that he would remain with them. At the end of that month, nevertheless, the fleet was still detained for fifteen days, in the vain hope of receiving news of the Prince’s marriage. The Pope’s illness, it was now said, was delaying the dispensation; but Buckingham’s conduct was, according to a letter from Sir Francis Woolley to Carleton, “much commended.” He was, nevertheless, more impatient than ever to return, and that eagerness was sure, it was thought, to hinder rather than accelerate the wished-for nuptials. In addition to his other troubles, Buckingham had now a very grievous one in the visitation which had fallen, during his absence, upon Lord Purbeck, his favourite brother, who became insane. As usual, under every circumstance, the greatest good sense was shown by the Duchess of Buckingham. She wrote to Secretary Conway to inform him that the unfortunate Viscount’s “distemper now inclined to his usual melancholy fit,” during which he was gentle, and “could be removed anywhere, but that at present he would be outrageous were it attempted;” she suggests, therefore, that Sir John Keysley, and a few other friends, had better remain with him in London.

The King, replying through his secretary, said that he admired the Duchess’s gentleness, but that Purbeck’s malady, exciting him to public acts, in public places, which dishonoured himself and his brothers, made it necessary to place him under some restraint, and to remove him into the country.[^[32]] Lord Purbeck, it seems, was therefore put under restraint. Such was the end of that ambitious career which the Duke had hoped to witness, and so pave the way to which he had promoted the marriage with Sir Edward Coke’s unhappy daughter.

Whilst a degree of gloom and anxiety thus overspread his home, Buckingham was witnessing, in the festivities given to honour the expected espousals, one of the most characteristic diversions of the Spanish nation. This was the “Fuego de Caunas,”--borrowed from the Moors, and still practised by Eastern nations, under the name of El Djerid. “It is,” says Sir Walter Scott, “a sort of rehearsal of the encounter of their light horsemen, armed with darts, as the Tourney represented the charge of the feudal cavaliers with their lances. In both cases, the difference between sport and reality only consisted in the weapons being sharp or pointless.”[^[33]]

This entertainment was ordered by the King of Spain, who was not contented with the festivities hitherto given in honour of the Prince of Wales, and was held at Madrid, in the Market Place, containing scaffolding for a great concourse of strangers, who were present. The Infanta appeared on this occasion in white, as an unspotted dove, “after the Majesty of England;” the manes of her coach horses were twisted with blue ribbands, in compliment to her future consort; and there accompanied the Lady Infanta, says the Spanish annalist, “Don Fernando, her brother, clothed in Romane purple, that radiant sunne of the church, even as his sister is the resplendent beames of true beauty,”[^[34]] this “radiant sunne of the church;” being, as it has been before stated, a boy of twelve years of age. The Queen was carried in a chair of state, followed by her meninas (or minions) and ladies. The King, about two o’clock, arrived in a coach with the Prince of Wales, and his brothers, “brave with gravity,” says the chronicler, and “grave in bravery.” Philip was in black, Prince Charles in white, their dresses divided in fashion, half after the English, and half after the Spanish manner; Charles being placed on the right hand of the King.

Then came four and twenty movable fountains, with a supply of beverages; and next entered into the Market Place His Majesty’s four and twenty musicians, and servants in satin liveries, carnation colour, guarded with silver lace, interspersed with folds of black velvet in large cassocks, with black hats and carnation plumes, mounted on goodly horses. Next appeared the King’s equerries, leading the way, uncovered, before a noble courser on which His Majesty was to run: and, amongst the numerous retinue that followed, were four farriers with pouches of crimson velvet, in which all that was requisite for shoeing horses was contained. Sixty horses of brown bay, in white and black trappings, with muzzles of silver, and covered with crimson velvet, embroidered with the arms of Philip IV., were led by lacqueys in carnation satin, their hose and jacket decorated with black and silver lace. Next came forty “youngsters of the stables,” dressed in the Turkish fashion, and lastly, twelve mules, laden with bunches of canes, and caparisoned in similar fashion with the horses. To add to the convenience of the equestrians, steps of fine wood, inlaid with ebony, and covered with carnation taffeta, with fringes of gold, were also brought into the Market Place.

The livery of the town was of orange colour, relieved with silver; and it may easily be conceived how splendid was the effect of these gorgeous dresses, set off by the badges worked in silver, beneath a cloudless sky, with the far-famed Spanish coursers prancing under their gorgeous caparisons, and all the beauty and rank of the city ranged as beholders. Mingled with these retainers, were those of the great Spanish grandees. First came Don Duarte, the Duke of Infantado, with forty horses, in white and black caparisons, with the glorious blazon of the Ave Maria upon them; and after the last horse, came the Rider, as he was called on this occasion.

Next followed Don Pedro of Toledo, the pride of Castilian knights, with a troop of sorrel horses. Next, that of the Admiral of Castile, whose retainers wore long coats of black satin, and yellow and white plumes, and were followed by the farrier--a functionary attached to each troop. Presently, the Condé de Monterey, the Duke of Sessa and the Duke of Cea’s horse, all in liveries of various colours, made up the number of five hundred and eighty-six cavaliers; augmented by muleteers, farriers, and grooms, in number a hundred and forty-four. This unrivalled troop, glittering with silver plumes and emblazonments, took an hour to make their entrance. After “baiting but a few bulls,” says the chronicler, the running with the canes commenced.

King Philip, followed by his thaclow[thaclow], Don Carlos, then went to mask himself for the sport, at the house of the Condessa Miranda, who had been previously apprised of the intended honour. Her reception of the young monarch is characteristic of the minute, though stately, hospitality of that period. She whitened her house all over for the occasion; she hung round the courts with draperies; in the portals of the King’s apartment these were of white damask, with gold fringe. Beds were prepared for the King and Infant Carlos; and these were brought from the royal palace; the rooms were washed with sweet powder and water mingled with ambar, and were replete with fragrance. Next to the apartment of His Majesty, there was one provided for the Condé Olivares, with a bed of rich needle-work. The Condessa Miranda also provided for the King and Don Carlos each a shirt to change, which they put on; she gave each of her royal guests boxes of relics, of inestimable value: to the King, one of St. Philip the Apostle; to the Infant, one of St. Lawrence, given to the Condessa by Pope Sixtus V., when she was at Naples; and these reliques were the more valuable because the vessel in which they had been sent was sunk, but the trunk in which they came was seen in the water, and was sent to the Condé of Miranda, by the famous John Andrea Dorea, which miraculous incident proves, says the Spanish historian, “the certainty of reliques;” this gift was esteemed a “pious and discreet present, on such occasions, to such persons.” The Condessa had also gloves and handkerchiefs, for her royal guests, in cabinets of rock crystal, set in gold; sweet cake to be eaten, in crystal glasses; and crystal apples, filled with sweet waters. All these carefully arranged courtesies must have seemed indeed singular to Prince Charles and Buckingham, when they, who had come from a Court in which people had almost begun to show outward disrespect to the King, by leaving off ruffs and plumes, witnessed these refinements of hospitality.

More than all, it must have astonished them, considering the festive nature of the occasion, had they not been accustomed now to Spanish modes, that the Condessa, being most “wise and discreet,” had procured that the Holy Sacrament, in the Monastery of the Holy Trinity, should be exhibited before her window, with great solemnity of lights and ornaments. On bended knees, the two young Princes humbly and devoutly worshipped the sacred elements, previous to returning to their apartments to put on their masks. In that room they found about forty plates of silver, with all manner of conserves on them, and rose-sugar confections. The honour shown to the Condessa in thus selecting her to be the hostess, was, it was alleged, only a renewal of the favour exhibited by Philip the Second, the grandfather of the King, to that illustrious lady when she was vice-Queen of Barcelona.

After this preparation, the running commenced. The canes were distributed to each runner, and, according to ancient custom, the King chose the Condé Olivares for his own encounter, and the Infant Carlos, the Marquis of Carpio. The palm of skill and bravery was, of course, accorded to these royal brothers, and on the Duke of Cea’s delivering to the King the canes, the place rang with shouts of “Long live their Majesties,” a cry which London doubtless would re-echo as this “triumpant show,” says the annalist, “was made to honour her Prince, and in a time of such vehement heate, though now it was qualified.”[^[35]]

This grand festivity was probably the cause of a serious illness to Buckingham, for, a day afterwards, Charles wrote to his father that his “dog” was not to be troubled with writing, having taken cold, which had ended in an ague. The Duke had been bled, and was recovered; the Prince concluded by warning the King that in spite of his efforts to keep his letters private, they had been seen in London, by the French ambassador’s means, by the Spanish ambassador, and that His Majesty was “betrayed in his bedchamber.”

Buckingham added in a postscript[postscript]:--"Sir, I have bine the willinger to let your sone play the secretary at this time of little neade, that you may see the extraordinary care he hath of me, for which I will not intreat you not to love him the wors--nor him that thretens you that when he once getts hould of your bed-post againe never to quitt it."

The period for Charles’s return home with the Princess was now at hand.[^[36]] It was arranged with the King of Spain that, upon the arrival of the Pope’s approbation of some articles that had lately been sent to him, he should be empowered to have the Infanta married by proxy; and that, meantime, she should be styled “Princessa de Inglatierra,” and be considered in every respect as the betrothed wife of Prince Charles. “This day we take our leaves,” the Prince, on the twenty-fifth of August, wrote to his father; his letter was accompanied by one from the Earl of Bristol, stating that the King of Spain and his ministers had grown “to have so high a dislike of the Duke of Buckingham,” and considered him to be so adverse to the treaty, and to exercise so great an influence over Prince Charles, that they hoped it might not be in his power to make the Infanta’s life less happy there (in England), or to embroil the two kingdoms. “Suspicions and distastes betwixt them here and my Lord of Buckingham,” Bristol said, “could not be at a greater height.” This was the first letter that Bristol wrote prejudicial to Buckingham.

Nevertheless, at the very same moment, the Duke wrote to his master thus:--"Sir,--He bring all things with me you have desired, except the Infanta, which hath almost broken my heart, because yours, your sone’s, and the nation’s honour is touched by the miss of it; but since it’s there falt (their fault) here, and not ours, wee will bere it the better; and when I shall have the happiness to lie at your feete, you shall then knowe the truth of it, and no more."[^[37]]

In another letter from Bristol, James was given to understand that the compact entered into by his son was a solemn and formal promise; but that an afterthought impelled him to make the powers with which he had entrusted Bristol contingent:

"May it please your Majesty,

"By my cosen, Simon Digby, I gave your Majesty an account of all that passed here upon the Prince his departure, and that according to what was capitulated. His Highness had left powers for the marrying of the Infanta, per verba de presenti, which powers were made unto the King and his brother, Don Carlos, but left with me to be delivered upon the arrival of the Pope’s approbation, and so declared to be His Highnesse’ pleasure before all this King’s Ministers that were present at the solemne act of passing the Prince his powers unto the King. Since His Highnesse’ departure, I have receaved commandement from His Highness not to make deliverie of the said powers untill His Highness shall be satisfied what securitie may be given him that the Infanta may not become a religious woman[^[38]] after the betroathing; and that I expect his further pleasure therein, as y^r Majestie will see by the coppie of His Highnesse’ letter unto me, which I presume to send your Majestie, as likewise the answer which in that point I make unto His Highnesse, to the end your Majestie may have perfect information of the whole estate of the businesse. For that I conceave the temporal articles are so farr agreed that I have to give your Majestie an account of them within a few daies, and to youre content, and the businesse, after so manie rubbs, brought to that estate that I am confident there will not be any failing in any pointe capitulated betwixt your Majesty and His Highnesse, but all will be punctuallie performed. I conceave your Majestie, continuing your desire of the match, would be loath to have the faire way it is now in to be clogged or interrupted with any new jealousie that may now be raised, for questionlesse there is no securitie in that particular, that can on His Highnesse’ part be required, that they will refuse him."[^[39]]

The character of Charles, composed, as Hume remarks, “of decency, reserve, modesty, sobriety, virtues so agreeable to the manners of the Spaniards;”[^[40]] the reliance he had placed on their honour, his romantic gallantry, the invariable courtesy of his demeanour to every person, whether prince, or peer, or the lowest groom of his household; a courtesy springing from a gentle nature, elevated and refined by careful culture; these attributes were strongly contrasted with the impetuous temper of Buckingham. There are moments when sincerity becomes insolence; and when Buckingham, at his last interview with Olivares, told him that his attachment to the Spanish nation, and to the King, was extreme, and that he should use every endeavour in his power to cement the friendship between England and Spain, but that, as for him, the Condé Olivares, “he need never consider him as a friend, but must ever expect from him every possible opposition and enmity,” he was well reproved by the grave and lofty answer, “that Olivares very willingly accepted what was offered him.” Thus they parted.[^[41]]

There were, however, many who approved this defiant manner, and called the conduct of the Duke “brave and resolute;” and certainly there was much in the character of Olivares to extenuate the bitterness of Buckingham’s dislike. Lord Bristol, however, imputed all the mistrust and failure that ensued to Buckingham. “The Prince,” he said, "had left men’s hearts set upon him." “And the leave-taking,” adds the ambassador, “betwixt him and the King, was with as great profession of love and affection as could be, of which I was a witness, being interpreter betwixt them.”[^[42]]

Every possible demonstration of honour was proffered to the Prince and Duke at their departure. To the last, the pages of the Condé Olivares attended, as they had done all along, on Buckingham--there was no apparent change of feeling, nor diminution of respect.

The farewell presents, too numerous to be fully recited, were magnificent. Among them were, given to the Prince by the King, eighteen Spanish jennets, six Barbary horses, six mares, and twenty foals. These superb animals were covered with cloths of crimson velvet, guarded with gold lace; one of them being distinguished by a saddle of fine lamb-skin, the other “furniture” being set with rich pearl; among a number of cross-bows which were given, those used by the Dukes of Medina Sidonia and Ossunia, in the wars, were peculiarly valuable to the Prince.

To Buckingham’s share, among others, were several Spanish jennets, and Barbary or Arabian horses, and a splendid diamond girdle, worth thirty thousand crowns.

Thu Queen presented the young Prince with linen, and skins of ambar and of kids, their scent and perfume amounting in value to many thousand crowns.

Twice, before his leaving for ever the Spanish capital, did Charles, in company with the King, visit the Infanta. She had retreated to the monastery of the Descallas, or bare-legged friars; and it was, perhaps, her extreme piety that inspired the Prince with the fear that she might, after her betrothal, become a nun, and in that way avoid espousing a heretic. She received him with “tears of joy,” and gave the Prince many boxes of scents, flowers, and curiosites of great value. The Prince’s gifts to the Infanta consisted of a string of two hundred and fifty great pear-shaped pearls, one of them with a diamond which could not be valued, and two pairs of pearl-shaped ear-rings, marvellous great.”[great.”] Amongst the officers and retainers of the Court, the Prince gave, in various ways, the sum of twelve thousand pounds.

At their last interview in Madrid, the King of Spain wore black, as a token of mourning at their departure; but the final parting was in a field near the Escurial, the place appointed for their adieus. Philip had been desirous of showing to the English that wonder of Europe, with its thirteen courts, its grand marble structure, its statue of St. Lawrence over the gate, with his gridiron in his hand. Here Philip, the Queen, the Infant, and his brothers pointed out, with just pride, the fine cloisters, three stories high, the libraries, sepulchres, chapels, and graves. About a hundred friars were resident at this time in the house, which it required half a day to go over. That part appropriated to royal residence was wholly unsuitable to the purpose. It is a remarkable fact that, when Charles the First was in Spain, there was only one kitchen in the Escurial; neither was there a hall, nor offices below stairs fit for a royal abode; so that, as Sir Richard Wynn remarked, "it was never intended for a king’s palace, but for the goodliest monastery in the world, which it is."[^[43]]

The church, with its twenty altars, and enormous silver candlesticks, higher and heavier than a man; the wonderful chapel at the extremity, with curiously painted roofs and desks of silver; the marble fountains playing in every court; the invaluable paintings in the churches and chapels, collected in all parts of the world, were then in undisturbed freshness; the convulsions of war and revolutions, and the hand of time, have since dimmed their splendour, but the Escurial stands unscathed on the side of a mountain. Stern in cloistral gloom rather than beautiful, it had then a narrow strip of garden round two sides, with walks and “knots of flowers,” and a pond at one extremity, in which the friars were accustomed to fish. Most of them had their apartments provided with a chapel; all had mules for riding, for walking was forbidden to these monks, even to a short distance.[^[44]]

In a field near this grand building, the King and Prince sat and conversed an hour; a pillar, it was afterwards decided, was to be erected on the spot where this last interview took place; “wherein,” wrote Mr. Chamberlain, “the Duke of Buckingham is quite forgotten, as if he had been none of the company.” The Queen, the Infanta, and her brothers, embraced the Prince who so soon became their foe. The English lords and gentlemen kissed the King’s hands, the Spaniards those of the Prince, “returning,” says the chronicler, “to embrace us again with wonderful demonstrations of love.” Then the Prince took his final departure, attended by the Condé de Monterey, Gondomar, Buckingham, and Lord Bristol, and pursued his journey to Segovia, which had been recommended to him, according to Sir Richard Wynn, as the only thing worth seeing after the Escurial. “It was then,” says Wynn, “a large town, but much ruinous, having a great castle, kept in very good repair, in which there be two goodly rooms, whose roofes are the richest, done with gold, and incrusting, of an old manner, but wonderful costly.” Here Charles was welcomed with a salute of artillery, and alighting, he went over the palace, extolling the memory of Philip the Second, who had rebuilt it, and expressing great pleasure at seeing his arms quartered with the Spanish scutcheons in the great hall,--Henry the Third of Spain, having married Catherine, daughter of John of Gaunt, in right of whom Philip the Second pretended to derive his claim to the crown of England after the death of Mary. In this palace, Charles was magnificently entertained; and in the evening, whilst fireworks and torches threw their light upon the scene, the Alcayd of that royal house presented him with a gallant mask of thirty-two-knights, and proposed to honour him by a bull-fight on the ensuing day; but he declined the terrible amusement, being in haste to depart.

