Anger and alarm spread through England as the nation learned that James aimed at placing a Catholic queen upon its throne. Even at the court itself the cooler heads of statesmen were troubled by this disclosure of the king's projects. The old tradition of Cecil's policy lingered among a powerful party which had its representatives among the royal ministers; and powerless as these were to influence the king's course, they still believed they could impede it. If by any means war could be stirred up between England and Spain the marriage-treaty would fall to ruin, and James be forced into union with the Protestants abroad and into some reconciliation with the Parliament at home. The wild project by which they strove to bring war about may have sprung from a brain more inventive than their own. Of the great statesmen and warriors of Elizabeth's day one only remained. At the opening of the new reign Sir Walter Ralegh had been convicted on a charge of treason; but though unpardoned the sentence was never carried out, and he had remained ever since a prisoner in the Tower. As years went by the New World, where he had founded Virginia and where he had gleaned news of a Golden City, threw more and more a spell over his imagination; and at this moment he disclosed to James his knowledge of a gold-mine on the Oronoco, and prayed that he might sail thither and work its treasures for the king. No Spanish settlement, he said, had been made there; and like the rest of the Elizabethans he took no heed of the Spanish claims to all lands in America, whether settled or no. The king was tempted by the bait of gold; but he had no mind to be tricked out of his friendship with Spain; he exacted a pledge against any attack on Spanish territory, and told Ralegh that the shedding of Spanish blood would cost him his head. The threat told little on a man who had risked his head again and again; who believed in the tale he told; and who knew that if war could be brought about between England and Spain a new career was open to him. He found the coast occupied by Spanish troops; and while evading direct orders to attack, he sent his men up the country. They plundered a Spanish town, found no gold-mine, and soon came broken and defeated back. Ralegh's son had fallen in the struggle; but, heart-broken as he was by the loss and disappointment, the natural daring of the man saw a fresh resource. He proposed to seize the Spanish treasure ships as he returned, to sail with their gold to England, and like Drake to turn the heads of nation and king by the immense spoil. But the temper of the buccaneers was now strange to English seamen; his men would not follow him; and he was brought home to face his doom. James at once put his old sentence in force; and the death of Ralegh on the scaffold atoned for the affront to Spain.
The troubles in Bohemia.
The failure of Ralegh came at a critical moment in German history. In 1617, while he was traversing the Southern seas, Ferdinand was presented by Matthias to the Diet of Bohemia, and acknowledged by it as successor to that kingdom. As had been foreseen, he at once began the course of forcible suppression of Protestantism which had been successful in his other dominions. But the Bohemian nobles were not men to give up their faith without a fight for it; and in May 1618 they rose in revolt, flung Ferdinand's deputies out of the window of the palace at Prague, and called the country to arms. The long-dreaded crisis had come for Germany; but, as if with a foresight of the awful sufferings that the struggle was to bring, the Germans strove to look on it as a local revolt. The Lutheran princes longed only "to put the fire out"; the Calvinistic Union refused aid to the Bohemians; the Catholic League remained motionless. What partly accounted for the inaction of the Protestants was the ability of the Bohemians to hold their own. They were a match for all Ferdinand's efforts; through autumn and winter they held him easily at bay. In the spring of 1619 they even marched upon Vienna and all but surprised their enemy within his capital. But at this juncture the death of Matthias changed the face of affairs. Ferdinand became master of the whole Austrian heritage in Germany, and he offered himself as candidate for the vacant Imperial crown. Union among the Protestants might have hindered his accession, and with it the terrible strife which he was to bring upon the Empire. But an insane quarrel between Lutherans and Calvinists paralyzed their efforts; and in August 1619 Ferdinand became Emperor. Bohemia knew that its strength was insufficient to check a foe such as this; and two days before his formal election to the Empire its nobles declared the realm vacant, and chose Frederick, the young Elector-Palatine, as their king.
Outbreak of the Thirty Years War.
