The comprehensive history of England, from the earliest period to the suppression of the Sepoy revolt, by C. MacFarlane and T. Thomson. Continued to signing of the treaty of San Stefano

-that the late queen had often restrained the books; but this debt was presently paid off, and house from meddling in politics of divers kinds. | the Scottish viscount was well matched, being A motion was then made for the appointment of a committee to search for precedents. But here James sent down a second message, telling the house that, though the petition contained matter whereof they could not properly take cognizance, yet, if they thought good to have it read, he was not against the reading. The commons were mollified, and the petition was at last "with general liking agreed to sleep."

married, by the king's desire, to the daughter of the great Earl of Sussex. Towards the end of James's reign he was created an English peer, with the title of Earl of Holderness. Next to Haddington, the prime favourite was Sir James Hay, another Scotchman, whom we have already mentioned, and who was soon created Lord Hay, and subsequently Viscount Doncaster and Earl of Carlisle. Places, honours, gifts, were showOn the 4th of July, 1607, James prorogued the ered upon this Scottish Heliogabalus, who, in parliament till the month of November of the the course of his very jovial life, "spent above same year, but, in effect, it did not meet again £400,000, which, upon a strict computation, he till February, 1610. While it was still sitting, in received from the crown, leaving not a house nor the month of May, 1607, lawless assemblages of acre of land to be remembered by." But nearly neu, women, and children were suddenly ob- all the Scottish favourites, like Carlisle, and their served in Northamptonshire, Warwickshire, and master, the king, spent their money as fast as Leicestershire. The king was greatly alarmed, they could get it; being rapacious, but certainly and at first thought that it must be an organized not avaricious. Nor had they long the field to insurrection, got up either by the Papists or by themselves; for James presently chose to himself the Puritans, who were equally dissatisfied with minions of English birth, to whom he gave far his government. But it was nothing of the sort, more than he ever bestowed on the Scots. The but rather resembled the agricultural riots about first of these favourites was Sir Philip Herbert, inclosures which happened in the time of Ed- brother of the Earl of Pembroke, who was preward VI., and it was soon and easily put down. sently created Earl of Montgomery, found in a Meanwhile James continued his life of indo- rich wife, and loaded with gifts. "The Earl of lence and ease, hunting a good part of the year, Montgomery," says Clarendon, "being a young and lying in bed the greater part of the day when man scarce of age at the entrance of King James, he was not so pleasantly engaged. He even went had the good fortune, by the comeliness of his so far as to say that he would rather return to person, his skill and indefatigable industry in Scotland than be chained for ever to the council- hunting, to be the first who drew the king's eyes table. It was rarely that his subjects could get towards him with affection. Before the access to him in his retreats. When they did, end of the first or second year he was made his address and demeanour, and appointments, gentleman of the king's bedchamber and Earl clashed strangely with the notion of a most royal of Montgomery. . . . He pretended to no other and heaven-descended prince, the image, as he qualifications than to understand horses and called himself, of the Godhead. He was dressed dogs very well; which his master loved him all over in colours green as the grass, with a the better for, being at his first coming into little feather in his cap, and a horn instead of a England very jealous of those who had the resword by his side. His queen, Anne of Den-putation of great parts." The Viscount Hadmark, was as fond of dancing and masks, fine dresses, and costly entertainments, as he was of hunting; nor had she, on the whole, much more personal dignity than her husband. She was dissipated, thoughtless, extravagant, and had her favourites. But it was the monstrous favouritism of James that withdrew the eyes of all from his other follies and the follies of the queen. When he first entered England, the man he most delighted to honour and enrich was Sir John Ramsay, who had stabbed the Earl of Gowrie at the time of the alleged conspiracy, for which he had been promoted by James to be Viscount Haddington. As soon as they were fairly settled in the land of promise, he received leases of crown-lands, gifts, and pensions. Haddington had recently been £10,000 deep in the merchants'

1 Osborne.

dington, the Scottish favourite, became jealous of Montgomery, and struck the English favourite with his whip on a public race-course at Croydon; an insult which the English took up as offered not merely to the spiritless minion, who had not courage to resent it, but to the whole nation; "so far as Mr. John Pinchback, though a maimed man, having but the perfect use of two fingers, rode about with his dagger in his hand, crying, 'Let us break our fast with them here and dine with the rest at London.' But Herbert, not offering to strike again, there was nothing spilt but the reputation of a gentleman."3 coward's mother, the high-minded sister of Sir Philip Sidney, tore her hair when she heard of her son's dishonour. James took the matter into his own hands, sent Haddington to the Tower

