to prepare himself for the block. But, when the victim had suffered all that was most painful in death, one John Gib, a Scotch groom of the bedchamber, secretly withdrew the sheriff for a while; whereupon the execution was stayed, and Markham left upon the scaffold, to his own wretched thoughts. The sheriff, returning at last, told him, that as he was so badly prepared, he should have two hours' respite to make his peace with Heaven; and so led him from the scaffold without giving him any more comfort, and locked him up by himself. The Lord Grey, whose turn was next, was led to the scaffold by a troop of young noblemen, and was supported on both sides by two of his best friends. He had such gaiety and cheer in his countenance, that he looked like a young bridegroom. In front of the block he fell upon his knees, and prayed with the fervency and zeal of a religious spirit for more than half an hour, when, as he was ending, and was expecting the signal to stretch his neck under the axe, the sheriff suddenly told him he had received commands from the king to change the order of the execution, and that the Lord Cobham was to go before him. And thereupon Grey was likewise removed from the scaffold and locked up apart; "and his going away seemed more strange unto him, than his coming thither . . . neither could any man yet dive into the mystery of this strange proceeding." While the people were lost in amazement, the third prisoner was led up to the block.

"The

Lord Cobham, who was now to play his part, and who, by his former actions promised nothing but matière pour rire, did much cozen the world; for he came to the scaffold with good assurance, and contempt of death. . . . Some few words he used, to express his sorrow for his offence to the king, and crave pardon of him and the world; for Sir Walter Raleigh he took it, upon the hope of his soul's resurrection, that what he had said of him was true.' He would have taken a farewell of the world, when he was stayed by the sheriff, and told that there was something else to be done,—that he was to be confronted with some other of the prisoners, naming no one. And thereupon Grey and Markham were brought back, separately, to the scaffold, each believing that his companions were already executed: they were nothing acquainted with what had passed any more than were the spectators with what should follow, and they looked strange and wildly one upon the other, "like men beheaded and met again in the other world." "Now all the actors being together on the stage (as use is at the end of a play), the sheriff made a short speech unto them, by way of interrogatory, of the heinousness of their offences, the justness of their trials, their lawful condemnation, and due execution there to be performed; to all which they assented: then, said the sheriff, see the mercy of your prince, who of himself hath sent hither the countermand, and given you your lives. There was then no need to beg a plaudite of the audience, for it was given with such hues and cries

that it went from the castle into the town, and there began afresh." Raleigh, who had a window in his prison opening upon the castle green, the scene of these strange doings, was hard put to it to beat out the meaning of the stratagem. His turn was to have come on the Monday following; but the king gave him pardon of life with the rest, and ordered him to be sent with Grey and Cobham to the Tower of London, there to remain during his royal pleasure.* The lively letterwriter, from whom we have borrowed these details, says, that no one could rob the king of the praise of the action; for the lords of the council knew nothing about it, but expected that execution was to go forward till the very last moment, when his majesty called them before him, and told them "how much he had been troubled to resolve in this business; for to execute Grey, who was a noble, young, spirited fellow, and save Cobham, who was as base and unworthy, were a manner of injustice to save Grey, who was of a proud insolent nature, and execute Cobham, who had showed great tokens of humility and repentance, were as great a solecism; and so went on with Plutarch's comparisons in the rest, still travelling in contrarieties, but holding the conclusion in so indifferent balance, that the lords knew not what to look for till the end came out-and therefore I have saved them all." But one thing had like to have marred the play; for the respite was closed and sealed, and delivered to John Gib, the Scottish messenger, without the royal signature. James, however, remembered this himself, called the messenger back, and signed the paper. But this made it Thursday at noon before the messenger took the road to Winchester, and the prisoners were ordered for execution on the next morning. A lame horse, a lost shoe, a fall, and many another little accident, might have caused the messenger, who had three men's lives in his pocket, to arrive too late. It appears, in fact, that he did not reach Winchester till the fatal hour; and there, "there was another cross adventure; for John Gib, who was little known, could not get so near the scaffold that he could speak to the sheriff, but was thrust out amongst the boys, and was fain to call out to Sir James Hayes ;t or else Markham (who had been brought up to the block) might have lost his head." It is not without reason, that a recent writer exclaims-" What a government, with the penal justice of the nation in such hands, and the lives of men at the hazard of such sad buffooneries!" The sapient James, however, congratulated himself on the effect produced by his wonderful sagacity. Many persons had disbelieved Cobham's confession-some had even doubted whether there had been any serious plot at all, be

Sir Dudley Carleton, Letters to Mr. John Chamberlain in Hardwicke State Papers. The editor of this important work says"There are in the Salisbury Collection several letters from these prisoners during their continement, which probably would throw light on their respective cases, if they were published."

