This Ball has been confounded with a more ancient radical, Ball, a priest, and a principal mover in Wat Tyler’s insurrection. Our Ball must have been very notorious, for Jonson has noticed his “admired discourses.” Mr. Gifford, without any knowledge of my account of this tailor-prophet, by his active sagacity has rightly indicated him.—See Jonson’s Works, vol. v. p. 241.
[297] It is curious to observe that the Westminster elections, in the fourth year of Charles’s reign, were exactly of the same turbulent character as those which we witness in our days. The duke had counted by his interest to bring in Sir Robert Pye. The contest was severe, but accompanied by some of those ludicrous electioneering scenes which still amuse the mob. Whenever Sir Robert Pye’s party cried—“A Pye! a Pye! a Pye!” the adverse party would cry—“A pudding! a pudding! a pudding!” and others—“A lie! a lie! a lie!” This Westminster election of two hundred years ago ended as we have seen some others; they rejected all who had urged the payment of the loans; and, passing by such men as Sir Robert Cotton, and their last representative, they fixed on a brewer and a grocer for the two members for Westminster.
[298] Extract from a manuscript letter:—“On Friday last I hear, but as a secret, that it was debated at the council-table whether our Essex men, who refused to take press-money, should not be punished by martial-law, and hanged up on the next tree to their dwellings, for an example of terror to others. My lord keeper, who had been long silent, when, in conclusion, it came to his course to speak, told the lords, that as far as he understood the law, none were liable to martial law but martial men. If these had taken press-money, and afterwards run from their colours, they might then be punished in that manner; but yet they were no soldiers, and refused to be. Secondly, he thought a subsidy, new by law, could not be pressed against his will for a foreign service; it being supposed, in law, the service of his purse excused that of his person, unless his own country were in danger; and he appealed to my lord treasurer, and my lord president, whether it was not so, who both assented it was so, though some of them faintly, as unwilling to have been urged to such an answer. So it is thought that proposition is dashed; and it will be tried what may be done in the Star-chamber against these refractories.”
[299] A member of the house, in James the First’s time, called this race of divines “Spaniels to the court and wolves to the people.” Dr. Mainwaring, Dr. Sibthorpe, and Dean Bargrave were seeking for ancient precedents to maintain absolute monarchy, and to inculcate passive obedience. Bargrave had this passage in his sermon: “It was the speech of a man renowned for wisdom in our age, that if he were commanded to put forth to sea in a ship that had neither mast nor tackling, he would do it:” and being asked what wisdom that were, replied, “The wisdom must be in him that hath power to command, not in him that conscience binds to obey.” Sibthorpe, after he published his sermon, immediately had his house burnt down. Dr. Mainwaring, says a manuscript letter-writer, “sent the other day to a friend of mine, to help him to all the ancient precedents he could find, to strengthen his opinion (for absolute monarchy), who answered him he could help him in nothing but only to hang him, and that if he lived till a parliament, or, &c., he should be sure of a halter.” Mainwaring afterwards submitted to parliament; but after the dissolution got a free pardon. The panic of popery was a great evil. The divines, under Laud, appeared to approach to Catholicism; but it was probably only a project of reconciliation between the two churches, which Elizabeth, James, and Charles equally wished. Mr. Cosins, a letter-writer, is censured for “superstition” in this bitter style: “Mr. Cosins has impudently made three editions of his prayer-book, and one which he gives away in private, different from the published ones. An audacious fellow, whom my Lord of Durham greatly admireth. I doubt if he be a sound protestant: he was so blind at even-song on Candlemas-day, that he could not see to read prayers in the minster with less than three hundred and forty candles, whereof sixty he caused to be placed about the high altar; besides he caused the picture of our Saviour, supported by two angels, to be set in the choir. The committee is very hot against him, and no matter if they trounce him.” This was Cosins, who survived the revolution, and returning with Charles the Second, was raised to the see of Durham: the charitable institutions he has left are most munificent.
[300] Rushworth’s Collections, i. 514.
[301] I deliver this fact as I find it in a private letter; but it is noticed in the Journals of the House of Commons, 23 Junii, 4º. Caroli Regis. “Sir Edward Coke reporteth that they find that, enclosed in the letter, to be unfit for any subject’s ear to hear. Read but one line and a half of it, and could not endure to read more of it. It was ordered to be sealed and delivered into the king’s hands by eight members, and to acquaint his majesty with the place and time of finding it; particularly that upon the reading of one line and a half at most, they would read no more, but sealed it up, and brought it to the House.”
[302] I have since discovered, by a manuscript letter, that this Dr. Turner was held in contempt by the king; that he was ridiculed at court, which he haunted, for his want of veracity; in a word, that he was a disappointed courtier!
[303] This circumstance is mentioned in a manuscript letter; what Cooke declared to the House is in Rushworth, vol. i. p. 525.
[304] I refer the critical student of our history to the duke’s speech at the council-table as it appears in Rushworth, i. 525: but what I add respecting his personal sacrifices is from manuscript letters. Sloane MSS. 4177. Letter 490, &c.
[305] On this subject, see note to the brief article on Buckingham in vol. i.