No clamours affected Buckingham long during this period of his life; for, although there were occasionally some boisterous demonstrations of disapproval, the affections of the majority of the people returned to him shortly after a temporary unpopularity. And here, observes Lord Clarendon, in his parallel between the Earl of Essex and Buckingham, “the fortunes of our great personages met when they were both the favourites of the princes, and of the people. But their affections to the Duke of Buckingham were very short lived.”[[154]]
CHAPTER IV.
THE KING’S PROJECTS—A JOURNEY TO SCOTLAND—OBSTACLES TO THAT INTENTION—WANT OF MONEY—£100,000 RAISED IN THE CITY—DISLIKE OF THE PEOPLE TO THIS JOURNEY, ON ACCOUNT OF EXPENSE—JAMES SETS OUT, MARCH 13TH, 1616-1617—HIS ATTENDANT COURTIERS, SIR JOHN ZOUCH, SIR GEORGE GORING, SIR JOHN FINETT—CHARACTERISTICS OF EACH—SURPASSING QUALITIES OF BUCKINGHAM—OBJECTS OF JAMES’S JOURNEY TO EDINBURGH—ANECDOTE OF LORD HOWARD OF WALDEN—DISPUTATIONS AT ST. ANDREWS—THE KING KNIGHTS MANY OF THE YOUNG COURTIERS—OFFENCE GIVEN AT EDINBURGH BY LAUD—A PROJECT TO ASSASSINATE BUCKINGHAM SUSPECTED—JAMES’S PROGRESS CONCLUDED—HIS VISIT TO WARWICK—AFFAIRS RELATING TO SIR EDWARD COKE AND HIS FAMILY—BASE CONDUCT OF ALL THE PARTIES CONCERNED—MEANNESS OF BACON—HIS LETTERS—FRANCES HATTON—CONTRAST BETWEEN HER AND THE EARL OF OXFORD BROUGHT FORWARD BY LADY HATTON—COKE RESTORED TO FAVOUR—MARRIAGE OF FRANCES HATTON TO LORD PURBECK.
CHAPTER IV.
Early in the year 1616-17, James determined to visit Scotland—a resolution which was opposed, somewhat to the displeasure of the King, by Buckingham. But the King was soon pacified, and the journey was decided upon. Some obstacles existed; for instance, the want of money, which was to be borrowed from rich citizens before the monarch’s project could take place; then it was expected to prove a “hard journey,” for it was thought the Court would reach the North before there would be grass for their horses; and even the Scots expressed a wish that the visitation might be deferred.[[155]]
The entertainment given to Monsieur de la Tour, the Ambassador Extraordinary from the French King, delayed somewhat this freezing expedition. At length, it was decided that James should set out on the twenty-second of February; though money came in slowly; and it was found extremely difficult to raise the sum of 100,000l. in the metropolis. “Yet,” observes a contemporary, “there is much urging, and in the end it must be done, though men be never so much discouraged.” To propitiate the presiding Lord Mayor, he was knighted, and received, with his companions, the King’s thanks for the 100,000l. in prospect, which was, however, to be raised, nolens volens, whilst men of low condition were called in to bear the burden.
