James remitted a sixpence. But Philip commiserated the hard case of Bristol, gave him a rich sideboard of plate, and, being fully aware of the fate that Buckingham was preparing for him in England, he made him an offer, that if he would stay in any of his dominions, he would give him money and honour equal to what the highest of his enemies possessed; but Bristol declined the splendid offer, saying, that he feared no mischief in his native country, which he must ever love and prefer to every other. Though Charles and Buckingham were very anxious to get Bristol away from Madrid, they were by no means desirous of his presence in England: he was told to travel by slow stages, and when he arrived, he was ordered to go instantly to his house in the country, and there consider himself a prisoner. But for the opposition of the Duke of Richmond and the Earl of Pembroke, the vindictive Buckingham would have had him committed to the Tower. As it was, without any trial-without a hearing--he was forbidden either to visit the court, or to take his seat as a peer in parliament.1

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that all that had passed should be disclosed to them. He hoped they would judge him charitably, as they wished to be judged; he declared that, in every treaty, whether public or private, he had always considered above all things the Protestant religion. He had, it was true, sometimes caused the penal statutes to bear less rigorously upon the Catholics than at other times, but to dispense with the statutes, to forbid or alter the law in that matter, he had never promised or yielded any such thing. In the conclusion of his long speech in parliament, he told them to beware of jealousy, to remember that time was precious, and to make no impertinent and irritating inquiries. Five days after, on the 24th of February, Buckingham, at a general conference held at Whitehall, delivered to the houses a long rambling but specious narrative, the Prince of Wales standing beside him to assist his memory, and give weight to his assertions. The Lord-keeper Williams, who had rehearsed the matter beforehand with the prince, had warned Buckingham not to produce or refer to all the despatches, for fear parliament should fall to examine particular despatches, wherein they could not but find many contradictions, "and because his highness wished to draw on a breach with Spain without ripping up of private despatches." In fact, if these documents had been produced, they would have proved the king to be an astonishing liar, and they would have disproved nearly everything that Buckingham uttered. Bold in the absence of Bristol, in the servility and connivance of the lords of the council, in the countenance of the heir to the throne, in the sympathy of the commons and the people, who were ready to credit anything about the breach of the match, which they always abhorred, the double favourite solemnly declared, that, after many years' negotiation, the king had found the Spaniards as far from coming to an honest decision as ever; that the Earl of Bristol had never brought the treaty beyond mere professions and declarations on their part (the truth being, that that ambassador had brought the treaty to a conclusion); that the prince, doubting of their sincerity, had gone to Spain himself; that he had there found such artificial dealing as convinced him that they were false and deceitful; that the king his master had always regarded the restitution 3 On the 20th of July, in the preceding year, James, in swearand in their house, had sworn to the following clause :—“Quod nulla lex particularis contra Catholicos Romanos lata, necnon leges generales sub quibus omnes ex æquo comprehenduntur,

The king's joy for the return of the "dear boys" was soon overcast by a gloomy reflection upon the consequences of their rash journey. No money from Spain, fresh debts contracted, his jewels nearly all gone, his daughter still an outcast, a war in perspective- those thoughts harassed him to death, and made him forego his hunting and his hawking, and shut himself up in solitude. In other directions, Buckingham was eliciting the most deplorable exhibitions of human baseness. Cranfield the lord-treasurer, Bishop Williams the lord-keeper, and others of his creatures, who had joined in censuring his conduct during his absence, because they thought his influence was on the decline, were all brought to crawl like reptiles before him." Nothing remained for James but A.D. 1624. the last and painful resource of assembling a parliament. This time he issued no arbitrary proclamations, laid down no lessons to the electors; and when the houses met (on the 19th of February), he addressed them in a tone of great moderation and sweetness; but he could not conquer his nature or his inveterate habit, and, in the end, this falsetto give way to his real voice. He told them that he remembered and regretted former misunderstandings; that he earnestly desired to do his duty, and manifesting to the Spanish treaty, in presence of the two ambassadors, his love to his people. Forgetting previous declarations, he told them that he had been long engaged in treaties with Spain; that he had sent his own son with the man he most trusted, the faithfulest and best of counsellors, into Spain;

1 Hardwicke State Papers; Clarendon Papers; Cabala; JourHale of the Lords. 2 Cabala.

modo ejus modi sint quæ religioni Romanæ repugnant, ullo unquam tempore, ullo omnino modo ant casu, directe vel indirecte, quoad dictos Catholicos, executioni mandabitur."—

Prynne; Hardwicke Papers.

