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Michael A. Linton
BOOK VI.
FROM THE PERIOD OF THE ACCESSION OF JAMES I. TO THE RESTORATION OF CHARLES II.
CHAPTER THE FIRST.
JAMES THE FIRST.
THE moment the queen died, Cecil and the other Lords of the Council sneaked out through the back garden gate of the Palace at Richmond at three o'clock in the morning on the 24th of March, 1603, and posted for Scotland to James, whom they hailed as the brightest Jem that had ever adorned the throne. Cecil, having long been in correspondence with the Scotch king, had only been waiting to see which way the cat jumped, or, in other words, for the death of the queen, and she had lived so long that he began to think the royal cat had nine lives, which delayed her final jump much longer than her minister desired.
Before posting to Scotland, the Lords of the Council had stuck up several posters about London, proclaiming James I. amid those shouts which the boys are ever ready to lend to any purpose for which a mob has been got together. The Scotch king was of course glad to exchange the miserable cane-bottomed throne of his own country for the comfortably cushioned seat of English royalty; but he was so wretchedly poor that he could not even start for his new kingdom till it had yielded him enough to pay his passage thither. He tried hard to get possession of the crown jewels for his wife, but the Council would not trust him with the precious treasures. On his way to his new dominions he was received with that enthusiasm which a British mob has always on hand for any new object; but he did not increase in favour upon being seen; for if a good countenance is a letter of recommendation, James carried in his face a few lines that said very little in his favour. His legs were too weak for his body, his eyes too large for their sockets, and his tongue was too big for his mouth; so that his knees knocked without making a hit, his pupils could not be restrained by the lash, while his lingual excrescence caused so many a slip between the cup and the lip, that his aspect was awkward and disagreeable
James I. on his way to England.
During his journey to London he rode on horseback, but he was such a bungling equestrian that he was thrown by a sagacious animal intent on having his fling at the expense of the sovereign. Besides being ungainly in his person, he did not set it off to the best advantage, for he was exceedingly dirty; and thus he appeared to be looking black at everybody, for his face was encrusted in dust, and though his predecessor, Elizabeth, was very objectionable, he could not boast of coming to the throne with clean hands. Power was such a new toy to him that he could not use it in moderation, and he made knights at the rate of fifty a day, which caused Bacon so far to forget himself as to utter the silly sarcasm, that there would be a surfeit of Sirs, if James proceeded in the manner in which he was beginning.
Conspiracies were soon formed against a monarch so weak, and the ambitious Raleigh, who had been in his youth a mere street adventurer, thought he could vault over official posts as easily as he had vaulted over those in the public thoroughfares. His designs being detected, he was deprived of some of the offices he possessed, and among others his monopoly of licensing taverns, and retailing wines, for which his knowledge of the tobacco business had well fitted him. He plotted with Grey, a Puritan, Markham, a Papist, and Cobham, a Nothingarian, to seize the person of the king; but the tables were turned upon them by the seizure of themselves and their committal to the Tower. Grey, Cobham, and Markham were condemned to die; but just as they had laid their heads on the block, they were axed if they would rather live, and having answered in the affirmative, they were committed to the Tower with Raleigh for the remainder of their lives.
The Puritans having complained of ecclesiastical abuses, James ordered a meeting at Hampton Court between the bishops and their opponents, to talk over their differences. The bishops were allowed the first innings, and they continued running on for several hours, when James took the matter up on the same side, and the Puritans were not alloyed to utter a word. After the long had talked himself out of breath, and his hearers out of patience, Doctor Reynolds was permitted to take a turn on behalf of the Puritans; but he was insulted, interrupted, and regularly coughed down before he had spoken twenty words. The king then exclaimed, "Well, Doctor, is that all you have to say?" Upon which the Doctor, being abashed by the unfairness shown towards him, admitted that he was unwilling to proceed. James boasted that he had silenced the Puritans ; and so he had, but it was by intimidation and bluster alone that he had succeeded in doing so.
Encouraged by his triumph over a few trembling sectarians, the king called Parliament together, expecting to overcome that body; but he found he had to deal with some very awkward customers. They questioned his rights, refused his salary, and turned coldly from a proposition to unite England with Scotland, which they resisted with a sneering assertion that oil and vinegar would never agree. Doubting whether he would get much good out of Parliament in the temper in which ha found it, he abruptly closed the session.
The Catholics, who were subjected to much persecution, became very angry under it, and a gentleman of the name of Catesby, who had changed his opinions some three or four times, stuck to the last set with such fury, that he resolved to assist them at all hazards. His principles had been a mere matter of toss up, but he had settled down into a Papist at last; and conceiving the idea of destroying King, Lords, and Commons, at a blow, he expressed himself on the subject avec explosion, as the French dramatists have it, to Thomas Winter, a gentleman of Worcestershire, who having been worsted in all his prospects, cottoned at once to the scheme. The Catholics had solicited the mediation of the King of Spain, and Winter passed over to the Netherlands to hear how matters were going on, when he made himself acquainted at Ostend with a fellow named Guido Fawkes, who has been equally misinterpreted by "the boys" and the historians. It has been usual to describe him as a low mercenary who got his name of Fawkes or Forks, from his way of brutally demanding everybody to fork out; but however etymology may encourage such an interpretation of his name, we must denounce it as a cruel libel on his character. [Some monster or punster in human form, declares he was called Fawkes or Forks, because he was ready to con-knive in anything sanguinary. The atrocity of this assertion needs no comment.] The eagerness of the juvenile mind to adopt any malicious absurdity that is proposed to it, has been exhibited in the boyish extravagance of making Guido Fawkes a man of straw, though there is little doubt that he was a man of substance, and not the mere Will o' the Wisp that constitutes his portrait as we see him drawn on stone along the paved streets of the metropolis. Guido, whose pretended ugliness has made his abbreviated name of Guy synonymous with a frightful object, was a gentleman, though a fanatic, and it is not true that had Fawkes been invited to dinner, it would have been necessary to look after the spoons as well as the Fawkes with unusual vigilance. Catesby invited Winter and Guido to his lodgings, where they were met by Thomas Percy, a distant relation of the Earl of Northumberland, and by John Wright, an obstinate fellow, who would never own himself wrong. Grog and cigars—the latter being a novelty recently imported by Raleigh—were liberally provided, when Catesby suggested that before business could be regularly gone into, an oath of secresy must be administered. With a melodramatic desire to give the affidavit all the advantages of appropriate scenery, it was suggested that a lone house in the fields beyond Clement's Inn should be the spot where the oath should be administered.
In the course of a few days the affidavit had been drawn, perused, settled, and engrossed, when the parties met at the, place appointed, and were all sworn in, with due formality. Catesby, acting as a sort of chairman, then proceeded to explain to the meeting his views. He commenced rather in the shape of innuendos, by hinting that he wished the Parliament further, and he thought he knew a mode of despatching all the Members at once, by a special train. As his associates did not take the hint immediately, he proceeded to expatiate on the expediency of a regular blow up, and getting rid of the whole Parliament "slap bang;" accompanying his observation by dealing on the deal table a tremendous thump, that made a noise resembling the explosion of gunpowder. The action seemed to strike a light in the eyes of all present, and by putting this and that together, they perceived that Catesby's intention was to act the last scene of the Miller and his Men, beneath the walls of Parliament. Percy, who was a gentleman pensioner—though he seems to have been rather more of the pensioner than the gentleman—had an opportunity of hanging about the Court, and watching the movements of his intended victims. The first care of the conspirators was to take a house in the neighbourhood; but no one of the lot, except Percy, had sufficient credit to justify his acceptance as a tenant, by any prudent landlord. At length they got hold of a dwelling by the water side, which was occupied by one Ferris—probably a ferryman—who, for a small consideration, vacated the premises in Percy's favour. The back of the house abutted—by means of a water-butt—on the Parliamentary party Avail, and they began picking a hole in the wall as soon as they obtained possession. At every move they renewed their oath of secresy, as if they were mutually better known than trusted among themselves, and a secret which, even in ordinarily honest hands, is tolerably sure to get wind, was very soon known to twenty people, at least, through the leakiness of one or more of the conspirators.
Emboldened by their success, they took a coal shed, on the Lambeth side of the river, where one of them, under pretence of going into the potato business, accumulated as large a quantity of coals, coke, and wood, as he could with the small means upon which he was enabled to speculate. The chief scene of their operations was, of course, the house at Westminster, where they laid in a large supply of hard boiled eggs; "the better," says Strype, "to be enabled to hatch their scheme, and to avoid suspicion, by not being compelled to send out for food." The wall offering considerable resistance to their projects it was found advisable to send for the keeper of the potato shed, over the way, to aid in the work, and young Wright, a brother of the same Wright that never would admit himself to be wrong, was admitted to a partnership in the secret.
Vainly did these ninny-hammers go hammering on at the walls of Parliament, which stuck together in a manner very characteristic of bricks, and no impression seemed to be made upon them; while the mine from Lambeth, by means of which they intended under-mining the British Constitution, made scarcely any progress at all. One morning, in the midst of their labours, they were startled by a rumbling noise over head, when Guido Fawkes, who acted as sentinel, ran to ascertain the cause of the alarming sound. It seemed that one Bright, who carried on the coal business in a cellar immediately below the Parliament, was clearing out his stock, at "an alarming sacrifice," with the intention of moving his business to some more fashionable neighbourhood. Perhaps he was a bad tenant, and being on the eve of ejection, removed his coals in revenge for having got the sack from his landlord; but at all events, he had a cart into which he was shooting the Wall's End, though he may have had no intention of shooting the moon at the expense of his creditors.
Percy, knowing the cellar must be vacant went to look at it, and pronounced it the very thing; though it might, naturally, have excited some surprise that one who had hitherto been considered a man of ton should become a man of chaldrons and hundred weights, by going into the coal business, on a scale somewhat limited. A tenancy was nevertheless effected, and several barrels of gunpowder were carried into the vault, under the pretence that the small-beer and bloater business was about to be commenced by the new lessee, in a style of unusual liberality.
Guy Fawkes was despatched to Flanders, to obtain adherents to the scheme, but he got no further than to obtain a promise from Owen that he would speak to Stanley, which seems to have been merely equivalent to an extension of the secret, without any beneficial result to the conspirators. On the return of Guido, he found that while he had been extending the secret abroad, his colleagues had been blabbing—of course confidentially—at home, so that the secret was becoming a good deal like an "aside" in a melo-drama, which comes to the ears of every one but the person most interested in being made acquainted with its purport.
Every arrangement was now made for blowing up the Parliament sky-high, when a prorogation, until the fifth of November, was suddenly announced, and the conspirators began to fear that the secret, which had experienced as many extensions as a railway line, had found its way, by some disagreeable deviation, to the ears of the intended victims. The expense of the conspiracy had hitherto been borne by Catesby, who paid for all the hard-boiled eggs, the rent of the coal-cellar, with the wood and the coals that had been had in; for, the rest being soldiers of fortune, which means that they were soldiers of no fortune at all, would not have got credit for even the bull's-eye lanthorn, which has since cut such a conspicuous figure in the history of the period. Catesby had however spent so much in new-laid eggs and new-laid gunpowder—for he had to support a numerous train—that he was obliged to take in fresh capital, and Sir Everard Digby, with Francis Tresham, were admitted as shareholders in the dangerous secret Digby put down fifteen hundred pounds on the allotment of a slice of the mystery to himself, and Francis Tresham, who did not much like the speculation, though he consented to enter into it, gave his cheque for two thousand pounds, saying that he considered the money thrown away as completely as if he had wasted it in horse-chestnuts, Venetian grog, or raspberry vinegar His givings were accompanied by fearful misgivings, and he never expected to see the hour when he should have the honour of being sent up to posterity on the wings of a barrel of gunpowder.
The fifth of November was the day that the conspirators had agreed to immortalize, for the benefit of future dealers in squibs, crackers, Catharine-wheels, and all the other "wheels within wheels," that are so completely in character with this complicated project. They used to take blows on the river preliminary to the great blow they had in their eye, and a house at Erith was their frequent place of rendezvous They also held consultations at White Webbs—not Webb's the White Bear—near Enfield, and here they arranged that Guido Fawkes, after putting matters in train, should set fire to it, by a slow burning match, which would give him time to escape, though he often said, half jestingly, that to find his match would be exceedingly difficult. As the scheme drew near its intended execution, the "secret" had become so fearfully divided that every one who possessed a share of it had some friend or other he wanted to save; and, if each had been allowed to withdraw his man, the residue of the Parliament would scarcely have been worth the powder and shot it had been determined to devote to them. Tresham, for example, was seized with a sudden fit of benevolence towards old Lord Monteagle; while Kay, the seedy and needy gentleman in charge of the house at Lambeth, wanted to save Lord Mordaunt, who had cashed for poor K. an I.O.U., when the money was of great use to him, Catesby, who was not so tender-hearted, declared it was all very well, but if they were to go on saving and excepting one after the other, there could be no explosion at all, unless they could procure some of that celebrated discriminating gunpowder, which blows up all the villains, in the last scene of a melo-drama, and spares the virtuous characters. He insisted, therefore, on the necessity of leaving the result to a toss-up, as at a game of heads and tails, in which all would have an equal chance of winning or losing.
Tresham, who combined the wavering of the weathercock with the tremulousness of the tee-to-tum, was still intent on giving a sort of general warning to a number of his friends, and when his blabbing was objected to, he declared the affair had better be put off, as he could find no more money to carry on the conspiracy. Catesby, Winter, and Fawkes objected to delay; whereupon it is supposed that Tresham not only ratted but let the cat out of the bag in a most unwarrantable manner. Lord Monteagle, who had a country box at Hoxton, was giving a petit souper to a few friends on the twenty-sixth of October, and he was just finishing the leg of a Welsh rabbit, when his page presented him a letter that had just been left by a tall man who had refused to leave his name or wait for an answer. Lord Monteagle, thinking it might be a bill, desired one of his guests to read it out, when it proved to be a letter written in the characteristic spelling of the period. "I would advyse yowe, as yowe tender yower lyf, to devyse some excuse to shift of yower attendance at this parleament," said the anonymous scribbler, which threw Monteagle into such alarm that he took the Hoxton 'bus, and went off to Whitehall the same evening to see Cecil. The king was "hunting the fearful hare at Royston," in the most hare-um scare-um style, and it was resolved that nothing could, would, or should be done until the return of the sovereign.
Notwithstanding the letter having been delivered as early as the twenty-sixth of October, nothing seems to have been done to stop the conspiracy, for Fawkes went regularly once a day to the cellar, to count the coals, snuff the rushlight, and do any other little odd job that the progress of the conspiracy might require. Cecil and Suffolk having laid their heads together on the subject of the letter, at last fancied they had found the solution of the riddle, which, for the convenience of the student, we will throw into the form of a charade, after an approved model.
My first is a sort of peculiar tea;
My second a lawn or a meadow might be;
My whole's a conspiracy likely to blow
King, Commons, and Lords to a place I don't know.
The "peculiar tea" was gunpowder, the "lawn" or "meadow" was a plot—of grass, and the whole was the gunpowder plot, which, though it went off very badly at the time, caused an explosion from which the country has not yet quite recovered. Notwithstanding the solution of the mystery, no steps were taken to bring the matter to an issue, and Fawkes was permitted to be at large about town, paying his diurnal visits to the cellar without attracting the observation of any one. Tresham and Winter talked the matter over in Lincoln's Inn Fields, or wandered amid the then romantic scenery of Whetstone Park, to consult on the scheme and its probable completion. The timid Tresham proposed flight, but his fellow conspirators, who were not so flighty, resolved on persevering, and the intrepid Fawkes kept up a regular Cellarius, [We may as well state, for the benefit of that posterity which this work will reach and the Cellarius will not, that the Cellarius is a dance fashionable in the year 1847 when this history was written.] by dancing backwards and forwards about the cellar.
The shilly-shallying of all parties with respect to the gunpowder conspiracy is one of the most remarkable features of the period when it occurred; for we find the plotters, with detection, staring them in the face, adhering to their old haunts, while the intended victims, though made aware of the plot, were as tardy as possible in taking any steps to baffle it. Fawkes continued his visits to the cellar just as confidently as ever; and one would think that ultimately detection was the object he had in view, for he lurked about the premises with such obstinate perseverance that his escape was impossible. At length Suffolk, the Lord Chamberlain, took Monteagle down to the House the day before the opening of Parliament, to see that all was right, and they occupied themselves for several hours in looking under the seats, unpicking the furniture of the throne to see if any one was concealed inside, and searching into every hole and comer where a conspirator was not likely to secrete himself. Having taken courage from the fact of there being no signs of danger, they determined to go down stairs into the cellar, under pretence of stopping up the rat-holes—for even in those early days rats found their way into the House—and they had no sooner opened the door than they saw in one corner a round substance, which they at first took for a beer barrel. They approached it with the intention of giving it a friendly tap, when the supposed barrel rose up into the height of a water-butt.
Suffolk instantly got behind Monteagle, who stood trembling with fear, when the phantom cask assumed the form of a "tall, desperate fellow," who proved to be Fawkes, and the Chamberlain, affecting a careless indifference, demanded his "name, birth, and parentage." Guido handed his card, bearing the words G. Fawkes, and announced himself as the servant of Mr. Percy, who carried on a trade in coals coke, and wood, if he could, in the immediate neighbourhood. "Indeed," said Suffolk, "your master has a tolerably large stock on hand, though I think there is something else screened besides the coals, which I see around me." Without adding another word, he and Monteagle ran off, and Fawkes hastened to acquaint Percy with what had happened.
Discovery of Guido Fawkes by Suffolk and Monteagle.
Poor Guido seems to have formed a most feline and most fatal attachment to the place, for nothing could keep him out of the cellar, though he knew he was almost certain of being hauled, unceremoniously, over the coals, and he went back, at two in the morning, to the old spot, with his habitual foolhardiness. He had no sooner opened the door than he was seized and pinioned, without his opinion being asked, by a party of soldiers. He made one desperate effort to make light of the whole business, by setting fire to the train, but he had no box of Congreves at hand, and he observed, with bitter boldness, in continuation of a pun which he had made in happier days, that he had at last found his match and lost his Lucifer. Poor Guy Fawkes, having been bound hand and foot, was taken on a stretcher to Whitehall, having been previously searched, when his pocket was found filled with tinder, touch-wood, and other similar rubbish. Behind the door was a dark lanthorn, or bull's-eye, that had cowed the soldiers at first glance, by its glazed look, but it seemed less terrible on their walking resolutely up to it. Fawkes was taken to the king's bed-room, at Whitehall, and though his limbs were bound and helpless, he spoke with a thick, bold, ropy voice, that terrified all around him. His tones had become quite sepulchral, from remaining so long in the vault, and when asked his name, he scraped out from his hoarse throat the words "John Johnson," which came gratingly—as if through a grating—on the ears of the bystanders. He announced himself as John the footman to Mr. Percy, and he threw himself into an attitude—which was rather cramped by his pinions—which he found anything but the sort of pinions that would enable him to soar into the lofty regions of romance to which he had aspired. He nevertheless boldly announced his purpose, with the audacity of a stage villain; and with that sort of magnanimity which lasts, on an average, about five minutes, in the guilty breast, he refused to disclose the names of his accomplices.
One of the Scotch courtiers who had a natural feeling of stinginess, asked how it was that Fawkes had collected so many barrels of gunpowder, when half the quantity would have done? upon which Fawkes replied, that his principal had desired him to purchase enough to blow the Scotch back to Scotland. "Hoot, awa, mon!" rejoined the Scot; "but ken ye not that ye might have bought half the powder, and put the rest of the siller in your pocket?" Fawkes sternly intimated that though he would have blown up the Parliament, he would not defraud his principal. "Hoot, mon!" cried the Scotchman, who loved his specie under the pretence of loving his species, and who, it is probable, belonged to the Chambers; "Hoot, mon!" he whined, "dinna ye ken that there are times when you mun just throw your preencipal overboard?" [A fact.]
On the 6th of November Fawkes was sent to the Tower, with instructions to squeeze out of him whatever could be elicited by the screw, which was then the usual method of scrutiny. For four days he would confess nothing at all; but his accomplices began to betray themselves by their own proceedings. Several of them fled; but Tresham exhibited the very height of impudence by coming down to the Council and asking if he could be of any use in the pursuit of the rebels. Nothing but the effrontery of the boots which ran after the stolen shoes, crying "Stop thief!" and have never returned to this very hour, can be compared with the coolness of Tresham in offering to aid in effecting the capture of the conspirators.
Catesby and Jack Wright cut right away to Dunchurch, Percy filled his purse, and Christopher Wright packed up his kit, to be in readiness for making off when occasion required, while Keyes made a precipitate bolt out of London the morning after the plot was discovered.
