CHAPTER XIX.
REIGN OF CHARLES I.
Accession of Charles—His Marriage—Meeting of Parliament—Loan of Ships to Richelieu—Dissolution of Parliament—Failure of the Spanish Expedition—Persecution of the Catholics—The Second Parliament—It appoints three Committees—Impeachment of Buckingham—Parliament dissolved to save him—Illegal Government—High Church Doctrines—Rupture with France—Disastrous Expedition to Rhé—The Third Parliament—The Petition of Right—Resistance and Final Surrender of Charles—Parliament Prorogued—Assassination of Buckingham—Fall of La Rochelle—Parliament Reassembles and is dissolved—Imprisonment of Offending Members—Government without Parliament—Peace with France and Spain—Gustavus Adolphus in Germany—Despotic Proceedings of Charles and Laud.
Within a quarter of an hour after the decease of James, Charles was proclaimed by the Knight-Marshal, Sir Edward Zouch, at the court-gate at Theobalds. He was in his twenty-fifth year, and so far as the admission of his title and the substantial prosperity of the kingdom were concerned, few monarchs have mounted the throne with more favourable auspices. But though there was entire submission to his right to reign, and the state of parties was such that no immediate change of executive was needed, yet there were at work feelings and principles which required the nicest wisdom to estimate their nature and their force, and the most able policy to deal with them. The battle between prerogative and popular rights had to be fought out, and it depended on the capacity of the monarch to perceive what was capable of modulation, and what was immovable, whether the result should be success or ruin. Charles was equally prepared by his father's maxims, his father's practice, and his habit of favouritism, to convert one of the grandest opportunities in history into one of the most terrible of its catastrophes. The first thing which augured ill for him was his continuing in the post of chief favourite and chief counsellor, the vain, incapable, and licentious Buckingham. The next matter to which Charles turned his attention was his marriage with the Princess Henrietta Maria, sister of Louis XIII. of France, the contract for which was already signed. The third day after his accession, he ratified the treaty as king which he had signed as prince. The Pope Urban, as we have stated, seeing that he could not prevail on the royal family of France to give up the marriage with the heretic prince of England, at length had, through his nuncio, delivered the breve of dispensation.
Louis of France, the queen-mother, the bride, Gaston Duke of Orleans, and the Duke of Chevreuse, Charles's proxy, signed the document with the English ambassadors, on the 8th of May, 1625, and the marriage took place on a platform in front of the ancient cathedral of Notre Dame on the 11th. The Duke of Buckingham arrived to conduct the young queen to England, attended by a numerous and splendid retinue of English nobility. The showy and extravagant upstart appeared at the French Court in a style which threw even the monarch into the shade. He wore "a rich white satin uncut velvet suit, set all over, suit and cloak, with diamonds, the value whereof," say the Hardwicke Papers, "is thought to be worth fourscore thousand pounds; besides a feather made with great diamonds, with sword, girdle, hatband, and spurs with diamonds, and he had twenty-seven other suits, all rich as invention could frame or art fashion." His conduct was as devoid of modesty as his dress, and threw discredit on the king who could entrust his honour and his counsels to such a man.
The king, queen, and queen-mother, accompanied by the whole Court, set out to conduct the young fiancée to the port where she should embark for England. The procession was made as gorgeous and imposing as possible, and at each halting place the Court was amused by a variety of pageants and entertainments drawn from a past age. One alone of these deserves remark, being afterwards deemed ominous—a representation of all the French princesses who had become queens of England. They presented a group distinguished by their misfortunes, the only one necessary to complete the number being herself yet a spectator, the girlish Henrietta, little more than fifteen years of age, who was destined to exceed them all in calamity. The king was, however, seized with an illness, which compelled him to discontinue the journey, and at Compiègne the queen-mother was also taken so ill as to detain the procession a fortnight at Amiens. There the queen and queen-mother took leave of Henrietta. Charles, during the delay at Amiens, had been awaiting his Buckingham. No sooner did that most impudent of libertines reach the French Court than he had the audacity to fall in love with the Queen of France, the beautiful Anne of Austria. He lost no opportunity of pressing his insolent suit on the way in the absence of the king, and had the presumption to imagine that his daring passion was returned. No sooner did he reach Boulogne, than pretending that he had received some despatches of the utmost importance, he hurried back to Amiens, where the French procession yet remained, and rushing into the bed-chamber of the queen, threw himself on his knees before her, and, regardless of the presence of two maids of honour, poured out the infamous protestations of his polluted passion. The queen repulsed him with an air of deep anger, and bade him begone in a tone of cutting severity, the reality of which, however, was doubted by Madame de Motteville, who recorded the occurrence.
GREAT SEAL OF CHARLES I.