2 Clarendon, History of the Great Rebellion.

This

3 Osborne.

for a short time, and then reconciled the parties. the Latinity of James's preceptor, Buchanan, or He had a deal of work of the like kind-for the of Cicero and Horace. On Christmas Eve, 1607, Scottish and English courtiers quarrelled inces- the new favourite was knighted, and sworn gensantly, and sometimes fought to the death. tleman of the bedchamber, which place kept him constantly about the king, who took no care to conceal his nauseous affection from the court, leaning on his arm, pinching his cheek, smoothing his ruffled garment, and looking in his face even when directing his discourse to others. Soon everybody who had to ask a favour, to press a suit, or to demand simple justice, found that the surest road to success was through the good graces and protection of Sir Robert Carr. It was at first feared that Carr, as a Scot, would especially favour his own countrymen; but this was not the case, probably because the English lords and ladies could pay him best. "He even appeared to be endeavouring to forget his native country, and his father's house, having none of note about him but English. But, above all, was Sir Thomas Overbury his Pythias." This close friendship, which ended in the murder of Overbury, commenced with Carr's first appearance at

flatter Sir Thomas, on account of the influence he had with his friend. Cecil and Suffolk, who were rivals, tried hard which should engross him and make him their monopoly. All this seems to have inflated Overbury, who was otherwise moderate and cunning, and a man of excellent parts and accomplishments. But it was not until after the death of Cecil, in 1612, that the minion was allowed to take his flight to the pinnacle of honour, and to become a sort of dictator both in court and kingdom.

When Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery, saw himself supplanted in the king's strange favour by a new comer, he betrayed no resentment, but clung to the new minion as to a bosom friend-a line of conduct which quite charmed the king, and which secured to Herbert a continuance of the royal liberality and good-will. This new favourite, who over-topped all his predecessors, and first put the monstrous folly or vice of James in its full and disgusting light, was Robert Carr, or Ker, of the Border family of Fernyherst, which had suffered severely in the cause of the king's mother. It is said that, when a mere child, Robert Carr had been page to James. In his youth he went over to France, according to the custom of Scottish gentlemen, and there acquired many courtly graces and accomplishments. He was poor, even beyond the bounds of Scottish poverty, but "straight-limbed, well-favoured, strong-shouldered, and smooth-court; and it became the custom to bribe and faced, with some sort of cunning and show of modesty;" and he had been taught that personal beauty, gay dress, and manners, would make him a fortune at court. He had recently returned from the Continent, and the gloss was not off his French-cut doublet when he appeared, in the month of July, 1606, as page or esquire to the Lord Dingwall, in a grand tilting-match at Westminster. In the course of the chivalrous entertainment he had to present his lord's shield to the king. In doing this his horse fell with him, or threw him, close to James's feet. His leg was broken, but his fortune was made. The king, struck with his beauty, and tenderly moved by his accident, ordered him to be instantly carried into Master Rider's house at Charing Cross, sent his own surgeon to attend him, and, as soon as the tilting was over-"having little desire to behold the triumph, but much to have it ended" -he flew to visit him, and wait upon him in person; and after, by his daily visiting and mourning over him, taking all care for his speedy recovery, he made the day-break of his glory appear." Carr, at this time, was scarcely of age, and as James soon found out that the more scholastic part of his education had been sadly neglected, he undertook to teach him Latin himself, and gave him a lesson every morning. And soon he began to give court places and rich presents-things which Carr coveted more than all 1 Nuga Ant.

2 "Lord!" exclaims Sir Anthony Weldon, "how the great men flocked then to see him, and to offer to his shrine in such abundance, that the king was forced to lay a restraint, lest it might retard his recovery by spending his spirits. And to facilitate the cure, care was taken for a choice diet for himself

All the rest of Europe might A.D. 1608, 1609. despise the personal character and the timid policy of the English monarch; but there was one infant republic obliged, by circumstances which he had not made, to look to James with anxiety and awe. This was the government of Holland and the United Provinces, some of the keys to which he held in the cautionary towns of Flushing, Brill, and Ram mekens. At one moment there was a report that James was in treaty with Philip III. for the sale of those places which the Dutch had not been able or willing to redeem with money; and after concluding his treaty of peace with Spain, by which he bound himself to be neutral, he had permitted troops to be levied in England for the service of the Spaniards and the Archduke Albert, who yet flattered himself with hopes of reducing the free States. In the end, the arch

and chirurgeons with his attendants, and no sooner recovered but a proclaimed favourite.'

