CHAPTER III.
DECLINE OF THE KING’S HEALTH--CASE OF LORD MIDDLESEX--PROCEEDINGS IN BOTH HOUSES--SIR EDWARD COKE’S EXAGGERATION--BUCKINGHAM’S PARTICIPATION IN THE AFFAIR--MIDDLESEX STEALS AWAY TO THEOBALD’S, AND IS FOLLOWED BY CHARLES--FOUND GUILTY--CONFINED--BUCKINGHAM’S DANGEROUS ILLNESS--ARTHUR BRETT--DEATH OF THE KING--ASCRIBED TO BUCKINGHAM.
CHAPTER III.
The health of James the First had long been declining, and the vexations which troubled his last years contributed, it has been supposed, greatly to its decline. A mortal internal disease, however, aggravated by an attack of tertian ague, left, in the spring of the year 1625, little hope of his recovery. When told, during the access of this disorder, the proverb, that “ague in the spring was health to a king,” he remarked that the saying was meant to apply to a young king. The King was, in truth, only fifty-eight years of age, but, independent of his originally feeble constitution, he, like other men in those times, was old of his age. It has been our blessing, under the improvements of science, and in the habits of the nineteenth century, to retain, if not youth, many of its greatest advantages, to a period of life far more advanced than that in which James was styled the “old King,” a term to which he gave his mournful assent.
Amongst the numerous causes which, with the Spanish treaty, vexed the royal invalid, the case of the Lord Treasurer Middlesex was prominent. In this minister James had rested unbounded confidence, which nothing but the clearest evidence of the Lord Treasurer’s corruption could undermine.
In April, 1624, Middlesex had been questioned in the House of Lords on account of his neglect of the fortresses. He was much dejected by this attack; but the inquiry was ascribed to the jealousy of Buckingham, Lord Middlesex’s brother-in-law, Arthur Brett, having been put forward to supplant the Duke in James’s favour.[[140]] It was thought, however, such was the low standard of public morality, that the articles produced against the Treasurer were not worse than “might be found in most men in his place;” and the attempts to injure him were referred rather to his harsh and insolent manner, his want of respect to Prince Charles, and his inclination to the Spanish match, than to his devices for raising money, and so impoverishing the nation, and to his opposition to the calling a Parliament. Still he stood high in James’s favour, and boldly declared his own innocence; James, whatever he might really feel, “looking on” merely, and leaving his minister to his fate.[fate.][[141]]
Buckingham, addressing the Peers, read a letter from the Deputy in Ireland, who complained of neglect to his applications for repairing the forts, which had become the more necessary as the Irish were in a state of tumult and rebellion. Prince Charles added that a “member of the council” had undertaken to answer these letters, and that this was the Lord Treasurer, “who used to put such letters in his pocket, under pretence of answering them.” Middlesex was soon after suspended from his office, till he should clear himself; and it was even reported that his title, given for services in the royal wardrobe, where he had been guilty of many abuses, would be taken away; but rewards for services, acknowledged under the Great Seal, could not, it was found, be questioned. Even his life would have been in danger, could all have been proved against him.
The House, desirous to finish the matter, allowed Middlesex to produce forty witnesses, twelve of whom deposed directly against him; upon this, Prince Charles sent him a message, ordering him not to appear in the royal presence again until he had cleared himself. This command was the more necessary, since, at this very moment, the mind of James had been impressed by Inojosa with a suspicion that his son and the Duke were plotting against him; an idea which the King, with weeping, imparted to his son and the Duke. “The Lord Treasurer,” Sir Dudley Carleton writes, “is suspected to be at the bottom of it.” Hitherto, James had still appeared confident of the Lord Treasurer’s innocence,[[142]] and in a speech to the Lords, whom he had summoned to Whitehall,[[143]] he advised them as to their judgment. “Such a trial,” he observed, “had no precedent before the last parliament, and then the guilty party, Lord Bacon, had confessed, now the supposed delinquent denied the charge.” James, indeed, long clung to the Lord Treasurer, and told the lords he came to “sing a psalm of mercy and justice about him;” still the trial went on, and the accused, in spite of alleged ill-health, was examined both morning and afternoon; his illness was found, however, to be feigned; and his answers were so audacious, and so manifestly perjured, that, had it not been for the intercession of the Prince, he would have been sent to the Tower. Among other speeches, Middlesex said he had been baited by two mastiffs, Crew and the Attorney General; and he reasoned, in his defence, “saucily” for five hours, but was found guilty, and sentenced to pay 50,000l. fine, and to lose his office; never to sit in Parliament again, nor to come within the verge of the Court. “He would,” Mr. Chamberlain writes, “have been further degraded, but that he had great, if not gratis, friends in the bedchamber. He may live to crush his enemies, if his brother-in-law, Brett, should get into favour and marry the Duchess of Richmond, who would do anything to be prime courtier again.”[[144]]
Regarding this sentence, Lord Campbell remarks:--"The noble defendant had done various things, as head of the Treasury, which would now be considered very scandalous; but he had only imitated his predecessors, and was imitated by his successors."--A melancholy commentary on the state of public morality. It must have been galling to Lord Bacon, in his retirement, to have known that he was coupled with a man so dishonest, so specious, and so degraded as Middlesex.
Whilst all this was taking place, Buckingham was dangerously ill; so that on Charles the difficult task of infusing a sense of justice into the mind of James almost wholly devolved.[[145]] At length, however, irritated by the insolent bearing of Middlesex, who conducted himself as if he had not been expelled from Court, James, with his own hand, scratched out the culprit’s name from the commission of subsidy for Middlesex; and sent, through Sir Richard Weston, a message, saying that, without regarding any other charge, he condemned him merely in his capacity as Master of the Wardrobe, which Middlesex had “treated as a fee-farm not to be accounted for, and would not even allow the clerk to keep accounts, whereby great corruptions arose, and ordinary and mean stuffs were brought in.”[[146]]
Whilst all this was going on, Arthur Brett, the supposed rival of Buckingham, was committed to the Fleet. By his examination it appears that, on the Duke’s going into Spain, he had desired this young man to retire to France, and he did so; but on Buckingham’s return, he could not obtain leave to come back to England, and had therefore left France without it. He was ordered back to France by the King; he pleaded his right to stay in his own country, as a free-born subject. Then he was told not to appear within forty miles of London. He had afterwards an interview with Buckingham, who blamed him for returning; but said he was the King’s servant, and might live where he pleased. He had therefore staid in London, and wished to plead for a restoration of favour with the Duke; failing in this, he went to Wanstead to petition the King.[[147]]
This disclosure of Brett’s, and Buckingham’s wish to keep him from the Court, certainly throw a doubt on the genuineness of the Duke’s motives in the prosecution of Middlesex. Brett had imprudently met the King in Waltham Forest, and had seized hold of his Majesty’s bridle and stirrup, a liberty which had greatly offended James, and to punish which Brett was sent to the Fleet Prison, and, though released, was heavily fined.
In the midst of these various harassing affairs, the illness of James began to assume a formidable appearance. The King had frequently, before his last illness, been heard to express his belief that he should not live long. He was a martyr to rheumatism and gout, which he increased by gross feeding, and the continual use of sweet wines. During the whole of the Christmas preceding his death he had kept his chambers, not even going to chapel, or to see the plays, although his known delight in Ben Jonson’s masques would have induced him to attend the representation of the last of those performances played in his reign, the masque of the “Fortunate Isles.” The sole amusement which the dying King permitted himself was to go abroad in his litter, in fair weather, to see some flights at the brook; but all enjoyment of his usual diversion was at an end.
Accounts from the Court became daily worse:--"The King," Chamberlain, on the twelfth of March, wrote to Carleton, “has a tertian ague, but not dangerous, if he would be governed by physicians.”[[148]] His Majesty’s decline was evidently gradual; nor was he the only person in the realm sinking under fever or ague, the “spotted fever”[[149]] being fearfully prevalent. Buckingham was now on the eve of going to France as ambassador, to marry by proxy the young Princess, Henrietta Maria; but so late as the twenty-third of March he was detained by the continued illness of James.
"The King’s fits," Mr. Chamberlain again writes, “diminish; the Duke will not leave him till he is perfectly recovered, of which there is hope, but no assurance.” On the following day, we find, from the same source, that James performed an act of mercy, almost if not quite his last, in excusing Lord Middlesex part of his fine, and reducing it from 50,000l. to 20,000l., which sum was to be repaid to the Crown.
