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CHAPTER III.-CIVIL AND MILITARY HISTORY.-A. D. 1614-1618.

JAMES I.

Continuing prodigality of James-He is compelled to meet his parliament-His ministers undertake to manage it-Their failure in the attempt-Tyrannical proceedings of the Star Chamber-Its cruel treatment of Edmond Peachum-George Villiers, a new royal favourite, appears-His rise in the king's favour-The Earl of Somerset discarded-He is accused of the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury-Trials connected with the eventStrange particulars of Somerset's trial-His singular mode of eluding condemnation-Lord Bacon's services in the trial-Rivalry and quarrels between him and Coke-James seeks a wife for his son Charles-Rapid rise of Villiers, the new favourite-James visits Scotland-His attempts to subvert the Church of Scotland and establish bishops over it-Resistance of Andrew Melvil to the innovations-He and other Scottish ministers banished-Resistance to Episcopacy in Scotland-Bishops imposed on the Scots-Attempts of James to win over the Scots to his changes-His hostility to English Puritanism-His attempts to establish the Book of Sports in England-Extravagant conduct of Lord Bacon during the king's absence-His abject behaviour on the return of James-Bacon's intrigues to recover his influence His plots to accomplish the marriage of the favourite's brother-He is created Baron Verulam-The favourite's aggrandizement of his relatives-His own high offices-He is created a marquis.

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INCE the dissolution of parliament | plan for managing the House of Commons, asin 1611, James had attempted, assured the king that the chief leaders of the late usual, to raise loans by writs under opposition, such as Neville, Yelverton, Hyde, the great seal; but the merchants Crew, and Sir Dudley Digges, had been won to whom he principally applied over to the court; that much might be done by refused him the accommodation. forethought towards filling the House of ComHe opened a market for the sale of honours; mons with persons well affected to his majesty, sold several peerages for large sums; and created winning or blinding the lawyers, the literæ voa new order of knights called baronets, whose ciles of the house, and drawing the country honours were hereditary, and who paid £1000 gentlemen, the merchants, the courtiers, to act each for their patents under the great seal. He with one accord for the king's advantage. But still continued giving with as lavish a hand as Bacon told James, at the same time, that it would ever to these servants, by which must be under- be expedient to tender voluntarily certain graces stood his favourities and courtiers, for the true and modifications of the prerogative, such as servants of the state were often left unpaid, and might with smallest injury be conceded. This told that they must support themselves on their advice was seconded by Sir Henry Neville, a private patrimonies. Such as obtained the higher place-hunter, as ambitious a man as Bacon, and employments paid themselves by means of bribes scarcely more honest. In a well-written memoand peculations. These places were generally rial, he suggested to his majesty that he should sold to the highest bidders by the minion So- consider what had been demanded by the commerset and the noble Howards. Thus, Sir Fulke mons, and what promised by the crown during Greville obtained the chancellorship of the ex- the last session; that he should grant now the chequer for the sum of £4000, which he paid to more reasonable of the commons' requests, and Lady Suffolk, now the favourite's mother-in-law.' keep all the promises which he had actually made; The States of Holland had neither paid prin- that he should avoid irritating speeches to his cipal nor interest of their debt. Some of the parliament, and make a show of confidence in ministers proposed adopting bold and decisive their good affections. Upon these conditions, and measures, in order to obtain this money, but under this system, they undertook to manage the James was too timid to follow their advice; and commons (the lords had long been tame enough), as his exchequer was bare and his credit ex- and carry the king triumphantly through parhausted, he reluctantly made up his mind to liament to abundant votes of the public money; meet parliament once more. It appears that and hence they were called undertakers. James, even at this extremity he would have avoided a in his embarrassments, acceded to the plan, and parliament had it not been for Bacon, who was Somerset put himself at the head of it with now attorney-general, and high in the royal fa- Bacon and Neville. On the 5th of April, 1614, vour, from which his rival, Coke, had wonderfully declined. Bacon, who had drawn up a regular by him in Const. Hist. 2 Original MSS. in the possession of Mr. Hallam, as quoted Arthur Wilson says, "Yet there was a generation about the