+ Or Hay, one of the Scottish favourites, afterwards Earl of Carlisle.

yond a design on Raleigh's part to get money from the court of Spain, for promoting a favourable treaty of peace; but now they had heard Cobham repeat his confession in sight of the axe; and though in the case of state prisoners many dying speeches had been notoriously false, men were still disposed to give great weight and credit to such orations and depositions. Unfortunately, however, James did not derive all the advantage from the proceeding that he had expected; for, upon reflecting on the bold carriage of the pusillanimous Cobham, who had never been brave before, there were some who were led to suspect that he, at least, was in the king's secret, and had a promise of life when he made his last dying speech on the scaffold. It should be remembered, however, that Cobham was neither the first nor the last coward that could die with firmness-that found, when death was near and inevitable, that it was stripped of many of those terrors which had agonized the imagination at other seasons. At least nothing more positive than a doubt ought to be entertained on this, as on several other points of the perplexing story. The laborious Rushworth, who wrote near the time, confesses that it was a dark kind of treason," and that in his days the veil still rested upon it; nor has this veil been removed by the hypotheses of modern writers or the few contemporary documents that have been brought to light since Rushworth's time. If it had not been for the "reason of state," and the diplomatic etiquette which prevented the court from pressing hard. upon the Spanish ambassador and other ministers, and from producing their letters and the documents in which they were implicated, we might have been better able to form an opinion.†

The king took possession of the estates of the conspirators, but for some time refused to give away any of their lands to his covetous courtiers. Lord Cobham, whose understanding did not improve under imprisonment and poverty, was, after some few years, rather suffered to stray out of his prison in the Tower than released in form: he did not wander far; a beggar, and an object of contempt, he found an asylum in a miserable house in the Minories, belonging to one who had formerly been his servant, and upon whose charity he meanly threw himself. There, in a wretched loft, accessible by means of a ladder, he died, probably of starvation, in 1619, the year after the bloody execution of Raleigh. The Lord Grey was more closely looked to; and he died a prisoner in the Tower in 1614. Raleigh remained in the same fortress till the

Cecil said that the king's object was to see how far Cobham, at Lis death, would make good his accusations of Raleigh.

↑ Beaumont, the French ambassador, told his court, in one of his dispatches, that in the month of August a Scotchman had been taken at Dover, on his return from Bruxelles, whither he had carried a packet from d'Aremberg, written upon his conference with Lord Cobham. And Beaumont further stated that the English court "were satisfied that d'Aremberg had encouraged the plot, not only from the Scotchman's confession, but from two original letters of d'Aremberg's, which the king showed to M. de Beaumont; and that he (the ambassador) was perfectly satisfied of Raleigh's guilt by various circumstances and relations upon which he could absolutely depend, and by the knowledge he had of his and Cobham's designs, from the proposals made to himself and Sully, and their correspondence in France."-Dispatches, quoted by Carte.

month of March, 1615, when we shall meet him again, daring and enterprising as ever. Markham, Brooksby, and Copley, were banished the kingdom. Markham retired to the Low Countries, where, to rescue himself from indigence, he became a spy to Sir Thomas Edmonds, an intriguing courtier, and cunning diplomatist, who rose to eminence under the patronage of Cecil and the Earl of Shrewsbury.*