His sickness had now assumed a distinctly intermittent form; even so late as the middle of the month there had been an apparent abatement; on the sixteenth of March, he had his seventh fit of this debilitating disease; but it was, as Mr. Secretary Conway informed the Earl of Carlisle, “less intense hereto than the rest, and left more clearness and cheerfulness in his looks than the former.”[[150]] Yet, in the same letter, Conway speaks of the “double sadness of every face,” and alludes to the "extreme grief suffered for the sharp and smart accesses of His Majesty’s fever."
During the last sufferings of King James, the marriage treaty with France was still diligently carried on, through the agency of Lord Carlisle, ambassador at Paris, and was only delayed on the ground that "it could not be suitable with the good nature of a son, in so dangerous a state of his father’s health, to entertain such jollity and triumph as duly belong to so acceptable a marriage." The Duke of Buckingham, who had entertained some notion of going in person to Paris, and of concluding the treaty himself, directed Lord Carlisle, in a letter written on the fifteenth of March, “to have his eyes open, and to state any course, as much as he could, which might hinder the business of the Palatinate and of the religion,” until he appeared in the French capital.
But the increasing illness of his royal master delayed the Duke’s journey from day to day; and James was not permitted to witness the conclusion of the long-cherished hopes of the union of his son with a Princess of birth equal to his own. “All human things,” wrote Conway, “have something of earth and defect.” Nothing, he added in his letter to Lord Carlisle,[[151]] could exceed the contentment of the “excellent Prince and gracious Duke,” at the sure progress of the treaty, "and there was now no speech but of the speed of the Duke’s going;"[[152]] but in the next letter the journey was spoken of as conditional upon the restoration of His Majesty to health. On the twenty-fourth of March, the tenth night of the King’s fever arrived. The attack, as the same correspondent informed Lord Carlisle, “exercised much violence upon a weak body, which being so much reverenced, and loved with so much cause as His Majesty hath given, struck much sense and fear into the hearts of his servants that looked upon him.” The King, it appeared, nevertheless, had that day slept well, “and taken broths.” “And more to your comfort,” added the secretary, “did, with life and cheerfulness, receive the sacrament in the presence of the Prince and Duke, and many others, and admitted many to take it with him; and in the action and the circumstances of it, did deliver himself so answerable to his writings and his wise and pious professions, and did justly produce much tears between comfort and grief; and now this day, and now this night, he recovers temper and gets, in appearance to us, strength, appetite, and digestion, which gives us great hope of his amendment, grounded not only upon desire, but upon the method of judicious observation.”[[153]]
It may here be remarked, before going more fully into the false and calumnious evidence of poison, afterwards brought forward in this case of the royal sufferer, that the state of the King, his relapses, and his rallyings, imply anything but poison, and convey an impression of a constitution long broken up, and suddenly depressed by the supervening of an accidental attack of a disease then extremely prevalent in this country. The Holy Communion was administered to James, over as before stated, four days before he died: of the King’s professions before that last sacrament, an account, corresponding with that of Secretary Conway, but more distinct and instructive, is given by the Lord Keeper Williams. The monarch, who broke the heart of Arabella Stuart by long imprisonment and blighted hopes, and who beheaded Ralegh, and denied restitution to his son, Carew, died well;--so self-deceived is the spirit of the “rich man,”--so easy is it to substitute professions for practical Christianity.
“Being asked,” said the Lord Keeper, “if he was prepared in point of faith and charity for so great a devotion, he said he was, and gave humble thanks to God for the same.” Being desired to declare his faith, he repeated the articles of the creed, one by one, and said, “He believed them all as they were received and expounded by that part of the Catholic church which was established here in England,” adding that whatever he had written of this faith in his life he was ready to seal with his death. Being questioned in “point of charity,” he answered that he forgave all men that had offended him, and wished to be forgiven by all whom he had offended. Being told that men in holy orders in the Church of England can challenge a power, as inherent in their function, not in their power, to pronounce absolution on such of the penitent as do call on the same, and that they have a form of absolution in the Book of Common Prayer, he answered quickly:--
“I have ever believed that there was that power in you that be in orders in the Church of England, and that, amongst others, was to me an evident demonstration that the Church of England was the Church of Christ, and I, therefore, a miserable sinner, desire of Almighty God to absolve me of my sins, and that you, that are his servants in this high place, do afford me this heavenly comfort.” And, after that the absolution had been read, “he received the sacrament,” adds the Lord Keeper, “with that zeal and devotion as if he had not been a frail man, but a Cherubim clothed with flesh and blood.” He expressed to his son, and to the Duke, the inward comfort which he felt after receiving the Communion, and exclaimed “Oh, that my Lords would but do this when they were visited with the like sickness! Themselves would be more comforted in their souls, and the world less troubled with questioning their religion.”
Thus, in perfect composure, and sufficiently collected even to make his replies to the Lord Keeper in Latin, James met death. Whilst the last hour was approaching, he was little aware that the two beings whom he most loved in the world, were, at that very moment, the objects of suspicions the most cruel and groundless.
At that period, throughout Europe, and “nowhere,” says Lord Macaulay, “more than in England, the public, both high and low, were in the habit of ascribing the deaths of princes, and, indeed, of all persons of importance, to poison. Thus,” he adds, “James the First had been accused of poisoning Prince Henry. Thus Charles had been accused of poisoning King James.”[[154]]
The calumnies, however, were not so distinctly directed to Charles, as to the Duke; the calumnies circulated respecting Buckingham assumed an importance, as they formed part of his subsequent impeachment. Those also which attempted to implicate Charles merit a reference, since they were repeated to his injury at a very critical period of his life, in 1642, when they were credited by many persons; for there exist those who will, on a party question, believe, or affect to believe, any absurdity.
An act of kindness on the part of Buckingham gave rise to the rumours to which some contemporary historians, and even an excellent writer of the present century, have attached an almost incredible value.[[155]] Nothing, perhaps, can really be more unwise, or more unkind, than to interfere in illnesses with that profession which, admirable as are its practitioners, is remarkable for the tenacity of its etiquette, and its just horror of chance remedies. Yet, in other instances, even in the age of Sydenham and of Mead, Anne of Denmark had imprudently sent to Sir Walter Ralegh in the Tower for a remedy for her best beloved son, Henry, in his last agonies; and thus afforded Buckingham a precedent for his resort to unprescribed, and, therefore, often dangerous remedies.
The Countess of Buckingham, like many ladies of her own time and ours, had a specific which cured every known distemper; and which, at all events, was believed in by her son, the Duke; and it is not improbable that during his own frequent illnesses and attacks of ague he might have resorted to it himself.
Six days before the King died, the Duke applied, as it is stated by several historians, plasters to the wrists and body of the sufferer, and also administered several drinks, although some of the King’s physicians did, says Roger Coke, “disallow thereof, and refused to meddle further with the King until the said plasters were removed.”[[156]]
The King grew worse after these remedies, and great “droughts, raving, fainting, and an intermitting pulse followed thereupon.” Twice was the drink given him by the Duke’s own hand; and the third time refused. The physicians, to comfort the King, told him that the relapse was from cold, or from some other accidental cause. Upon which James answered, “No, no, it was that I had from Buckingham.” “I confess,” adds Coke, “that this was but a charge upon the Duke upon the Impeachment of the Commons” (in the next reign), “yet it was next to positive proof, for King Charles, rather than his charge should come to an issue, dissolved one Parliament.”[[157]]
It appears, however, that the plasters to which such dire consequences were ascribed, and which seem to have been suggested by the Countess of Buckingham, were prepared by an able and honest physician, Dr. John Remington, of Dunmow, in Essex;[[158]] and that he had often applied similar ones with success. One error was in supposing that a remedy suited to one case had an empirical virtue; another, in using it, without the knowledge of the physicians in attendance on the King. Their professional pride was, of course, justly irritated by the discovery; and one of them, Dr. Craig, having spoken “some plain words” on the matter, was ordered out of the Court, the Duke himself complaining to the King of what had been uttered.[[159]]
His Majesty, however, grew worse and worse, so that Mr. Hayes, the Court surgeon, was called out of bed to take off the plasters; a julep was then prepared by Mr. Baker, the Duke of Buckingham’s servant, for His Majesty to drink, and was administered by Buckingham himself.
