CHAPTER II.
JAMES I., HIS DISAPPROVAL OF THE GENTRY CROWDING INTO LONDON—DISGUST ENTERTAINED BY THE OLD FAMILIES TO HIM AND HIS COURT—THE CLINTONS, BLOUNTS, VERES, AND WILLOUGHBY D’ERESBYS SHOW IT—CHARACTER OF SIR THOMAS LAKE—WILLIAM, EARL OF PEMBROKE, THE EARLY PATRON OF VILLIERS—ACCOUNT OF THE FIRST INTRODUCTION OF VILLIERS TO JAMES—AMBITIOUS VIEWS WHICH IT SUGGESTED—HIS ATTACHMENT TO THE DAUGHTER OF SIR ROGER ASHTON—THEIR ENGAGEMENT BROKEN OFF—ACCOUNT OF THE KING’S VISIT TO CAMBRIDGE IN 1614-15—SOME DESCRIPTION OF THE COURTLY LADIES WHO WERE PRESENT THERE—THE QUEEN’S ABSENCE—COUNTESS OF ARUNDEL—COUNTESS OF SOMERSET—COUNTESS OF SALISBURY—LADY HOWARD OF WALDEN—PERFORMANCE OF THE PLAY OF “IGNORAMUS” IN CLARE HALL—THE DESIGN OF THIS COMEDY TO RIDICULE THE COMMON LAW—ADMIRATION EXPRESSED BY THE KING, DURING THE PERFORMANCE, OF THE PERSONAL APPEARANCE OF VILLIERS, WHO WAS PRESENT—THE SUBSEQUENT REPRESENTATIONS REFERRED TO.
CHAPTER II.
It might be presumed, from this harangue, that never had the Court of James been so magnificent, nor such a throng of the high-born and the opulent clustered in the metropolis as at that time. But the fact was that whilst obscure country gentlemen brought thither their families, the old nobility fled from a court which cherished Somerset and proscribed Raleigh, and where all the real business of the King’s life consisted in expedients to raise money in order to support an expenditure from which he derived no dignity. The great and gallant representatives of the Houses of Clinton, Blount, and Willoughby D’Eresby sought in continental countries the meed of honour which was denied them in the service of their own country by the pacific temper of the King.[[39]] The Tower entombed some of the noblest spirits. There still languished the Earl of Northumberland and the Earl of Wilton; the one beloved, nevertheless, by Henry Prince of Wales, though suspected of being concerned with his kinsman Percy in the Gunpowder Plot; the other a “very hopeful gentleman blasted in the bud,” who had been imprisoned since the Raleigh plot. Others prosecuted schemes of discovery; West, Earl of Delawarr, in Virginia, attempted to second Raleigh, and contenting himself with that return and inward satisfaction which a good mind feels in its own consciousness of virtue, died in the undertaking. Others, such as the Earl of Arundel, could not tolerate the vulgar revels, the tasteless prodigality of the Court of James; that nobleman confined himself, therefore, to the splendours of his stately home, for his soul was not that of a patriot, nor had he, says Lord Clarendon, “any other affection for the nation or kingdom than as he has a home in it, in which, like the great Leviathan, he might disport himself.”[[40]]
Room and opportunity there were, therefore, for fresh aspirants to compete for royal favour; nevertheless the Earl of Somerset still reigned pre-eminent, and had then been recently promoted to the highest office about the King’s person, that of Lord Chamberlain. The reason assigned for this new display of partiality was also such as to prove that Somerset was firmly planted in his sovereign’s favour. He succeeded in the high office the Earl of Salisbury, who, as James expressed it, was wont to entertain his royal master with “epigrams, discourses, and learned epistles, and other such nicks and devices.” These, the King observed, would pay no debts, and he therefore selected in Somerset, he said, a “plain and honest gentleman, who, if he committed a fault, had not rhetoric enough to excuse it.”[[41]] It seemed therefore very improbable that Villiers should ever hope to rival one who was so rooted in the King’s regard as the Earl of Somerset, but events which no human foresight could have anticipated worked for him in the dark secrecy of a woman’s guilty career.