Charles--and doubtless Buckingham (although in this decline of favour in Spain, he is rarely alluded to by the chroniclers)--in stopping at Valladolid, had great delight in seeing some of the finest productions of Michael Angelo and of Raphael. Before the Prince entered the city, an individual who was the object of dread and jealousy, and who was still more hated by Olivares than even Buckingham, was withdrawn from amid those who vied in offering their homage to the Prince. This was the Cardinal Duke of Lerma, the disgraced minister and favourite of Philip, who was ordered to leave Valladolid before Charles entered it. The affront sank deep into the old man’s heart, as he had greatly wished to see the Prince. The Duke of Lerma was considered to be more favourable to the English alliance than Olivares, and he had formerly projected a union between Anne of Austria, then Infanta, and Henry, the last Prince of Wales. He lived generally at Valladolid, retiring, as was the custom with the Spaniards of rank, after sixty, to a place of quiet and devotion; officiating, and singing mass, and passing his days in charity and piety. “This,” as Howell remarks, “doth not suit well with the genius of an Englishman, who loves not to pull off his clothes till he goes to bed.” The remark shows that our countrymen were then, as now, the last in Europe to give up the intellectual or military career to which their youth had been devoted, and which, during their middle life, had been their source of pride and prosperity.

The conduct of Olivares to the Cardinal Duke seems to betray a rancorous spirit, which may somewhat extenuate the haughty bearing of Buckingham to the ruling favourite. Lerma’s fall was signal; he had been the greatest favourite, save one, ever known in the Spanish Court; and he was, as a grandee of Spain, privileged to stand covered before the King. Had it not, however, been for his ecclesiastical dignity, which protected him, the Duke of Lerma would have sunk, under the persecutions of Olivares, into utter ruin.

Meantime, whilst the Prince was thus journeying to the coast, Sir John Finet, the assistant Master of the Ceremonies to King James, being also a naval commander, had set sail in May with certain ships, now in the port of St. Andero, in Biscay. They had been three months in their voyage from England, and Finet had been ordered to apprize the Prince of the Earl of Rutland’s arrival in the same port; but that event not having taken place, he rowed ashore, and crossing several mountains in the darkness of a tempestuous night, met the Prince and Duke at about six leagues distance from the town. Charles was beside himself with joy on seeing Finet, and told him that he looked upon him “as one that had the face of an angel,” for bringing such good news. Buckingham, when he afterwards beheld him, was equally enraptured, and drawing from his finger a ring worth a hundred pounds, gave it to Finet.

Prince Charles arrived at St. Andero on St. Matthew’s day. Whilst at dinner outside of the town, he heard that the whole fleet, under the command of the Earl of Rutland, lay at anchor near the harbour. Charles hastened to the port, and hurrying through the town amid volleys of musketry and the firing of cannon in his honour, went on board that very afternoon. The Prince, a vessel which was a source of great pride to the English, contained the admiral of the fleet. In returning that night in his own barge, rowed by watermen, well accustomed to the Thames, but little fitted to cope with a swelling sea, the Prince was in imminent peril. In the hurry of the moment, neither master, pilot, nor mariner of experience were sent in his barge; the town was, at least, at the distance of a Spanish league from the ships, and before the boat could near the shore, a storm arose. The Prince’s watermen were, says the chroniclers, “strong, cunning, and courageous, but the furious waves taught their oares another manner of practice than ever they were put to on the Thames.” They soon found it impossible to reach the town. Not only did the tempest rage, but there lay at the very mouth of the harbour a barque, which was there for refuge, so that it was dangerous to approach it; neither did the dismayed boatmen dare to make for the shore; it was studded with rocks; almost equally perilous would it have been to return to the ships, for the night was dark, and, in case of missing them, the boat, with its precious freight, might be carried out into the main seas, the channel where the fleet anchored running with an impetuous and irresistible torrent.

It was a singular and critical situation. Here was the heir to a great kingdom, close, on the one hand, to a city which was ringing with acclamations at his arrival; on the other, near to a fleet which the most anxious precautions had sent for his service--and yet, scarcely would a peasant in his father’s dominions have been placed in such a plight for want of ordinary care, or, perhaps, owing to the jealousy of the boatmen and their dislike to foreign aid.

“In this full sea of horrors,” to borrow the somewhat flowery language of the narrator, the Prince resolved to turn back towards the ships, and to fall upon the first that could be fastened on, rather than to run the risk of being wrecked on one of the rocks, which threatened immediate destruction.

The storm continued to rage, and the night became darker and darker. Charles and Buckingham could, at this moment, see the lights streaming from the town, and dimly, perhaps, discern the track of the English fleet. Soon all was enveloped in the deepest gloom. At such a moment the mind can only turn to one source of help, and to that, doubtless, the young and reflective Prince, who afterwards met the sternest trials of life with a lofty resignation, did revert, whatever may have been the case with his spoiled, impetuous favourite.

“At last,” as the chronicler observes, “that Omnipotent arm, which can tear up rocks from their center, and that voyce which can call in the winds, and still them with the moving of His finger, sent a dove with an olive branch in her bill, as an assurance of comfort.”

Sir Sackwill Trevor, the commander of the Defiance, perceived at this crisis the peril of the Prince; by his order, casks and buoys, with lights fastened to them by some ropes, were thrown out, and the watermen seized hold of these, though at the risk of their lives. A light was now discerned in the ship Defiance, and the Prince was soon safely received on board, where he spent the night, by no means, as it is said, daunted by these terrors.

On the ensuing day Charles went on shore, but returned on the same evening to the fleet. On Sunday, the fourteenth of September, he entertained Gondomar and the other grandees who had been commissioned to attend him to the coast on board the Prince.

The dinner consisted, according to Phineas Pette, who was in the ship, “of no other than we brought from England with us.” Stalled oxen, fatted sheep, venison, and all manner of fowl were presented to those who would, perhaps, never see such a repast spread before them again. A long table for persons of inferior quality was set in the great cabin, and across this another was placed, where Charles and the chief personages sat. Healths were drunk; the Spaniards were delighted with the ships, but still more with the graceful and courteous manners of Charles. Never, it is said, had a stranger so won upon the affections of a people, as this young Prince had done in Spain, independently of his generosity and liberality at parting, when he ordered that the gifts and rewards of all those who had attended him in his journey, should be double in value to what he had before specified. “We have found some difficulty,” Lord Bristol wrote to Calvert, "in taking up the monies, but I shall, God willing, see it perfectly performed to his highness’s honour."[^[45]]

Some days elapsed before the Prince weighed anchor. At last, on the eighteenth of September, Charles bade adieu to Spain, and with it, probably, to the sunshine of his youth. For James was now visibly declining, and his son was soon to be called upon to fulfil duties which he comprehended not in their just spirit, and to contend with bold, intelligent, indignant subjects, whom he also imperfectly understood.

As the sails were swelling with the breeze, the Prince and the other English gentlemen stood on deck taking leave, in dumb show, of the throng of Spaniards who saluted them from the shore. The wind was now prosperous, but a voyage of nine days awaited the impatient Prince before he could touch English ground.

The fleet consisted of ten ships of the line; that styled the Prince was of twelve hundred tons burthen, the others considerably less. In eight days they arrived within twelve miles of the Scilly Islands. The Council who were entrusted with the convoy of Charles debated on the propriety of his landing on this remote point, and were unanimous against it. Several pilots had come on board, but were dismissed. After supper, however, Charles suddenly ordered out the long boat and the ketch, and announced his intention of landing, accompanied by Buckingham.

About one o’clock at night they got into the long boat, and being saluted with a volley from the ship, made for St Mary’s Island, where the Prince and all his companions landed about seven in the morning. In the castle the Prince and Buckingham remained four days, and were taken again on board of the fleet on the third of October; and on the fifth of the same month, in the afternoon, arrived at Portsmouth,[^[46]] having been in all seventeen days at sea. Charles proceeded at once to the house of Lord Annandale, near Guildford, and reached York House at eight the next morning; thus paying Buckingham the honour of going first to his house in London. Here he met the Privy Council, and refused an unreasonable request by the Spanish ambassador for a prior audience. [^[47]]

Never was there more general or more enthusiastic joy expressed than on this occasion, and, amongst other demonstrations, a bonfire, which cost a hundred pounds, was kindled at Guildhall. It is supposed to have been composed of forfeited logwood, prohibited to the dyers, which had been seized. Shops were closed; the streets were spread with tables of provisions, and with hogsheads of wine and butts of sack; the people were mad with joy. If they met a cart full of wood, they took out the horse, and set the wood and the cart on fire. At St. Paul’s a new anthem was sung, the words being taken from the 114th psalm:--"When shall I come out of Egypt, and the house of Jacob from among the barbarous people?"

The battlements of St. Paul’s Cross displayed as many burning torches as the years of the young Prince in age; two enormous bonfires lighted up the enclosure around the cross, whilst fireworks, squibs, crackers, and rockets added to the general illumination of the city, in which, between St. Paul’s and London Bridge, no fewer than a hundred and eight bonfires were kindled. But the most interesting of all the incidents of that day was the reprieve of six men and two women, whom the Prince met on their road to Tyburn, where they were being taken for execution. At Royston, the King came down on the stairs to receive the travellers. The Prince and Duke kneeled down as they beheld the infirm monarch hastening to them; but the King fell on their necks, and they all wept together. A post was despatched to the Duchess and Countess of Buckingham, and to the Countess of Denbigh, to come to Royston.[^[48]]

Whilst the public rejoicings in almost every town in the kingdom did honour to "England’s Joy," as Charles was then called, Buckingham gleaned some good from this safe return. The confidence of the people appeared to be restored to him. There was a general impression that even before Charles had quitted Spain, the match with the Infanta was virtually at an end; and this was partially confirmed when the Spanish ambassadors, having set out towards Royston, to congratulate the Prince, were met at Buntingford by Secretary Conway, to say that Royston being “a place of ill reception,” they were not to sleep there that night, but must return to Buntingford the same evening. This was by no means an agreeable intimation to the Marquis Inojosa, since it was but a week before that the French ambassador had both supped and lodged at Royston, though going unexpectedly; nevertheless, the Marquis proceeded to Royston, and had apparently a gracious reception from the King and Prince; neither did they “speak amiss” of the Duke’s manner on the awkward occasion. “Welcome home!” was for a long time the burden of the Court and country. One amongst the least meritorious of Buckingham’s dependants, Tobie Mathew, was knighted at Royston, where James and his favourite kept their intentions with regard to Spain profoundly secret. Mathew owed, indeed, his very presence at Court to Buckingham, who had interceded for him when banished on account of his conversion to Popery by the Jesuit Parsons. Mathew, when at Madrid with the Duke, had written a description of the Infanta, which he styled a picture “drawn in black and whyte,” for James’s amusement. “We pray you,” Buckingham wrote to the King, “let none laugh at it but yourselfe and honneste Kate; he thinks he hath hitt the naill on the head, but you will find it the foolishest thing you ever saw.” Amongst the many impertinences of the fool, Archy, some, directed against Tobie Mathew, were so cutting as to drive the newly-made knight from the dinner-table at Royston.[^[49]]

Whilst all these matters, great and small, were discussed at Court, the poor Infanta, under the tuition of Mr. Wadsworth and Father Boniface, was studying English “apace.” Wherever she went, she was treated as Princess of England, the English ambassadors standing uncovered before her; whilst she occupied herself in having several embroidered suits of ambar-leather prepared for the Prince, and in the choice and arrangement of the attendants who were to accompany her to England. “We want,” Howell wrote, “nothing but one more dispatch from home, and then the marriage will be solemnized, and all things consummated.”[^[50]]

This was the last lingering hope, which was soon to be abandoned, and fresh schemes substituted to amuse the fancy of the Prince, to gratify the caprice of his favourite, and to divert the decline of the King.

CHAPTER II.

INDISPOSITION OF THE DUCHESS OF BUCKINGHAM--THE KING’S REGARD FOR HER AND HER CHILD--ARCHBISHOP LAUD’S ENCOMIUM ON HER CHARACTER--QUEEN ANNE’S CHAIN PRESENTED TO THE DUCHESS OF LENNOX--EFFRONTERY OF THE COUNTESS OF BUCKINGHAM--THE DUKE’S DEPORTMENT ON HIS RETURN FROM SPAIN--MORE DIGNITIES CONFERRED UPON HIM--KING JAMES AND THE CLERGY--THE ROYAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE PERFORMANCE OF DIVINE SERVICE IN SPAIN--PUBLIC PREJUDICE AGAINST THE SPANISH MATCH--THE WALLINGFORD HOUSE CABAL PRONOUNCE IN FAVOUR OF A FRENCH ALLIANCE--POPULAR INDIGNATION AGAINST THE SPANISH AMBASSADOR--COMPETITION FOR PRECEDENCE BETWEEN THE AMBASSADORS OF FRANCE AND SPAIN--CHARACTER OF THE LORD KEEPER WILLIAMS--HIS OPPOSITION TO THE PROCEEDINGS OF BUCKINGHAM--THE COUNTESS OF BUCKINGHAM EMBRACES THE CATHOLIC FAITH--CONTROVERSY BETWEEN THE DEAN OF CARLISLE AND THE JESUIT FISHER--BREACH BETWEEN BUCKINGHAM AND WILLIAMS--THE KING MANIFESTS HIS DISPLEASURE WITH BUCKINGHAM--THE SPANISH COURT AND THE ENGLISH ALLIANCE--CONDUCT OF THE INFANTA AFTER THE DEPARTURE OF CHARLES--PREPARATIONS FOR THE MARRIAGE--A COMMISSION APPOINTED TO INQUIRE INTO THE CONDITIONS OF THE SPANISH TREATY--THE LORD KEEPER IN FAVOUR WITH THE KING--PARLIAMENT COUNSELS JAMES TO BREAK THE TREATY WITH SPAIN--POPULAR REJOICINGS, AND DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE CATHOLIC PARTY--THE ILLNESS OF BUCKINGHAM--PAINFUL ILLUSTRATION OF THE BIGOTED SPIRIT OF THE AGE--INOJOSA ACCUSES BUCKINGHAM OF TREACHERY AGAINST THE KING--THE PROPHECY OF GAMALIEL GRUYS--GENERAL DESIRE FOR WAR WITH SPAIN--PROPOSED ALLIANCE OF PRINCE CHARLES WITH HENRIETTA MARIA OF FRANCE--RESTORATION OF BUCKINGHAM TO THE KING’S FAVOUR.

CHAPTER II.

Buckingham had now returned to a house where more sources of real happiness awaited him than fall usually to the lot of the busy courtier and statesman. One drawback to his felicity, one stimulant to his return, had been the serious indisposition of the Duchess of Buckingham. Her uneasiness during her husband’s absence, her vexation at the rumours which prevailed to his disadvantage, and, above all, the doubts of his fidelity which embittered their separation, had produced that condition which the physicians of the day generalized under the name of “melancholy.”

Under these circumstances, the kindness of heart which formed part of King James’s character, unaccompanied as it was with dignity or judgment, was manifested, and, at the same time, he evinced his lively and unabated regard for Buckingham. An affection cannot be deemed wholly selfish which shows itself to those who are beloved by its object. James’s compassion for the Duchess, the fatherly interest he took in her, and his continual acts of favour to her child, elevate the character of his preference for Buckingham. It has been the practice of historians to ridicule as a weakness the good-nature of this monarch; but those who felt its effect forgot, probably, the absurdity of its mode of manifestation in the benevolent impulses of the royal heart.

The “poor fool Kate,” as the King entitled the Duchess of Buckingham, met with incessant consideration on small and great points from His Majesty. During the year previous to the journey into Spain, the Duchess (then Marchioness) had given birth to another daughter; the King stood sponsor to the infant, and gave her the name of Jacobina. During the young mother’s illness, James testified the greatest anxiety, and “prayed heartily” for her; calling at Wallingford House, where she was, several times a day to inquire after her health.[^[51]] The child eventually died; and James was the more confirmed in his parental fondness for the Lady Mary Villiers, whom he usually denominated his grandchild, on the principle that her father was to him as a son. And now “my sweete Steenie” was the chief object of the King’s interest and gossip; he wrote from Whitehall to the Duke, in Spain:--"I must give thee a short account of many things. First, Kate and thy sister (the Countess of Denbigh) supped with me on Saturday last, and yesterday bothe dined and supped with me, and so shall do still, with God’s grace, as long as I am here; and my little grandchild, with her four teeth, is, God be thanked, well weaned, and they are all very merry." [^[52]]

The Marchioness dined, during her convalescence, in the bed-chamber of the King, who gave a diamond chain, worth 3,500l., with his picture, to the Duchess of Lennox, for having “made broths and caudles” for the Marchioness during her illness.[^[53]]

The Duchess had, it appeared, informed His Majesty of a domestic arrangement, all important to the mother and infant, but not usually deemed an affair such as royalty might condescend to take account of, or be a matter for an elderly pedant, like King James, to decide. “I hope my Lord Arran,” she wrote to the King, “has told your Majesty that I mean to wean Moll very shortly. I would not by any means do it till I had made your Majesty acquainted with it; so I intend to make trial this very night how she will endure it.”[^[54]] “Little Moll,” who afterwards married successively three times, is mentioned frequently in the domestic correspondence of the day.[^[55]]

James’s regard for the Duchess was also shown in another way. When the Duke applied to His Majesty for jewels, his young wife, scarcely twenty years of age, was eager to part with baubles which were so precious in the eyes of others, in order to advance Buckingham’s interest, and enhance his splendour at the Spanish Court. The King could hardly bear that his favourite should accept her generosity. “And now,” he wrote, "my sweet Steenie gossip, that the poor fool Kate hath also sent thee her pearl chain, which, by chance, I saw in a box in Frank Steward’s hand, I hope I need not to conjure thee not to give any of her jewels away there, for thou knowest what necessary use she will have of them at your return here, besides that it is not lucky to give away anything that I have given her."[^[56]] In his correspondence, James never forgot the Duchess. “This,” he says, addressing Buckingham, “is the sixt time I have written to you two, five to Kate, two to Su (the Countess of Denbigh), and one to thy mother, Steenie, all with my own hands.”[^[57]] In presents of provisions he was considerate of her comfort, and so lavish that the Duke was wont to call his Majesty his “man-purveyor.”

