CHAPTER V.
BUCKINGHAM’S FAVOUR PARAMOUNT—CHANGE IN THE KING’S TEMPER—HIS POETIC FLIGHTS—HIS REIGN A COURSE OF DISSIPATION—THE MASQUES OF BEN JONSON—THEIR GREAT BEAUTY—PATRONIZED BY THE QUEEN—HOW PERFORMED—THE VISION OF DELIGHT—COMPOSED TO CELEBRATE BUCKINGHAM’S BEING MADE A MARQUIS—HIS APPEARANCE AT THIS ERA—THE BANQUET GIVEN FOR THIS OCCASION—GREAT EXTRAVAGANCE OF THE ENTERTAINMENT—RIVALS TO BUCKINGHAM IN JAMES’S FAVOUR—SIR HENRY MILDMAY—BROOKE—YOUNG MORISON—THE DIVERSIONS OF THE COURT—THE METEOR THAT APPEARED—FOOT-RACING—BUCKINGHAM’S PROFUSION—JEALOUSIES BETWEEN PRINCE CHARLES AND HIM, 1617-1618-1619.
CHAPTER V.
1617–1618–1619.
Buckingham may now be said, in the words of Lord Clarendon, “to sleep in the arms of fortune.” The King, notwithstanding his failing health, continued his patient sittings in the Star-Chamber, where, groaning under his mortal disease, he found fault with “lawyers’ repetitions,” and sometimes indulged in petulant eloquence, comparing, when he presided at the trial of Sir Thomas Lake, that disgraced courtier to Adam, Lady Lake to Eve, and their daughter, Lady Roos, to the serpent. Whilst encouraging, on the one hand, a treaty of marriage for his son with a daughter of Spain, and ordering, on the other, musters of troops to be ready to keep down the Papists, who might otherwise be emboldened by that project; he still, throughout the whole of these troublesome and often urgent affairs, had one object in view—the gratification and aggrandizement of George Villiers. Sometimes we find the King indulging in poetic flights. After a week or two of hard work in the Star-Chamber, James, in a serious mood, wrote a meditation on the Lord’s Prayer, and dedicated it to Buckingham.[[214]] On a festive occasion, in which the favourite entertained him to his heart’s content, the Monarch thought it not beneath him to write a poem and address it also to his young host.[[215]]
The latter part of King James’s reign was one perpetual course of what may safely be termed dissipation, but which was then styled “good cheer and jollity.” Amongst the most refined of his pleasures were the Masques of Ben Jonson;[[216]] and the monarch showed his appreciation of the merits of those beautiful productions by a pension of a hundred marks to their author. Hitherto, Daniel had been the Laureate of the Court, having been an especial favourite with Queen Elizabeth and her ladies. Though the appointment had hitherto been unpaid, the slight thus passed on Daniel embittered his declining years, and drove him from the Court, where his talents and virtues were, as he fancied, no longer appreciated.
Shakespeare was now in the tomb; and Jonson, who “had hated and feared him through life,” was left without a rival to interfere with his triumph, or to commemorate the actions of the great. The death of Prince Henry had saddened the nation and obscured the gaiety of the Court for a season; but now, especially before the marriage of Villiers, whose settling in life was an event cordially desired by James, no revels were carried on without that most popular feature, a Masque; and no masque could gain applause unless Ben Jonson were the writer. A frequent visitor at Belvoir, at Burleigh on the Hill, and at Windsor, when the Court was at either of these places, Jonson never wrote a masque without exhibiting, in strong colours, qualities that astonished his acquaintance. He delighted in the composition of those productions, which, it has been truly said, were unrivalled except by Comus; of the masque, he was, as he himself remarked, “an artificer;” it began with him, and with him it ended. Pageants and masquerades had long been familiar to the English; and masques, improperly so called, had been carried to a great degree of splendour in the reign of Henry VIII., but neither then, as Gifford observes, nor in that of Elizabeth, did the masque acquire “that unity of design, that exclusive character, which it assumed on the reign of James.”
That monarch had, in the opinion of the same admirable critic, more literature than taste or elegance. What was deficient in him was, however, apparent in the character of his Queen, Anne of Denmark, who delighted in show and gaiety, loved pomp, and understood it; as Sully expresses it, she “aspired to convert Whitehall into a temple of delight.” She assembled around her the most brilliant leaders of fashion among the nobility; and, not well comprehending our language, she delighted in masques and shows which addressed themselves to the senses. She had, however, sufficient discrimination to applaud the poetical talents of Ben Jonson, whose compositions had delighted her at Althorpe; and she called him to her Court, and engaged him “to embody her conceptions,” soon after her arrival in London.[[217]]
The masque of Ben Jonson consisted of dialogue, singing, and dancing; worked up into one harmonious whole by the introduction of some striking fable, generally borrowed from the Greek or Roman Mythology. The sister arts were employed to bestow the splendours of moveable scenery, hitherto unknown to the stage; for pomp and expense were essential to the masque; “it could only breathe,” as Gifford observes, “in the atmosphere of a Court;” it was composed for princes, and by princes was it performed. The flower of all that was gay and gallant was collected to constitute a band of royal and noble performers; and perhaps there was never such a display of elegance and beauty as that which graced the masques of Ben Jonson. The songs devolved probably on professional performers, but the dialogues required great care and study to learn them, and skill and practice in their delivery before a courtly and critical audience. The dances were also executed by the Court; so admirably, that Jonson paid to the exquisite performance of the Measures, as he beheld them, in these lines:—
“In curious knots and mazes, so
The Spring at first was taught to go;
And Zephyr, when he came to woo
His Flora, had these notions too;
And thus did Venus learn to head
Th’ Indian brawls, and so to tread,
As if the wind, not she, did walk,
Nor pressed a flower, nor bow’d a stalk.”
The dialogue in the masques of Ben Jonson is marked by strength and boldness, and the songs are replete with all the luxuriance of the richest fancy. In his dramatic works, and also in his longer poems, there is a compression which produces hardness and severity, but, as Gifford beautifully expresses it, “no sooner has he taken down his lyre, no sooner touched his lighter pieces, than all is changed, as if by magic, and he becomes a new person. His genius awakes at once, his imagination becomes fertile, ardent, versatile, and excursive; his taste pure and elegant; and all his faculties attuned to liveliness and pleasure.”[[218]]
The masque was therefore one of the highest intellectual delights of an intellectual age. Whilst Jonson composed the dialogues, in which “the soundest moral lessons came recommended by the charm of numbers,” the chief artists of the realm were employed in decorative scenery, the construction of which was at its climax in the time of James. Lawes, and other noted composers, set the songs to music; the masque was the courtly recreation of gallant gentlemen, and ladies of honour, striving to exceed one another in their measures and changes, and in their repasts of wit. Notwithstanding the efforts of Inigo Jones, under whose guidance many of the accompaniments were framed to preserve it, and those of Aurelius Townshend, the masque fell again into the pageant and masquerade after the death of James, and, in spite of an effort made by Charles II. to revive it, ceased to exist.
The “Vision of Delight,” one of the most fanciful and beautiful of Jonson’s masques, was performed on Twelfth Night, and the expenses of the representation were defrayed by Buckingham. It was to celebrate his new dignity as a Marquis, to which James had resolved to elevate him, that the following lines, spoken by Delight, seen afar off, with his attendants, Grace, Love, Harmony, Revel, Sport, Laughter, and followed by Wonder, were composed, and sung in a recitative solo:—
“Let us play, and dance, and sing,
Let us now turn every sort
Of the pleasures of the Spring
To the graces of a court.
From air, from cloud, from dreams, from toys,
To sounds, to sense, to love, to joys;
Let your shows be new, as strange,
Let them oft and sweetly vary,
Let them haste to their change,
As the seers may not tarry;
Too long to expect the pleasing’st sight,
Doth take away from the delight.”
The “Vision” concluded with a dance of ladies, in which Aurora appeared, and this epilogue followed:—
Aurora. “I was not wearier when I lay
By frozen Tithon’s side to-night,
Than I am willing now to stay,
And be a part of your delight;
But I am urged by the day,
Against my will, to bid you come away.”[[219]]
At this masque Buckingham acted, and assumed his place as a Marquis, taking, it appears, a precedence to which he was not entitled. “It is thought strange,” Levingston wrote to Carleton, “amongst the old lords that he should take precedence of them.”[[220]]
James had never, since his accession, conferred the dignity of Marquis on any of his subjects. He now very hastily gave it to his favourite, ascribing as the reason for this act that he bestowed that “title for the affection he bore him, more than he did to any man,” and “for the affection, faith, and modesty that he had found in Buckingham.”
A few of the nobility about the Court were hastily summoned to witness the creation, which was by patent, and in private. In the evening great festivities followed, Buckingham presiding as the master of the feast which preceded the masque. His appearance at this era has been delineated by Simon Pass, whose portrait is to be found among the historical collection of prints in the British Museum. He now assumed a deep falling ruff; his doublet was closed with a row of rich pearls, and over it he wore the ribbon of the Garter and the George. A large cloak of rich satin was suspended over one shoulder;—his hands are adorned by a cuff of Vandyck lace. His portrait after this time exhibits two long, very thin wavy curls, suspended from the left ear; his hair, otherwise, is almost always worn rather short, and turned back from the forehead. The slight moustache of his earlier portraits becomes augmented into one of greater consequence, carefully turned up at each corner; and a peaked beard environs the chin, which had before a youthful smoothness. He was now matured in form and perfect in deportment.
In unwonted magnificence Buckingham received his royal guest at a banquet long celebrated in the annals of the Court for its exuberance. As yet, the Marquis owned no house sufficiently spacious for this entertainment, and it appears to have been held in Whitehall. How attractive must have been his deportment at this era, before care sat upon his brow, and ill health, vexation of spirit, a consciousness of deserved unpopularity, and a heart sated with unsatisfactory pleasures, had changed into anxiety the eager enjoyment of his dazzling fortunes! “Carrying his loves and his hatreds in his open forehead,” he presided, careless of the future, full of health and hope, at that noisy and festive board.
The repast on this occasion was served up in the French fashion, under the auspices of Sir Thomas Edmondes, who had recently returned from France. “You may judge,” writes an eye-witness, “of the feast, by this scantling, that there were said to be seventeen dozens of pheasants and twelve partridges in a dish, throughout which, methinks, were more spoil than largesse.”[[221]] The entertainment, “in spite of many presents,” cost six hundred pounds.