Rookwood, who had ordered relays of fine horses all along the road, went at full gallop through Highgate, and never slackened his pace till he reached Turvey, in Bedfordshire, where he came tumbling almost topsy-turvy over the inhabitants. Arriving at Ashby, St. Legers, with a legerete quite worthy of the race for the St. Leger itself, he had already travelled eighty miles in six hours; but he nevertheless pushed along on his gallant steed—a magnificent dun—who always ran as if he had a commercial dun at his heels, to Dunchurch. Here he found Digby, enjoying his otium cum dig.—with a hunting party round him; but the guests guessed what was in the wind, and fearing they might come in for the blow, had vanished in the night-time. When Digby sat down to breakfast the next day, his circle of friends had dwindled to a triangle, consisting of Catesby, Percy, and Rookwood, who, with their host, now become almost a host in himself, took speedily to horse, and rode a regular steeple-chase to the borders of Staffordshire. Here they arrived on the night of November the 7th, at Holbeach, where they took possession of a house; but by this time Sir Richard Walsh, the sheriff of
Flight of Rookwood.
Worcester, who had got writs out against them all, was close upon them with his officers.
In the morning their landlord, one Littleton, having been let into their secret, let himself out of his bed-room window through fear, and Digby decamped under the pretence of going to buy some eggs to suck for breakfast, as well as to look for some succour. Digby had hardly shut the street door when its bang was echoed by a bang up stairs, occasioned by Catesby, Percy, and Rookwood having endeavoured to dry some gunpowder in a frying pan over the fire. Catesby was burnt and blackened, besides being blown up for having been the chief cause of the accident; and shortly afterwards, to add to their misfortunes, the sheriff, with the posse comitatus, surrounded the dwelling. The conspirators endeavoured to parry with their swords the bullets of their assailants, but this was a hopeless job, and keeping up their spirits as well as they could, they exclaimed at every shot fired on the side of the king, "Here comes another dose of James's powder."
Catesby, addressing Thomas Winter, roared out, "Now then, stand by me, Tom!" and Winter, suddenly taking a spring to his friend's side, they were both shot by one musket. Their attendants, not being able to get the bullet out, issued a bullet-in to say they were both dead, and the brothers Wright were not long left to bewail the fate of their accomplices. Percy, who had persevered to the last, got a wound which wound him up, and Rookwood had received such a home-thrust in the stomach from a rusty pike, that the pike rust sadly disagreed with him. Digby, whose feelings had run away with him, was overtaken, caught, and made fast, because he had been too slow, while Keyes came to a deadlock, and the prisoners being all brought to London, were lodged in the Tower.
Tresham, who had never left town, but was strutting about with all the easy confidence of a man with "nothing out against him," was suddenly nabbed, in spite of his remonstrances, conveyed in exclamations of "What have I done?" "La! bless me! there must be some mistake!" and other appeals of an ejaculatory but useless character.
Poor Guido Fawkes was examined by Popham, Coke, and Wood, whose names may now for the first time he noticed as appropriate to the business they were intrusted with. Popham is surely emblematical of the series of pops, bangs, and explosions that would have ensued from the Gunpowder Plot; while Coke and Wood are obviously symbolical of the combustibles required for fuel. In vain did these sagacious persons attempt to get anything from Guido, who said "he belonged to the Fawkes and not to the spoons, who might perhaps be made to convict themselves by cross-questioning." Popham popped questions in abundance; Coke tried to coax out the truth; and Wood, if he could, would have got at the facts; but neither threats nor promises could prevent Fawkes from showing his metal.
Posterity, in altering his name to Guy Fox, has happily hit upon and appropriately expressed the cunning of his character. He confessed his own share in the business readily enough, but resolutely refused to betray his associates. "I will not acknowledge that Percy is in the plot," he cried; which reminds us of an intimation made by a gentleman just arrested, to his surrounding friends, that "he did not wish the bailiff pumped upon." A nod is as good as a wink in certain cases; and like winking the sheriff's officer was submitted to a course of hydropathic treatment. In the same manner the declaration of Fawkes that "Percy had nothing to do with it—oh dear no, nothing at all!" was quite enough to put the authorities on the right scent had any such guidance been required.
Poor Fawkes was so fearfully damaged by the torture he had undergone, that his handwriting was entirely spoiled; and specimens of his mode of signing his name after the torture, contrasted with the copy of his autograph before the cruel infliction, present the reverse of the result which writing-masters of our day boast of producing by their six lessons in penmanship.
Guido Fawkes, however, confessed nothing specifically beyond what the Government already knew, but Tresham and Catesby's servant
Guy Fawkes before and after the Torture.
Bates, a man remarkable for his betise, confessed whatever the authorities required. Tresham being seized with a fatal illness in prison, retracted his confession, which he declared had been extorted or "extortured"—as Strype has it—from him, and he died after placing his recantation in the hands of his wife to be given to Cecil. The surviving conspirators were brought to trial after some delay, and though they all pleaded not guilty, as long as there was a chance of escape, they were no sooner convicted beyond all hope than they began boasting of their offense, and were all "on the high ropes" when they came to the scaffold. Garnet the Jesuit was served up by way of garniture to the horrible banquet that the vengeance of the Protestants required. This brilliant character shone with increased lustre as the time for his execution approached, and however glorious had been his rise, the setting was worthy of Garnet in his very brightest moments.
Besides those who were executed for an avowal, or at least, a proved participation in the Gunpowder Plot, several persons were punished very severely, in the capacity of supplementary victims, who might, or might not, have been implicated in the conspiracy. Lords Mordaunt and Stourton, two Catholic nobles, were fined, respectively, ten thousand and four thousand pounds, because they did not happen to be in their places in Parliament, to be blown up, had Fawkes succeeded in accomplishing his object. The Earl of Northumberland was sent to the Tower for a few years, and mulcted of thirty thousand pounds, because he had made Percy a gentleman pensioner, some years before; but no trouble was taken to show how this could have rendered him afterwards a rebel, nor how Northumberland could be responsible, even if such a result had really arrived. But it was urged by the apologists for this severity, that the Gunpowder Treason would have been fatal alike to the good and the bad, and that as the punishment should correspond with the offence, an indiscriminate dealing out of penalties among the guilty and the innocent was quite allowable.
JAMES THE FIRST (CONTINUED).
THE Parliament that was to have been dissolved in thin air on the 5th of November, leaving nothing behind but a report in several volumes of smoke, met for the despatch of business on the 21st of January, 1606. Laws were passed against the Papists in a most vexatious spirit, and by one enactment they were positively prohibited from removing more than five miles from home without an order signed by four magistrates. If a Catholic had got into a cab, and the horse had run away, without the driver being able to pull up within the fifth mile, the fare would have been most unfairly sacrificed.
James, who saw the advantage Scotland would derive from an alliance with England,
began to urge the Union, but the English naturally objected to such a very unprofitable
match; for Scotland had nothing to lose, nothing to give, nothing to lend,
and nothing to teach, except the art of making bread without flour, joke-books
without wit, reputation without ability, and a living without anything. James
felt that the sarcasms on the Scotch were personal to himself, and he told the
Parliament they ought not to talk on matters they did not understand; but it
was thought that to restrict them to subjects which they did understand, would
be equivalent to depriving them of liberty of speech on nearly every occasion.
James had become somewhat popular on account of the attempt to Wow him up sky-high
with all his ministers, and a rumour of his having been assassinated, sent him
up a shade or two higher in the affections of his people. It is a feature in
the character of the English that they always take into their favour any one
who seems to be an object of persecution; and there is no doubt that if in a
crowd there is any one desirous of rising in public esteem, he has only to ask
a friend to give him a severe and apparently unmerited blow on the head, in
order to render him the idol of the surrounding multitude. If there had been
no Gunpowder Plot, it would have been worth the while of James to have got one
up, for the express purpose of increasing his popularity His qualities, as shown
in his way of life at this time, do not warrant the esteem in which he was held
; for he divided his time between the pleasures of the table, the excitements
of the chase, and the blackguardism of the cock-pit. When remonstrated with
on the lowness of his pursuits, he declared that his health required relaxation;
and he would declare that he would rather see one of his Dorking chickens win
Ids spurs, than witness the grandest tournament. These pursuits, which were
expensive, caused him to do many acts of meanness to obtain the necessary supplies
: and among other things he went to dine with the Clothworkers as well as with
the Merchant Tailors, among both of whom the royal hat was sent round at the
close of the banquet. At the second of these entertainments his own beaver had
just made the circuit of the table with considerable effect, when, encouraged
by the liberality of the company, he shoved on to the social board a cap, in
the name of his son, Prince Henry. The collection for the child was not very
ample, for many of the guests objected to being called upon for a trifle towards
lining the pockets of the young gentleman's new frock, more especially when
it was obvious that James fully intended to clutch the whole of the additional
assets.
Among other disreputable methods he took of procuring money, was the institution of the order of Baronets, whose titles he sold at a
King James disposing of Baronetcies.
thousand pounds each, without regard to the merit of the purchasers. The antiquity of a baronetcy is therefore not much in its favour, and those who can trace the possession of such a distinction in their family down to the first establishment of the rank, do nothing more than prove the possession, either honestly or dishonestly, of a thousand pounds by one of his ancestors. Seventy-five families took advantage of this traffic in dignities to obtain a sort of spurious nobility, founded on the necessities of the sovereign. The only qualifications required of candidates wishing to be elected to the order were "cash down," to pay the fees, and an ability to trace a descent from at least a grandfather on the father's side; so that semble, as the lawyers say, the maternal ancestors might have been utterly hypothetical and purely anonymous. The arms of the baronets have always included those of Ulster, because the money they contributed was designed for the relief of that province—a proof that Ireland has been a drain upon England for a long series of centuries. The emblem of Ulster is a bloody hand, which was only too appropriate to the place; and the symbol being called in the language of heraldry a hand gules—or gold—in a field argent—or silver—was also characteristic of the metallic source from which the baronets derived their titles.
Prince Henry, the heir to the throne, had long been looked upon as a pleasing contrast to his odious father, and the people were anticipating the former's reign with an assurance that the amiable and accomplished son would compensate for the infliction they had endured in the ignorance, pride, and selfishness of the parent. Death, however, that sometimes seizes first on the best, and leaves the worst till the last—on the principle of the boy who began by picking all the plums out of the pudding—took the youthful prince before appropriating his papa, and caused the latter sinfully to exult in being the survivor of his own offspring. He forgot the maxim that "Whom the gods love, die young," and the remarks he made upon his own comparative longevity proved that he at least was one of those whom the gods had not been anxious to adopt at the earliest opportunity. The young prince died of a malignant fever, on the 5th of November, 1612, and his father, whose harsh conduct—especially to Sir Walter Raleigh and other great men—had been criticised by his heir, allowed no mourning to take place, but made the unnatural and blasphemous boast that "he should outlive all who opposed him."
Though having little or no affection for his own children, James delighted in having about him some low and sneaking favourite who would flatter his ridiculous vanity, and help to cheat him into the belief that he was a good and amiable character. As no one of spirit and honesty would consent to become the despicable parasite that James required, some mean and unprincipled vagabond was of necessity selected as the depositary of that confidence which a son, with the feelings of a gentleman, could not of course participate. Henry had therefore been excluded from that free communication which should exist between child and parent in every station, and an uneducated humbug named Robert Carr had wormed his way into the heart, or rather into the favour of James, who was drawn towards the other by a sympathy with congenial littleness. Carr was such a wretched ignoramus as to be unable to speak ten consecutive words of grammar, and it flattered the egregious vanity of James to be able to impart some of that education of which he had just about enough to enable him to show his superiority over his most unlettered pupil. Carr played his cards so successfully that he was soon not only knighted but created Viscount Rochester; and though his future career proved him worthier of the rope, he actually obtained the garter.
It was to be presumed that this disreputable scapegrace would soon do something or other to prove how far James had been right or wrong in the selection of a friend, adviser, companion, and favourite. The necessities of Carr were so well supplied by sponging on his royal patron that it was not necessary for the former to commit any pecuniary swindle; but he very rapidly got into a most disgraceful connection with the Countess of Essex, a vile person who obtained a divorce from her own husband, to enable her to marry Rochester. The latter had a friend named Sir Thomas Overbury, who advised him to have nothing to do with the profligate woman in question. This so irritated the countess that she persuaded her paramour to join her in poisoning the party who had given the advice, and after trying the homoeopathic principle for some weeks without effect, they at length gave him one tremendous dose which did the atrocious business. Carr had received the title of Earl of Somerset on his infamous marriage, but the favourite was getting already a little out of favour when the affair of the murder happened. James being one of those who promptly turned his back on those who were "down in the world," and had smiles for those only who were prosperous, began to estrange himself from Somerset, and to transfer his worthless friendship to George Villiers, afterwards Duke of Buckingham.
The king first saw this young scamp at the Theatre Royal, Cambridge, where a five-act farce called Ignoramus was being represented by a party of distinguished amateurs, with the applause that usually attends these interesting performances. Villiers was appointed cup-bearer—a grade immediately under that of bottle-holder—to the king, and the influence of the new favourite was soon felt by the old, who found himself arrested one fine morning on the charge of having been concerned in Sir Thomas Overbury's murder. The steps taken for the punishment of this atrocity were perfectly characteristic of the period. By way of a preliminary offering to Justice, some half dozen of the minor and subordinate parties to the crime were executed off-hand, while the two principal delinquents, Somerset and his countess, having been tardily condemned, were immediately afterwards pardoned. The infamous couple subsequently received a pension of four thousand a year from the king, who no doubt felt that Somerset could show him up, and was just the sort of scoundrel to do so unless he could be well paid far his silence. The annuity allowed to the ex-favourite must be looked upon as hush-money, rendered necessary by the mutual rascalities of the donor and the recipient, who being in each other's power, were under the necessity of effecting a compromise. The fall of Somerset was followed by the rise of Villiers, who rushed through the entire peerage with railroad rapidity, passing the intermediate stations of Viscount, Earl, and Marquis, till he reached the terminus as Duke of Buckingham.
Poor Raleigh, who had been thirteen years in the Tower, where he was writing the History of the World, began to feel a very natural anxiety to get out of his prison, and describe, from ocular demonstration, the subject of his gigantic labours. He accordingly spread a report that he knew of a gold mine in Guiana, where the stuff for making guineas could be had only for the trouble of picking it up, and the king was persuaded to let him go and try his luck in America. Raleigh had no sooner got free than he published a prospectus and got up a company with a preliminary deposit sufficient to start him off well on his new enterprise. He proved with all the clearness of figures—which the reader must not think of confounding with facts—that a hundred per cent must be realised; and the shares in Raleigh's gold mine rose to such a height that he was enabled to rig a ship after having rigged the market. Plans were published, with great streaks of gamboge painted all over, to represent the supposed veins of gold that were waiting only to be worked; and through the medium of these veins the British public bled very rapidly.
The extent of the mining mania got up by Sir Walter may be imagined when we state that he arrived with twelve vessels at Guiana, a portion of which had already been taken possession of by Spain; and the English speculators declared with disgust, that they had come for the gold, and had not expected to meet the Spanish. The town of St. Thomas being already in the possession of the latter, was boldly attacked and ultimately taken, but instead of finding a mine there were only two ingots of gold in the whole place, which Raleigh clutched, exclaiming "Those are mine," immediately on landing. It was evident to the whole party that Raleigh's story of the gold mine was a mere "dodge" to get himself released from the Tower; and when they came to look for the boasted vein, they found that it was literally in vain that they searched for the precious metal. A mutiny at once broke out, and as Raleigh deceived them in his promise of introducing them to abundance of gold, they made him form a very close connection with a large quantity of iron. They in fact threw him into fetters, a species of treatment that, had it been applied to every projector of a bubble company during the railway mania of 1846, would have hung half the aldermen of London in chains, and linked society together by a general concatenation of nearly every rank as well as every profession. Poor Raleigh arrived safe in Plymouth Sound, but he found a proclamation out against him, accusing him of a long catalogue of crimes, and inviting all the world to take him into custody.
The Spanish ambassador was at the bottom of this affair, for the Spaniards had a score of old scores against Sir Walter, who had no sooner landed at Plymouth than he was made a prisoner. With considerable ingenuity he pretended to be very ill, and even feigned insanity; but the latter was a plea that could not so easily be established in the time of Raleigh as it has been in our own days, when it has been found a convenient and effective excuse for those who, having committed murder, escape on the ground of their being given to eccentricity. Raleigh tried it on very hard, by talking incoherently, playing the fool, dancing fandangos in his prison, sending a potato to his tailor to be measured for a new jacket, and feigning other acts of madness, but to the writ de lunatico inquirendo, there was no other return than nullum iter, or no go, when the investigation into his state of mind was concluded. In order to save the trouble and expense of a fresh conviction, the old outstanding judgment was again brought up, and it was determined to kill him by a bill of reviver—if such an anomaly could be permitted. He grew ponderously facetious as his end drew nigh, and made one or two jokes that might have saved him had they been heard in time, for they gave evidence of an amount of mental imbecility that should have released him from all responsibility on account of his actions. Among other lugubrious levities of Raleigh before his death, was the well-known but generally-execrated remark in reference to a cup of sack which was brought to him; "Ha!" said he, "I shall soon have the sack without the cup;" an observation that elicited, as soon as it was known, an immediate order for his execution. "That head of Raleigh's must come off," cried the king, "for it is evident the fellow has lost the use of it." On the 29th of October, 1618, poor Raleigh joked his last, upon the scaffold, where he stood shivering with cold, when the sheriff asked him to step aside for a few minutes and warm himself. "No," said Sir Walter, "my wish is to take it cool;" and then looking at the axe, he balanced it on the top of his little finger—some say his chin—and observed, "This is a great medicine, rather sharp, but it cures all diseases." At this the headsman, no doubt irritated by the maddening mediocrity of the intended witticism, let fall the fatal blade, and Raleigh, with his head off, never came to—or rather never came one—again.
We ought, perhaps, to shed a tear over the fate of this great, though unprincipled man; but it is not so easy to turn on the main of sentiment to the fountains of pity, after the water has been cut off during more than two centuries by Time, in the capacity of turncock. Besides, in going through the history of our native land there are so many victims, all more or less worthy of a gush of sympathy, that we should literally dissolve ourselves in tears before we had got half through our labours, if we began giving way to what old King Lear has ungallantly termed a woman's weakness.
On the 16th of June, 1621, James, being "hard up," and finding that the circulation of the begging-box produced no effect, was compelled to summon a Parliament. Some cash to go on with was voted to the king, but the Commons then proceeded to investigate some cases of gross corruption that had been discovered among the Ministers. The Testes, the Cubieres, and other official swindlers of modern France, who, in the midst of meanness, deception, and theft, were still blatant about their "honour," might have found, in the England of 1621, a precedent for their venal rascality. Sir John Bennet, Judge of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, and Field, Bishop of Llandaff, were convicted of bribery. Yelverton, the Attorney-General, was found guilty of having aided in an extensive swindle in the Patent Office, and Bacon, the great "moral philosopher," was found to have been fleecing the public in the
Bacon, ye great Moral Philosopher. From a remarkably scarce Print.
Court of Chancery, to such a degree, that he might have stuffed the woolsack over and over again from the produce of the shearing to which he submitted the flocks of suitors who appealed to him. He would take bribes in open court, and he would pretend to consider, that as all men should be equal in the eye of the law, the equality could only be achieved by emptying the pockets of every party that came into court, as a preliminary to giving him a hearing. It has been said by his apologists, that though he took bribes, his decisions were just, for he would often give judgment against those who had paid him for a decree in their favour. The excuse merely proves that he was sufficiently unscrupulous to follow up one fraud by another, and to cheat his suitors oat of the consideration upon which they had parted with their money. Bacon endeavoured to effect a compromise with his accusers by a confession of about one per cent, of his crimes, but the Peers insisted on making him answerable in full for all his delinquencies. He then acknowledged twenty-eight articles, which seemed to satisfy the most ravenous of his enemies, who were hungering to see his reputation torn to pieces by the million mouths of rumour. The great seal was taken away from a man of such a degraded stamp, he was fined forty thousand pounds—a mere bagatelle out of what he had bagged—was declared incapable of holding office or sitting in Parliament, and was sent off to the Tower.
There were thoughts of beheading him, but happily for England, her Bacon was saved to devote the remainder of his life to literary compositions, which have greatly redeemed his name from obloquy. We must regard the character of our Bacon as streaky, for the dark is intermingled "with the fair in the most wonderful manner." Bacon was undoubtedly rash, but he might have been rasher," says the incorrigible Strype, whose name is continually suggestive of the lashing he merited.
The Commons having been instrumental in bringing to light a considerable quantity of corruption, seemed determined to continue on the same scent, and every one who had a grievance was invited to lay it at once before Parliament. The waste-paper baskets of the House were of course soon overflowing with popular complaints, for there is scarcely a man, woman, or child that cannot rake up a grievance of some kind, upon the invitation of persons professing to be able and willing to supply a remedy. James, fearful that his prerogative would be entrenched upon, wrote a letter to the Speaker, advising the Commons not to form themselves into an assembly of gossips, to listen to all the tittle-tattle that an entire nation of scandal-mongers would be ready to collect; but the House would not be diverted from its honest purpose by the sneers or threats of the sovereign. A good deal of polite and other letter-writing ensued between the king and the Parliament, until the latter entered on its Journals a protestation, claiming the freedom of speech and the right of giving advice as the undoubted "inheritance of the subjects of England."