Like a good wife, the Duchess appears to have occupied herself, during the absence of her husband, in maintaining and improving Newhall and Burleigh, places in which the Duke felt a lively interest, and his mother participated in these exertions without any of that petty jealousy of interference being exhibited, which a less amiable mind than that of the Duchess might have disturbed.

“For Burley,” she writes word, “I hear the wall is not very forward yet, and my lady” (the Countess) “bid me send you word that she is gone down to look how things are there. She says she is about making a littel river to run through the park. It will be about sixteen feet broad; but she says she wants money.”[^[58]]

In all her letters to the Duke, the warmest affection is expressed by his wife; and she seems to have justified the encomiums of Archbishop Laud, who enters her name in his diary, as “that excellent lady, who is goodness itself.”[^[59]]

In the concerns of his mother, the Duke found much dissatisfaction. In June, 1622, the Countess of Buckingham received a hint to stay away from Court on account of the Progress, but really on account of her professing the Roman Catholic faith, or rather, perhaps, as a punishment for a little Court intrigue, relative to the Duchess of Lennox. When the ambassador from the Emperor of Austria took leave, it was thought necessary to bestow some jewel upon him as a mark of royal favour. James commanded one to be brought to him; it proved to be a chain which had belonged to Queen Anne, and which was worth three thousand pounds. James thought it too valuable for the ambassador, and refused to give it, saying, “wherein hath he deserved so much at my hands?” Prince Charles, hearing this, suggested that the chain should be bestowed on the Duchess of Lennox, who had received no present since her marriage. An assent was given; and the Prince undertook to carry the gift to her Grace. He put it round his own neck, and, taking it thence, presented it to the Duchess. This was regarded as so unusual an act of respect, that the Countess of Buckingham could not hear of it unmoved. Relying upon the unbounded favour of the King to her son, she took upon herself to send for the jewel back again the next day, saying it was required for a particular purpose, and that it should be requited with a gift equally costly. The Duchess of Lennox, astonished, questioned the messenger, who confessed that the Countess had sent him. The truth was then disclosed; of course, the Duchess was highly indignant; she sent back the messenger with this answer, that since the Prince had brought it to her, it should be taken back by no hand but her own; accordingly, on the following day, she went with the chain in her hand to the King, desiring to know how she had offended His Majesty. The King, when he comprehended the matter, swore that he was abused, and the Prince burst into a passion of anger, and declared that if the Countess of Buckingham stayed in the Court he would leave it. This story has been in some particulars, however, discredited, for several good reasons; but it may be regarded as characteristic of those to whom it refers; and as exemplifying the unbounded effrontery attributed to the mother of the Favourite.[^[60]]

A change was observed to have taken place in the deportment of Buckingham almost immediately on his return from Spain. He became affable, and, therefore, “suddenly and strangely gracious among the multitude,” so that, as Sir Henry Wotton expresses it, “he did seem for a time to have overcome that natural incompatibility which, in the experience of all ages, hath ever been noted between the vulgar and the sovereign favour. But this was no more than a meer bubble or blast, and like an ephemeral bit of applause, as eftsoon will appear in the sequel and train of his life.”[^[61]]

Shortly after his return from Spain, fresh honours were added to those with which Buckingham had been so richly endowed. The King, it was observed, had now grown into “an habitual and confirmed custom” of loading his favourite with benefits; and the Duke was, accordingly, made Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, and Steward of the Manor of Hampton Court; “dignities and offices,” says Sir Henry Wotton, “still growing out of trust and profit.”

But this apparent prosperity was alloyed by many difficulties, and shaken by cabals, some stimulated by direst foes, others induced by hollow allies; and the career of the Favourite, like that of all the fortunate, began to be embittered and precarious.

There required, indeed, much condescension and courtesy to soften the exasperated feeling of the people against the promoter of the Spanish match. The pulpits, far from being “tuned” to its praise, were continually clamouring against the alliance.

There were strange signs of the times when, notwithstanding the almost absolute dominion of the Crown, it was found necessary to issue orders that the sanctity of the royal presence, and the dignity of the Privy Council should not be lowered by persons coming in booted and spurred--forbidding them also to go into chapel in that guise, and ordering them to remain uncovered during the services.[^[62]] In former days, James, as well as Elizabeth, had demanded an almost degrading respect; but the habits of the monarch had long since brought even royalty into contempt.

Accordingly, his influence over the pulpits had also decreased. James could not now control his impatience and petulance; even when listening to a sermon on Christmas-day, from the Bishop of London, the King, displeased at its length, talked so loud that the prelate was obliged to end abruptly. Urgent measures were taken to curb the taste for controversial sermons; and none below bachelors of divinity were henceforth to be allowed to preach them; for the Spanish match, and favour to recusants, were the great themes, especially when the King, on the plea that Protestants might find more freedom abroad, if there were more toleration here, released all Jesuits, priests, and persons refusing the oath of supremacy, who happened then to be in prison.[^[63]] “Wise men,” wrote one courtier to another, his kinsman, “are troubled, and betake themselves to prayers, rather than inquiry.”[^[64]] The clergy, meantime, had been ordered to pray for the Prince’s prosperous journey and safe return; but one stiff-necked preacher prayed “that God would be merciful to him now that he was going to the House of Rinmon.”[Rinmon.”][^[65]]

The King had, however, before Charles’s departure, given sensible and stringent instructions to the two chaplains who were to attend on the Prince, with regard to the reverential performance of divine service whilst in Spain. They were to preach “Christ crucified, and the doctrines of the English Church,” but not to indulge in polemical discourses or in controversy. They might take with them Prayer-books, articles of religion, and the King’s works.[^[66]] At a later period, however, this was altered, and the Prince’s “servants and chaplains” were ordered to follow him with chapel furniture and Prayer-books in Latin; the service was to be in Latin, and the communion celebrated with wafer-cakes and wine and water; “but it will be to no purpose,” adds the writer of this news, “as the Spaniards will not go near them.” Dr. Hakluyt, the Prince’s former chaplain, had written a work against the Spanish match, calling the Spaniards idolaters, and had presented it to the Princes,[^[67]] so that he was, it may be concluded, not among the “servants and chaplains,” who were thus, according to the spirit of the day, coupled together as forming a part of the Prince’s household.

The prejudice against the Infanta, as a future Queen of England, continued to increase, nor was it confined to uneducated or bigoted persons. It was supposed that, whilst Buckingham was in Spain, he received secret advices, which convinced him that to steer his course in safety, it would be necessary to break off a treaty which the Puritanical party regarded as a compact with Popery. “There were those who,” says Bishop Hacket, “sent instructions into Spain, to adjure the Duke to do his best to prevent the espousals.” The reasons assigned were "God’s glory, and his own safety." "For God’s sake, keep our orthodox religion from the admixture of that superstition which threatened against the soundness of it. And no corrosive so good to eat out the corruption of Romish rottenness creeping on, as to give the Spaniard the dodge, and leave the daughter of Spain behind." Such were the counsels despatched by friends to the Duke.

Consultations of his adherents were now held at Wallingford House, to consider what would be the best way of promoting, not the interests of the nation, but his own personal advancement. James had, of late, become partial to parliaments, and was resolved to close the next very graciously. “Therefore,” observes Hacket, "the cabinet men at Wallingford House set upon it to consider by what exploit their lord should commence to be the ‘Darling of the Commons,’ and, as it were, to republicate his lordship, and to be precious to those who had the vogue to be lovers of their country." It was, therefore, determined to abandon the Spanish marriage, and to direct the attention of the country, and more especially the regard of the Prince, towards a daughter of France; and it was agreed that it would be for Buckingham’s interests that he should have the full credit of the newly projected alliance. From these considerations was the Spanish alliance thrown aside, with, it must be confessed, little regard to honour. Whether the evident disgust of the nation to the marriage formed sufficient plea for the crooked and complicated means which were taken to do away with a contract which had been so nearly brought to a conclusion, it remains for posterity to decide; contemporaries were divided by faction, not reason.

It was in vain, by the arbitrary acts employed, to suppress public opinion. The Earl of Oxford had been committed to the Tower for saying that he hoped the time would come when justice would be free, and not come only through Buckingham’s hands. This committal was an instance of the resolution at Court to crush all discussion. Gondomar, smooth to the great, was a perfect fury towards the small. The people had been indignant with him for having, before his return to Spain, struck a Scotsman with his fists, for saying that he had been ill-treated in Spain. The Scotsman, though he took the insult patiently, had been sent to prison.[^[68]] These were but scanty specimens of the petty oppressions by which the voice of an aroused people was to be stopped. It was therefore time, Buckingham thought, to save himself, at all events, from the storm. Public hatred had been already shown when Don Diego, as Gondomar was called, passed through the city. The mob insulted him, and even threatened violence, “but none was used.” Three apprentices were, nevertheless, whipped at the cart’s tail for this slight to the Spanish ambassador, whilst the people looked, pitying, on; and those who executed the sentence incurred much popular abuse. James, who was at that time angry with all who differed from him, came from Theobald’s to London in a rage to reprove such disorders. He was pacified by the Recorder, and contented himself with private admonition to the Aldermen to punish such offenders. Another man was then whipped, and those who murmured at the sentence arrested.[^[69]]

Steps were immediately taken to mark a difference between the conduct to be pursued to the Spanish and the French ambassadors; and Charles, having first proposed an audience to the Marquis of Inojosa, granted it, under circumstances not very flattering. The Spanish ambassadors, having repaired to Theobald’s, returned not so well “satisfied as they ought” to be. They endeavoured, but in vain, to procure an audience of the King without the presence of the Duke; but finding that impossible, they became disposed to arraign his conduct in the marriage before his face.[^[70]]

The public, meantime, could not fail to interpret the real temper of the King’s Council by circumstances apparently trivial. In the course of the winter, there arrived from France a nobleman skilled in falconry, with a present of fifteen or sixteen cast-off hawks, some ten or twelve horses, and the same number of setters. He was accompanied by a numerous train, splendidly accoutred, and made his entry into London by torchlight. He was to remain until he had instructed the people in the kind of falconry in which he excelled, he and his troop costing the King from twenty-five to thirty pounds daily. Under this guise, probably, some political mission was couched; for James, although now fast declining, braved the advice of his physicians, and travelled to Newmarket on purpose to see these foreign hawks fly. He had put off the masque on Twelfth Night, on account, as he had assigned, of his indisposition; but actually because of the competition about precedence between the French and Spanish ambassadors, who could not be accommodated in his presence.[^[71]]

Thus did every variation in Buckingham’s plans appear to prosper. That he could so work upon James’s mind as to obliterate from it the cherished scheme of years, seems, indeed, a marvellous effect of his influence. For his ingratitude in this matter to the King, who had entrusted to him, as the object next his heart, the completion of the Spanish treaty, the Duke has justly been blamed. Could he, as Bishop Hacket asks, be deemed “execrable in point of honour and conscience? Did he do it the best for the King? Did he think the Spanish alliance would be fruitful in nothing but miseries, and that it would be a thankful office to lurch the King in his expectation of it? Evil befall such double diligence!” “Or did this great lord do it for the best for himself? I believe it. If the hope of the match died away, he lookt to get the love of the most in England; but if it were made up, he lookt for many enemies, for he had lost the love of the best in Spain. Let the Duke have his deserved praise in other things, great and many, but let fidelity, loyalty, and thankfulness hide their face, and not look upon this action.”[^[72]]

The blame of this conduct was attributable, according to the same writer, more to those who worked upon the flexible temper of Buckingham than to his own wishes. But no one has a right to throw off his own shoulders, or to place on those of another, the deliberate violation of solemn engagements. “For it is,” as the Bishop remarks, “not man, God that made the law: he that kindled the fire, let him make retribution.”

It was not long before James began to suspect that he had been abused by the favourite whose fidelity ought to have been secured by gratitude. Among the friends of the Duke, there was one who looked disapprovingly on his conduct. This was the Lord Keeper Williams; a man of “as deep and large wisdom,” says Bishop Hacket, “as I did ever speak with.” Confessing the greatest obligations to Buckingham, Williams had the courage to oppose him, when conscience dictated a remonstrance.

“His enemies,” says his biographer, “liked nothing worse in him than his courage, and he pleased himself in nothing more.” Of a stately presence, and possessing abilities to maintain that lofty demeanour which is absurd when not supported by real superiority of intellect, Williams could cope with the haughty Buckingham, whose headstrong will had become such that none of the King’s ministers could move it. Williams, too, was of temper somewhat irritable. “Choler and a high stomach were his faults, the only defects in him.”[^[73]] His manners were, at times, even supercilious. He was not likely to be daunted by one whose capacity was, therefore, to his own, as that of the infant to the man, and over whom he exercised an ascendancy through a very noted channel; namely, the influence which the Lord Keeper possessed over the Countess of Buckingham. “Those dangerous and busy flies,” writes Bishop Hacket, “which the Roman seminaries send abroad, had buzzed about the Countess of Buckingham, had blown upon her, and infected her. She was mother to the great favourite, but in religion became a step-mother.” Her conversion had taken place about a twelvemonth previously. The Countess doted on her son; but her conversion was certain to be highly injurious to him, especially at that juncture, just before the Spanish journey. Complaints were uttered, importing that the mother, who was thought almost to govern her son, must indirectly sway the monarch who was now little other than that son’s slave. The part which Laud had taken to remedy the evil has been already detailed. The Lord Keeper also had foreseen and endeavoured to prevent the mischief which might arise from these rumours. “Safety,” he considered, “is easiest purchased by precaution.” “An instrument that is swung may be used upon a little warning.” Anxious for the welfare of the Duke, Williams addressed him to the following effect. “Your mother,”[^[74]] he observed, “is departed from the bosom of the Church of England, in whose confession of faith she was baptized;--a strange delusion in any to go astray from that society of Christians among whom they cannot demonstrate but salvation may be had. I would we could bring her home so soon that it might not be seen she had ever wandered.” His concern, he intimates, was, however, not so much for the Countess’s eternal welfare, as for her son’s temporal security. It was, he thought, time to inform the Favourite “that clamours were opened,” “that now the recusants have a potent advocate to plead for their immunity, and when this should be handed in high and popular court by tribunitial orators, what a dust it would make!”

“But,” pursued the Lord Keeper, “though I have touched a sore with my finger, I am furnished with an emplaister to lay upon it, which, I presume, will lenifie. Only measure not the size of good counsel by the last of success.” After this address, Williams had proposed that controversies between learned men, in which that age so much delighted, should be held for the Countess of Buckingham’s edification; that the King should be present at this; and the “conflux of great persons, as thick as the place would permit.” Then should Buckingham’s industry and zeal be manifested to “catch at every twig or advantage,” to give weight to every solid reason, to bring his mother into a sound mind again. If successful, the Duke would “save a soul very precious to him;” if unsuccessful, then the favourite’s “pious[“pious] endeavours would fill the King with a good report,” and impart a “sweet savour” to all.

The result had justified the Lord Keeper’s anticipations; the Jesuit father, Fisher, was the champion in whom the Countess most relied; the King was the superintendent of the controversy. Dr. Francis White, then Dean of Carlisle, had gone first into the lists with Fisher, and given him “foil for foil,” according to the testimony of the Protestant party. But the lady was still unconvinced. The Lord Keeper engaged, therefore, in the combat. He managed the disputation with infinite skill, guided by worldly[worldly] wisdom, mixed up with Christian charity. He had observed in the former conflict, that if some of the Jesuit’s arguments were admitted, “the Church of England, repurging itself from the super-injected errors of Rome, would stand inculpable.” He laboured, therefore, to show that if “unnecessary strifes were discreetly waved, little was wanting to a conclusive unity.” The King greatly commended this conciliatory mode of disputation, which surprised and baffled Fisher, yet which still failed to bring back the wanderers to their former path. The third who had contended for the palm of victory, to bring, as Hacket calls it, “eye-salve to the dim-sighted lady, was Bishop Laud, who was declared to have galled Fisher with great acuteness.” But all his labour was vain, as far as the Countess was concerned; she continued in her new belief. The conference had, however, effected what was desired for her son. He had appeared as an antagonist in the field against one whom he honoured, and whom he had treated with the deepest respect. He was "blazed abroad as the Red Cross Knight that was Una’s champion against Archinago."[^[75]] And this scheme, which produced results afterwards, as well as at the time they were effected, of the utmost importance to Buckingham, had been accomplished from the suggestions and by the skill of the Lord Keeper Williams.

It may therefore be supposed that Buckingham would listen with reverence to his representations, when the Lord Keeper ventured to warn him from the course he was pursuing. So far, however, from such being the case, the Duke never forgave him for a letter addressed to him whilst in Spain, advising a reconciliation with the Earl of Bristol, whose knowledge of Spanish affairs, and repeated success in negotiations, would, it was thought, secure the completion of the marriage treaty.[^[76]] Even whilst writing the letter, which seemed to alienate Williams from Buckingham for a time, the Lord Keeper was aware that he had already incurred the favourite’s displeasure. “What I wrote formerly,” he says, “may be ill-placed, and offend your grace, but all proceeded from as true and sincere a heart as you left behind you in all this kingdom.”[^[77]] The Earl of Bristol, on hearing of this act of mediation, argued truly when he anticipated that it would produce a quarrel. He wrote to Williams to the following effect, “that the friendship of the Duke was a thing he did infinitely desire, that he did infinitely esteem the good offices that the Lord Keeper had done therein, but that he conceived that any motion he had made in that kind had been despised rather than received with thankfulness.”[^[78]]

Buckingham had formerly been compared to Alcibiades, the Lord Keeper to Socrates; but all obligations to that supposed Socrates were henceforth annulled. The interference of Williams, creditable to himself, and due to the King, was so misinterpreted that Buckingham withdrew from him his friendship, forgetting not only the axiom of Solon, “never to choose a friend suddenly, nor to lose him suddenly,” but the still stronger argument of services which could not be denied. During the Duke’s absence in Spain, Williams had watched over his welfare with the utmost care; he had ventured boldly to speak the truth to him; a benefit scarcely less important; yet Buckingham could not be appeased.

