SECOND PART
His Sowship would pretty willingly, I think, have blown the House ofCommons into the air himself; for, his dread and jealousy of it knew nobounds all through his reign. When he was hard pressed for money he wasobliged to order it to meet, as he could get no money without it; andwhen it asked him first to abolish some of the monopolies in necessariesof life which were a great grievance to the people, and to redress otherpublic wrongs, he flew into a rage and got rid of it again. At one timehe wanted it to consent to the Union of England with Scotland, andquarrelled about that. At another time it wanted him to put down a mostinfamous Church abuse, called the High Commission Court, and hequarrelled with it about that. At another time it entreated him not tobe quite so fond of his archbishops and bishops who made speeches in hispraise too awful to be related, but to have some little consideration forthe poor Puritan clergy who were persecuted for preaching in their ownway, and not according to the archbishops and bishops; and theyquarrelled about that. In short, what with hating the House of Commons,and pretending not to hate it; and what with now sending some of itsmembers who opposed him, to Newgate or to the Tower, and now telling therest that they must not presume to make speeches about the public affairswhich could not possibly concern them; and what with cajoling, andbullying, and fighting, and being frightened; the House of Commons wasthe plague of his Sowship's existence. It was pretty firm, however, inmaintaining its rights, and insisting that the Parliament should make thelaws, and not the King by his own single proclamations (which he triedhard to do); and his Sowship was so often distressed for money, inconsequence, that he sold every sort of title and public office as ifthey were merchandise, and even invented a new dignity called aBaronetcy, which anybody could buy for a thousand pounds.
These disputes with his Parliaments, and his hunting, and his drinking,and his lying in bed--for he was a great sluggard--occupied his Sowshippretty well. The rest of his time he chiefly passed in hugging andslobbering his favourites. The first of these was SIR PHILIP HERBERT,who had no knowledge whatever, except of dogs, and horses, and hunting,but whom he soon made EARL OF MONTGOMERY. The next, and a much morefamous one, was ROBERT CARR, or KER (for it is not certain which was hisright name), who came from the Border country, and whom he soon madeVISCOUNT ROCHESTER, and afterwards, EARL OF SOMERSET. The way in whichhis Sowship doted on this handsome young man, is even more odious tothink of, than the way in which the really great men of Englandcondescended to bow down before him. The favourite's great friend was acertain SIR THOMAS OVERBURY, who wrote his love-letters for him, andassisted him in the duties of his many high places, which his ownignorance prevented him from discharging. But this same Sir Thomashaving just manhood enough to dissuade the favourite from a wickedmarriage with the beautiful Countess of Essex, who was to get a divorcefrom her husband for the purpose, the said Countess, in her rage, got SirThomas put into the Tower, and there poisoned him. Then the favouriteand this bad woman were publicly married by the King's pet bishop, withas much to-do and rejoicing, as if he had been the best man, and she thebest woman, upon the face of the earth.
But, after a longer sunshine than might have been expected--of sevenyears or so, that is to say--another handsome young man started up andeclipsed the EARL OF SOMERSET. This was GEORGE VILLIERS, the youngestson of a Leicestershire gentleman: who came to Court with all the Parisfashions on him, and could dance as well as the best mountebank that everwas seen. He soon danced himself into the good graces of his Sowship,and danced the other favourite out of favour. Then, it was all at oncediscovered that the Earl and Countess of Somerset had not deserved allthose great promotions and mighty rejoicings, and they were separatelytried for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, and for other crimes. But,the King was so afraid of his late favourite's publicly telling somedisgraceful things he knew of him--which he darkly threatened to do--thathe was even examined with two men standing, one on either side of him,each with a cloak in his hand, ready to throw it over his head and stophis mouth if he should break out with what he had it in his power totell. So, a very lame affair was purposely made of the trial, and hispunishment was an allowance of four thousand pounds a year in retirement,while the Countess was pardoned, and allowed to pass into retirement too.They hated one another by this time, and lived to revile and torment eachother some years.
