II.
Had our old book but a tongue, what tales it might tell of the life after life which has passed before it!
Since the date of its printing, 1614, twelve sovereigns have worn the English crown; for in that year James I. was upon the throne of his mother's enemy. Eleven years before, when a messenger was sent to him in Scotland with an announcement of the death of Elizabeth and his own accession, the tidings found him so poor that he was obliged to apply to the English secretary, Cecil, for money to pay his expenses to London. His wants multiplied rapidly. From his first stopping-place he sent a courier forward to demand the crown jewels for his wife; and a little further on another messenger was dispatched for coaches, horses, litters, and, "above all, a chamberlain much needed."
This journey of James was a very unique affair. Honors were scattered so lavishingly that knighthood was to be had for the asking; and a little pasquinade appeared in print, advertising itself—A Help to Memorie in learning Names of English Nobility.
"At Newark-upon-Trent (says Stow) was taken a cut-purse, a pilfering thief all gentleman outside, with good stores of gold about him, who confessed he had followed the court from Berwick; and the king, hearing of this gallant, did direct a warrant to have him hanged immediately."[44]
And so began at the very outset the spirit which said afterward, "Do I make the lords? Do I make the bishops? Then God's grace—I make what likes me of law and gospel!" So outspoke the king; who is described by those who went to meet him as "ill-favored in appearance, slovenly, dirty, and wearing always a wadded dagger-proof doublet."
These eleven years of his reign had been fruitful in troubles of all kinds. The death of his son Henry, and the alleged, but never proven schemes of Lady Arabella Stuart to gain the throne, made a portion of them; and all were aggravated by that spectre, conjured up by his reckless extravagance, and which haunted him to the last moment of his life—an empty purse. When his daughter Elizabeth was married to the Palatine of Bohemia, the fireworks alone of London cost seven thousand pounds; and when my Lord Hargrave accompanied the bride to the Rhine and brought back a bill of thirty thousand pounds, the king, having neither gold nor silver to pay with, gave him a grant to coin base farthings in brass.
King James, in a book which he wrote on Sports, advocates all active exercises, and one of his own greatest pleasures had always been hunting. When so engaged, every thing else was forgotten, and hence arose a grievance by no means trifling to his English subjects—he and his courtiers, his companions in the chase, not unfrequently quartered themselves in some district where game abounded, until the provisions of the locality were absolutely exhausted. There is a story told of him that, while hunting at Royston, his favorite hound Jowler was missed one day, and the next he reappeared with a paper fastened on his neck, upon which was written—
"Good Mister Jowler, I pray you speak to the king, for he hears you every day, (and he doth not so us,) that it will please his majesty to go back to London, for all our provision is spent." ... "however, (says the courtier,) from Royston he means to go to New-Market, and from thence to Thetford."[45]
How much further he might have been led to hunt, is unknown; for there Lord Hay, who loved hounds, and horns also, promised no more to importune his majesty, and his more sedate counsellors succeeded in getting him back to business. In the mean time, in the more weighty matters of politics and religion, where the ambitious nobles of two countries intrigued and plotted for power over a monarch easily imposed upon, discord and contention reigned, until in 1614 they seem to have reached their height.
And so stood the world, old book! into which thou wert launched. Guy Fawkes and his crew had been swept from the earth; but in the Tower of London this year lay a more noble company, accused of the same crime—treason. There was Earl Grey, and Lord Cobham, and Sir Walter Raleigh, besides some others. These three had been tried, convicted, sentenced to die, and taken to the scaffold; and at the last moment reprieved and committed to the Tower. At the last moment it was, and it came near being a minute too late; for James wrote his order in such haste that he forgot to sign it, and the messenger was called back; then when this one man on horseback reached the place of execution, the great crowd gathered there prevented his being seen or heard for a long time, and the axe was just ready for the fatal stroke. On what a chance hung three lives! But what availed their added years? Earl Grey is dying now in that Tower; and Lord Cobham, never very strong in intellect, has grown weaker still in captivity; and so, after a little time, he is suffered to wander out; and he goes to a miserable hovel in the Minories, and climbs a ladder to a loft, and lies down on straw—to die of very destitution.
Three years hence King James will want money even more than he does now; and he will call Sir Walter Raleigh from his cell, and place him at the head of a fleet; for Sir Walter—who has been to the new world in years long gone by—insinuates that there gold is to be had for the digging. He fails to get it, though; and on his return to England, he is seized, and, with only the shadow of a just trial, executed; partly on the old sentence, but more to please the Spaniards, whom he came in conflict with abroad.
Another life is this year pining itself away in that Tower—the Lady Arabella Stuart; a woman descended from royalty, Henry VII., in the same degree as King James himself, and therefore to be feared. Many years ago charges of conspiracy against the government were brought against her, and she was placed in confinement. She contrived to escape, and with her husband, Lord Seymour, attempted to reach France. By some mischance they were separated in their flight; he reached the coast of Flanders in safety, but the little vessel in which she had embarked was pursued, overtaken, and the unhappy fugitive compelled to return. Love and hope bore her up bravely for a time; but she is sinking at last, and it is recorded that September 27th, 1615, she died there.
High above all this misery merry notes were heard; for in 1614, was a grand marriage and banqueting such as London had not seen—no, not even at the bridal of the king's own daughter. The story is sadder than any fiction, a "sad o'er true tale"—as follows:
Some years before this, the Lady Frances Howard, daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, beautiful and accomplished, though still a mere child of thirteen years, was married to the Earl of Essex, a few years older. The ceremony was merely to secure the alliance; for the young countess returned to her home and her embroidery, and the earl to the university. Four years after, he went to claim the bride whose image had doubtless oftentimes stolen between him and his books; "but (says the chronicle) his joy was overcast: he found her cold and contemptuous, and altogether averse to him."