There were some obstacles, even on this day, to Buckingham’s perfect enjoyment. One of these was the uncertain temper of the King. He had now, in the words of those who watched his varying humour, “become so forward and morose, that few things seemed to please him.” The sight of Buckingham alone appeared to appease him; he was, however, greatly delighted with the banquet, and praised “both the meat and the master.” Yet, in spite of this marked preference, and of these abundant honours, there were rumours that Buckingham’s place in the King’s regard was not secure; Sir Henry Mildmay, young Brooke, the son of Lord Cobham, and a son of Sir William Monson’s, began, it was thought, to come into consideration with the King.
The “Vision of Delight” became the chief theme of public discourse. In this masque, Prince Charles was a principal performer; and the other parts were filled up by Buckingham, the Marquis of Hamilton, the Earl of Montgomery, and some other lords. Among the dancers, Isabel,[[222]] the eldest daughter of Sir Thomas Edmondes, “bore away the bell.” She was, as it were, “hanged all over with jewels;” but, notwithstanding the beauty of the piece, and the rank of the actors, the plot of the “Vision of Delight” is said “to have proved dull.” The representation was attended by the Spanish and Venetian ambassadors, to the great affront of the French ambassador; for Buckingham had now planned a deep game, and the apparent frivolity of his pleasures was becoming merely the surface of those political schemes which he had at heart. Soon after these festivities, the King took occasion to affront young Monson, who had been set up by the envious to be an idol in place of Buckingham, by intimating that he did not like his forwardness in presenting himself continually before him. The young man not only took the hint himself, but imparted it to others; so “that all the young Court gallants vanished like mushrooms;” and those who had taken great pains “to set out young Monson to the best advantage, pricking and pranking him up, besides washing his face every day with posset curd, in order that he might rival the handsome Buckingham, received a severe rebuff.”[[223]]
Among the favourite diversions of King James was horse-racing. Early in the spring, the Court was aroused by the racing of two footmen from St. Albans to Clerkenwell; “and many came to pass the time,” writes Mr. Chamberlain, merrily, “at[“at] Newmarket, and the running match ranges all over the country, where they be fit subjects to entertain it, as lately they have been at Sir John Croft’s, near Bury, and in requital, those ladies have invited them to a mask of their own invention (all those fair sisters being summoned for the purpose), so that on Thursday the King, Prince, and Court go thither a shroving.”[[224]]
The following extract from one of Mr. Chamberlain’s letters represents another kind of diversion:—“The King came hither the Saturday before Shrovetide, and the two days following there was much feasting and jollity; and the Christmas mask repeated on Shrove Tuesday night. On Saturday last, the Prince made a ball and a banquet at Denmark House, which he had lost at Tennis to the Marquis of Buckingham,[[225]] who invited thither a number of ladies, mistresses, and valentines, a ceremony come lately in request, and grown so costly that it is said he hath cast away this year 2000l. that way, among whom a daughter of Sir John Croft’s that is unmarried, had a carcanet of 800l. for her share; and the King is so pleased with the whole society of those sisters,[[226]] that he extols them before all others, and hath bespoken them for the Court against next Christmas. The banquet at Denmark House was so plentiful that it cost 400l., and all the women came away, as it were, laden with sweetmeats; but supper there was none, save what the Lord of Purbeck made to his private friends.”[[227]]
Another of those aspirants to royal favour, to whom we have referred, and whom the career of Buckingham drew forth from obscurity, was Sir Henry Mildmay, and a son of George Brooke’s, who had been executed at Winchester, on the supposed Raleigh plot. But James soon discovered that both these young courtiers were the tools of factions directed against Buckingham; and they were banished the Court. Some time afterwards, it was thought that the return of young Monson might be effected through the influence of his friends; but, observes a bystander of this game, these Court resolutions do strangely alter, and for the most part, “the day following gives the lie to that which preceded.”
The King, meantime, continued to amuse himself vastly at Newmarket. The following description of one of his days of pleasure presents a singular picture of the homely diversions of the first of the Stuart monarchs that reigned in this country:—
“We hear nothing from Newmarket, but that they devise all the means they can to make themselves merry, as of late there was a feast appointed at a farm-house not far off, where every man should bring his dish. The King brought a great chine of beef; the Marquis of Hamilton four pigs, garnished with sausages; the Earl of Southampton two turkies; another, some partridges; and one, a whole tray full of buttered eggs: and so all passed very pleasantly.”[[228]]
During these diversions, James’s good humour, often interrupted by disease and self-indulgence, was maintained by his partiality for Buckingham. “The King,” writes Mr. Chamberlain, “is never out of tune, but that the sight of the Earl of Buckingham doth settle and quiet all.”
Meantime, one of those meteoric appearances to which the superstition of the day attached some portentous meaning, excited popular alarm, and suspended even the course of public business. “On Wednesday,” writes one of the functionaries of government, “we had no Star Chamber, by reason of the Lord Chancellor’s indisposition; that was the first day we took notice here of the great blazing star, though it was observed at Oxford a full week before. It is now the only subject of discourse, and not so much as little children, but as they go to school, talk in the streets that it foreshows the death of a king or a queen, or some great war towards.”[[229]]
At another time a race of two footmen from St. Albans to Clerkenwell diverted the Court. Many money bets were laid upon the result, and Buckingham won three thousand pounds upon that day. “The story,” as the narrator of it well observes, “were not worth telling, but that you may see we have little to do when we are so far affected with these trifles, that all the Court in a manner, lords and ladies, and some further off, and some nearer, went to see this race, and the King himself almost as far as Barnet; and though the weather was sour and foul, yet he was scant fils de bonne mère that went not out to see, insomuch that it is verily thought there was as many people as at the King’s first coming to London; and for the courtiers on horseback, they were so pitifully bewrayed and bedaubed all over, that they could scant be known one from another, besides divers of them came to have falls and other mishaps, by reason of the multitude of horses.”
On some of these occasions, the lavish disposition of Buckingham was exhibited. On St. George’s Day, a festival observed with much solemnity, he presented forty of his gentlemen with fifty pounds a piece “to provide themselves,” and twenty to ten of his yeomen, besides a hundred pounds to treat them with a supper and a play on the following night at the Mitre in Fleet Street. A retinue of fifty persons appears, in modern days, a tolerable attendance for a nobleman even of high rank; but it had recently been found necessary to limit them to that number, owing to the unbounded ostentation and extravagance of many of the nobility.[[230]]
Whilst this continued round of pleasures was carried on, some adverse events checked the merriment of those who played a part in the revels. Prince Charles, who was his mother’s favourite, was sometimes the object of his father’s jealousy, although, by the gentleness and prudence of his deportment, he had avoided the almost open state of variance with the King, which, in his brother’s days, had divided the Court into two parties. Still there were occasions on which the conduct of the young Prince was misrepresented.
The difference was soon reconciled; and “my Lord of Buckingham,” as he was called by several annalists of the day, gave a dinner to the King and Queen for the express purpose of reconciling his Highness to his royal father. The King and Queen dined at a separate table, but in the same room as that in which the lords and ladies were feasted: among these, Lady Hatton, Lady Villiers Compton, and Lady Fielding, and several others of the same family, were placed; the King drank to all these separately, and sent them secret messages. At the close of the banquet, he rose, and drank a common health to all the noble family, and declared that he desired them to advance them before all others. “And because,” adds the writer of the letter in which this account is given of himself, “there was no doubt—for, said he, ‘I live to that end;’ be assured we live in their posterity’s name, that they would so far regard their father’s commandments and instructions as to advance that house above all others whatsoever.”[[231]]
The King shortly afterwards verified his assertion by creating Lady Villiers Compton, by patent, Countess of Buckingham in her own right for life. The Heralds, it is said, were “posed” to explain how Sir Thomas Compton, himself of a noble and loyal family, should have no part in this patent; but the public could easily comprehend that it was the aim and intention of James to elevate the Villiers family by every mark of especial favour. The newly-made Countess of Buckingham, thus raised by fortune from a low estate, did not escape calumny; rumours, both scandalous and unjust, being set afloat regarding her imputed intimacy with Lord Keeper Williams, who succeeded Bacon on the woolsack.[[232]]
Another melancholy event saddened all hearts, and excited a deep and generous resentment. This was the death of Sir Walter Ralegh. In this event, “the sacrifice,” as Hume expresses it, “of the only man in the nation who had a high reputation for valour and military experience,” Buckingham had no doubt some indirect participation. He promoted it, because he promoted the projected alliance with Spain, which had now, for some years, lain the closest at the King’s heart. He was responsible for it, because no intercession that he might have chosen to make for the “gallantest worthie that England ever bred,” would have been proffered in vain. During the early part of his career, Buckingham had, indeed, befriended Ralegh; but little credit is to be assigned for the mediation which, in 1615, had procured the release of the illustrious prisoner, after twelve years of durance, since it was purchased, through the agency of Lady Villiers, for fifteen hundred pounds. On that occasion, Ralegh had addressed a letter of thanks to the all-powerful favourite; but now affairs had undergone a marvellous change. Even money could not avail, and Buckingham, in all the sunshine of his fortunes, stood at all events indifferent, if not accessory, to the infamous sentence, by the revival of which Ralegh was doomed to death.
The fashion of the day, as well as the wishes of the King, all tended at this time to increase the ascendancy of Spanish counsels in England. James entertained an opinion, peculiar to himself, that any marriage, except with a daughter of France or Spain, would be unworthy of the Prince of Wales, and he would never suffer a princess of any other royal house to be mentioned in his presence as a suitable consort for the heir apparent.[[233]] Upon the death of Prince Henry, a negotiation for a marriage between the Prince Charles and the second daughter of France, the Princess Christine, was set on foot, but failed, owing to the death of the Count de Soissons, its chief promoter.[[234]] The efforts of the Spanish ambassador, the famous Gondomar, and the long course of intrigues which attended his visitation to England, afterwards effectually set aside for a time all thoughts of prosecuting the scheme of a marriage treaty with either of the French princesses, on the one hand; whilst, on the other, the affairs of Germany were such as to discourage, to all appearance, the exertions which were made by the Spanish party in England to produce a union between the royal families of Great Britain and Spain. Frederic, the Elector, and son-in-law of James, had accepted the tender of the crown of Bohemia, and become, consequently, involved in hostilities with Austria, and these were regarded as a religious war; for Austria, which, throughout her dominions, had always made religion a pretext for her usurpations, now upheld the Catholic faith as her object, whilst the Elector Palatine, a Protestant, ranged himself on the side of liberty. The whole of the English nation were eager to espouse the cause, and to aid the brave exertions of that prince. Sincerely attached to the Princess Palatine, the ill-fated Elizabeth of Bohemia, they considered her interests, and those of her husband, as constituting a sort of crusade, and they were ready to risk plunging the country into all “the chaos of German politics,” considering the contest as between Protestantism and liberty—and Popery and despotism.