James was furious at what had occurred, and ordering the Journals of the Commons to be brought to him, he contemptuously tore out the page; and then, sending back the book, advised the House to turn over a new leaf as soon as possible. "Tell your master," said Coke, in a whisper that nobody heard, "tell him he will do well to take a leaf out of our book, but not in the style in which this leaf has been taken." Parliament was first prorogued, and then dissolved by the king, who declared it would do no good as long as it lasted, and Coke, who was charged with adding fuel to the Parliamentary fire, was sent to the Tower with several others. On the day of the dissolution James nearly met with his own dissolution, for while taking a ride on a spirited horse, who had perhaps a certain instinctive sympathy with the popular cause, he was thrown into the New River. This was on the 6th of January, 1622, when the water was frozen; and James had just been saying to himself, "I'm glad I have made the plunge, and broken the ice with these turbulent Commons," when he found himself plunging and breaking the ice after another fashion. Fortunately his boots were buoyant—perhaps they had cork soles—and
King James rescued from the New River.
Sir Richard Young, seizing a boat-hook, which he converted for the moment into a boot-hook, drew the sovereign by the heels from what he afterwards declared was decidedly not his proper element.
Buckingham, as we have already seen, was the sole successor to Somerset in the office of royal favourite; but Charles, the Prince of Wales, had taken rather an aversion than otherwise to the person whom his father patronised. The friends of the latter were generally so disreputable, that his son could not go wrong in avoiding them; but Buckingham beginning to look upon Charles as the better speculation of the two, resolved on making himself as agreeable as possible to the more faithful and therefore more promising branch of royalty. The duke being fond of scampish adventure, proposed a plan better suited to be made the incident of a farce, than to be ranked as an event in history. He suggested that Charles and himself should travel to Spain under the assumed names of Jack Smith and Tom Smith, in order that the prince might introduce himself to the Infanta of Spain, whom it had been proposed he should marry. For such a wild-goose scheme to succeed, an Infanta of Spain must have been much more accessible in those days than in ours; for though Jack Smith and Tom Smith might find their way into a public-house parlour, and make love to the landlord's daughter, they would assuredly never be allowed to carry their gallantries into any European palace, or even to obtain admittance into any respectable private family. James, when the scheme was proposed to him, discouraged it at first, but being taken by the scapegrace couple in "a jovial humour," which means when the trio happened to be disgracefully drunk, the consent of the king was given to the farcical enterprise.
Having arrived at Madrid, the two hopeful youths rode up on mules to the door of Sir Thomas Digby, the British ambassador, and sent in the names of John and Thomas Smith; but Digby, knowing no less than half a hundred Smiths, declined seeing the "party" unless a more special description was sent up to him. Without waiting for further formality, Buckingham—alias Tom. Smith—walked with his portmanteau straight into the ambassador's presence, after a series of scuffles on the staircase, and in the passages, accompanied by shouts of "Keep back, fellow!" "You can't come up!" and other exclamations that had prepared Digby to give Tom Smith a reception by no means encouraging. When the ambassador recognised his visitor, his manner completely changed, and his politeness knew no bounds when in Jack Smith, who entered next, Digby saw no less a person than the heir to the throne of England. The incognito was of course at an end in an instant, and the next day Buckingham and the prince were presented to the Royal family of Spain, though the farce of the disguise was still kept up to a certain extent; and the Infanta was sent out in her father's carriage, "sitting in the boot," says Howell, "that Charles might get a sight of her." The position of a young lady looking from the boot of a carriage could not have been very becoming, and she does not seem to have made a particularly favourable impression on her intended suitor. He nevertheless expressed his readiness to have another look at her, and he played the part of lover at Buckingham's instigation, for the purpose of getting a variety of presents from the young lady's family.
Her brother Philip was anxious for the match, and did everything to encourage it, by giving some valuable article to Charles whenever he evinced anything like affection for the young Infanta. One day he pretended to be in a particularly tender mood, and at every piece of gallantry he displayed Philip gave him something costly to take away with him. By a series of smirks, leers, and pretty speeches, he secured some original pictures by Titian and Correggio, but when he rushed up to the Infanta with amorous playfulness, pinking her in the side with his cane, and giving the Spanish version of "Whew, you little baggage!" the Queen of Spain was so delighted that she emptied her reticule, which was full of amber, into the pocket of the Prince, while the word "Halves" was whispered in a sepulchral tone into his ear by the crafty and avaricious Buckingham.
When they had got all they could out of the Spanish royal family, the English prince and his companion made up their minds that the Infanta was a failure, and that they had better get home with all possible celerity. Buckingham began treating Philip with the most disrespectful familiarity, slapping him boisterously on the back, alluding to him curtly, but not courteously, as Phil., and otherwise offending the royal dignity. At length Prince Charles and his companion called to take leave, when the former played his old part of a devoted lover, beating in the crown of his hat, stamping on the floor, and giving the numerous signs of devotion that a practice of several weeks under a popular actor had made him completely master of. He had no sooner turned his back upon Madrid, and commenced moving towards home, than he made up his mind to cut the matrimonial connection; and he announced his determination by a messenger, who was instructed to say to Philip, that, for the good of both parties, and decidedly for the happiness of one, the abandonment of the marriage was much to be desired. Philip, upon whom the Infanta was a drag he would have been glad to get off his hands, became angry at the tampering that had taken place with the young lady's affections; but as these were no doubt pretty tough, the damage was not material. A proxy had been left in the hands of Digby, Earl of Bristol, the British Ambassador at Madrid, and the royal family sent nearly every day, with their compliments, begging to know when the proxy was to be acted upon; but finding at last, that, notwithstanding the proxy, there was no approximation to a satisfactory result, a most unpleasant feeling was created. Bristol, who was a man of honour, felt very uncomfortable at the evasive replies he was compelled to give, and was not sorry to return to England; though he had, as he naturally observed, "not bargained for the warrant which, in the most unwarrantable manner, awaited his arrival, and sent him straight to the Tower." He was soon afterwards released, but was not allowed by Buckingham, the favourite, to approach the king, and a recommendation to Bristol to go to Bath, or to retire to his country seat, was the only reply the ex-ambassador could obtain to his solicitations to be allowed to offer explanations to his sovereign.
Charles had given the Infanta scarcely time to recover from the jilting she had just undergone, when, with a cruel disregard of that young person's feelings, he made up to Mademoiselle Henrietta of France, and a marriage with the latter was speedily concluded. The dowry, amounting to about £100,000, was paid partly down, but the nuptial ceremony was performed by proxy; and the English government wrote over to say, that there was no hurry about the bride, provided some of the cash was transmitted to England as speedily as possible.
With some of the cash thus obtained, and with money squeezed out of the people, an expensive engagement was formed with Count Mansfeldt, an adventurer from the Low Countries, who undertook to recover the Palatinate, if an English army of twelve thousand men were placed under him. The troops were put at his disposal, and embarked at Dover; but on reaching Calais the governor had no orders to let them pass, and in consequence of the loss of the city in Mary's time, the free list, of which the English had been in the habit of taking advantage, was of course suspended. In vain did Mansfeldt inform the door-keeper that it was all right, and insist that the name of Mansfeldt and party should have been left with the authorities; for the man resolutely declared he had a duty to perform, which prevented him from admitting the earl and his followers. While they were waiting outside the bar of Calais, several of the troops suffered severely from sea-sickness, and being obliged to go round by the back way, they had become so attenuated, that instead of being fit for marching into the Palatinate, they were much better adapted for marching into Guy's Hospital.
The failure of this expedition was the last event of importance in the reign of James, who was fast sinking under gout and tertian ague, produced by a long indulgence in rums, gins, brandies, and other compounds. He died, at the age of fifty-nine, on the 27th of March, 1625, having reigned upwards of two-and-twenty years, during which he showed himself fully deserving of the title bestowed on him by Sully, who said of James I. that he was the "wisest fool in Europe." He was learned, it is true, but his acquirements, such as they were, became a bore, from his disagreeable habit of thrusting them at most inappropriate times upon all who approached him. He was weak, mean, and pusillanimous, while his excessive vanity caused him to select for his companions those pitiful sycophants who would affect admiration for those miserable qualities, which, had he cultivated the friendship of honest and intelligent men, he might have been eventually broken of He lost, and indeed he did not desire the society of his children, because they could not sympathise with those littlenesses of character which, the older they grew, their judgment caused them more and more to despise and deplore in their unfortunate parent.
Happily only two out of seven survived to endure that alienation which must have been painful while it would have been unavoidable; and they were thus spared the humiliation of seeing a father vain, selfish, and unrepentant to the last, while their deaths in rapid succession gave him happily no uneasiness. For his eldest son he had, as we have already seen, prohibited the wearing of mourning, thus giving a proof of combined malice and stupidity, since his insults to the dead were of course as impotent as they were wicked and infamous. He was suspicious in the extreme, and always fancied he was going to be done or done for. To guard against the latter contingency he wore a quilted doublet that was proof against a stiletto, and under the apprehension of being taken advantage of, he obstinately excluded every one from his confidence. The result was that he never had a friend, through his constant dread of an imaginary enemy. It has been said of him by one of his historians, that he was fond of laughing at his own conceits; but the wretch who can even smile at a joke of his own must be such a libel upon human nature that not even Hume-an(d) Smollett (ha! ha! mark the pun) shall make us believe that an individual so abject could ever have existed.
Though the sovereign himself was not calculated to inspire respect, there were many events m his reign which rendered it useful if not glorious. Sir Hugh Middleton commenced at Amwell that now venerable New River, by dabbling in which he swamped himself and secured a stream of health and prosperity to those who came after him. The immortal Hicks finished his memorable Hall; Lord Napier invented logarithms, to the extreme disgust, of the school-boys of every generation; and Dr. Harvey made the magnificent discovery that the blood is a periodical enjoying the most unlimited circulation. Two Dutch navigators contrived to double Cape Horn; which the reader must not imagine was twice its present size before that operation was performed, for Cape Horn, like any other cape, is not larger when doubled. Bill Baffin, an Englishman (you all know Bill Baffin) discovered Baffin's Bay in the year 1616, and a patent for the fire engine, granted two years afterwards, has been stated as a proof that steam power was first known in England in 1618, though upon inquiry we are inclined to think there was more of smoke than steam in the invention spoken of.
The wealth and extravagance of the nobles, among whom corruption and bribery were practised "wholesale, retail, and for exportation," may be imagined from the statement, that on the marriage of the French lung, the horse of the English ambassador wore silver shoes so loosely fastened on, that they fell off, and were instantly replaced, for distribution among the populace. We can scarcely believe that any English horse could have walked in these silver shoes or slippers in the time of James, however skilfully they could have substituted sliding for walking, since the Wood Demon, coming to London, caused the introduction of wooden pavements.
The luxury and display that stand prominently forward among the characteristics of the period, were discountenanced by James when seen in others, though he would have spared nothing for the selfish gratification of his own extravagance. Bacon, whose tendency to flattery justifies the popular analogy between butter and bacon, remarked of the king that he would recommend the country gentlemen to remain at their seats, by saying to them, "In London you are like ships in a sea, which show like nothing; but in your country villages you are like ships in a river, which look like great things." This, after all, was a funny idea, but a bad argument; for a ship in a river, like a storm in a puddle, is somewhat out of its element. Many would prefer being wrecked in the ocean of a busy but tempestuous life, to remaining aground in the dismal swamp of rural obscurity. The thing to be desired, is the art of keeping a steady course, and steering in the right direction; but it is mere pusillanimity to accept a recommendation to shirk the voyage Among the inventions of the reign of James, we must not omit to mention the sedan, a contrivance of the lazy and luxurious Buckingham. On its first appearance in public, the mob hooted the machine as it passed, declaring that their fellow-creatures should not do the service of beasts; but the "fellow-creatures," being paid for and liking the job, were the first to beat off their friends, the people. The friends of humanity were however not content till they had broken in the top and knocked out the bottom of the machine, leaving Buckingham to walk home in a most uncomfortable case, with his head peering out at the top, and his feet appearing at the bottom, of his novel equipage.
The literary characters who flourished in the reign of James were very numerous; and we must, of course, place at the head of them our old acquaintance the "Swan of Avon," as some goose has most irreverently christened him. Shakspeare adorned the time of James by dying in it, as, by living in it, he shed a lustre on that of Elizabeth. One of our predecessors [Hume.] in the gigantic task we have undertaken—and by the way, it is said that Mr. Macaulay, fired by our shining example, is preparing himself to follow it by a retirement from public life—one of our predecessors, we repeat, has thrown cold water upon the warm admiration which is felt for Shakspeare to this day, and which at this very moment is urging the whole nation to buy his house at Stratford, though the town was burnt [Stratford-upon-Avon was all destroyed by fire in September, 1614, two years before Shakespeare's death.] down at about the time when the poet lived in it. Our own enthusiasm, which was great at first for the possession of this relic, has, we confess, a little abated since our research put us in possession of the unpleasant fact, that the bard must have been burnt out, notwithstanding the assurance of the auctioneer, who acts, of course, on what he considers the best policy. Whatever we may think of the house the poet left or did not leave behind him, the houses he still draws by the magic of his genius are sufficient to refute the argument of the hypercritical Hume, that Shakspeare appeared greater than he really was, because he happened to be irregular. We are not aware that irregularity and grandeur must necessarily seem to be combined, and indeed, irregularity in payment, which considerably aggrandises an account, is the only instance we can call to mind in which we see some ground for our fellow-historian's strange hypothesis.
Fletcher, the dramatist, and his partner Beaumont, belonged to the reign of James; but when the latter died, in 1616, the firm was broken up; and as each had been nothing by himself, Fletcher fell into wretched insignificance. His name had only been known in connection with that of Beaumont, and if he attempted to play the lion afterwards at an evening party, a cool inquiry of "Fletcher! Fletcher! who's Fletcher?" was the only sensation the announcement of his name elicited. Some say he died of the plague in 1625, but it is more probable that the plaguy indifference shown towards him everywhere, after he lost poor Beaumont, was in reality the death of him.
Honest Jack Stowe, the antiquarian, ought not to be overlooked, though time has long since stowed away his works among the lumber of our libraries. His Survey of London was his greatest literary labour, and he was preparing a new edition in 1605, when he was obliged to "Stow it" by an attack of illness that unhappily proved fatal.
Donne, the poet, can hardly be mentioned among the literary dons of the age ; but Bacon is a luminary that must not be snuffed out in a single sentence. It has been said that his wit was far-fetched, but a thing is certainly not the less valuable for having been brought from a long way off; for if it were so, the diamond would lose much of its value in the London market. If Bacon's wit was far-fetched, it was not only worth the carriage, but it has been found sufficiently valuable to warrant its being forwarded on from generation to generation ; and it will, we suspect, find its way to a still remote posterity, before it arrives at the terminus of its journey.
James himself was but a contemptible writer, and would have been scarcely worth his five pounds a week in these days, as the London correspondent of a country newspaper. His imagination would not have been vigorous enough to supply him with the "latest intelligence," which must always be in type at least two days before the date on which the facts it professes to impart are stated to have happened. As an industrious chronicler of early gooseberries, new carrots, gigantic cabbages, irruptions of lady-birds, and showers of frogs, he would have been useful in his way, or he might have undertaken that branch of periodical literature which embraces the interesting recollections—or non-recollections rather—of the oldest inhabitant.
CHARLES THE FIRST.
On the afternoon of Monday, March the 28th, 1625, Charles I. was proclaimed at Charing Cross, amid a tremendous shower of rain and hail, so that the commencement of his reign was hailed in a somewhat disagreeable manner. His first care was to turn out the fools and buffoons that his father had kept at Court, or rather, as Buckingham called it, to get rid of the comic and pantomimic company which had been established in the palace. He next determined to send over for his new bride, who appeared to have been forgotten in the hurry of business, and who was waiting at Paris, "to be left till called for." Buckingham was despatched to take charge of the precious cargo; but his behaviour at the French Court was so disreputable that he received some very broad hints as to the propriety of his speedy return to England. He made love to the young Queen Anne of Austria, and flirted with every female member of the royal family, to the extreme disgust of Cardinal Richelieu, who told him, plainly, that such conduct could not be permitted, at any price.
Buckingham took his departure, with the young Henrietta, on the 23rd of May; but there must have been pretty goings on, or dreadful standings still, during the journey, for it was the 27th of June before they arrived at Dover. Charles, who had naturally began to wonder what had become of his minister and his bride, set off to meet them, and having slept at Canterbury on the 27th of June, he reached Dover on the 28th, and found his intended, who had "put up" at the Castle.
The first interview was very dramatic, for Charles extended both his arms,
and Henrietta, taking a hop, a skip, and a jump, tumbled gracefully into them.
Finding her a little taller than he expected, he looked at her feet, when the
young Princess coquettishly pulled off her shoe, to prove that there was no
imposition practised, and that it was impossible there could be any deception
through the medium of high heels, for she had, in reality, a sole above it.
The newly married couple started for Canterbury at once, and making another
day of it to Rochester, they came via Gravesend to London, where they arrived
in the midst of one of those pelting showers which have been graphically compared
to a melee of cats, dogs, and pitchforks.
Charles being in want of money had assembled a Parliament, which opened for
business on the 18th of June, and he at once asked for some supplies; but as
he stammered in his speech, there was a sort of hesitation in his demand, which
some took for modesty. With real, or affected delicacy, he declined mentioning
any specific sum, but requested his faithful Commons to give what they pleased,
and they were thus placed in the embarrassing position of a gentleman, who,
on asking "what's to pay?" finds it left to that dreadfully sliding-scale,
his "own generosity." This dishonest manoeuvre, for such it usually
is, succeeds frequently in extracting twice the proper amount from the pockets
of him whose liberality is thus artfully invoked; but the Commons, being apparently
"up to the dodge," voted Charles £112,000, to meet liabilities
to the tune of some £700,000, per annum, for the war, to say nothing of
his father's debts and other contingencies. Pocketing this miserably inadequate
contribution, he adjourned the Parliament, on account of the Plague, and having
met it again at Oxford, in August of the same year, he told the Commons, plainly,
that he "must have cash," for he was being dunned by the King of Denmark,
who held his promissory note, and that his private creditors would allow him
no peace in his own palace. He protested solemnly that he had not the means
of paying his way for the subsistence of himself and his family, and, throwing
a quantity of tradesmen's accounts, unsettled, before the Speaker's chair, asked,
imploringly, if those were the sort of bills that could be got rid of by ordering
them to be read that day six months, or by their being suffered to lie on the
table? The Commons shook their heads, expressed their regret, buttoned up their
pockets, and declared they could do nothing. The matter now became serious,
for Charles had changed his butcher already three or four times, and was having
his bread of nearly the last of a confiding batch of bakers. "Something
must be done," he said, with much solemnity, to himself, and he wrote off
a polite note to the Corporations of Salisbury and Southampton, requesting the
loan of £3000, which was loyally granted him. Angry at being baffled and
left insolvent by his Parliament, he declared that he would, at least, prove
himself solvent in one respect, by dissolving the Parliament who had so rudely
resisted his demands.
Finding that he had got nothing by begging, and very little by borrowing, he was thrown upon the expedient of stealing, as a last resort. With the money lent him by some of his subjects he resolved on fitting out a fleet, under Cecil, to attack some Spanish ships, which he understood were lying at Cadiz, with some valuable cargoes on board. He reached the bay, and being kept at bay by the enemy, for a short time, he at last landed, very silently, the leaders exclaiming "Piano, Piano," and took a fort. The troops, finding a quantity of wine in the garrison, partook so freely of it that they lost all their ammunition, and spoiled several pounds of best canister, by making too free with the juice of the grape. Cecil, finding that the longer they remained the more intoxicated they got, resolved on re-shipping as many as could be got to stand upon their legs, and to return to England. The British sailors were, however, in those days, such delicate creatures that half of them died of sea-sickness, and a very few of them returned home alive.
Charles, having been foiled in his last hope of recruiting his exhausted resources by plunder, resolved to try another Parliament, and a new one was manufactured with a view to give every chance to the experiment. He endeavoured to weaken the opposition by putting several of its members into offices which would prevent them from sitting in the House of Commons; but, this artful manoeuvre having been seen through, only served to put the people more on their guard.