These particulars were all given and sworn to by the physicians, two years afterwards, before a select committee of Parliament, when the Duke’s act was voted “transcendant presumption,” though most people thought that it was done without any ill intention.[[160]]
Whilst the poor King lay expiring, a strange and scandalous scene, according to Weldon, passed near his death-bed. Buckingham was coming into the chamber, when one of the servants greeted him with these words:--"Ah! my lord, you have undone all us poor servants, though you are so well provided for you need not care:" upon which the Duke kicked him. The man, enraged, caught hold of the foot which spurned him, and the Duke fell to the ground. On arising, he ran to the King’s bedside, and exclaimed, “Justice, for I am an abused man.” At which James is said to have fixed his eyes mournfully upon him, "as one who would have said, ‘not wrongfully.’"[[161]]
Such were the unwarrantable and malignant reports which strove to impute to Buckingham the foulest treachery and the deepest ingratitude.
The motive for such an action as that which his foes scrupled not to fasten upon him--and the imputation followed him through life--is difficult to be discovered. Buckingham had no reason to wish for the death of his benefactor. Loaded with obligations, omnipotent in the country, feared, if not respected, abroad, for what purpose he should destroy the source of all his superabundant blessings, it were impossible to divine. The sole reason that could be given was a fear lest the King should promote the Earl of Bristol, and grow weary of the Duke. Yet Bristol was even then in retirement and disfavour, and had only recently been in a sort of imprisonment. The charge, cruel and groundless, tends to justify Buckingham from many minor imputations, since those who could fabricate such an accusation were not likely to be fair interpreters of his ordinary conduct. Roger Coke, for instance, as we have seen, specifies the charge against Buckingham, but gives him no credit for the actual acquittal of Parliament, and is silent regarding the general opinion.
The confidence reposed by Charles in Buckingham affords another source of vindication. Charles had ever been a dutiful son; indulged, indeed, to excess, yet not spoiled by kindness. On the Friday before the King died, he had three hours private conversation with his son. Had James then entertained any suspicion of the Duke, he would, assuredly, have imparted it as a matter which lay most heavily on his mind, and, as a precaution to his son, James could not have controlled a grief so pungent as the suspicion that his favourite, the being, perhaps, the best beloved in the world, had dealt out to him the potion of death. Wilson, indeed, relates the circumstance of this last interview thus.
The King, according to his account, sent for the Prince out of his bed. Charles appeared before him; when James, arousing all his strength and energy, strove to address him; “but nature being exhausted, he had not strength to express his intentions.” That a conversation did, however, take place, rests on the testimony of a private letter addressed by Mr. Mead to Sir Martin Stuteville, and written shortly after the King’s death.[[162]]
There was among the Court physicians, one named Eglesham, who had acted in that capacity for ten years; and this long attendance, in a responsible post, has been thought a sufficient guarantee for his character. Upon his evidence, chiefly, the charge against Buckingham rested; Eglesham was obliged, in consequence of his allegations against the Duke, to abscond, and remain some years absent from the country. In the pamphlet which he published, he stated that the plaster was applied to the King’s heart and chest whilst the physicians in attendance were absent at dinner: the King, after this application, which was suggested and carried into execution by the Countess of Buckingham, became faint, and was in great agony. Some of the physicians, returning after dinner, and perceiving an offensive smell from the plaster, exclaimed that the King was poisoned, and then Buckingham, entering, commanded the physicians to leave the room, sent one of them a prisoner to his own chamber, and ordered another out of the Court; whilst his mother, kneeling down, cried out to the King, with a brazen face, “Justice, sire, I demand justice!” His Majesty asked her “Justice for what?” “For that which their lives are nowise sufficient to satisfy; for having said that I have poisoned your Majesty.” “Poisoned me!” cried James, and, turning round, fainted away. On the following Sunday, Buckingham entreated two physicians who attended the King to sign a document, declaring that the powder he had given to the King was a safe and good remedy; this they refused to do.
After the King’s death, the physician who had been commanded to keep within his own apartment was set at liberty, with a caution “to hold his peace,” and the others were threatened, if they kept not “good tongues in their heads.”[[163]] The public were also horrified at hearing that the King’s body and head had swelled beyond measure; but that is by no means an unusual symptom after death.
Now the value of Eglesham’s evidence rests wholly upon his personal credit. It was stated, by Sanderson the historian, that he afterwards offered to write a recantation of his pamphlet for four hundred guineas;[[164]] but although Brodie does not consider the assertion of Sanderson, who had the statement direct from Sir Balthazar Gerbier, to be a good authority, the impression which it conveys against Eglesham is confirmed from another source. There is a letter in the State Paper Office, from one Andrew Herriott to Secretary Nicholas, in which "he marvels that Nicholas and Sir James Bagg should take into their protection Edward Yeates, who was a pirate with one Captain Herriott, a poor man’s son in Kent, a mere mountebank, only companion with Dr. Eglesham, at bed and board for many years together, insomuch as they coined many double pistolets, and yet unhanged."[[165]] This letter was written in 1627, two years after the King’s death; when Eglesham, probably from a fear of justice, had fled from Court, after he had lost the protection of the King, who was by no means scrupulous as to the character of those around him.
On Eglesham, it appears, it devolved to examine the corpse, and he did not hesitate to point to Buckingham as the King’s murderer.[[166]]
He afterwards presented petitions both to the King and the Parliament, praying for vengeance on the Duke. These petitions were published in the form of a pamphlet in Latin, in 1626; and in 1640 the English translation was printed.[[167]] In this pamphlet, Eglesham stated that his motives for the publication were these: that having been patronized from his youth by the Marquis of Hamilton, the probability there was of that nobleman’s being poisoned was mentioned to him; he then stated that about the time of the Duke of Richmond’s death, a list of persons who were to be poisoned was found in King’s Street, Westminster, and brought to the Marquis of Hamilton by a relation, a daughter of Lord Oldbarre; in this list was not only Hamilton’s name specified, but also that of Dr. Eglesham “to embalm him.” Other titles were contained in the list; those of the Duke of Lennox and his brother, and the Earl of Southampton, who died at this time of a fever, being particularized. These accusations of Eglesham’s, who was doubtless only a tool in the hands of a party, were, according to Arthur Wilson, hushed up, but they served the purpose of those by whom they were originated. According to the account of those historians who have delighted to blacken Buckingham, James foresaw his doom, and hinted at the probability of treachery, when, on hearing of the Marquis of Hamilton’s death, he said--"If the branches are thus cut off, the stock cannot continue long;" and often was he heard, according to Sir Anthony Weldon, to say, in his last illness, to the Earl of Montgomery, "For God’s sake, see that I have fair play."[[168]]
Of this improbable story, there is not a hint in any of the correspondence of the day, although the circumstances of the King’s death are carefully detailed by Chamberlain and other news-writers.
After his last interview with Charles, the King declined rapidly; and his tongue was so swollen, that he could either not speak at all, or not be understood. An hour before the King’s death, the Dean of Hereford, Dr. Daniel Price, preached before the Prince and Court at Theobald’s; he prayed earnestly for the King before the sermon, and wept as he prayed and preached.[[169]]
James expired on Sunday, the 27th of March, between the hours of eleven and twelve, aged fifty-seven years and three months. Upon the examination of his remains, much internal disease was found, but no appearance of poison. His heart was unusually large, which accounted, in the opinion of Sir Symonds D’Ewes, for his being “so very considerate, so extraordinary fearful, which hindered him from attempting any great action.”[[170]]
During the Monarch’s last hours, prayers were multiplied more and more for the benefit of his soul, and certain English and Latin short sentences of devotion, to elevate his spirit to heaven “before it came thither,” were recited. James, whose consciousness and memory continued unimpaired, was so “ravished and solaced” by these religious ejaculations, that his groans of agony were stilled whilst they were uttered. “To one of these,” says the Lord Keeper Williams, “Mecum eris in Paradiso,” he replied presently, “Vox Christi”--that it was the voice and promise of Christ. Another, “Veni, Domine Jesu, veni cito,” he twice or thrice articulated. And as his end drew near, that prayer usually said at the hour of death was repeated. And no sooner had that prayer been uttered, “In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum,” than, without any convulsion or pangs, he expired,--his son and servants kneeling on one side the bed, his archbishops, bishops, and all his chaplains on the other.
Thus closed the responsible career of the first of the Stuart Kings that had ascended the throne of England.
Immediately after the King’s last sigh was breathed, a letter, not official, was written by one of his household, without a name, to the Queen of Bohemia. It is among the foreign inedited papers in the State Paper Office; and contains, which is remarkable, since it appears to be written in strict confidence, no allusion whatever to the suspicion of poisoning.[[171]]
CHAPTER IV.