On the first introduction of Gondomar to the King, an accident had occurred which was regarded by many as a presage.[[235]] As the ambassador was passing from the Council Chamber, along the terrace towards the Great Chamber in Whitehall, a piece of the floor sank, and several persons fell down. The Earl of Arundel hurt his face; the Lord Gerrard and Lord Gray also received some injury from the fall; the ambassador alone escaped, being held up by two of the household guards. This accident seemed ominous of the ultimate rupture between England and Spain; James regarded it in that light, and could never bear to hear it mentioned!
Unwonted honours were indeed shown to Gondomar. He was received with marks of great distinction, and lodged at Ely House, which had been prepared for his use with considerable expense. But the most important deviation from established custom was the appropriation of a cloth of state to this ambassador, an appendage never permitted to any such personage before. That mark of favour, however, which gave the greatest offence to the Puritan party, was the order that the chapel should be renewed and embellished, and an altar placed in it. All the ambassador’s expenses of living were defrayed by the King; although, on being offered some of the royal attendants, Gondomar declined their services. Whilst these things were going on at Court, the populace, cherishing the cause of the distant and deserted daughter of James, Elizabeth of Bohemia, were parading the streets with drums beating, to muster recruits for the Palatinate.[[236]]
But James was under the influence of Gondomar, and Spain was connected by the closest ties of blood, and by the still dearer bonds of political interest, with the Emperor of Austria. Gondomar well understood the King, and divined his wishes. He offered, at this juncture, the second daughter of the King of Spain to Prince Charles, and backed his proposal by the promise of an immense sum of money, which he well knew would be acceptable in the present needy circumstances of the British King. The proposal, though entertained by James, was distrusted by the public, and deemed wholly insincere, for it was thought that Spain had no intention of forming any union with a princess of heretical principles.
The fate of Sir Walter Ralegh was therefore sealed. Twenty-three years before, he had acquired for the crown of England a claim to the continent of Guiana; and, in his second expedition, had planned, and executed through his son Walter, the sacking of St. Thomas, a small town which the Spaniards, not acknowledging the British claim to the territory of Guiana, had built on the river Oronooko. The young Walter Ralegh was killed in that attempt. He was a young man more desirous of honour than safety; “with whom,” said the agonized father, on hearing of his loss, “to say truth, all the respects of this world have taken end in me.”[[237]]
Ralegh was now to suffer for the results of an enterprise which he had undertaken with the express consent of the King.[[238]] Whilst proceedings were carried on against him, Gondomar was entertained, as it will be remembered, with a marked distinction by Buckingham. The extreme youth of the favourite had indeed attracted the witticisms of the artful Spaniard, who had converted that circumstance into a compliment to the King’s penetration, telling his Majesty “that he was the wisest and happiest prince in Christendom, to make privy-counsellors sage at the age of twenty-one, when his master, the King of Spain, could not do it when they were sixty.”[[239]] The wily Spaniard dealt out his phrases in points and conceits, a sort of discourse then well received in society, and peculiarly agreeable to the King. He affected, also, to speak false Latin. The King laughed at him, on which the Ambassador rejoined, “Your Majesty speaks like a pedant, but I speak like a gentleman,” and James gloried in his acknowledged superiority in the classics. By these small contrivances had Gondomar insinuated himself into royal favour, so that no boon that he could ask—not even the life of the venerated Ralegh—could be refused.
There was another wheel within this closely-contrived political machine. The Countess of Buckingham was inclined to Popery; and became, eventually, a convert to that faith. This circumstance naturally influenced greatly the son, over whose counsels the Countess continued to hold a sway, and to dispose them to the marriage of the heir apparent to a Catholic.
Some time previously, when the affair of the marriage was first broached, the sentiments of the Marquis and his mother were, therefore, generally understood to be favourable, and the Lord Treasurer Cranfield, at that time, under their influence, was zealous in a cause so acceptable to the favourite.
In February, 1617, Nathaniel Brent wrote to Sir Dudley Carleton: “By the Marquis of Buckingham and his mother the Spanish match is much apprehended, though methinks there needs no such haste, the lady being yet scant eleven years old. In the meantime every man hopes or fears as he is affected, and they say the Lord Treasurer is so far possessed, that, like another Cato, that began to learn Greek at threescore years old, he hath got him a Spanish reader, and applies it hard.” The influence of the Countess of Buckingham doubtless, therefore, turned the scale against Ralegh, to the vexation of her son’s best friends. “She was,” writes Bishop Hacket, who knew her well, “mother to the great favourite, but, in religion, became a step-mother. She doated upon him extremely, as the glory of her womb, yet, by turning her coat so wantonly when the eyes of all the kingdom were upon her, she could not have wrought him a worse turn if she had studied a mischief against him.” “Many,” adds the same writer, “marvelled what rumbled in her conscience all that time; for, from a maid to a maiden, she had not every one’s good words for practice of piety.”[[240]] “Arthur Wilson complains also that the Countess of Buckingham was the cynosure that all the Papists steered by; but that it was above her ability to bear the weight of that metaphor.”
“The Countess was,” he adds, “a protectress of the Jesuits and Jesuitesses, the females of that order, of whom there were no fewer in England than two hundred English ladies of good families.” Her opinions were well known to affect her son, who now began to be accused by the Puritans of Armenianism, and became the friend and patron of Archbishop Laud. Gondomar saw well to what point to direct his insidious game. The Countess had a share in the management of State affairs; she, with her son, guided the helm, and as much court was paid to her as to Buckingham, whilst both received far more adulation than was thought necessary to bestow on the King himself. Wittily, though somewhat impiously, Gondomar wrote to the Spanish Court that “there never was more hope of the conversion of England than now; for there are more prayers and oblations offered here to the mother than to the son.”[[241]]
Under this complication of interests, Ralegh, on the 24th of October, 1618, was given to understand that it was the King’s intent that he should be put to death, and that he should therefore prepare himself for the same.[[242]] Between that intimation and the fulfilment of his doom, the courage of the broken-spirited and diseased prisoner, prematurely old with sorrow and disappointment, gave way. He sought to anticipate his fate, and attempted suicide, but the wound which he gave himself by stabbing—a cut, rather than a stab—was not fatal, and he recovered to address to his disconsolate wife one of the most eloquent and heart-rending letters that ever emanated from that tomb of the living in which he passed the close of his days.[[243]] How Buckingham could hear of this last act of a mind almost frenzied with misery, of a being, to use Ralegh’s own words, “not tempted with Satan,” but only “tempted with sorrow, whose sharp teeth devour my heart,” and not plead for this ornament of his age, it is scarcely possible to conceive. He would have culled golden opinions for such an interference; he would have established a source of proud and consolatory recollections for his own heart; but he lost that glorious opportunity, and left the illustrious prisoner, to use his own words, to be a “wonder and a spectacle,” and went on in his own perilous career, until the hour of retribution, even to him, arrived.
Ralegh’s execution was fixed to take place—so conscious was Government of the odium which it would incur—on the Lord Mayor’s Day, “that the pageants and fine shows might,” as Aubrey expresses it, “avocate and draw away the people from beholding the tragedie of the gallantest worthie that England ever bred.”[[244]]
On the twenty-third of October, a discussion took place in the Privy Council as to the mode in which prisoners who had been condemned for treason, and set at liberty, could be executed. The subject was one of much perplexity, but everything that was subservient and expedient could be accomplished in those days. It was, however, determined to send a Privy Seal to the judges on the King’s Bench, desiring them to try Sir Walter Ralegh “according to law.” The death to which he was doomed, by the hand of the executioner, was already impending over the illustrious prisoner in the form of disease. He had sent to the merciless Cecil his mournful manifesto of privation and sickness; his left side was numbed, his fingers on the same side were beginning to be contracted, his tongue and speech affected; he spoke feebly, and feared he might altogether lose the power of utterance. An application had therefore been made for his removal from his damp, cold lodging in the Tower, to a little room in the garden, which he had himself built, close to his laboratory, or, as it was styled, his stilhouse.[[245]]
But the time was at hand when his spirit should breathe in a freer atmosphere; and all that man could do to him should cease to be of a source of dread. “The world,” he calmly observed, “was but a large prison, out of which some were daily selected for execution.”
On the twenty-eighth of October, he was tried, and of course, condemned, in the King’s Bench. Henry Yelverton, then attorney-general, could not help again, in his address for the Crown, describing the prisoner as one who, for his parts and quality, was to be pitied; “one who had been a star, yea, and of such nature, that shineth far; but out of the necessity of state, like stars when they trouble the sphere, must indeed fall.” It is remarkable that Yelverton, who had been patronised by Somerset, did himself, in after days, fall, having incurred the enmity of Villiers.