The new Parliament was in its principles the fac simile of its predecessor, and on the 6th of February, 1626, voted to Charles just about one-tenth of what he really wanted, and one-twentieth of what he asked. Notwithstanding the smallness of the subsidy, he took it, and resolved to pay his creditors something on account, as far as the money would go, and trust to the future to enable him to make up the deficiency. Having shown a pretty resolute disposition in dealing with the king, it is not surprising that the Commons should at length have determined to take a turn at the minister. Buckingham had long been very obnoxious, and one Dr. Turner—remarkable for his straight-forward conduct, and his determination not to turn—moved a question, "Whether Common Report was a good ground of proceeding?" Though Common Report has generally been accounted a common story-teller, she had been tolerably right about the Duke of Buckingham, and the resolution to proceed against him on the faith of Common Report was at once approved.
On the 8th of May a still more resolute step was taken with reference to the "favourite," as this generally detested person was absurdly called, by articles of impeachment being preferred against him. The duke and his master seemed to treat the matter rather as a joke, and Charles even went down to the House of Lords to speak in favour of Buckingham. These proceedings were so clearly unconstitutional and irregular, that if the British Lion had taken to roaring, and only roared out in time, he might have saved many of the disagreeable consequences that unhappily followed. Considering how very intrusive this animal has sometimes been on occasions when he really was not wanted, it is lamentable to think that "the squeak in time," which might have saved nine times nine hundred and ninety-nine, was not forthcoming at the exact moment when its value would have been extreme.
Notwithstanding the impeachment of Buckingham, he was still loaded with fresh honours, and he became Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, at which the Commons vainly expressed their disgust, They nevertheless continued boldly enough remonstrating against this, and that, and the other, until the king regularly shut them up by a dissolution, without their having passed a single act.
Charles, sympathising with Nature in an utter abhorrence of a vacuum, which he found in the royal treasury, devoted all his energies to filling it. "Must have cash," was the motto adopted by his Majesty; who was not particular whether he begged, borrowed, or stole, so that he succeeded in replenishing his pockets. He looked up every outstanding liability, and routed out a lot of recusants who had fallen into arrear with their penalties. He borrowed money from the nobility—if it can
His Gracious Majesty Charles I. borrowing money.
be called borrowing to go up to a person, exclaiming, "Lend me your money," and at the same time take it forcibly away from him. But the most tremendous swindle of all was the demand of ship-money; a tax he laid upon all sea-ports, under the pretence of their contributing a certain number of ships to the defence of the country. He, of course, pocketed the proceeds without supplying the ships, so that if the country had been attacked, there would not have been a sail to resist the assailants. Charles and his favourite, Buckingham, declared, with disreputable frivolity, that the ship money was appropriately applied; for it was, in fact, floating capital, and helped to keep them above water just as much as if it had been devoted to the purchase of a navy.
Something having been said during the sitting of Parliament about a subsidy, which had never been granted, Charles thought he might as well collect it at any rate, though the Commons had declined voting it. Promises were held out that it should all be paid back out of the next supplies, or, in fact, that though the king helped himself from the right-hand pockets of his subjects, he would return the money out of their left-hand pockets—some clay or another. A great many of the people, who objected to this remote reversionary interest, were thrown into prison, or sent to serve in the navy, where they became British Tars in spite of themselves, and some of them having received a classical education, introduced, no doubt, the College Hornpipe into the fleet, as an elegant and scholarly pastime.
Even the church was made the medium of extortion, for the popular preachers recommended from their pulpits the propriety of cashing up to any extent that the sovereign might require. By way of economising at home, Charles went one afternoon to the queen's apartments and dismissed every one of her tribe of French servants, who were dancing and curvetting in the presence of their mistress. This ballet of private life was summarily brought to a close by a general chassez of the whole crew, who had been dancing attendance on her Majesty since her marriage, and she was so enraged at their dismissal that she broke the windows with her fist, which shows the panes she was at to mark her displeasure. The French women howled very piteously, so that, between their lamentations in broken English, and the queen's expostulations in broken glass, the hubbub was truly terrible. These disturbances fomented the ill feeling between France and England, which Buckingham desired to increase, and he actually had the excessive vanity to put himself at the head of a fleet, which sailed to Rochelle, where he "carried himself nobly," to use the words of the king, but where, in fact, he carried himself off as speedily as his legs would allow, for he ran away after having made a desperate failure. Charles was now, once more, as completely cleaned out as a young scamp in a farce, who arrives "without sixpence in his pocket," just like "love among the roses;" and Buckingham was the roguish valet who is usually in attendance on the eccentric light comedian under the circumstances alluded to. The worthy couple discussed the best method of raising the wind, and it was agreed that there was nothing left but to try it on again with a Parliament. "We shall have writs out against ourselves," said Charles, "if we do not get the writs out for summoning the Commons." They met on the 17th of March, 1628, and several of the most determined opponents to ship-money were found in the new house, which included Bradshaw, the brewer, who was ready to brew the storm of revolution, as well as Maurice, a grocer, who suited the times to a T with his liberal sentiments. The king made a haughty speech, but the Parliament determined to proceed with address, and, upon the grand piscatorial principle of throwing a sprat to catch a herring, five subsidies were hinted at for the purpose of securing concessions of the utmost value to English liberty. The Petition of Eight was accordingly drawn up, which declared the illegality of collecting money except by the authority of Parliament. It next referred to our old friend, your old friend, and everybody else's old friend, Magna Charta, or Carter, as some people call it—perhaps because a broad-wheeled waggon has been frequently driven through it—and this document was recited to prove that people could not be imprisoned without cause; though, unfortunately for them, they had been imprisoned very frequently, in spite of the arrangement that made such a circumstance quite impossible. The Petition of Right next alluded to the billeting of soldiers on private houses, which had grown into such an abuse, that scarcely a family could sit down to tea without half-a-dozen troopers dropping m during the meal, and pocketing the spoons, cribbing the cups, or saucily appropriating the saucers, when the entertainment was concluded.
The Bill of Rights, having been drawn by the Commons, and endorsed by the Lords, was offered to Charles for his acceptance. Without either rejecting it or adopting it, he wrote under the petition a few vague generalities, which meant nothing at all, and the Commons, retiring to their Chamber, vented their indignation in a very spirited manner. Sir Robert Phillips uttered several severe Philippics against the sovereign; Sir D. Digges followed, with some tremendous digs at the throne, declaring it was quite infra dig. for the Commons to sit still and do nothing; while Mr. Kurton, or, as that miscreant Strype calls him, Curtain, [We regret to say, that the motive of Strype in calling this person Curtain, instead of Kurton, is too obvious. A jeu de mot is at the bottom of this baseness. We forbear from saying more.] threw off the veil; and even old Coke gave symptoms of having caught the revolutionary flame Selden, whose table-talk is much more amusing than his talk at the table of the House of Commons, proposed a strong declaration under four heads, and was in the midst of a powerful harangue, when Finch, the Speaker, who had got the name of Chaff-Finch, from the badinage in which he indulged, ran breathless into the House with a message from the king, recommending, as well as his puffing and blowing would permit, an adjournment until the next morning. Notwithstanding the valour that had been displayed in words, the Commons had not yet learned how to act with courage, and they quietly adjourned at the suggestion of the sovereign. The next day, however, they met again, and having plucked up all their pluck, they continued to demand an explicit answer to the Petition of Right, to which the assent of Charles was, one fine afternoon in June, 1628, somewhat unexpectedly given. Buckingham, who could never keep quiet, resolved to make another warlike venture at Rochelle, and had got as far as Portsmouth, where, on the 23rd of August, says Howell, "he got out of bed in good-humour, and cut a caper or two" in his nightcap and dressing gown. These capers were soon destined to be cut very short, for as the Duke was passing to his carriage in the course of the day, he received a stab from somebody in a crowd of gesticulating Frenchmen, who were all suspected of being the assassins, and instead of being taken into custody were, oddly enough, kicked down stairs. Buckingham was as dead as the British and Foreign Institute, when a number of captains and gentlemen rushed into the kitchen of the house, exclaiming—"Where is the villain?" "Ou est le boucher?" Upon this a gentleman of the name of Felton, who had been screening himself in the meat-screen, stood forth, and struck an attitude, vociferating "Here I am." He then handed over his hat, in the crown of
Felton admits that he killed the Duke.
which he had stitched the full and true particulars of his own crime, which he requested might be read out, while he did the appropriate pantomime to the confession in the centre of a group of listeners. Felton gloried in the act he had committed, and when put upon his trial there was a good deal of badinage between himself and Judge Jones, whom the prisoner politely thanked for the announcement that he was to be hanged until he was dead, at Tyburn.
The king was greatly affected on hearing of Buckingham's death; and, according to the accounts of the period, his Majesty rolled himself about on his bed in an agony of tears, until nothing but a wet blanket seemed to hang over all his prospects. He nevertheless continued his attention to business, but he never had another favourite like Buckingham, whom his Majesty use to apostrophise familiarly as "my Buck," and hence that term of amiability no doubt has its origin. He admitted Laud to be in many respects laudable; and of Wentworth he acknowledged the worth, while Noy, whose maxims contain the maximum of wisdom, was so far appreciated, as to get the place of Attorney-General.
On the 30th of January, 1629, the Parliament met once more, and Charles turning out both his pockets, urged the necessity of supplies. He declared that as to his balance at his bankers, it had become like "linked sweetness," for it had been "long drawn out," and the public treasury had been swept up several times, in the hope of finding an odd coin or two; but there was not a shilling to be found, and Charles was running up bills in all directions with his tradespeople. The Commons, instead of giving him the money to pay his debts, brought against him all their own old scores, and there were several stormy discussions, the storminess of which may be accounted for by the long windedness of many of the orators.
Among those who took part m these debates, was a clownish looking person of about thirty years of age, with a slovenly coat, and a hat so bad that Strype hints it was perhaps without a crown, to mark the republican objection to crowns which was entertained by the owner. This individual was Mr. Oliver Cromwell, the new member for Huntingdon, who brewed, beer and political storms, until the country itself became Cromwell's entire, the Crown his butt, and the Constitution his mash-tub.
Charles finding the Parliament in a very unaccommodating humour, desired Sir John Finch, the Speaker, to adjourn the House, but the House refused to be adjourned, and when he was about to leave the chair, he found himself suddenly knocked back into it, with his arms pinioned, which rendered him incapable of putting any motion whatever, for he was quite motionless. A few privy councillors rushing in, endeavoured to release him, but the opposite party bound him again to
The Member for Huntingdon.
the chair, and the trial of strength between the two factions, ended in a tie—as far as poor Finch was concerned—for he remained fastened in the seat of dignity. At length the Speaker, who could not dissolve the House, began dissolving himself in tears, and the king who had been waiting for him to come and tell the news, was so impatient, that messengers were dispatched to know what had become of him. Hearing that Finch was caged, or in other words locked in, the king could only leave the poor bird to his fate; but he despatched a messenger to tell the sergeant to slip out of the house quietly with his mace, which would dissolve the sitting. The sergeant may perhaps have forgotten the right cue, but he had got the right mace, and had walked nearly to the door, when he was stopped and pushed back, the key of the House taken from him and placed in the hands of one of the members, who promised to keep tight hold of it.
Charles, hearing that the door was bolted, went down, determined to force it open; but happily, he found the Commons had bolted instead of the door, or at least, they were on the point of doing so. The king, nevertheless, ordered several of the ringleaders to be arrested, and he intimated pretty plainly to the Commons that he would not trouble them again for a very considerable period. He had, in fact, resolved to take all matters of government entirely into his own hands; and though Magna Charta, with a few other trifles of the kind, stood in his way, he did not scruple to trample on rights and liberties, which he knew were being continually renewed, as occasion required.
On the 10th of March, 1629, the day to which the Commons had adjourned themselves, Charles came down to the. House of Lords with the proclamation of dissolution in his pocket. His Majesty began by saying, that this was "really a very unpleasant business," that "he had no fault to find with the Lords," but "there were some vipers among the Commons;" whom, according to the unhappy Strype, he expressed his determination of "viping out"—observe the paltry evasion of the W for the sake of the pun—"with the utmost energy." Thus, by flattering the Lords and threatening the Commons, or, to continue the language of Strype, "soaping the Upper House, and lathering the Lower," did Charles dissolve his Parliament. Several members had already been placed in custody, among whom were Eliot, Holles, and Selden, the last of whom was such an inveterate table-talker, that his tongue was always getting him into scrapes of the most serious character. An information was exhibited against them in the Star-Chamber, but they were subsequently offered their release, on promising to be of good behaviour, which they refused to do, for they felt they would have been good for nothing had they entered into such a disgraceful compact. Eliot died in prison, and the rest were adjudged to be detained during the pleasure of the king, and as he took great pleasure in persecuting his refractory Commons, there was every chance that their "durance vile" would be unpleasantly durable.
The 29th of May, 1630, was signalised by the birth of Prince Charles, and it is said that a bright star shone in the east at mid-day, which some have considered ominous. To us, the appearance of the star by daylight, on the birth of this dissolute scapegrace, denotes nothing more than a propensity for not going home till morning, or till daylight did appear. About the same time that severities were being practised on the Commons, one Richard Chambers refused to pay more than legal duty on a bale of silk, and the Custom-house officers going at him rather fiercely, he declared that "merchants were more screwed in England than they were in Turkey." His audience hearing him use the word "screwed," at once nailed him to the expression, and he was fined £2000 for the lapsus linguae he had fallen into. Unhappily, political martyrdom was not, in those days, so good a trade as it has subsequently become, and poor Chambers had neither a subscription opened to pay his fine, nor a testimonial to reimburse him for the expense of resistance. A struggle for principle was then a struggle indeed, and not an eligible medium for advertisements. A Chambers of the present day would have made his principles pay him an enormous per centage, and would have made a handsome fortune for himself by what he would have termed his exertions for the happiness and liberty of the people. Poor Chambers, however—the real martyr of 1630—died in a prison at last, after waiting for redress from the Long Parliament, which was a little too long in making reparation to the victim of oppression.
Charles had apparently made up his mind to get on as well as he could without any Parliament at all, and having bribed some of the cleverest fellows in the kingdom, he thought that as one fool proverbially makes many, one or two knaves would also be found to fructify. Among the shameless apostates of that day were of course many who had been mouthing most energetically on the popular side ; and Wentworth, who had been originally one of the very noisiest of the people's friends, became the meanest and most inveterate of the people's enemies. Having brawled for some years against aristocracy, his purpose at length peeped out in his acceptance of a peerage for himself, and the man who had been continually bullying the Court, became its fawning favourite. Digges, who had been, as we have already intimated, digging away most energetically at the constituted authorities, accepted the post of Master of the Rolls, for he had, as he said, made the discovery on which side his bread was buttered.
It would be tedious to the reader, and difficult to ourselves, to give a catalogue of the exactions and impositions which were practised by Charles between the years 1629, when the Parliament was dissolved, and 164.0, the year marked by the assembly of a new one. He revived, among other cruelties, the old practice of making Knights of all persons possessing forty pounds a year, and either charging ruinous fees for imposing the so-called honour, or imposing a heavy fine for declining it Knighthood became such a fearful drug in the market of dignities, that it is not surprising it should even up to this day have failed to recover its position. The cry of "Dilly, dilly," was never more ferociously addressed to the ducks who were invited to "come and be killed," than was the command to "come and be knighted," enforced against the unwilling victims, who were selected either to pay the penalty for declining, or the fees on receiving this unenviable distinction.
While guilty of wholesale persecution, Charles did not, however, neglect the retail branch, and a Puritan preacher named Leighton—a blind fanatic, but, notwithstanding Ins blindness, no relation we believe to Leighton Buzzard—was exposed to the utmost cruelty for writing some ad captandum trash against the Queen and the Bishops: a bombastic little work, which neither repaid perusal, nor repaid the printer who brought it forward. Poor Leighton was fined for his coarseness, and flogged for his flagellation of the authorities, besides being compelled to undergo a variety of other barbarisms, the narration of which we would have attempted, but we found our very ink turning pale at the bare prospect of our doing so. The Puritans now began to emigrate in great numbers to America, and they no doubt laid the foundation of that drawl which has ever since distinguished the tone of the model republicans.
We now arrive at the tragical story of poor Mr. William Prynne, a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, who, in the utter absence of briefs, finding himself at a dead stand-still for want of a motion, had started a trumpery little work with one Sparkes, a publisher. The volume had the unattractive title of "Histrio Mastric, the Players' Scourge, or Actors' Tragedie," in which he made an attempt to write down the stage in particular, and all amusements in general. He denounced all who went to the play as irredeemably lost, and he neither exempted the free list, the half-price, or those who went in with the orders of the Press, from the anathema, which he hurled indiscriminately against the "brilliant and crowded audiences" nightly honouring such-and-such an establishment with a succession of overflows. The queen not only patronised the drama, but sometimes appeared herself as a distinguished amateur, and the whole of Prynne's book was taken to apply to her, though she was not even mentioned in any part of it. Poor Prynne was declared to be a wolf in sheep's clothing, and, considering that he was a barrister who had turned author, the alleged mixture of wolfishness and sheepishness may be fairly attributed to his character. He was found guilty, of course, and upon sentence being passed, the Chief Justice expressed his regret that a gentleman, who had handed in on two or three occasions a compute, and was a promising junior of twenty years' standing—without ever being on his legs—should have brought himself into such an unpleasant predicament.
He was condemned to be degraded from the profession, or in fact to be dishonoured; to pay a fine of five thousand pounds, which was by no means feasible, when we consider his fees, and to he kept from the use of pen, ink, and paper, which was perhaps the most humane part of the sentence, for he was thus prevented from proceeding with his wretched trade of authorship. The poor fellow, however, contrived to write humorous articles on the soles of his boots; and "Prynne on the Understanding," though it was rubbed out as mere rubbish by the man who cleaned his boots, might have taken its place by the side of many more lofty productions of the period. His sentence was exceedingly cruel, and comprised "branding on the forehead," as if his enemies would have it believed "there was nothing inside to hurt," while his nose was savagely maltreated, to prevent its being again poked into that which did not concern its owner. His ears were cropped under the pretext of their being a great deal too long, and indeed Prynne was so altered, as a punishment for rushing into print, that his own clerk would not have known him again in the abridged edition which the Government reduced him to.
We have now to treat of the great civil war; but the magnitude of the subject requires us to take breath, which we cannot do, unless we break off and begin a fresh chapter.
CHARLES THE FIRST (CONTINUED.)
THE great civil war was brought on by a series of incidents we will now briefly explain; but we must premise that the turncoat Noy had been long hunting for precedents to justify Charles in any course of despotism that he might resolve upon. It never was very difficult to find precedents in the legal records for anything, however cruel, tyrannical, or absurd, and Noy was not the man to be over nice in putting upon the case in the books whatever construction would be most favourable to the views of his master. The ingenious Noy took care to discover that the supplying of ship-money by sea-ports was a custom as old as the hills, and giving a large interpretation to the word hills, he assumed that land as well as water should supply ships, and that inland places as well as those on the coast were consequently liable to the impost. He argued that almost every town, however far from the shore, had marine interests, for there was always a dealer in marine stores, and in fact he urged that a town being unable to float a ship, might nevertheless be made to build or at least to pay for one.
In the midst of these ingenious theories, and perplexing points of law, Noy died, which is no matter of astonishment to us, for the idea of looking up such a subject as ship-money, and having "case for opinion" continually on his desk, is sufficiently formidable to reconcile with it the decease of the barrister to whom the business had been confided. London was selected as the first place on which the demand for ship-money was made, and an attempt to excite the fears of the citizens, by getting up a cry very like that of "Old Bogie" was resorted to. A proclamation was issued declaring that a set of "thieves, pirates, robbers of the sea, and Turks" were expected by an early boat, though a sharp look-out along the offing at Gravesend and Richmond, through one of which the pirates must pass, would have convinced the greenest of the green that a corsair was not likely to be eating his white bait at Blackwall, nor was England in danger of invasion by a horde of ruffians coming up from the other side of the world at the Chelsea end of the metropolis. Several ships were ordered, but the citizens would have been quite at sea had they attempted to supply a ship, and a composition in money was demanded as an easier method of satisfying the wants of the Government. Considerable resistance was made to this gigantic swindle, and the celebrated John Hampden immortalised himself by the part he took in the struggle. This true patriot had consulted his legal advisers on the subject of ship-money, and hearing from them that it could not be justly claimed, he determined that he would resist the impost at any sacrifice. The matter came on for argument upon demurrer, in the Court of Exchequer, on the 6th of November, 1637, and lasted till December the 18th, when their lordships were unable to agree in their judgment. The majority, however, ultimately decided against Hampden, but two of the judges continuing to differ from the rest, it was felt that the imposition was seen through, and that the public would have the sanction of at least some of the legal dignitaries for resisting it. Went worth would have whipped Hampden like poor Prynne, but not all the black rods, white rods, and rods in pickle the Court could muster, would have been sufficient for the flagellation of so great a character.
