“Riding one day with the king, a-hunting, he, Lord Howard of Walden, asked the Marquis of Hamilton whether he were ever in love. He answered, Yes. What effects wrought it? saith he. His answer was, It made him fat, saucy, and ignorant. Other speeches passed just like this, but I proceed to the quarrels he had with him. The Marquis of Hamilton hath a page, whom my Lord Hay did liken, for his fairness of face, to the second daughter of the Lord Burghley, Mrs. Diana Cecil, admired so much by the Lord Walden, except he were unmarried. After my Lord Hay’s departure thence, the Marquis, the Favourite, and Lord Walden being at dinner together, and the boy waiting at the table, the Marquis and my Lord Buckingham whispered and laughed, to which my Lord Walden said he knew what they laughed at, and that he, that said that, was but a fool. To which the Marquis replied that, ‘were he a roaring boy, he would have flung a glass of wine in his face.’ It was my Lord Hay had said it. He was his friend, and a noble gentleman, whom, in his absence, he would not have wronged, and, therefore, bid him, before he should answer it, draw his sword. But my Lord of Buckingham so talked with these lords that after dinner he did reconcile this business, the Lord Walden acknowledging him now, upon better consideration, to be a noble gentleman, and that he knew no other of my Lord Hay. This business fell out nigh a month before the king’s coming from Scotland, though it came not to my knowledge since a week before the king’s departure there, at what time the Marquis Hamilton was on the point to be sworn a councillor. The Lord Walden, remembering some of these former passages, and thinking to stop the conferring of this honour upon him, as is said, did acquaint Sir Edward Villiers, that the Marquis should say that if my Lord of Buckingham did not dispatch that business for him, of conferring the councillorship, that he would cut his throat, wishing him to tell it his brother, which he did; so that, when he met the Marquis, the Lord of Buckingham questioned him of that, who presently demanded the author, which he told him. Then the Marquis departed, and presently sent the Lord Buckhurst to seek out the Lord Walden, with a challenge as was thought, but he could not be found. In the end he came to my Lord of Buckingham’s chamber, where, it is said, he lamented by ill fortune to have these words spoken again, and from thence did not depart until by acknowledgments the quarrel was reconciled.”
Buckingham appears, on this occasion, to have acted a kind and sensible part. His utmost discretion was soon called upon in an affair upon which the annals of the time ring changes, and the details of which present the most curious combat of worldly[worldly] passions, and the most fatal results of misdirected influence, that can be conceived.
In spite of a “fearful dream” of Queen Anne’s, reported to James as a warning, his progress was not shortened. He spent several days at Brougham Castle, the residence of Francis Clifford, fourth Earl of Cumberland, whose daughter, the celebrated Anne Clifford, afterwards repaired the castle, which suffered during the civil wars; but which, so vain were her exertions, has since been permitted to fall into ruins. The expenses entailed by the king’s visit, including the music performed in his presence, were considerable, and helped to ruin the lord of the castle, an easy, improvident man, whose allusion to the tax imposed by this royal visitation is almost touching. “I fynde plainly,” he thus wrote to his son, “upon better consideration, that the charge for that entertainment will grow very great, besyde the musick, and that instead of lessening, my charge in general encreaseth, and new paiments come on which without better providence hereafter cannot be performed.”[[170]] In his progress from one mansion or manor-house to another, James visited several of those families whose names became afterwards distinguished among the adherents of his unfortunate son. At Hoghton Tower, in Lancashire, at that time the principal seat of the Hoghton family, but now unhappily a ruin, still containing an apartment called King James’s room; where[where] the monarch is said to have conferred the honour of knighthood, which he had dispensed very freely during his progress upon his subjects, on the loin of beef, that act being also one of the last achievements of his journey. He visited also Lathom House, the seat of the Stanleys; and was received with great demonstrations of respect and joy at Stafford, where the Earl of Essex, who lived in an honoured retirement at Chartley Castle, rode before him into the town. At Warwick, he was entertained by Sir Fulke Grevill, who was then the master of Warwick Castle, which he had found, on taking possession of it, in a ruinous state, and used as a county jail.[[171]] In the hall of Leicester Hospital, that charitable foundation, endowed by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, for twelve Brethren, James was entertained with a supper; an event of which a tradition still remains attached to the half-monastic institution in which it occurred. Sir Fulke Grevill had his own private motives to induce him to extend his marks of respect to Buckingham, as well as to the king; for, shortly afterwards, we find him a suitor to the niece of Buckingham, Lady Anderson, for her hand.[[172]] There can be no doubt, but that James and Buckingham visited Warwick Castle, but were not entertained there on account of its ruinous condition.
Whilst Buckingham was in Scotland, overtures were made to reconcile certain differences between him and Sir Edward Coke, then Lord Chief Justice in England. In order to comprehend the conduct which the favourite pursued in relation to that celebrated man, it becomes necessary to review a series of occurrences which had happened previously to the Scottish journey; to enter, likewise, into the topics of the day; and, above all, to refer to the prejudices of the king, and the resistance made to them by an honest, though a harsh, individual. These considerations are mixed up with matters of apparently private interest; yet are necessary to be unfolded, when the conduct of Villiers, and the history of his family, are the subject of narrative.