"I think some one should teach him English too; for, as he is a Scottish lad, he hath much need of better language. ' Letter of Lord Thomas Howard to Sir John Harrington. Naga Ant.

4 Weldon

duke either made or listened to an overture to negotiate separately with the Dutch, upon the basis of their independence, without communication with James, who would fain have held himself as arbitrator, or with any other party. When a truce was agreed upon with the archduke, the Dutch, in the month of April, 1607, informed the King of France that they had opened negotiations for a definitive peace with Spain, and invited their ally, Henry, to participate with them in the treaty. Three months after, the States condescended to give, in a formal manner, the same intelligence and the same invitation to the King of England. The vanity of James must have been hurt, but he acceded with alacrity, and joined himself with Henry IV., as mediator and guarantee. On the 29th of March, 1609, a truce was concluded for twelve years between Spain and the new republic-a truce equivalent to a peace. By this treaty the brave and persevering Hollanders, after a forty years' war, obtained from their tyrannical masters entire independence, liberty to trade to the Indies, and the closing of the Scheldt. James got for himself the acknowledgment of a debt of £818,000, as the sum total of what was due to the English crown; and the promise of the States to discharge this debt by annual instalments of £60,000 each. In the meanwhile, and until liquidation, James was to retain possession of Flushing, Brill, and Rammekens.'

The grand merit-perhaps the greatest of Elizabeth's government-was its strict order and economy. This, as we have remarked before, enabled her to maintain her high notions of prerogative, which were, however, on most public occasions, coloured over with kind and popular language, and varnished with dignity and grace.2 But James was extravagant beyond all precedent, and he allowed the queen and his children, or the corrupt and greedy courtiers about them, to squander great sums. He was always in want of money. In the third year of his reign he could neither pay his servants, nor decently supply his own table. The treasurer, Lord Dorset, was stopped in the streets by the servants of the household, who wanted their wages, and the purveyors refused further supplies till they should he settled with. Upon the death of the Earl of Dorset, in 1608, the Earl of Salisbury (Cecil) succeeded to the post of treasurer, still retaining his secretaryship of state. The Earl of Northampton, who became lord privy-seal about the same time, had considerable authority or influ

Rymer; Birch, Negotiations; Stow.

"Your queen (Elizabeth) did talk of her subjects' love and affection, and, in good truth, she aimed well; our king talketh of his subjects' fear and subjection, and herein I think he doth well too, as long as it holdeth good."-Lord T. Howard to Harrington. Nuga Ant.

ence with the king; but Cecil might be regarded now as prime minister, or sole acting minister of England. He found the treasury empty, but fortunately a portion of the subsidies had not yet been paid in and spent. This money was something to stand by, and his fertile mind devised other means of raising supplies without consent of parliament. Monopolies more oppressive than any that had preceded them were established and bartered; a right of fishery off the coasts of England and Scotland was sold to the Dutch; a feudal aid of twenty shillings on each knight's fee was levied by an old law, and duties were imposed upon the import and export of goods by the prerogative alone, without any reference even to the sanction of parliament. In the latter course Dorset had begun before him, by laying an import duty on Corinth raisins, or currants, by letters-patent. Bates, a Turkey merchant, resisted payment. He was proceeded against in the Court of Exchequer, where the barons decided for the crown, and laid down a right of taxation in the king without parliament, which was highly satisfactory to James and his ministers. With this precedent before him, Cecil went boldly to work, and imposed duties upon various kinds of goods by orders under the great seal. But all these sources of revenue were not sufficient to supply James's expenditure, and he was driven by his necessities to call together again his parliament, which had been prorogued some thirty months.

The houses began their session A.D. 1610. on the 14th of February, when Cecil represented to the lords, instead of causing it to be represented to the commons, that the king's necessities were such as to call for an immediate supply. Neither time nor anything else was gained by this irregular mode of proceeding, and the minister was brought to a dead pause by the murmurs of the commons, who took up the question of taxation and duty-making. Several of the members had sifted the legal authorities, and had arrived at the conclusion that the decision of the barons of the exchequer in the case of Bates was illegal. Hakewill and Yelverton made two elaborate speeches to this effect, and they were lamely answered by Bacon and Sir John Davis, who sustained the cause of prerogative. The opposition became resolute and clamorous. James intimated, by a message, that they must not talk upon such subjects; but it appears that they talked louder than ever. He then called both houses before him at Whitehall, and delivered to them a long lecture, which was at once blasphemous and ridiculous. "Kings," said this unroyal specimen, "are justly called gods, for that they exercise a manner or resemblance of Divine power upon earth; for, if you will con