The dissatisfaction of the people, and the unconstitutional practices of the king, were not confined to England, for Scotland, after having been taken—or rather having been merged in the English monarchy—was destined to be well shaken by political convulsions. The proximate cause of the dissatisfaction of the Scotch, who are not a remarkably exciteable race unless their pockets are threatened, was the introduction of the English service into their churches ; and when the Dean of Edinburgh began to read it on Sunday, the 23rd of July, 1637, he was assailed with shouts of the most indecorous character. The populace clapped with their hands, kicked with their heels, and bellowed with their lungs till the Bishop of Edinburgh, who had ascended the pulpit to entreat that order might be preserved, was compelled to bob down his head to avoid a three-legged stool that was thrown with savage force by one of the assembled multitude.
The Scotch congregation continued to evince their zeal for their religion by throwing sticks, stones, and dirt (of which they had a good deal always on their hands) at the unprotected prelate, and cries of "stone him," "at him again," "give it him," "throw him over," "turn him out," resounded through the sacred edifice. The religious ruffians kept up their ferocity without intermission wherever the new service was commenced, and thus, though they might easily have satisfied their consciences by abstaining from attendance at the churches where innovation had been introduced, they preferred to intimidate and
Something like Argument.
brutally attack the inoffensive ministers. This was another of the innumerable instances history has to record of the name of religion being desecrated by its being applied to acts utterly at variance with every religious principle.
Charles, who in this instance evinced a keen perception of Scotch character, resolved to punish the people of Edinburgh in a manner they would be sure to feel; and by threatening to remove the council of government from that city to Linlithgow, he touched them in what is the Scotchman's tenderest point—his pocket. Whether it was from fear of a general stoppage to business, and the consequent loss of its profits, or from some more exalted cause, the Scotch desisted from physical violence, and took a great moral resolution, which is in every way respectable. A document, called the Covenant, was drawn up, and its sentiments were put forth with the eloquence of enthusiasm from the home of John O'Groat—by-the-bye, who was this Jack Fourpence, Esq., of whom we have heard so much?—to the hills of Cheviot. The Covenanters had exchanged the brickbat and bludgeon style of argument for the lighter but more pointed and effective weapon—the pen—though they still acted in the most unchristian spirit of intolerance and persecution towards those who would not adopt their sentiments.
The Marquis of Hamilton was sent to Scotland with instructions to do all he could, and a great deal that he couldn't. He was to apprehend all the rebels, if possible; but not being of a very lively apprehension, it was not likely he would succeed greatly in this portion of his enterprise. He was to overturn the Covenant in six weeks, if he found it convenient to do so, or in less if he found it otherwise. In fact, his instructions might be summed up into an order to go and make the best of a bad job—an attempt which frequently ends in leaving a matter much worse than one originally found it.
On his arrival at Holyrood his first effort to persuade the people to give up the Covenant was met by an attempt to cram it down his own throat, but he refused the profferred dose, and finding himself in a very awkward fix, he could only hope to temporise. Charles wrote to him to say, "he would rather die than give in;" but Hamilton, knowing his master would have to die by deputy, and that the deputy would be no other than himself, entreated his Majesty not to be too open in his demonstrations of force against his Scotch subjects. The Covenanters on the other hand declared they meant nothing disrespectful to the throne, and that their pelting, shouting, bullying, stoning, and protesting, were all to be considered as acts performed in the most loyal spirit, and without the smallest idea of disobedience to the royal mandate.
Some negotiations ensued between the two parties, and it was resolved that a General Assembly should be held in Glasgow forthwith, while a proclamation was issued for a Parliament to meet at Edinburgh a few months afterwards. Hamilton knew the Assembly would do no good, and wrote to the king to say so; but Charles answered, that it would at all events gain time, and the Scotch might perhaps, if they met together in large numbers come to the scratch among themselves—a result that was exceedingly probable.
The Marquis of Hamilton reached Glasgow on the 17th of November 1638; and the General Assembly commenced on the 21st with a sermon of such tremendous length, that the audience were pretty well exhausted by the time it was concluded. The assembly would have then chosen a moderator; but Hamilton starting up with a polite "I beg your pardon," told them there was a little Commission to read in order to explain by what authority he was sitting there. The Commission was excessively long, and all in Latin, which enabled the officer entrusted with the commission of reading the Commission, to extemporise rather extensively, by adding to the original Latin a considerable quantity of Dog, which spun out the time amazingly. The assembly then again prepared to choose a moderator, when Hamilton starting up, exclaimed—"I'm very sorry to be so troublesome, but I must interrupt you again, for I wish you to hear this letter from his Majesty."
Charles had purposely dispatched a most unintelligible scrawl, and the functionary employed to read it, prolonged the painful operation of deciphering it as long as he could, until at length the reading of the letter was concluded. The assembly being again about to proceed to elect a moderator, Hamilton once more was upon his legs, with a "Dear me, you'll think me very tiresome, but I have really something very particular to say;" and off he went into a speech which seemed almost interminable, from its excessive wordiness.
As all things must come to a conclusion, if not to an end—Hamilton's speech, for example, came to no end at all—the oration of the Marquis was terminated at last, and for the fourth time the Assembly had begun to choose a moderator, when Hamilton interfered with a—"Stop! stop! stop! Before you go any further, remember that I protest against anything you may do, that will be prejudicial to the king's prerogative."
At length he was formally asked if he had quite done with his interruptions, and having exhausted all his resources, he was constrained to admit that he had no further remark to make, when the election of a moderator was proceeded with. Alexander Henderson, a minister of Fife,—which might well have been called, in the strong language of Shakspeare, the "ear-piercing Fife," for it was determined to make itself heard,—was chosen to the office, and Hamilton was again on his legs to read a protest, but a general cry of "Down, down! Come, come; we've had enough of that," prevented the Marquis from proceeding further in his obstructive policy. The Assembly then chose one Archibald Johnston as clerk, and Hamilton, determined to give the Covenanters one more lesson on the Hamiltonian system, commenced protesting against the last appointment they had made. The Marquis was, however, most unceremoniously pooh poohed, and the Assembly adjourned.
On the next day Hamilton began the old game of entering more protests against the return of lay elders to the Assembly, but he was treated with no more respect than if he had been a lay figure, and was compelled to hold his tongue. Being checked in every attempt to enter a protest on his own account, he insisted on patronising and adopting a protest of the bishops who denied the jurisdiction of the Assembly, but one of the clerks of session thundering out a declaration that they would go on with their proceedings, Hamilton started up once more, "begging pardon for being so very troublesome, but adding that he really must protest to that." Finding his protestations utterly useless, he thought it better to protest to the whole thing en masse, and he accordingly dissolved the General Assembly on the ensuing day. Henderson the moderator so called—on the lucus a non lucendo principle—from his being no moderator at all, declared he was sorry they were going to lose the pleasure of Hamilton's company, but the Assembly being assembled had no intention to disperse. The Marquis, who had gone about muttering to himself "Oh, you know. This is quite absurd! I'm no use here," made the best of his way to England. He urged Charles to take military measures against the Scotch, but they were exceedingly active in making warlike preparations, and had got up a magazine at Edinburgh—no relation to Blackwood or Tait—which was full of pikes, muskets, halberts, and other striking but very offensive articles. In the mean time the coffers of Charles were standing perfectly empty, nobody in the city would take his paper upon any terms, and indeed he could accept no
Charles I. does not know which way to turn.
bills, for there was no Parliament in existence to draw the documents He called upon the judges, the clergy, and even the humbler servants of the crown, to contribute part of their salaries to his necessities—a process very like borrowing a portion of the wages of one's cook to pay one's butcher. The Covenanters had got together a tolerably large number of troops under General Leslie, and Hamilton was sent with five thousand met to take Leith, but by the time he got into the waters of Leith(e) his soldiers seemed to be oblivious of their duties, for they all deserted him.
Charles now thought it high time to go and see about the Scotch business himself, and he started, per coach, for York, with the Duke of Lennox and the Earl of Holland, as inside passengers. He was met at that city by the Recorder, as the coach drew up to the Inn door, and that functionary, in a fulsome speech, told him he had built his throne on two columns of diamond—the parasite forgetting that the old notion of "diamond cut diamond" might unpleasantly suggest itself. At York Charles exacted an oath of fidelity from the nobles, which was taken by all but Lords Saye and Brook, the former declaring he should be a mere do if he consented to say what he did not mean, and the latter intimating that he was far too deep a Brook to commit himself in the manner that the king required.
On the 29th of April Charles left York and repaired to Durham, where the Bishop feasted him famously, giving him Durham mustard every day, as a condiment to the delicious dishes that were prepared for him. He next advanced to Newcastle, where the Mayor entertained him sumptuously; but while the king went to dinner he heard that many of his troops were going to desert, and by the time he got to Berwick he was glad to listen to a proposition for a truce, which, after a good deal of trumpeting on both sides, was arranged without a blow—except those conveyed through the trumpet—on either.
A conference was next agreed upon, between the deputies of the Covenanters and the Commissioners of the king; but, just as they were commencing business, Charles walked in, saying, "I am told you complain that you can't be heard! Now then, fire away, for I am here to hear you." Lord Loudon, who was loud without being effective, began to make a speech, but the king cut him short, and Loudon, with all his loudness, remained inaudible during the rest of the sitting. The parties to the negotiation were pretty well matched, for royal roguery had to contend with Scotch cunning. "We must give and take," said Charles; "Yes, that's all very well, but you want us to do nothing but give, that you may do nothing but take," was the keen reply of the Caledonians. The assemblies of the Kirk were to be legalised, and an act of oblivion was to be passed, which was very unnecessary on the king's side, at least, for he was very apt to forget himself. Castles, forts, ammunition, and even money, were to be delivered up to the king, but part of the money having been spent, the cunning Scotchmen accounted for the deficiency by saying to his Majesty, "You can't eat your cake and have it,—that is very well known; and as we have eaten your cake, that you can't have it is a natural consequence."
Charles was puzzled, though not quite convinced, by this reasoning; but he thought it best to acquiesce for the sake of peace and quietness in all the proposed arrangements The two armies were disbanded on the 24th of June, and Charles having stopped at Berwick to buy a Tweedish wrapper, returned to England. The king was now seized very seriously with a fit of his old complaint—the want of money—and he called in Laud and Hamilton to consult with Wentworth about a cure for the distressing malady. It was agreed, after some hesitation, to try another Parliament, and Wentworth suggested that an Irish Parliament might be tried first, upon which he was named Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, with the title of Earl of Strafford, to give him more weight in making the experiment. The Irish Parliament promised four subsidies off-hand, and two more if required; but an Irish promise to pay, is little better than a bill without a stamp, a promissory note without a date, or an I.O.U. without a signature.
At length on the 13th of April, 1640, the English Parliament met, and it contained many eminent men, among whom Hampden, who sat for the town of Buckingham, was one of the most conspicuous. Finch, who had been formerly Speaker, was now Lord Keeper, a position he was most anxious to keep, and Mr. Serjeant Glanvil was chosen to fill the Speaker's chair, upon which he made a long tedious speech that annoyed every one by its premises, as much as it gratified every one by its conclusion. The debates very soon assumed a most important air; and Pym, who from his effeminate voice had got the name of Niminy Pyminy from some parasites of the king, held forth with wondrous power, on the subject of national grievances. Charles, who hated the word grievance—it is a pity he did not abhor and avoid the act—ordered Parliament to attend him next day in the Banqueting Hall, not to give them an opportunity of filling their mouths, but for the purpose of stopping them. Charles said nothing himself, but set Finch at them, who told them that they must first vote the supplies, and that then they might luxuriate in their grievances to their hearts' content, and having given the king his cash, they would be at liberty to look out for their own consolation. The Commons were not to be so cajoled, and on the 30th of April, resolved themselves into a committee of the whole House on the question of ship-money.
The Lords, who were servile to the king, no sooner heard of this than they sent down to request a conference, but the Commons, who could get no satisfactory answer to the questions "why" and "what about?" of course, on seeing the trap, declined tumbling into it. In vain did Charles send down to say he had a large amount to make up, and would be glad to know when it would be convenient to let him have "that subsidy," and even Sir Henry Vane, his treasurer, came—it can't be helped, the wretched pun must out—Yes! even Vane presented himself in vain to know when the supplies would be ready. The usual mode of getting rid of a pertinacious dun was resorted to by saying, that an answer should be sent; and on the 5th of May, 1640, Charles, having asked the Speaker to breakfast, and as some say, made him exceedingly drunk, ran down to the House of Lords and dissolved the Parliament.
The state of the money-market was now truly frightful, and the emissaries of Charles ran about in all directions crying out "Cash! Cash! We must have Cash!" in every direction. Bullion was got from the Tower by bullying the people who had charge of it, and when no more good money was to be got, a proposition for coining four hundred thousand pounds' worth of bad was coolly suggested. "By Jove!" said the king, "when we can't snow white, we must snow brown, and if we can't snow silver, we must snow copper." Such snow would however have been equivalent to its Latin appellation of nix, and the merchants foreseeing the danger of depreciating the coinage, prevented the uttering of base money, which would have been a source of unutterable confusion. The swindling resorted to for supplying the necessities of the king was something quite unsurpassed even in the annals of the most modern of fraudulent bankruptcies. Charles got goods on credit at a high price, and sold them for ready money at a low one; horses were lugged out of carriages or carts, leaving the owners to draw their own vehicles and their own conclusions; and indeed the king's emissaries went about like a clown in a pantomime, appropriating and pocketing everything they could lay their hands upon. "See what I've found" was a common cry at the snatching of a purse or anything else for the use of the king, and the example of robbery being set in high quarters, was sure to be followed in low with the utmost activity. The London apprentices were invited by a posting-bill stuck upon the Royal Exchange to a soiree at Lambeth, for the purpose of sacking the palace of the archbishop, but Laud was ready with cannon, loaded with grape, and the apprentices muttering that the grapes were sour, abandoned their formidable intention.
Hostilities with Scotland having again broken out, Charles had his hands quite full, and his pockets quite empty. The disputants on both sides were ultimately glad to come to another truce, for they found themselves after a great deal of fighting exactly where they were before they began, except some of the killed and wounded, who, unfortunately for them, were anything but just as they were at the commencement of the contest. The. Scots were to receive, according to treaty, the sum of £850 per day for two months, and Charles, wondering where the money was to come from, recollected that the Commons had the glorious privilege of voting the supplies, together with the glorious privilege of raising the money
CHARLES THE FIRST (CONCLUDED).
SUCH an unfortunate sovereign as Charles is a melancholy subject to dwell upon, but we must not cut him short though his contemporaries cruelly served him so. With a melancholy foreboding of what was to come, the king, on the 3rd of November, 1640, opened the Long Parliament. One of its earliest acts was to release from prison our learned friend Mr. Prynne, and to give him £5000 damages for his detention. On hearing the decision he declared he would live no longer like a Prynne, but like a Prince; and by way of a beginning he came down one flight of stairs, and had "2 pair, Mr. Prynne," instead of "3 pair, Mr. Prynne," marked on the door-post of his chambers.
Strafford, who felt that his turn would very soon come, remained out of town as long as he could, under the idea that, in conformity with the proverb, "out of sight out of mind," the Commons, if they did not see him, would never think of him. Charles however wrote to him, telling him that "to keep so long out of sight he must, indeed, be out of his mind," and insisted on his coming up to town to take his place in Parliament. He had scarcely entered the House of Lords before Mr. Pym appeared at the bar to impeach Thomas Earl Strafford in the name of all the Commons of England. The Earl was taken to the Tower; and the chief secretary, Windebank, had he not discovered something in the wind, which caused him to take to flight, would assuredly have been obliged to follow the favourite, or even to come in with him neck and neck, which means, in this instance, neck or nothing Finch, the Lord Keeper, was next proceeded against, but, having made one speech in his own defence, he availed himself of the natural qualities of the Finch family, by taking to flight, or to speak more characteristically, he "hopped the twig," and fled to Holland. Several others were threatened with Parliamentary vengeance, and Berkeley was actually arrested while sitting as a Peer in his ermine, which he said had been done because the mob had resolved to undermine the Constitution.
On the 19th of January, 1641, Mr. Prideaux brought in a bill to regulate the holding of Parliaments. Its object was to provide for their being summoned by the Lords in case of the refusal of the king, or by the Sheriffs in default of the Lords, or on the failure of King, Lords, and Sheriffs, the thing was to be done by the people. There was, by this measure, to be a new Parliament once in three years, which was allowing rather amply for wear and tear; and though Charles was very reluctant, he ultimately gave his consent to the arrangement Those very ill-used gentlemen, the Bishops, who are always selected as a mark when the spirit of revolution is abroad taking random shots at everything venerable, were of course not allowed on this occasion to escape, and the Commons voted them most unceremoniously out of Parliament.
The great event of the session, however, was the trial of Lord Strafford, who on the morning of Monday, the 22nd of March, boated it, or rather barged it, up from the Tower to Westminster. Everything, even the tide was against him, and the Earl of Arundel, who was notoriously his enemy, acted as High Steward at the trial. The impeachment contained twenty-eight articles, every one of them being capital, so that if Strafford had possessed twenty heads, it is quite clear that the deep revenge of his accusers "had stomach for them all." Stafford's reply was written out on two hundred sheets of paper, but a good bold text hand must have been employed, for the two hundred sheets, as well as the articles of impeachment, were all got through on the first day of the trial.
It is rather a strange way of proceeding to take the reply before hearing evidence in support of the charge; but such was the practice on this momentous occasion. Arundel next called upon the managers of the Commons to bring forward their proofs, and Pym began a very roundabout address in the fashion of the period. The speech of Pym was a reiteration of the charges in the Impeachment, served up with a garniture of his own eloquence. Strafford declared it was a conspiracy, of course, for it is a curious fact that the most flagrant criminals have always been—if they are to be believed, which we need scarcely say they are not—the victims of a cruel combination against injured innocence. Strafford asked for time to plead, but he had not taken out a summons in the regular way, and accordingly only half-an-hour was awarded him. He nevertheless made such good use of this short time, that he made a capital speech, and concluded with a puzzle almost as good as the old original inquiry, with reference to the red herring and the sack of coals. [Every one knows, or ought to know the question of the arithmetical enthusiast:—"If a red herring costs three-halfpence, what will a sack of coals come to?" Ans.—Ashes.] "For if," said he, "the one thousand misdemeanors will not make a felony, how will twenty-eight misdemeanors make a treason?"
The trial was continued from day to day, and on the 10th of April Pym walked knowingly up to the bar with a variety of nods and winks, to intimate that he had a matter of vast importance to communicate. The assembly having ordered the door to be locked to prevent intrusion—as if the housemaid might have wandered in with her broom—there was a general cry of "Now then, what is it? Let's have it out without all this mystery." Pym hereupon produced a copy of notes taken at a meeting of the privy council in which Strafford was reported to have told the king that he was "absolved and loosed from all rule and government." The point was considered a strong one; but if Strafford had told Charles he was the Emperor of Morocco, and might turn all his subjects into morocco slippers by trampling them under his feet, the ministers having merely said so would not have made the fact, and he could not have been liable for it unless it had really happened. Verba non acta seemed, however, to be the motto of his judges, who took the word for the deed in numerous instances. Strafford having made the best answer he could to this part of the charge, was told by Arundel, that if he had anything more to say, the sooner he said it the better, for his judges were very anxious to have the pleasure of condemning him. The fact was, that the customary sympathy of Englishmen for a poor fellow in a mess, was beginning to show itself, and the Commons feared that the trial would not "keep" a great deal longer if they did not speedily make an end of it. The matter was accordingly hurried on, and on the 21st of April, the bill of attainder passed the Commons by a very large majority. The numbers were 204 against 59, which of course did not include the "tellers," for if it had done so, Hume, Hallam, and the rest of us, must have been comprised, for we are all of us the "tellers" of this sad story.
When the bill went up to the Peers, their Lordships were not at all in a hurry to despatch it, and the Commons kept sending up messages to know "How about that little Bill," and begging that the Upper House would immediately settle it. It was rumoured that Stafford intended to escape, but it was rather idle to speculate upon the intentions of a man who was utterly unable to accomplish them. He offered a bribe of twenty-two thousand pounds to Balfour, the Lieutenant of the Tower; but that virtuous individual scorned the filthy dross, though some brute who has no appreciation of the great and good, has hinted that Balfour either expected more, or was afraid that what was offered would not be forthcoming.
Charles, who was very anxious to make the favourite safe, though the odds were terribly against him, sent for the Lords and Commons, whom he begged, when drawing up their sentence, to draw it as mild as possible. He said he had listened to the evidence, and he really did not see how they could commit the Earl. But Pym replied, sotto voce, that "none are so blind as those who won't see;" and Charles could elicit nothing satisfactory. At the next sitting of the Parliament a furious mob was collected outside, and the Lords naturally expressed their disinclination to being bullied into haste on the subject of the bill of attainder. Upon this, one Dr. Burgess, who had some weight with the people, went out to disperse them, and though he said some sharp things which caused that intolerable nuisance—a wag—to cry out, "Come, Burgess, none of your sauce," he succeeded in his object.