The King, and of course Buckingham, were at this time in Hertfordshire, on the Royal progress, which was always a scene of festivity and amusement. The warrant for Ralegh’s execution was, however, produced directly after the sentence had been passed, dated the same day, signed, and addressed to Lord Bacon. The sentence was commuted from hanging to beheading: but no other favour was granted. James and his courtiers feared the effect of public indignation; no time, therefore, was allowed; on the day after his sentence, Ralegh met his death with simple, decorous tranquillity; as one who was going to take a long journey, for which he was well prepared. The streets were then thronged with the gay followers of the annual pageantry; and, amid the din of trumpets, and shouts of the people, the noble spirit of Ralegh passed to a better world. Perhaps, had he sued for life to Gondomar, as his friend Lord Clare recommended, the boon might have been granted. But those who loved his memory had not this act of humiliation to recall, as casting one shadow over the brightness of his departure from among them. “I am neither so old, nor so infirm,” was his reply, when urged to make this appeal to the Spaniard, “but that I should be content to live; and, therefore, this would I do, were I sure it would do my business; but if it fail, then I shall lose both my life and my honour; and both those I will not part with.”[[246]]
Since it was understood that Ralegh’s death was a sacrifice to Spanish councils, owing to a disputed territory, there can be no doubt but that this event embittered the minds of the public against the cherished schemes which James and Villiers had for some time conceived with regard to the Spanish alliance. Whilst all bore a smiling aspect, various sources of discontent were ready to break forth; and it was generally reported that James had, to his infinite disgrace, somewhat insisted on the sentence of hanging being put into execution, and that he could with difficulty be brought to consent to its being commuted.[[247]]
One circumstance which somewhat disturbed the minds of the Court revellers, yet seemed not to lessen the number of the revels, was the fatal illness of the Queen. At the Christmas of 1618-19, the physicians began to speak doubtfully, and the courtiers to plot for leases for her lands, for the keeping of Somerset House, and for a division of the spoil of her furniture and personalities, whenever her death should take place, so confidantly was it expected. Meantime, the festivities of the season went on as usual, Hatton House being the centre of all that was gay and great, and the lady of the mansion the deepest of domestic politicians. During the Christmas she gave a grand supper, with a play, and invited all the gallants and great ladies about the Court to grace it; but the Howards, especially, were solicited and caressed, for it was Lady Hatton’s aim to “solder and link them fast again” with the Marquis of Buckingham; and to see if he would cast an eye towards Diana Cecil,[[248]] the second daughter of William, second Earl of Salisbury. This young lady was made, in order to attract the greater notice, Mistress of the Feast; but the bait proved unsuccessful. Many, doubtless, were the parents who were not unwilling to match even the fairest of their daughters with the young Marquis, “for it is like,” writes Mr. Chamberlain, “there will be much angling after it, now it is decided the King wishes him to take a wife, which of divers is diversely constructed.”[[249]]
Twelfth Night was celebrated with a masque, in which Prince Charles, Buckingham, and several young noblemen and gentlemen, to the number of twelve—amongst whom young Maynard “bore away the bell” for dancing—enacted. This masque was one of Ben Jonson’s compositions; but whether it was the “Vision of Delight” repeated, or “Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue,” is not determined.[[250]] Six days afterwards, the Banqueting House at Whitehall, in which these revels had taken place, was burned down, owing, it was supposed, to the neglect of women who were appointed to sweep the room, and who held their candles too near to some of the oiled cloths and devices for the masque, which had been left by the King’s orders to be ready for Shrove Tuesday.[[251]]
The Queen had been some time ill, but hopes were entertained of her recovery until within a very short period of her death. When the danger increased, Dr. Mayerne, according to a promise he had given her, told her, twenty-four hours before her decease, that she could not recover. It was then too late for the Queen to make a will; but she wished to leave all that she possessed, with the exception of a jewel to the King of Denmark, and a casket to the Princess Elizabeth, to her son Charles, adding an assurance that her faith was free from Popery. Although, when asked if she wished to leave all she had to her son, she answered, and had again, “Yes,” her possessions were so valuable, that the people about the Court did not expect that her wishes would be followed out without the usual formalities. Meantime, whilst her body lay at Denmark House, her funeral was delayed, because the Master of the Wardrobe would not pay double prices, usually then charged when ready money could not be produced. Crowds thronged round Denmark House; and far more curiosity was expressed to see her after her death than had ever been testified during her life. The ladies were weary of waiting till the money could be raised to carry to the grave one who had left 400,000l. in jewels, 90,000l. in plate, 80,000 Jacobuses in ready money, besides a costly wardrobe.[[252]] “The will,” says the precise Mr. Chamberlain, in a letter to Sir Dudley Carleton, “proves to be nothing.”[[253]] The King, meantime, was dangerously ill, of an agonising disease, and obliged to be carried part of the way to Theobalds in a Neapolitan portative chair, given him by Lady Hatton; weak as he was, and even whilst the Queen was unburied, he would have his deer brought before him, that he might enjoy his wonted pleasures. The lady mourners were, meantime, quarrelling by the funeral bier for precedency at the approaching ceremonial; and, amongst the foremost of the combatants was the Countess of Nottingham, who claimed, as one of the two conditions of Nottingham’s giving up the post of Lord High Admiral, that he should be the first Earl of England, and that she, as first Countess, should step out before all others on this occasion. The expenses of the funeral were to exceed those of Queen Elizabeth’s, although money was so scarce, that some of Queen Anne’s plate would have to be coined three times to pay them. There was not even money to put the King’s and Prince’s servants in mourning; and, though Anne died on the twenty-first of March, the twenty-seventh of March found her still in ghastly state at Denmark House.[[254]] At length, on the fourteenth of May, the corpse, with Prince Charles riding before it, was carried to its resting place. The chariot and six horses, on which the Queen’s effigy was placed, and the hearse itself, were very stately, yet the funeral was pronounced to be a “poor, drawling sight.” Two hundred and fifty indigent women followed the hearse. The Countess of Arundel claimed and obtained her privilege to follow as first Countess; whilst Buckingham’s place, as pall-bearer, was supplied by the Earl of Rutland.
The Queen’s death took away all chance of that counter-influence which it is possible that Anne might have sought to exercise when the conduct of Buckingham became, as it eventually did, oppressive and overbearing. It left, also, her son, whose affectionate nature had found a return in his mother’s partiality for him, dependent wholly upon Buckingham as a mediator with his father. Shortly afterwards, one of the effects of this state of affairs was exhibited. The King, upon the Prince’s suit, granted the Marquis of Buckingham an estate of twelve hundred a year, that had belonged to the Queen; and to requite this service, Buckingham sued the King for an addition of 5,000l. a year to the Prince’s former allowance, which was also granted. It appears, however, that the estate assigned to Buckingham was given, ostensibly, for the care which the favourite had bestowed on His Majesty during a severe illness which had followed closely upon the death of Queen Anne.[[255]]
Hitherto, the young favourite had proved himself possessed of no higher qualities than those which a courtier’s life requires. He was now placed in a situation which drew forth abilities of which his enemies and his friends were alike ignorant. On the thirtieth day of January, 1618-19, Buckingham was created Lord High Admiral; a post which he at first refused to accept on account of his youth and inexperience. James would, however, admit of no excuse, and the aged Earl of Nottingham resigned that pre-eminent place, alleging as a reason, his advanced years, but, actually, for a “consideration.” According to one authority, the compensation was a pension of six hundred a year to his lady, of five hundred to his son, Charles Howard, and of two hundred and fifty to his daughter, to commence from the death of the Earl; or, as another statement gives it, the compact was made for certain benefits; namely, “a good round sum of ready money, and 3,000l. yearly pension during the Earl’s life; and after his decease, 1,000l. pension to his lady, and 500l. a year to his eldest son by her, which was to be doubled to him at his mother’s death.”[[256]]
The office of High Admiral was enjoyed by Buckingham to the close of his short life; and was maintained by energy such as had not been witnessed in the administration of naval affairs since the days of Queen Elizabeth. Little credit has been assigned to him hitherto by historians for his unwearied endeavours, not only to restore, but actually to create a navy; but the recent discoveries in the State Paper Office place his merits in this important sphere beyond dispute, as will hereafter be shown.[[257]]
He served, indeed, a master, whose confidence in him, based, perhaps, on more solid grounds than have been allowed, it was no easy task to disturb.
Buckingham would have acted wisely, had he, at this most critical period of his life, remembered the counsels given by Bacon in his famous “Letter to Sir George Villiers.” “You are as a new risen star, and the eyes of all men are upon you; let not your own negligence make you fall like a meteor.” But his youth, his sudden rise to fortune, his mother’s influence, and his own desire to elevate his family—an aim which militated against disinterested conduct—all contributed to smother the naturally generous impulses of his heart.
The King’s partiality was manifested both publicly and privately. Buckingham had been his attendant in illness; he was now his consoler in affliction; for the King was not insensible to the loss of a wife to whom, in spite of “some matrimonial wrangling,”[[258]] he had been an indulgent husband. Accordingly, when the funeral made for the Queen took place, Buckingham remained at Theobalds with his royal master.[[259]] His great object appears, at this period of his career, to have been the aggrandisement of his family. He had secured the prosperity of his elder brother, Sir John Villiers, by his marriage with the daughter of Sir Edward Coke; he now determined to effect that of his youngest brother, Sir Christopher Villiers, not by marrying him to the niece of a rich alderman, but by other methods. Already had he availed himself of his empire over the actions of Bacon,[[260]] to procure for his relatives one of those profitable sinecures which abounded in that reign. This was a monopoly for the licensing of ale houses, which Buckingham desired to engross, conjointly with Mr. Patrick Maule, for his brother. But there was an impediment—the monopoly had been deemed a grievance, and in 1617, Bacon had replied to Buckingham’s application for it in the following terms:—
“I have conferred with my Lord Chief Justice and Mr. Solicitor thereupon, and there is a scruple in it that it should be one of the grievances put down in Parliament; which, if it be, I may not, in my duty and love to you, advise you to deal in it; if it be not, I will mould in the best manner and help it forward.”[[261]] In a subsequent letter, three years afterwards, Bacon again discourages the continued solicitude expressed by Buckingham for the patent; for, in alluding to the patents “as like to be stirred in the lower house of parliament,” he mentions among them that of the ale houses; and recommending, through the “singular love and affection he bore to Buckingham,” that his Lordship, “whom God hath made in all things so fit to be beloved, would put off the envy of these things,” which, according to Bacon’s judgment, “would bear no great fruit, and rather take the means for ceasing them, than the note for maintaining them.”[[262]]
It was probably, on finding his first application, though assisted by his mother, useless, that Buckingham contrived a match between Sir Sebastian Harvey’s[[263]] only daughter and Sir Christopher Villiers. “The match,” writes Mr. Chamberlain, “being not to the joy of the poor father, so much against the old man’s stomach, as the conceit thereof hath brought him near his grave already, if at least the world mistake not the true cause of his sickness.”[[264]]
The marriage was urged on, nevertheless, by the Countess of Buckingham, who found, however, that Sir Sebastian, then the Lord Mayor, a wilful and dogged man, could not by any means, either foul or fair, be brought to yield; in the agony of his spirit, the old man wished himself and his daughter dead, rather than be compelled to comply. The truth is, the young lady was only in her fourteenth year, and very small in stature, and her father did not wish her to be married until four or five years afterwards. He was, nevertheless, incessantly annoyed with messages from the King; and these he took so much to heart that he was brought to death’s door, although Buckingham and others were sent to comfort him. The Lord Mayor and aldermen had not been present at the Queen’s funeral; and the King, wishing to please Harvey, and to atone for this apparent insult, ordered that St. Paul’s Cross should mourn on Trinity Sunday, and that the Mayor and Corporation should go there as mourners; but Harvey, “sick and surfeited”[surfeited”], declined attendance; nor, when his Majesty, on the fifth of June, made his triumphant entry into London, was he well enough to receive him. In truth, the honest pride of Englishmen began to revolt against having the relatives of the favourite forced upon them as sons-in-law. The King, however, entered in state, attended by Prince Charles and all the nobility—Buckingham, of course, a conspicuous object amid the throng. James, on this melancholy occasion, looked “more like a wooer than a mourner.” He had already laid aside his weeds for Queen Anne. A fresh suit of “watchet satin, laid with a blue and white feather,” rejoiced the eyes of the company, who were glad to see him so gallant; and ill accorded with the expected appearance of an embassy of condolence from the Duc de Lorraine, with two or three thousand persons all in deep mourning.[[265]] And when it was remembered that the King had, not long ago, formally recommended, as on his death-bed, his son, his favourite, and Lord Digby—who had suffered, he said, in popularity, for the Spanish match—to his council, and had expected his decease shortly, there was something almost ludicrous in the contrast.
