1616, the countess was separately arraigned before the peers. The beautiful but guilty woman looked pale, and sick, and spiritless: she trembled excessively while the clerk read the indictment; she hid her face with her fan at mention of the name of Weston; and she wept and spoke with a voice scarcely audible when she pleaded guilty and threw herself on the royal mercy. As soon as this was done she was hurried from the bar, and then, when she was not present to say that her confession did not involve her husband, Bacon delivered a very artful speech, stating the evidence he had to produce, if she had made it necessary by pleading not guilty. After this speech the countess was recalled for a minute to the bar of the lords to hear sentence of death, which was pronounced by the Chancellor Ellesmere, whom the king and Bacon, after long deli beration, had appointed high-steward for the ROBERT CARR, Earl of Somerset, AND HIS COUNTESS. trials. On the same day Somerset, who ought to have been tried with his wife, was warned by Sir George More, the present lieutenant of the Tower, that he must stand his trial on the morrow. Owing to some causes not explained, but at which we may easily guess, the earl, who had before desired 1 Weldon says that Sir George More "was really rewarded with a suit worth to him £1500, although Annandale, his great friend, did cheat him of one-half; so was there falsehood in friendship." 2 Weldon. The lieutenant of the Tower may have thought of providing the two sentinels and the hood-winking cloaks, but all the rest had certainly been suggested beforehand by Bacon, in a Particular Remembrance for his Majesty. "It were good," says this miracle of genius and profligacy, "that after he is come this, absolutely refused to go, telling the lieutenant that he should carry him by force in his bed; that the king had assured him he should never come to any trial, and that the king durst not bring him to trial. This language made More quiver and shake; . . . "yet away goes More to Greenwich, as late as it was, being twelve at night, and bounces up the back stairs as if mad." The king, who was in bed, on hearing what the lieutenant had to say, fell into a passion of tears, and said, On my soul, More, I wot not what to do! Thou art a wise man; help me in this great strait, and thou shalt find thou dost it for a thankful master."1 "Returning to the Tower, the lieutenant told his prisoner that he had been with the king, and found him a most affectionate master unto him, and full of grace in his intentions towards him; but, said he, to satisfy justice, you must appear, although you return instantly again, without any further proceeding, only you shall know your enemies and their malice, though they shall have no power over you. With this trick of wit he allayed his fury, and got him quietly, about eight in the morning, to the hall; yet feared his former bold language might revert again, and, being brought by this trick into the toil, might have more enraged him to fly out into some strange discovery. He had two servants placed on each side of him, with a cloak on their arms, giving them a peremptory order, if that Somerset did any way fly out on the king, they should instantly hoodwink him with that cloak, take him violently from the bar, and carry him away; for which he would secure them from any danger, and they should not want also a bountiful reward."" Somerset, however, when brought to the bar of the lords, was in a very composed easy humour, which Bacon took good care not to disturb by any of those invectives that were usually employed against prisoners. He abstained, he said, from such things by the king's order, though of himself he were indisposed to blazen his name in blood.' He handled the case most tenderly, never urging the guilt of Somerset without bringing forward the hope or assurance of the royal mercy. But the prisoner, who displayed far more ability than he had ever been supposed to possess, though he abstained from any accusations or into the hall, so that he may perceive he must go to trial, and shall be retired to the place appointed till the court call for him, then the lieutenant shall tell him roundly that if in his speeches he shall tax the king, that the justice of England a that he shall be taken away, and the evidence shall go on without him; and then all the people will cry, "Away with him! and then it shall not be in the king's will to save his life, the people will be so set on fire."-State Trials. 