One of the first was the Conspiracy of Sir Walter Raleigh. conspiracy against the king, in which Lord Cobham and Sir Walter Raleigh were engaged. We lament that so great a favorite with all readers as Sir Walter Raleigh, so universal a genius, a man so learned, accomplished, and brave, should have even been suspected of a treasonable project, and without the excuse of some traitors, that they wished to deliver their country from tyranny. But there is no perfection in man. Sir Walter was restless and ambitious, and had an eye mainly to his own advantage. His wit, gallantry, and chivalry were doubtless very pleasing qualities in a courtier, but are not the best qualities of a patriot. He was disappointed because he could not keep pace with Cecil in the favor of his sovereign, and because the king took away the monopolies he had enjoyed. Hence, in conjunction with other disappointed politicians, he was accused of an attempt to seize the king's person, to change the ministry, and to place the Lady Arabella Stuart on the throne. Against Raleigh appeared no less a person than the great Coke, who prosecuted him with such vehemence that Raleigh was found guilty, and condemned to death. But the proofs of his guilt are not so clear as the evidence of his ambition; and much must be attributed to party animosity. Though condemned, he was not executed; but lived to write many more books, and make many more voyages, to the great delight both of the cultivated and the adventurous. That there was a plot to seize the king is clear, and the conspirators were detected and executed. Raleigh was suspected of this, and perhaps was privy to it; but the proofs of his crime were not apparent, except to the judges, and to the attorney-general, Coke, who compared the different plots to Samson's foxes, joined in the tails, though their heads were separated.
The most memorable event at this time in the domestic history of the kingdom was the Gunpowder Plot. Gunpowder Plot, planned by Catesby and other disappointed and desperate Catholics for the murder of the king, and the destruction of both houses of parliament. Knowing the sympathies of James for their religion, the Catholics had expected toleration, at least. But when Persecution of the Catholics. persecution continued against them, some reckless and unprincipled men united in a design to blow up the parliament. Percy, a relation of the Earl of Northumberland, was concerned in the plot, and many of the other conspirators were men of good families and fortunes, but were implacable bigots. They hired a cellar, under the parliament house, which had been used for coals; and there they deposited thirty-one barrels of gunpowder, waiting several months for a favorable time to perpetrate one of the most horrid crimes ever projected. It was resolved that Guy Fawkes, one of the number, should set fire to the train. They were all ready, and the 5th of November, 1605, was at hand, the day to which parliament was prorogued; but Percy was anxious to save his kinsman from the impending ruin, Sir Everard Digby wished to warn some of his friends, and Tresham was resolved to give his brother-in-law, Lord Mounteagle, a caution. It seems that this peer received a letter so peculiar, that he carried it to Cecil, who showed it to the king, and the king detected or suspected a plot. The result was, that the cellar was explored by the lord chamberlain, and Guy Fawkes himself was found, with all the materials for striking a light, near the vault in which the coal and the gunpowder were deposited. He was seized, interrogated, tortured, and imprisoned; but the wretch would not reveal the names of his associates, although he gloried in the crime he was about to commit, and alleged, as his excuse, that violent diseases required desperate remedies, the maxim of the Jesuits. But most of the conspirators revealed their guilt by flight. They might have escaped, had they fled from the kingdom; but they hastened only into the country to collect their friends, and head an insurrection, which, of course, was easily suppressed. The leaders in this plot were captured and executed, and richly deserved their fate, although it was clear that they were infatuated. But in all crime there is infatuation. It was suspected that the Jesuits were at the bottom of the conspiracy; and the whole Catholic population suffered reproach from the blindness and folly of a few bigots, from whom no sect or party ever yet has been free. But there is no evidence that any of the Catholic clergy were even privy to the intended crime, which was known only to the absolute plotters. Some Jesuits were indeed suspected, arrested, tortured, and executed; but no evidence of guilt was brought against them sufficient to convict them. But