The desired match did not, however, prosper, not withstanding a visit from James to the Lord Mayor’s own residence, soon afterwards, to expostulate with the old man. He also sent for Sir Sebastian, his wife, and daughter, from their dinner, in Merchant Taylor’s Hall, in order to recommend Sir Christopher as a suitor; but all was in vain, Buckingham was defeated, and the young lady was eventually united to the eldest son of Sir Francis Popham.[[266]]
Disappointed in this matter, Buckingham now manifested his intentions of improving his own fortunes by a successful marriage; various objects of attraction had been offered to his gaze, but they wanted, probably, that which his extravagance rendered essential—fortune. On one occasion, we find him, with the King, visiting a house in order to admire the beauty of one of his god-daughters, but no result followed. The world, too, now talked loudly of the marriage of Lady Diana Cecil with the Earl of Oxford, whilst a richer bride was given, by common report, to Buckingham. This was the Lady Katherine Manners, the only daughter of Francis, sixth Earl of Rutland, a nobleman of great wealth; the lady was also endowed with other attractions besides fortune, proving a woman of many attainments and great spirit.
This marriage was, in every respect, desirable. It produced, amongst one of its advantages, an alliance in blood with the illustrious Sydneys. Roger, fifth Earl of Rutland, the brother of Earl Francis, having married Sir Philip Sydney’s daughter and heiress.[[267]] It cemented a union with a house already favoured by King James, who visited Belvoir Castle repeatedly, and who had constituted its two last lords successively Chief Justices in Eyre of all his forests and chases north of the Trent, beside conferring other distinctions; lastly, it offered to Buckingham a prospect of domestic happiness with a lady of considerable wit and spirit, and one whose affectionate attachment to her husband was amply testified by her letters and conduct during their union.
One drawback, however, existed. The Lady Katherine was a Roman Catholic; and, although passionately attached to Buckingham, she, for some time, refused to go to church. Through the exertions, however, of the celebrated Williams, then Dean of Salisbury, and afterwards Lord Chancellor, she was ultimately converted. It was for her benefit that he composed his work, entitled, “A Manual of the Elements of the Orthodox Religion, by an old Prebend;” only twenty copies of which were printed, and these were all presented to the Marquis of Buckingham.[[268]] Such was the success of Williams’s arguments, or the influence of the young lady’s affection for her suitor, that, shortly before her marriage, a public profession of the reformed faith was made by Lady Katherine, on her partaking of the Holy Communion at the altar of a Protestant church.[[269]]
Various were the rumours at Court concerning the progress of the engagement, which went on “untowardly;” amongst others, that the Countess of Buckingham, having taken the young lady away from her home, the Countess of Rutland, Lady Katherine’s step-mother, had refused to receive her back: the King was said to be in the plot.[[270]]
The future Duchess of Buckingham was the only child of the Earl of Rutland, by his first wife, Frances, the widow of Sir William Bevile, of Kilkhampton, Cornwall;[[271]] and, during the lifetime of her mother, she was regarded as the sole heiress of all the wealth of her father. Upon the death of the first Countess of Rutland, the Earl married again, his second lady being the daughter of the Earl of Thanet, and the widow of Sir Henry Hungerford. Two sons were the offspring of this union, but before the courtship of Buckingham, death removed them from being obstacles to Lady Katherine’s prosperity. They died in their infancy, from the effects, as it was believed in those credulous days, of wicked practices and sorcery.[[272]] It was this celebrated case which is said to have convinced King James, before sceptical on the subject, of the existence of witchcraft, of the real agency of the power of darkness.[[273]] The instruments of the foul fiend were three women in the service of the Earl of Rutland, Joan Flower, and her two daughters, who were stated to have entered into a formal contract with the devil, and to have become “devils incarnate themselves.” Being dismissed from Belvoir Castle, on account of bad conduct, they made use of all the enchantments, spells, and charms that the black art comprised.
Henry Lord Roos, the eldest born of the house of Rutland, sank under the effects of these demoniacal influences, or rather, probably, from childish terrors, in 1613.[[274]]
The Lady Katherine did not escape their machinations, having, with her brother Francis, been tortured by Flower and her accomplices.[[275]] Five years after the supposed exercise of their witchcraft, these wretched women were apprehended, and upon being rigidly examined by Lord Willoughby d’Eresby, Sir George Manners, and others, were committed to Lincoln gaol. Joan died on her way to prison, whilst wishing the bread and butter which she was eating, might choke her if she were guilty. The two daughters were tried, confessed their guilt, and were executed at Lincoln.
By the death of her brother, Lady Katherine, whose more advanced years, and probably, whose courage and sense enabled her to master the dark terrors of the wicked Joan and her daughters, became a personage of no little importance in those venal times, when even a show of affection was scarcely thought necessary for the preliminary arrangements of the nuptial tie. Belvoir, her father’s proud possession, stands upon the eminence, the fine prospect from which gave it the name it bears, in all its stately antiquity.[[276]] It was built in the time of the Conqueror, by Robert de Belvedeir, standard-bearer to the monarch. The edifice is seated on the confines of the counties of Lincoln and Leicester, Nottingham and Rutland, and it commanded, in the time of Francis Manners, until the present day, fourteen lordships.[[277]] Of this domain, Lady Katherine was now sole heiress. Repeated visits had been made by King James to it, and, indeed, a sojourn at Belvoir was always a principal feature in a royal progress. A singular custom was formerly observed on the occasion of a royal visit to this castle. A family in Nottinghamshire, who held the Manor of Staunton, by the office of castle guard of the strong hold of Belvoir Castle, called the Staunton Tower, were required to present the keys of that tower to the monarch, in the same manner as the keys of a town are offered. The tenure required, in feudal times, that—
“Unto this forte with force and flagge,
The Staunton’s stock should sticke,
For to defende against the foe,
Which at the same might kicke.”[[278]]
The office of castle guard has long become a sinecure, but the importance of maintaining all those forms was such, that in 1618 a writ of inquiry was issued to show why the Castle of Belvoir should not fall into the king’s hands, on account of some alienation. “This,” says a modern writer, “might appear an ungrateful return to the earl for his hospitality; but it was
the customary process when property held under the crown became, on any occasion, alienated.”[[279]]
At Belvoir, James made, on one occasion, a considerable number of knights, and, notwithstanding his writ of inquiry, he visited the hospitable palace every second or third year, from 1612 to 1621. In 1612, Henry, Prince of Wales, met his father at Belvoir Castle, riding thither from Richmond in two days, and received “very honourable entertainment” from Francis, Earl of Rutland, who, but a fortnight before, had attended the funeral of his brother at Bottesford.[[280]]
In August, 1619, the king again visited Belvoir, but it does not appear certain that Buckingham accompanied his royal master. Probably, the preliminaries to the union which subsequently took place, may have been entered into on that occasion. Early in the following year, the marriage contract was signed, a ceremonial which generally preceded the completed marriage by a period of forty days. In this instance, that event did not take place until the sixteenth of May.
In the interim, Buckingham, either through the impatience of a lover, or, what is more likely, fearful of losing, from objections, the heiress of Belvoir, took a step which cannot be condemned without a full knowledge of every circumstance connected with it; but which seemed, on the first view, alike discreditable to the lover and to his mistress. He induced the Lady Katherine to leave her father’s house, and conveyed her to his own apartments at Whitehall. Of this transaction, an account is given by Arthur Wilson, whose puritanical principles caused him to regard Buckingham with dislike, and perhaps to misrepresent his conduct, and Buckingham is stated to have kept the lady there for several days, and then to have returned her to her father. “The stout old earl,” pursues the same writer, “sent him this threatening message, ’That he was too much of a gentleman to suffer such an indignity, and if he did not marry his daughter, to repair her honour, no greatness should protect him from his justice.’” It is conjectured that this elopement may have been contrived by Buckingham, in order to extort from the Earl of Rutland an unwilling consent. He quickly, therefore, says Wilson, “salved the wound before it grew to a quarrel; and if this marriage stopped the current of his sins, he had the less to answer for.”[[281]]
Such is one account of the obstacles which impeded that good understanding which afterwards existed between the Earl of Rutland and his son-in-law. It appears, however, from an unpublished document in the State Paper Office, that Buckingham’s exorbitant demands had disgusted the Earl; these were, 20,000l. in ready money, 4,000l. in land a year, and, in case of Lord Roos’s death, 8,000l. in land. On this account, at first, had the match been broken off, but renewed upon the death of the son and heir, an event which some ascribed to witchcraft, others to the falling sickness, to which the poor youth was subject. Rumour also attributed the interruption of the marriage-treaty to the religious scruples of Buckingham.[[282]]
After his daughter had left his house, the Earl wrote a letter, half indignant, half relenting, to Buckingham. In this epistle, the feelings of a father’s struggle with the offended honour of the man. “I confess,” he writes to Buckingham, “I took no great council in this business, for nature taught me that I was to advise my daughter to avoid the occasion of ill, as confidently as I assure myself she is of ill.” The aggrieved and unhappy parent had perhaps, afterwards, reason to retract that bitter expression. “I confess,” he adds, “I had noble offers from you, but I expect real performance, which I hope in the end will bring comfort to us both.” “His daughter,” he touchingly remarks, “deserves no so great a care from a father whom she little esteems,” as he had shown her; “yet,” adds the Earl, “I must preserve her honour, if it were with the hazard of my life. And for calling our honours in question,” he proceeds, “pardon me, my lord, that cannot be any fault of mine; for you would have me think that a contract, which, if you will make it so, be it as secret as you will, this matter is only at an end; therefore, the fault is only your lordship’s if the world talk of us both.”