The state of nervous agitation in which the whole country was plunged at about this period may be conceived by a little anecdote which is told on the best authority—that is to say, the best that happens to be available. Sir Walter Earl was in the midst of a cock-and-bull story about some plot that had been hatching to make a sort of Girandola of the Parliament, by blowing it up with a splendid display of fire-works, in the midst of which the Speaker was to have gone off like a Jack in the Box, when the members, who were shivering and shaking like a grove of aspens, were startled by the following incident:—Two very corpulent members happening to stand upon one plank, which was rather the worse for wear, caused the floor to crack, and the Commons thought it was all up, or rather all down, with them. The utmost confusion prevailed, and somebody at once started off to fetch the trainbands, who acted as the police of the period. It turned out to be a false alarm, or to speak more correctly, a real alarm resting on false premises, for the flaw in the floor had been the cause of this not altogether groundless terror.
On the 7th of May the Lords passed the bill of attainder against Stafford, as well as another bill, abrogating the power of the king to dissolve the Parliament. The House was thin, and it may have happened that the recent accident, with the two fat members in the Commons operated as a warning to corpulent Peers not to attend till their locus standi had been looked to by the carpenter.
It now remained to be seen whether Charles would give his consent to the execution of the favourite, and poor Strafford feeling that his life hung upon a thread, sent a long yarn, in the shape of a letter, to his royal master. The king summoned his privy council to advise him what step to take, when honest Jack Juxon, the plain-sailing Bishop of London, exclaimed, bluntly, "I'll tell you what it is, Your Majesty; if you've any doubts about his guilt don't you go and sign his bill of attainder for all the Bills—no, nor the Bobs—nor the Dicks, in Christendom." Others, however, gave him opposite advice, and the scene ended by his resolving to give his assent, though he did so with his pocket handkerchief before his eyes, but whether from emotion or a cold in his head, is still an "open question" with all historians. On the 12th of May, 1641, poor Strafford met his doom with such heroic fortitude that, though he became shorter by a head in a physical sense, his moral stature was considerably heightened in the eyes of posterity.
The death of Strafford was the signal for the abandonment of office by several of his friends, who thought it better to live with resignation than die with resignation at this very trying juncture. Bills were passed for abolishing the Star-Chamber, and the Court of High Commission, as well as for preventing the Parliament from being dissolved, except by its own consent; so that Charles became like a king in a game of skittles, whose downfall was only a question of time and circumstance.
Being dreadfully in want of a little loyalty to comfort him, and finding very little in England—and that of the weakest kind—the Sovereign paid a visit to Scotland, where he knew he could have as much as he wanted, if he chose to pay for it. His visit to that country was fast coming to a close when news reached him of a rebellion in Ireland, where the descendants of the early settlers, who were for settling every body, and had taken the name of the "Lords of the Pale," were causing numbers to "kick the bucket."
The republican spirit had now broken out in full force; and the more the king went on doing what he was asked, the more the Commons went on being dissatisfied. At length he determined to try a bit of firmness, and walked into the House of Commons one morning to demand the impeachment of five members, two of whom were Pym and Hampden. Charles entered the assembly quite alone, and walking up to the chair of the Speaker, who had risen on the king's arrival, his Majesty glided into it. He stated that he had come to take the five members into custody : but there was something so derogatory in the idea of "every monarch his own policeman," that the Commons were rather disgusted, and greeted him with shouts of "Privilege! Privilege!"
Having made up his mind that "this sort of thing would not do," he determined to go out of town, and repaired to York, where he was soon joined by a party of volunteers more select than numerous. Charles was in that state of cashlessness so often ascribed by history to kings, who, nominally possessed of a crown, are positively not worth a shilling.
He had sold his wife's jewels, and laid out the produce in arms and ammunition, which he gave out as far as they would go to his few friends; but the distribution was a mournful business. There were scarcely swords enough to go round, and the gunpowder was served out in little packets like so many doses of salts to the small band of royalists. They mustered the money for a manifesto, in which Essex, one of his apostate generals, was denounced in very large type; and the king having corrected the proof of the poster, ordered one hundred to be worked off and stuck up at the earliest opportunity. His Majesty and suite—which Strype tells us was short and suite—repaired to Nottingham, where the cause of the sovereign got a sort of lift by the hoisting of the royal standard.
When Charles found it necessary to draw the sword, he felt that he had nothing else to draw, for his funds were quite exhausted. Everything seemed to go against him, and even the elements themselves were unfavourable, for the standard which his friends had found it so difficult to hoist, was blown down, and came rattling through a skylight on to the heads of the royalists. The civil war had now regularly commenced, and the first battle was fought at Edge Hill, in Warwickshire, where Prince Rupert—the inventor of mezzotinto engraving—left the print of his sword, and several proofs of his valour, on the ranks of the King's enemies. After fighting all day the two armies put up for the night, and facing each other the next morning, they evidently did not like each other's looks, for both parties retired. Had the King's troops gone to London, they might have done some good, but they loitered about Reading, and by the time they got to Turnham Green it was occupied by 24,000 men, though where they managed to turn 'em in at Turnham Green, is somewhat mysterious. [It seems more probable that the 24,000 parliamentary troops were stationed in London than that so many were crammed into the little suburb specified.]
On the 15th of April, the parliamentarians invested Reading, but the king having nothing to invest, could not compete for this eligible investment. Essex, who had managed the transaction, did not continue long a holder, but fell back to Thame, where a skirmish took place that would have been literally a tame affair if the illustrious Hampden had not perished in the melee.
Essex was one of the worst men possible to be chosen as a leader, for he had an unconquerable propensity to gib—which was the only invincibility he possessed—and he was consequently falling back whenever he should have been going forward. He had gibbed from Heading to Thame, and he now gibbed again from Thame to London, where it became a saying among the common people, "Oh that's Essex: I know him by the cut of his jib."
The civil war continued to rage with varying success until the Battle of Marston Moor, where the royalists, under Prince Rupert, sustained a defeat they never after recovered, and the only use they could make of their right and left wing, was to fly for safety. After this reverse, Charles attempted to get up a treaty called the Treaty of Uxbridge, which after twenty days of wrangling between the Commissioners of the Parliament and those sent by the king—the former wanting everything, and the latter conceding nothing—fell completely to the ground. Cromwell had contrived that Sir Thomas, now Lord Fairfax, should be appointed General of the Parliamentary Army, so that the responsibility of failure should rest upon that individual; while the wily brewer, who knew how to take his measures, would have artfully secured the merit of any success for himself.
Trained Band. Soldier of the Period.
The Battle of Naseby was the last decisive blow, which, in the graphic words of one of our early writers, "put the nasal organ of royalty completely out of joint." Charles behaved very gallantly, and so did Rupert; but when the former cried out to his cavalry "One charge more and we win the day!" he might just as well have exclaimed, "Twopence more, and up goes the donkey," for his words produced no effect. "Thank you, we've had enough of it," seemed to be imprinted on every countenance; and after a few more reverses, Charles formed the rash deliberation of throwing himself upon the generosity of the Scotch.
He might just as well have thrown himself on the pavement beneath the Monument, as the sequel proved; for the Scotch at once set to work to see what profit was to be made by the sale of the royal fugitive After a good deal of haggling, they sold the sovereign, who had thrown himself upon their generosity, for four hundred thousand pounds; and they no doubt silenced their consciences—if they ever had any—by saying, "It's just a matter of beesness, ye ken," to any one who remonstrated with them upon their mercenary baseness.
The royal prisoner was shut up for some weeks at Holmby Castle, in Northamptonshire, but after a few weeks Cromwell sent one Joyce, formerly his tailor and afterwards a cornet in Fairfax's troop of horse, to "smug" the unhappy king and carry him to the army.
The House of Commons became exceedingly jealous of the military influence that prevailed, but the people rather sided with the soldiers; for the parliament had, of course in its great love of liberty, taken the liberty to lay on taxes to an extent unprecedented in the annals of royal rapacity. It is a fact worth remembering, that the people frequently find their friends more costly than their enemies.
In the autumn of 1647, the king was sent to Hampton Court, where he was allowed some indulgencies, such as going out to spend the day at Sion House, where two of his children were remaining as parlour boarders with the Duke of Northumberland. Some Puritans having given indications of their imagining that they had a spiritual call to do some mischief to the king, his Majesty resolved not to be at home to such a call if he could possibly help it, and leaving Hampton Court with three attendants he reached the coast of Hampshire. It was noticed at the time that Charles had probably heard of the celebrated Hampshire hogs, and fancied therefore that Hampshire must be the best place for him to go to in the hope of saving his bacon. He resigned himself to Colonel Hammond, the Governor of the Isle of Wight, who placed the royal fugitive in Carisbrook Castle; where a bowling-green was arranged and a summer-house built, so that Charles could fancy himself, if he liked, in a surburban tea-garden. The king was a capital bowler, and when sorrow came across his mind he would try and "drown it in the bowls" which Colonel Hammond was so good as to provide him with.
In the September of 1648, another conference was attempted, and Charles took a furnished lodging at a private house in Newport, where the commissioners came to consult with him. They found him much altered, and with his hair so grey as to bespeak the fact that care had been busy in peppering his head, which he declared had got into that state during his anxious sojourn at Oxford; and this peculiar combination of tints retains to this day the title of the Oxford Mixture.
The Parliament would have been glad to diminish the influence of the army by a successful negotiation with the king; but while terms were being discussed, Cromwell, who never brewed half-and-half, struck a blow at both parties. He sent one of his draymen named Pride, who had risen from a seat on the shafts of his dray to a colonelcy in the army, to blockade the Parliament-house with a body of troops, and let in only those members who were favourable to the views of his late employer. We, who cannot imagine Barclay or Perkins going the entire in the style of their predecessor in trade, nor conceive Meux and Co. meddling with the Crown, except to supply it with beer, are of course astonished at the insolence of Cromwell. He nevertheless gained his point, for he set the Parliament at defiance, and had the king removed to Hurst Castle, in Hampshire, which was so dull that Charles could not help remarking that coming to Hurst was like going to be buried. He was again removed to Windsor, and subsequently to St. James's palace, where the guards were ordered to call him Charles Stuart, in order to show the magnanimity of the revenge of such a man as Cromwell. The king was exposed to every petty insult that littlemindedness could suggest or coarse brutality execute. In this respect the "liberals" of England in 1649 set an example which the "liberals" of France followed in the treatment of their own fallen and powerless sovereign upwards of a century afterwards. The only comfort he enjoyed was the society of poor old Jack Juxon, the bishop who had been faithful to him in all his adversity.
It was now determined to bring the king to trial, and on the 20th of January the proceedings commenced in Westminster Hall, when upon its being declared that Charles was accused in the name of the people, a shrill voice exclaimed "Pooh, pooh! not a tenth part of them." The ushers looked in vain to see who was disturbing the audience, and the soldiers were ordered to fire into the corner whence the voice proceeded, until it turned out that Lady Fairfax was the individual by whom the proceedings had been interrupted. She was a warm politician, and with her husband had espoused the parliamentary cause, but was disgusted like him with the brutal use that the "liberals" were making of their triumph. Charles demurred to the jurisdiction of his judges for three days, but, on the 27th, they found him guilty, and sentenced him to be beheaded three days afterwards. The "people," imitating the conduct of some of their "friends," insulted the fallen monarch in his misfortune, and many a malicious, low-bred ass, tried to get a kick at the chained lion. Happily the people in our own days are very superior to the people of the time of Charles, and there is no sympathy among the masses with ungenerous persecution, whatever may be the rank of the victim.
As Charles quitted the hall after his conviction, a wretched miscreant displayed a toad-like venom by spitting in the king's face, which drew from the sovereign the true remark, "Poor souls! they would treat their generals in the same manner for sixpence." While chronicling an act disgraceful to human nature, we must not forget to put down what is on the credit side—namely, a blessing instead of an insult from one of the guard, who was struck to the ground for giving way to this creditable impulse.
We draw a veil over the closing scene, for our history is not a register of murders; but whoever reads attentively the details of the sacrifice of Charles I. will see the original of one of the darkest scenes in the French Revolution.
The death-warrant for the execution of Charles the First, was signed by fifty-nine of his judges, the list beginning with the name of John Bradshaw, and ending with that of Miles Corbet. Few of them rose to much distinction, and still fewer have left descendants capable of acquiring fame, for there is scarcely a renowned patronymic in the entire catalogue. A man in a visor performed the murderous ceremony of striking off the king's head; and we cannot be surprised that the executioner was ashamed to show his face on such an occasion.
Though the nation had stood by, in the most apathetic manner, while the mischief was doing, it was no sooner done, than everybody became very indignant and very sorrowful. Women went into fits, men took to drinking, and some went so far as to commit suicide rather than survive their murdered sovereign. This sympathy was all peculiarly English, and, in fact, a little too much so; for it is the fault of our countrymen to make a great deal too much of the dead and far too little of the living. Neglect, or even starvation, is frequently the fate of one who, after his decease, has his merits recognised by subscription and a monument. Genius not unfrequently asks in vain for bread when living, but when dead gets a stone awarded him.
Charles was in the 49th year of his age, and the 24th of his reign, when he
was brought to the scaffold. We regret that we cannot give a favourable character
to this unfortunate person out of place—for he certainly was completely
out of place on the throne of England. His disposition was mixed, like human
nature in general; and indeed, what is mankind, as the philosopher would ask,
but the "mixture as before" incessantly repeated? He was dignified,
it is true, but so is the representative of the "fifth noble" or "tenth
senator," in an opera or play, and he was temperate also to an extent that
might have fitted him for the chair of a tee-total lodge, but not for the throne
of a vast empire. He was not avaricious, but if he spent money freely it was
because he freely helped himself to the money of other people. He was humane
to such an extent, that "he would not have hurt a fly;" but it may
be said that a fly never did him any harm, and hostility therefore, to that
imbecile insect, would have been at once brutal and undignified. The man who
would hurt a fly, must indeed be very hard up for a victim to his malevolence,
and Charles cannot, therefore, have much credit given him for his amiability
towards that humble member of the class of diptera. The manners of Charles were
not much in his favour; "but it would not have mattered much," says
the incorrigible Strype, "that he was a bit of a bear, had he been otherwise
bearable."
In a commercial country, like ours, his swindling propensities will always tell
against him, and his insatiable desire to obtain money, under false pretences,
was quite unworthy of his exalted station, or, indeed, of any station but that
where the police are paramount. It is true, that his subjects would have kept
him rather hard up for cash and he often declared that the Long Parliament reduced
him repeatedly to very short commons. Hume has endeavoured to give Charles the
reputation of being a man of "probity and honour;" but it must have
been the sort of honour said to prevail among thieves, for when he could not
get money by honest means—which he seldom could—he never scrupled
to rob for it.
In person, Charles had a sweet but melancholy expression, a sort of agro dolce, which made his portrait not quite a Carlo Dolce to look upon. His features were regular, but he was not vain; and he would often say or think "that he should not care about a regular nose or chin, so that he could make both ends meet by having a regular salary." He was an excellent horseman; but it is one thing to be skilful in the management of the bridle, and another to be adroit in holding the reins of power. His equestrian accomplishments would have been useful to him had fate thrown him into another circle, where his favourite Buckingham, as clown to the ring, would also have been in his proper position.
The men of letters of Charles's reign were numerous and illustrious. Ford, the dramatist, whose depth it is difficult to fathom; Ben Jonson, surnamed the Rare, and as it has been prettily said by somebody, "the rarer the better;" with Philip Massinger, belonged to the period. Speed, the topographer, commonly called the "slow coach;" Burton, the famous anatomist of melancholy, and familiarly known as the sad dog; Spelman, whose writings possess no particular spell; Cotton, who has furnished a lot of printed stuffs; and a few others, constituted the literary illuminators of the age, by their moral and intellectual moulds, dips, or rushlights.
THE COMMONWEALTH.
The king being now dead, the republican beggars were on horseback, and began at a rapid pace the ride whose terminus we need not mention. On the 5th of February, 1649, a week after the execution of Charles, the Commons had the impudence to vote the House of Peers "both useless and dangerous." One of the next steps of the lower House was to vent a sort of brutal malignity upon unfeeling objects, and having no longer a king to butcher, it was resolved to break up all his statues. The Commons thought, no doubt, to pave the way to a republic by macadamizing the road with the emblems of royalty.
Considerable discussion has been raised upon the question of the right of a nation to decapitate its king; and, of course, if the people may do as they please with their own, they may do anything. The judgment of posterity has very properly pronounced a verdict of "Wilful Murder" against the regicides, and we have no wish to disturb this very fair decision. It is very unlikely that a similar state of things will ever arise again in England; but, if such were to be unhappily the case, there are, in these enlightened times, numerous pacific and humane modes of meeting the emergency. "Between dethroning a prince and punishing him, there is," as Hume well observes, "a wide difference;" and unless the professed humanity-mongers should get fearfully ahead—unless the universal philanthropists should gain an ascendancy over public opinion—there is no fear that kings or aristocrats will ever be butchered again, for the promotion of "universal love" and "brotherhood."
When Charles was no more, the republicans continued to show their paltry malevolence by making insulting propositions as to the disposal of his family. It was suggested that the Princess Elizabeth should be bound apprentice to a button-maker; but the honest artificer to whom the proposal was made generously hoped that his buttons might be dashed before he became a party to so petty an arrangement. Happily for the princess, death, by making a loop-hole for her escape, saved her from being reduced to the necessity of making buttons.
A Committee of Government had been hitherto sitting at Derby House, which was now changed into the Executive Council, with Bradshaw, as president, and Milton, the poet, as his secretary: the latter having being employed no doubt on account of his powerful imagination to conceive some possible justification for the conduct of the regicides. Duke Hamilton, the Earl of Holland and Capel, the last of whom had bounded away like a stag, but was seized at the corner of Capel Court, were all tried and beheaded.
The usual consequences of the triumph of the "great cause of liberty," as advocated by noisy demagogues, and of the ascendancy of the soi-disant friends of the people, very soon became evident. It was declared treason to deny the supremacy of Parliament, which might indeed lay claim to supremacy in oppression, pride, and intolerance. The "freedom of the press" was completely stopped; and, in fact, there was the customary direct antagonism between principle and practice which too frequently marks the conduct of the hater of all tyranny except his own, and the ardent friend of his kind, which is a kind that we do not greatly admire.
The king's eldest son was proclaimed as Charles II., in Scotland and Ireland, which caused Cromwell to say, "I must go and see about that," and to start at once for Dublin. Having done considerable damage, notwithstanding the resistance of some of the Irish youth, who went by the name of the Dublin Stout, he left his son-in-law, Ireton, to look after Ireland, thinking, perhaps, he would be acceptable from the semi-nationality of his name, while he himself returned to England. He took up his abode in London, at a place called the Cockpit, where he was visited by several persons of consequence; and the new lord of the Cockpit enjoyed the Gallic privilege of having a good crow upon his own dunghill.
Montrose now made an attempt in Scotland in favour of Charles II., but being defeated, he fled and sought refuge with a Scotch friend, who, of course, sold him for what he would fetch, and made two thousand pounds by the business transaction. Poor Montrose was hanged at Edinburgh, on a gallows thirty feet high, which justifies us in saying that cruelty was carried to an immense height, on this deplorable occasion. Charles himself now took the field, having landed at the Frith of Cromarty, and had collected a tolerably large army under Lesley. Cromwell instantly started for Scotland, with a considerable force, and attacked the royalists at Dunbar, where he encouraged his own troops by a quantity of religious cant, which contrasted strangely with the sanguinary nature of his object. After cutting to pieces all that fell in their way, the Puritan humbugs set to at psalm-singing with tremendous vehemence. This mixture of butchery and bigotry was one of the most disgusting characteristics of Cromwell and his ferocious followers. Charles, having fled towards the Highlands, intended leaving Scotland ; but some people there asked him to stop and take a bit of dinner, with the promise of a coronation in the evening.
The reunion took place, but it was rather dull, and Charles deter mined to make his way towards England. Cromwell resolved to pursue him, and this active friend of religion and humanity, having met a few royalists on the road, deliberately "cut them to pieces." On the 3rd of September, 1651, the Battle of Worcester was fought, with success to the republican force; and poor Charles was obliged to escape as well as he could by assuming a variety of disguises, though how he got the extensive wardrobe his dramatic assumptions entailed a necessity for, is not quite obvious. He arrived at Shoreham, near Brighton, in a footman's livery, and the "lad with the white cockade," as the old song called him, obtained a situation in a coal barge, in which he was carried to France. The captain of the collier must have been an odd sort of person, to take a footman with him on the voyage, but perhaps the coal-heavers of that day were more refined than they are at present.
Cromwell was triumphantly received in London, and the cloven foot soon began to peep out from the high-low of the crafty republican. He accepted Hampton Court Palace as his residence, and an estate of 4000Z. a year was voted to him, without the purity of his intentions offering any obstacle to his receiving it.