He instantly avowed his determination, expressed with such effrontery and openness that it was soon conveyed to Williams, that he "would pluck down the highest roof of the Lord Keeper’s dignity." Williams, however, remained undaunted. He knew the favourite well. He allowed him to be a “generous and incorrupt patron, a great exacter of duty from those whom he served, and a bitter enemy.” But he confided in his own powers of rhetoric, and in the pliable temper of his former friend. The Earl of Rutland, Buckingham’s father-in-law, was employed to mediate between them; and to him the Duke said, referring to Williams, “Whenever I disagree with him, he will prove himself to be in the right; and though I could never convict him of being dishonest, I am afraid of his wit.”

Before Buckingham returned, Williams sent another letter, warning him of the risk he ran, and offering excellent advice on the subject of the Spanish treaty, and upon the Duke’s demeanour. The Spaniards had remarked with resentment that when Charles attempted to speak in Buckingham’s presence, the Duke took the words out of his mouth, or checked, with an abrupt contradiction, what he had to say; the more gently Charles endured this presumption, the greater was the general admiration expressed towards him, and disgust towards his favourite. The Spaniards, who never address their kings first, were indignant with his freedom, which constituted one of those points against which Williams had warned the Duke. It was in vain that the Lord Keeper strove to conciliate Buckingham, in vain that he praised the Duke’s skill and energy in the marriage treaty to King James; a breach was made, which was never entirely repaired, and which is as discreditable to the Duke of Buckingham as any of those violations of good faith and propriety by which his career was sullied.

On Tuesday, the thirteenth of January, whilst Buckingham’s disfavour with the King was suspected, a singular scene took place. The King, being much disturbed by his affairs, resolved to go to Theobald’s for change of scene. His health was now completely broken, and the vexatious and arbitrary conduct of his favourite added greatly to his sufferings. The morning before he left Whitehall, he received the various foreign ambassadors--the Venetian was first admitted, the French second, the Spanish last. They were introduced privately; and, after a full hour’s audience, the Prince and Buckingham were called in; what passed remained a secret, but the Prince and Duke were observed to come out looking very much dejected.

The Duke’s carriage stood at the door, ready to follow that of the King to London; and the favourite was prepared, as usual, to accompany his royal master in his own coach. The King and his son were in the coach, when the Duke received an intimation from His Majesty that he was not to go. Buckingham, it is related, with tears in his eyes, entreated “his Master” to inform him how he had offended his gracious sovereign. “I vow,” he added sternly, “to purge, or confess it.” James, also, shed tears, and exclaiming that he was the unhappiest man alive, to be forsaken by those who were dearest to him, ordered his coach to drive on, and the Duke was left standing, dismayed, and probably indignant. Charles, who witnessed this scene, behaved with his usual weakness, his tears, also, expressing his concern and contrition.

Buckingham retired to Wallingford House, where, sometime afterwards, the Lord Keeper Williams went to him, having with difficulty been admitted. “He found him,” says Bishop Hacket, “lying on a couch, in that unmovable posture that he would neither rise up nor speak, though invited twice or thrice with courteous questions.” But Williams generously consoled him, admonishing that he believed "God’s directing hand was in it, to stir up his grace;" he assured him that he came on purpose to bring him out of his sorrow with the light of the King’s favour. He besought the Duke to set off instantly for Windsor; not however to show himself to His Majesty before supper was over, and then to deport himself with all “amiable addresses;” not “to quit the King night or day, for the danger was that some would thrust themselves in to push his Majesty on to break utterly with the Parliament; and the next degree of theirs to be was, upon that dissolution, to see his grace convicted to the Tower, and God knows what would follow.”[^[79]]

The Duke, as if awakening from a dream, aroused himself, and set off, on the following day, to Theobald’s, where he arrived before he was expected.

Thus, to Williams’ mediation, did Buckingham owe the avoidance of any open displeasure on the part of his sovereign; unhappily this obligation did not cancel in the Duke’s mind that avowal of a difference in opinion, and that condemnation of the policy pursued towards Spain which Williams esteemed it his duty to express.

Opinions differed as to the actual obligations of the Prince to complete the contract with the Infanta.

The Earl of Bristol declared that the King and the Prince stood as much engaged to it as princes could be; but Charles is said to have styled himself, as he knelt down before the King, at Royston, to have been “an absolute free man, but with one limitation--the restitution of the Palatinate.”[^[80]]

These matters, painful and disgraceful as they were, were not concluded until the end of the year 1624, when the “golden cord,” as Bishop Hacket terms it, was broken. “Nothing,” adds the same authority, "is more sure than that the Prince’s heart was removed from the desire of that marriage after the Duke had brought him away from the object of that delightful and ravishing beauty."[^[81]] If the report of other historians be credited, a far greater degree of constancy was shown by the young Princess whose affections were thus cruelly gained, and then sacrificed. After an acquaintance of many months, during which every possible exertion had been made by Charles to win her regard, these young persons, affianced as they doubtless were, had separated on terms of the closest affection. “The rare Infanta,” as she was styled, “seemed to deliver up her own heart at parting in as high expression as that language, and her learning could, with her honour, set out.” And when Charles had assured her that “his heart would never be out of anxiety till she had passed the intended voyage, and were safe on British land,” she answered with a blush, “that should she happen to be in danger upon the ocean, or discomposed in health with the rolling, brackish waters, she would cheer up herself, and remember to whom she was going.”[^[82]] After his departure the Princess began to study English “a-pace,”[^[83]] two Englishmen, the one a Mr. Wadsworth, and the other Father Boniface, being appointed to teach her. The English ambassador, and all the ambassadors in Madrid from other countries, gave her the title and style of an English Princess, the Earl of Bristol and Sir Walter Aston remaining uncovered in her presence. In order to pass the period of absence, the Infanta employed herself in working “divers suits of rich cloths” for Charles, of perfumed ambar leather, some embroidered with pearls, others with gold and silver. Her household was on the eve of being settled, and nothing but one more despatch from home was expected, and then the solemnization of the nuptials would take place. In the midst of these preparations, one circumstance puzzled observers. “There is,” says Howell, "one Mr. Clerk (with the lame arm), that came hither from the seaside as soon as the Prince was gone; he is one of the Duke of Buckingham’s creatures, yet he is at the Earl of Bristol’s house, which we wonder at, considering the darkness that hapned ’twixt the Duke and the Earl. We fear that this Clerk hath brought about something that may puzzle the business."

Nevertheless, the preparations for the espousals proceeded; the first check given to them being a letter from Prince Charles, desiring Lord Bristol not to deliver up his proxy to the marriage to the King of Spain until further notice from England. On receiving this intimation, Lord Bristol observed “that he and Sir Walter Aston had a commission under the Broad Seal of England to conclude the match, and that there could not be a better favour for the surrender of the Palatinate than the Infanta, who would never rest until she had merited the love of the British nation.” He did not, therefore, relax his preparations; and provided rich liveries of watered velvet, with silver lace up to the very capes of the cloaks for his servants; and, in a fortnight afterwards, the ratification arrived, the marriage-day was fixed, and a terrace, covered with tapestry, was raised from the King’s Palace to the next church, a distance about the same as that between Whitehall and Westminster Abbey. But when she stood thus on the very threshold of her happiness,as she deemed it, the Infanta was doomed to be rejected and disappointed. “She had studied,” writes Bishop Hacket, “our language, our habit, our behaviour, everything but our religion, to make her English. Her conversation turned continually upon the Prince, and on her projected voyage to England in the spring. On the other hand, she was led to suppose that Charles admired her for her beauty; that his attachment was equal to her own; and that he was worthy of the affection which she undoubtedly bore him.”[^[84]]

The young King of Spain, her brother, participated in the sentiments of personal attachment which Charles appears to have inspired in those who beheld him, in the prime of his youth, at the Court of Madrid. Philip was now anxious to conclude the marriage, which he meant to do on the day on which his infant daughter was christened. Invitations were actually sent to the principal nobility to attend the espousals by proxy; ordinance was ordered to be fired off in the port-towns; and all Spain was prohibited from speaking disadvantageously of the alliance; when a new commission to Lord Bristol arrived. By this he was forbidden to deliver up the Prince’s proxy until a full and absolute satisfaction for the surrender of the Palatinate was given under the hand and seal of the King of Spain.

This pretext--for the plea of the Palatinate could not in justice be adduced at this stage of the treaty--was met by the insulted Philip IV. with spirit. He replied that the “Palatinate was not his to give;” that he held only a few towns there; but that if the King of Great Britain would set a treaty on foot, he would send his own ambassador to join in it.[^[85]] But the final blow was given to the Spanish treaty. Lord Bristol was prohibited from delivering any more letters to the Infanta, and her title of Princess of England and Wales was prohibited.

The King, on his return to Whitehall, commissioned a select junto to inquire, whether, in the treaty with the King of Spain, that monarch had been sincere to the last in his desire to satisfy the Prince and the Duke; and whether, in the treaty for the restitution of the Palatinate, he had violated the league between the two kingdoms, so as to deserve a war to be proclaimed against him.[^[86]]

Some of the proceedings of this junto having been bruited abroad, it was found that they were divided into three parties, five of their number being for the Spanish marriage--among whom was the Lord Keeper Williams--four neutral, and three directly against the alliance. These were the Duke of Buckingham, who sent his vote, the Earl of Carlisle, and Secretary Conway. The evident distaste which Charles now showed for the match had a great influence in the deliberations of the junto. The Earl of Pembroke, Lord Chamberlain, who was at first neutral, “nobly spoke out, declaring it as his opinion that, if the Spaniards performed the conditions, he saw not how the thing could in honour draw back.” It was supposed that this candid declaration was owing to some pique between him and Buckingham. Much heart-burning, indeed, existed on the part of several of the junto towards the favourite, who engrossed, as it was plainly seen, the regards both of the King and of his son, and contrived to cut off all access to those whom it was his aim wholly to govern.[^[87]]

But the chief object of Buckingham’s wrath was Williams. “The proceedings in this affair were,” says Bishop Hacket, "so far against the Lord Keeper’s mind, that he wished, before a friend or two in private, that a fever in his sick-bed might excuse him." Buckingham was now become incapable of that generous candour which permits a friend to differ in opinion. He “was now mortally anti-Spanish,” as Bishop Hacket observes, “and his anger was headed with steel. He assayed the Lord Keeper to hale him to his judgment, as an eddy does a small boat,” and would have persuaded him to influence the King against Spain; but he found him as “inflexible as a dried bough.” When pressed by the favourite to advance his views, he declared that, as God was his protector, he would suffer all the obloquy in the world, rather than be ungrateful to the Duke. But when the King asked his judgment--he must be true and faithful--Buckingham, to his discredit be it spoken, had not the generosity to appreciate Williams. The Duke had been apprized that James, addressing the Earl of Carlisle, had remarked, "that had he sent Williams into Spain, he would have kept both heart’s ease and honour, both of which he lacked at that time." And one day, when Prince Charles was present, James, looking at Williams, said, “This is the man that makes us keep merry Christmas.” The Prince, not seeming to understand his father, the King explained himself. “It is he,” he said, “that laboured more dexterously than all my servants to bring you safe back home this Christmas, and I hope you are sensible of it.” A finishing stroke was put to Buckingham’s mortification when the King announced his intention of promoting the Lord Keeper to the Archbishopric of York when next it should be vacant.[^[88]]

The decision of the junto exonerated Philip IV. from any hollowness in his share of the treaty. They blamed the Earl of Bristol for not revoking the proxy, which was left in his hands sooner, and thus stopping those preparations for the nuptials which had rendered the King of Spain ridiculous. But when they voted that that Monarch should be defied with open war, till amends were made to the Prince Palatine for the wrongs he had suffered, the majority of the conference hesitated, and refused to say more than that the “girths of peace were slack, but not broken.” Buckingham had now become wholly impatient of opposition; scarcely any of the council had voted to his satisfaction. Sometimes strange scenes were witnessed in the conference; the fiery Duke would arise, and “chafe against” those who opposed him from room to room, “as a hen who has lost her brood, and clucks up and down when there is none to follow her.” Upon meeting Lord Belfast, one of the party adverse to his wishes, he asked him contemptuously, “Are you turned too? and flung from him; upon which Lord Belfast, in a manly and candid letter, announced his resolution to conform in all things to the pleasure of his royal master.” But the greatest anger was displayed by Buckingham against the Lord Keeper, who seldom spoke, but who, when he gave his opinion, swayed that of the majority.[^[89]]

Buckingham was not of a character to dissemble his feelings; and his displeasure was shown, not only in his countenance, but expressed in angry expostulations. He told Bishop Laud that the Lord Keeper had so strangely forgotten himself to him that he seemed to be “dead in his affections.” Laud, who was devotedly attached to the favourite and his family, meeting Williams in the withdrawing-chamber at Whitehall, “fell into very hot words with him,” which were reported to the Duke. Eventually, however, these differences were healed, and, in February, 1624, a reconciliation was effected through the mediation of Laud. From henceforth, nothing but an appearance of friendship subsisted between Buckingham and Williams. “The wound,” says Dr. Heylyn, “was only stunned, not healed, and festered the more dangerously, because the secret rancour of it could not be discerned.”[^[90]]

The issue of all this was that the Duke insisted on a parliament, by way of appeal;[^[91]] and during the heat of these Court cabals, that body was assembled at Westminster in February.

Meantime, public aversion to the match was from time to time forcibly expressed. The pulpits were still profaned by political allusions; a clergyman named Knight was committed for preaching that tyrannical kings might be brought to order by their subjects; a doctrine which appeared so monstrous to James, that he talked of having the sermon burned by the hangman.[^[92]] This arrest took place at Oxford; the King highly approved the proceedings, and directions were forthwith sent to the heads of the colleges, to desire the students to apply themselves to the Scriptures, to general councils, and the ancient fathers and schoolmen, excluding the heretical doctrines of both Jesuits and Puritans. The document which contains these directions is still extant, and is endorsed by Laud. Sedition seems not to have been the only rank weed that then sprang up in the universities.[^[93]]

The King, in addressing the Parliament, declared that he had called them together to correct previous misunderstandings; that he would cherish his people as a husband does his wife; he wished for their advice in matters of the greatest moment; he had long been engaged in treaties, hoping to settle the peace of Christendom, but had found treaties fallacious. With regard to Spain, he referred the houses to the secretaries, the Prince, and to Buckingham; on their good advice he conceived the felicity of the kingdom depended. He had never, he said, neglected religion, nor intended anything but a temporary indulgence to recusants. He concluded this original and eccentric harangue (rather different from a modern royal speech) by saying that he knew that never was there a king more beloved than himself, and that he wished the two houses to be the mirrors of the people.[^[94]]

The Speaker was then elected; and Sir Thomas Crewe, sergeant-at-law, in his reply, recalled the benefits of the good parliament in the thirty-second year of Henry VIII., and the thirty-ninth of Elizabeth.

Soon afterwards, More, an attorney, was sentenced to lose both his ears “for speaking disrespectfully of those two deceased monarchs.” Such was English liberty. The culprit laughed whilst the sentence was being put into execution in Cheapside. A proclamation was issued, ordering priests and Jesuits to leave Ireland within forty days;[^[95]] so instant was the change from toleration to persecution. James was not more free from troubles about Ireland than his successors have been. On visiting the State Paper Office, and seeing a large mass of documents relating to that island there, he had once remarked that there was “more ado about Ireland than about any of his dominions.”[^[96]]

The Duke had now so completely regained the love of the people, by his abandoning the Spanish marriage, that it was proposed in the Lower House to confirm all his lands and honours to him by act of parliament; but the reply was that this was no time to commend men, though deserving well.[^[97]] A few days afterwards, the Prince told the Upper House that they need not fear “advising a breach, for if we did not begin the war, Spain would.”

In the House of Commons, Sir Benjamin Rudyard declared that the King of Spain had verified the proverb that kings’ daughters are so many ways to deceive their neighbours; and that since the match was first thought of, much Papistry had sprung up amongst the people; that Protestantism was disunited as in Germany; suppressed as in France; threatened as in Holland. All the speakers on this memorable occasion praised the Prince. Rudyard declared that he had shown both courage and wisdom in his journey, which “had matured his excellent parts.” The Lord Keeper Williams related how the Prince had sent a message to the council, to say that though he stole to Spain for love, he would not steal back again for fear; how he had told Grimes, one of his servants, to tell his father, in case he should hear that he was detained, to think of him no more as a son, for he would be lost, but to place all his affections on his sister.[^[98]] On the second of March, Sir Edward Coke was instructed by the Commons to advise the Lords of their unanimous resolution to counsel the King to break the treaties with Spain; and was instructed to request the Lords to join in a petition to make a declaration to that effect, which should comfort his people and encourage his allies abroad.[^[99]] Sir Edward answered, that he never knew a petition of both houses refused; he could not say anything more “for weeping;” and Sir Thomas Edmondes, treasurer of the household, taking up the pecuniary part of the question, said that the “mysteries of delusion in the treaties were now discovered, and that the Spanish, having enticed us from the match with France, now offered, instead of a dowry of 600,000l., only 20,000l. yearly with the Infanta, and some jewels; whilst France would give a wedding portion of 240,000l.” This, perhaps, considering the King’s debts, and the almost bankrupt state of the treasury, was probably a stronger argument with James than the restitution of the Palatinate, or the security of Protestantism, on which points his conscience seems to have been conveniently callous.