While these events were in progress, and while his Sowship was makingsuch an exhibition of himself, from day to day and from year to year, asis not often seen in any sty, three remarkable deaths took place inEngland. The first was that of the Minister, Robert Cecil, Earl ofSalisbury, who was past sixty, and had never been strong, being deformedfrom his birth. He said at last that he had no wish to live; and noMinister need have had, with his experience of the meanness andwickedness of those disgraceful times. The second was that of the LadyArabella Stuart, who alarmed his Sowship mightily, by privately marryingWILLIAM SEYMOUR, son of LORD BEAUCHAMP, who was a descendant of KingHenry the Seventh, and who, his Sowship thought, might consequentlyincrease and strengthen any claim she might one day set up to the throne.She was separated from her husband (who was put in the Tower) and thrustinto a boat to be confined at Durham. She escaped in a man's dress toget away in a French ship from Gravesend to France, but unhappily missedher husband, who had escaped too, and was soon taken. She went ravingmad in the miserable Tower, and died there after four years. The last,and the most important of these three deaths, was that of Prince Henry,the heir to the throne, in the nineteenth year of his age. He was apromising young prince, and greatly liked; a quiet, well-conducted youth,of whom two very good things are known: first, that his father wasjealous of him; secondly, that he was the friend of Sir Walter Raleigh,languishing through all those years in the Tower, and often said that noman but his father would keep such a bird in such a cage. On theoccasion of the preparations for the marriage of his sister the PrincessElizabeth with a foreign prince (and an unhappy marriage it turned out),he came from Richmond, where he had been very ill, to greet his newbrother-in-law, at the palace at Whitehall. There he played a great gameat tennis, in his shirt, though it was very cold weather, and was seizedwith an alarming illness, and died within a fortnight of a putrid fever.For this young prince Sir Walter Raleigh wrote, in his prison in theTower, the beginning of a History of the World: a wonderful instance howlittle his Sowship could do to confine a great man's mind, however longhe might imprison his body.
And this mention of Sir Walter Raleigh, who had many faults, but whonever showed so many merits as in trouble and adversity, may bring me atonce to the end of his sad story. After an imprisonment in the Tower oftwelve long years, he proposed to resume those old sea voyages of his,and to go to South America in search of gold. His Sowship, dividedbetween his wish to be on good terms with the Spaniards through whoseterritory Sir Walter must pass (he had long had an idea of marryingPrince Henry to a Spanish Princess), and his avaricious eagerness to gethold of the gold, did not know what to do. But, in the end, he set SirWalter free, taking securities for his return; and Sir Walter fitted outan expedition at his own coast and, on the twenty-eighth of March, onethousand six hundred and seventeen, sailed away in command of one of itsships, which he ominously called the Destiny. The expedition failed; thecommon men, not finding the gold they had expected, mutinied; a quarrelbroke out between Sir Walter and the Spaniards, who hated him for oldsuccesses of his against them; and he took and burnt a little town calledSAINT THOMAS. For this he was denounced to his Sowship by the SpanishAmbassador as a pirate; and returning almost broken-hearted, with hishopes and fortunes shattered, his company of friends dispersed, and hisbrave son (who had been one of them) killed, he was taken--through thetreachery of SIR LEWIS STUKELY, his near relation, a scoundrel and a Vice-Admiral--and was once again immured in his prison-home of so many years.
His Sowship being mightily disappointed in not getting any gold, SirWalter Raleigh was tried as unfairly, and with as many lies and evasionsas the judges and law officers and every other authority in Church andState habitually practised under such a King. After a great deal ofprevarication on all parts but his own, it was declared that he must dieunder his former sentence, now fifteen years old. So, on thetwenty-eighth of October, one thousand six hundred and eighteen, he wasshut up in the Gate House at Westminster to pass his late night on earth,and there he took leave of his good and faithful lady who was worthy tohave lived in better days. At eight o'clock next morning, after acheerful breakfast, and a pipe, and a cup of good wine, he was taken toOld Palace Yard in Westminster, where the scaffold was set up, and whereso many people of high degree were assembled to see him die, that it wasa matter of some difficulty to get him through the crowd. He behavedmost nobly, but if anything lay heavy on his mind, it was that Earl ofEssex, whose head he had seen roll off; and he solemnly said that he hadhad no hand in bringing him to the block, and that he had shed tears forhim when he died. As the morning was very cold, the Sheriff said, wouldhe come down to a fire for a little space, and warm himself? But SirWalter thanked him, and said no, he would rather it were done at once,for he was ill of fever and ague, and in another quarter of an hour hisshaking fit would come upon him if he were still alive, and his enemiesmight then suppose that he trembled for fear. With that, he kneeled andmade a very beautiful and Christian prayer. Before he laid his head uponthe block he felt the edge of the axe, and said, with a smile upon hisface, that it was a sharp medicine, but would cure the worst disease.When he was bent down ready for death, he said to the executioner,finding that he hesitated, 'What dost thou fear? Strike, man!' So, theaxe came down and struck his head off, in the sixty-sixth year of hisage.