1 Birch, Negotiations.

3 Carte.

the king opened the session with a conciliatory | private consultation with the rest of the judges, speech, descanting on the alarming growth of declined giving any opinion to the lords touchPopery (he knew a little persecution would please them well), and on his zeal for the true religion; and then he told them how much he was in want of money, and how many graces he intended for them in this present session. But the commons would not be cajoled: they passed at once to the great grievance the customs at the outports and impositions by prerogative. "And such faces appeared there as made the court droop." Some of the courtiers and members returned or won over by the "undertakers," made a faint effort, but their voice was drowned, and died away in a helpless murmur about the hereditary right

SIR FRANCIS BACON.-After a portrait by Vansomer.

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of kings to tax their subjects as they list. commons demanded a conference on this momentous subject with the lords. The lords hesitated, and consulted with the judges. Before the opinion of the latter was known, the commons objected to the way in which several members had been elected, and they went nigh to expel the attorney-general, Bacon. Coke, who had attained to the chief-justiceship of the King's Bench, who could hope for no higher promotion, and who was irritated into something like patriotism by his hatred of Bacon and the ill-usage he had received from the court, after a court, that to please and humour greatness, undertook a parliament, as men presuming to have friends in every county and borough, who by their power among the people, would make election of such members for knights and burgesses as should comply solely to the king's desires; and Somerset is the head and chief of these undertakers. But this was but an embrion,

and became an abortive."

ing the legality of impositions on merchandise by prerogative, because it was proper that he and his brethren, who were to speak judicially between the king and his subjects, should be disputants in no cause on any side. The lords, who had expected a very different answer, now declined the conference; and Neyle, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, who, for the share he had taken in the Countess of Essex's divorce, had been recently translated to the see of Lincoln, rose in his place, and said that the commons were striking at the root of the prerogative, and that, if admitted to conference, they might proceed to undutiful and seditious speeches, unfit for the ears of their lordships. This Neyle was one of the worst of James's bench of bishops, and an object of detestation to the Puritans, whom he had harassed and persecuted. The commons fell upon him in a fury, and demanded reparation; for the practice did not yet obtain of one house of parliament supposing itself ignorant of what is done or said in the other house. The bishop instantly changed his tone, excused himself, and, with many tears, denied the most offensive of the words which had been attributed to him. By this time James must have discovered that the undertakers had engaged for more than they could accomplish. Indeed, the discovery of this scheme, which was made public before the meeting of parliament, contributed to the ill-humour of the lower house. James, in his opening speech, positively denied that there was any such plan entertained, protesting that, "for undertakers, he never was so base to call, or rely on any ;" and Bacon had pretended to laugh at the notion that private men should undertake for the commons of England. A few days after, Sir Henry Neville's memorial to the king was read at full length in the house, and at the opening of the session of 1621 James himself expressly confessed that there had been such a scheme. Seeing no likelihood of the despatch of the business for which alone he had summoned them, James sent a message, that if they further delayed voting supplies he would dissolve parliament. The commons, in reply, stated that they would vote no supplies till their grievances should be redressed. It is said, on a questionable authority, that he then sent for the commons, and tore all their bills before their faces in Whitehall; but, whatever was James's indiscretion, his cowardice would be likely to prevent such an offensive and violent act. What is certain, however, is, that he carried his threat into execution on the 7th of June, and, on the following morning, committed five of the members to the Tower, for "licentiousness of speech."