In declaring that he would allow of no toleration, James pledged himself to become a persecutor; and there were men about him disposed to urge him to a rigid enforcement of the penal statutes, both against Catholics and Puritans. The former, knowing their weakness, were silent; but the Puritans soon drew up what they called their "millennary petition ;" wherein they called for reformation of certain ceremonies and abuses in the church, and for a conference. The latter was the sort of thing that James, who deemed himself the most learned and perfect of controversialists, loved above all others. To his ears there was no music in the shrill trump, the spiritstirring drum, the ear-piercing fife; but he enjoyed the thumping of thick folios of dusty divinity, the eager voices of polemics, and disputation, for disputation's sake, particularly when, as on the present occasion, he was sure to have the better of the disputants, whatever he had of the argument. He had, besides, a long-standing debt to square with the Puritans, who had not merely been a main cause of his unhappy mother's defamation and ruin-this he might have overlooked-but they had also set his authority at nought, contradicted him and pestered him from his cradle till his departure for England, and had made him. drain the cup of humiliation to its very dregs. He had been obliged to fall in with their views of church government, to conform to their gloomy creed; and, as he must be doing, he had at one time taken up the pen to proclaim them the only church of Christ, and had delivered to them studied orations in praise of their orthodoxy and godliness: but now he no doubt hated them the more for those forced exercises of his wit which he had considered as things necessary to prop him on his throne. In the general assembly at Edinburgh, in 1590, "he stood up with his bonnet off, and his hands lifted up to heaven, and said, he praised God, that he was born in the time of the light of the gospel, and in such a place, as to be king of such a church, the sincerest (purest) kirk in the world." church of Geneva," continued the royal orator, keeps pasch and yule (Easter and Christmas); what have they for them? They have no institution. As for our neighbour kirk of England, their service is an evil-said mass in English; they want nothing of the mass but the liftings. I charge you, my good ministers, doctors, elders, nobles, gentlemen, and barons, to stand to your purity, and

"The

Howell, State Trials.-Jardine, Crim. Trials.-- Weldon.-Wilson. -Stow.-Hardwicke State Papers.-Cayley, Life of Raleigh.-Oldys. In allusion to its having nearly a thousand signatures of clergymen attached to it. The exact number was eight hundred.

to exhort the people to do the same; and I, forsooth, as long as I brook my life, shall maintain the same. From the year 1596, however, James had gone upon a directly opposite tack in ecclesiastical matters. In 1598, as has been related in the preceding Book, he had completely changed the constitution of the Scottish church, by appointing certain of the clergy to hold seats in parliament, which was in substance nothing else than making bishops of them, although he found it convenient to declare at the time that "he minded not to bring in papistical or Anglican bishops." The whole course of his policy as to ecclesiastical matters from this time forward tended to transform the Scottish establishment from a Presbyterian to an Episcopalian church. In 1599 he wrote and published for the instruction of his son Prince Henry, his "Basilicon Doron," a master-piece of pedantry, a model of abuse, against the Puritans and the whole church polity of Scotland! Nothing, he said, could be more monstrous than parity or equality in the church;-nothing more derogatory to the kingly dignity than the independence of preachers. Therefore he advises his son " to take heed to such Puritans, very pests in the church and commonwealth, whom no deserts can obligeneither oaths nor promises bind,-breathing nothing but sedition and calumnies, aspiring without measure, railing without reason, and making their own imaginations (without any warrant of the word) the square of their conscience." "I protest before the Great God," he continued, " and since I am here upon my testament, it is no place for me to lie in, that ye shall never find with any highland or border thieves, greater ingratitude, and more lies and vile perjuries, than with these fanatic spirits; and suffer not the principal of them to brook your land, if ye list to sit at rest; except ye would keep them for trying your patience, as Socrates did an evil wife."+

These were the real sentiments of James; but the English bishops had neither a perfect confidence in his steadiness of purpose, nor a full acquaintance with his feelings, and for a while he kept them in an uncomfortable state of suspense. Like the chief personages in the tragi-comedy at Winchester, Markham, Cobham, and Grey, who did not know but that they were to be beheaded, the bishops, almost to the last moment, did not know but that their system would be overthrown. In their anxiety they implored for a private conference with the king, who, even then, is said to have played the Puritan, and to have carried this humour so far that the prelates threw themselves on their knees before him, and entreated him neither to alter the church government, nor give the Dissenters victory in the disputation about to be held, lest the Popish recusants should say that

Calderwood, Hist. of Church of Scotland.