On the twenty-sixth of February, Buckingham, assisted by the Prince, addressed the houses, beginning from the first negotiation at Brussels, which had raised doubts of the Spanish King’s sincerity, and induced the Prince to go himself to Spain; and had disclosed the fact that neither the marriage, nor the restitution of the Palatinate, was intended. Many letters were read to and from the chief parties concerned in the treaty, and the houses were asked whether the King should act on the assurances given, or “stand on his own feet.” It was soon resolved that the King should not accept their answer. The houses applauded the Duke’s conduct, and requested the King to break off the treaties.[^[100]]

Upon this resolution, the spirits of the anti-Catholics were so much excited that a request was sent James to order a fast for the happy deliverance of the Prince; and no member of parliament was henceforth to be allowed to retain recusant servants.[^[101]] Soon afterwards the Lower House informed the Upper that the Spanish ambassadors declared that Buckingham deserved to lose his head for wronging the King of Spain, but that the Commons had acquitted him, and the Upper House appointed a committee, who did the same.[^[102]] On the same day, the Duke made a motion in the House of Peers to “thwart the King of Spain in the Indies,” by way of a commencement of hostilities. The Upper House, indeed, cried out loudly for hostilities, more especially the bishops; and the Bishop of Durham was so excited that he declared he would lay down his rochet, and gird on a sword if the King would take that course. This excitement was heightened by the following anecdote. Buckingham, having been present when the Spanish ambassador told the King that his master had deprived a bishop for speaking disrespectfully of James, had answered, “It was true; and he had admired the justice of his Spanish Majesty therein, but still more his mercy, for in a few days he gave the man a bishopric worth thrice of his former prelacy.” These particulars were stated by some members in the debates.[^[103]]

It is not improbable that the exaggerated fears of the people, on the one hand, and the expectations of the Catholics, on the other, may have alarmed Charles, who was firmly attached to the Church of England. Upon an application being made to Pope Gregory the XV. to grant a dispensation for the marriage, that Pontiff had replied in a Latin letter, expressing, first, his regret at the altered state of Britain;[^[104]] next, his hopes that, as under his predecessor, Gregory the Great, Apostolical authority had been there established, he might be permitted to see it reestablished by the conversion of the Prince, “the flower of the Christian world,” who had proved, by seeking a Catholic Princess, that he did not hate the see of Rome. He then set before the Prince the example of his Highness’s ancestors, and concluded with hoping that Charles would become “the infranshiser of Brittayne.”

Several Catholics who had worn a mask of Protestantism now threw it off, and in hopes of toleration, avowed themselves Romanists; amongst these were Sir John Wentworth and Lord Vaughan. “Everyone,” Lady Hatton wrote to Carleton, “was on the wing for Spain;” but, “in spite of her walks and talks with Gondomar,” she would ever, she said, oppose his country.[^[105]]

Nor were the Catholics without reason in their dreams of enjoying a degree of security and toleration long most unjustly and cruelly withheld. Even after James had begun to listen to the changed tone adopted by Buckingham, preparations had been going on, both for the reception and maintenance of the Infanta, which might well afford hopes of religious liberty. It was reported that the marriage conditions were to be, the liberation of the Catholics and the abandonment of the Hollanders. The Spanish ambassador surveyed Denmark House and St. James’s, where “lodgings,” as they were styled, were prepared for the Infanta. At each place, he ordered a new chapel, and Inigo Jones was to prepare each with great costliness. The Spanish ambassador laid the stone of a new chapel for the Infanta at St. James’s, whilst the Savoy chapel was to be given up to the Infanta’s suite.

“After the London bonfires,” adds Mr. Chamberlain, who tells in the same tone good and bad tidings, “Oxford lit fires and rung bells, and wrote verses in honour of the match.”[^[106]] It appears, indeed, from a letter of Lord Treasurer Middlesex to Secretary Conway, that it was even in contemplation to decorate the chapel with jewels; "Sir Peter Lore’s jewels, and others of the Countess of Suffolk, now in pawn, should," wrote the Lord Treasurer, immediately after referring to his preparing the chapel, "be submitted to His Majesty’s inspection, though he hoped the King would not declare which he preferred, as advantage would be taken of his preference, but leave the Chancellor himself, and others, to bargain[to bargain] for them, as there was great necessity for frugality."[^[107]]

The King, indeed, up to the very moment of his son’s return, had been sanguine of the marriage, and delighted to talk over the adventures of the journey, during which Buckingham had had seven falls, Sir Francis Cottington twelve, and the Prince not one; but his tone was now beginning to alter, which seemed strange to those who knew the King’s circumstances, and who considered how splendid a dower was expected with the Infanta. Lord Middlesex, who was afterwards discovered to have embezzled public money, had declared himself “sick at heart” with the idea of all these extraordinary charges, when the King was so ill able to meet even his ordinary expenses. Like all servants who rob their masters, his zeal was laudable; he could not, he wrote, “hold out, unless some extraordinary reply be thought of, or some large sums come in from Spain with the fleet; but would pawn his whole estate for the present.”[^[108]]

It was a gift from a lady that brought first the altered sentiments of Prince Charles to light. In the course of March, 1624, the Countess of Olivares had sent him a large present of provisions, comprising gammons of bacon, vessels of olives, special figs, sweet lemons, capers and caperons, suchets, and sweet meats; he vouchsafed not even to see them. They were conveyed into the riding place at St. James’s, and left to the disposal of Mr. Francis Cottington.[^[109]] On the twenty-third of March, James informed his Privy Council that he was about to send a messenger to Spain, to signify to the King that his Parliament had advised him to break off the treaty, and that he intended proceeding to recover the Palatinate as he might. “Bonfires were made in the city,” says Archbishop Laud, “for joy that we should break with Spain.” Prince Charles gave great satisfaction to the Parliament, where he was a constant attendant, by declaring that should he choose any one of a different religion from his own, it would be with a caution that his consort, and her foreign servants, alone should be permitted the exercise of their faith.[^[110]] It was not, however, until the tenth of December in the same year, that a ship was sent to Spain to fetch back the jewels that had been bestowed on the Infanta and the royal family there; when, by the proposal of the Spaniards themselves, they were returned. They were placed under the care of James Howell, whose familiar letters are so well known, and the news of their arrival was conveyed by him to the King.[^[111]] The Infanta, as an account from Spain testified, was greatly distressed by these proceedings. The termination of this treaty was, as Bishop Hacket remarks, “flat and unfortunate. Not an inch of the Palatinate better for it, and we the worse from wars in all countries.” The same writer justly observes that the Spanish as a nation are preferable to the French; that the Spanish ladies, who have been united to English princes, have been “virtuous, mild, thrifty, and beloved of all.”

The conduct of Charles in this affair gave a presage of that vacillating and insincere policy which, in his after life, stamped a character full of beautiful indications and gentle qualities, with duplicity. "But to his life’s end," remarks Hacket, “he had a quality, I will not call it humility, it is something like, but it is not it, to be easily persuaded out of his own knowledge and judgment by some whom he permitted to have power over him, who had not the half of his intellectuals.” The public, however, remarked that the “brave prince,” as they called him, was “bettered in his judgment after his return from Spain.”[^[112]]

Buckingham’s conduct drew forth still more severe censures. It was observed that in advising the Prince to break off the treaty, he had only counselled what he had often done himself; for he was said to have given promises of marriage to many within the Court, and to have withdrawn from the fulfilment.[^[113]] Harassed by the censures cast upon him, Buckingham’s health and spirits sank under the alternate excitement of his too dazzling career, and the depression of blame and opposition. “A fever, the jaundice, and I know not what else,” are described, in a letter from Mr. Chamberlain, as his disease. For this he was “let blood thrice;” “yet the world,” adds the same writer, “thinks he is more sick in mind than body, and that he declines apace.” The King in vain endeavoured to reconcile him to the Earl of Bristol, who had returned from Spain some time previously. That nobleman was ordered not to leave his house, although many gracious messages were sent to him from the King.[^[114]] Buckingham, however, passed much of his time with the King, “with as much freedom and love as ever.”[^[115]]

The Duke of Buckingham was attended in his illness by Sir Theodore Mayerne, the favourite court physician. From an entry in a journal of cases kept by that eminent man, and styled by him his “Ephemerides Anglicæ,” it appears that Buckingham was not unfrequently the subject of his care and skill. In 1617 he had been troubled with a tumour in the right ear, owing to riding bareheaded in the winter, when hunting with the King; and the mode of life pursued in James’s society, the habits of intemperance prevalent in those days, and the absence of any strict moral principle, were, as Mayerne’s details are said to prove, highly injurious to the general health of the Favourite,[^[116]] who is specified, in Sir Theodore’s voluminous collection, under the name of Palamedes. Every one remarked that Buckingham had, since his return, become pensive. “The Prince,” writes Mr. Mead to Sir Martin Stuteville, “hath got a beard, and is cheerful; the Marquis (some conceive) not so.” The expenses of the Spanish journey were very considerable; and in the impoverished state of James’s treasury, they might naturally provoke difficulties far from agreeable to the main projectors of that enterprize. They amounted, according to a release given by Prince Charles to Sir Francis Cottington, to 50,027l. Prince Charles, before he left Spain, had given presents to the amount of 12,000l.

But it appears that the nation, pleased that the heir-apparent of Great Britain should have an opportunity of seeing two great kingdoms, and proud of his discretion and princely demeanour, were far from regretting that the journey had taken place, but rejoiced that he had returned in health, and without any change in his religious opinions.[^[117]]

The Prince, it was now said, disliked a Dutch match, and refused a Spanish one, until full restoration of the Palatinate and Electorals. “A lady,” Dudley Carleton remarked, “wise in these matters, declared she saw no symptom of his being in love.”[^[118]] The talk of the Spanish match became daily cooler, and another was said to be under consideration at Vienna; whilst the Princes’s safe return was, as many thought, a “marvel to all;” and a great man told him that he might thank God and his sister for it.[^[119]]

In the course of these discussions an accident occurred, which too plainly showed the temper of the times. A house had been hired by the Roman Catholics, next to that of the French ambassador, in order to celebrate mass, and to hear Father Drury, a famous Jesuit preacher. The day chosen for the opening of the tenement was the fifth of November. That day the roof fell in, whilst these worshippers were assembled, and ninety-five people, Drury among the number, were killed. It seems difficult, in the present state of public feeling, to believe that, as the crashing ruins entombed the victims beneath them, the barbarous multitude, who might term themselves Protestants, but were not to be called Christians, “rather railed and taunted the sufferers, than helped them.” Nor did the bitterness of persecution end there, for the Bishop of London refused to allow these unfortunate people to be interred in any churchyard in the City; the dead were therefore buried in two pits behind the houses which had fallen in, and black crosses were placed above their graves. This event made a deep impression. It was the first solemn meeting of recusants for sixty years; the Puritans styled it a judgment; the Romanists declared that it could not be such, for that those dying in that way escape purgatory. The preachers in the churches, however, treated the question “charitably and temperately.”[^[120]] Masses for the sufferers were said at Ely House, in the presence of all the Spanish Legation, Sir Tobie Mathew appearing as chief mourner.[^[121]]

People began to fear Buckingham more than even Prince Charles himself; he was styled the “dictator, not only of England, Ireland, and of Scotland, but of the King himself,”[^[122]] and he henceforth courted popularity, inviting himself to the houses of the influential citizens, which seemed nevertheless to imply that he dreaded lest some impending storm should be lowering over his destiny.

During the whole of this year, however, Buckingham’s security was being undermined; and, had it not been for the unfathomable indulgence of James, he would probably have shared the fate of that great minister, Wolsey, to whom he has been sometimes compared. During the progress of the Spanish treaty, as we have already seen, the Marquis of Inojosa had been sent to England as ambassador. He was a man of truly Spanish gravity and severity, and a great promoter of the Popish interests in England. His peculiar distinctions as an ambassador were, however, his disagreeable, discourteous manners, which marked him as one of the most unamiable foreigners that had visited the English Court.

This nobleman, in a private audience with James, had, in the spring of 1624, accused Buckingham of conspiring with certain accomplices how to break off the match with the Infanta, and of having determined, in case that their plot should not succeed, to send the King to one of his country houses, and to put all public matters in the hands of the Prince, whose virtue and discretion were so much worthier of confidence.

Hints were even thrown out by Inojosa that Buckingham plotted treason against the King, who, until assured by several peers and councillors that there was no intention of deposing him, was greatly disquieted. Precedents were now sought to punish Buckingham; and there was an idea started of calling him before the upper house to answer for his conduct. But when the council talked to the King of precedents, he said that "such precedents were found to cut off his mother’s head." Inojosa did his best, meantime, to obtain a private hearing from the King, and went to him, whilst Charles was in the House of Lords, at Theobald’s; but the Prince, hearing of this visit, hurriedly rose, and arrived at the Palace before the ambassador.

The King, harassed and vacillating, sent for the Lords to Whitehall, and harangued them, when a strange scene ensued; he told them that he came to sing a psalm of mercy and justice about the Lord Treasurer,[^[123]] whose misdeeds had lately come to light--who had done him, he said, some good, in restraining grants which his own facile disposition led him to consent to; that a recent imposition on wines was for his service and profit, and therefore they might as well arraign him as the Lord Treasurer. Prince Charles, deputed by the lords, said Lord Middlesex was not questioned for that; but the King “told him he lied,” and bade the house proceed, but give a good account of what they did.[^[124]]

James next did what every open nature is likely to suggest; he sent for the creature whom he had raised from the dust, and reproached him with his conduct. “Ah, Steenie, Steenie,” cried the monarch, “wilt thou kill me?” Steenie, however, found means to justify himself to the King’s satisfaction, and the Marquis of Inojosa was henceforth prohibited from any more private interviews with the King. He resolved, however, to overreach those who were set as spies to prevent his seeing James; and, whilst Don Carlos de Coloma held the Prince and the Duke in close conversation, he managed to slip into the King’s hands, with a wink, a paper which he wished him to see, and made a sign that His Majesty should thrust it into his pocket, which was quietly effected by the poor frightened monarch. James had, indeed, for some time perceived that he was maltreated by the haughty Buckingham. The Prince, though averse to the alliance with Spain, was gentle and tractable; but, in the Duke, the King declared that he had noted a turbulent spirit of late, and knew not how to quell it. It was by the altered expression of James’s countenance, and by his frequent silence and musings, that the Duke and the Prince discovered these proceedings, and when they heard that Inojosa and the Jesuit Maestro had been with the King, their alarm was considerable. In consequence of this discovery, Buckingham wrote to his royal master the following ungrateful and unpardonable letter:--

"Dear Dad and Gossip,

"Notwithstanding this unfavourable interpretation I find made of a thoughtful and loyal heart, in calling my words ‘cruel Catonic words,’ in obedience to your commands, I will tell the House of Parliament that you, having been upon the fields this afternoon, have taken such a fierce rheum and cough, as, not knowing how you will be this night, you are not able yet to appoint them a day of hearing; but I will forbear to tell them that notwithstanding of your cold, you were able to speak with the King of Spain’s instruments, though not with your own subjects. All I can say is, you march slowly towards your own safety (here the words ‘and happiness’ are erased), and those that depend of you. I pray God at last you may attain wit, otherwise I shall take little comfort in wife or child, though now I am suspected to look more to the rising son than to my maker. Sir, hitherto, I have tied myself to a punctuall answer of yours. If I should give myself leave to speak my own thoughts, they are so many, that though the quality of them should not grieve you, coming from one you wilfully and unjustly suspect, yet the number of them are so many, that I should not give over till I had troubled you. Therefore I shall only tie myself to that which shall be my last and speedy refuge--to pray, the Almighty to increase your joys and qualify the sorrows of your Majesty."

Notwithstanding this remonstrance, James continued to give audience to the Spanish ambassadors, though sometimes disputes ran high, and loud expostulations were addressed even to his Majesty by Inojosa; at other times, the Pope’s envoy, the Jesuit Maestro, was admitted whilst Buckingham was at Newhall, and jealousies were thus fomented.[^[125]] The Duke was about this time ill of fever and jaundice; and reports were spread of his having had something given to him in Spain that was undermining his health; he was, in short, harassed by debts, harassed by the Spanish treaty, and doubted by the King. Superstitious fears never seemed to have had much hold on him; yet in James’s time, wiser men than Buckingham (not to specify the King himself) were agitated by omens and prophecies. In the spring of this eventful year, one Gamaliel Gruys had prophesied that two great cedars would fall in England; these were, he said, the Duke of Buckingham and the Lord Keeper. An hour after this prophecy was spoken, news arrived of the death of the Duke of Lennox. The augury, therefore, might be thought to refer to him. This idle speech was deemed worthy of investigation;[^[126]] and the prognostic was judged by many to have had special reference to the events which time too surely disclosed. Nevertheless, in proportion as the favour of the Monarch declined, that of the people seemed to be restored to the Duke.

The King, at this epoch, must have had some difficulties in arranging his different audiences. The ambassadors from the States, and those from Spain, were obliged to be conducted by different ways to the presence chamber, that they might not meet, and the very chamber and bed which had been prepared for the reception of the Infanta at St. James’s, were allotted to Count Mansfeld, the ambassador from the Protestant party in Germany, who, notwithstanding a protest from the Spanish ambassador, was graciously received, and royally entertained by the King.[^[127]] James found it impossible long to resist the influence of his favourite, and accordingly the Duke soon perceived that he was again welcome at court; and a complete triumph was gained. Thus dishonourably and discourteously ended the famous treaty with Spain, for the accomplishment of which James had risked the best interests in Europe, and of his own family, and upon which so much time, trouble, and money had been expended. The voice of the people certainly called for the result.

The expected rupture of the treaties with Spain was, however, most acceptable to the nation; and Parliament resolved to assist His Majesty in maintaining the honour of the nation by proclaiming war. Sir Edward Coke encouraged the resolution, by saying in the house that “we never thrived so well as in a war with Spain; and that if the navy was ready, Ireland secured, and the low countries divided, we need fear neither Turk, Pope, devil, nor the King of Spain himself, and that the very idea of the war made him seven years younger.”[^[128]] Sir Thomas Edwards was authorized to declare also that the Prince “was sensible to the dishonours put on himself, and condescended to urge speed in the resolution for avenging them.” “Who,” cried the well-paid courtier, “can resist such an invitation, the first made by him? He shall have an answer of thanks, and assurance of tender concern for his interests.”[^[129]]

The King still temporized, nevertheless; and his conduct at this juncture shows more plainly than at any other his native apathy, and the indecision of his weak character, faced, as it was, with strong pretensions. He was truly the “Clerk of Arms,” and said lofty things whilst the sword was still in the sheath. Prince Charles endeavoured to keep up appearances, by saying, “The King hath a long sword, and when it is out it will not easily go in again.” But James confessed, in his reply to the declaration, that he was old and oppressed with debts, and had not yet expressed his opinion with regard to the war; “for, where Jupiter speaks,” he added, “he should have his thunder; and a king should not speak unless he could act.”[^[130]] In this great business he must satisfy his conscience, and his honour and he were already almost resolved. The fact was, that he wanted larger subsidies than, he expected, without this coquetting with his Parliament, would be voted.