1624-1625.
THE REMARKS OF SIR HENRY WOTTON UPON BUCKINGHAM’S UNINTERRUPTED PROSPERITY DURING THE REIGN OF JAMES--HIS MOST PERILOUS TIME YET TO COME--THE CHARACTER OF CHARLES DIFFICULT TO MANAGE--HIS AFFECTIONS DIVIDED--REQUEST OF THE PRIVY COUNCIL REGARDING THE LATE KING’S FUNERAL AND THE YOUNG KING’S MARRIAGE--GOOD TASTE DISPLAYED BY CHARLES IN HIS CONDUCT AT THE FUNERAL--THE INFLUENCE OF BUCKINGHAM STILL PARAMOUNT--ROGER COKE’S REMARK UPON KING JAMES’S REGRET ON OBSERVING THAT HIS SON WAS OVERRULED BY THE DUKE--THE THREE GREAT KINGDOMS OF EUROPE AT THIS PERIOD RULED BY FAVOURITES--THE MARRIAGE OF CHARLES AND HENRIETTA MARIA--MOTIVE ATTRIBUTED TO BUCKINGHAM--PRELIMINARY STEPS--LETTER FROM LORD KENSINGTON TO THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM DETAILING HIS INTERVIEW WITH THE QUEEN-MOTHER--DESCRIPTION OF THE YOUNG PRINCESS--THE DUKE PREPARES FOR HIS JOURNEY INTO FRANCE TO FETCH HOME THE BRIDE--THE EXPENSE OF HIS MISSION OBJECTED TO BY THE NATION--THE TWO AMBASSADORS DESCRIBED--RICH--LORD KENSINGTON, FIRST EARL OF HOLLAND--HIS BEAUTY OF PERSON, ADDRESS, AND EARLY FAVOUR AT THE COURT OF JAMES--HIS RESTING SOLELY UPON BUCKINGHAM--HIS MARRIAGE WITH THE DAUGHTER OF SIR WALTER COKE, THE OWNER OF THE MANOR OF KENSINGTON--THE EARL OF HOLLAND REGARDED BY SOME AS A RIVAL TO BUCKINGHAM--JAMES RELIED MORE ON THE EARL OF CARLISLE--CHARACTER OF THE TWO NOBLEMEN BY BISHOP HACKET--SUCCESSFUL INTERVIEWS ON THE PART OF LORD HOLLAND WITH MARIE DE MEDICI--HER DISPOSITION TO FAVOUR CHARLES AS A SUITOR TO HER DAUGHTER--ANECDOTE OF HENRIETTA MARIA AND OF CHARLES’S PORTRAIT--ENCOMIUMS ON HENRIETTA--THE DUCHESS DE CHEVREUSE--HER INFLUENCE OVER ANNE OF AUSTRIA--HER SPLENDOUR--RESENTMENT OF THE COUNT DE SOISSONS ON ACCOUNT OF THE MARRIAGE TREATY WITH ENGLAND--THE WILLINGNESS EVINCED BY HENRIETTA MARIA TO THE MARRIAGE--LORD KENSINGTON’S FLATTERY OF THE QUEEN-MOTHER--THEIR CONVERSATIONS ON THE SUBJECT OF THE SPANISH MATCH--THE MARRIAGE FINALLY CONCLUDED--CHARLES’S CONDUCT TO THE RECUSANTS REGARDED AS A PROOF OF HIS AVERSION TO CATHOLIC HOPES.
CHAPTER IV.
1624-1625.
It is remarked by Sir Henry Wotton, that “a long course of calm and smooth prosperity” had been enjoyed by the Duke of Buckingham under the sway of James I. “I mean,” adds that writer, “long for the ordinary life of favour, and the more notable, because it had been without any visible eclipse or wane in himself, amid divers variations in others.”
Villiers had witnessed the disgrace of Somerset, the degradation of Bacon, the execution of Ralegh, the fall of Coke, without experiencing, in his own fortunes, any symptoms of decline, or knowing more than a temporary displeasure towards himself in the mind of his sovereign.
But the more perilous part of his career was yet to come; when he had to deal with a young prince, whose affections were not undivided, but were liable to an influence foreign to that of his early friend and companion in travel. He had to contend with a character full of generous impulses, but strongly marked by obstinacy in some points, and by weakness of purpose in others. He had also to contend with the future bride of his enamoured sovereign, and that bride a woman of no ordinary determination, and of a sagacity sufficient, if not to guide her right, fully to comprehend the assailable points in the conduct of another.
It was soon remarked that the influence which had predominated during the last reign was hereafter to prevail; for Charles, as an historian remarks, had been linked to the Duke of Buckingham in his father’s life-time, “and now continued to receive him into an admired intimacy and dearness, making him partake of all his counsels and cares, and chief conductor of his affairs; an example rare in this country, to be the favourite of two succeeding princes.”[[172]]
According to another writer, James had perceived with sorrow the sway obtained by Buckingham over Charles. “Before he died,” thus writes Roger Coke, "he saw his son overruled by his favourite, against his determinate will and pleasure, and the Prince’s own honour and interest, which was a great mortification to him, and which he often complained of, but had not courage to redress."[[173]] To this influence, Coke attributed all the internal feuds, jealousies, and discords of the nation, and the fatal catastrophe which closed both the career of the Favourite and that of his royal master.
It was a singular coincidence that the three great kingdoms of Europe were governed at this time by young Kings, or rather, virtually, by their favourites. France, in the reign of Louis the XIII., was governed by Richelieu; Spain, in that of Philip the IV., by Olivares; England by Buckingham; “and this,” adds the same historian, “Europe reckoned in those times amidst its unhappy destiny.” Immediately after the funeral of the late king, the marriage of Charles to Henrietta Maria--a union fraught with evils eventually, and replete with early discomfort--was eagerly anticipated both by the Monarch and his favourite. The impatience of Charles to welcome the young Princess as his bride was ascribed to the favourable impression which her youthful loveliness had produced upon his imagination, when he had seen her himself, incognito, two years previously in passing through Paris. But when it is remembered that, after that brief interview, he had been enamoured of the loving Infanta, it will be readily supposed that the influence of persuasion was employed in advancing this ill-starred marriage. It was attributed, indeed, to the rivalry and hatred between Buckingham and Olivares, which had succeeded their professions of amity, and to the eager desire for an alliance with France, England being during the first fifteen years of Charles’s reign, as Coke expressed it, “perfectly French.”
“The Spanish wooing,” observes Miss Strickland, “certainly smoothed the way for the marriage of Charles and Henrietta. It had accustomed the English people to the idea of a Catholic Queen.”[[174]] The prepossessions of the party mainly interested in the match might indeed easily be gained over by the reputed graces and acquirements of the French Princess. Inheriting from her mother’s family a taste for the fine arts, Henrietta’s musical acquirements were considerable. Her voice was by nature so sweet and powerful, that if she had not been a queen, she might have been, as Disraeli observes, “Prima Donna of Europe.” She had learned to dance with grace, and became, even during her childhood, a frequent performer in the court ballets, which, with other displays and festivities, are said to have interrupted the education of the young Princess, and to have prevented her from receiving a solid course of instruction.
Two noblemen, one of them the peculiar favourite and creature of the Duke of Buckingham, had been sent during the previous year to negotiate the marriage. Of these the most able and least scrupulous was Henry Rich, created first Baron Kensington, and afterwards Earl of Holland, who is described as having been of a lovely and winning presence, and of gentle conversation. The younger son of a noble house, the obloquy which was attached to his birth, which was supposed to be illegitimate,[[175]] had kept Rich, in early life, humble. He had adopted the profession of arms, and made several campaigns in the Low Countries. Happening, as was the custom of English volunteers, to visit England during the winter, the youth had been introduced at the Court of James in the dawn of Buckingham’s favour. He shortly made himself acceptable to the Favourite, for he was subtle, discerning and artful. He soon, therefore, laid aside all thoughts of becoming a soldier, but took every means of endearing himself to Buckingham, carefully avoiding all suspicion that the King had any kindness for him, but appearing to rest solely upon the Favourite, “whose creature” he desired to be considered; “and he prospered,” remarks Lord Clarendon, “so well in that pretence, that the King scarcely made more haste to absolve the debt, than the Duke did to promote the other.”[[176]] Under such auspices, the Earl of Holland had risen soon to greatness.