Journals of the Lords. Rushworth gives the king's eloquence more at length than the journals.

of the Palatinate as a preliminary; and that, in the insincerity of the Spaniards, for James infine, the prince, after enduring much ill-treat-terrupted him by saying, "Hold! you insinuate ment, was obliged to return home, bereft of all what I have never spoken. Buckingham hath hope of obtaining either the infanta or the Pala- made you a relation on which you are to judge; tinate. This tissue of misrepresentations was but I never yet declared my mind upon it.”; received with enthusiasm by parliament. Old Five days after this message, the question of Coke, in the House of Commons, called Buck- supplies came on in the commons. The king ingham the saviour of the nation, and out of asked for £700,000 to begin the war, and for doors the people sang his praises, lit bonfires, £150,000 per annum to pay his debts. These and insulted the Spanish ambassadors. These demands made the commons falter in their wargentlemen protested against the duke's speech like note: but Buckingham and the prince hinted as false and injurious to their sovereign's honour; that a smaller sum would be accepted; and, withbut the two houses defended the favourite, and out noticing the king's debts, they voted three presently proceeded to declare that their king subsidies and three fifteenths, making about could no longer negotiate with honour or safety. £300,000, which was all to be raised within a The people were eager for war; but James, in year, to be applied to the war, and to be put into growing old, had not grown warlike; he trembled, the hands of treasurers appointed by themselves, hung back, talked of the long standing of his who were to issue money on the warrant of the character as a righteous and pacific monarch, of council of war, and on no other orders. The his debts, of his poverty; but it was this very king then declared by proclamation, that the poverty that forwarded the views of Buckingham treaties with Spain were at an end. In their biand his son, who represented that money he gotry the lower house forgot their old jealousy must have; that there was no such sure way of of proclamations, and resolved to petition the obtaining a round supply as by declaring war king for another proclamation against the Caagainst his Catholic majesty; and, in the end, tholics; but the lords objected to this course, though with sore fears and misgivings, James and, in the end, a joint petition from both houses, resolved to assume the novel attitude of a belli- with some of the sting taken out of it, was pregerent.' The idea made the Spaniards laugh. sented, praying the king to enforce the penal Gondomar had told them that there were no men statutes. James again called God to witness in England, and, if he meant public men, he was that it was his intention so to do; his determinanot far wrong; they despised this kingdom, as tion never to permit of any indulgence or toweak, poor, disunited, led by a timid king and an leration; and Prince Charles also swore that, inexperienced prince, whose anger they ridiculed, if it should please God to bestow upon him any comparing it to a revolt of the mice against the lady that was Popish, that she should have no cats. Such had become, in the hands of James, further liberty but for her own family, and no the thunderbolts of Elizabeth. But, with unusual advantage to the recusants at home. All misalacrity, the king told the commons that, if they sionaries were ordered by proclamation to leave would vote him money, he would apply it to a England under the penalty of death; the judges war with Spain; and, as he was well aware that and magistrates were instructed to act vigorously; the commons had no confidence in him, he gra- and the lord-mayor of London was especially ciously told them that the money voted might be admonished to arrest all such persons as went to given over to a committee of parliament, to be hear mass in the houses of the foreign ambasmanaged and paid out by them. sadors. The commons drew up a list of Catholics holding places under government, and unanimously petitioned for their removal; but these placemen were saved for the present by the interference of the lords. Patents and monopolies, and the bitter recollection of the manner in which parliament had been dissolved, still rankled in the hearts of the commons, and in their committee of grievances they pronounced some of the patents illegal, and reserved others for future examination. The king, much nettled, told them that he too had his grievances to complain of—that they, the commons, had encroached on his prerogative and condemned patents that were very useful, and had suffered themselves to be led by the lawyers, who were the greatest

