[537] Commons' Journals for 1610, passim; Lords' Journals, 7th May, et post; Parl. Hist. 1124, et post; Bacon, i. 676; Winwood, iii. 119, et post.
[538] It appears by a letter of the king, in Murden's State Papers, p. 813, that some indecent allusions to himself in the House of Commons had irritated him. "Wherein we have misbehaved ourselves, we know not, nor we can never yet learn; but sure we are, we may say with Bellarmin in his book, that in all the lower houses these seven years past, especially these two last sessions, Ego pungor, ego carpor. Our fame and actions have been tossed like tennis-balls among them, and all that spite and malice durst do to disgrace and inflame us hath been used. To be short, this lower house by their behaviour have perilled and annoyed our health, wounded our reputation, emboldened all ill-natured people, encroached upon many of our privileges, and plagued our people with their delays. It only resteth now, that you labour all you can to do that you think best to the repairing of our estate.
[539] "Your queen," says Lord Thos. Howard, in a letter, "did talk of her subjects' love and good affection, and in good truth she aimed well; our king talketh of his subjects' fear and subjection, and herein I think he doth well too, as long as it holdeth good." Nugæ Antiquæ, i. 395.
[540] The court of James I. was incomparably the most disgraceful scene of profligacy which this country has ever witnessed; equal to that of Charles II. in the laxity of female virtue, and without any sort of parallel in some other respects. Gross drunkenness is imputed even to some of the ladies who acted in the court pageants (Nugæ Antiquæ, i. 348), which Mr. Gifford, who seems absolutely enraptured with this age and its manners, might as well have remembered. Life of Ben Jonson, p. 231, etc. The king's prodigality is notorious.
[541] "It is atheism and blasphemy," he says in a speech made in the star-chamber, 1616, "to dispute what God can do; good Christians content themselves with his will revealed in his word; so it is presumption and high contempt in a subject to dispute what a king can do, or say that a king cannot do this or that." King James's works, p. 557.
It is probable that his familiar conversation was full of this rodomontade, disgusting and contemptible from so wretched a pedant, as well as offensive to the indignant ears of those who knew and valued their liberties. The story of Bishops Neile and Andrews is far too trite for repetition.
[542] Carte, iii. 747; Birch's Life of P. Henry, 405. Rochester, three days after, directed Sir Thomas Edmondes at Paris to commence a negotiation for a marriage between Prince Charles and the second daughter of the late King of France. But the ambassador had more sense of decency, and declined to enter on such an affair at that moment.
[543] Winwood, vol. ii.; Carte, iii. 749; Watson's Hist. of Philip III. Appendix. In some passages of this negotiation Cecil may appear not wholly to have deserved the character I have given him for adhering to Elizabeth's principles of policy. But he was placed in a difficult position, not feeling himself secure of the king's favour, which, notwithstanding his great previous services, that capricious prince, for the first year after his accession, rather sparingly afforded; as appears from the Memoirs of Sully, l. 14, and Nugæ. Antiquæ, i. 345. It may be said that Cecil was as little Spanish, just as Walpole was as little Hanoverian, as the partialities of their respective sovereigns would permit for their own reputation. It is hardly necessary to observe, that James and the kingdom were chiefly indebted to Cecil for the tranquillity that attended the accession of the former to the throne. I will take this opportunity of noticing that the learned and worthy compiler of the catalogue of the Lansdowne manuscripts in the Museum has thought fit not only to charge Sir Michael Hicks with venality, but to add: "It is certain that articles among these papers contribute to justify very strong suspicions, that neither of the secretary's masters [Lord Burleigh and Lord Salisbury] was altogether innocent on the score of corruption." Lands. Cat. vol. xci. p. 45. This is much too strong an accusation to be brought forward without more proof than appears. It is absurd to mention presents of fat bucks to men in power, as bribes; and rather more so to charge a man with being corrupted because an attempt is made to corrupt him, as the catalogue-maker has done in this place. I would not offend this respectable gentleman; but by referring to many of the Lansdowne manuscripts I am enabled to say that he has travelled frequently out of his province, and substituted his conjectures for an analysis or abstract of the document before him.
[544] A great part of Winwood's third volume relates to this business, which, as is well known, attracted a prodigious degree of attention throughout Europe. The question, as Winwood wrote to Salisbury, was "not of the succession of Cleves and Juliers, but whether the house of Austria and the church of Rome, both now on the wane, shall recover their lustre and greatness in these parts of Europe."—P. 378. James wished to have the right referred to his arbitration, and would have decided in favour of the Elector of Brandenburg, the chief protestant competitor.
[545] Winwood, vols. ii. and iii. passim. Birch, that accurate master of this part of English history, has done justice to Salisbury's character. Negotiations of Edmondes, p. 347. Miss Aikin, looking to his want of constitutional principle, is more unfavourable, and perhaps on the whole justly; but what statesman of that age was ready to admit the new creed of parliamentary control over the executive government? Memoirs of James, i. 395.