Never had the courtiers been so much at a loss in which way to turn their customary homage; whether to the failing interest of the Spanish ambassador, or to the rising but precarious favour of the French, for James still vacillated.

At this juncture, the unfortunate Charles I. became for a time the darling of the anti-catholic party, by far the most powerful at all times in this country. His gentleness, his urbanity, his filial respect, on the one hand, his endeavours to procure the King’s assent to the wishes of his people, on the other, were the theme of praise. Still Parliament was “fitful, and did lettle,” though the Prince and Duke endeavoured to get it into a better understanding with His Majesty. The Prince so “bravely and judiciously” exhorted the Houses, that they resolved to offer life and fortune to His Majesty, if he would declare the treaties broken. Secretary Calvert knowingly suggested that the offer should be restricted “to be in a Parliamentary way;” the Treasurer and Lord Arundel suggested that a general offer of aid from Parliament would be of no avail; the Archbishop of Canterbury presented the declaration; the King replied by thanks for their “large offer, which, he said, was too general to be accepted;” they mistook him “in supposing that he said Spain had dealt falsely with him; but if they would give him five subsidies and ten fifteens for the war only, and one subsidy and two fifteens yearly for himself, till his debts were paid, he would issue a declaration to make this Parliament a session, and call another for Michaelmas, and another for Lady-day.” This answer so annoyed the House that there was not one “God save the King” heard as they went away. When the Houses met again, the Prince and Duke endeavoured to disperse these clouds: they said His Majesty was misunderstood; he only wanted six subsidies and twelve fifteenths for the war. But this did not convince those who heard him. Many members of Parliament were now again "so cast down, that they would give the King’s men all for the war, even to their shirts;" others harped on the poverty of the country, and would not consent to give at all. At last the house voted three subsidies and three fifteenths, to be paid within a year after the declaration that the treaties were broken, and the King “lovingly” accepted their offer, saying he would not touch a penny of the money himself, but devote it all to the Palatinate. The general joy was expressed in bonfires; and one nobleman, Lord Verulam, ran into debt to give four dozen fagots and twelve gallons of wine. Stones and firebrands were now thrown at the Spanish ambassador’s house; but the Commons refused to protect him. The ambassador complained of some expressions used by Buckingham, reflecting on the King of Spain, but the Houses immediately praised his conduct in Spain, and the King said the Duke “had set an ill example to ambassadors, for he had spent 40,000l. in his journey, and had asked no repayment.” Never, adds Sir Edward Conway, whose letter to Carleton contains these curious details, “was man so beloved of King, Prince, and people” as Buckingham.

All seemed now to be settled according to the popular wish; but those who deemed the rupture with Spain secure knew but little of King James. The motives for his perpetual vacillations seem inexplicable, unless we could believe that a sincere desire to preserve peace, and a dread of being involved in continental wars, may have influenced the now feeble and broken monarch. But sincerity was not one of this King’s attributes; and his professions with regard to the Palatinate were utterly hollow and worthless.

Shortly after this apparent understanding with his Parliament, he “stormed” at a bill reviewing all the acts against Papists; and even scolded Buckingham for consenting to it. At length, however, matters seemed to draw to a conclusion.

The Earl of Bristol was recalled; Buckingham was empowered to read to the Houses a dispatch from the King of Spain, declaring that the treaties were dissolved. The King, in reply to an address from the Houses, protested that his heart bled at the increase of Popery; and that he had desired to hinder it, not by persecution, for that would be useless; nevertheless, he granted their desire for the banishment of priests and Jesuits; and promised to advise with council about the probability of seizing subjects coming out from mass in the ambassador’s chapel; no priests were in fact allowed to leave the kingdom without first taking the oaths of allegiance.

So far, all looked well for the Protestant party; but not long afterwards, the pertinacious Inojosa again seemed on the ascendant. He resolved to raise, through Padre Maestro, a discord between the King and Parliament, and, therefore, hinted to the King that there was a design to confine him in Theobald’s, and to give the Crown to the Prince.[^[131]] The King was a good deal agitated, and told the Prince and the Duke of this suspicion. They were resolved to find out who had put this idea into the Spaniard’s head--some Englishmen they believed had done it, and they suspected Lord Middlesex. James had heard of this design in the morning, but had kept it to himself until after dinner, when, with weeping eyes, in St. James’s Park, he imparted it to Buckingham, who, in his reply, asked how it was possible he could ever do such a thing without the Prince’s knowledge, whose filial feeling would rise against it; and without his knowledge it were sottish to plan it, for the affection of the people for His Majesty was such that they would tear anyone to pieces who attempted such baseness. To which the King replied, that had he believed it, he should never have mentioned it.[^[132]] Eventually, Inojosa pretended that the accusation was a misunderstanding on the part of the King, and declared the Prince to be the most dutiful son, and the Duke to be the most faithful servant, that ever monarch had.[^[133]]

Meantime, the Earl of Bristol arrived in London, bringing with him the jewels that had been given to the Infanta. He was confined, by the King’s order, to his house in St. Giles’s Fields, but James sent him kind messages. “It is thought,” writes Carleton, “that he will not be much questioned, lest he should reveal too much.”

All hopes of now marrying the Prince to a lady of his own religion were at an end, for James would not consent to his son’s espousing an inferior, and there seemed to be no other alternative than to make proposals to a French Princess. The Earl of Holland was therefore dispatched into France, to treat with the queen-mother and her ministers concerning this alliance, Charles, in the casual view which he had obtained of Henrietta Maria, the posthumous daughter of Henry the Great, having been struck by her beauty. First it prospered, and the French ministers seemed disposed not to stand upon any conditions; but when they found that the breach with Spain and that his inclinations favoured the negotiation; that the breach with Spain was irreparable, and that a war was in preparation, they resolved to abate none of the terms which had been granted to the Spaniards, relative to the exercise of the Catholic religion, and to these terms James and his son consented. Such was the infatuation, and such, perhaps, the ignorance of the people, that, having in November, 1623, celebrated the dissolution of the Spanish treaty with bells and bonfires, they now, in February, signalized their joy at the conclusion of a treaty precisely similar. The conduct of Buckingham to the Earl of Bristol was justly and generally unpopular. That nobleman had prayed that he might make his answer in Parliament against any charge that might be preferred against him; but had been committed to the Tower, in order, it was thought, to prevent disclosures, and was only released upon his making submission, and retiring into the country; nevertheless, articles were prepared to impeach him.

In the course of the autumn, Don Hurtado de Mendoza, as ambassador extraordinary from the Court of Spain, arrived in England. This nobleman insisted on his right of precedence, according to the English custom, which always grants it to the ambassador last arrived. This right was resisted by Inojosa, as being of higher rank in his own country, and he was eventually supported by the King of Spain, who ordered Mendoza back again, and commanded him to remain in his own house as a prisoner when he arrived in Spain.[^[134]]

During Mendoza’s sojourn in London, Buckingham had given a great feast in his honour, and in that of Don Diego de Mexia, the Austrian ambassador. On this occasion, Inojosa, although of course expected, declined, not choosing, before the point of precedence was arranged, to walk after Mendoza. On the following evening, Buckingham sent the absent Inojosa, by Endymion Porter, a “regale of three large flaskets,” full of the provisions of which the feast had been composed; one of cold meats for the custe pasto, “another filled with uncooked fowl, fat and ready for the spit;” a third containing the best and rarest sweetmeats; and with all these, this message,--"that the Duke kissed his hand, and would have esteemed it an honour and happiness to have had his company; but since he had not had it, begged him to taste of what he had provided for him; and on tasting this supper, entreated that the Marquis would be pleased to drink the health of the King of England, and he would, at the same time, drink that of the King of Spain."

Inojosa’s immediate answer to this compliment was, “that if my Lord Duke had wished for his company, he might have had it, if it had pleased him to command it; adding that it was easy to conceive what the feast must have been, when a taste of it was so rare and plentiful.” It was, indeed, one of those ruinous entertainments which were contributing to impoverish Buckingham. It cost three hundred pounds--a large sum in those days--and such was the taste and profusion of the times, that twelve pheasants were piled in a dish, and there were on the table forty dozen partridges, and all else in proportion.[^[135]]

These compliments had passed, of course, before the accusation which Inojosa had preferred against Buckingham had been insinuated into the mind of the King by secret and artful proceedings.

“And no wonder it was,” Bishop Hacket remarks, “that His Majesty was abused awhile, and dim-sighted with the character of jealousie, for the Parliament was about to land him in a new world, to begin and maintain a war, who thought that scarce any mischief was so great as was worth a war to mend it; wherein the Prince did deviate from him, as likewise in affection to the Spanish alliance: but otherwise promised nothing but sweetness and obedience.”

On the twenty-second of May, Buckingham came to Court, and was very welcome and well entertained, the King having previously shown him his continued favour by his determination to get York House, which Buckingham had hitherto borrowed, or rented, from Tobias Mathew, Archbishop of York, transferred to the Duke; and scarcely six weeks had elapsed, after the quarrel between James and his favourite, before we find that prelate writing a letter to the King, declaring that he will submit to His Majesty’s wishes, and give up York House and other tenements; craving, however, that satisfaction to the see for so large a property should be cared for; Mathews adding that he “blessed God for a King who did not require anything from the church without making abundant recompense.”[^[136]] An act was subsequently passed, giving lands in Yorkshire to the Archbishop in lieu of York House, which Buckingham was altering at great expense. On giving his assent to the bill for the transfer of York House, the King vindicated himself, in his speech to the Lower House, from any design of allowing the Archbishop of York to be a loser, and praised the care of the clergy taken by Buckingham, who was adding to the lands given in exchange a house fit for the bishop.[^[137]] In another account it is said that the King spoke “very affectionately of Buckingham;” and on the fourteenth of June the Monarch granted to the Duke York House, and other messuages in the parish of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, formerly belonging to the Archbishop of York, but assigned to the King by act of Parliament. On the same day an annuity of a thousand a year from the Court of Wards was conferred also on the Duke, and a thousand pounds, arrears from the Court of Wards, in lieu of a like grant from the Exchequer, surrendered.[^[138]] Thus it appears that Buckingham’s plan of managing his royal master, sometimes by flattery, sometimes by insolence, reaped an undeserved success. That the reconciliation was complete appears from the visit which James paid during the summer to Burleigh-on-the-Hill, still in an unfinished condition. Here the King witnessed the masque, by Jonson, entitled "Pan’s Anniversary, or the Shepherd’s Holiday," containing those beautiful lines, beginning:--

“Well done, my pretty ones, rain roses still,

Until the last be dropt, then hence, and fill

Your fragrant prickles;[^[139]] for a second shower

Bring corn-flags, tulips, and Adonis flower,” &c.

Buckingham, however, did not accompany his royal master in this his last progress; but, although his separations from the King and Court were more frequent than formerly, many letters from James to the Favourite, preserved among the Harleian manuscripts, sufficiently attest the unchanged character of the King’s devotion, not only to his favourite, but to his whole family.

CHAPTER III.

DECLINE OF THE KING’S HEALTH--CASE OF LORD MIDDLESEX--PROCEEDINGS IN BOTH HOUSES--SIR EDWARD COKE’S EXAGGERATION--BUCKINGHAM’S PARTICIPATION IN THE AFFAIR--MIDDLESEX STEALS AWAY TO THEOBALD’S, AND IS FOLLOWED BY CHARLES--FOUND GUILTY--CONFINED--BUCKINGHAM’S DANGEROUS ILLNESS--ARTHUR BRETT--DEATH OF THE KING--ASCRIBED TO BUCKINGHAM.

CHAPTER III.

The health of James the First had long been declining, and the vexations which troubled his last years contributed, it has been supposed, greatly to its decline. A mortal internal disease, however, aggravated by an attack of tertian ague, left, in the spring of the year 1625, little hope of his recovery. When told, during the access of this disorder, the proverb, that “ague in the spring was health to a king,” he remarked that the saying was meant to apply to a young king. The King was, in truth, only fifty-eight years of age, but, independent of his originally feeble constitution, he, like other men in those times, was old of his age. It has been our blessing, under the improvements of science, and in the habits of the nineteenth century, to retain, if not youth, many of its greatest advantages, to a period of life far more advanced than that in which James was styled the “old King,” a term to which he gave his mournful assent.

Amongst the numerous causes which, with the Spanish treaty, vexed the royal invalid, the case of the Lord Treasurer Middlesex was prominent. In this minister James had rested unbounded confidence, which nothing but the clearest evidence of the Lord Treasurer’s corruption could undermine.

In April, 1624, Middlesex had been questioned in the House of Lords on account of his neglect of the fortresses. He was much dejected by this attack; but the inquiry was ascribed to the jealousy of Buckingham, Lord Middlesex’s brother-in-law, Arthur Brett, having been put forward to supplant the Duke in James’s favour.[^[140]] It was thought, however, such was the low standard of public morality, that the articles produced against the Treasurer were not worse than “might be found in most men in his place;” and the attempts to injure him were referred rather to his harsh and insolent manner, his want of respect to Prince Charles, and his inclination to the Spanish match, than to his devices for raising money, and so impoverishing the nation, and to his opposition to the calling a Parliament. Still he stood high in James’s favour, and boldly declared his own innocence; James, whatever he might really feel, “looking on” merely, and leaving his minister to his fate.[fate.][^[141]]

Buckingham, addressing the Peers, read a letter from the Deputy in Ireland, who complained of neglect to his applications for repairing the forts, which had become the more necessary as the Irish were in a state of tumult and rebellion. Prince Charles added that a “member of the council” had undertaken to answer these letters, and that this was the Lord Treasurer, “who used to put such letters in his pocket, under pretence of answering them.” Middlesex was soon after suspended from his office, till he should clear himself; and it was even reported that his title, given for services in the royal wardrobe, where he had been guilty of many abuses, would be taken away; but rewards for services, acknowledged under the Great Seal, could not, it was found, be questioned. Even his life would have been in danger, could all have been proved against him.

The House, desirous to finish the matter, allowed Middlesex to produce forty witnesses, twelve of whom deposed directly against him; upon this, Prince Charles sent him a message, ordering him not to appear in the royal presence again until he had cleared himself. This command was the more necessary, since, at this very moment, the mind of James had been impressed by Inojosa with a suspicion that his son and the Duke were plotting against him; an idea which the King, with weeping, imparted to his son and the Duke. “The Lord Treasurer,” Sir Dudley Carleton writes, “is suspected to be at the bottom of it.” Hitherto, James had still appeared confident of the Lord Treasurer’s innocence,[^[142]] and in a speech to the Lords, whom he had summoned to Whitehall,[^[143]] he advised them as to their judgment. “Such a trial,” he observed, “had no precedent before the last parliament, and then the guilty party, Lord Bacon, had confessed, now the supposed delinquent denied the charge.” James, indeed, long clung to the Lord Treasurer, and told the lords he came to “sing a psalm of mercy and justice about him;” still the trial went on, and the accused, in spite of alleged ill-health, was examined both morning and afternoon; his illness was found, however, to be feigned; and his answers were so audacious, and so manifestly perjured, that, had it not been for the intercession of the Prince, he would have been sent to the Tower. Among other speeches, Middlesex said he had been baited by two mastiffs, Crew and the Attorney General; and he reasoned, in his defence, “saucily” for five hours, but was found guilty, and sentenced to pay 50,000l. fine, and to lose his office; never to sit in Parliament again, nor to come within the verge of the Court. “He would,” Mr. Chamberlain writes, “have been further degraded, but that he had great, if not gratis, friends in the bedchamber. He may live to crush his enemies, if his brother-in-law, Brett, should get into favour and marry the Duchess of Richmond, who would do anything to be prime courtier again.”[^[144]]

Regarding this sentence, Lord Campbell remarks:--"The noble defendant had done various things, as head of the Treasury, which would now be considered very scandalous; but he had only imitated his predecessors, and was imitated by his successors."--A melancholy commentary on the state of public morality. It must have been galling to Lord Bacon, in his retirement, to have known that he was coupled with a man so dishonest, so specious, and so degraded as Middlesex.

Whilst all this was taking place, Buckingham was dangerously ill; so that on Charles the difficult task of infusing a sense of justice into the mind of James almost wholly devolved.[^[145]] At length, however, irritated by the insolent bearing of Middlesex, who conducted himself as if he had not been expelled from Court, James, with his own hand, scratched out the culprit’s name from the commission of subsidy for Middlesex; and sent, through Sir Richard Weston, a message, saying that, without regarding any other charge, he condemned him merely in his capacity as Master of the Wardrobe, which Middlesex had “treated as a fee-farm not to be accounted for, and would not even allow the clerk to keep accounts, whereby great corruptions arose, and ordinary and mean stuffs were brought in.”[^[146]]

Whilst all this was going on, Arthur Brett, the supposed rival of Buckingham, was committed to the Fleet. By his examination it appears that, on the Duke’s going into Spain, he had desired this young man to retire to France, and he did so; but on Buckingham’s return, he could not obtain leave to come back to England, and had therefore left France without it. He was ordered back to France by the King; he pleaded his right to stay in his own country, as a free-born subject. Then he was told not to appear within forty miles of London. He had afterwards an interview with Buckingham, who blamed him for returning; but said he was the King’s servant, and might live where he pleased. He had therefore staid in London, and wished to plead for a restoration of favour with the Duke; failing in this, he went to Wanstead to petition the King.[^[147]]

This disclosure of Brett’s, and Buckingham’s wish to keep him from the Court, certainly throw a doubt on the genuineness of the Duke’s motives in the prosecution of Middlesex. Brett had imprudently met the King in Waltham Forest, and had seized hold of his Majesty’s bridle and stirrup, a liberty which had greatly offended James, and to punish which Brett was sent to the Fleet Prison, and, though released, was heavily fined.

In the midst of these various harassing affairs, the illness of James began to assume a formidable appearance. The King had frequently, before his last illness, been heard to express his belief that he should not live long. He was a martyr to rheumatism and gout, which he increased by gross feeding, and the continual use of sweet wines. During the whole of the Christmas preceding his death he had kept his chambers, not even going to chapel, or to see the plays, although his known delight in Ben Jonson’s masques would have induced him to attend the representation of the last of those performances played in his reign, the masque of the “Fortunate Isles.” The sole amusement which the dying King permitted himself was to go abroad in his litter, in fair weather, to see some flights at the brook; but all enjoyment of his usual diversion was at an end.