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At the time of this hasty and angry dissolution, the parliament had sat two months and two days, but had not passed a single bill. It was afterwards called the Addle Parliament; but few parliaments did more towards the proper establishment of the rights of the commons.' For the next six years James depended upon most uncertain, and, for the greater part, most illegal means. People were dragged into the Star Chamber on all kinds of accusations, that they might be sentenced to pay enormous fines to the king; monopolies and privileges were invented and sold, and the odious benevolences were brought again into full play; and such as would not contribute had their names returned to the privy council. Mr. Oliver St. John, who put himself in this predicament, who explained his reasons in writing like a lawyer and statesman, and who did not spare the king, was sentenced by the Star Chamber to a fine of £5000,

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up to London, and committed to the Tower. There he was examined by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord-chancellor Ellesmere, the Earls of Suffolk and Worcester, Sir Ralph Winwood, the Lord Chief-justice Coke, and others, touching his motives, advisers, and instructors. "I find not the man," wrote Winwood, "to be, as was related, stupid or dull, but to be full of malace and craft." James, who in such cases would always read the law in his own way, insisted that the offence amounted to high treason, and taking up his pen, he drew out for the instruction of his ministers and judges what he called "The true state of the question." But Coke, who had not always been so scrupulous, who, before the tide of his favour was on the ebb, had concurred and co-operated in many arbitrary measures, maintained that the offence might be a criminal slander, but did not amount to treason. On the next merciless examination of the prisoner, Coke was not present; but his rival Bacon was there, in his stead, and an assenting witness to the atrocities committed. Twelve interrogatories were put to the preacher, who, according to the horribly concise expression of Secretary Winwood, in his report, was examined upon them, "before torture, in torture, between torture, and after torture." "Notwithstanding," continues Winwood, "nothing could be drawn from him, he still persisting in his obstinate and insensible denials and former answer." Some two months after, the poor captive changed his key somewhat, but still he would make no confession likely to bring any one into trouble; and, in the end, he would not sign this examination, which was taken before Bacon, Crew, and two other lawyers. In the absence, therefore, of all other evidence, James resolved that the manuscript unpreached sermon should be taken as the overt act of treason. And he called in the willing Bacon to smooth the legal difficulties to this strange course. Bacon conferred with the judges one by one, and found them all ready to be as base as himself, except only Coke, who objected that "such particular, and, as he called it, auricular taking of opinions (from the judges) was not according to the custom of this realm." This resistance to his infallibility stung James to the quick, and prepared, perhaps more than any other single circumstance, the triumph of Bacon over his great rival. In the end Coke,

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THE STAR CHAMBER, WESTMINSTER.-From a drawing by J. T. Smith.

and to be imprisoned during the royal pleasure. But greatly as James wanted money, he was of himself disposed to be much less severe against those who refused it than against those who questioned his Divine right in the abstract, or censured his kingly conduct. There was one Edmond Peachum, a minister of the gospel, in Somersetshire, who probably first attracted attention by preaching puritanically. His study was suddenly broken open, and in it was found a manuscript sermon, which had never been preached, sharply censuring the king's extravagance and love of dogs, dances, banquets, and costly dresses, and complaining of the frauds and oppressions practised by his government and officers. The poor old man was seized, dragged

Journals of the Lords and Commons; Harrington, Nuga Ant. Reliq. Wott; Coke: Wilson; Carte; Hallam. See his letter in Cabala.