The Parliament was now getting into disrepute, and Cromwell thought he would take advantage of its loss of popularity, to increase his own stock, whereupon the game of "diamond cut diamond" was commenced between them. The Parliament had now been sitting for some years, and people began to think there might be too much of a good thing, even in an assembly of red-hot patriots, that had hanged a king, and sent the country into a fit of melancholy, by prohibiting, by law, everything in the shape of cheerfulness.
In those days, a joke would lead the perpetrator to the gibbet, and a pun was so highly penal—as, perhaps, it ought to be—that a dull dog who had dropped one by mistake, was called upon to find heavy securities for his good behaviour. The nation was thrown into the dismals by Act of Parliament, and England became—to use a simile that would, at the time, have sent our heads smack to the block—the very centre of gravity. Cromwell, seeing that the Parliament was going down in favour every day, resolved to raise himself by giving the finishing blow to it. He sounded Whitelock, to whom he put the question, "What if a man should take upon himself to be king?" and thus Whitelock got a key to Cromwell's intentions. The old man—Silverplate, as some call him,—did not take to the notion, and Cromwell was exceedingly cool to him ever afterwards. There was a meeting at Oliver's lodgings, on the 20th of April, to discuss the best method of getting rid of the Parliament; and Cromwell, hearing the Commons were in the act of passing a very obnoxious bill, got up from his chair, in a very excited state, and told some soldiers to follow him. He swelled his little band with the sentinels on duty, whom he called out of their sentry-boxes, as he passed, and entered the House, attended by Lambert, a file of musketeers, and a few officers. He took his seat, and listened to the debate, but when the Speaker was going to put the motion, he started up, saying to Harrison—"Now's the time; I must—indeed I must!" when Harrison pulled him back by the skirts of his coat, saying to him, "Can't you be quiet? Just think what you're doing." He then proceeded to address the assembly, but soon got dreadfully unparliamentary in his language, and rushing from his seat to the floor of the House, got very personal. He next stamped on the floor, when his musketeers entered, and, pointing to the Speaker, who was of course raised above the rest, he cried "Fetch him down!" when the Speaker was seized by the robe and pulled into the midst of the assembly. Pointing to Algernon Sydney, Cromwell next cried "Put him out!" and out he went, like a farthing rushlight.
Algernon was very young, and exhibited at first a degree of boyish obstinacy, mixed with infantine insolence, which caused him to be refractory, or—to use a simile in conformity with the comic_pics/Image of the rushlight—to flare up in the socket. He, for a moment, refused to go; which caused Harrison to tap him gently on the shoulder, and say to him, in a mild, but resolute tone, "Come, come, young gentleman; if you don't go out quietly, we must put you out." The child seemed doubtful whether to turn refractory or not, when it suddenly appeared to occur to him that it would be useless to resist; and, just as Harrison had his hands on the lad's shoulders, to impart to him sufficient momentum to have sent him flying through the door, young Algernon made up his mind that he would go quietly. Cromwell stood, in fact, like a dog in the midst of so many rats; a position he had perhaps learned to assume, from his residence at the Cockpit; and he next flew at the mace, exclaiming—"Take away that bauble!" The mace was most unceremoniously hurried off, when, after a little more abuse against several of his old friends, the House was completely cleared, and there was an end to the Long Parliament.
Nothing could exceed the well-bred dogism or utter curishness of the Commons on this occasion, for not one of them offered the smallest resistance to the violence of Cromwell. When they had all sneaked out he locked and double locked the door, put the keys in his pocket, and carried them to his lodgings. He admitted that he had not intended to have gone so far when he first entered the House, but the mean-spiritedness of the Members had urged him on to the course he had adopted.
Thinking that he might as well make a day of it, he proposed to Harrison and Lambert to walk with him to Derby House, and the three stalked into the room where the Council of State was sitting. Cromwell at first pretended to listen with attention to what was going on, and gave an occasional loud ejaculation of "Hear!" but Bradshaw, who was presiding, soon felt that the cheer was ironical. Business was permitted to proceed in this way for a few minutes, when the Council felt it was being "quizzed," and Bradshaw, giving an incredulous look at Cromwell, the latter made no longer a secret of his intention. "Come, come," he cried, "there's been enough of this; go home, and get to bed, and don't come here again until you've a message from me that you're wanted." The hint was immediately taken by Bradshaw, who started up and ran for it—for he was afraid of rough treatment—and he presently had close at his heels the whole of his colleagues. Thus, within the space of a few hours, Cromwell had broken up the Council of State and dissolved the Long Parliament.
Cromwell, having made short work of the Long Parliament, proceeded to supply its place by a legislature of his own composition, and the enemy of absolute monarchy proved himself an absolute humbug by acts of the most arbitrary and designing character. His pretended patriotism had in fact been a struggle on his part to decide whether the business of despotism should remain in the hands that were "native and to the manner born" to it, or whether he should start on his own account as a monopolist of tyranny to be practised for his own aggrandisement. The new Parliament was a miscellaneous collection of impostors and scamps, with a slight mixture of honest men, but
The Barebones Parliament.
these were too few to make the thing respectable. Cromwell now began to put on the external semblance of religion with an extravagance of display that gives us every reason to doubt his sincerity. As the man of straw frequently covers himself with jewellery, a good deal of which may be sham; so Cromwell enveloped himself in all the externals of sanctity, which we firmly believe penetrated no further than the surface.
"Take away that Bauble" Cromwell dissolving the Long Parliament.
One of the principal members of the new Parliament was a fellow named Barbone or Barebone, a leather-seller and currier, who attempted to curry favour by an affectation of extreme holiness. The legislative assembly subsequently got the name of the Barebones Parliament from the person we have named, and the whole pack of humbugs usurped the powers of the state by pretending they "had a call" to take upon them the duties of government.
It may generally be observed, that they who make piety a profession look very sharply out for professional profits, and if they are desirous of taking what is not justly their own, they soon get up an imaginary "call" to urge them to the robbery. Cromwell formally handed over to them the supreme authority—which, by the bye, was not his to give—and the first day of their meeting was devoted to praying and preaching with a view to giving the public an idea of their excessive sanctity. They soon set to work in their career of mischief, and began by abolishing the Court of Chancery, on account of its delays, which was like killing a horse because it did not happen to go at full gallop. They certainly expedited the suits, and brought them to a conclusion about as effectually as one would accelerate a steam-engine by shutting up the safety-valve, and allowing it to go to smash with the utmost possible rapidity. They nominated as judges a new set of lawyers, whose qualification was that they were not in the law; and there is no doubt the Parliament would have dissolved every institution in the kingdom if the members had not dissolved themselves on the 12th of December, 1654, at the suggestion of Cromwell.
The old constitutional principle, that too many cooks spoil the broth, having been rapidly exemplified, it was declared expedient to have "a commonwealth in a single person," or, in other words, to have a king with a democratic name, which is the invariable result of the policy of red-hot republicans. Cromwell was of course the unit who had put himself down as A. 1, for the new office, and he succeeded in choosing himself or getting himself chosen by the title of Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Thus, though the people had cut off the head of a real king, another head grew in its place, for Government is like the hydra, which must have a head, however often the process of decapitation may be carried into execution. The brewer had, in fact, mashed up the constitution as completely as if he had used one of his own mash-tubs for the purpose, and his upstart insolence reached such a point, that the now well-known expression, "He doesn't think small beer of himself," was first applied in reference to this dealer in ale and stout, who, it was clumsily observed, had "gone the entire" in his great audacity.
While these things were going on at home, the English fleet had been engaged with Von Tromp, or Trump, abroad, and the Dutch sailor behaved like the article which his name delicately indicates. The Dutch for some time, though they only had this Von Trump, carried off all the honours, and sometimes succeeded even by tricks; but at length the distinguished Trump was obliged to "shuffle off the mortal, coil," and though he would gladly have revoked his determination to "cut in" to such a desperate game as an engagement with the English, he played it out to the last with all his wonted courage. The only remaining Trump, looking whistfully round him, fell by a blow from a knave who was in the suit and service of the English. When the last breath was blown out of the highly respectable Trump, the war between the Dutch and the English was at an end, and the Protector had time to follow out his principles by protecting himself with the utmost vigilance. One of his chief difficulties arose from the eagerness of the various liberal sects in religion to oppress each other in the name of brotherly love and universal harmony. This difficulty in quieting the demands of each to exterminate the others taught him lessons of diplomacy, and Cromwell soon became the most accomplished "do" that ever had a place in the pages of history. Though he recommended great tolerance in their quarrels with each other, they no sooner began to abuse him than he threw some of them into prison, reminding us of the celebrated apostle of Temperance who, in a fit of intoxication, broke the windows of a public-house for the purpose of assisting the triumph of the "grand principle."
Cromwell, who was a clever man, and though a brewer was averse to doing things by half-and-half, made some legal appointments that gave general satisfaction. He promoted Hale—with whom he was hale fellow well met—to the Bench of the Common Pleas, and he was fortunate enough to obtain a recognition of his protectorate from the Governments of Prance, Spain, and Portugal.
On the 3rd of September, 1654, which was Sunday, Cromwell, as Protector, first met his new Parliament, and played the part of a king in all its most essential points, even down to the delivery of a speech from the throne, remarkable for the badness of its grammar, the antiquity of its language, and the utter emptiness of most of its sentences. He abused the levellers, for, with the skill of political engineering, he desired to level down no lower than the "dumpy level" at which he had arrived; and while eulogising liberty of conscience, he admitted it to be a capital thing so long as it did not extend to the formation of opinions unfavourable to the Protector's own position. He spoke glowingly of the beauty of free thoughts, but hinted that, lest these thoughts should be more free than welcome, the people had better keep their thoughts to themselves as much as possible.
At the close of Cromwell's speech, the Commons sneaked back to their House, where they elected Lenthall their Speaker, and appointed the 13th of September a day of humiliation, as if there had not been humiliation enough for the country in the conduct it had been recently pursuing. The Protector soon began to put his despotic principles in force, for his position having been debated rather freely, he sent for the members of Parliament to the Painted Chamber, and told them very plainly that he had made up his mind to stand no impertinence, "You wanted a republic," said he, "and you have got it; so you had better be satisfied." In vain did they venture to urge that liberty, equality, and all the rest of it had been the purpose they had in view, for he replied that "they were all equally bound to show subservience to him, and that as to liberty, they were at perfect liberty to do, say, or think anything that would not be offensive to him, their master." He followed up this announcement by placing a guard at the door of the Parliament, whose duty it was to exclaim to each member, "You can't go in, sir, until you have signed this paper," and on its being produced, it turned out to be an agreement not to question in any manner Cromwell's authority. Though this was a piece of tyranny and impertinence more disgusting than anything that had been attempted by Charles, 130 of the members yielded to it at once; for it is a curious fact that, though the people will often show the susceptibility of the blood-horse at the slightest check of the rein when it is held by a royal hand, they will manifest the stolid patience of the ass under the most violent treatment from one of themselves, who has risen to the position of their master.
On the 14th of September Cromwell's door-keepers played their parts so well, and barred the entrance so effectually against all but those who would sign the paper, that a great many more agreed to do so, and when the number of consenting parties was sufficiently respectable to make up a fair average house, Cromwell's creatures proceeded to vote that subscribing the recognition of the Protector should be a necessary preliminary to taking a seat in Parliament.
The Protector having done everything he could for himself, proceeded to show his protecting influence—of course—over several of his relatives. Fleetwood, who had married his daughter—the widow of Ireton,—was sent as governor to Ireland, and the Protector's own son afterwards succeeded to this high and lucrative office. Not only did he provide snugly for his living kindred, but he gave them most inappropriate honours when dead, and his mother happening to go off about this time, he actually insisted on the "old woman's" being entombed in the Abbey of Westminster. What the dowager Mrs. Cromwell had done to deserve this distinction, we have yet to learn, and as we have learnt everything connected with the subject on which we write, our instruction on this point will, we fear, be postponed to a very distant period.
Among the incidents of the Protector's domestic life, there is one which we will insert on account of its amusing and perhaps instructive character. Cromwell's vanity had so increased with his success, that he one day said to himself, "I can drive a whole people; I can drive a bargain as well as any man; and, odds, bobs, and buttercups! why should I not be able to drive my own carriage?" The cattle having been put to, he mounted the box with a jaunty air to enjoy a jaunt, and was tooling the cattle down Tooley Street, when, in consequence of the friskiness of one of the nags, Cromwell began nagging at his mouth with much violence. The horses not being so easily guided and controlled as the Parliament, soon turned restive, and ran away; which threw the Protector from his seat, and his own poll came into collision with the pole of his carriage. To add to the unpleasantness of the situation, a loaded pistol, which Cromwell always carried about him, went off, in sympathy, no doubt, with the steeds : or, perhaps, the charge could no longer contain itself, and exploded with a burst of indignation at the pride of its owner, who, however, was not wounded by the accident.
The Protector continued to feather his nest with unabated zeal, and he got the Parliament to vote him half-a-dozen different abodes, including three or four in London itself; so that, unless he took breakfast at one, dined at a second, and took "his tea" at a third, he could not have occupied the metropolitan residences set apart for him. Multiplicity of lodgings appears to have been a faiblesse of the Protector : for, notwithstanding these six places of sojourn, there is scarcely a suburb that has not a house or apartments to let that, according to a landlord's myth, once served for the palace or residence of Cromwell. If we may trust to tradition, he once lived at a surgeon's in the Broadway, Hammersmith; once in a lane at Brompton; once in Little Upper James Street, North; and once in or near Piebald Row on the confines of Pimlico. Having got an allotment of plenty of houses, to an extent reminding us of the extravagant order of "some more gigs" which an anonymous spendthrift once commanded of his coachmaker, Cromwell began to think about getting a grant to pay the expenses of his numerous establishments.
An allowance of £200,000 a year was settled on himself and his successors, which, we find from a document of the period, [Statement of a sub-committee of the Commons.] was exactly one entire sixth of the whole aggregate revenue of the three kingdoms put together.
Thus, though poor Charles had experienced the utmost difficulty in getting money granted for the payment of his debts, or even for the costs of his living like a king and a gentleman, the usurper Cromwell obtained at once the concession of a most liberal salary.
Notwithstanding the subservience the Parliament had in the first instance shown, symptoms of refractoriness in that quarter soon became visible. The Protector had made up his mind to go on changing it, as he would have done a set of domestic servants, until he could thoroughly suit himself; and accordingly, on the 22nd of January, 1656, he rang the bell, desired the legislature to appear before him, and announced that he had no further use for it. The members were desired to find themselves situations elsewhere; and though some of them had courage enough to hint that they "would be sure to better themselves, for they were tired of the quantity of dirty work they had had to do," the Parliament evinced, on the whole, a spirit, or rather a want of spirit, that was quite contemptible Some of the malcontents ventured on a little revolutionary rising; but the levellers were speedily reduced to their old level. Major Wildman, a man rendered wild at the success of Cromwell's ambition, and hating the Protectorate, had been heard to declare that he would "take the linch-pin out of the common-weal," and notwithstanding the flaw in the orthography, he was imprisoned on this evidence of hostility to the ruling power. At the moment when Wildman was arrested, he was sitting alone in his
Arrest of Wildman.
own back-parlour, evincing the same sort of enthusiasm that has immortalised the three tailors of Tooley Street, and drawing up "a declaration of the free and well-affected people of England now in arms against the tyrant Oliver Cromwell, Esquire." The Major thought he had accomplished something very stinging, in adding "Esquire" to Cromwell's name; and he was in the act of roaring out, "Hear, hear! Bravo, bravo!" after he had written out the title of his tremendous manifesto, when a sudden bursting open of the door, and a cry of "You must come along with us," threw the Major into a state of surprise from which he had not recovered when he found himself put for safe keeping in the keep of Chepstowe Castle. A few other insurrectionary movements were made, but all of them were of a very trifling character. Penruddock, Grove, and Lucas got up a little royalist trio, but their movement was soon turned into a disconcerted piece, by a regiment of Cromwell's horse, who rode rough-shod over the three conspirators, and they were executed instead of their project.
The Protector was no less imperious towards foreign nations than towards his own, and having made some demands upon Spain, to which that country refused to accede, he sent Admiral Penn, familiarly termed his Nibs, to write his name upon some of the Spanish possessions. Assisted by General Venables, Penn, who may be distinguished as a steel-pen, for he carried a pointed sword, and never showed a white feather, took the island of Jamaica after a contest, in which he found among the inhabitants of Jamaica some rum customers. Blake worried the Spaniards in another quarter, and the Protector spread so much consternation among some of the European governments, that the celebrated Cardinal Mazarin, who greatly feared him, began to look so very blue, that a Mazarine blue retains to this very day a character for intensity.
Emboldened by his good fortune, Cromwell thought he might venture on another parliament, which met on the 17th of September, 1656, the members having undergone at the door an examination as to their servility to the Protector's purposes. The first sitting was like the first night of any novelty at the pit of Her Majesty's Theatre, and two of Cromwell's creatures officiated as check-takers. Every member who presented himself at the doors was obliged to produce his credentials, and upon this being satisfactorily done, a cry of "Pass one" was raised to the officer in charge of the inner barrier. Nearly one hundred new members were sent back, after more or less altercation; and the words "I can't help it, sir; those are my orders; you must go back, sir," were being continually heard above the din of "Pass one," or "It's all right," which confirmed the privilege of admission claimed by many of the applicants.
A legislature with only one house soon began to be considered as a sort of sow with one ear, and even the ear that remained was closed by Cromwell's art against what he used to call in private "the swinish multitude." A suggestion was made by several that the House of Lords should be restored, and many began to sigh for a return to the old constitution, which had been broken up before there had been time to try the effect of a new one.
At length an alderman of London, one Sir Christopher Pack, started up, without any preliminary notice, and moved that the title of king should be offered to the Protector. Pack's proposition set off the entire pack of republicans in full cry against him, and they all continued to give tongue from the 23rd of February to the 26th of March, 1657, when Pack's motion was carried by a large majority. A deputation was appointed to request that "his Highness would be pleased to magnify himself with the title of king,"—a proposition almost as absurd as an offer to place Barclay and Perkins on the throne, or entreat Meux and Co. to write Henry IX. over the door of their brewery.
Cromwell gave an evasive reply to the requisition, approving most fully of the proposition to restore the House of Lords, but was hanging back about the "other little matter," when a declaration from some of his former friends and tools, that they had fought against monarchy and would do so again if required, completely settled him in his wavering refusal of the royal title. He was therefore inaugurated with much pomp as Lord Protector, and indeed he might well have been satisfied, for he had secured everything except the name of royalty. His manner of life and his court were marked by no extravagant show, but he had everything very comfortable; and he
One of the Protector's Tea Parties.
was accustomed to say to his intimate friends, "What do I want with the gilt, for haven't I got the gingerbread?" He did not give very large parties at Hampton Court, but used to have "a few friends" to tea, and "a little music" in the evening. He occasionally attempted a joke, "but this," says Whitelock, "was always a very ponderous business." One of his frolics—we start instinctively at the idea of Cromwell being frolicsome—was to order a drum to beat in the middle of dinner, falling unpleasantly on the drums of his guests' ears, and at the signal the Protector's guards were allowed to rush into the room, clear the table, pocket the poultry, and, on a certain signal from the drum, make off with the drumsticks.
Cromwell had the good taste to delight in the society of clever men, and there was always a knife and fork at Hampton Court for Milton, or for that marvel of his age, the celebrated Andrew Marvel. Waller, the poet, was welcome always ; Dryden now and then; John Biddle sometimes; and Archbishop Usher, whom Cromwell used to call the only real Gentleman Usher of his day, was constantly kicking his heels under the Protector's mahogany.
We have now to record the death of poor Blake, who, having fluttered the Canaries in the isles of that name, was returning safe into Plymouth Sound, when he died of the scurvy, which, according to a wag of that day—happily the wretch is not a wag of this—showed that Fortune had in store for him but scurvy treatment. Poor Blake had been in early life a candidate for an Oxford fellowship, but lost it from the lowness of his stature, [Brodie, Brit. Emp., iv. 317.] for in Blake's time very little fellows were not academically recognised. There is no doubt that with his general ability he would have taken a very high degree if he had been only big enough. He was buried at the Protector's expense, in Henry VII.'s Chapel, for Cromwell was a great undertaker, and was very fond of providing his friends with splendid funerals.
While these things were happening at home, the Protector was fortifying his position abroad, and had persuaded the French to abandon Charles II., known to the world in general, and to playgoers in particular, as the "merry monarch." This fugitive scamp—of whom more hereafter—was mean enough to offer to marry one of the Misses Cromwell, a daughter of the usurper, who had the good sense and spirit to turn up his puritanical nose at the idea of such a son-in-law. Orrery, whom Charles consulted with the vague idea that consulting an orrery was in fact consulting the stars, took the message to Cromwell, who replied haughtily, "I am more than a match for Charles, but Charles is less than a match for my daughter." The Protector had what he called something better in view for his "gal," who, on the 17th of November, was wedded to Lord Falconbridge. The ceremony was described in the Morning Post of the period, which was then called the Court Gazette, and a column was devoted to an account of the festivities. We see from facts like these how ready are the declaimers against aristocracy to adopt the ways and even the weaknesses of a class that is ridiculed and abused, chiefly by those who would, if they could, belong to it.