3 A hint at Coke, who was a dealer in invectives. out-pourings of wrath against James, was not willing to submit to a verdict of guilty, however sure of a pardon. He maintained his innocence, and defended himself so ably that the trial lasted eleven hours. In the end the peers unanimously pronounced him guilty. He then prayed them to be intercessors for him with the king, adding, however, words which meant that he thought that it would hardly be needed. "But who had seen the king's restless motion all that day, sending to every boat he saw landing at the bridge, cursing all that came without tidings, would have easily judged all was not right, and that there had been some grounds for his fears of Somerset's boldness; but at last, one bringing him word he was condemned, and the passages, all was quiet." A few weeks after sentence, James granted a pardon to the countess, "because the process and judgment against her were not of a principal, but as of an accessory before the fact." A like pardon was offered to the earl, who said that he, as an innocent and injured man, expected a reversal of the judgment pronounced by the peers. After a few years' imprisonment, Somerset and his lady retired into the country-there, as it is said, to reproach and hate one another. The king would not permit the earl's arms to be reversed and kicked out of the chapel of Windsor; and upon his account it was ordered "that felony should not be reckoned amongst the disgraces for those who were to be excluded from the order of St. George, which was without precedent." Further, to keep the discarded favourite and depository of royal mysteries from desperation, he was allowed for life the then splendid income of £4000 a-year. Considering the power of money and the baseness of the age, we are inclined to doubt the oratorical accounts of the loneliness and abandonment into which he fell. The countess died in 1632, in the reign of Charles I.; the earl, who survived her thirteen years, will reappear on the scene towards the close of the present reign. Their daughter, an only child, the Lady Anne Carr, who was born in the Tower, was married to William, fifth Earl, and afterwards first Duke, of Bedford, by whom she had many children, one of whom was the celebrated Lord Russell, who died on the scaffold in the time of Charles II. She is described as a lady of great honour and virtue: and it is said that her mother's history was so carefully con Weldon. Old Sir Anthony's pen was no doubt occasionally dipped in gall, but his account of these transactions, which he says he and a friend had from Sir George More's own mouth erbatim in Wanstead Park, after being long ascribed to his hellous spirit and hatred of James, has received the most com piste confirmation by some letters from More himself, published in the Archæologia, vol. xviii. When he is found so veracious in one important particular, it may be questioned whether Weldon has not been unfairly doubted in others. * Camden, Annals of King James. VOL. 11. cealed from her, that she knew nothing of the divorce of Lady Essex until a year or two before her death. The ill-used Earl of Essex will appear hereafter, and most conspicuously, as the leader of the parliament army against the unfortunate successor of King James. It should appear that the services of Bacon in the Overbury and Somerset case secured his triumph over his rival. Coke, however, had long been hated by the king, and in his irritation thereat he took an independent, and what might otherwise have been a patriotic course in administering the law. Many things had made the lord chief-justice totter in his seat, but a dispute with Villiers, the new favourite, about a patent place at court, a dispute with the king about bishoprics and commendams, and the ingenious malice of Bacon, who had James's ear, laid him prostrate at last. By the advice of Bacon, he was called before the council: the other judges had all been there before him, to kneel to the king and ask pardon for attempting to act according to law. Bacon, Ellesmere, and Abbot the primate had been employed for some time in collecting charges against him. Coke was accused of concealing a debt of £12,000, due to the crown by the late Chancellor Hatton; of uttering on the bench words of very high contempt, saying that the common law would be overthrown, wherein he reflected upon the king; and, thirdly, of uncivil and indiscreet carriage in the matter of commendams. Coke repelled the charge about the money, and he afterwards obtained a legal decision in his favour: without denying his words on the bench, he palliated the second charge; to the third he confessed, and prayed forgiveness. The king ordered him to appear a second time before the council, and then the proud lawyer was brought to his knees to hear the judgment of his royal master, which was, that he should keep away from the counciltable and not go the circuit, but employ himself in correcting the errors in his book of reports. When Coke reported to the king that he could discover only five unimportant errors in his book, James chose to consider that he was proud and obstinate, and gave the chief justiceship to Montague, the recorder of London. It is said that Coke, on receiving his supersedeas, wept like a child. Prince Charles, now created Prince of Wales, was in his seventeenth year, and the king had not yet succeeded in negotiating what he considered a suitable marriage for him. The religious feelings of his subjects, both in England and Scotland, were violently opposed to any Catholic match; but James's pride led him to prefer a family alliance with some one of the 3 Oldmixon. 