their acquittal was impossible in such a state of national alarm and horror. Nothing ever made a more lasting and profound impression on the English mind than this intended crime; and it strengthened the prejudices against the Catholics even more than the persecutions under Queen Mary. Had the crime been consummated, it would only have proved a blunder. It would have shocked and irritated the nation beyond all self-control; and it is probable that the whole Catholic population would have been assassinated, or hunted out, as victims for the scaffold, in every corner of England. It proved, however, a great misfortune, and the severest blow Catholicism ever received in England. Thus God overrules all human wickedness. There was one person who suffered, in consequence of the excited suspicions of the nation, whose fate we cannot but compassionate; and this person was the Earl of Northumberland, who was sentenced to pay a fine of thirty thousand pounds, to be deprived of all his offices, and to be imprisoned in the Tower for life, and simply because he was the head of the Catholic party, and a promoter of toleration. Indeed, penal statutes against the Catholics were fearfully multiplied. No Catholic was permitted to appear at court, or live in London, or within ten miles of it, or remove, on any occasion, more than five miles from his home, without especial license. No Catholic recusant was permitted to practise surgery, physic, or law; to act as judge, clerk, or officer of any court or corporation; or perform the office of administrator, executor, or guardian. Every Catholic who refused to have his child baptized by a Protestant, was obliged to pay, for each omission, one hundred pounds. Every person keeping a Catholic servant, was compelled to pay ten pounds a month to government. Moreover, every recusant was outlawed; his house might be broken open; his books and furniture destroyed; and his horses and arms taken from him. Such was the severe treatment with which the Catholics, even those who were good citizens, were treated by our fathers in England; and this persecution was defended by some of the greatest jurists, divines, and statesmen which England has produced. And yet some maintain that there has been no progress in society, except in material civilization!
One of the peculiarities of the reign of James was, the ascendency which favorites obtained over him, so often the mark of a weak and vacillating mind. Henry VIII. and Elizabeth had their favorites; but they were ministers of the royal will. Moreover, they, like Wolsey, Cromwell, Burleigh, and Essex, were great men, and worthy of the trust reposed in them. But James, with all his kingcraft and statecraft, with all his ostentation and boasts of knowledge and of sagacity, reposed his confidence in such a man as Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. It is true he also had great men to serve him; Cecil was his secretary, Bacon was his chancellor, and Coke was his chief justice. But Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset. Carr and Villiers rose above them all in dignity and honor, and were the companions and confidential agents of their royal master.
Robert Carr was a Scottish gentleman, poor and cunning, who had early been taught that personal beauty, gay dress, and lively manners, would make his fortune at court. He first attracted the attention of the king at a tilting match, at which he was the esquire to Lord Dingwall. In presenting his lord's shield to the king, his horse fell and threw him at James's feet. His leg was broken, but his fortune was made. James, struck with his beauty and youth, and moved by the accident, sent his own surgeon to him, visited him himself, and even taught him Latin, seeing that the scholastic part of his education had been neglected. Indeed, James would have made a much better schoolmaster than king; and his pedantry and conceit were beyond all bounds, so that Bacon styled him, either in irony or sycophancy, "the Solomon of the age." Greatness and Fall of Somerset. Carr now became the pet of the learned monarch. He was knighted, rich presents were bestowed on him, all bowed down to him as they would have done to a royal mistress; and Cecil and Suffolk vied with each other in their attempts to secure the favor of his friends. He gradually eclipsed every great noble at court, was created Viscount Rochester, received the Order of the Garter, and, when Cecil, then Earl of Salisbury, died, received the post of the Earl of Suffolk as lord chamberlain, he taking Cecil's place as treasurer. Rochester, in effect, became prime minister, as Cecil had been. He was then created Earl of Somerset, in order that he might marry the Countess of Essex, the most beautiful and fascinating woman