King James's Works. He afterwards said to his English bishops and courtiers-"I will tell you. I have lived among this sort of men (Puritans or Presbyterians) ever since I was ten years old; but I may say of myself, as Christ said of himself, though I lived among them, yet, since I had ability to judge, I was never of them."

they had just 'cause to insult them as men who had travailed to bind them to that which was now confessed to be erroneous. On the 14th of January, 1604, James held his first field-day in his privy chamber at Hampton Court. On the one side were arrayed nearly twenty bishops and high dignitaries of the established church, the lords of the privy council, and sundry courtiers, all determined to applaud to the skies the royal wisdom and learning on the other side were only four reforming preachers-Doctors Reynolds and Sparks, professors of divinity at Oxford; and Knewstubs and Chatterton, of Cambridge: the king sate high above them all "proudly pre-eminent," as moderator. On the first day the learned doctors did not enter upon the real controversy, but, after a day's rest, they met again on the 16th, when the Puritans proceeded roundly to business, beginning by demanding, among other things, that the Book of Common Prayer should be revised; that the cap and surplice, the sign of the cross in baptism, baptism by women, confirmation, the use of the ring in marriage, the reading of the Apocrypha, the bowing at the name of Jesus, should all be set aside; that non-residence and pluralities in the church should not be suffered, nor the commendams held by the bishops; that unnecessary excommunications should cease, as also the obligation of subscribing to the Thirty-Nine Articles. The bishops chose to make their chief stand upon the ceremonies, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Articles; and London and Winchester, assisted by some of the deans, spoke vehemently and at great length. Then, without listening to the four Puritans, James himself took up the argument, and combated for the Anglican orthodoxy, in a mixed strain of pedantry, solemnity, levity, and buffoonery. He talked of baptism, public and private, of confirmation, of marriage, of excommunication, and absolution, which latter he declared to be apostolical and a very good ordinance. But, as it has been remarked, it would be endless to relate all he said, for he loved speaking, and was in his element whilst disputing. In the heat of his argument he treated St. Jerome very disrespectfully, for saying that bishops were not by divine ordination, closing his speech with this short aphorism:-" No bishop, no king." When he was tired, Dr. Reynolds was allowed to talk a a little. The doctor stated his objections to the Apocrypha, which was ordered to be read by the Book of Common Prayer, and particularly to the book of Ecclesiasticus. James called for a Bible, expounded a chapter of Ecclesiasticus in his own way, and then turning to his applauding lords, said, "What trow ye make these men so angry with Ecclesiasticus? By my soul, I think Ecclesiasticus was a bishop, or they would never use him so." The bishops smiled decorously-the courtiers grinned. In answer to a question started by the abashed and browbeaten Puritans-How far an ordinance of the church could bind without impeaching Christian liberty? he said "he would

not argue that point, but answer therein as kings are wont to do in parliament, le roy s'avisera, adding withal, that the query smelled very rankly of Anabaptism." And then he told a story about Mr. John Black, a Scottish preacher, who had impudently told him that matters of ceremony in the church ought to be left in Christian liberty to every man. But," added James, "I will none of that; I will have one doctrine and one discipline one religion, in substance and in ceremony." It would have been policy to act and speak as if from a spiritual conviction that Episcopacy was preferable to Presbytery, and essential to salvation; but, as has been observed, James was all his life rather a bold liar than a good dissembler; and he soon let out the very worldly motives of his preference, which had their roots in his high notions about the royal prerogative and supremacy. "If," he said," you aim at a Scottish Presbytery, it agreeth with monarchy as God with the devil. Then Jack, and Tom, and Will, and Dick shall meet, and at their pleasure censure me, and my council, and all our proceedings. Then Will shall stand up and say, It must be thus: then Dick shall reply and say, Nay, marry but we will have it thus; and, therefore, here I must once more reiterate my former speech, and say, le roy s'avisera." Reynolds was esteemed one of the acutest logicians and most learned divines then in the kingdom, but James treated him in this manner:-"Well, Doctor, have you anything more to say?" The Doctor, who had been constantly interrupted and insulted, replied, "No, please your majesty." Then the king told him, that if he and his fellows had disputed thus lamely in a college, and he, the king, been moderator, he would have had them fetched up and flogged for dunces; that, if this was all they could say for themselves, he would have them conform, or hurry them out of the land, or else do worse. On the morrow of this glorious day James rested from his labours. On the morning of the 18th he again assembled the bishops, and deans, and lords of the council; but the dissenting divines were not admitted till a late hour, and then not to renew the disputation, but only to implore that conformity should not be enforced till after a certain interval. James granted their request, dismissed them, and gloried in the victory he had obtained. The bishops and courtly ministers had not waited for the finale to shower down their plaudits. Bancroft, Bishop of London, throwing himself on his knees in a paroxysm of gratitude and adoration, had protested during one of the acts, "that his heart melted with joy, and made haste to acknowledge unto Almighty God the singular mercy in giving them such a king, as, since Christ's time, the like had not been."+ Whitgift, the primate, without falling upon his knees, exclaimed, that undoubtedly his majesty spake by the special