149-50 felt his end approaching in the month of February, formally resigned the seals in March, and died a fortnight after. James gave the seals, with the title of Lord-keeper, to Bacon, who had pledged himself to do the royal will in all things. royal houses in Europe, and of those houses the greatest were all Catholic. Suspecting at last that the court of Spain had no intention to conclude any arrangement with him, he opened negotiations with that of France for the hand of Madame Christine, sister to the young King Louis XIII.; but, notwithstanding an extravagant and pompous embassy, the French court preferred an alliance with the Duke of Savoy. Shortly after the failure of this treaty, Concini, Marshal D'Ancre, a Florentine, who had accompanied the queen mother, Maria de' Medii, into France, and who, since the death of Henry IV., had ruled the whole kingdom, was murdered on the drawbridge of the Louvre by Vitry, one of the captains of the body-guard. The deed was done in broad daylight, by order of Louis, who had been kept in a state of subjection, and almost of bondage, by his mother's favourite. On the following day the people of Paris raised a cry against the excommunicated Jew and wizard; they dug up his body, which had been hastily buried-dragged it through the streetshung it by the heels on a gibbet on the Pont Neuf-cut it up-burned part of it before the statue of Henry IV., and threw the rest into the Seine. The parliament of Paris proceeded against the memory of the deceased favourite, declared him to have been guilty of treason both against God and the king-condemned his wife to be The great philosopher, now in the fifty-fourth beheaded, and her body afterwards burned-year of his age, was made giddy by his elevation: and declared his son to be ignoble and incapable of holding any property or place in France. In this strange process there was more talk of sorcery and devil-dealing than there had been on the trial of the murderers of Overbury; and it was pretended that monstrous proofs were discovered of the Judaism and magic of the wretched Florentine. In the meanwhile, James's new favourite, Villiers, was becoming far more powerful and mischievous than his predecessor, Somerset. The old Earl of Worcester was made to accept a pension and the honorary office of president of the council, and to resign his place of master of the horse to the minion, who was now Viscount Villiers, and was soon after (on the 5th of January, 1617) created Earl of Buckingham. Bacon, who, on Villiers' first advancement, had written an elaborate treatise to show him how to demean himself in his post of prime favourite, got some reward at the same time.' The old Chancellor Ellesmere, who in moments of sickness had repeatedly complained of his great age, his griefs, and infirmities, but who, when the fit was past, had baffled the hopes of the attorney-general and had clung to his place, having been gratified with the title of Viscount Brackley in November, 1616, 1 Cabala and Bacon's Works. GEORGE VILLIERS, Duke of Buckingham.-From a print after Michael Mierevelt. he rode to Westminster Hall on horseback, in a gown of rich purple satin, between the lord-treasurer and the lord privy-seal, with a splendid escort of lords, courtiers, judges, lawyers, law students, officers, and servants. He seemed inclined to rival the magnificence and finery of Buckingham, and, in the absence of that creature of the court, the fullest-blown fop was the head of the English law, the restorer of philosophy, the greatest wit, scholar, and scoundrel of his age. When James took his leave of his loving subjects of Scotland, he had promised that he would gladden their hearts and eyes with his presence at least once every three years; but fourteen years had elapsed, and he had never been able to recross the Tweed. This was owing to his improvidence and consequent poverty. It would have been too much to expect the poor Scots to pay the expenses of his costly progress. But in the course of the preceding year (1616) he had restored the cautionary towns of Brill, Flushing, and Rammekens to the Dutch, for 2,700,000 florins, which was about one-third of the debt really owing to him. This Dutch money enabled 2 Rymer. It appears that the English ministers and nep tiators were bribed by the Dutch, who must, however, have known that James's wants would make him grasp at any offer of ready money. Peyton says that Secretary Winwood got £29,000 from the States. 