Accounts from the Court became daily worse:--"The King," Chamberlain, on the twelfth of March, wrote to Carleton, “has a tertian ague, but not dangerous, if he would be governed by physicians.”[^[148]] His Majesty’s decline was evidently gradual; nor was he the only person in the realm sinking under fever or ague, the “spotted fever”[^[149]] being fearfully prevalent. Buckingham was now on the eve of going to France as ambassador, to marry by proxy the young Princess, Henrietta Maria; but so late as the twenty-third of March he was detained by the continued illness of James.

"The King’s fits," Mr. Chamberlain again writes, “diminish; the Duke will not leave him till he is perfectly recovered, of which there is hope, but no assurance.” On the following day, we find, from the same source, that James performed an act of mercy, almost if not quite his last, in excusing Lord Middlesex part of his fine, and reducing it from 50,000l. to 20,000l., which sum was to be repaid to the Crown.

His sickness had now assumed a distinctly intermittent form; even so late as the middle of the month there had been an apparent abatement; on the sixteenth of March, he had his seventh fit of this debilitating disease; but it was, as Mr. Secretary Conway informed the Earl of Carlisle, “less intense hereto than the rest, and left more clearness and cheerfulness in his looks than the former.”[^[150]] Yet, in the same letter, Conway speaks of the “double sadness of every face,” and alludes to the "extreme grief suffered for the sharp and smart accesses of His Majesty’s fever."

During the last sufferings of King James, the marriage treaty with France was still diligently carried on, through the agency of Lord Carlisle, ambassador at Paris, and was only delayed on the ground that "it could not be suitable with the good nature of a son, in so dangerous a state of his father’s health, to entertain such jollity and triumph as duly belong to so acceptable a marriage." The Duke of Buckingham, who had entertained some notion of going in person to Paris, and of concluding the treaty himself, directed Lord Carlisle, in a letter written on the fifteenth of March, “to have his eyes open, and to state any course, as much as he could, which might hinder the business of the Palatinate and of the religion,” until he appeared in the French capital.

But the increasing illness of his royal master delayed the Duke’s journey from day to day; and James was not permitted to witness the conclusion of the long-cherished hopes of the union of his son with a Princess of birth equal to his own. “All human things,” wrote Conway, “have something of earth and defect.” Nothing, he added in his letter to Lord Carlisle,[^[151]] could exceed the contentment of the “excellent Prince and gracious Duke,” at the sure progress of the treaty, "and there was now no speech but of the speed of the Duke’s going;"[^[152]] but in the next letter the journey was spoken of as conditional upon the restoration of His Majesty to health. On the twenty-fourth of March, the tenth night of the King’s fever arrived. The attack, as the same correspondent informed Lord Carlisle, “exercised much violence upon a weak body, which being so much reverenced, and loved with so much cause as His Majesty hath given, struck much sense and fear into the hearts of his servants that looked upon him.” The King, it appeared, nevertheless, had that day slept well, “and taken broths.” “And more to your comfort,” added the secretary, “did, with life and cheerfulness, receive the sacrament in the presence of the Prince and Duke, and many others, and admitted many to take it with him; and in the action and the circumstances of it, did deliver himself so answerable to his writings and his wise and pious professions, and did justly produce much tears between comfort and grief; and now this day, and now this night, he recovers temper and gets, in appearance to us, strength, appetite, and digestion, which gives us great hope of his amendment, grounded not only upon desire, but upon the method of judicious observation.”[^[153]]

It may here be remarked, before going more fully into the false and calumnious evidence of poison, afterwards brought forward in this case of the royal sufferer, that the state of the King, his relapses, and his rallyings, imply anything but poison, and convey an impression of a constitution long broken up, and suddenly depressed by the supervening of an accidental attack of a disease then extremely prevalent in this country. The Holy Communion was administered to James, over as before stated, four days before he died: of the King’s professions before that last sacrament, an account, corresponding with that of Secretary Conway, but more distinct and instructive, is given by the Lord Keeper Williams. The monarch, who broke the heart of Arabella Stuart by long imprisonment and blighted hopes, and who beheaded Ralegh, and denied restitution to his son, Carew, died well;--so self-deceived is the spirit of the “rich man,”--so easy is it to substitute professions for practical Christianity.

“Being asked,” said the Lord Keeper, “if he was prepared in point of faith and charity for so great a devotion, he said he was, and gave humble thanks to God for the same.” Being desired to declare his faith, he repeated the articles of the creed, one by one, and said, “He believed them all as they were received and expounded by that part of the Catholic church which was established here in England,” adding that whatever he had written of this faith in his life he was ready to seal with his death. Being questioned in “point of charity,” he answered that he forgave all men that had offended him, and wished to be forgiven by all whom he had offended. Being told that men in holy orders in the Church of England can challenge a power, as inherent in their function, not in their power, to pronounce absolution on such of the penitent as do call on the same, and that they have a form of absolution in the Book of Common Prayer, he answered quickly:--

“I have ever believed that there was that power in you that be in orders in the Church of England, and that, amongst others, was to me an evident demonstration that the Church of England was the Church of Christ, and I, therefore, a miserable sinner, desire of Almighty God to absolve me of my sins, and that you, that are his servants in this high place, do afford me this heavenly comfort.” And, after that the absolution had been read, “he received the sacrament,” adds the Lord Keeper, “with that zeal and devotion as if he had not been a frail man, but a Cherubim clothed with flesh and blood.” He expressed to his son, and to the Duke, the inward comfort which he felt after receiving the Communion, and exclaimed “Oh, that my Lords would but do this when they were visited with the like sickness! Themselves would be more comforted in their souls, and the world less troubled with questioning their religion.”

Thus, in perfect composure, and sufficiently collected even to make his replies to the Lord Keeper in Latin, James met death. Whilst the last hour was approaching, he was little aware that the two beings whom he most loved in the world, were, at that very moment, the objects of suspicions the most cruel and groundless.

At that period, throughout Europe, and “nowhere,” says Lord Macaulay, “more than in England, the public, both high and low, were in the habit of ascribing the deaths of princes, and, indeed, of all persons of importance, to poison. Thus,” he adds, “James the First had been accused of poisoning Prince Henry. Thus Charles had been accused of poisoning King James.”[^[154]]

The calumnies, however, were not so distinctly directed to Charles, as to the Duke; the calumnies circulated respecting Buckingham assumed an importance, as they formed part of his subsequent impeachment. Those also which attempted to implicate Charles merit a reference, since they were repeated to his injury at a very critical period of his life, in 1642, when they were credited by many persons; for there exist those who will, on a party question, believe, or affect to believe, any absurdity.

An act of kindness on the part of Buckingham gave rise to the rumours to which some contemporary historians, and even an excellent writer of the present century, have attached an almost incredible value.[^[155]] Nothing, perhaps, can really be more unwise, or more unkind, than to interfere in illnesses with that profession which, admirable as are its practitioners, is remarkable for the tenacity of its etiquette, and its just horror of chance remedies. Yet, in other instances, even in the age of Sydenham and of Mead, Anne of Denmark had imprudently sent to Sir Walter Ralegh in the Tower for a remedy for her best beloved son, Henry, in his last agonies; and thus afforded Buckingham a precedent for his resort to unprescribed, and, therefore, often dangerous remedies.

The Countess of Buckingham, like many ladies of her own time and ours, had a specific which cured every known distemper; and which, at all events, was believed in by her son, the Duke; and it is not improbable that during his own frequent illnesses and attacks of ague he might have resorted to it himself.

Six days before the King died, the Duke applied, as it is stated by several historians, plasters to the wrists and body of the sufferer, and also administered several drinks, although some of the King’s physicians did, says Roger Coke, “disallow thereof, and refused to meddle further with the King until the said plasters were removed.”[^[156]]

The King grew worse after these remedies, and great “droughts, raving, fainting, and an intermitting pulse followed thereupon.” Twice was the drink given him by the Duke’s own hand; and the third time refused. The physicians, to comfort the King, told him that the relapse was from cold, or from some other accidental cause. Upon which James answered, “No, no, it was that I had from Buckingham.” “I confess,” adds Coke, “that this was but a charge upon the Duke upon the Impeachment of the Commons” (in the next reign), “yet it was next to positive proof, for King Charles, rather than his charge should come to an issue, dissolved one Parliament.”[^[157]]

It appears, however, that the plasters to which such dire consequences were ascribed, and which seem to have been suggested by the Countess of Buckingham, were prepared by an able and honest physician, Dr. John Remington, of Dunmow, in Essex;[^[158]] and that he had often applied similar ones with success. One error was in supposing that a remedy suited to one case had an empirical virtue; another, in using it, without the knowledge of the physicians in attendance on the King. Their professional pride was, of course, justly irritated by the discovery; and one of them, Dr. Craig, having spoken “some plain words” on the matter, was ordered out of the Court, the Duke himself complaining to the King of what had been uttered.[^[159]]

His Majesty, however, grew worse and worse, so that Mr. Hayes, the Court surgeon, was called out of bed to take off the plasters; a julep was then prepared by Mr. Baker, the Duke of Buckingham’s servant, for His Majesty to drink, and was administered by Buckingham himself.

These particulars were all given and sworn to by the physicians, two years afterwards, before a select committee of Parliament, when the Duke’s act was voted “transcendant presumption,” though most people thought that it was done without any ill intention.[^[160]]

Whilst the poor King lay expiring, a strange and scandalous scene, according to Weldon, passed near his death-bed. Buckingham was coming into the chamber, when one of the servants greeted him with these words:--"Ah! my lord, you have undone all us poor servants, though you are so well provided for you need not care:" upon which the Duke kicked him. The man, enraged, caught hold of the foot which spurned him, and the Duke fell to the ground. On arising, he ran to the King’s bedside, and exclaimed, “Justice, for I am an abused man.” At which James is said to have fixed his eyes mournfully upon him, "as one who would have said, ‘not wrongfully.’"[^[161]]

Such were the unwarrantable and malignant reports which strove to impute to Buckingham the foulest treachery and the deepest ingratitude.

The motive for such an action as that which his foes scrupled not to fasten upon him--and the imputation followed him through life--is difficult to be discovered. Buckingham had no reason to wish for the death of his benefactor. Loaded with obligations, omnipotent in the country, feared, if not respected, abroad, for what purpose he should destroy the source of all his superabundant blessings, it were impossible to divine. The sole reason that could be given was a fear lest the King should promote the Earl of Bristol, and grow weary of the Duke. Yet Bristol was even then in retirement and disfavour, and had only recently been in a sort of imprisonment. The charge, cruel and groundless, tends to justify Buckingham from many minor imputations, since those who could fabricate such an accusation were not likely to be fair interpreters of his ordinary conduct. Roger Coke, for instance, as we have seen, specifies the charge against Buckingham, but gives him no credit for the actual acquittal of Parliament, and is silent regarding the general opinion.

The confidence reposed by Charles in Buckingham affords another source of vindication. Charles had ever been a dutiful son; indulged, indeed, to excess, yet not spoiled by kindness. On the Friday before the King died, he had three hours private conversation with his son. Had James then entertained any suspicion of the Duke, he would, assuredly, have imparted it as a matter which lay most heavily on his mind, and, as a precaution to his son, James could not have controlled a grief so pungent as the suspicion that his favourite, the being, perhaps, the best beloved in the world, had dealt out to him the potion of death. Wilson, indeed, relates the circumstance of this last interview thus.

The King, according to his account, sent for the Prince out of his bed. Charles appeared before him; when James, arousing all his strength and energy, strove to address him; “but nature being exhausted, he had not strength to express his intentions.” That a conversation did, however, take place, rests on the testimony of a private letter addressed by Mr. Mead to Sir Martin Stuteville, and written shortly after the King’s death.[^[162]]

There was among the Court physicians, one named Eglesham, who had acted in that capacity for ten years; and this long attendance, in a responsible post, has been thought a sufficient guarantee for his character. Upon his evidence, chiefly, the charge against Buckingham rested; Eglesham was obliged, in consequence of his allegations against the Duke, to abscond, and remain some years absent from the country. In the pamphlet which he published, he stated that the plaster was applied to the King’s heart and chest whilst the physicians in attendance were absent at dinner: the King, after this application, which was suggested and carried into execution by the Countess of Buckingham, became faint, and was in great agony. Some of the physicians, returning after dinner, and perceiving an offensive smell from the plaster, exclaimed that the King was poisoned, and then Buckingham, entering, commanded the physicians to leave the room, sent one of them a prisoner to his own chamber, and ordered another out of the Court; whilst his mother, kneeling down, cried out to the King, with a brazen face, “Justice, sire, I demand justice!” His Majesty asked her “Justice for what?” “For that which their lives are nowise sufficient to satisfy; for having said that I have poisoned your Majesty.” “Poisoned me!” cried James, and, turning round, fainted away. On the following Sunday, Buckingham entreated two physicians who attended the King to sign a document, declaring that the powder he had given to the King was a safe and good remedy; this they refused to do.

After the King’s death, the physician who had been commanded to keep within his own apartment was set at liberty, with a caution “to hold his peace,” and the others were threatened, if they kept not “good tongues in their heads.”[^[163]] The public were also horrified at hearing that the King’s body and head had swelled beyond measure; but that is by no means an unusual symptom after death.

Now the value of Eglesham’s evidence rests wholly upon his personal credit. It was stated, by Sanderson the historian, that he afterwards offered to write a recantation of his pamphlet for four hundred guineas;[^[164]] but although Brodie does not consider the assertion of Sanderson, who had the statement direct from Sir Balthazar Gerbier, to be a good authority, the impression which it conveys against Eglesham is confirmed from another source. There is a letter in the State Paper Office, from one Andrew Herriott to Secretary Nicholas, in which "he marvels that Nicholas and Sir James Bagg should take into their protection Edward Yeates, who was a pirate with one Captain Herriott, a poor man’s son in Kent, a mere mountebank, only companion with Dr. Eglesham, at bed and board for many years together, insomuch as they coined many double pistolets, and yet unhanged."[^[165]] This letter was written in 1627, two years after the King’s death; when Eglesham, probably from a fear of justice, had fled from Court, after he had lost the protection of the King, who was by no means scrupulous as to the character of those around him.

On Eglesham, it appears, it devolved to examine the corpse, and he did not hesitate to point to Buckingham as the King’s murderer.[^[166]]

He afterwards presented petitions both to the King and the Parliament, praying for vengeance on the Duke. These petitions were published in the form of a pamphlet in Latin, in 1626; and in 1640 the English translation was printed.[^[167]] In this pamphlet, Eglesham stated that his motives for the publication were these: that having been patronized from his youth by the Marquis of Hamilton, the probability there was of that nobleman’s being poisoned was mentioned to him; he then stated that about the time of the Duke of Richmond’s death, a list of persons who were to be poisoned was found in King’s Street, Westminster, and brought to the Marquis of Hamilton by a relation, a daughter of Lord Oldbarre; in this list was not only Hamilton’s name specified, but also that of Dr. Eglesham “to embalm him.” Other titles were contained in the list; those of the Duke of Lennox and his brother, and the Earl of Southampton, who died at this time of a fever, being particularized. These accusations of Eglesham’s, who was doubtless only a tool in the hands of a party, were, according to Arthur Wilson, hushed up, but they served the purpose of those by whom they were originated. According to the account of those historians who have delighted to blacken Buckingham, James foresaw his doom, and hinted at the probability of treachery, when, on hearing of the Marquis of Hamilton’s death, he said--"If the branches are thus cut off, the stock cannot continue long;" and often was he heard, according to Sir Anthony Weldon, to say, in his last illness, to the Earl of Montgomery, "For God’s sake, see that I have fair play."[^[168]]

Of this improbable story, there is not a hint in any of the correspondence of the day, although the circumstances of the King’s death are carefully detailed by Chamberlain and other news-writers.

After his last interview with Charles, the King declined rapidly; and his tongue was so swollen, that he could either not speak at all, or not be understood. An hour before the King’s death, the Dean of Hereford, Dr. Daniel Price, preached before the Prince and Court at Theobald’s; he prayed earnestly for the King before the sermon, and wept as he prayed and preached.[^[169]]

James expired on Sunday, the 27th of March, between the hours of eleven and twelve, aged fifty-seven years and three months. Upon the examination of his remains, much internal disease was found, but no appearance of poison. His heart was unusually large, which accounted, in the opinion of Sir Symonds D’Ewes, for his being “so very considerate, so extraordinary fearful, which hindered him from attempting any great action.”[^[170]]

During the Monarch’s last hours, prayers were multiplied more and more for the benefit of his soul, and certain English and Latin short sentences of devotion, to elevate his spirit to heaven “before it came thither,” were recited. James, whose consciousness and memory continued unimpaired, was so “ravished and solaced” by these religious ejaculations, that his groans of agony were stilled whilst they were uttered. “To one of these,” says the Lord Keeper Williams, “Mecum eris in Paradiso,” he replied presently, “Vox Christi”--that it was the voice and promise of Christ. Another, “Veni, Domine Jesu, veni cito,” he twice or thrice articulated. And as his end drew near, that prayer usually said at the hour of death was repeated. And no sooner had that prayer been uttered, “In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum,” than, without any convulsion or pangs, he expired,--his son and servants kneeling on one side the bed, his archbishops, bishops, and all his chaplains on the other.

Thus closed the responsible career of the first of the Stuart Kings that had ascended the throne of England.

Immediately after the King’s last sigh was breathed, a letter, not official, was written by one of his household, without a name, to the Queen of Bohemia. It is among the foreign inedited papers in the State Paper Office; and contains, which is remarkable, since it appears to be written in strict confidence, no allusion whatever to the suspicion of poisoning.[^[171]]

CHAPTER IV.
1624-1625.