at the English court. She was daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, and granddaughter of the old Duke of Norfolk, executed in 1572, and, consequently, belonged to the first family in the realm. She was married to Essex at the age of thirteen, but treated him with contempt and coldness, being already enamored of the handsome favorite. That she might marry Carr she obtained a divorce from her husband on the most frivolous grounds, and through the favor of the king, who would do any thing for the man he delighted to honor. She succeeded in obtaining her end, and caused the ruin of all who opposed her wishes. But she proved a beautiful demon, a fascinating fury, as might be expected from such an unprincipled woman, although ennobled by "the blood of all the Howards." Her reign lasted, however, only during the ascendency of her husband. For a time, "glorious days were succeeded by as glorious nights, when masks and dancings had a continual motion, and when banquetings rapt up the spirit of the sacred king, and kept it from descending to earthly things." But whatever royal favor stamps, royal favor, like fashion, leaves. Carr was supplanted by Villiers, and his doom was sealed. For the murder of his old friend Sir Thomas Overbury, who died in the Tower, as it was then supposed by poison, he and his countess were tried, found guilty, and disgraced. But he was not executed, and, after a few years' imprisonment, retired to the country, with his lady, to reproach and hate each other. Their only child, the Lady Anna Carr, a woman of great honor and virtue, married the first duke of Bedford, and was the mother of Lord Russell who died on the scaffold, a martyr to liberty, in the reign of Charles II. The origin of the noble families of England is curious. Some few are descended from successful Norman chieftains, who came over with William the Conqueror, and whose merit was in their sword. Others are the descendants of those who, as courtiers, statesmen, or warriors, obtained great position, power, and wealth, during former reigns. Many owe their greatness to the fact that they are the offspring of the illegitimate children of kings, or the descendants of the ignoble minions of kings. Some few are enrolled in the peerage on account of their great wealth; and a still smaller number for the eminent services they have rendered their country like Wellington, Brougham, or Ellenborough. A vast majority can boast only the merit or the successful baseness of their ancestors. But all of them are interlinked by marriages, and therefore share together the glory or the shame of their progenitors, so far as glory and shame can be transmitted from father to son, independently of all individual virtue or vice.
Carr was succeeded in the royal favor by Duke of Buckingham. Villiers, and he, more fortunate, ever retained the ascendency over the mind and heart of James, as well as of his son Charles I. George Villiers owed his fortune, not to his birth or talents, but to his fine clothes, his Parisian manners, smooth face, tall figure, and bland smiles. He became cup-bearer, then knight, then gentleman of the privy council, then earl, then marquis, and finally duke of Buckingham, lord high admiral, warden of the Cinque Ports, high steward of Westminster, constable of Windsor Castle, and chief justice in eyre of the parks and forests. "The doting and gloating king" had taught Somerset Latin; he attempted to teach Buckingham divinity, and called him ever by the name of "Steenie." And never was there such a mixture of finery, effeminacy, insolence, and sycophancy in any royal minion before or since. Beau Brummell never equalled him in dress, Wolsey in magnificence, Mazarin in peculation, Walpole in corruption, Jeffries in insolence, or Norfolk in pride. He was the constant companion of the king, to whose vices he pandered, and through him the royal favor flowed. But no rewards, or favors, or greatness satisfied him; not so much because he was ambitious, as because, like a spoiled child, he did not appreciate the magnitude of the gifts which were bestowed on him. Nor did he ever know his place; but made love to the queen of France herself, when he was sent on an embassy. He trampled on the constitution, subverted the laws, ground down the people by taxes, and taught the king to disregard the affections of his subjects, and to view them as his slaves. But such a triumph of iniquity could not be endured; and Buckingham was finally assassinated, after he had gained an elevation higher than any English subject ever before attained, except Wolsey, and without the exercise of any qualities which entitled him to a higher position than a master of ceremonies at a fashionable ball. It is easy to conceive that such a minion