1 James to pay off some of his most pressing debts, and to raise on the first blush of his improved credit nearly £100,000 at ten per cent. per annum, for his journey into Scotland. "He begins his journey with the spring, warming the country as he went with the glories of the court; taking such recreations by the way as might best beguile the days, and cut them shorter, but lengthen the nights (contrary to the seasons); for what with hawking, hunting, and horse-racing, the days quickly ran away; and the nights, with feasting, masking, and dancing, were the more extended." At Berwick, the king and his favourite, and his English courtiers and jesters, were met by a numerous deputation of the Scottish nobility, who conducted them by slow stages to Edinburgh --for James loved to stop at every good house or sporting-ground that he came nigh. His chief object in visiting Scotland was, however, to effect the complete establishment of the Episcopal form of church government, and to assimilate the religious worship of the two countries. Without the least spark of religious zeal or fanaticism, James was most determinately bent on the subversion of the Presbyterian system, the spirit and form of which he detested more than ever, as inimical to his notion of the Divine right of kings, and their absolute supremacy over the church as well as state. From the time of his controversy with the English Puritans at Hampton Court, he had been devising how he should fully restore Episcopacy in Scotland; and, by means of English money, and the boldness and cunning of his principal minister there, Sir George Hume, afterwards Earl of Dunbar, he had made some progress in this direction. The first blow was struck at the general assembly of the Scottish kirk in 1605. This assembly was arbitrarily prorogued by royal authority three times in rapid succession. A number of the clergy met at Aberdeen; their meeting was prohibited, but they proceeded to assert their rights, chose a moderator, fixed an assembly to be held in the course of that year, and then dissolved themselves, in compliance with an order from the privy council. Thirteen of the leading members were forthwith selected for fierce prosecution; and out of this number Welsh, Drury, and four other popular preachers, were convicted by the crown lawyers and a slavish jury of high treason. After a rigorous confinement, sentence of death was commuted into perpetual banishment. These conscientious men retired to the Protestant churches in France and Holland, whither they were soon followed by many voluntary exiles, who revered their doctrines, and who were scared by the approaching horns of the mitre. Soon after, the bishops, who had 1 Arthur Wilson. never altogether ceased to exist in name, were re-established in authority and in revenue-that is, to the extent of the power of James and his slavish court. These occupants of dilapidated sees, who were ready on all occasions to maintain that it was a part of the royal prerogative to prescribe the religious faith and worship of the people, soon came into conflict with the Presbyterian clergy. Old Andrew Melvil, the successor of John Knox, James Melvil, his nephew, and six others, were summoned up to London, where James disputed with them about doctrine and practice. It is probable that the king did not treat them with more respect than he had treated the Puritans at Hampton Court; and old Melvil was made of firmer materials than those preachers. To the king his behaviour was respectful; but when he was interrogated by some Scottish lords, he said indignantly, “I am a free subject of Scotland-a free kingdom, that has laws and privileges of its own. By these I stand. No legal citation has been issued against me, nor are you and I in our own country, where such an inquisition, so oppressive as the present, is condemned by parliament" James, who had only invited them to a free conference, prohibited the return of the Scottish preachers to their own country, and insisted on their attending worship in his royal chapel, where they might hear the preaching of his courtly bishops. This made matters worse. The characters of the bishops most about court were not spotless, and their discourses seemed monstrously slavish to the unbending Calvinists: nor did the rites and oblations of the chapel, the gilded altar, the chalices, the tapers, improve in their eyes upon a closer but a compulsory acquaintance. Old Andrew Melvil vented his feelings of disgust in a Latin epigram of six lines, in which he set down all these things as relics of the scarlet she-wolf of Rome. The verses were shown to James, who summoned the author before his English privy council, where Andrew was so irritated that he burst forth into an invective against the whole Anglican church, and pulled or shook what he called the Romish rags of the Archbishop of Canterbury's surplice. For all these offences James arbitrarily committed him to the Tower of London, where he lay for four years. He was then liberated at the earnest prayer of the Duke of Bouillon, but only upon condition that he should pass the remainder of his life in some foreign country. The venerable champion of Calvinism retired to Sedan, and died abroad in 1620. His nephew, James Melvi, was confined for life to Berwick, on the confines of his native country, where he died six years before his uncle. The other six Scottish 2 Calderwood. concessions. Then Dunbar, and some of the bishops, would have proceeded to the entire suppression of presbyteries; but the more prudent considered such a measure as dangerous or premature, and it was laid aside for the present. the packed clergy, however, solemnly recognized the king's ecclesiastical supremacy, and the right of bishops to ordain and induct to churches. Under the crafty and bold