THE REMARKS OF SIR HENRY WOTTON UPON BUCKINGHAM’S UNINTERRUPTED PROSPERITY DURING THE REIGN OF JAMES--HIS MOST PERILOUS TIME YET TO COME--THE CHARACTER OF CHARLES DIFFICULT TO MANAGE--HIS AFFECTIONS DIVIDED--REQUEST OF THE PRIVY COUNCIL REGARDING THE LATE KING’S FUNERAL AND THE YOUNG KING’S MARRIAGE--GOOD TASTE DISPLAYED BY CHARLES IN HIS CONDUCT AT THE FUNERAL--THE INFLUENCE OF BUCKINGHAM STILL PARAMOUNT--ROGER COKE’S REMARK UPON KING JAMES’S REGRET ON OBSERVING THAT HIS SON WAS OVERRULED BY THE DUKE--THE THREE GREAT KINGDOMS OF EUROPE AT THIS PERIOD RULED BY FAVOURITES--THE MARRIAGE OF CHARLES AND HENRIETTA MARIA--MOTIVE ATTRIBUTED TO BUCKINGHAM--PRELIMINARY STEPS--LETTER FROM LORD KENSINGTON TO THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM DETAILING HIS INTERVIEW WITH THE QUEEN-MOTHER--DESCRIPTION OF THE YOUNG PRINCESS--THE DUKE PREPARES FOR HIS JOURNEY INTO FRANCE TO FETCH HOME THE BRIDE--THE EXPENSE OF HIS MISSION OBJECTED TO BY THE NATION--THE TWO AMBASSADORS DESCRIBED--RICH--LORD KENSINGTON, FIRST EARL OF HOLLAND--HIS BEAUTY OF PERSON, ADDRESS, AND EARLY FAVOUR AT THE COURT OF JAMES--HIS RESTING SOLELY UPON BUCKINGHAM--HIS MARRIAGE WITH THE DAUGHTER OF SIR WALTER COKE, THE OWNER OF THE MANOR OF KENSINGTON--THE EARL OF HOLLAND REGARDED BY SOME AS A RIVAL TO BUCKINGHAM--JAMES RELIED MORE ON THE EARL OF CARLISLE--CHARACTER OF THE TWO NOBLEMEN BY BISHOP HACKET--SUCCESSFUL INTERVIEWS ON THE PART OF LORD HOLLAND WITH MARIE DE MEDICI--HER DISPOSITION TO FAVOUR CHARLES AS A SUITOR TO HER DAUGHTER--ANECDOTE OF HENRIETTA MARIA AND OF CHARLES’S PORTRAIT--ENCOMIUMS ON HENRIETTA--THE DUCHESS DE CHEVREUSE--HER INFLUENCE OVER ANNE OF AUSTRIA--HER SPLENDOUR--RESENTMENT OF THE COUNT DE SOISSONS ON ACCOUNT OF THE MARRIAGE TREATY WITH ENGLAND--THE WILLINGNESS EVINCED BY HENRIETTA MARIA TO THE MARRIAGE--LORD KENSINGTON’S FLATTERY OF THE QUEEN-MOTHER--THEIR CONVERSATIONS ON THE SUBJECT OF THE SPANISH MATCH--THE MARRIAGE FINALLY CONCLUDED--CHARLES’S CONDUCT TO THE RECUSANTS REGARDED AS A PROOF OF HIS AVERSION TO CATHOLIC HOPES.

CHAPTER IV.

1624-1625.

It is remarked by Sir Henry Wotton, that “a long course of calm and smooth prosperity” had been enjoyed by the Duke of Buckingham under the sway of James I. “I mean,” adds that writer, “long for the ordinary life of favour, and the more notable, because it had been without any visible eclipse or wane in himself, amid divers variations in others.”

Villiers had witnessed the disgrace of Somerset, the degradation of Bacon, the execution of Ralegh, the fall of Coke, without experiencing, in his own fortunes, any symptoms of decline, or knowing more than a temporary displeasure towards himself in the mind of his sovereign.

But the more perilous part of his career was yet to come; when he had to deal with a young prince, whose affections were not undivided, but were liable to an influence foreign to that of his early friend and companion in travel. He had to contend with a character full of generous impulses, but strongly marked by obstinacy in some points, and by weakness of purpose in others. He had also to contend with the future bride of his enamoured sovereign, and that bride a woman of no ordinary determination, and of a sagacity sufficient, if not to guide her right, fully to comprehend the assailable points in the conduct of another.

It was soon remarked that the influence which had predominated during the last reign was hereafter to prevail; for Charles, as an historian remarks, had been linked to the Duke of Buckingham in his father’s life-time, “and now continued to receive him into an admired intimacy and dearness, making him partake of all his counsels and cares, and chief conductor of his affairs; an example rare in this country, to be the favourite of two succeeding princes.”[^[172]]

According to another writer, James had perceived with sorrow the sway obtained by Buckingham over Charles. “Before he died,” thus writes Roger Coke, "he saw his son overruled by his favourite, against his determinate will and pleasure, and the Prince’s own honour and interest, which was a great mortification to him, and which he often complained of, but had not courage to redress."[^[173]] To this influence, Coke attributed all the internal feuds, jealousies, and discords of the nation, and the fatal catastrophe which closed both the career of the Favourite and that of his royal master.

It was a singular coincidence that the three great kingdoms of Europe were governed at this time by young Kings, or rather, virtually, by their favourites. France, in the reign of Louis the XIII., was governed by Richelieu; Spain, in that of Philip the IV., by Olivares; England by Buckingham; “and this,” adds the same historian, “Europe reckoned in those times amidst its unhappy destiny.” Immediately after the funeral of the late king, the marriage of Charles to Henrietta Maria--a union fraught with evils eventually, and replete with early discomfort--was eagerly anticipated both by the Monarch and his favourite. The impatience of Charles to welcome the young Princess as his bride was ascribed to the favourable impression which her youthful loveliness had produced upon his imagination, when he had seen her himself, incognito, two years previously in passing through Paris. But when it is remembered that, after that brief interview, he had been enamoured of the loving Infanta, it will be readily supposed that the influence of persuasion was employed in advancing this ill-starred marriage. It was attributed, indeed, to the rivalry and hatred between Buckingham and Olivares, which had succeeded their professions of amity, and to the eager desire for an alliance with France, England being during the first fifteen years of Charles’s reign, as Coke expressed it, “perfectly French.”

“The Spanish wooing,” observes Miss Strickland, “certainly smoothed the way for the marriage of Charles and Henrietta. It had accustomed the English people to the idea of a Catholic Queen.”[^[174]] The prepossessions of the party mainly interested in the match might indeed easily be gained over by the reputed graces and acquirements of the French Princess. Inheriting from her mother’s family a taste for the fine arts, Henrietta’s musical acquirements were considerable. Her voice was by nature so sweet and powerful, that if she had not been a queen, she might have been, as Disraeli observes, “Prima Donna of Europe.” She had learned to dance with grace, and became, even during her childhood, a frequent performer in the court ballets, which, with other displays and festivities, are said to have interrupted the education of the young Princess, and to have prevented her from receiving a solid course of instruction.

Two noblemen, one of them the peculiar favourite and creature of the Duke of Buckingham, had been sent during the previous year to negotiate the marriage. Of these the most able and least scrupulous was Henry Rich, created first Baron Kensington, and afterwards Earl of Holland, who is described as having been of a lovely and winning presence, and of gentle conversation. The younger son of a noble house, the obloquy which was attached to his birth, which was supposed to be illegitimate,[^[175]] had kept Rich, in early life, humble. He had adopted the profession of arms, and made several campaigns in the Low Countries. Happening, as was the custom of English volunteers, to visit England during the winter, the youth had been introduced at the Court of James in the dawn of Buckingham’s favour. He shortly made himself acceptable to the Favourite, for he was subtle, discerning and artful. He soon, therefore, laid aside all thoughts of becoming a soldier, but took every means of endearing himself to Buckingham, carefully avoiding all suspicion that the King had any kindness for him, but appearing to rest solely upon the Favourite, “whose creature” he desired to be considered; “and he prospered,” remarks Lord Clarendon, “so well in that pretence, that the King scarcely made more haste to absolve the debt, than the Duke did to promote the other.”[^[176]] Under such auspices, the Earl of Holland had risen soon to greatness.

A wealthy marriage with the heiress of Sir Walter Coke brought him, among other sources of wealth, the Manor of Kensington, and made him the owner of Holland House, built by his father-in-law in 1607, but greatly enlarged and embellished. Through the influence of Buckingham, he had not only been created Baron of Kensington, but placed about the person of the Prince of Wales, a step of much hazard, as the Favourite was, at that time, scarcely certain of the favour of Charles to himself.[^[177]] Holland was sent to Spain before the Prince and the Duke, so that he had acquired an insight, not only into the politics of that court, but into the character of those with whom he had to deal, whose foibles were, as he conceived, to contribute some of the stepping-stones to his own fortune.

The Earl of Holland had had,[had,] says Bishop Hacket, “an amorous temper and a wise head, and could court it as smoothly as any man with the French ladies; and made so fortunate an account into England, after three months of his introductions, that he saw no fear of denial in the suit, nor of superiority in the articles.”[^[178]] But James, wisely relying less upon the crafty arts of Holland, than upon the integrity of the Earl of Carlisle, had sent that nobleman afterwards, joining him in the same commission with Holland. “They were,” added Bishop Hacket, “peers of the best lustre in our court, elegant in their persons, habit, and language, and, by their nearness to King James, apt scholars to learn the principles of wisdom, and the fitter to improve their instructions to honour and safety.”[^[179]]

The Earl of Holland soon discovered that in the queen-mother, Marie de Medici, the widow of Henry the Great, alone centred the real sway in France at that period,[^[180]] unhappily for the young Prince, her son, who crouched beneath her rule and that of Richelieu. During frequent interviews at the Louvre, he gained from her a promise of assistance; this was even before the return of Charles and Buckingham from Spain, as the postscript of a letter from the Earl of Holland, lately created Earl of Kensington, dated Feb. 26, 1624, and addressed to Charles, certifies. “The obligations you have unto this young Queen (Anne of Austria) are strange, for with the same affections that the Queen, your sister, would do, she asks of you, with all the expressions that are possible of joy, for your safe return out of Spain, and told me that she durst say you were weary of being there, and so should she, though a Spaniard; though I find she gives over all thought of your alliance with her sister. Sir, you have the fortune to have respects put upon you unlooked for; for, as in Spain the Queen there did you good offices, so I find will this sweet Queen do, who said she was sorry when you saw them practise their masques, that madam, her sister[^[181]] (whom she dearly loves), was seen to so much disadvantage by you; to be seen afar off and in a dark room, whose person and face hath most loveliness to be considered nearly. She made me show her your picture, the which she let the ladies see, with infinite commendations of your person, saying she hoped some good occasion might bring you hither, that they might see you like yourself.”[^[182]]

“The French match,” according to another eyewitness, “went on by fits;” the Earl of Carlisle growing so weary of frivolous objections and delays that he wished to return home. “The young lady,” adds the same informant, “is forward, and this week sent one over with her picture to the Prince, and where any rubb or slip comes in the way, she grows melancholique and keeps her chamber.”[^[183]] Nevertheless, even in this early stage of the business, we find a letter from King James to the Duke of Buckingham, commanding him to put the royal navy into readiness “to bring over the Princess Henrietta.”[^[184]]

Shortly afterwards, Lord Kensington wrote again, giving Charles, whom he addresses as the “most complete young Prince and person in the world,” the flattering intelligence that the fair Henrietta had expressed a passionate desire to see his picture, “the shadow of that person so honoured,” yet knew not “the means,” adds the ambassador, “to compass it, it being worn about my neck; for though others, as the Queen and Princesses, would open it and consider it, which even brought forth admiration from them, yet durst not this poor young lady look any otherwise on it than afar off, whose heart was nearer it than any of the others that did most gaze upon it.” Resolved, however, to behold the portrait of her royal suitor, Henrietta desired the gentlewoman in whose house the ambassador was lodged, and who was a former servant of hers, to borrow the picture secretly, assigning as an excuse that "she could not want that curiosity, as well as others, towards a person of the Prince’s infinite reputation." As soon as she saw her emissary enter her room, the Princess retired into her cabinet, calling her in, “where,” says Holland, “she opened the picture in such haste as shewed a picture of her passion, blushing in the instant at her own guiltiness. She kept it an hour in her hands, and when she returned it she gave it many praises of your person.” “Sir,” continues the ambassador, well comprehending the gallant and delicate nature of him whom he addressed, "this is a business fit for your secrecy, as I know it shall never go farther than unto the King your father, my Lord of Buckingham, and my Lord of Carlisle’s knowledge. A tenderness in this is honourable; for I would rather die a thousand times than it should be published, since I am by this young lady trusted, that is for beauty and goodness an angel."[^[185]]

Amongst the most powerful advocates of Prince Charles in the French Court was the Duchess de Chevreuse, to whose influence over Anne of Austria has been attributed her subsequent imprudent encouragement of Buckingham’s discreditable addresses.[^[186]] Formerly the wife of the Duc de Luises, the favourite of Louis the Thirteenth, but married afterwards to the Duc de Chevreuse, a Prince of the House of Lorraine, the Duchess de Chevreuse became the great star of the gay and dissolute scenes in which the young Queen of France sought to bury the remembrance of a husband from whom she recoiled, and of a Queen-Mother and Minister of State whom she both disliked and feared. The Duchess, whose banishment from Court, sometime afterwards, was an event never forgiven by Anne of Austria, was one of the most splendid and lavish as well as the gayest and most fascinating women of her day. Lord Kensington, visiting her one evening at the Louvre, found her and the Duc de Chevreuse dressing themselves for a masque, and covered with such a profusion of jewels as even he never expected again to behold adorning subjects. Shortly afterwards, there entered Anne of Austria and Henrietta, the latter full of glee, of which, as many persons told the ambassador, “the cause might easily be guessed.” “My Lord,” adds the Lord Kensington, addressing the Duke of Buckingham, “I protest to God she is a lovely, sweet young creature. Her growth is not great yet, but her shape is perfect; and they all swear that her sister, the Princess of Piedmont (who is now grown tall and a goodly lady), was not taller than she is at her age.” He feared that Anne ever would be reserved towards him, not liking the “breach and disorder of the Spanish treaty;” but she had become, it was observed, “so truly French” as to wish for this affiance rather than that with her own sister, the Infanta of Spain.[^[187]]

Everything therefore proceeded favourably, and Henrietta passed hours in the society of Lord Kensington, expatiating upon the Prince, and touching upon English customs. Among other things, she “fell to speaking,” says Lord Kensington, “of ladies riding on horseback, which, she said, was rare here, but frequent in England; and then expressed her delight in that exercise.”[^[188]]

Lord Kensington continued, meantime, to ply the Queen Dowager with incessant flattery, and to meet her inquiries ingeniously. “I find,” he writes to the Duke of Buckingham, “the queen-mother has the only power of governing in this state. She was willing to know upon what terms stood our Spanish alliance. I told her that their delays had been so tedious that they had sometimes discouraged the King, and had so wearied the Prince and state with the dilatory proceedings in it, as that treaty, I thought, would soon have an end.” So little expectation was, at this time, entertained of an unfavourable termination of the Spanish marriage, that the Queen thought that the ambassador referred to a speedy union between Charles and the Infanta. "She strait said, ‘Of marriage?’ taking it that way. I told her I believed the contrary, and I did so her entreat, because the Spanish ambassador hath given it out, since my coming, that the alliance is fully concluded, and that my journey hath no other end than to hasten his master unto it, only to give them jealousies of me, because he, at this time, fears their dispositions stand too well prepared to desire and affect a conjunction with us."[^[189]]

In another letter, also addressed to the Duke of Buckingham, it appears that Lord Kensington was allowed access at all times to the young French princess, with permission “to entertain her henceforth with a more free and amorous kind of language from the Prince;” and these and other favours were acknowledged by Kensington, as from the Duke of Buckingham, with redoubled thanks, adding that "he knew his lordship would esteem it one of the greatest happinesses that could befall him, to have any occasion offered whereby he might witness how much he adored Her Majesty’s royal virtues, and how infinitely he was her servant, ready to receive law from her, whensoever, by the least syllable of her blessed lips or pen, she should please to impose it." And then followed encomiums in the same letter from the crafty Kensington, who, as he said, solved everything as well as he could, upon the Cardinal de Richelieu, magnifying to the Queen "the Cardinal’s wisdom, his courage, his courtesy, his fidelity to the service, his affection to our business," so as to captivate the queen-mother.[^[190]]

A long conversation followed regarding the voyage into Spain, upon which memorable event the queen-mother remarked “that two kings had committed in it two great errors; the one, in trusting so precious a pledge in so hazardous an enterprize; the other, in treating so brave a guest so ill.” “Indeed, I heard,” said the Queen, “that the Prince was used ill.” “So he was,” returned Lord Kensington, “but not in his entertainment, for that was as splendid as their country could afford; but in their frivolous delay, and in the unreasonable conditions which they propounded.”

“And yet, madam,” added the wily ambassador, “you here use him far worse.” "And how?" inquired the queen-mother; “In that you press,” replied he, "upon that noble and worthy Prince, who hath, with so much affection to your Majesty’s service, with so much passion to Madam, sought this alliance, the same, nay, more unreasonable conditions than the other, and what they traced out for the breaking of the match, you follow, pretending to conclude it," alluding to one of the conditions of the marriage contract. Lord Kensington then requested a personal interview with the young Princess, in order to deliver to her a message from Charles. After some little difficulty, his petition was granted; the queen-mother, relying, as she said, upon his discretion not to utter anything which it might be derogatory to her daughter’s dignity to hear. It was, of course, the endeavour of the ambassador to put the Prince’s addresses in the light of a passionate love-suit. “I obey,” said he, "the Prince’s commands in presenting to your Highness his service, not by way of compliment, but out of passion and affection, which both your outward and inward beauties, the virtues of your mind, so kindle in him that he was resolved to contribute the utmost he could to the alliance in question," with some little other “such amorous language.” Then, turning to the old ladies who stood near the Princess, he thought it fit to let them know that his Highness had the Princess’s picture, which he kept in his cabinet, “and fed his eyes many times with the sight and contemplation of it, since he could not have the happiness of beholding her person.” All which, and many other such speeches, were by the Princess, “standing by, quickly taken up, without letting any one fall to the ground.”[^[191]]