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, "93 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, 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. finding himself standing alone, consented to give | tioned, far more handsome-or so thought the some opinions in writing; but these were evasive, and did not lend the king the confirmation of his high legal authority. "As Judge Hobart, that rode the western circuit, was drawn to jump with his colleague, the chief baron, Peachum was sent down to be tried and trussed up in Somersetshire," where the overt act of writing the libel was supposed to have been committed. The poor old preacher was accordingly condemned for high treason, on the 7th of August, 1615. They did not, however, proceed to execution, and Peachum died a few months after in Taunton jail. This has been considered as the worst and most tyrannical act of James's reign; but there are others not at all inferior in violence and illegality. Those writers who consider this reign as an amusing farce, and nothing worse, appear to have forgotten such incidents. 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 youth, Robert Carr. When he appeared at the 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 mother. James was enchanted, and in a few weeks or days young Villiers was installed as his majesty's cup-bearer. He was tall, finely propor king-than ever Somerset had been, and, unlike that now care worn favourite, his face was always dressed in smiles. Soon after there was a great but private supper-entertainment at Baynard's Castle, at which the noble Herberts, Seymours, Russells, and other courtiers of high name, devised how they should get Somerset wholly out of favour and office, and put George Villiers in his place.' Their only difficulty was to induce the queen to enter into their plot, for they knew "that the king would never admit any to nearness about himself but such as the queen should commend to him; that if she should complain afterwards of the dear one, he might make answer, it is along of yourself, for you commended him unto me."2 Now, though her majesty Queen Anne hated Somerset, she had seen Villiers, and 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, Aulicus Coquinaria (written by William Saunderson, author of a History of James I. See Harris, Life of James L., p. 45, edition of 1814). 2 These are Abbot's own words. See Rushworth. 4 Such pardons, or pardons very like them, had been sonietimes 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. 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. 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. 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 me, 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 after-without any difficulty; for not one of them susnoon 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 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 One Weston to be warder or keeper of the priso1 Rushico. th; R. Coke. 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 pected 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 bury; that Weston administered the poison, which was of several kinds, and procured from his former master Franklin, in Sir Thomas's medicines, soups, and other food; that he, Weston, had told his employers that he had given him poison enough to kill twenty men, administering it in small doses at a time through a course of several months; and that Somerset had commanded, through the Earl of Northampton, that the body of the victim should be buried immediately after his death. Franklin, the apothecary, made a full confession, in the vain hope of saving his own neck; Weston also confessed the murder, and many particulars connected with it. Coke pro criminals. As Weston was on the scaffold at Tyburn, Sir John Holles and Sir John Wentworth, with other devoted friends of the fallen Somerset, rode up to the gallows, and endeavoured to make him retract his confession; but the miserable man merely said, "Fact, or no fact, I die worthily!"-and so was hanged. Elwes, he lieutenant of the Tower, who had made a scaffold, and ascribed his misfortune to his hav ing broken a solemn vow he had once made against gambling. The fate of the beautiful Mrs. Turner excited the most interest. Many women of fashion, as well as men, went in their coaches to Tyburn to see her die. She came to the scaffold rouged and dressed, as if for a ball, with a ruff, stiffened with yellow starch, round her neck; but otherwise she made a very penitent end.' found her the means of executing them. When they renewed their intimacy in London, the Lady Frances was the unwilling wife of Essex, and enamoured of the favourite Rochester. Mrs. Turner had had her illicit amours also; and believing, as most ladies then believed, in the efficacy of spells and love philters, she had found out one Dr. Forman, a great conjuror, living in Lambeth, and who was frequently consulted by court dames and people of the best quality. Forman engaged to make Sir Arthur Mainwaring love Mrs. Turner as much as she loved him; and soon after Sir Arthur travelled many miles by night, and through a terrible storm, to visit the widow. Instead of ascribing this passion to her own per-nounced sentence of death upon all these mino sonal charms-and she was a most beautiful woman-she attributed it entirely to the charms of the conjuror at Lambeth. All this she told to the amorous Lady Essex, who, anxious for a like spell upon Rochester, went with her to the house of Dr. Forman. Like Mrs. Turner, the fair countess thought her beauty less potent than his incantations. She was grateful to him for the favourite's love, and frequently visited him after-stout defence on the trial, confessed all on the wards with Mrs. Turner, calling him "father!" and "very dear father!" It appeared, also, that the countess had secret meetings with Rochester at the house in Lambeth. The wizard was since dead, but they produced in court some of the countess's letters to him, in which she styled him "sweet father!" and some of his magical apparatus, as pictures, puppets, enchanted papers and magic spells, which made the prisoners appear the more odious, as being thus known to have had dealings with witches and wizards. At this point of the proceedings in court, a loud crack was heard from the gallery, which caused great fear, tumult, and confusion among the spectators and throughout the hall, every one fearing hurt, as if the devil had been present, and grown angry to have his workmanship shown by such as were not his own scholars. There was also produced a list on parchment, written by Forman, signifying "what ladies loved what lords" in the court. The Lord Chief-justice Coke grasped this startling document, glanced his eye over it, and then insisted that it should not be read. People immediately said that the first name on the list was that of Coke's own wife, the Lady Hatton. It was further proved though in some respects the evidence seems to have been such as would not satisfy a modern jury that Weston had once lived as a servant with Mrs. Turner, who had recommended him to the countess; that it was at the request of the countess and her uncle Northampton, communicated through her friend Sir Thomas Monson, chief falconer, that Elwes, the of the