It was not until the thirteenth of March that the King and Queen, with Prince Charles, removed to Theobalds, preparatory to the progress of James northwards. Never was undertaking so much disliked by the generality of the people, chiefly on account of the immense expense which it involved. It was now fourteen years since his Majesty had visited his Scottish dominions. “He began the journey,” says Wilson, “with the spring, warming the country, as he went, with the glories of the Court;” and carrying with him those boon companions who best could shorten the way, and consume the nights by their pranks and buffoonery. These were Sir George Goring, Sir Edward Zouch, and Sir John Finett—men “who could fit and obtemperate the King’s humour;” and it may, therefore, be readily supposed what description of gentlemen they were. Sir George Goring was a native of Hurst-per-point, in Sussex, in which county his descendants still flourish. He had been brought up in the Court of Queen Elizabeth, his father being one of the gentlemen pensioners; and had been gentleman in ordinary to Prince Henry. He now went as lieutenant of the gentlemen pensioners, and accordingly was despatched with others of that hand by sea.[[156]] Goring had attracted the regard of James by his sound sense and vein of jocular humour; like Sir Edward Zouch and Sir John Finett, he was the “chief and master fool” of the Court—sometimes “presenting David Dromore and Archie Armstrong, the King’s fools, on the back of other fools, till they fell together by the ears, and fell one over another.” Goring, like his colleagues in his respectable employment, is said to have got more by his fooling than other people did by their wisdom; he was, indeed, regarded as a sort of minor favourite, yet Buckingham evinced no jealousy of him, and procured him, in 1629, the title of Baron Goring, of Hurst-pierre-point.[[157]] Finett and Zouch were equally expert with Goring in “antick” dances, disguises in masqueradoes, and extemporary foolery; but in this last accomplishment Sir John Millicent, whose name is not among the King’s retinue in Scotland, excelled them all; and was the “most commended for notable fooling.”[fooling.”][[158]] It was found, however, impossible to surpass Buckingham in the accomplishment of dancing. His grace, and the fondness he showed for the pastime, brought it into fashion. “No man,” writes an historian, “dances better; no man runs or jumps better; and, indeed, he jumps higher than ever Englishman did in so short a time—from a private gentleman to a dukedom.”[[159]] He now reigned sole monarch in the King’s favour; and everything he did was admired “for the doer’s sake.” The king was never contented, except when near him; nor could the Court grandees be well out of his presence; all petitions, therefore, “whether for place or office, for Court or Commonwealth, were addressed to him.”
The King proceeded by easy journeys of ten, twelve, and seventeen miles a day northwards. It is curious to find him resting a day and a night at the home of Sir Oliver Cromwell of Hinchinbrook, near Huntingdon.[[160]] At Lincoln, he healed fifty persons of the Evil, a gracious act which was succeeded by an attendance upon a cock-fighting, at which His Majesty was very merry. This diversion was varied by horse-racing.
On his arrival near Edinburgh, the King took up his arrival at Seton House, the seat of the Earl of Wintoun, whose family continued to be faithful to the descendants of James during the calamitous contest between the modern Stuarts and the Hanoverians. James remained in Scotland until the fifth of July, when he returned by the west coast of Scotland to Carlisle.
The three great objects of his Majesty’s journey to Scotland, were the extension of episcopal authority; the establishment of some ceremonials in religion; and the elevation of the civil above the ecclesiastic authority.[[161]] It does not, however, appear that Buckingham took any active part in these designs, or that he was at this period regarded in any other light than as one of the ministering agents to the amusement of James’s vacant hours. It is possible that he may have viewed Scotland with that prejudice with which the English at that time regarded that nation. The revenues of that country being then insufficient to maintain the Government, Buckingham probably deemed it, as others did, nothing but a drain upon the resources of England—a barren ground from which “a beggarly rabble (like a fluent spring),” to use the words of Osborne, “was for ever to be found crossing the River Tweed.”[[162]] The national prejudice was likewise considerably strengthened by the King’s favourite, but abortive scheme of union between the two crowns; thus dividing the kingdom into halves, so that he, “a Christian king under the gospel, should no longer be a polygamist to two wives, under which discreditable imputation he conceived that the partition of the kingdom placed him.”[him.”][[163]] Whether Buckingham may have been propitiated by the hospitality of the Scots or not, or whether he thought with Sir Anthony Weldon that “the country was too good for them that possess it, and too bad for others to be at the charge to conquer it,” does not appear. In some passages of the Royal Progress it is most likely that the young courtier found but little delight. At St. Andrews, disputations in divinity, and at Stirling in philosophy, were honoured by the King’s presence. They were delivered by some members of the University of Edinburgh, and were to have been held in the college there, had not public business interfered.”[interfered.”][[164]]