Mature years, precipitated into old age by disease and infirmities, had brought no increase to James of that practical wisdom which regulates a Court as well as a family. His imputed wisdom, which was so over panegyrized in his own time, and which has been too much depreciated in ours, consisted in shrewd and sensible general notions, which he never seems to have applied to his private benefit.
So that, though the favour of Somerset, when George Villiers returned from France, was in its decline, the King could not be deterred from seeking a new object for his partiality. He might indeed have learned a lesson which should have taught him that he had disgusted the nation and lowered himself by his system of favouritism, yet, after recovering from the perils and vexations of the infamous business which ruined Carr, he had not a notion that it would be wise to profit by experience, and was ready to commence a new career of folly, and to sacrifice all the slender portion of dignity that remained to him—a dignity which consisted chiefly in the general confidence of his subjects towards him—by adopting any new object that might chance to cross his path.
It was during the year of inaction which Villiers passed at Goadby, that he became acquainted with the family of Sir Roger Aston. This knight was the father of four daughters, for one of whom Villiers, in the quiet hours of his country life, conceived an attachment. One might, on a first view of this incident, wonder at the want of caution in Lady Villiers, in detaining her son at Goadby, there to shackle his future course by an early, and, apparently, unprofitable engagement; but she was not acting, it appears, inconsistently with her schemes of future advancement, when she permitted the intimacy which produced this result. Sir Roger Aston was, it is true, only the base-born son of John Aston, of Aston, in Cheshire;[[42]] he could, therefore, derive no lustre from that ancient family; he had held formerly the office of barber to King James when in Scotland, where Sir Roger was chiefly educated.[[43]] He was, in time, made a groom of the royal chamber, and further promoted to be master of the wardrobe, and, however humble his birth and education may have been, became a person of no inconsiderable influence at Court. During the last twenty years of Elizabeth’s reign, he was the continual correspondent of Cecil, whom he supplied with details of all that transpired in Scotland. The powerful minister was not, it appears, ashamed to owe much important information to the former barber, and, fortunately for those who rested upon the good offices of Aston, he is reported to have been a “very honest, plain-dealing man, no dissembler, neither did he do any ill office to any man.”[[44]]
In addition to these acquired advantages, Sir Roger was enabled to provide his daughters with portions. It may, therefore, be inferred that Lady Villiers—who could never have foreseen that her son would have claimed the hand of an heiress of ducal line, nor have anticipated that those attractions, of which she could but partially calculate the value, should captivate in after times even a royal mistress—approved of the growing affection which sprang up amid the rural scenes of Goadby. It was permitted, indeed, at first, by both the parents, whose interests were concerned in it, and it seems, on the part of the lady, to have been a fervent and disinterested sentiment. But the question of a settlement intervened: Villiers, in consideration of a handsome dower, to which the young damsel was entitled, was required to settle upon her the moderate sum of eighty pounds a-year. The arrangement was impracticable, for all his fortune at that time, and even after he had appeared for some time at Court, amounted to only fifty or sixty pounds annually.[[45]]
Some opposition to the engagement originated, therefore, with the friends of the young lady, though she, passionately enamoured, was at first fixed in her choice, and firm to her professions of affection. “The gentlewoman,” says Sir Anthony Weldon, “loved him so well as, could all his friends have made for her great fortune but a hundred marks jointure, she had married him presently, in despite of all her friends, and, no question, would have had him without any fortune at all.” But whilst the affair was under consideration, or probably when it was partially concluded, but was still cherished in the minds of the parties most concerned in it, a circumstance occurred which diverted the hopes of Villiers into another direction; a new stimulus was given to the energies of his nature, and ambition, as it is known to have done before, proved mightier than love.