Frederick accepted the crown; but he was no sooner enthroned at Prague than the Bohemians saw themselves foiled in the hopes which had dictated their choice. They had trusted that Frederick's election would secure them support from the Calvinist Union, of which he was the leading member, and from James, whose daughter was his wife. But support from the Union was cut off by the jealousy of the French Government, which saw with suspicion the upgrowth of a great Calvinistic power, stretching from Bohemia to its own frontier, and pushing its influence through its relations with the Huguenot party into the very heart of France. James on the other hand was bitterly angered at Frederick's action. He could not recognize the right of subjects to depose a prince, or support Bohemia in what he looked on as revolt, or Frederick in what he believed to be the usurpation of a crown. By envoy after envoy he called on his son-in-law to lay down his new royalty, and to return to the Palatinate. His refusal of aid to the Protestant Union helped the pressure of France in paralyzing its action, while he threatened war against Holland, the one power which was earnest in the Palatine's cause. It was in vain that in England both court and people were unanimous in a cry for war, or that Archbishop Abbot from his sick-bed implored James to strike one blow for Protestantism. James still called on Frederick to withdraw from Bohemia, and relied in such a case on the joint efforts of England and Spain for a re-establishment of peace. But no consent to his plans could be wrung from Frederick; and the spring of 1620 saw Spain ready to throw aside the mask. The time had come for securing her road to the Netherlands, as well as for taking her old stand as a champion of Catholicism. Rumours of her purpose had already stolen over the Channel, and James was brought at last to suffer Sir Horace Vere to take some English volunteers to the Palatinate. But the succour came too late. Spinola, the Spanish general in the Low Countries, was ordered to march to the aid of the Emperor; and the famous Spanish battalions were soon moving up the Rhine. Their march turned the local struggle in Bohemia into a European war. The whole face of affairs was changed as by enchantment. The hesitation of the Union was ended by the needs of self-defence; but it could only free its hands for action against the Spaniards by signing a treaty of neutrality with the Catholic League. The treaty sealed the fate of Bohemia. It enabled the army of the League under Maximilian of Bavaria to march down the valley of the Danube; Austria was forced to submit unconditionally to Ferdinand; and in August, as Spinola reached the frontier of the Palatinate, the joint army of Ferdinand and the League prepared to enter Bohemia.
The Parliament of 1621.
On James the news of these events burst like a thunderbolt. He had been duped; and for the moment he bent before the burst of popular fury which the danger to German Protestantism called forth throughout the land. The cry for a Parliament, the necessary prelude to a war, overpowered the king's secret resistance; and the Houses were again called together. But before they could meet the game of Protestantism was lost. Spinola beat the troops of the Union back upon Worms, and occupied with ease the bulk of the Palatinate. On the 8th of November the army of the League forced Frederick to battle before the walls of Prague; and before the day was over he was galloping off, a fugitive, to North Germany. Such was the news that met the Houses on their assembly at Westminster in January 1621. The instinct of every Englishman told him that matters had now passed beyond the range of mediation or diplomacy. Armies were moving, fierce passions were aroused, schemes of vast ambition and disturbance were disclosing themselves; and at such a moment the only intervention possible was an intervention of the sword. The German princes called on James to send them an army. "The business is gone too far to be redressed with words only," said the Danish king, who was prepared to help them. "I thank God we hope, with the help of his Majesty of Great Britain and the rest of our friends, to give unto the Count Palatine good conditions. If ever we are to do any good for the liberty of Germany and religion now is the time." But this appeal met offers of "words only" and Denmark withdrew from the strife in despair. James in fact was as confident in his diplomatic efforts as ever; but even he saw at last that they needed the backing of some sort of armed force, and it was to procure this backing that he called for supplies from the Parliament.
Impeachment of the monopolists.
The Commons were bitterly chagrined. They had come together, trusting that their assembly meant such an attitude on the part of the Crown as would have rallied the Protestants of Germany round England, and have aided the enterprise of the Dane. Above all they hoped for war with the power which had at once turned the strife to its own profit, whose appearance in the Palatinate had broken the strength of German Protestantism, and set the League free to crush Frederick at Prague. They found only demands for supplies, and a persistence in the old efforts to patch up a peace. Fresh envoys were now labouring to argue the Emperor into forgiveness of Frederick, and to argue the Spaniards into an evacuation of Frederick's dominions. With such aims not only was no war against the Spaniard to be thought of, but his good-will must be sought by granting permission for the export of arms from England to Spain. The Commons could only show their distrust of such a policy by a small vote of supplies and refusal of further aid in the future. But if their resentment could find no field in foreign affairs, it found a field at home. The most crying constitutional grievance arose from the revival of monopolies, in spite of the pledge of Elizabeth to suppress them. To the Crown they brought little profit; but they gratified the king by their extension of the sphere of his prerogative, and they put money into the pockets of his greedy dependants. A parliamentary right which had slept ever since the reign of Henry the Sixth, the right of the Lower House to impeach great offenders at the bar of the Lords, was revived against the monopolists; and James was driven by the general indignation to leave them to their fate. But the practice of monopolies was only one sign of the corruption of the court. Sales of peerages, sales of high offices of State, had raised a general disgust; and this disgust showed itself in the impeachment of the highest among the officers of State.
Fall of Bacon.