The commons took him at his word, and a joint address from both houses, with an offer to support him in the war with their persons and fortunes, was presented to him by Abbot, the Archbishop of Canterbury-a strange choice, both because it was unseemly that a churchman should deliver a message leading to war and blood, and because the archbishop had sworn with the lords of the council to the Spanish treaty. But Abbot had taken that oath most unwillingly, and it was probably with an expression of joy or even of triumph that he congratulated the king on his having become sensible of

In the Hardwicke Papers, there is a curious letter from

Buckingham to his "Dear dad and gossip," urging him to war.
It is quite in the popular strain.

A fearful tragedy, enacted on a small island in the Eastern Ocean, should have seemed likely to make this Dutch alliance unpopular with the English people. Ever since the conclusion of the long truce at the Hague, the Dutch had been colonizing and trading on a most extensive scale in the seas of India and China. Among other islands they possessed Amboyna, one of the Molucca or Spice Islands, which they had taken from the Portuguese. They pretended not only an absolute sovereignty over this island—part of which continued to be occupied for some years by independent natives-but also an exclusive right to the spice trade in all that archipelago. Their friends and allies the English soon became desirous of sharing in this profitable traffic; they sent some ships to obtain cloves from the natives, and in 1612 the East India Company formed a little settlement at Cambello, in Amboyna, from which they were forced to retire two years after. In 1619 a treaty was concluded in London, by which the English thought themselves entitled to share in the trade; but the Dutch settlers and the local government were jealous in the extreme, and they had recently seized Captain Gabriel Towerson and nine Englishmen, with nine poor

grievances of all. But the commons were bent | who had invaded their territory under the comupon striking a blow in higher quarters; they mand of the great Italian general Spinola.' had taken their measures for impeaching Cranfield, now Earl of Middlesex, the lord-treasurer of England, and master of the court of wards, for deficiency, bribery, and oppression. This lordtreasurer was one of the creatures of Buckingham, who had intrigued against him during his absence in Spain, and on his return he was less successful than Bishop Williams, the lord-keeper, in making his peace with the incensed favourite by vile prostrations and abjurations. Buckingham, moreover, in starting as a fiery Protestant and patriot, had cultivated a good understanding with some of the leaders of the opposition or country party. Now these men wanted a victim-not that the treasurer was not guilty-and Buckingham gladly gave him up. The king would fain have protected his servant, and he lost his temper both with Buckingham and Charles for favouring the impeachment; he told the duke that he was a fool, and was making a rod for his own breech, and the prince that he would live to have his bellyful of impeachments. Nor did he stop here; he wrote to tell the commous that the lord-treasurer had not, as they supposed, advised the dissolution of the last parliament, but, on the contrary, had begged on his knees for its continuance; he covered or palliated the treasurer's offences to the lords: but all this was of no avail, and Middlesex, being only allowed three days to prepare his defence, was convicted by the unanimous vote of the peers, condemned to pay a fine of about £5000, to be imprisoned during pleasure, and to be for ever excluded from his seat in parliament, and from the verge of the court. The country party had also intended to impeach the lord-keeper, Williams, but the supple prelate was protected by Buckingham, to whom, during the session, he rendered a most important piece of secret service.

While James trembled, and talked of the blessedness of peace, his son and the duke, in his name and with the concurrence of parliament, attended to the raising of troops and the concluding of alliances against the house of Austria, for the humbling of Spain, and for the recovery of the Palatinate. "This spring gave birth to four brave regiments of foot (a new apparition in the English horizon), 1500 in a regiment, which were raised and transported into Holland, under four gallant colonels, the Earls of Oxford, Southampton, and Essex, and Lord Willoughby."3 The Dutch were already at war with the Spaniards,

000

MUSKETEER AND PIKEMAN OF THE PERIOD. —From Meyrick's Ancient Armour.