assistance of God's spirit. And that the laity might not be left all behind, the Lord Chancellor Ellesmere said, that the king and the priest had never been so wonderfully united in the same person; and the temporal lords generally applauded his majesty's speeches as proceeding from the spirit of God, and from an understanding heart.* This was pretty well! but not the most grateful of bishops, nor the most servile of courtiers, could praise James more than James praised himself. "I peppered them soundly," said he; "they fled me from argument to argument like schoolboys." And he soon after wrote a most conceited letter to one Blake, boasting of his own superior logic and learning. In his wisdom, however, and of his own prerogative, without consulting either the bishops or parliament, he thought proper to make a few slight alterations in the Book of Common Prayer and the church service; but this step irritated or afflicted the high churchmen, without reconciling any of their opponents to their discipline. Shortly after the conference he put forth a proclamation commanding all ecclesiastical and civil officers strictly to enforce conformity, and admonishing all men not to expect nor attempt any further alteration in the church. Some months later, when he was hunting near Newmarket, a deputation of Puritan ministers waited upon him to present a petition for further time that their consciences might be better satisfied. According to his courtiers, he again argued the matter very fully, and put them to a non-plus.

But the king loved hunting as much as he loved polemics, and a proclamation was devised, that none should come to him on hunting days-which days of sport occupied one half of James's year! He had already enjoined the bishops to proceed against all their clergy who did not conform and observe his orders. Whitgift died-some said of mortification at the king's interference-and Bancroft, who succeeded him in the primacy, wanted no royal spur to urge him on in the paths of persecution and severity. Three hundred clergymen were driven from their livings to poverty-some to wander in foreign countries, some to suffer with their wives and children absolute want at home. Ten leading men of those who had presented the millenary petition were arrested; the judges declared, in the Star Chamber, that theirs was an offence fineable at discretion and very near to treason and felony, as it tended to sedition and rebellion; and they were all committed to prison. Spies, such as had been trained to the work in hunting down Papists and private masses, found their way to prayer-meetings and secret conven

"The king talked much Latin, and disputed with Dr. Reynolds at Hampton; but he rather used upbraidings than arguments, and told the petitioners that they wanted to strip Christ again; and bid them away with their snivelling......The bishops seemed much pleased, and said his majesty spoke by the power of inspiration. I wist not what they mean; but the spirit was rather foul-mouthed."-Harrington, Nuga Ant.

Fuller, Church Hist.-Howell, State Trials.-Barlow (Bishop of Chichester), in Phoenix Britannicus.-Rymer. -Winwood.- Harrington, Nug. Ant.-Hearne, Titus Livius.-Calderwood.-Neale Hist. Puritans.

Letter of the Earl of Worcester, in Lodge's Illustrations.

D

ticles; and the gaols of the kingdom soon began to be crowded with unlicensed preachers. The Puritans soon added to a contempt of the king's person a hatred of the whole system of government. Still, however, they were as distant as ever from any notion of toleration; and when James proceeded to a still more cruel persecution of the Catholics, they only complained that he was not sharp and rigorous enough. Even while smarting themselves under the iron rod of a despotic church, they did not conceal that their wish and object was to get the rod into their own hands, that they might enforce upon all a strict conformity to their own peculiar doctrines.