James had also, very soon

after his accession, both on coins and in proclamations, assumed the title of King of Great Britain; and here, in prudence, he ought to have stopped, and left the rest to the salutary operation of time and peaceful intercourse. But he drove on to his end, and was greatly enraged with the commons when they rejected his proposition for the naturalization of the ante-nati, or Scots born before his accession to the English throne. A decision, however, soon after obtained in the courts of law, extended the rights of naturalization to all Scots who were post-nati, or born after the king's accession; so that in the course of a few years the mass of the Scots would become natural subjects of the English crown. The commons did not venture to call in question this right of the post-nati, though it was evident that they did not admit it with very good will When urged to go farther they invented all kinds of difficulties and delays, which called forth another harsh schooling from the king. In his speech to the two houses, which had the haughtiness but not the dignity of Elizabeth, he threatened to abandon London, and fix his resi

bitterness to certain discourses which had been made in the commons' house.'

manlike speech in support of the measure. But king's dominions. the two countries were in no respects prepared; the antipathies, prejudices, and hostilities of centuries were not to be cured in three short years; and many recent circumstances and indications had tended greatly to indispose men's minds, on either side the Tweed, to the grand political experiment. James had so openly and coarsely announced his creed of prerogative that alarms were excited, and people were averse to any measure that might increase his sovereign power. We have already mentioned his determined predilection for Episcopacy; and it was generally understood that the state union would be accompanied by a church union, the Scots being made | to conform to the Anglican establishment, which they regarded, and which James himself had at one time professed to regard, as something little short of Papistry. The king, moreover, had dwelt continually upon the great superiority of the laws of England, which the Scots had no inclination to adopt. Nor is it ever easy to change the laws and institutions of a people except by absolute conquest. The Scots were justly proud of their hardly contested and preserved independence: they regarded with indignation and horror every-dence at York or Berwick; and he alluded with thing which seemed to fix the badge of submission or inferiority upon them. The English, on the other side, scarcely less proud, were avowedly averse to admitting the Scots to a footing of equality; and the king's indiscretion, at the commencement of his reign, in lavishing English money, posts, and titles, upon some Scottish favourites, had raised a popular clamour that the country was to be overrun and devoured by their poor and hungry neighbours. At different stages of the debates several members of the commons gave full expression to the most angry and contemptuous feeling against James's countrymen. Sir Christopher Pigot, member for Buckinghamshire, expressed his astonishment and horror at the notion of a union between a rich and fertile country like England, and a land like Scotland, poor, barren, and disgraced by nature-between rich, frank, and honest men, and a proud, beggarly, and traitorous race. The whole Scottish nation hotly resented these gross insults, and threatened to take up arms to avenge them. James, in an agony of alarm, rebuked Cecil for allowing such expressions to pass unnoticed; and he declared to his council that the insult touched him as a Scot. Next he rebuked and threatened the commons, who thereupon expelled Pigot, and even committed him to the Tower. In the session of 1604 the English and Scotch commissioners had agreed to the entire abrogation of all hostile laws between the two kingdoms, to the abolition of Border courts and customs, and to a free intercourse of trade throughout the

The commons, who had already learned that James could bark better than he could bite, would not take this castigation in silence. They made known to him, through the speaker, their earnest desire that he would listen to no private reports of their doings, but take his information of the house's meaning from themselves; that be would be pleased to allow such members as he had blamed to clear themselves in his hearing; and that he would, by some gracious message, let them know that they might deliver their opinions in their places without restraint or fear. On the very next day he civilly replied, through the speaker, that he wished to preserve their privileges, especially that of liberty of speech. And yet, a very few days after this message, he was interfering again, and commenting on their speeches, telling them that they were too much given to the discussion of matters above their comprehension. Nay, when they moved the reading of a petition, which contained strong remonstrances against eeclesiastical abuses, and in favour of the deprived and persecuted Puritan preachers, the speaker. according to orders received, told the house that his majesty reserved these matters to himself, and would not be pressed thereon. Some members cried out that this was an infringement of their liberties; but the speaker told them (and truly enough) that there were many precedents