The ascendancy of the puritan Protector was marked by the grossest corruption that ever prevailed under the most licentious of regal governments. Unlimited bribery of one portion of the people was effected by the unlimited robbery of the other, and thus the dupes were made to pay the knaves who sold themselves and betrayed their fellow-subjects for the sake of Cromwell's aggrandisement.
On the 20th of January, 1658, the Parliament met again, and fraternised with a little batch of peers, amounting to sixty in all, whom Cromwell had created, and who might, indeed—upon our honour, we don't say so for the sake of the pun—be justly called his creatures. Two of the Protector's sons, namely, Richard and Henry, were among the batch of anything but thoroughbreds, that formed the roll of Oliver's peerage. The number, however, included some highly respectable names, among whom we may particularly notice Lord Mulgrave, who took the family name of Phipps, because in the civil wars he would not at one time have given Phippence for his life; Lord John Claypole, whose head was as thick and whose brains were as muddy as his title implies; and a few old military friends of Cromwell. Colonel Pride, who had been a drayman, was also among the new peers; and the drayman of course offered a fair butt to the royalists, who threw his dray in his face and assailed him with the shafts of ridicule.
Scarcely any of the genuine nobles who had been called to Parliament condescended to come, and the Protector made his appearance before a house almost as poor as some of those in which the farce of legislation is enacted in these days at nearly the close of a very long session. Cromwell was really indisposed, or shammed indisposition on account of the scantiness of the audience, for, after having said a few words, he turned to his Lord Speaker Fiennes, exclaiming, "Fiennes! you know my mind pretty well; so just give it them as strongly as you like, for I'm too tired to talk to them." Fiennes, taking the hint, proceeded to rattle on at very rapid rate, mixing up a quantity of religious quotations and a vast deal of vulgar abuse, in the prevailing style of the period.
The Commons retired to their chamber in a huff; and four days afterwards receiving a message mentioning the Upper House, refused to recognise the peers except as the "other house,"—for the little Shakspearean fable of the Rose, the Odour, and the Name, was not at that time popular. The Protector, who always sent for the Parliament as he would have sent for his tailor, desired that the legislature should be shown into the banquetting or dining-room, where he advised them not to quarrel, and, producing the public accounts, he impressed upon them that things were very bad in the City. He exhorted them not to increase the panic by any dissensions among themselves, but he could not persuade them to change their note; and he accordingly got out of bed—some say, wrong leg first—very early on the 4th of February, when, calling for his hot water and his Parliament, he dissolved the latter without a moment's warning. The legislative body had enjoyed a short but not very merry life of fourteen days, when an end was thus put to its too weak existence.
The Protector was now in need of all his protective powers in consequence of the dangers that on all sides threatened him. The republicans were ready, as they generally are, to draw anything, from a sword to a bill; and the army, with its pay in arrear, did nothing but grumble. The royalists were being inspirited by the Marquis of Ormond, who was "up in town," quite incog.; and the levellers were, of course, ready to sink to any level, however degraded, in the cause of the first leader who was willing and able to purchase them.
Notwithstanding the gathering storm, Cromwell boldly stuck up the sword of vengeance by his side, as a sort of lightning conductor to turn aside the destruction that threatened him. A pamphlet, called "Killing no Murder," put him to the expense of a steel shirt, the collar of which, by the way, could have required no starch; and he kept himself continually "armed in proof," but we do not know whether he selected an author's proof, which might have been truly impregnable armour, for getting through an author's proof is frequently quite impossible. He carried pistols in his pockets, to be let off when occasion required—a provision of which he never gave his enemies the benefit. Poor Dr. Hunt was cruelly cut off—or, at least, his head was—which amounted to much the same thing; and others were treated with similar severity.
On the Continent the Protector was very successful, and the English serving under Turenne, or, as some have called him, Tureen, poured down upon Dunkirk, which was overwhelmed and taken. Cromwell, however, lived a miserable life at home, being suspicious of every one about him, and he never dared sleep more than two consecutive nights in the same place—a circumstance that may account for the multiplicity of lodgings we have already alluded to. This continual changing of apartments must have rendered him very liable to get put into damp sheets, and, as hydropathy had not yet been reduced to a system, he caught the ague, instead of profiting by the moisture of the bed-clothes. On the 2nd of September he grew very bad indeed, and, in the presence of four or five of the Council, he named his son Richard to succeed him; but this youth was so complete a failure, that to talk of his succeeding was utterly ridiculous. Oliver Cromwell died between three and four o'clock in the afternoon of the 3rd of September, the day on which he always expected good luck, for it was the anniversary of some of his greatest victories. Death, however, is an enemy not to be overcome, and, in spite of the prestige of success which belonged to the day, the Protector was compelled to yield to the universal conqueror. He died in the fifty ninth year of his age, and it is a singular coincidence that Nature brewed a tremendous storm—as if in compliment to the brewer—at the very moment of his dissolution.
The character of Cromwell was, as we have already intimated, a species of half-and-half, in which the smaller description of beer appeared to preponderate. He had, like a pot of porter, a good
One, Two, Three, and Under.
head; but, to draw a simile from the same refreshing fount, he was rather frothy than substantial in his political qualities. His speeches had the wonderful peculiarity of meaning nothing, and instead of saying a great deal in a few words, he managed to say very little in a great many. [The following is an extract from one of the Protector's speeches, which even Captain Bunsby, the naval oracle in Dombey and Son, might he proud of :—"I confess, I would say, I hope, I may be understood in this, for indeed I must he tender in what I say to such an audience as this;—I say, I would he understood that in this argument I do not make a parallel between men of a different mind."—Original Speech of Oliver Cromwell.] Cromwell wrote almost as obscurely as he spoke, and he could do little more than sign his name, for which he used to make the old excuse of the illiterate, that his education had been somewhat neglected; and indeed it seemed to have gone very little beyond those primitive pothooks intended for the hanging up of future more important acquisitions. The Protector's wit was exceedingly coarse, or rather particularly fine, for it was scarcely perceptible. It savoured much of the Scotch humourist, whose fun might be exceedingly good sometimes, if it were not always invisible. His practical jokes were not particularly happy, and his smearing the chairs with sweetmeats at Whitehall, to dirty the dresses of the ladies, was a piece of facetiousness worthy of an eccentric scavenger, but highly unbecoming to the chief-magistrate, for the time being, of such a country as England.
Though Cromwell could scarcely read the characters of caligraphy, he could peruse the characters of men with great acuteness. He was well acquainted with all the variations of human types, and could easily distinguish the capitals from the lower-case. In private life he was playful, though in his public capacity he was severe even to cruelty; and it has hence been prettily remarked, that, though he was a kitten in the bosom of his family, the puss became a tiger in the arena of politics. He never turned his back upon any of his children, except at leap-frog, in which he would often indulge with his sons, who had little of that vaulting ambition for which their parent was conspicuous.
Cromwell playing at Leap-frog with his Children.
RICHARD CROMWELL.
Considering all things, we have some hesitation in devoting a chapter to this contemptible imbecile; but in taking up the thread of the history, we promise to wind him off in a very few pages.
The ceremony of proclamation was performed in London and Westminster, as well as in every city of the kingdom, and congratulatory addresses poured in upon the new protector, as they would upon Brown, Jones, Robinson, or any other piece of scum that the tide of chance might have thrown up to the same position. There was the usual junction of condolence on the death of the parent, and joy at the accession of the son; but both expressions were equally affected and hypocritical. Richard Cromwell was, however, such a mere nonentity, that he could not turn to account the advantages of his position: and when the army promised to stand by him to a man he had nothing to say beyond "Dear me! how very kind of the army!" He had, it is true, been born as the saying is, "with a silver spoon in his mouth," and the qualities of the spoon had become incorporated with his being.
The soldiers soon began to discover that the brewer's son knew more about barrels of beer than barrels of gunpowder, and that his acquaintance with the musket was limited to the butt end of it. A petition was got up among the troops requesting him to resign; but he replied, that though he was very willing to do anything to oblige, he was sure his people did not wish him to relinquish the command of the army.
Richard had sent, as usual, for the coffers of the state, which have been generally the first object of solicitude to one attaining the post of chief magistrate. Some small change was all that the coffers contained, and he resolved to call a Parliament in order to replenish them. The legislative assembly met on the 27th of January, 1659, but was very soon torn by factions of every sort, except satisfaction, which there were no symptoms of in any quarter whatever. Fleetwood, the brother-in-law of Richard Cromwell, and Desborough, his uncle-in-law, who had married his aunt, got up a movement against him among the soldiers, who resented their want of pay, and avowed their determination not to draw their swords until they had drawn their salaries. Finding there was nothing to be got out of the Parliament, Richard dissolved it, and the old one that Oliver had forcibly ejected had the impudence to resume its sittings. The new Protector beginning to think, like his father, that self-protection was the first duty he had to perform, withdrew to Hampton Court, and sent in his resignation, which was accepted immediately.
The Parliament, though very long of date, was very short of cash, and coolly proposed selling the three royal palaces to ease the pecuniary pressure which the tightness in the City was occasioning. Royalists plots, however, disturbed the plans of the assembly, whose members quarrelled fiercely with each other, and were terribly bamboozled by Monk, who had a large amount of monkish deception in his character. He wrote letters to cajole Parliament, while he was in treaty with the king; but the former being very short of cash soon, decided, whatever doubts he might have entertained as to which was the best investment for his allegiance.
It having become tolerably sure that Charles II. would be sent for, there was a sudden rush of competitors for the honour or dishonour, as the case may be, of bringing him back to England. Even Fleetwood, the brother-in-law of Richard Cromwell and the son-in-law of Oliver, was on the point of undertaking the job ; but having entered into a sort of tacit agreement with Lambert, to give him a share in any job that he (Fleetwood) might undertake, the latter could not make up his mind to sell himself in the former's absence.
Monk continued to deceive the Parliament with so much success that he was invited by that body to come to London, and accept the situation of keeper of St. James's Park, a post of honour rather than of active duty : for, in those days, "the boys" had not gained such ascendancy as to call for activity in the metropolitan beadlery. Monk used his new position for the purpose of promoting the object for the furtherance of which he had in fact sold himself to the king; and his Majesty having sent a letter to the Parliament, in which the lords had again mustered very strong, a favourable answer was returned to it.
Charles was voted a sum of £50,000 to pay his expenses home, and the evening was spent in bell-ringing, beer, and bonfires. Royalty rushed up to a premium as exorbitant and unhealthy as the discount to which it had fallen in the days of the Commonwealth; and on the 8th of May, 1660, Charles was proclaimed at the gate of Westminster Hall, amidst loud cries of "Hats off!" "Down in front!" "Long live the king!" and "Where are you shoving to?"
Richard Cromwell made himself not the least obstacle to any arrangements that might be made for deposing him, and indeed begged the parties concerned would not "consider him" in any alterations that circumstances might require. His chief anxiety was to get a guarantee against the expenses of his father's funeral, for which "poor Richard" feared he was legally responsible. He sneaked eventually out of the kingdom, and making a call abroad on a foreign prince, who did not know him, was told to his face, in the course of casual conversation, that "Oliver Cromwell, though a villain and a traitor, was fit to command, but that Richard was a mere poltroon and an idiot." [Universal Biography, vol. i., Life of Richard Cromwell. The Prince of Conte is the individual with whom the conversation was held in which Richard received, unasked, this true but not flattering character.] "What has become of the fellow?" added the prince; upon which Richard suddenly withdrew, and the conversation ended. He eventually returned to England, and taking the name of Clark, died unknown at a little place in Cheshunt.
We may as well finish off the Cromwells at once, while we are about them, by mentioning that the last known descendant of the family, who died in 1821, was on the roll of attornies. From the throne of England to the stool in a solicitor's office, is undoubtedly a dreadful drop; and if Oliver Cromwell could have seen the last of his race making out a bill of costs, the Protector would have received a lesson by which he might have profited.
ON THE NATIONAL INDUSTRY AND THE LITERATURE, MANNERS, CUSTOMS, AND CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE.
THAT improvement was not stationary during the period we have just been describing, will be inferred from the fact that, in 1625, Science called a hackney-coach into existence. Though in these clays, invention would seem to be at a stand if it went no further than the point we have indicated, still the hackney-carriage was a decided advance on the slow coaches of previous centuries. From a print of the period, we perceive that the newly-invented vehicles resembled in shape something between a steam locomotive and a covered railway luggage-van, or in other words, exhibited a sort of combination of the 'bus and the boiler. The hackney-coachmen did not long enjoy a monopoly, for in 1634, Sir Sanders Duncomb thrust a pair of poles through an old sentry-box, and calling it a sedan, started it as a "turn out" for his own convenience. The arrangement seeming to give satisfaction, he obtained a patent for fourteen in all, and S. D. advertised the careful removal of ladies and gentlemen by means of his new invention.
In the year 1630, London began to exhibit symptoms of outgrowing its strength, and fresh buildings within three miles of the gates were prohibited. So long as the metropolis extended on all sides alike, there could have been nothing to fear, for it would have been as broad as it was long, at any rate. It is a curious fact, that those persons who had money in the 16th and 17th centuries, did not know what to do with it. They had been in the habit of keeping it in the Royal Mint, till Charles the First got into the ugly habit of going down to that establishment, clearing off the whole of the cash it contained, calling it a loan, and never paying it back again. The capitalists next tried the experiment of lodging their cash with their clerks and apprentices, and unfortunately it soon became current coin of the realm, for the clerks and apprentices all ran away with it. "The moneyed men, listening at last" says Anderson, "to these admoneytory lessons, began to place their cash in the hands of goldsmiths," but these gentlemen used to pick out the heaviest coins, and make a profit by the sweating process, so that instead of living by the sweat of their own brows, they lived by the sweating of other people's money. This was the origin of the banking business, which began in, or near, Sweeting's Alley, then called Sweating's Alley, from the practices we have mentioned.
Gardening industry made wonderfully rapid strides during this era, for the peas were well drilled, the cabbages made to stand at ease in the open air, and the turnips to take close order, at the commencement of the seventeenth century. Cherries soon after came amongst the English people, with a degree of cherry bounce that the beauty and delicacy of the fruit perhaps warranted. The apple was welcomed with enthusiasm, and Samuel Hartlib, a gardener of the day—week, month, or year—was so affected by the flourishing growth of an apple tree he had planted, that the well-known expression, "Go it my pippin," burst from his lips, and has taken its place in popularity with the Eureka of the old philosopher. The hops also presented themselves as candidates for British favour, and were soon at the top of the poll in all directions,
The woollen manufacturers of England acquired importance at a very early date ; but the secret of dyeing the cloth could never be discovered, and every failure only threw a wretched stain upon national ingenuity At length a Dutchman settled himself, in 1643, at Bow, and announced, by a notice in his bow-window, his intention to get a living by dyeing upon an entirely new principle. Hitherto the English had miserably failed in this branch of art, for when they attempted to master the dye, and keep it under their control, it was always sure to come off with flying colours. The Dutchman of Bow had determined to conquer, even in dyeing, and he not only succeeded in producing a single shade, but he made such hits with his shots, that customers might safely stand the hazard of the dye, if they brought their orders to his establishment. He taught the art to the English, the fastness of whose colours had been previously shown in the extreme rapidity of their running.
In 1622, hemp and flax having been introduced, ready dressed, into this country, the rope manufacture twined itself with the industrial institutions of England. There had been always a prejudice against the use of coal for domestic purposes; but on its value in manufactures being discovered, it acquired a higher character, though its best friends were never able to say that coal after all is not so black as it had been painted. It was extensively employed in iron manufactories, which had greatly advanced; and we have seen an old woodcut of a saw which is one of those very "wise saws" that maybe considered equal to the best of our "modern instances."
Knowing the danger of playing with edge tools, we forbear to speak of them any longer in a sportive strain, and turn to the state of music in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Henry VIII. himself was a composer, if we are to believe Sir John Hawkins, but we suspect that the monarch's well-known overtures to the Pope may have misled the musical historian. There were several writers of madrigals, a class of production whose name has been ingeniously but ignorantly supposed to have reference to the mad wriggles into which the music throws itself.
Charles I. was an adept in the pleasing science, and pretended to play on the viol, though not without a sad violation of some of the rules of harmony. He was, however, fond of melody, which, like everything else of a cheerful and agreeable nature, received a sad blow from the dull puritanical humbugs who rose into importance at the time of the Commonwealth. These psalm-singing sycophants were so fond of hearing their own melancholy and monotonous voices, that no accompaniments were allowed: and thus, to use the impassioned pun of Smith, [For further particulars of Smith, see the London Directory.] "one of the most disgusting specimens of an organised hypocrisy that the world ever saw was carried on entirely without the use of organs."
The Fine Arts flourished in England under Charles I., who was a scholar, a man of taste, a gentleman, and, in fact, everything but what he ought to have been—namely, a good sovereign. He employed Vandyke to take off his head, or rather multiply it frequently, as if he felt a foreboding of his eventually losing it. He was also the patron of Inigo Jones, the architect of several public buildings, and of his own fortune.
The drama is a subject so exciting to antiquarian speculation, that we are afraid of losing ourselves in the mists of ages by plunging into it. We cannot hope to surpass in sagacity some of those ingenious annotators of the present day, who have had such a keen eye to Gammer Gurton's needle, that they actually trace its existence to so remote a date as some few years before the birth of its author. [See Wright—who, by the way, was generally wrong—in his Historia Histrionica.] We need not particularise the various dramatic authors who gave lustre to the Elizabethan period, nor shall we fall into the affectation of talking about Master Beaumont, Master Fletcher, Master Jonson, Master Shakspeare, Master Deekes, and Master Heywood, as if they had been so many precocious young gentlemen or juvenile prodigies of which the present age is somewhat prodigal.
The long Parliament put down all stage plays, for the miserable mummers of whom that assembly was composed were desirous of having all the acting to themselves, though they made a Very poor burlesque of the parts of statesmen and patriots. It has been ingeniously suggested by Mr. Collier, in his History of Dramatic Poetry, that the Puritanical Parliament suppressed the drama and dramatists less on conscientious grounds than from the fear of being made the subject of well-merited satire. The same feeling which would urge a legislature of pickpockets to abolish the police might have actuated the republicans in their zeal to get rid of that moral watch which a well regulated state will always keep over cant and villany.
If, however, dramatic performances were scarce during the ascendancy of Cromwell and the Puritans, the public—had they known how to appreciate it—would not have been without food for mirth in the very ludicrous exhibitions which the events of the day were perpetually furnishing. The career of Cromwell himself might have suggested an amusing spectacle to those who are in the habit of turning to the ridiculous side of everything. A brewer on the throne, endeavouring to unite republican simplicity with royal state, presents to the imagination a figure almost as grotesque as that of an elephant on the tight-rope—an idea in which there is that rare combination of ponderosity and levity, which Cromwell's conduct on the protectoral elbow, or supreme armchair, will be found to have realised.
The Balance of Power.
His unwieldy gambols and great preponderance over all below him, were most fatal to that balance of power which can never be sustained without an equality of pressure and an equality of resistance on all sides.
Our survey of the literature of the 17th century would be incomplete if we were to omit to notice the 3rd of November, 1640, as being the date of the earliest English newspaper. It bore the name of the "Diurnal Occurrences; or, Daily Proceedings of both Houses," but though it professed to give daily news, it was only a weekly periodical. There arose rapidly a provincial press, but its pretensions were slight, and "News from Hull," "Truths from York," "Warranted Tidings from Ireland," were the names of some of the chief of these country newspapers. Their leading articles were not much in the style we are accustomed to at the present day; but the ancient order of penny-a-liners seemed to be ever agog for these precocious gooseberries, showers of frogs, and fading reminiscences of oldest inhabitants, that are still the staple of the productions of this humble class of contributors. It is a remarkable coincidence that the circulation of the blood and the circulation of newspapers should both have belonged to this period of our country's history.
Furniture and costume improved wonderfully in this age, and the wealthy became less chary of expence in their chairs, while they began to sleep on down, or, in other words, to feather their nests with great luxuriance. The clothes of the times of the two Charles's were made much too large for the wearers, and may be considered characteristic of the loose habits of the period. The hair was cut short by the republican party, or Roundheads, in memory of whom the culprits at Clerkenwell and other prisons are cropped exceedingly close, though this is not the only point of resemblance between the modern rogues and the old regicides.
The condition of the people was not very enviable in the era we have described, and it is a remarkable as well as a most instructive fact, that common-wealth is usually synonymous with common poverty. Wages were invariably low, for a man-servant who could thrash a corn-field and kill a hog, received only fifty shillings per annum. Poverty and knavery, begging and filching, were at their height under the reign of the Puritans; for "Like master, like man" was at all times a proverb that could be thoroughly relied upon.