A wealthy marriage with the heiress of Sir Walter Coke brought him, among other sources of wealth, the Manor of Kensington, and made him the owner of Holland House, built by his father-in-law in 1607, but greatly enlarged and embellished. Through the influence of Buckingham, he had not only been created Baron of Kensington, but placed about the person of the Prince of Wales, a step of much hazard, as the Favourite was, at that time, scarcely certain of the favour of Charles to himself.[[177]] Holland was sent to Spain before the Prince and the Duke, so that he had acquired an insight, not only into the politics of that court, but into the character of those with whom he had to deal, whose foibles were, as he conceived, to contribute some of the stepping-stones to his own fortune.
The Earl of Holland had had,[had,] says Bishop Hacket, “an amorous temper and a wise head, and could court it as smoothly as any man with the French ladies; and made so fortunate an account into England, after three months of his introductions, that he saw no fear of denial in the suit, nor of superiority in the articles.”[[178]] But James, wisely relying less upon the crafty arts of Holland, than upon the integrity of the Earl of Carlisle, had sent that nobleman afterwards, joining him in the same commission with Holland. “They were,” added Bishop Hacket, “peers of the best lustre in our court, elegant in their persons, habit, and language, and, by their nearness to King James, apt scholars to learn the principles of wisdom, and the fitter to improve their instructions to honour and safety.”[[179]]
The Earl of Holland soon discovered that in the queen-mother, Marie de Medici, the widow of Henry the Great, alone centred the real sway in France at that period,[[180]] unhappily for the young Prince, her son, who crouched beneath her rule and that of Richelieu. During frequent interviews at the Louvre, he gained from her a promise of assistance; this was even before the return of Charles and Buckingham from Spain, as the postscript of a letter from the Earl of Holland, lately created Earl of Kensington, dated Feb. 26, 1624, and addressed to Charles, certifies. “The obligations you have unto this young Queen (Anne of Austria) are strange, for with the same affections that the Queen, your sister, would do, she asks of you, with all the expressions that are possible of joy, for your safe return out of Spain, and told me that she durst say you were weary of being there, and so should she, though a Spaniard; though I find she gives over all thought of your alliance with her sister. Sir, you have the fortune to have respects put upon you unlooked for; for, as in Spain the Queen there did you good offices, so I find will this sweet Queen do, who said she was sorry when you saw them practise their masques, that madam, her sister[[181]] (whom she dearly loves), was seen to so much disadvantage by you; to be seen afar off and in a dark room, whose person and face hath most loveliness to be considered nearly. She made me show her your picture, the which she let the ladies see, with infinite commendations of your person, saying she hoped some good occasion might bring you hither, that they might see you like yourself.”[[182]]
“The French match,” according to another eyewitness, “went on by fits;” the Earl of Carlisle growing so weary of frivolous objections and delays that he wished to return home. “The young lady,” adds the same informant, “is forward, and this week sent one over with her picture to the Prince, and where any rubb or slip comes in the way, she grows melancholique and keeps her chamber.”[[183]] Nevertheless, even in this early stage of the business, we find a letter from King James to the Duke of Buckingham, commanding him to put the royal navy into readiness “to bring over the Princess Henrietta.”[[184]]
Shortly afterwards, Lord Kensington wrote again, giving Charles, whom he addresses as the “most complete young Prince and person in the world,” the flattering intelligence that the fair Henrietta had expressed a passionate desire to see his picture, “the shadow of that person so honoured,” yet knew not “the means,” adds the ambassador, “to compass it, it being worn about my neck; for though others, as the Queen and Princesses, would open it and consider it, which even brought forth admiration from them, yet durst not this poor young lady look any otherwise on it than afar off, whose heart was nearer it than any of the others that did most gaze upon it.” Resolved, however, to behold the portrait of her royal suitor, Henrietta desired the gentlewoman in whose house the ambassador was lodged, and who was a former servant of hers, to borrow the picture secretly, assigning as an excuse that "she could not want that curiosity, as well as others, towards a person of the Prince’s infinite reputation." As soon as she saw her emissary enter her room, the Princess retired into her cabinet, calling her in, “where,” says Holland, “she opened the picture in such haste as shewed a picture of her passion, blushing in the instant at her own guiltiness. She kept it an hour in her hands, and when she returned it she gave it many praises of your person.” “Sir,” continues the ambassador, well comprehending the gallant and delicate nature of him whom he addressed, "this is a business fit for your secrecy, as I know it shall never go farther than unto the King your father, my Lord of Buckingham, and my Lord of Carlisle’s knowledge. A tenderness in this is honourable; for I would rather die a thousand times than it should be published, since I am by this young lady trusted, that is for beauty and goodness an angel."[[185]]
Amongst the most powerful advocates of Prince Charles in the French Court was the Duchess de Chevreuse, to whose influence over Anne of Austria has been attributed her subsequent imprudent encouragement of Buckingham’s discreditable addresses.[[186]] Formerly the wife of the Duc de Luises, the favourite of Louis the Thirteenth, but married afterwards to the Duc de Chevreuse, a Prince of the House of Lorraine, the Duchess de Chevreuse became the great star of the gay and dissolute scenes in which the young Queen of France sought to bury the remembrance of a husband from whom she recoiled, and of a Queen-Mother and Minister of State whom she both disliked and feared. The Duchess, whose banishment from Court, sometime afterwards, was an event never forgiven by Anne of Austria, was one of the most splendid and lavish as well as the gayest and most fascinating women of her day. Lord Kensington, visiting her one evening at the Louvre, found her and the Duc de Chevreuse dressing themselves for a masque, and covered with such a profusion of jewels as even he never expected again to behold adorning subjects. Shortly afterwards, there entered Anne of Austria and Henrietta, the latter full of glee, of which, as many persons told the ambassador, “the cause might easily be guessed.” “My Lord,” adds the Lord Kensington, addressing the Duke of Buckingham, “I protest to God she is a lovely, sweet young creature. Her growth is not great yet, but her shape is perfect; and they all swear that her sister, the Princess of Piedmont (who is now grown tall and a goodly lady), was not taller than she is at her age.” He feared that Anne ever would be reserved towards him, not liking the “breach and disorder of the Spanish treaty;” but she had become, it was observed, “so truly French” as to wish for this affiance rather than that with her own sister, the Infanta of Spain.[[187]]
Everything therefore proceeded favourably, and Henrietta passed hours in the society of Lord Kensington, expatiating upon the Prince, and touching upon English customs. Among other things, she “fell to speaking,” says Lord Kensington, “of ladies riding on horseback, which, she said, was rare here, but frequent in England; and then expressed her delight in that exercise.”[[188]]
Lord Kensington continued, meantime, to ply the Queen Dowager with incessant flattery, and to meet her inquiries ingeniously. “I find,” he writes to the Duke of Buckingham, “the queen-mother has the only power of governing in this state. She was willing to know upon what terms stood our Spanish alliance. I told her that their delays had been so tedious that they had sometimes discouraged the King, and had so wearied the Prince and state with the dilatory proceedings in it, as that treaty, I thought, would soon have an end.” So little expectation was, at this time, entertained of an unfavourable termination of the Spanish marriage, that the Queen thought that the ambassador referred to a speedy union between Charles and the Infanta. "She strait said, ‘Of marriage?’ taking it that way. I told her I believed the contrary, and I did so her entreat, because the Spanish ambassador hath given it out, since my coming, that the alliance is fully concluded, and that my journey hath no other end than to hasten his master unto it, only to give them jealousies of me, because he, at this time, fears their dispositions stand too well prepared to desire and affect a conjunction with us."[[189]]
In another letter, also addressed to the Duke of Buckingham, it appears that Lord Kensington was allowed access at all times to the young French princess, with permission “to entertain her henceforth with a more free and amorous kind of language from the Prince;” and these and other favours were acknowledged by Kensington, as from the Duke of Buckingham, with redoubled thanks, adding that "he knew his lordship would esteem it one of the greatest happinesses that could befall him, to have any occasion offered whereby he might witness how much he adored Her Majesty’s royal virtues, and how infinitely he was her servant, ready to receive law from her, whensoever, by the least syllable of her blessed lips or pen, she should please to impose it." And then followed encomiums in the same letter from the crafty Kensington, who, as he said, solved everything as well as he could, upon the Cardinal de Richelieu, magnifying to the Queen "the Cardinal’s wisdom, his courage, his courtesy, his fidelity to the service, his affection to our business," so as to captivate the queen-mother.[[190]]
A long conversation followed regarding the voyage into Spain, upon which memorable event the queen-mother remarked “that two kings had committed in it two great errors; the one, in trusting so precious a pledge in so hazardous an enterprize; the other, in treating so brave a guest so ill.” “Indeed, I heard,” said the Queen, “that the Prince was used ill.” “So he was,” returned Lord Kensington, “but not in his entertainment, for that was as splendid as their country could afford; but in their frivolous delay, and in the unreasonable conditions which they propounded.”
