At a late hour, when not a third part of the house remained, and those who required a fuller house, amid darkness and confusion, were neither seen nor heard, they made a protest,—of which the king approved as little of the ambiguous matter, as the surreptitious means; and it was then, that, with his own hand, he tore the leaf out of the journal.[A] In the sessions of 1614 the king was still more indignant at their proceedings. He and the Scotch had been vilified by their invectives; and they were menaced by two lawyers, with a "Sicilian vespers, or a Parisian matins." They aimed to reduce the king to beggary, by calling in question a third part of his revenue, contesting his prerogative in levying his customs. On this occasion I find that, publicly in the Banqueting-house at Whitehall, the king tore all their bills before their faces; and, as not a single act was passed, in the phrase of the day this was called an addle Parliament.[B] Such unhappy proceedings indicated the fatal divisions of the succeeding reign. A meeting of a different complexion, once occurred in 1621, late in James's reign. The monopolies were then abolished. The king and the prince shed reciprocal tears in the house; and the prince wept when he brought an affectionate message of thanks from the Commons. The letter-writer says, "It is a day worthy to be kept holiday; some say it shall, but I believe them not." It never was; for even this parliament broke up with the cries of "some tribunitial orators," as James designated the pure and the impure democratic spirits. Smollett remarks in his margin, that the king endeavoured to cajole the Commons. Had he known of the royal tears, he had still heightened the phrase. Hard fate of kings! Should ever their tears attest the warmth of honest feelings, they must be thrown out of the pale of humanity: for Francis Osborne, that cynical republican, declares, that "there are as few abominable princes as tolerable kings; because princes must court the public favour before they attain supreme power, and then change their nature!" Such is the egotism of republicanism!
[Footnote A: "Rushworth," vol. i. p. 54.]
[Footnote B: From a MS. of the times.]
* * * * *
SCANDALOUS CHRONICLES.
The character of James I. has always been taken from certain scandalous chronicles, whose origin requires detection. It is this mud which has darkened and disturbed the clear stream of history. The reigns of Elizabeth and James teemed with libels in church and state from opposite parties: the idleness of the pacific court of James I. hatched a viperous brood of a less hardy, but perhaps of a more malignant nature, than the Martin Mar-prelates of the preceding reign. Those boldly at once wrote treason, and, in some respects, honestly dared the rope which could only silence Penry and his party; but these only reached to scandalum magnatum, and the puny wretches could only have crept into a pillory. In the times of the Commonwealth, when all things were agreeable which vilified our kings, these secret histories were dragged from their lurking holes. The writers are meagre Suetoniuses and Procopiuses; a set of self-elected spies in the court; gossipers, lounging in the same circle; eaves-droppers; pryers into corners; buzzers of reports; and punctual scribes of what the French (so skilful in the profession) technically term les on dit; that is, things that might never have happened, although they are recorded: registered for posterity in many a scandalous chronicle, they have been mistaken for histories; and include so many truths and falsehoods, that it becomes unsafe for the historian either to credit or to disbelieve them.[A]
[Footnote A: Most of these works were meanly printed, and were usually found in a state of filth and rags, and would have perished in their own merited neglect, had they not been recently splendidly reprinted by Sir Walter Scott. Thus the garbage has been cleanly laid on a fashionable epergne, and found quite to the taste of certain lovers of authentic history! Sir Anthony Weldon, clerk of the king's kitchen, in his "Court of King James" has been reproached for gaining much of his scandalous chronicle from the purlieus of the court. For this work and some similar ones, especially "The None-Such Charles," in which it would appear that he had procured materials from the State Paper Office, and for other zealous services to the Parliament, they voted him a grant of 500_l_. "The Five Years of King James," which passes under the name of Sir Fulk Greville, the dignified friend of the romantic Sir Philip Sidney, and is frequently referred to by grave writers, is certainly a Presbyterian's third day's hash—for there are parts copied from Arthur Wilson's "History of James I.," who was himself the pensioner of a disappointed courtier; yet this writer never attacks the personal character of the king, though charged with having scraped up many tales maliciously false. Osborne is a misanthropical politician, who cuts with the most corroding pen that ever rottened a man's name. James was very negligent in dress; graceful appearances did not come into his studies. Weldon tells us how the king was trussed on horseback, and fixed there like a pedlar's pack or a lump of inanimate matter; the truth is, the king had always an infirmity in his legs. Further, we are told that this ridiculous monarch allowed his hat to remain just as it chanced to be placed on his head. Osborne once saw this unlucky king "in a green hunting-dress, with a feather in his cap, and a horn, instead of a sword, by his side; how suitable to his age, calling, or person, I leave others to judge from his pictures:" and this he bitterly calls "leaving him dressed for posterity!" This is the style which passes for history with some readers. Hume observes that "hunting," which was James's sole recreation, necessary for his health, as a sedentary scholar, "is the cheapest a king can indulge;" and, indeed, the empty coffers of this monarch afforded no other.
These pseudo-histories are alluded to by Arthur Wilson as "monstrous satires against the king's own person, that haunted both court and country," when, in the wantonness of the times, "every little miscarriage, exuberantly branched, so that evil report did often perch on them." Fuller has designated these suspicious scribes as "a generation of the people who, like moths, have lurked under the carpets of the council-table, and even like fleas, have leaped into pillows of the prince's bed-chamber; and, to enhance the reputation of their knowledge, thence derived that of all things which were, or were not, ever done or thought of."—Church History, book x. p. 87.]
Such was the race generated in this court of peace and indolence! And Hacket, in his "Life of the Lord-Keeper Williams," without disguising the fact, tells us that the Lord-Keeper "spared not for cost to purchase the most certain intelligence, by his fee'd pensioners, of every hour's occurrences at court; and was wont to say that no man could be a statesman without a great deal of money."
We catch many glimpses of these times in another branch of the same family. When news-books, as the first newspapers were called, did not yet exist to appease the hungering curiosity of the country, a voluminous correspondence was carried on between residents in the metropolis and their country friends: these letters chiefly remain in their MS. state.[A] Great men then employed a scribe who had a talent this way, and sometimes a confidential friend, to convey to them the secret history of the times; and, on the whole, they are composed by a better sort of writers; for, as they had no other design than to inform their friends of the true state of passing events, they were eager to correct, by subsequent accounts the lies of the day they sometimes sent down. They have preserved some fugitive events useful in historical researches, but their pens are garrulous; and it requires some experience to discover the character of the writers, to be enabled to adopt their opinions and their statements. Little things were, however, great matters to these diurnalists; much time was spent in learning of those at court, who had quarrelled, or were on the point; who were seen to have bit their lips, and looked downcast; who was budding, and whose full-blown flower was drooping: then we have the sudden reconcilement and the anticipated fallings out, with a deal of the pourquoi of the pourquoi.[B]