3 Letter from Secretary Winwood to a lord about King James's person, in Dalrymple Lord Hailes), Memorials, &c.

4 Ibid. The original of this precious performance is preserved in James's own handwriting.

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finding himself standing alone, consented to give | tioned, far more handsome-or so thought the some opinions in writing; but these were evasive, king-than ever Somerset had been, and, unlike and did not lend the king the confirmation of his that now careworn favourite, his face was always high legal authority. "As Judge Hobart, that dressed in smiles. Soon after there was a great rode the western circuit, was drawn to jump but private supper-entertainment at Baynard's with his colleague, the chief baron, Peachum was Castle, at which the noble Herberts, Seymours, sent down to be tried and trussed up in Somer- Russells, and other courtiers of high name, desetshire," where the overt act of writing the libel vised how they should get Somerset wholly out was supposed to have been committed. The of favour and office, and put George Villiers in poor old preacher was accordingly condemned his place.' Their only difficulty was to induce for high treason, on the 7th of August, 1615. the queen to enter into their plot, for they knew They did not, however, proceed to execution, "that the king would never admit any to nearand Peachum died a few months after in Taun- ness about himself but such as the queen should ton jail. This has been considered as the worst commend to him; that if she should complain and most tyrannical act of James's reign; but afterwards of the dear one, he might make anthere are others not at all inferior in violence | swer, it is along of yourself, for you commended and illegality. Those writers who consider this him unto me.' Now, though her majesty Queen reign as an amusing farce, and nothing worse, Anne hated Somerset, she had seen Villiers, and appear to have forgotten such incidents. did not like him. To remove this feeling of the queen's, to labour for the substitution of one base minion for another, was thought a duty not unsuitable to the primate of the English church; and Archbishop Abbot, in his animosity to Somerset, undertook it at the request of the noble lords. In the end, the importunities of the primate prevailed; but Anne told him that they should all live to repent what they were doing in advancing this new minion.3 On St. George's Feast, April 24, 1615, his onomastic day, the young cup-bearer was sworn a gentleman of the privy-chamber, with a salary of £1000 a-year; and on the next day he was knighted. The doom of Somerset was now sealed; his enemies had chuckled over the suc cess of their scheme, and the most timid saw that there would no longer be any danger in accusing the favourite of a horrible crime which had long been imputed to him by the people. He was not so blind to his danger as court favourites have usually been; and before any proceedings were instituted against him he endeavoured to procure a general pardon to secure him in his life and property. Sir Robert Cotton drew one out, as large and general as could be," wherein the king was made to declare, " that, of his own motion and special favour, he did pardon all, and all manner of treasons, misprisions of treasons, murders, felonies, and outrages whatsoever, by the Earl of Somerset committed, or hereafter to be committed." James, hoping thereby to rid himself for ever of his disagreeable importunities,

On the 15th of June, 1614, about a week after the dissolution of the Addle Parliament, the Earl of Northampton, the grand-uncle of Somerset's wife, and the most crafty statesman of that faction, departed this life. His nephew, the Earl of Suffolk, and the favourite, divided his places between them, or filled them up with their own creatures; but his death was a fatal blow to their interests; for they neither had his cunning or ability themselves, nor could procure it in any of their allies and dependants. But they might have maintained their ascendency, had it not been for the appearance at court of another beautiful young man, and for the declining spirits of the actual favourite. Somerset, guilty as he was, was no hardened or heartless sinner. From the time of the death of his friend Overbury a cloud settled upon his brow; his vivacity and good humour departed from him; he neglected his dress and person, and became absent-minded, moody, and morose, even when in the king's company. All the courtiers, who envied him and the Howards, were on the watch, and as James grew sick of his old minion they threw a new one in his way. This was George Villiers, the youngest son of Sir Edward Villiers, of Brookesby, in Leicestershire, by his second wife, a poor and portionless but very beautiful woman. George, who appears, at least for a short time, to have been brought up expressly for the situation he succeeded in obtaining, was sent over to Paris, where he acquired the same accomplishments which had so fascinated the king in the Scottish

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Aulicus Coquinaria (written by William Saunderson, author of a History of James I. See Harris, Life of James L., p. 245,

2 These are Abbot's own words. See Rushworth.
3 Rushworth; R. Coke.

youth, Robert Carr. When he appeared at the edition of 1814).
English court he had all these French graces, a
fine suit of French clothes on his back, and an
allowance of £50 a-year from his widowed mo-
ther. James was enchanted, and in a few weeks
or days young Villiers was installed as his ma-
jesty's cup-bearer. He was tall, finely propor-

4 Such pardons, or pardons very like them, had been sonetimes granted in other cases. Several ministers had obtained them as a security against the malice of their enemies, when their fall should come, and also as a security for doing the will of their sovereign in an illegal or unconstitutional manner. Wolsey had obtained a similar pardon from Henry VIII.

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approved of the document most heartily; but the Chancellor Ellesmere refused to put the great seal to it, alleging that such an act would subject him to a premunire.