great Coke, says that the lord chief-justice, Judge Dodlieutenant of the Tower, had received him as ridge, and Judge Hyde, declared Sir Thomas Monson to be as warder, and placed him over Sir Thomas Over-guilty of the murder as any of the others. Both Coke and Bacon eulogized the righteous zeal of the king for the impartial execution of justice; but their praise was at the least premature. James betrayed great uneasiness on hearing that his chief falconer, Sir Thomas Monson, was implicated, and would probably "play an unwelcomed card on his trial." And when Monson was arraigned, some yeomen of the guard, acting under the king's private orders, to the astonishment and indignation of the public, carried him from the bar to the Tower. After a brief interval he was released from that confinement, and allowed not only to go at large, but also to retain some place about the court. As for the trial of the great offenders, the Earl and Countess of Somerset, it was delayed for many months. The delay was imputed for a time to the necessity of waiting for the return of John Digby, the ambassador at Madrid, afterwards Baron Digby and Earl of Bristol, who, it was 1 Mrs. Turner had introduced yellow starched ruffs, &c. The fashion went out with her exit at Tyburn. 2 Roger Coke, the author of the Detection, and the grandson said, could substantiate the late favourite's trea- | tained (it did not materially bear against him), sonable dealings with the Spanish court; but when Digby came he could do nothing of the sort; and everything tends to prove that James had all along a dread of bringing Somerset to trial. Even from the documents which remain, we may see the king's unceasing anxiety, and a system of trick and manoeuvre almost unparalleled, which cannot possibly admit of any other interpretation than this-Somerset was possessed of some dreadful secret, the disclosure of which would have been fatal to the king. The two prisoners, who were kept separate, were constantly beset by ingenious messengers from court, who assured them that, if they would only confess their guilt, all would go well-that they would have the royal pardon to secure them in their lives and estates. Nay, more, there was held out to Somerset, "indirectly as it were, a glimmering of his majesty's benign intention to reinstate him in all his former favour." When we mention that James's chief messenger and agent was Bacon, it will be understood that the business was ably done, and that the hopes and fears of the prisoners were agitated with a powerful hand.' The countess, after much pains had been taken with her, confessed her guilt; but Somerset resisted every attempt, most solemnly protesting his innocence of the murder of Overbury. He earnestly implored to be admitted to the king's presence, saying that, in a quarter of an hour's private conversation, he could establish his innocence, and set the business at rest for ever. But James shrunk from this audience; and the prisoner's request to be allowed to forward a private letter to the king was denied him. Then Somerset threatened instead of praying; declaring that, whenever he should be brought to the bar, he would reveal such things as his ungrateful sovereign would not like to hear. James Hay, afterwards Earl of Carlisle, the friend and countryman of Somerset, and other particular friends, were despatched from time to time by the trembling king to the Tower to work upon the prisoner; but though, in the end, something must have been done by such means, they for a long time produced no visible effect upon the resolution of the earl. When the confession of his wife was ob-ported the king to conceal. On the 24th of May, Bacon and the other commissioners, among whom were Coke and Chancellor Ellesmere, told Somerset that his lady, being touched with remorse, had at last confessed all, and that she that led him to offend ought now, by her example, to lead him to repent of his offence; that the confession of one of them could not singly do either of them much good; but that the confession of both of them might work some further effect towards both; and that therefore they, the commissioners, wished him not to shut the gates of his majesty's mercy against himself by being obdurate any longer. But Somerset would not "come any degree farther on to confess; only his behaviour was very sober, and modest, and mild; but yet, as it seemed, resolved to expect his trial." Then they proceeded to examine him touching the death of Overbury; and they made this farther observation, that, "in the questions of the imprisonment," he was "very cool and modest;" but that, when they asked him "some questions that did touch the prince, or some foreign practice" (which they did "very sparingly"), he "grew a little stirred."3 James received a letter from the prisoner, but not a private one. The tone of the epistle was enigmatical, but bold, like that of a man writing to one over whom he had power.' In it Somerset again demanded a private interview; but James replied that this was a favour he might grant after, but not before his trial.' Bacon's Works: Cabala; State Trials. Bacon was intrusted with the legal management of the case, but he appears hardly to have taken a step without previously consulting the king, who postillated with his own hand the intended charges, and instructed the wily attorneygeneral so to manage matters in court as not to drive Somerset to desperation, or give (in his own words) "occasion for despair or flushes." He was perfectly well understood by Bacon, who undertook to have the prisoner found guilty before the peers without making him too odious to the people. The whole business of Bacon was to put people on a wrong scent, for the purpose of preventing Somerset from making any dangerous disclosure, and the other judges from getting an insight into some iniquitous secret which it im that was what the Lord Chief-justice Coke meant, when he said, at the Earl of Somerset's trial, God knows what went with the good Prince Heury, but I have heard something.' It is by no means clear that Prince Henry is here alluded to. Bacon may possibly refer to the living prince, Charles, and the rumour of Somerset's undertaking to deliver him into the 3 Bacon's letter to the king, in Cabala. In his postscript the hands of the Spaniards. But it seems scarcely possible that wily attorney general says, "If it seem gool unto your najesty, Somerset should have betrayed agitation at an unfounded report. we think it not amiss some preacher (well chosen and access to On a former examination, when, as we learn from Bacon him- my Lord of Somerset, for his preparing and comfort, a:though self, the charge was clearly that of a treasonable correspondence it be before his tria!" From the whole tenor of this correswith Spain, Somerset showed no emotion whatever, merely say-pondence, there can be no doubt whatever as to the sort of service ing that he had been too well rewarded by his majesty ever to think of Spain. "If he' Prince Henry, says Lord Dartmouth, In a note to Burnet's History of his Own Time (vol i. p. 11), "was pooned by the Earl of Somerset, it was not upon the account of religion, but for making love to the Countess of Essex; and ་ Bacon would expect from this "well-chosen preacher! Seve- 5 Letter of James, in Archaologia. |