THE FLEET PRISON.
In foreign affairs James was placed in particular difficulties. The two objects which he had more than all others at heart, were the marriage of his son, the Prince of Wales, to the Infanta of Spain, and the restoration of the Elector Palatine to his hereditary possessions. He had tried too late to secure the Princess Christine of France. She was already affianced to Philip of Spain. He had since negotiated for the hand of Donna Maria of Spain. If he could accomplish this marriage, he should be at once able to secure by it his other grand desire—the restoration of the Palsgrave,—for Spain would then be induced to withdraw its forces from the assistance of the Emperor against the Palatinate, and to add its earnest co-operation in arranging for the Palsgrave's re-instatement.
But against this project of marriage—the stepping-stone to these measures in Germany—stood the aversion of the people in England to a match with so pronouncedly Catholic a country as Spain, and so bigoted a family as that of its Sovereign. Just as adverse were the Spaniards, and especially the priests, to the young Infanta coming into a heretical country, and to any impediment thrown in the way of the Emperor of Germany exterminating the Protestants there. During the life of Philip III., the father of Donna Maria, little progress was made in these negotiations, but on the accession of his son Philip IV., in 1621, the prospect brightened. Both James and Charles wrote to the new king and his favourite Olivarez. In England Gondomar, the Spanish minister, was warmly in favour of the alliance, seeing in it a guarantee for the relief of the Catholics and of increased strength against France. Lord Digby, now Earl of Bristol, late ambassador at Madrid, was equally zealous for the marriage; and James was the more eager for it as he saw no hope of aid in his German project from France. There the feeble monarch, Louis XIII., was wholly in the hands of a despicable favourite, De Luynes, who was insolently opposed to the English interests, though the French people, from the hereditary hatred of the house of Austria, would have gladly marched against the invaders of the Palatinate.
The affairs of Frederick, the Elector Palatine, were desperate. The Palatinate, in fact, was already lost. Count Mansfeldt—the ablest general who had fought for the Elector's interests—and the Prince Christian of Brunswick, had evacuated the Palatinate; Heidelberg and Mannheim were in the hands of the enemy; and these generals had entered the service of the Dutch. The Emperor, in reward for the successful services of Maximilian of Bavaria, had conferred on him the Electorate of the Palatinate with the greater part of the territory.
James himself, to get rid of the maintenance of the garrison, had given up Frankenthal to the Spaniards, on condition that if, within eighteen months, a satisfactory peace were not made, it should be returned. Everything, therefore, was lost, and James fondly hoped that the Spanish match might yet recover everything.
Circumstances appeared to favour his hopes. The young King of Spain and his minister, Olivarez, responded cordially to James's proposal; Gondomar hastened on to Madrid to promote the object, and was soon followed by the Earl of Bristol, equally earnest for the accomplishment of the marriage. It was, however, necessary to procure a dispensation for this union from the Pope, and this the King of Spain undertook to procure through his ambassador at Rome. James was not to appear at all in the affair, but with the unconquerable propensity to be meddling personally in every negotiation, he could not help despatching George Gage, a Catholic, with letters to the Pontiff, as well as to the Cardinals Ludovisio and Bandini; and Buckingham, to complete the intercession, sent Bennet, a Catholic priest, on the same errand.
The Pope was not likely to grant the favour to James without a quid pro quo, and therefore, as might have been expected, replied that the canons of the Church could only be suspended for the benefit of the Church; that the King of England had been very liberal of his promises to the late King of Spain, but had performed nothing; he must now give proof of his sincerity by relieving the English Catholics from the pressure of his penal laws, and the request would be accorded. This was a demand in limine which would have shown to any prudent monarch the dangerous path he was entering upon; but James trusted to his tortuous art of king-craft, and rashly set to work to undo all that he had done throughout his reign against the Catholics. He caused an order under the Great Seal to be issued, granting pardons to all recusants who should apply for them within five years; and the judges were commanded to discharge from prison those who gave security for their compliance with these terms.
There was a glad and universal acceptance of the proffered lenity by the Catholics. The doors of the prisons were opened, and the astonished Puritans saw thousands on thousands of the dreaded Papists once more coming abroad. There was instantly a cry of terror and indignation from John O'Groat's to the Land's End. The pulpits resounded with the execrations of enthusiastic preachers on the traitorous dealing of the Court, and the depicted horrors of Catholic and Spanish ascendency. James trembled, but ordered the Lord Keeper Williams and the Bishop of London to assure the public that he was only seeking to gain better treatment for the Protestants abroad, whom the Continental princes declared they would punish with the same rigour as James had punished the Catholics in England, unless the British severity was somewhat mitigated; and that, moreover, there was no danger; for the recusants, though out of prison, had still the shackles about their heels, and could at any moment be remanded. This, without satisfying the Puritans, undid all confidence amongst the Catholics. They recalled the habitual duplicity of James and felt no longer any security; and when Gondomar boasted in Spain that four thousand Catholics had been released in England, those Catholics only remarked, "Yes; but we have still the shackles about our heels, and may at any moment be thrust again into our dungeons."
His only consolation was that the Spanish match now seemed really to progress. On the 5th of January, 1623, the twenty articles securing the freedom of her worship to the Infanta in England, the cessation of persecution of the Catholics, and the exercise of their religious rites in their own houses, were signed by James and Prince Charles. The dower of the princess was to be two millions of ducats. The espousals were to take place at Madrid by proxy, within forty days from the receipt of the dispensation; and the princess was to set out for England within three weeks. The time for the final consummation of the marriage, and the intervals between the several payments of the dower, were all fixed, and Gondomar and Bristol congratulated themselves on the completion of their arduous negotiation.