Secretary Winwood is said to have been the first to declare to James that the Countess of Essex and Somerset had caused Sir Thomas Overbury to be poisoned. When James privately summoned Elwes, the lieutenant of the Tower, into his presence, and questioned and cross-questioned him, he was fully convinced of the fact; but he still kept the earl about his person, concealed all he knew, and even simulated a return of his former warm affection. He went to hunt at Royston, and took Somerset with him. There, as he seemed "rather in his rising than setting," he was attached by the warrant of the Lord Chief-justice Coke, who, however, had refused to proceed until James had joined several others in commission with him. "The king had a loathsome way of lolling his arms about his favourites' necks, and kissing them; and in this posture Coke's messenger found the king with Somerset, James then saying, 'When shall I see thee again? When shall I see thee again?"" When Somerset got the warrant in the royal presence, he exclaimed, that never had such an affront been offered to a peer of England. "Nay, man," said the king wheedlingly, "if Coke sends for I must go;" and as soon as Somerset was gone he added, "Now the devil go with thee, for I will never see thy face more!" This was at ten o'clock in the morning. About three in the afternoon the lord chief-justice arrived at Royston, and to him James complained that Somerset and his wife had made him a go-between in their adultery and murder. He commanded him, with all the scrutiny possible, to search into the bottom of the foul conspiracy, and to spare no man how great soever. And, in conclusion, he said to Coke, "God's curse be upon you and yours, if you spare any of them; and God's curse be upon me and mine, if I pardon any of them!”1

me,

Coke, who had many motives besides the love of justice, was not idle. He had owed many previous obligations to Somerset; but he saw that earl could never again be of use to him. He and his brother commissioners took three hundred examinations, and then reported to the king that Frances Howard, sometime Countess of Essex, had employed sorcery to incapacitate her lawful husband Essex, and to win the love of Rochester; that afterwards she and her lover, and her uncle, the late Earl of Northampton, had, by their joint contrivance, obtained the committal of Sir Thomas Overbury, the appointment of their creature Elwes to be lieutenant of the Tower, and Que Weston to be warder or keeper of the priso1 Rushico. th; R. Coke.

ner; and, further, that the countess, by the aid of Mrs. Turner, had procured three kinds of poison from Franklin, an apothecary, and that Weston, the warder or keeper, had administered these poisons to Sir Thomas. Coke had also obtained possession of many note-books and letters; and from a passage in a letter from Overbury to Somerset, alluding to the secrets of the latter, he pretended to derive proof that these secrets must have been of a treasonable nature; and he ventured thereupon to charge the earl with having poisoned Prince Henry! In reality there was nothing in Overbury's letter which could bear this construction; Sir Thomas merely said that he had written a history of his confidential connection with the favourite (Somerset), from which his friends might see the extent of that man's ingratitude. The queen, however, entered into Coke's view of the case, and openly declared that she had no doubt of the murder of her eldest son. But the king discouraged this interpretation, and only believed, or pretended to believe, that, in addition to his guilt in being an accomplice in the poisoning of Overbury, Somerset had received bribes from Spain, and had engaged to place Prince Charles in the hands of that court.

Weston, the warder, who had been servant to Franklin, the apothecary who furnished the poison, had been arrested and examined at the first opening of these proceedings, and the countess and all the other guilty parties were secured without any difficulty; for not one of them suspected what was coming. Weston at first stood mute, but his obstinacy gave way to Coke's threats of the peine forte et dure, and to the exhortations of Dr. King, Bishop of London, and he consented to plead. But even then he pleaded not guilty, and so did Mrs. Turner, Franklin the apothecary, and Elwes the lieutenant of the Tower. Their trials disclosed a monstrous medley of profligacy and superstition; and what seems almost equally monstrous, is the fact that the learned Coke, the other judges, and all the spectators believed in the force of astrology and witchcraft, and considered the credulity of two frantic women as the most damnable of their crimes. Mrs. Turner, now the widow of a physician of that name, had been in her youth a dependant in the house of the Earl of Suffolk, and a companion to his beautiful daughter Frances Howard, who contracted a friendship for her which survived their separation. As certain vices, not unknown in the court of the Virgin Queen, had become common and barefaced in that of her successor, it would not be fair to attribute the demoralization of the Lady Frances solely to her connection with this dangerous woman; though it should appear that she led her into the worst of her crimes, and

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