The new favourite got on fast. He was made a viscount, he was made Dukeof Buckingham, he was made a marquis, he was made Master of the Horse, hewas made Lord High Admiral--and the Chief Commander of the gallantEnglish forces that had dispersed the Spanish Armada, was displaced tomake room for him. He had the whole kingdom at his disposal, and hismother sold all the profits and honours of the State, as if she had kepta shop. He blazed all over with diamonds and other precious stones, fromhis hatband and his earrings to his shoes. Yet he was an ignorantpresumptuous, swaggering compound of knave and fool, with nothing but hisbeauty and his dancing to recommend him. This is the gentleman whocalled himself his Majesty's dog and slave, and called his Majesty YourSowship. His Sowship called him STEENIE; it is supposed, because thatwas a nickname for Stephen, and because St. Stephen was generallyrepresented in pictures as a handsome saint.
His Sowship was driven sometimes to his wits'-end by his trimming betweenthe general dislike of the Catholic religion at home, and his desire towheedle and flatter it abroad, as his only means of getting a richprincess for his son's wife: a part of whose fortune he might cram intohis greasy pockets. Prince Charles--or as his Sowship called him, BabyCharles--being now PRINCE OF WALES, the old project of a marriage withthe Spanish King's daughter had been revived for him; and as she couldnot marry a Protestant without leave from the Pope, his Sowship himselfsecretly and meanly wrote to his Infallibility, asking for it. Thenegotiation for this Spanish marriage takes up a larger space in greatbooks, than you can imagine, but the upshot of it all is, that when ithad been held off by the Spanish Court for a long time, Baby Charles andSteenie set off in disguise as Mr. Thomas Smith and Mr. John Smith, tosee the Spanish Princess; that Baby Charles pretended to be desperatelyin love with her, and jumped off walls to look at her, and made aconsiderable fool of himself in a good many ways; that she was calledPrincess of Wales and that the whole Spanish Court believed Baby Charlesto be all but dying for her sake, as he expressly told them he was; thatBaby Charles and Steenie came back to England, and were received with asmuch rapture as if they had been a blessing to it; that Baby Charles hadactually fallen in love with HENRIETTA MARIA, the French King's sister,whom he had seen in Paris; that he thought it a wonderfully fine andprincely thing to have deceived the Spaniards, all through; and that heopenly said, with a chuckle, as soon as he was safe and sound at homeagain, that the Spaniards were great fools to have believed him.
Like most dishonest men, the Prince and the favourite complained that thepeople whom they had deluded were dishonest. They made suchmisrepresentations of the treachery of the Spaniards in this business ofthe Spanish match, that the English nation became eager for a war withthem. Although the gravest Spaniards laughed at the idea of his Sowshipin a warlike attitude, the Parliament granted money for the beginning ofhostilities, and the treaties with Spain were publicly declared to be atan end. The Spanish ambassador in London--probably with the help of thefallen favourite, the Earl of Somerset--being unable to obtain speechwith his Sowship, slipped a paper into his hand, declaring that he was aprisoner in his own house, and was entirely governed by Buckingham andhis creatures. The first effect of this letter was that his Sowshipbegan to cry and whine, and took Baby Charles away from Steenie, and wentdown to Windsor, gabbling all sorts of nonsense. The end of it was thathis Sowship hugged his dog and slave, and said he was quite satisfied.
He had given the Prince and the favourite almost unlimited power tosettle anything with the Pope as to the Spanish marriage; and he now,with a view to the French one, signed a treaty that all Roman Catholicsin England should exercise their religion freely, and should never berequired to take any oath contrary thereto. In return for this, and forother concessions much less to be defended, Henrietta Maria was to becomethe Prince's wife, and was to bring him a fortune of eight hundredthousand crowns.
His Sowship's eyes were getting red with eagerly looking for the money,when the end of a gluttonous life came upon him; and, after a fortnight'sillness, on Sunday the twenty-seventh of March, one thousand six hundredand twenty-five, he died. He had reigned twenty-two years, and was fifty-nine years old. I know of nothing more abominable in history than theadulation that was lavished on this King, and the vice and corruptionthat such a barefaced habit of lying produced in his court. It is muchto be doubted whether one man of honour, and not utterly self-disgraced,kept his place near James the First. Lord Bacon, that able and wisephilosopher, as the First Judge in the Kingdom in this reign, became apublic spectacle of dishonesty and corruption; and in his base flatteryof his Sowship, and in his crawling servility to his dog and slave,disgraced himself even more. But, a creature like his Sowship set upon athrone is like the Plague, and everybody receives infection from him.