The dangerous man secured, the measures for the divorce commenced. The countess petitioned for it, alleging serious grounds, and her father signed the petition. But no one was more forward and determined in carrying this disgraceful transaction through than the king. He appointed without delay a commission to try the cause. The commissioners were Abbot the Archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops of London, Winchester, Rochester, Ely, Lichfield, and Coventry; Sir Julius Cæsar, Sir John Barry, Sir Daniel Dunne, Sir John Bennet, Francis James and Thomas Edwards, doctors of civil law.
The Earl of Essex was only too glad to be rid of his virago, and consented to anything, even to the most humiliating imputations on his manhood. The real causes of the vile business were sufficiently notorious; and the Primate, though at the head of the commission, revolting at being made a tool for the accommodation of aristocratic licentiousness, strongly opposed the divorce. But James took him sharply to task, telling him in so many words that it was his duty to resign his own judgment and follow that of his sovereign. "If," he wrote, in a most imperative letter, "a judge should have a prejudice in respect of persons, it should become you rather to have a kind of implicit faith in my judgment, as well in respect of some skill I have in divinity, as also that I hope no honest man doubts the uprightness of my conscience; and the best thankfulness that you, that are so far my creature, can use towards me, is to reverence and follow my judgment and not to contradict it, except where you may demonstrate unto me that I am mistaken or wrong informed."
But James did not content himself with recommending implicit obedience; he influenced and controlled the proceedings, and intimidated the judges by all means in his power. His zeal was quickened by the receipt of twenty-five thousand pounds from Rochester, at a moment when his officers were at their wits' end for money. But do what he would, he could not bend the integrity of the Primate, who to the last resisted the divorce, and three of the doctors of law supported him. The Bishop of London also voted with him, but the rest of the bishops and civil lawyers voted for the divorce, which was carried by seven voices against five. The Bishop of Winchester showed himself so servile on the occasion, that the king knighted his son, who was ever afterwards dubbed by the people Sir Nullity Bilson. The other judges and bishops who voted according to his wish were also rewarded by James, and the sentence of divorce was pronounced on the 25th of September.
The public at large, to whom the facts of the case were no secret, condemned the whole proceeding in no measured terms, and this reprobation rose into actual horror when the news oozed out that, the very day before the verdict for the divorce, Sir Thomas Overbury was found dead in his cell in the Tower. He was buried in all haste, and with profound secrecy, the officials diligently propagating a report that he died of a loathsome and contagious disease: but the public entertained no doubt of his perishing of poison.
In the face of all this, James proceeded immediately to raise Rochester to the dignity of Earl of Somerset, that he might equal in rank, if not in iniquity, the murder-breathing countess. The marriage, moreover, was celebrated on the 26th of December, at the royal chapel in Whitehall, the king making it his own affair, being himself present, with Prince Charles, and a great crowd of bishops and noblemen. The queen kept herself commendably apart from the whole infamous business. The blood-stained bride, with a shamelessness unparalleled, appeared with her hair hanging loose on her shoulders, in the character of a virgin! Montague, Bishop of Bath and Wells, married the guilty couple, and Mountain, Dean of Westminster, pronounced a blessing upon them. Then the king gave a series of banquets and masques at Whitehall in honour of them, which continued till the 4th of January, 1614; and, as if all classes of public men were eager to disgrace themselves by sanctioning this Court wickedness, the Lord Mayor and aldermen invited the adulterous couple to a splendid banquet, given at the Merchant Taylors' Hall, on the same 4th of January, whither they were accompanied by the Duke of Lennox, the Earl of Northampton, Lord Privy Seal, the Lord Chamberlain, and the Earls of Worcester, Pembroke, and Montgomery.