All that the father demanded was, to use his own words, addressing Buckingham, as follows, “proof that she is yours, and then you shall find me tractable, like a loving father; although she is not worthy in respect of her neglect to me; yet, it being once done, her love and due respects to your lordship shall make me forget that which I confess I now am too sensible of.” “To conclude, my lord, this is my resolution, if my conscience may not be fully satisfied she is yours, take your own courses; I must take mine, and I hope I may arm myself with patience, and not with rage. Your lordship shall even find I will be as careful of your honour as I shall be tender of mine own; and this is my resolution.”[[283]]
To this searching letter, wrung from a father, uncertain how far his daughter had for ever exposed herself to shame, hoping, yet fearing, lest it might not prove so, and that she had fallen into honourable hands, Buckingham thus replied:—
“My Lord,
“Your mistaking in your fashion of dealing with a free and honest heart, together with your froward carriage towards your own daughter, enforced me the other day to post to Hampton Court, and there cast myself at His Majesty’s feet, confessing freely unto him all that hath ever passed in privacy between your lordship and me concerning your daughter’s marriage, lest otherwise, by this, your public miscarriage of the business, it might by other means, to my disadvantage, have come to his knowledge. And now that I have obtained my master’s pardon for this, my first fault, for concealing, and going further in anything than His Majesty was acquainted with, I can delay no longer of declaring unto you how unkindly I take your harsh usage of me and your own daughter, which hath wrought this effect in me; that, since you esteem so little of my friendship and her honour, I must now, contrary to my former resolution, leave off the pursuit of that alliance any more, putting it in your free choice to bestow her elsewhere, to your best comfort; for, whose fortune it shall ever be to have her, I will constantly profess that she never received any blemish in her honour but which came by your own tongue. It is true I never thought before to have seen the time that I should need to come within the compass of the law, by stealing of a wife against the consent of the parents, considering of the favours that it pleaseth His Majesty, though undeservedly, to bestow upon me. So leaving this to you and your wife’s censure,
“I rest,
“Your lordship’s servant,
“Buckingham.”[[284]]
These protestations on the part of Buckingham, that the honour of Lady Katharine was untouched, are confirmed by the following extracts from certain letters relative to the affair, by which it is evident, first, that James himself promoted the abduction of the young heiress, and, secondly, that the Countess of Buckingham, whilst she favoured her son’s schemes, never suffered the reputation of her daughter-in-law to be injured, since she did not, for an instant, permit her to leave her presence during the temporary absence from her father’s house.
“There is an accident happened which breeds great stir in town, which is concerning the taking away of the Earl of Rutland’s daughter, by my Lady Buckingham. Nobody knows what to think of it, but, in my opinion, the King is in the plot, for, with all his arts, he could not persuade her to go to church, to which it may be, they think, she refuses to come by reason of her mother and father. Now, you may remember what my lord said to your lordship, that he would not marry one who did not come to church. She loveth him, and I think now he makes trial of her, whether she will forsake all the world for his sake.”[[285]]
“But the Lady Buckingham sayeth her father desired her to take her abroad with her, which she did, having his fatherly love imposed on her that she should not go out of her sight. She fell ill towards night, and rather than send her home with waiting gentlewomen, kept her that night to lie with herself, and brought her home the next day; her mother refusing to take her, so she went back, and there abided.”[[286]]
Another account states that the “Lady of Buckingham” fetched the young lady away one Sunday, without her father’s either leave or liking, “so that the next day he refused to receive her back, and Lady Katherine was obliged to take refuge with her uncle, being her nearest relation.” Neither party, it was observed, gained by this mode of dealing, which was “subject to much construction.”[[287]]
It is touching to find the Earl of Rutland, some years afterwards, excusing himself from visiting the Court, that he might bear his daughter company in her solitude at Burleigh, during the long interval in which Buckingham, attending on the King at Windsor, left her in that then remote country seat, in retirement.[[288]]
A coolness, however, continued for some time between these two noblemen; for on St. George’s day, which was observed with much solemnity at Greenwich, the now haughty Buckingham showed his resentment against the Earl of Rutland by refusing to be consorted with him in one mess; and, coupling himself with the Earl of Leicester, left his future father-in-law alone, “and yet,” as a contemporary relates, “the opinion is, the match must go on with his daughter, or else do her great wrong as well in other respects; so, for his sake and his mother’s, she is to be converted and receive the communion this Easter.”[[289]]
The marriage took place eventually, at Lumley House, a mansion built in the time of Henry the Eighth, by Sir Thomas Wyatt, on the site of the ancient Monastery[Monastery] of Crutched Friars, near Tower Hill.[[290]] The ceremonial was conducted with great privacy, probably on account of the vexatious and awkward circumstances which had previously occurred.[[291]]
It does not appear to which of his magnificent mansions the Marquis of Buckingham took his bride, after he had at last obtained possession of her hand. The man who only four years previously had appeared before a host of scoffing courtiers, in a thread-bare black suit, and whose slender allowance scarcely kept him from absolute penury, was now the owner of several stately residences. His apartments at Whitehall were held by virtue of his various offices near the King’s person. That palace was the constant residence of James the First when in London. It was, at this time, in a very ruinous state, and the Banqueting House had been recently burned down. Inigo Jones[[292]] was, indeed, employed in rebuilding it upon an extensive plan, only a portion of which was completed. It is, therefore, very unlikely that the honeymoon would be passed in the midst of noise and dust, although Whitehall, partially surrounded, as it was, by beautiful gardens, was not, by any means, devoid of that rural beauty for which the denizens of a royal metropolitan palace may now look in vain. Wanstead House, in Essex, which had escheated to the crown in 1606, upon the death of Charles Blount, Earl of Devonshire, was the first residence that Buckingham could properly call his own. He obtained it by a royal grant, and the King seems to have been well repaid for that act of generosity, by the pleasure which he took in visiting his favourite there. Burleigh-on-the-Hill, or Burleigh Harrington, so called to distinguish it from Burleigh Stamford, had been bought by Buckingham from the heir-general of the Harrington family, into whose possession it had come by purchase in the time of Queen Elizabeth. It was seated upon a hill, rising abruptly from the vale of Catmore, commanding a view of the country around, and protecting the village of Burleigh. At Burleigh-on-the-Hill, King James was entertained during his first journey into England; there he was received by Sir John Harrington, who was then its owner.
After Burleigh had become the possession of the Marquis of Buckingham, he made it one of the most splendid seats in the island, until it not only rivalled, but, in some respects, excelled, Belvoir.[[293]] Both the Marchioness of Buckingham and the Countess took a great interest in the place. In one of her letters to her husband, the Marchioness writes thus: “For Burly Shaw the wall is not very forward yett, and my lady” (her mother-in-law, the Countess of Buckingham) “bid me send you word that shee is gon done to look how things ar ther. Shee ses shee is about making a litell river to rune through the parke. It will be about xvi. foote broode. But shee ses shee wants money.”[[294]]
This magnificent structure, in which many a revel took place, and beneath whose roof many a masque was enacted, was not destined to remain a monument of Buckingham’s splendour. Its very strength proved its destruction; for it was, on that account, selected, during the Rebellion, as a garrison for the Parliamentarian troops, in order that they might, from that commanding station, at once harass the surrounding country, and protect their county committee. But they were unable to maintain the long line of defence which the extensive buildings presented, and therefore set them on fire, and thus, destroying the house and furniture, they deserted Burleigh.
The stables alone remained; and these alone perpetuated the magnificence of their first owner, being the finest in England. The ruins of Burleigh long served as a memento of the devastations of civil war, for the son and successor of George Villiers was unable to restore them. The estate was sold eventually to Daniel, Earl of Nottingham, who rebuilt the house, but of the structure which the princely taste of Buckingham planned, and which his lady mother embellished with her taste, little or no trace remains.[[295]]
Newhall, in Essex, was another residence of the Marquis of Buckingham’s. This property was purchased after Burleigh, in 1622, and was considered a great bargain, the money paid for it being twenty thousand pounds, for which there was a return of 1,200l.a year in land, whilst the wood was valued at about 4,000l. or 5,000l. The house, which cost originally 14,000l. in building, was immediately put under the hands of Inigo Jones, the King’s surveyor, “to alter and translate” according to the modern fashion.[[296]] It is described by Evelyn, who visited it in 1656, in the following terms:—“I saw New Hall, built in a park, by Henry VII. and VIII., and given by Queen Elizabeth to the Earl of Sussex, who sold it to the late great Duke of Buckingham; and since seiz’d on by O. Cromwell (pretended Protector). It is a faire old house, built with brick, low, being only of two stories, as the manner then was; ye gatehouse better; the court large and pretty, the staircase of extraordinary wideness, with a piece representing Sir F. Drake’s action in the year 1580, an excellent sea-piece; ye galleries are trifling; the hall is noble; the garden a faire plot, and the whole seate well accommodated with water; but, above all, I admir’d the fine avenue, planted with stately lime trees, in foure rowes, for neere a mile in length. It has three descents, which is the only fault, and may be reform’d. There is another faire walk of ye same at the mall and wildernesse, with a tennis-court, and a pleasant terrace towards the park, which was well stor’d with deere and ponds.”[[297]]
Our ancestors understood well the adaptation of what may be called landscape gardening, to the style of their stately edifices; and Buckingham appears to have displayed in his improvements the magnificent and refined taste of a man whose nature was noble, and who was intended for a holier career than that of a royal favourite.