It was scarcely to be expected, notwithstanding their great loss of spirit, that James would face an English parliament so bravely as a few intimidated preachers. The pestilence was for many months a sufficient reason for not calling one; and his first parliament was not assembled till the 19th of March, 1604, or until he had been nearly a year on the throne. There were probably few people in England or anywhere else, that had taken the pains to read his pedantic writings; but those who had done so must have known that he had expressed the greatest contempt for all parliaments. In his discourse On the True Law of Free Monarchies, or the Reciproque and Mutual Duty betwixt a Free King and his Natural Subjects,' which had been printed in Scotland some years before, he had stated in the broadest terms, that the duty of a king was to command-that of a subject to obey in all things; that kings reigned by divine right, and were raised by the Almighty above all law; that a sovereign might daily make statutes and ordinances, and inflict such punishments as he thought meet, without any advice of parliament or estates; that general laws made publicly in parliament might, by the king's authority, be privately mitigated or suspended upon causes known only to himself; and that, "although a good king will frame all his actions to be according to the law, yet he is not bound thereto, but of his own will and for example-giving to his subjects." Even in his proclamation for calling together this, his first parliament, he studiously put forth his lofty notions about the prerogative, and schooled his subjects as to the representatives whom they were to choose. For several reigns-certainly under all the princes of the Tudor dynasty-the court had constantly interfered with the freedom of elections; but they had done so with address, and had not made any pedantic exposition of the thing as a fixed principle of government. James, on the contrary, was ostentatious: he ordered that if any returns of members were found to be made contrary to the instructions contained in this his proclamation, the same should be rejected as unlawful and insufficient, and the cities or boroughs fined for making them; and any person, knight, citizen, or burgess elected contrary to the purport, effect, and true meaning of the proclamation, should be fined and imprisoned. The electors were commanded to

avoid "all persons noted in religion for their superstitious blindness one way, or for their turbulent humour otherways"—that is, they were to elect neither Catholics nor Puritans. But, in spite of king and proclamation, this parliament swarmed with Puritans, who had naturally more courage and confidence than their four baited preachers at Hampton Court. Indeed, the Commons met him on their threshold with a debate about privilege. At the election for Buckinghamshire-that county by a series of curious circumstances so distinguished in the struggle between the people and the Stuarts-Sir Francis Goodwin had been chosen in preference to Sir John Fortescue, the court candidate and a privy councillor ; and the writ had been duly returned into Chancery. Goodwin, some years before, had been outlawed: his return was, therefore, sent back to the sheriff as contrary to the late proclamation; and, on a second election, Sir John Fortescue was chosen. But the Commons objected to these proceedings, and, after a full hearing of the case, voted that Goodwin was lawfully elected and returned, and that he ought to take his seat, and not Fortescue. The Lords, by the mouth of Sir Edward Coke and Dr. Hone, requested that the matter might be discussed in a conference between the two Houses, "first of all before any other matters were proceeded in." The Commons replied with spirit, that they conceived it did not stand with the honour of their House to give any account of their proceedings and doings. The Lords rejoined, through Coke, that, they having acquainted his majesty with the business, his highness" conceived himself engaged and touched in honour that there might be some conference of it between the two houses." Upon this message the Commons sent their Speaker and a good number of their members to wait upon the king, to explain why they could not confer with the lords on any such subject. James was greatly chagrined; he insisted that they ought not to meddle with the returns, and directed them to confer with the judges. The Commons, after a warm debate, unanimously agreed not to have a conference with the judges; but they drew up a written statement, in reply to his majesty's objections, and sent the paper to the lords, requesting them to deliver it to the king and be mediators with his majesty in their behalf. This was moderate enough. James, who liked to do things in an odd way, sent privately for the Speaker, and told him that he was now much puzzled as to the merits of the case; but after some logical splitting of straws, he commanded, as an absolute king," that there might be a conference between the house and the judges. When the Speaker delivered this message "there grew some amazement and silence." But at last one stood up and said: "The prince's command is like a thunderbolt; his command upon our allegiance like the roaring of a lion! To his command there is no contradiction; but how or in what manner we should proceed to perform obe

66