management of the Earl of Dunbar, the Scottish parliament conirmed and enlarged these decisions. Hitherto the Scottish prelates had not been consecrated by the imposition of prelatical hands; but now three of their number were summoned up to London to undergo that ceremony, and on their return they imposed their hands on the other Scottish bishops, who were thus presented to the scorning and incredulous people as legitimate successors of the apostles. These proceedings were soon followed by the death of the Earl of Dunbar, whose place, whether for the king or the bishops, was badly supplied by some of the kinsmen of Carr, Earl of Somerset, who misruled scotland till the downfall of that favourite. preachers who had accompanied them to the free | bribery, the primate obtained several important conference were banished to separate and remote districts in Scotland. To quiet the murmurs of the Presbyterian clergy-to win them over to the bishops, whose indefinite powers the king continued to advance the Earl of Dunbar employed threats and bribes. Forty thousand marks were distributed among the members of an ecclesiastical convention summoned by royal authority, that met at Linlithgow, at the end of the year 1606, and appointed certain clergymen to be permanent moderators of the presbyteries within which they resided, and the bishops to be ex officio the moderators of the provincial synods. But the great body of the Scottish clergy-a spiritual republic-were incensed at this subversion of equality; they soon resumed their independence in the synods, and set aside the authority of the bishops as perpetual moderators. The synods were then, as seditious bodies, prohibited from assembling. In 1609 the consistorial courts, which at the Reformation had been given to civil judges, were restored to the bishops; and the Archbishop of Glasgow was created an extraordinary lord of session, in order to restore a spiritual intermixture to that high In 1616, the year before James's visit, the court of law, which had originally consisted of Episcopalians and the Presbyterians seem to have an equal number of temporal and spiritual judges. witnessed with equal satisfaction the barbarous But this latter plan was stopped in the commence-execution of one Ogilvy, a Jesuit. Presently ment, by the determination of James to establish after James's arrival, in the month of June, 1617, a separate and paramount court, which, if he was a parliament assembled to establish the faith, so minded, he might fill entirely with bishops. and ceremonies, and discipline of the Scottish The High Commission Court-the greatest griev-church. But by this time sundry of the lords, ance of the land-existed in England as a part who were holders of lands which had formerly or a result of the king's supremacy over the belonged to the bishoprics, began to be alarmed church; but in Scotland this supremacy had as to the security of those parts of their property. not yet been acknowledged, and no such court James disarmed their opposition by inviting could be imposed with anything like a decent these great nobles to a secret conference, whereregard to law. Yet notwithstanding this fact, in, it is generally supposed, he addressed himself and the violent repugnance of the people, James, to their most sensitive feelings, and promised in 1610, erected two courts of high commission that they should not be disturbed in any of their -one at St. Andrews, the other at Glasgow-possessions. Forthwith an act was prepared to more arbitrary, more absolute than the detestable court in London. And, as if the Scots did not already sufficiently hate the name of bishop, the Archbishops of St. Andrews and Glasgow were put at the head of these tyrannical courts, and it was declared that either of these prelates and four assistants should compose a quorum, from whose sentence there was no appeal. It was soon evident that an oppression of this kind must be enforced by troops of horse, as well as by bishops; but the peace-loving king would not see the inevitable result of his system. An assembly of the kirk was held at Glasgow in June, 1610, for the purpose of confirming the authority of the bishops; and, partly by the high exercise of authority, partly by a trick which kept away the bolder ministers, and partly by declare, "that, in ecclesiastical affairs, whatever should be determined by the king, with the advice of the prelates and a competent number of the clergy, should receive the operation and the force of law." This bill was brought suddenly into parliament, and passed there; and James was on the point of making it law in the Scottish manner, by touching it with the sceptre, when the clergy presented to parliament a loud and alarming protest against it. James trembled and hesitated; and, in the end, to save his honour, he pretended that it was idle to give him by statute that which was part of the inherent prerogative of the crown; and the bill was silently withdrawn. Another bill, assigning chapters to the different bishoprics, and regulating the methods to be followed in the election of bishops, appears |