Buckingham’s delight in improving his estates soon found scope here. “I have not beene yet att New Hall,” wrote his lady to him, in 1623, when he was in Spain, “but I do intend to go shortly to see how things ar ther. The walk to the house is done, and the tenis-court is all most done, but the garden is not done, nor nothing to the bouling greene, and yett I told Totherby, and he tould me he would sett men a worke presently; but I warant you they will all be redey before you come.” In a letter from the Countess of Denbigh, she informs her brother that there is one of the finest approaches to the house made that she ever saw. Buckingham, on his return from Spain, seems to have enjoyed thoroughly the sight of Newhall, in all its freshness, and to have gloried in its sylvan beauties. “I have found this morning,” he writes to the King, “another fine wood that must go in with the rest, and two hundred acres of meadows, broomes, closes, and plentiful springs running through them, so that I hope Newhall shall be nothing inferior to Burleigh. My stags are all lusty, my calf bold, and others are so too. My Spanish colts are fat, and so is my jovial filley.”[[298]] How gladly must he have returned to those more innocent pursuits of a country life, that formed so strong a contrast to the harassing existence of a courtier.[[299]]
Another place much coveted by Buckingham was stoutly refused, even to the all-powerful favourite. This was Beddington Hall, in Surrey, then possessed, and still inhabited, by the ancient family of Carew, on whom it was bestowed, having been before a royal manor, by Queen Elizabeth. It was, probably, its vicinity to London which increased Buckingham’s desire to possess this fine old house, with its stately precincts.
“The Marquis,” as we learn from a private letter of the day, from London, “would settle himself hereabout, and is much in love with Beddington, near Croydon, having won over the King, Prince, and others, to move Sir Nicholas Carew about it; but it seems he will not be removed, by reason his uncle bestowed it so frankly on him, with purpose to continue his memory there, and to that end caused him to change his name. If his lordship would have patience, he would soon find out many places convenient enough, or, at farthest, stay for Gorhambury, whereof (they say) he hath the reversion after my Lord Chancellor’s life, but upon what terms and conditions is only between themselves.”[[300]]
Wanstead House was another seat of Buckingham’s. The village which bears that name is situated on the borders of Waltham Forest; it commands a view of London and of Kent; the prospect stretching over a fertile and beautiful country. The manor of Wanstead had passed through various possessors to Sir John Heron, whose son, Sir Giles, being attainted, it was seized by the Crown. It was then granted to Robert, Lord Rich, who built the Manor House, then called Naked Hall House. The son of Lord Rich sold it to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester; and it thus became eventually the residence of two royal favourites. The unscrupulous Dudley owned it for some years. He enlarged and improved the house; and here his marriage with the Countess of Essex was solemnised in 1578.
At his death, Wanstead passed into the hands of his widow, Lady Essex; and the Earl being much involved in debt, an inventory was made of his property, real and personal. The furniture at Wanstead was valued at one hundred and nineteen pounds, six shillings, and sixpence; the pictures at eleven pounds, thirteen shillings, and fourpence. Such is the small amount of that which was reckoned costly in those days; yet there were in this collection original portraits of Henry the Eighth, of his daughters, and Lady Cartmills, Lady Rich, and thirty-six others not particularized. The library, consisting of an old Bible, of the Acts and Monuments, old and torn, of seven Psalters and a Service book, was valued at thirteen shillings and eightpence. The horses, however, were rated at three hundred and sixteen pounds and threepence.
The Countess of Essex married Sir Christopher Blount, and by some family arrangements the house was conveyed to his son, Charles Blount, Earl of Devonshire. At his death it was escheated to the Crown, and became the property of Buckingham. In 1619, he sold it to Sir William Mildmay;[[301]] and in our days this once noble possession, which has fallen, like its possessors, to ruin and destruction, came into the family of the present Earl of Mornington.[[302]]
A mineral spring was about this time discovered at Wanstead, and there was such “running there” by lords and ladies, that the spring was almost “drawn dry,” “and if it should hold on,” writes Mr. Chamberlain, “it would put down the waters at Tunbridge, which, for these three or four years, have been much frequented, specially in summer, by many great persons, insomuch that they who have seen both, say it is not inferior to the Spa for good company, numbers of people, and other appearances.”[[303]]
To one or other of these stately abodes Buckingham perhaps conveyed his bride; although the custom of travelling immediately after marriage is one of more recent, date. Such, however, were the future homes of the young Marchioness.
The year succeeding the nuptials of the Marquis was passed by him and his bride in a constant round of courtly revels. During these festivities, various incidents, of little import in themselves, marked the determination of James to accomplish the marriage which he now had at heart between his son and the Infanta of Spain. The slightest objection to that desired event was dangerous to the meanest of his subjects. A man named Almed, who held a subordinate situation, having presented the Marquis of Buckingham with a treatise against the match, was cast into prison by the King’s express commands.[[304]] Secretary Naunton was suspended from his situation for treating with the French ambassador concerning a union between the Prince and Henrietta Maria, and was obliged to write an humble acknowledgment of his errors to Buckingham, and to address to James an epistle penned, as he expressed it, “in grief and anguish of spirit.”[[305]] Buckingham interposed in his behalf, and prevented the secretary’s being turned out of his lodgings at Whitehall, by which many, looking upon Naunton as a ruined man, for having lent an ear to the proposal of France, were already intriguing.[[306]] The infatuation of James, promoted, it was believed, by the counsels of Buckingham, brought infinite disgrace upon the English court, and was repaid by the haughty Spaniards, acting through the crafty Gondomar, with contempt.
Even the pulpits were tuned, as Queen Elizabeth would have said, to one key. “The King,” Mr. Chamberlain wrote to Sr Dudley Carleton, “ordered the Bishop of London to warn his clergy not to preach against the Spanish match, but they do not obey.”[[307]]
The resolution taken by James to withhold assistance to the Bohemians in their revolt against the power of Austria, and his determined refusal to give to his son-in-law, who had been made King of Bohemia, any higher title than that of Prince Palatine, were resented by the jealous people whom James was so incapable even of comprehending, and his English subjects regarded his neutrality with disgust. “The happiness and tranquillity of their own country,” remarks Hume, “became distasteful to the English when they reflected on the grievances and distresses of their Protestant brethren in Germany.” Prince Charles besought his father on his knees, and with tears, to take pity upon his sister Elizabeth and her family, and to suffer himself no longer to be abused with treaties. The young and generous Prince entreated the King, since His Majesty was himself old, to allow him to raise a royal army, and to permit him to be the leader of it, being assured that his subjects would be ready to follow him. To this James replied, “that he would hear once more from Spain, and that if he had not satisfaction, he would give his son and the state leave to do what they would.”[[308]]
Still James was deaf alike to arguments and to parental affection, and defended his pacific measures upon the notion that Austria, swayed by his justice and moderation, would restore the Palatinate, which had been wrested from Frederic, his son-in-law, by Spinola, especially if his son’s marriage with the Infanta were effected. He was blind to the fact that his powers of negotiation would be wholly unable to achieve this end, nor when it was achieved, would the result be such as his hopes anticipated. His reluctance to engage in war, his want of courage in avowing to his subjects the measures which he meant to pursue, were alike indicative of that pusillanimous spirit which exposed him to the contempt of foreign courts, and rendered him unpopular at home.
Not having called a parliament for seven years, he now sent forth a writ of summons in the beginning of the year 1621; an event from which all men “who had any religion,” as Sir Symonds D’Ewes expressed it, “hoped much good, and daily prayed for a happy issue; for both France and Germany needed support and help from England, or the true professions of the Gospel were likely to perish in each nation under the power and tyranny of the anti-Christian tyranny.”
The opening of Parliament was graced by a splendid procession from Whitehall to Westminster; but although the progress was short, it was varied by several significant circumstances. Prince Charles appeared, on this occasion, riding on horseback between the Sergeants-at-arms and the Gentlemen Pensioners, with a rich coronet on his head. Next before his Majesty rode Henry Vere, Earl of Oxford, Lord Great Chamberlain of England, with Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, Earl Marshal. These noblemen were bare-headed. Then appeared James, with a crown on his head, “and most royally caparisoned.” But the personage who excited the most general interest was Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, a man only sixty-three years of age, but accounted in those days—such is the increased value of life in ours—“decrepit with age.” This nobleman, the son of the Protector Somerset, was dear to the people as the relative of Lady Jane Grey, whose sister, the Lady Catherine, he had married; an act for which he had incurred a long and unmerited imprisonment in the time of Elizabeth. He died shortly after the opening of parliament.
The King was now manifestly broken and infirm; the disease, then deemed incurable, which caused him intense agony, softened his petulance, and produced a courtesy that touched the bystanders with pity. As he rode along, he spoke often and lovingly to the crowd three-fold thick; calling out, with more good-will than kingly dignity, “God bless ye, God bless ye”—a striking contrast to his usual practice, or, to use the words of D’Ewes, to his “hasty and passionate custom, which often, in his sudden distemper,” would bid a plague upon those who flocked to see him.
Such was one of the remarks made on this day. Another was, that whilst the windows of Whitehall were crowded by the great and fair, James saluted none of them as he passed along, except the Marchioness of Buckingham and her mother-in-law.
He was observed to speak often and particularly to Gondomar, and his whole demeanour was, for some time, kindly and cheerful.
On a sudden, however, his gracious countenance became overcast. On gazing up at one window, he observed it to be full of gentlewomen and ladies, all in yellow bands: this fashion had been discountenanced at Court ever since the trial of the Countess of Somerset; her accomplice, Mrs. Turner, having been hanged, by sentence, “in her yellow tiffany ruffs and cuffs,” she being the first inventor of the yellow starch.[[309]] But certain “high-handed women,” as King James termed them, chose, it seems, perhaps out of despite to Buckingham, to retain what was conceived to be a memento of the Somerset faction. No sooner did the King perceive them than he cried out “a plague take ye—are ye there?” and immediately the ladies, in alarm, vanished from the window. James was so much exhausted by his exertions this day, and by a speech of an hour long, in which nevertheless he commended brevity, that he was obliged to be carried in a chair from the Abbey, where he attended service, to the Parliament House.