From his gaieties James was called, by his eternal want of money, to face his Parliament. Since 1611, when he dissolved his last House of Commons, he had endeavoured to carry on by any illegal and unconstitutional means that the people would submit to. But the Dutch did not keep their engagement to pay off their debt of upwards of eight hundred thousand pounds by annual instalments of sixty thousand pounds, and James was too pusillanimous to adopt the means which a Cromwell would have done. He threatened war, and threatened only; and therefore became despised by his debtors, who thenceforth made no movement towards paying. Disappointed here, the only alternative was to fleece his own subjects. He resorted to the scandalous measure of selling all the places of honour and trust, and all kinds of dignities, for money. He sold several peerages for high prices. Every place under Government was to be had only for cash; nor did the proceeds of this infamous traffic always reach the king's hands, but fell into those of his minion Somerset, and the Howards, the relatives of Somerset's wife. The wicked Countess of Somerset, and Lady Suffolk, her mother, got four thousand pounds as a bribe from Sir Fulke Greville, for the Chancellorship of the Exchequer. The example thus set at Court ran through all departments, and the whole management of the country was given up to corruption and venality. So little of these proceeds of iniquity came to the king, and that little was so foolishly and recklessly given away amongst his hangers-on, that the salaries of all who were not in a situation to be bribed, and thus pay themselves, remained unpaid. In this difficulty, James hit upon a notable scheme, and originated a new order of aristocracy—namely baronets, or little barons, a link between the barons, or lowest peers, and knights. These new titles he sold at one thousand pounds apiece. Sir Nicholas Bacon was the first created for England, and Sir Francis Blundell for Ireland, in 1620. Baronets for Nova Scotia, of whom Sir Robert Gordon was first, were added by Charles I., to extend this source of income, in 1625.
THE BANQUETING HOUSE, WHITEHALL.
James was now compelled to summon a Parliament, and Sir Francis Bacon concocted a scheme for managing the House of Commons. Bacon's plan was this, and he had regularly weighed it and drawn it up for the king's consideration: that, according to a principle afterwards made a maxim by Sir Robert Walpole, every one had his price; that the leaders of the late opposition, Neville, Yelverton, Hyde, Crew, and Sir Dudley Digges, were chiefly lawyers, and there were plenty of means, by prospects of promotion skilfully applied, to bring them zealously to the king's side; that they being once brought over, he had the talking, persuasive power of the House; and that much might be done beforehand also with the city men and country gentlemen, and where any obstinate man appeared, means might be used to keep him out. At the same time Bacon assured James that it was necessary to make a show of some concession. It was suggested that as he had promised to abolish abuses, he should at least give up some of the lesser ones; and on his accepting this plan, he and his friends were ready to "undertake" to manage Parliament, and to guarantee his Majesty plenty of money and little trouble, provided James would only avoid irritating speeches.
James's Parliament met on the 5th of April 1614, and he endeavoured to put in practice the Machiavellian instructions of Bacon by delivering a very popular speech—popular because it promised plentiful persecution for religion, which was the spirit of the day, and a liberal removal of grievances; but, as usual, first of all he placed the supply of his necessities. But the Undertakers had not succeeded in their first out-of-door efforts; there was a sturdy assemblage of popular members, and such faces appeared amongst them, according to a writer of the time, as made the Court to droop. The House of Commons at once reversed the topics of the king's speech, placing the grievances in the front and making the supplies conditional on their abolition. The royal party which the Undertakers had got together, found their pleas for slavish obedience drowned in a storm of angry demand for justice; and the House demanded a conference with the Lords on the subject. The Lords asked the opinion of the judges on the question, and especially that of Coke the Lord Chief Justice. Coke, who remembered the endeavours of Bacon to supplant him in the good graces of the king, and who hoped for no higher preferment, took the opportunity to throw cold water on the conference, asserting that the judges, after consultation among themselves, felt that they were bound by their office to decide between the king and his subjects, and were therefore equally bound not to appear as disputants or partisans on either side. The Lords on hearing this declined the conference, and Neale, who had recently been transferred from the see of Lichfield to the wealthier one of Lincoln, for his services in procuring the Countess of Essex's divorce, rose and uttered a most unbecoming tirade against the Commons, charging them with striking at the root of the royal prerogative, and anticipating that if admitted to a conference, they might use very disloyal and seditious language.