“And yet, madam,” added the wily ambassador, “you here use him far worse.” "And how?" inquired the queen-mother; “In that you press,” replied he, "upon that noble and worthy Prince, who hath, with so much affection to your Majesty’s service, with so much passion to Madam, sought this alliance, the same, nay, more unreasonable conditions than the other, and what they traced out for the breaking of the match, you follow, pretending to conclude it," alluding to one of the conditions of the marriage contract. Lord Kensington then requested a personal interview with the young Princess, in order to deliver to her a message from Charles. After some little difficulty, his petition was granted; the queen-mother, relying, as she said, upon his discretion not to utter anything which it might be derogatory to her daughter’s dignity to hear. It was, of course, the endeavour of the ambassador to put the Prince’s addresses in the light of a passionate love-suit. “I obey,” said he, "the Prince’s commands in presenting to your Highness his service, not by way of compliment, but out of passion and affection, which both your outward and inward beauties, the virtues of your mind, so kindle in him that he was resolved to contribute the utmost he could to the alliance in question," with some little other “such amorous language.” Then, turning to the old ladies who stood near the Princess, he thought it fit to let them know that his Highness had the Princess’s picture, which he kept in his cabinet, “and fed his eyes many times with the sight and contemplation of it, since he could not have the happiness of beholding her person.” All which, and many other such speeches, were by the Princess, “standing by, quickly taken up, without letting any one fall to the ground.”[[191]]
Such were the addresses of Charles to Henrietta. Buckingham, to whom this account was written by Lord Kensington, must have smiled at the repetition of the same love passages that had, it was said, fascinated the heart of the Infanta.
In a subsequent letter to Charles himself, Kensington again exalted the services of the queen-mother in promoting this match, and extolled the charms of the Princess. “There is no preparation, I find, towards this business, but by her--the queen-mother; and all persuasions of amity made light that look not towards this errand; and, sir, if your intentions proceed this way, as, by many reasons of state and wisdom, there is cause now rather to press it than slacken it, you will find a lady of as much loveliness and sweetness to deserve your affection as any creature under heaven can do.” The “impressions he had of her,” he adds, “were but ordinary, but the amazement extraordinary, to find her, as I protest to God I did, the sweetest creature in France. Her growth is very little short of her age, and her wisdom infinitely beyond it. I heard her discourse with her mother and the ladies about her with extraordinary discretion and quickness. She dances, which I am a witness of, as well as ever I saw any creature. They say she sings most sweetly; I am sure she looks so.” In conclusion, Kensington mentions to His Highness that, in his letter to “my Lord of Buckingham,” he had written a more large discourse upon this interesting theme.[[192]]
Thus far had the treaty proceeded, when it was delayed by the death of King James. The marriage articles had, nevertheless, been subscribed by that Monarch on the 11th of May, and by the King of France on the 13th of August, in the previous year; and, on the 13th of March, 1625, the Earls of Carlisle and Kensington signed these articles on the part of Charles I. Private arrangements received also their signature relative to the toleration of Catholics within the British dominions.
The dispensation for the nuptials having arrived from Rome in the beginning of May, there remained no obstacle to the ceremonial of marriage. This, notwithstanding the claim preferred by the Archbishop of Paris to that honour, was performed by Cardinal Richelieu. The marriage was celebrated according to the usual rites of the Church of Rome. After the ceremony, the whole procession, including the royal personages, entered the church of Notre Dame, the Duke de Chevreuse and the Princess Henrietta Maria taking precedence of the King and Queen. Then mass was said, the English ambassadors retiring to the Bishop’s house during the recital.[[193]]
A banquet followed, and the event was commemorated by the release of criminals, "as an earnest of the King’s love and respect for his sister."[[194]] The previous arrangements for these ceremonials had been delayed by much contention with regard to precedency.[[195]] But that which gave the greatest uneasiness to the English nation was the difficulty, and, as it seemed to many, the risk attendant upon the mode of faith professed by the young Queen.
At his accession, Charles had manifested very decisively his disfavour of Catholics; he declared his intention to reform the Court, “as of unnecessary charges, so of recusant Papists.” He gave an order in his own hand-writing that no recusant Papist, of any rank whatsoever, should be presented with mourning for the late King; and he showed his zeal generally for the observance of the Church, by putting the High Sheriff of Nottingham out of his commission, for accompanying the judges on the circuit, who were attending the sermon, only to the church door, and there leaving them.[[196]] Hopes were entertained that Henrietta Maria might be converted, and several prayer-books in French were sent her by Sir George Goring for that end; but the news that a bishop and twenty-eight priests were to be included in her retinue, quickly dispelled that pleasing anticipation.[[197]]
The part which Buckingham took in the promotion of this alliance lessened, therefore, greatly the popularity which his abandonment of the Spanish marriage was beginning to ensure to him; and the announcement of the King’s intention to despatch the Favourite, in order to bring off his royal bride, was, for many reasons, highly displeasing to the country.
The chief ground of objection to the proposed journey was the expense. And here the nation separated the wishes and intentions of Charles from those of his minister. The King had, they observed, shown a disposition to economy; nay, more, he had displayed an honourable determination to pay his late father’s debts by disparking most of his remote parks and chases, which were then more numerous and extensive than any royal domains in Europe.[[198]] The lavish tendencies of Buckingham, therefore, and the heavy charges on the exchequer which had been incurred by the two ambassadors already at the French court, were not ascribed to the extravagance of the Monarch, but to the vanity and profuseness of his Minister.
The preparations, therefore, made by Buckingham for this, his last foreign mission,--for, when he again visited the continent, it was with different intentions, and under another aspect,--were viewed with vexation, by the majority of those who were not bound to silence by interest, for the great and fruitless cost of the Spanish journey was fresh in remembrance.
The Duke had, however, begun his arrangements before King James’s death: and the day[[199]] had been fixed for his departure. He did not forget that he was to appear at the most festive and splendid of all the courts of Christendom.[[200]]
An account, preserved in the Harleian Manuscripts, represents him as having, “for his body, twenty-seven rich suits, embroidered and laced with silk and silver plushes, besides one rich satten uncut velvet suit, set all over, both suite and cloak, of diamonds, the value whereof is thought to be about one thousand pounds.” Corresponding to this extravagant attire, “a feather[“a feather] made with great diamonds, a sword girdle, hatband, and spurs, all studded with diamonds,”[diamonds,”] completed the apparel and decoration which the Duke intended to wear upon his entrance into Paris. For the wedding-day he prepared another rich suit, composed of purple satin, embroidered with rich orient pearls. Over this was worn a cloak made after the Spanish fashion, and the dress was finished with all things suitable.” “His[things suitable.” “His] other suits,” adds the narrator, “are all as rich other suits,” adds the narrator, “are all as rich as invention can frame, or art fashion. His colours for the entrance are white and watchet, for the wedding, crimson and gold.”
Buckingham’s departure was preceded by the despatching of his servants with fifty geldings and nags, and twelve coach horses. His personal retinue was consistent with all this grandeur and display; it reminds one of the gorgeous pomp of Wolsey in the height of his prosperity. Twenty privy gentlemen, seven grooms of his chambers, thirty chief women, and two master cooks constituted his own peculiar servants. Three rich suits apiece were given to each of these attendants. The inferior servants for the household consisted of twenty-five second cooks, fourteen women of the second rank, seventeen grooms to attend upon those yeomen, forty-five labourers sellerers belonging to the kitchen, twelve pages, twenty-four footmen, six huntsmen, and twelve grooms. Most of these functionaries were provided with three rich suits apiece[apiece], and to complete the establishment there were six riders with one suit apiece, and eight others to attend the stable business.
His equipages consisted of three rich coaches, velvet inside, and covered externally with gold lace all over. Eight horses and six coachmen were allotted to each coach; then there was a band of musicians, eight score in number, “all richly suited.” "There were my Lord Duke’s watermen, twenty-two in number, suited in sky-coloured taffety, all gilded, with anchovys and My Lord’s arms." These were appropriated to one barge only, and the whole of this regal retinue was, says the annalist, "at his Grace’s charge."