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the somewhat tarnished honour of the British | and his colleagues that it was security enough. arms. No time was allowed to train and disci- "But," say they, "we did sing a song to the pline them; they were marched to Dover (where deaf, for they would not endure to hear of it." several of them were hanged), and then hurried "In the next place," continue these diplomatists, on board ship. The court had negotiated for we offered the same to be signed by his hightheir passage through a part of France, but when ness (Prince Charles) and a secretary of state, they appeared off Calais they were refused a wherein we pretended to come home to their landing. Mansfeldt thence led them to the island own asking; but this would not serve the turn of Zealand, where the Dutch were scarcely more neither." Carlisle made a good stand, and would willing to receive them than the French had have bartered a toleration in England for French been. When, at last, Mansfeldt reached the troops to be sent into the Palatinate. He reRhine and the border of the Palatinate, he found peated words which they had used at the first that more than one-half of his army was gone, opening of the negotiation—“Give us priests," and that it would be impossible for him to under- said the cardinal, "and we will give you colonels." take any offensive operations. "Give us pomp and ceremony to content the pope," said another, "and we will throw ourselves wholly in your interests." "Yes," said the chancellor, we will espouse all your interests as if they were our own." They confessed to these expressions, but pretended that they had already done enough in joining the league. Carlisle made several good struggles, but he was badly supported. Secretary Conway, whose instructions and despatches seem to have been dictated entirely by Charles and Buckingham, became very obscure or ambiguous"3 After some negotiation, Richelieu consented to the écrit secret, as it was styled in French diplomacy, and Car

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While these events were in progress, nay, even before the warlike note was sounded, and before the Spanish match was actually broken off, a new matrimonial treaty was set on foot with France for the hand of Louis' sister, Henrietta Maria. Some time before, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the resident ambassador, was assured by the favourite De Luynes, that if there were any overture made for such a match, it should be received with all honour and affection. An overture was made; and it was thought fit, for the concluding of the match, that the Earl of Carlisle and Lord Kensington-created on the occasion Earl of Holland-should be sent as ambas-lisle dropped the question of the French army sadors extraordinary to France.' It was in this embassy that Hay displayed all his pomp and extravagance; but though a sensualist and a solemn fop, the Scottish Earl of Carlisle was destitute neither of abilities nor spirit. But he had to measure himself against one of the most wonder ful of men-the incomparably crafty and resolute Cardinal Richelieu, who had now established a sort of dictatorship over both the court and the nation, and who was at once a ruthless tyrant and a benefactor to France. Richelieu, who was most eager to defeat Charles's Spanish match, was all obsequiousness till it was absolutely broken off, and then he "stood upon his tip-toes," resolving not to abate a jot of the articles of religion, and of liberty to the Catholics of England, which had been agreed upon with Spain. This was excessively inconvenient to King James and Prince Charles, who only six months before had both solemnly vowed that they would never tolerate the Papists. In fact, when the proposal was made, they were permitting a fresh persecution of the recusants. James, however, signed a private paper, promising favour to the Catholics, without which the pope would not grant the dispensation. Carlisle presented this document, and endeavoured to convince Richelieu Life of Lord Herbert.

2 Lord Nithsdale, a Catholic, was sent to Rome to make pro mises and compliments to the pope, in the name of King James and his son.

for the Palatinate. The secret promise imported that James would permit all his Roman Catholic subjects to enjoy greater franchise and freedom of religion than they would have enjoyed in virtue of any articles of the Spanish treaty of marriage. This paper was duly signed in November, by James, by Charles, and by a secretary of state; and a copy of the engagement was signed by Carlisle and Holland. The marriage treaty was signed and ratified by the solemn oaths of King James and King Louis. But even after this the French ministers raised a fresh objection. They represented that the secret promise was conceived in general or vague terms, and they demanded that James should specify the favours he intended. Carlisle was indignant, and recommended a resistance to this demand, but James and his son feared to try the temper of Richelieu and the queen-mother, and they submitted to the specification of the three following articles:-1. That all Catholics in prison for their religion since the rising of parliament should be set free. 2. That all fines levied on them since that period should be repaid. 3. That, for the future, they might freely exercise their own worship in private. There was another incident of a very different kind, which occurred during the latter part of these negotiations, to the great alarm of James. The Huguenots, or "those of the religion," as 3 Hardwicke State Papers.