1 Commons' Journals; Parl. Hist.; Ambassades de la Bodru 2 Journals.

-that the late queen had often restrained the house from meddling in politics of divers kinds. A motion was then made for the appointment of a committee to search for precedents. But here James sent down a second message, telling the house that, though the petition contained matter whereof they could not properly take cognizance, yet, if they thought good to have it read, he was not against the reading. The commons were mollified, and the petition was at last "with general liking agreed to sleep.”

books; but this debt was presently paid off, and the Scottish viscount was well matched, being married, by the king's desire, to the daughter of the great Earl of Sussex. Towards the end of James's reign he was created an English peer, with the title of Earl of Holderness. Next to Haddington, the prime favourite was Sir James Hay, another Scotchman, whom we have already mentioned, and who was soon created Lord Hay, and subsequently Viscount Doncaster and Earl of Carlisle. Places, honours, gifts, were showOn the 4th of July, 1607, James prorogued the ered upon this Scottish Heliogabalus, who, in parliament till the month of November of the the course of his very jovial life, "spent above same year, but, in effect, it did not meet again £400,000, which, upon a strict computation, he till February, 1610. While it was still sitting, in received from the crown, leaving not a house nor the month of May, 1607, lawless assemblages of acre of land to be remembered by." But nearly men, women, and children were suddenly ob- all the Scottish favourites, like Carlisle, and their served in Northamptonshire, Warwickshire, and master, the king, spent their money as fast as Leicestershire. The king was greatly alarmed, they could get it; being rapacious, but certainly and at first thought that it must be an organized not avaricious. Nor had they long the field to insurrection, got up either by the Papists or by themselves; for James presently chose to himself the Puritans, who were equally dissatisfied with minions of English birth, to whom he gave far his government. But it was nothing of the sort, more than he ever bestowed on the Scots. The but rather resembled the agricultural riots about first of these favourites was Sir Philip Herbert, inclosures which happened in the time of Ed- brother of the Earl of Pembroke, who was preward VI., and it was soon and easily put down. sently created Earl of Montgomery, found in a Meanwhile James continued his life of indo- rich wife, and loaded with gifts. "The Earl of lence and ease, hunting a good part of the year, Montgomery," says Clarendon, "being a young and lying in bed the greater part of the day when man scarce of age at the entrance of King James, he was not so pleasantly engaged. He even went had the good fortune, by the comeliness of his so far as to say that he would rather return to person, his skill and indefatigable industry in Scotland than be chained for ever to the council- hunting, to be the first who drew the king's eyes table. It was rarely that his subjects could get towards him with affection. Before the access to him in his retreats. When they did, end of the first or second year he was made his address and demeanour, and appointments, gentleman of the king's bedchamber and Earl clashed strangely with the notion of a most royal of Montgomery. He pretended to no other and heaven-descended prince, the image, as he qualifications than to understand horses and called himself, of the Godhead. He was dressed dogs very well; which his master loved him all over in colours green as the grass, with a the better for, being at his first coming into little feather in his cap, and a horn instead of a England very jealous of those who had the resword by his side. His queen, Anne of Den-putation of great parts." The Viscount Hadmark, was as fond of dancing and masks, fine dresses, and costly entertainments, as he was of bunting; nor had she, on the whole, much more Dersonal dignity than her husband. She was dissipated, thoughtless, extravagant, and had her avourites. But it was the monstrous favouritsm of James that withdrew the eyes of all from is other follies and the follies of the queen. When he first entered England, the man he most delighted to honour and enrich was Sir John Ramsay, who had stabbed the Earl of Gowrie at he time of the alleged conspiracy, for which he ad been promoted by James to be Viscount Haddington. As soon as they were fairly settled the land of promise, he received leases of Town-lands, gifts, and pensions. Haddington had ecently been £10,000 deep in the merchants'

1 Osborne.

...

dington, the Scottish favourite, became jealous of Montgomery, and struck the English favourite with his whip on a public race-course at Croydon; an insult which the English took up as offered not merely to the spiritless minion, who had not courage to resent it, but to the whole nation; so far as Mr. John Pinchback, though a maimed man, having but the perfect use of two fingers, rode about with his dagger in his hand, crying, 'Let us break our fast with them here and dine with the rest at London.' But Herbert, not offering to strike again, there was nothing spilt but the reputation of a gentleman." This coward's mother, the high-minded sister of Sir Philip Sidney, tore her hair when she heard of her son's dishonour. James took the matter into his own hands, sent Haddington to the Tower

2 Clarendon, History of the Great Rebellion,

3 Osborne.

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