Among the revenges wrought by the ‘whirligigs of time’ before James went to his grave, was the necessity laid upon him to direct a search for precedents how best to put a mark of disgrace on a Spanish Ambassador for misconduct in his office. The man selected by the Duke of Buckingham to make the search, and to report upon it, was Sir Robert Cotton. Some weeks before he had been chosen to draw up, in the name of both Houses of Parliament, a formal address to the King for the rupture of the Spanish match.
The search for precedents against Ambassadors.
When Buckingham made that famous speech at the Conference of Lords and Commons on the relations between England and Spain, to which Cotton’s well-known Remonstrance of the treaties of Amity and Marriage of the Houses of Austria and Spain with the Kings of England,[[11]] was to serve as a preface, he spoke with considerable force and incisiveness. |1624. 27 April.| His arguments were not hampered by many anxieties about consistency with his own antecedents. His words were chosen with a view to clinch his arguments to English minds rather than to spare Spanish susceptibilities. The ambassadors—there were then, I think, two of them—were furious at a degree of plain-speaking to which they had been little accustomed. They appealed to the King. They knew that the versatile favourite, once loved, was now dreaded. They tried to work on the King’s cowardice. The Duke, they told His Majesty, had plotted the calling of Parliament expressly to have a sure tool with which to keep him in control, should he prove refractory to the joint schemes of the Duke and Prince Charles. ‘They will confine your Majesty’s sacred person,’ said they, ‘to some place of pleasure, and transfer the regal power upon the Prince.’
The framing of such an accusation, writes Sir Robert, in the Report which he addressed to Buckingham on ‘Proceedings against Ambassadors have miscarried themselves,’ would, by the laws of the realm, amount to High Treason, had it been made by a subject. |Relation of Proceedings, &c.; MS. Lansd., 811, ff. 133–139.| He then adduces a long string of precedents for the treatment of offending envoys; advises that the Spaniards should first be immediately confined to their own abode; and should then, by the Speakers of both Houses of Parliament, in person, be exhorted and required to ‘make a fair discovery of the ground that led them so to inform the King.’
If, says Sir Robert, they refuse—‘as I believe they will’—then are they authors of the scandal, and His Majesty should be addressed to send a ‘letter of complaint to the King of Spain, requiring justice to be done according to the law of nations, which claim should the King of Spain refuse, the refusal would amount to a declaration of war.’ This advice was given by Cotton to the Duke on the 27th of April, 1624. Its author’s momentary favour with the favourite of the now fast-rising sun was destined (as we shall see presently) to be of extremely brief duration.
Pen-service of this sort was eminently congenial with Sir Robert Cotton’s powers. To his vast knowledge of precedents he added much acumen and just insight in their application. Though never admitted to the Privy Council as a sworn councillor of the Crown, his service as an adviser on several great emergencies was conspicuous.
And it did not stand alone. Small as were his natural gifts for oratory, Cotton’s earnestness in the strife of politics prompted him, more than once, to put aside his own sense of his disadvantages, and to endeavour himself to strike a good blow, with the weapons which he knew so well how to choose for others. |Cotton’s Speech in the Parliament at Oxford.| On one of these occasions he prepared a speech which proved very effective.
1625. 10 August.
Curiously enough, whilst the best contemporary reports of that speech agree amongst themselves in substance; they differ as to the name of the speaker by whom it was actually uttered within the walls of the House of Commons. Internal evidence and external authority are also agreed that the speech, if not spoken, was at all events prepared by Sir Robert Cotton. On that point, all parties coincide. But according to one account, he both wrote and uttered it. According to another, he wrote it; but was prevented from the intended delivery,—either by an accidental absence from the House, or by some inward and unwaivable misgiving which led him at the eleventh hour to hand over the task to the able and well-accustomed tongue of his comrade Eliot.
Cotton’s? or Eliot’s?