should arrive at power under such a monarch as James; but how can we understand that such a man as Lord Bacon. Lord Bacon, the chancellor, the philosopher, the statesman, the man of learning, genius, and wisdom, should have bowed down to the dust, in vile subserviency, to this infamous favorite of the king. Surely, what lessons of the frailty of human nature does the reign of James teach us! The most melancholy instance of all the singular cases of human inconsistency, at this time, is the conduct of the great Bacon himself, who reached the zenith of his power during this reign. It is not the receiving of a bribe, while exercising the highest judicial authority in the land, on which alone his shame rests, but his insolent conduct to his inferiors, his acquiescence in wrong, his base and unmanly sycophancy, his ingratitude to his friends and patrons, his intense selfishness and unscrupulous ambition while climbing to power, and, above all, his willingness to be the tool of a despot who trampled on the rights and liberties which God had given him to guard; and this in an age of light, of awakened intelligence, when even his crabbed rival Coke was seeking to explode the abuses of the Dark Ages. But "the difference between the soaring angel and the creeping snake, was but a type of the difference between Bacon the philosopher and Bacon the attorney-general, Bacon seeking for truth and Bacon seeking for the Seals." As the author of the Novum Organum, as the pioneer of modern science, as the calm and patient investigator of nature's laws, as the miner and sapper of the old false systems of philosophy which enslaved the human mind, as the writer for future generations, he has received, as he has deserved, all the glory which admiring and grateful millions can bestow, of his own nation, and of all nations. No name in British annals is more illustrious than his, and none which is shaded with more lasting shame. Pope alone would have given him an immortality as the "wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind." The only defence for the political baseness of Bacon—and this is insufficient—is, that all were base around him. The years when he was in power are among the darkest and most disgraceful in English history.
Allusion has been made to the reign of favorites; but this was but a small part of the evils of the times. Every thing abroad and at home was mismanaged. Patents of monopolies were multiplied; the most grievous exactions were made; indefensible executions were ordered; the laws were perverted; justice was sold; and an ignominious war was closed by a still more ignominious peace. Trial and Execution of Raleigh. The execution of Raleigh was a disgrace to the king, the court, and the nation, because the manner of it was so cowardly and cruel. He had been convicted, in the early part of the reign, of treason, and committed to the Tower. There he languished twelve years, amusing himself by writing a universal history, and in seeking the elixir of life; for, in the mysteries of chemistry, and in the mazes of historical lore, as in the intrigues of courts, and dangers of camps, he was equally at home.
He was released from his prison in order to take command of an adventurous expedition to Guiana in quest of gold. In a former voyage he had visited the banks of the Oronoco in quest of the city of Manoa, where precious stones and gold existed in exhaustless treasures. That El Dorado he could not find; but now, in prison, he proposed to Secretary Winwood an expedition to secure what he had before sought in vain. The king wavered a while between his cupidity and fear; for, while he longed for gold, as the traveller does for water on the desert of Sahara, he was afraid of giving offence to the Spanish ambassador. But his cupidity was the stronger feeling, and Raleigh was sent with fourteen ships to the coasts of South America. The expedition was in every respect unfortunate to Raleigh and to the king. The gallant commander lost his private fortune and a promising son, the Spaniards attacked his armament, his troops mutinied and deserted, and he returned to England, with a sullied fame, to meet a disappointed sovereign and implacable enemies. In such times, failure is tantamount to crime, and Raleigh was tried for offences he never committed. The most glaring injustice, harshness, and sophistry were resorted to, even by Bacon; but still Raleigh triumphantly defended himself. But no innocence or eloquence could save him; and he was executed on the sentence which had been pronounced against him for treason fifteen years before. To such meanness and cowardice did his enemies resort to rid the world of a universal genius, whose crime—if crime he ever committed—had long been consigned to oblivion.