Eight noblemen, the Marquis of Hamilton at their head, and six gentlemen of honourable families, attended the Duke. Amongst them were his brother-in-law, the Earl of Denbigh, and one of his brothers, designated simply as “Mr. Villars.” When to these there were added twenty-four knights, of great worth, all of “whom carried six or seven pages a piece, and as many footmen,” the train amounted to six or seven hundred. Nor were those all. “When,” says the writer of this account, “the list is perfect, there will appear many more than I have named.”[[201]]
The nuptials for which some of this grand preparation was made, had, however, taken place before it was Buckingham’s fate to cross the Channel.
The day after King James’s funeral was to have witnessed the departure of Buckingham for France. This was on the eighth of May, and the future Queen was expected to be at Dover by the eleventh.[[202]] But the Duke did not arrive in Paris until the twenty-fourth; nor did Henrietta Maria land on the shores of England until the twenty-second of June.[[203]]
During the seven days that Buckingham remained at the French court, an uninterrupted succession of feasting and rejoicing occupied his time; whilst his imagination was engrossed by an object to which no man who had not been brought to the highest point of presumption by a career of prosperity would have ventured to aspire.
The painful and degrading position in which Anne of Austria was placed, under the sway of her mother-in-law, destitute as the young Queen was of all good advisers, and exposed by her youth and her attractions to the snares of the designing, in the vitiated sphere in which she moved, has been already referred to. Some additional traits of the appearance and character of a Princess whose fascinations produced a powerful effect upon Buckingham may not be deemed impertinent.
She was not then a mother; and the importance of giving birth to a future monarch of France was not permitted to her until thirteen years afterwards.[[204]] By her attendant and partizan, Madame de Motteville, a character so beautiful has been given of the Queen Consort of Louis the Thirteenth, as would inspire compassion for the sacrifice which bound her at the altar to a husband wholly unworthy of a wife so graceful and so virtuous, could an entire credence be assigned to that partial testimony.
According to her favourite, Anne had imbibed from her mother, Margaret of Austria, a lively piety and a love of virtue which were never quenched, even during her passage through the manifold temptations of her existence. She was replete, according to the same authoress, with goodness and with justice; she was neither suspicious, nor easily led wrong by persuasion; and where endeavours were made to prejudice her against any one whom she esteemed, her resistance showed the strength of her attachment. During her regency, when under the dominion of Cardinal Mazarin, that minister was often known to say that her devotion and rectitude of mind caused him embarrassment; “for she had,” observes Madame de Motteville, “sufficient aptitude of mind to know well what was right, and had she been endowed with strength of character adequate always to defend the truth, the pen of the historian could not have bestowed upon her any praise too high; but she distrusted herself, and her humility induced her to consider herself as incapable of conducting the government of the State.”[[205]]
This combination of good intention with weakness of purpose, these feminine requisites of piety and gentleness, added to her natural sagacity, rendered Anne of Austria one of the most engaging of all those lofty personages who figured in a capital of which one of its monarchs observed, comparing it to a head, “that it was so spiritually gross and full of disease as to require, from time to time, bleeding, in order to secure the repose of its members.”[[206]]
During the early years of this young Queen’s married life, she had been addressed in the language of passion by several successive suitors. “Notwithstanding the respect which her Majesty inspires,” writes Madame Motteville, “her loveliness did not fail to touch the hearts of certain individuals, who ventured to manifest their passion.”[[207]]
Amongst these, first in the list was the Duc de Montmorenci, distinguished for bravery, for a handsome person, and for his great magnificence in his mode of living. This nobleman had been enamoured of the Marquise de Sable, the reigning beauty at the French Court when Anne of Austria first came to grace it; but her coldness and self-esteem chilled the ardour of her admirer. Platonic attachments, the fashion for which was first introduced by Catherine de Medici from Italy, were still in vogue; to this fashion, more fatal, perhaps, to virtue than the more direct blandishments of vice, Madame de Sable inclined. The alliance between Spain and France had introduced many of the Spanish authors to the lettered portion of the French community, and the gallantry of that nation, imbibed from the Moors, appeared to correspond with the delicate sentiments of the Italians. It did not, however, change man’s nature, nor act as an antidote to his fickleness. The Duc de Montmorenci beheld Anne of Austria, and the Marquise was forgotten. Proud and yet humble, that lady, upon the first surmise of his alteration of sentiment, withdrew from the contest with one so much more elevated than herself, and refused to see him again. Nevertheless, Montmorenci found little favour in the heart of Anne of Austria, who could never believe that his passion for her was either sincere or ardent; and who regarded, in after times, the petty gratification which it gave her as one of the symptoms of flattered vanity.
The Duc de Bellegarde, old, and a veteran in the court, for he had been the favourite of two preceding monarchs, was the next who sought to occupy the heart in which there existed a void; for Anne’s indifference to her royal consort daily increased. The love-suit which this ancient nobleman presumed to address to the Queen was received by her as incense to her vanity which could not, possibly, injure her reputation; and, although she listened to his avowal of admiration at first with resentment, she soon treated it as a jest; and even the King, although disposed to be jealous, entered into the pleasantry which the devotion expressed in the lisping accents of age naturally induced.
But a far more dangerous suitor lurked about the young Queen’s haunts, who, watching her from the retired recesses of the court, at once loved and persecuted her. This was the Cardinal de Richelieu.
This extraordinary character, acknowledged even by his enemies to have been the greatest man of his time, had manifested the mad attachment with which Anne of Austria inspired, in a singular manner, this astute politician. To her confidante, Madame Motteville, the Queen had imparted a strange incident in the life of this minister, whose thoughts, designs, and affections appeared to be centered in public affairs, or, as he termed it, in the good of the state.[[208]]
One day, when, with ill-concealed disgust, Anne was listening to the conversation of the Cardinal, she was surprised by a sudden burst of hitherto subdued feelings from that crafty churchman; and she heard, with what mingled consternation and anger may be conceived, expressions of a passionate attachment. As she was about to reply in terms of indignation and contempt, the King entered the closet in which she and the Cardinal were conversing, and a sudden check was given to the subject, never to be resumed; for Anne dared not to recur to it, lest she should flatter the wishes of the Cardinal by showing her remembrance of his addresses; she would only reply to him by showing tacitly her hatred, and by her incessant refusal to accept either his proffered friendship, or his offer of mediation between her and the King. It was in vain she perceived that her conduct aggravated the bad understanding between her and her royal partner; in vain she knew that whilst the presumptuous love of the Cardinal preponderated in his breast, she yet drove him to extremities by her abhorrence. He demonstrated “his affection,” by persecutions which ceased only with his existence; for he hoped, possibly, if he could not succeed by gentle means, to prevail over her contempt by fear.
It was at this juncture, whilst Anne, estranged from her consort, and pursued, watched, and loved by the Cardinal de Richelieu, most truly required a friend and monitor, that Buckingham arrived to throw fresh temptations and difficulties in her path. Unhappily her favourite, Madame de Chevreuse, afterwards banished from Court by Richelieu, was not a woman of prudence, and, perhaps, scarcely of virtue. By Madame de Motteville, the Duchesse de Chevreuse is regarded as the true source of all Anne’s errors and misfortunes. Anne loved her, as those to whom the natural channels of affection are forbidden, or poisoned, love the soothing and humble. She never forgave Richelieu the disgrace of her favourite, nor even when she knew that it was the wish of her husband that Madame de Chevreuse should be sent away, could she submit to his wishes. Anne, in the commencement of her career, had shown much disgust to those who were termed “les dames gallantes,” and had appeared, to those who knew her best, to possess the most rigid notions of female decorum. But the society of Madame de Chevreuse had broken down that barrier in which the young and fascinating Queen found her best protection. Even after sundry imprudencies, those who were cognizant of her actions accorded to her the credit of a perfect purity of life, and bestowed upon her all the esteem which is due to the most undoubted virtue. In after life, the frankness and simplicity with which she spoke of these early passages of her life showed that no evil was attached to them, and that to vanity alone were to be attributed those rash adventures in which her reputation incurred so severe an ordeal. How far, on a review of the circumstances of her career, Anne may be acquitted of a want of feminine modesty, of a prudence the representative of virtue, must be a question for the moralist. Her character must, however, be measured in some respects by the standard of the age in which she lived.
Unhappily for Anne, at the time that Buckingham arrived in Paris, Madame de Chevreuse was passionately in love with the handsome and dangerous Earl of Holland, and made no secret of that disgraceful attachment.[[209]] It was, therefore, her endeavour to promote everything that could produce a continued intercourse between France and this country.