By these and other symptoms, the people saw too plainly that the interests of Spain were adopted by the Favourite. Parliament, opened with so much state and promise, was opposed to the King’s wishes, and deprecated the Spanish alliance. Declamations against the growth of Popery were continually heard in that assembly, and formed a constant feature in its discussions during the reign of the Stuarts; these invectives were now exasperated by the treaty with Spain, and the indifference of James to the sufferings of the Protestant cause on the Continent. In the House of Lords, the presence of Prince Charles, around whom all the bishops, and most of the courtiers, flocked, was supposed to overawe the debates. All this time, James had “engaged his crown, blood, and soul,” such were his expressions, for the recovery of the Palatinate. Nevertheless, he dissolved Parliament early in the ensuing year; and the fruitless treaties and debasing intrigues went on as usual.[[310]]
An embassy extraordinary from the French King, who had visited Calais, proved the touchstone of much latent jealousy. An attendance of fifty or sixty persons of rank, and a retinue of three hundred, gave to the Marquis de Cadenat, brother to the Duc de Luisues, the favourite of the King of France, all the dignity that so numerous a company of the flower of their country could ensure. The ambassador and his suite were met at Gravesend by the Earl of Arundel, and conducted to Denmark House, where the Earl, merely accompanying the Marquis to the foot of the first stair which led to his lodgings, took his leave, saying that there were gentlemen there who would show him to his apartments. This was a decided slight. Shortly afterwards, an affront was given by the Countess of Buckingham, owing to her having placed the Marquise de Cadenat and her niece, Mademoiselle de Luc, at a ball at Whitehall, beneath her own daughter-in-law, the Marchioness of Buckingham.
On the eighth of January, a tilting match was performed, to entertain the French Marquis, wherein Prince Charles broke a lance with great success. Amongst the tilters was the “beloved Marquis of Buckingham,” so called by Sir Symonds D’Ewes, who thus describes the appearance of the Favourite on the occasion:—
“Seeing the Marquis of Buckingham discoursing with two or three French monsieurs, I joined to them, and most earnestly viewed him for about half-an-hour’s space at the least, which I had the opportunitie the more easilie to accomplish, because he stood all that time he talked, bareheaded. I saw everything in him full of delicacie and handsome features; yea, his hands and face seemed to me especiallie effeminate and curious.” The contrast with the homely-featured foreigners who surrounded him seems to have struck this not very good-natured observer. “It is possible,” he adds, “he seemed more accomplist, because the French monsieurs that invested him weere verie swarthie, hard-featured men.”
All irritation seems to have subsided by this time, and the natural hospitality of well-bred Englishmen to have reappeared. In the midst of the business and pleasure which occupied the English Court, the unpopularity of the Spanish match was, however, so apparent that Gondomar begged to retire to Nonsuch Palace, to avoid the “fear and fury” of Shrove Tuesday.
In the summer of this year,[[311]] James visited his Favourite at Burleigh, when he was so much pleased with his entertainment, that he could not forbear expressing his contentment in certain verses, in which he said “that the air, the weather, and everything else, even the stags and bucks in their fall, did seem to smile.” The chief diversion prepared for His Majesty was a masque by Ben Jonson, entitled “The Metamorphosed Gipsies;” it was acted first at Burleigh, then at Belvoir, and lastly at Windsor, within the course of a few months.
Buckingham employed the poet’s pen at his own expense, and himself enacted the Captain of the gipsies; and, in his disguise, marching up to the King, he thus addressed him, with the freedom of his lawless tribe:—
With you, lucky bird, I begin:
I aim at the best, and I trow you are he,
Here’s some luck already, if I understand
The grounds of mine art; here’s a gentleman’s hand,
I’ll kiss it for luck sake; you should, by this line,[[312]]
Love a horse and a hound, but no part of a swine;[[313]]
To hunt the brave stag, not so much for the food
As the weal of your body and wealth of your blood.
In this fashion did Buckingham flatter the tastes of James, who, priding himself on his prowess in the chase, which he followed in a ruff and trowsers,[[314]] was charmed with any allusion to his favourite diversion.
As the Captain of the Gipsies further pursued the telling of the King’s fortune, his verse changed its metre, and touched on more serious themes:—
Could any doubt that saw this hand,
Or who you are, or what command
You have upon the state of things?
Or would not say you were let down
From Heaven, on Earth, to be the Crown
And top of all your neighbour Kings?
In another verse, he gracefully referred to the royal bounty to himself:—
Myself a gipsy here do shine,
Yet are you maker, sir, of mine.
Oh! that confession should content
So high a bounty, that doth know
No part of motion but to flow,
And giving, never to repent.
These poetical addresses were interspersed with dances and songs. After the second dance, a gipsy, supposed to be Viscount Purbeck, the brother of the Marquis, paid a tribute to Prince Charles:—
As my Captain hath begun
With the sire, I take the son!
Your hand, sir!
Of your fortune be secure,
Love and she are both at your
Command, sir!
See what states are here at strife,
Who shall tender you a wife,
A brave one?
And a fitter for a man
Than is offered here, you can
Not have one.
She is sister of a Star,
One, the noblest that now are,
Bright Hesper;
Whom the Indians in the East,
Phosphor call, and in West,
Hight Vesper.
Courses even with the sun
Doth her mighty brother run
For splendour.
—alluding to the boast of the Spaniards that the sun never sets on their King’s dominions.
The Marchioness of Buckingham was next addressed, in these terms:—
But, lady, either I am tipsy,
Or you are in love with a gipsy;
Blush not, Dame Kate,
For early or late,
I do assure you it will be your fate,
Nor need you once be ashamed of it, madam,
He’s as handsome a man as e’er was Adam.
The fortunes of Cecily, Countess of Rutland, the stepmother of the Marchioness, of the Countess of Exeter, and of the Countess of Buckingham, were then told. In the verses addressed to the last mentioned, the beauty and attractions of the lady were thus alluded to:—
Your pardon, lady, here you stand,
If some should judge you by your hand,
The greatest felon in the land,
Detected.
I cannot tell you by what arts,
But you have stol’n so many hearts,
As they would make you at all parts
Suspected.
The Lady Purbeck was the next theme:—
Help me, woman, here’s a book,
Where I would for ever look;
Never yet did Gipsy trace
Such true lines in hands or face.
Venus here doth Saturn move,
That you should be Queen of Love,
Only Cupid’s not content;
For, though you do the theft disguise,
You have robb’d him of his eyes.
The fair, frail being, whose loveliness was thus panegyrized, fled from her husband’s house three years afterwards, never to return. “She was,” says the historian Wilson, “a lady of transcending beauty.” Ben Jonson’s lines on her face:—
Though your either cheek discloses
Mingled baths of milk and roses;
Though your lips be banks of blisses,
Where he plants and gathers kisses—
were not, therefore, greatly exaggerated.
Her mother—the mother who had bartered her at the altar—was next flattered:—
Mistress of a fairer table,
Hath no history or fable;
Others’ fortunes may be shewn,
You are builder of your own,
And whatever Heaven hath gi’n you,
You preserve the state still in you.
Here ended the fortune-telling. And now, a dance of clowns, “Cockrel, Clod, Town’head, and Puffy,” each personated by knights, delighted the company with a colloquy in prose, and in their hands the conduct of the piece remained until the Gipsies, metamorphosed, “appeared in rich habits, to close the whole with a eulogy upon King James.”
A song was introduced just before the conclusion:—
Oh, that we understood
Our good!
There’s happiness indeed in blood,
And store—
But how much more When virtue’s flood
In the same stream doth hit!
As that grows high with years, so happiness
With it!
Thus ended this masque, which furnishes, in the estimation of a great critic, “specimens of poetic excellence, injurious flattery, and adroit satire.”
James was delighted with his cheer at Burleigh.[[315]] Before departing for Belvoir, he noticed, with much satisfaction, that there was a prospect of there soon being an heir to the house of Villiers; and, after uttering a fervent wish that all might prosper, he called upon the Bishop of London, by way of amen, to give the young couple a blessing in his presence on the interesting expectation.[[316]]
This gay scene was followed by some mischances. James, riding out after dinner, from Theobalds, early in the next year,[[317]] was thrown into the New River;[[318]] the ice broke, and he fell in, nothing appearing above the water except his boots. Buckingham, who was not with him, was sent for from Hertfordshire, and posted away to attend his royal master. The King recovered from this accident, but his infirmities increased daily; he was confined for some time at Theobalds, “by reason of a defluxion,” which, setting in his leg, assumed the form of gout; and he was obliged to be carried out in a litter when he went to see the deer.
Preparations were now made for that event to which James had referred when he had called the Bishop of London to bless the parents of the babe yet unborn. Yet, contrary to His Majesty’s expectations, it did not prove to be a “fine boy.” Early in the year 1622, a daughter, afterwards christened Mary, gladdened the hearts of the young and happy parents. On the twenty-seventh of March, the Marchioness was sufficiently recovered to be churched in the King’s chamber, where she dined, notwithstanding that the King was in bed. The Duchess of Lennox accompanied her on this occasion. This lady, was recently married, for the third time, to the Duke of Lennox, her first husband having been Henry Purnell, Esq.; her second, Edward Seymour, first Earl of Hertford. Ludowick, Duke of Richmond and Lennox, her husband, was a cousin of the King’s,[[319]] being grandson to John D’Aubignie, who was brother to Mathew, Earl of Lennox, grandfather of His Majesty. The Duke of Lennox deservedly enjoyed a great share of the King’s confidence; and it was a proof of the highest consideration for the young Marchioness of Buckingham, that his duchess should be her companion at the ceremony of churching. The Duchess attended her also in her sickness, and was rewarded for “her great pains and care in making broths and caudles” for the invalid, by a present from the King of a fair chain of diamonds, with his picture suspended to it, Prince Charles and the Marquis of Buckingham being charged to convey it to the Duchess, who, henceforth, came to be “in great request, and to be much courted and respected by the Prince.”[[320]]