But we cannot longer dwell on the lives of eminent individuals during the reign of James. However interesting may be the details of their fortunes, their history dwindles into insignificance when compared with the great public injuries which an infatuated monarch inflicted. Not cruel in his temper, not stained by personal crimes, quite learned in Greek and Latin, but weak and ignorant of his duties as a king, Encroachments of James. he was inclined to trespass on the rights of his subjects. As has been already remarked, the genius of his reign was the contest between prerogative and liberty. The Commons did not acquiesce in his measures, or yield to his wishes, as they did during the reign of Elizabeth. He had a notion that the duty of a king was to command, and that of the subject was to obey, in all things; that kings ruled by divine right, and were raised by the Almighty above all law. But such notions were not approved by a parliament which swarmed with Puritans, and who were not careful to conceal their views from the king. They insisted on their privileges as tenaciously as the king insisted on his prerogative, and often came into collision with him. And they instituted an inquiry into monopolies, and attacked the monstrous abuses of purveyance, and the incidents of feudal tenure, by which, among other things, the king became guardian to wards, and received the profits of their estates during their minority. These feudal claims, by which the king, in part, received his revenue, were every year becoming less valuable to the crown, and more offensive to the people. The king, at length, was willing to compound, and make a bargain with the Commons, by which he was to receive two hundred thousand pounds a year, instead of the privileges of wardship, and other feudal rights. But his necessities required additional grants, which the Commons were unwilling to bestow; and the king then resorted to the sale of monopolies and even peerages, sent the more turbulent of the Commons to prison, and frequently dissolved parliament. He was resolved to tax the people if supplies were not granted him, while the Commons maintained that no taxation could be allowed without their consent. Moreover, the Commons refused to grant such supplies as the king fancied he needed, unless certain grievances were redressed, among which was the High Commission Court, an arbitrary tribunal, which fined and imprisoned without appeal. But James, though pressed for money, stood firm to his notions of prerogative, and supplied his most urgent necessities by illegal means. People were dragged to the Star Chamber, on all kinds of accusations, that they might be sentenced to pay enormous fines; new privileges and monopolies were invented, and new dignities created. Baronets, who are hereditary knights, were instituted, and baronetcies were sold for one thousand pounds each.
But the monopolies which the king granted, in order to raise money, did not inflame the Commons so much as the projected marriage between the prince of Wales and the infanta of Spain. James flattered himself that this Spanish match, to arrange which he had sent Buckingham to the court of Madrid, would procure the restitution of the Palatinate to the elector, who had been driven from his throne. But the Commons thought differently. They, as well as the people generally, were indignant in view of the inactivity of the government in not sending aid to the distressed Protestants of Germany; and the loss of the Palatinate was regarded as a national calamity. They saw no good which would accrue from an alliance with the enemies and persecutors of these Protestants; but, on the other hand, much evil. As the constitutional guardians, therefore, of the public welfare and liberty, Quarrel between James and Parliament. they framed a remonstrance to the king, representing the overgrown power of Austria as dangerous to the liberties of Europe, and entreated his majesty to take up arms against Spain, which was allied with Austria, and by whose wealth Austrian armies were supported.
James was inflamed with indignation at this remonstrance, which militated against all his maxims of government; and he forthwith wrote a letter to the speaker of the House of Commons, commanding him to admonish the members "not to presume to meddle with matters of state which were beyond their capacity, and especially not to touch on his son's marriage." The Commons, not dismayed, and conscious of strength, sent up a new remonstrance in which they affirmed that they were entitled to interpose with their counsel in all matters of state, and that entire freedom of speech was their ancient and undoubted right, transmitted from their ancestors. The king, in reply, told the Commons, that "their remonstrance was more like a denunciation of war, than an address of dutiful subjects, and that their pretension to inquire into state affairs was a plenipotence to which none of their ancestors, even during the weakest reigns, had ever dared to aspire." He farther insinuated that their privileges were derived from royal favor. On this, the Commons framed another protest,—that the liberties, franchises, privileges, and jurisdictions of parliament are the ancient and undoubted birthright of Englishmen, and that every member has the right of freedom of speech. This protest they entered upon their journals, upon which James lost all temper, ordered the clerk to bring him the journals, erased the protestation with his own hand, in presence of the judges and the council, and then dissolved the parliament.