Of the first meeting between Anne of Austria and Buckingham, during his embassy, there is no account. We can suppose it to have occurred under circumstances of dazzling splendour, to which many considerations, not guessed by the public, lent a strong interest. The suppressed and dangerous admiration of Richelieu might not be penetrated by Buckingham; but it was notorious that whilst Louis XIII. distrusted, and apparently neglected, his Queen, he was really disposed to respect and cherish her; and was known to have confessed to a confidant one day, in speaking of the Queen’s personal attractions, that “he dared not show her any tenderness, lest he should displease the queen-mother and the Cardinal, whose aid and counsels were much more essential to him than the affection of his wife.”[[210]]
Thus situated--bound to a husband of whose indifference she was by no means certain, but who, she well knew, had not the mental strength to cope with the Cardinal, and to avow any kindness for her--admired at a distance by the courtiers--passionately loved and fiercely persecuted by Richelieu, Anne must have presented a new source of interest and curiosity to Buckingham; and the course of her destiny, hard as it might seem, would give fuel to his presumption.
The dignity which Anne could assume on state occasions has been insisted upon by Madame de Motteville, when, speaking of her demeanour during the regency, she describes her then as equally fair with the fairest of the Court. A vast quantity of brown hair, powdered and frizzed, indeed, and worn in curls, set off a complexion not so delicate in colour as distinguished for the softness and smoothness of the skin. She disfigured herself, after the Spanish fashion, by wearing rouge; and one defect was striking--her nose was thick and large. Her eyes varied in colour from a perfect blue to green; and her glance was full of sweetness and expression. Her mouth was small, and her lips crimson, and the sweetest smiles played upon her countenance. The form of her face and forehead was admirable; her arms and hands were celebrated for their wonderful symmetry and for their whiteness, being, without exaggeration, white as snow. The delicacy of her habits amounted almost to monomania. “Madam,” observed Cardinal Mazarin to her, “should you incur everlasting condemnation, your punishment would be to sleep in sheets of Holland cloth.”[[211]] Her deportment in after life, during the minority of her son, Louis XIV., and her fortitude during the agonies of her last fatal illness, showed that the gentle and attractive Queen possessed a strong natural capacity, which circumstances eventually called into action.
Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal de Richelieu, the all-powerful minister of Louis XIII., was now in the height of his power; he reigned, in short, under the name of the King. In an unbounded, and perhaps entirely selfish ambition, and in the full fruition of their hopes, Buckingham and Richelieu may be said to have resembled each other. In the love of pomp and display, they were alike. The superb attire, the costly retinue of the English peer, were puerile attempts compared with the ordinary household of Richelieu. His magnificent palace in the Rue St. Honoré, known, during his time, under the name of the Palais Cardinal, and, since the year 1636, as the Palais Royal, recalled the glories of York House at Whitehall, in the days of Wolsey, with all the added refinements of a later period. There, in the chapel, might be seen ornaments decorated with gold, studded with diamonds. The most splendid tapestry, the most uncommon articles of virtu, pictures of rare value, busts and statues, adorned the palace in which Richelieu entertained the King and the Court in stately revels. There, on one occasion, was enacted a play, drawn from the history of the Duke of Buckingham, when all the French prelates were invited, and when the Bishop de Chartres, formerly confessor to Richelieu, arranged the seats, and finally, clad in velvet, presented himself on the stage, at the head of a train of twenty-four pages, carrying the collation which was offered to the company.
At the Palais Cardinal, Buckingham learned fresh lessons of an ostentatious display, wholly inconsistent with the condition of a subject. The Cardinal’s body-guard, assigned to him by the King, equalled in number that of his royal master; and the horse soldiers had a table appropriated to him in his hall; of these, the Cardinal had the power of appointment and dismissal. His ordinary personal attendants in his own house were composed of thirty-six pages, selected from noble families, and reared in his house under the tutorage of able masters--a system again recalling the household of Wolsey. When he travelled, the Cardinal was followed by a train consisting of his secretaries, his physicians, and his confessor; by eight carriages, with four horses each; and by eighty baggage mules. His guard escorted him, and his pages; his band, composed of musicians of the first eminence, and a numerous body of domestic servants, followed the litter in which the great Richelieu, delicate from his birth, and infirm in health, was carried; the walls of the towns through which he passed being levelled to receive this princely procession, when the gates happened to be too narrow to permit its entrance. Often, indeed, it was found necessary to widen the roads.[[212]]
But, whilst Buckingham might read in the extreme expenditure of the Cardinal a plea for his own magnificence, there was much to be learned in that palace which Richelieu, like Wolsey, afterwards bestowed on the monarch to whom he owed his wealth. There, the minister of Charles might see a systematic regulation of expense; generosity without prodigality, and almost unlimited alms-giving. Abhorring solicitation, which always defeated its own aim, absolute and irascible, the Cardinal, nevertheless, loved to benefit those who served him. No hasty words escaped from him for which he was not eager to atone; and, whilst his principle was that men are only to be maintained in their duty by severity, his nature was placable to his inferiors, although proud and unrelenting to his political enemies.
Another lesson might Buckingham derive in the crowded salons> of the Palais Cardinal--the patronage of letters. Richelieu admitted to intimacy the most eminent authors of the day; and so much did he enjoy their society, that his chief physician, Monsieur Caton, used to say to him, when prescribing for the Cardinal:--"Sir, we will do all that is in our power; but all my remedies will be useless, if you do not add to them a drachm of Boisrobert;"--Boisrobert being a writer whose works are long since forgotten, but whose powers of telling well the news of the court and city used to charm the Cardinal. In the conversation of men of letters, Richelieu found, indeed, his greatest solace; and nothing gave him greater satisfaction than a victory argument, or a success in repartée.[[213]] In the Chamber of the Palais Cardinal might be heard poets reciting their unpublished verses, or going away richly paid and praised when their productions were approved. “Une Salle de Spectacle,” as it was called, was erected by the Cardinal in his palace, and five favourite authors, Corneille, Boisrobert, Colletet, D’Estoile, and Robron, were employed to work out into a dramatic form the poetical conceptions of their patron. Neither was this great minister content with lavishing his individual bounty upon men of genius; he formed the plan of the Academy of Paris, an institution which was to give laws to literature, and the notion of which originated in a private society of distinguished men who met together to converse, and to communicate their works. In this extension of his powerful aid to letters, Richelieu found an obstacle which Buckingham was not destined to encounter. Louis XIII. hated every species of study, and despised that which he had not intellect to appreciate. Charles, on the other hand, was intelligent and inquiring. His education had been carefully attended to; and his taste for the arts introduced a degree of refinement into English society such as this country had never before beheld.
It may easily be conceived with what intense curiosity, mingled, perhaps, with a spirit of rivalry, Buckingham must have regarded his introduction to Richelieu, and how extended a notion of the power of a minister he must have received during his notable, though brief, sojourn in France.
The dignity and courtesy of Richelieu, in his ordinary deportment, might, perhaps, have supplied a hint to the haughty and uncertain Buckingham, naturally imperious and lofty. The Cardinal knew well the value of affability. He had a most flexible countenance, every expression of which he could control; and even, according to Marie de Medici, command tears at pleasure. One moment he appeared to be sinking away in extreme pain; the next found him gay, gallant, and active. His manners were most caressing to those whom he designed to win over; but to all whom he met, his reception was full of apparent kindness--his extended hand preceded words full of courtesy, and his ready smile fascinated those who approached him.
But beneath this exterior there lay the most relentless spirit of vengeance towards all whom he regarded as enemies, and the smile and the ready dissimulation were fearful to many who were conscious of having fallen under his displeasure.
Richelieu, in his morals, gave occasion to much scandal. Beneath an assiduous exercise of some of the external forms of religion, he was supposed to conceal latitudinarian principles, and his private life was stained by great irregularities. The decencies of society were, nevertheless, maintained by the Cardinal, who was sensible that nothing lowers a man so much in public esteem as to be the slave of his passions; yet, since there scarcely existed, in his time, a man of more accommodating principles than the Cardinal in public life, so there were few, it was secretly believed, who had stronger passions to curb, or to indulge, than the most reverend celibate of the Château of Rueil--that wonderful and splendid retreat, of which no traces are left to mark the alleys wherein the festive throngs delighted, nor to recall the prisons in the park, to which the all-powerful Cardinal consigned his enemies.