A change had come over the lady. She had met her evil genius in the unprincipled favorite of King James, the Lord Rochester, who on his side was vain of his conquest. At this point Lady Frances is an object of pity; for she was the victim of a usage of courts which makes and mars the most solemn of all contracts without the least regard to individual bias; a usage which is responsible for some of the blackest crimes of history; but, O woman! from thy first steps downward how rapid is the descent; wandering thoughts, folly—crime! Such was the story of Lady Frances. Pity changes to horror at her subsequent career, and the unscrupulous vindictiveness which she displayed toward all those who strove to arrest her course. Most conspicuous among such was Sir Thomas Overbury, the bosom friend of Lord Rochester himself. He had more than once aided their meetings, and—so said gossip—had even penned the epistles which won her; but he became alarmed at the length to which their ventures were carried; and when the next step proposed was a divorce from the Earl Essex, he gave Rochester much good advice and solemn warning that he withdrew his aid in future. This was reported to the countess, and his doom was sealed. She failed in several attempts to involve him in individual disputes, whereby, as she hoped, a duel might have closed his life; she failed in having him sent in a public capacity abroad; she succeeded, however, in having him implicated in disloyalty and committed to the Tower, when shortly after he suddenly died. A divorce was now sought on some trifling pretext; and as no remonstrance was offered by Earl Essex, it was soon obtained; and in order that she might not lose rank, King James created Rochester Earl of Somerset.
And now, with nothing to mar their felicities, London was ablaze with bonfires over their marriage celebration.
"The glorious days were seconded by as glorious nights, when masques and dances had a continual motion; the king affecting such high-flying festivities and banqueting as might wrap up his spirit and keep it from earthly things.... Upon the Wednesday following was another grand masque, got up by the gentlemen of Prince Charles's household; and this so far surpassed the other, that the king caused it to be acted again. Then, January 4th, the bride and bridegroom with a crowd of nobles were invited to a treat in the city, where my lord mayor and aldermen entertained them in scarlet gowns. After supper was a wassail, a play, and a dance.... At three in the morning, they returned to Whitehall. On Twelfth-day the gentlemen of Grey's Inn invited the bride and bridegroom to masque." (Roger Coke.)
A brilliant triumph, soon to meet with a dark reverse. Scarcely a year had passed, when a new candidate for the king's favor appeared in Villiers, afterward created Duke of Buckingham; and the weak monarch, readily attracted by a new face, was very soon anxious to rid himself of Somerset. Enemies of the still beautiful countess were not slow to avail themselves of the royal mood; nor was it difficult to find in her questionable career a pretext for suspicion. With consent of the king, they were conjointly accused of having caused the death of Sir Thomas Overbury by poison, and sent to the Tower. It is recorded that Earl Somerset was hunting with the king at Royston, and actually sitting beside him when the warrant was served; and when he appealed to his royal master to forbid the indignity, King James only answered,
"An' ye must go, mon; for if Coke sent for me, I must go."
After the examination of some three hundred witnesses, Sir Edward Coke reported that the countess had used unlawful arts to separate herself from Earl Essex, and to win the love of Rochester, and that they had together plotted the death of Sir Thomas Overbury. Some of the inferior actors in the tragedy were condemned and executed; among them Mrs. Turner, who had in former years been governess to the countess, and who had once persuaded her to consult a wizard or fortune-teller—from whence came the charge of "unlawful arts." The unhappy principals were repeatedly questioned, and exhorted to confess; but with no avail. The countess at times made some admissions, but none which implicated the earl or seriously convicted herself; and we are fain to believe they arose rather from her unmitigated misery, and the harassing importunities of her judges, than from conscious guilt. They were at length restored to liberty—at least to the liberty of banishment from court; liberty to return to their country-seat and remain there; and there, a writer of that day tells us, "they lived in the same house many years without exchanging a word with each other."
King James seems to have devoted no small portion of his time to advancing the interests of Cupid—if love it could be called, where love there was none. Sir Edward Coke had himself an only daughter, whom the king assigned to Viscount Purbeck, brother of the Duke of Buckingham. The wife of Coke, Lady Hatton, was a very Xantippe; and the eloquence of the great jurist, which could sway multitudes, and check or change the course of political events, was totally powerless within the walls of his own castle. Lady Hatton wisely opposed this match, to which her daughter was averse; but in this case the king as well as Sir Edward had decided, and for once she was obliged to yield; "the king doing the matter (says an old writer) as if the safety of the nation depended on its completion." Lady Hatton had one retaliation within her reach, and she took it; she gave orders that at the wedding "neither Sir Edward Coke nor any of his servants be admitted."[46]
How fared at last the hapless Lady Purbeck, the heiress of thousands and thousands? She had the misery to see the husband not of her choice become in a short time hopelessly insane; while his brother, under pretence of looking after his affairs, left her, at times, almost penniless. Her letters to this unprincipled miscreant, written oftentimes under bodily as well as mental suffering, are truly touching. In one of them she says,
"Think not to send me again to my mother. I will beg my bread in the streets, to all your dishonors, rather than more trouble my friends." (Letter in the Caballa.)
Such were the tales of wretchedness within the precincts of a court.