It will be remembered that the chief interest which James derived from the representation of the play of “Ignoramus” had arisen from the ridicule cast upon the practice of the common law. In several passages of that drama, Sir Edward Coke was supposed to be particularly alluded to.[[173]] This great lawyer had, in various ways, given offence; he had termed the royal prerogative, in one of his speeches in Parliament, “a great overgrown monster;” and he had displayed a courage which redeemed his character from many of its demerits, by insinuating that the common law of England was in charge of being perverted. On two other notable points Coke had also offended the king; the one being the famous dispute respecting the Court of Chancery; the other, the still more celebrated case of the Commendams.[[174]] In the former matter, the conduct of Coke is allowed to have been highly discreditable to him and his associates; in the latter, to have merited the warmest admiration.
Whatever view the public may have taken of these transactions, they formed the first plea for that ruin of Coke to which Buckingham is said to have given an impetus, by the intrusion of his own interests upon the royal ear,[[175]] at this crisis of Coke’s destiny. The King, summoning the Lord Chief Justice and the twelve judges to the council at Whitehall, delivered his opinions concerning their conduct in an harangue, in which he declared “that ever since his coming to the crown, the popular sort of lawyers had been the men that most effrontedly had trodden upon his prerogative;”[[176]] and, having expatiated upon their offences with his usual pedantry and prolixity, he dismissed them, declaring “that in his protection of them, and expediting of justice, he would walk in the steps of the ancient and best of kings.” The firmness with which Coke conducted himself during the whole of this affair, whilst it won him a popularity which he would never otherwise have acquired, prepared the way for those who, from interested motives, sought his ruin, and, combined with his zeal and acuteness in the trial of Lord and Lady Somerset—an acuteness which the King, it is rumoured, had secret reasons to dread—completely undermined his credit at court.
In the intrigues which tended to ruin Coke, Buckingham certainly participated.[[177]] The first instance of rapacity in the young favourite is discernible at this period. Sir Henry Roper had for many years enjoyed the place of Chief Clerk for enrolling the pleas of the King’s Bench; it was supposed to be worth 4000l. per annum. Being advanced in age, Sir Henry was disposed to relinquish the appointment, on condition of being made Lord Teynham, receiving the salary during his life. Buckingham seized this opportunity of improving his fortunes. He applied for the reversion of this office to be granted to two of his trustees during their lives—an application which had been successfully made by the Earl of Somerset formerly.[[178]] But the Lord Chief Justice stood in the way of this surrender on the part of Roper, and also of the proposed arrangement. He answered, upon first being solicited, “that he was old, and could not struggle”—a reply which was regarded as a compliance.[[179]] But when Sir Henry Roper actually surrendered the situation, and was created Lord Teynham, Coke changed his tone, and stated that, since the salaries of the judges in his court were very low, it would be desirable to increase them by the revenues of this office, which was at his disposal. Upon this, it was resolved by the King and his favourite to remove him, and to substitute on the Bench a more compliant judge. The avowed plea of this iniquitous proceeding was the conduct of Coke in the affair of the Commendams; but its real cause was his non-compliance with the views of Buckingham. Bacon, with his usual subserviency, augmented by his hatred of Coke, wrote to Villiers: “For Roper’s place, I would have it by all means despatched, and therefore I marvel it lingereth.” The “thing,” he declared, was so reasonable, “that it ought to be done as soon as said.” Unhappily for Coke, he thought otherwise.
It is hardly possible to conceive a line of conduct more degrading than that which Buckingham pursued in the whole of this affair. He forfeited by it all the credit due to him for the rejection of Sherborne, and the principle of which he had boasted, that he would not rise upon the ruins of others, was already effaced from his memory. Upon the third of October, 1616, Coke was desired to desist from the service of his place.[[180]] This intimation of a disgraceful act had come suddenly, for, on the week before, the King had been at a great entertainment, given by Lord Exeter at Wimbledon, and the Lady Hatton, the wife of the Lord Chief Justice, was there, and “well-graced, for the King had kissed her twice:” but this, it seems, was “but a lightening.” On the following Sunday, Sir Edward Coke was sequestered from the council table, and prohibited from riding his circuit, his place being supplied by Sir Randolph Crew. “Some that wish him well,” adds a contemporary, “fear the matter will not end here, for he is wilful and will take no counsel, and not seeking to make good his first errors, runs in worse, and entangles himself more and more, and gives his enemies such advantage to work upon the King’s indignation towards him, that he is in great danger.” Others scrupled not to say that he had been too busy in the late business (of Somerset), and had dived into secrets further than there was need. “It happens, also, that he had not carried himself advisedly and dutifully to His Majesty.”[[181]] All these assigned causes are points which tend somewhat to mitigate the censures which must be cast on Buckingham in this affair. Lady Hatton, too, a Cecil, but not endowed with the prudence of that sagacious family, and one of the fiercest of her sex, contributed to the downfall of her husband, by carrying herself very indiscreetly to the Queen, who forbade her the court. “The story,” adds the same chronicler, “were long to tell; but it was about braving and uncivil words to the Lady Compton, George Villiers’ mother, and vouching the Queen for her author.” As usual,[[182]] to women was attributed all the far-spreading evil which comes[comes] out of contention.
A letter addressed by Coke to Buckingham, before his final removal from his pre-eminent station, must, one would imagine, have touched a harder heart than that of Villiers. Coke’s words are described as “now being humble enough.” His letter, though supplicatory, was not abject. He thanked Buckingham for having, by his honourable means, obtained a hearing for him. He entered manfully into the defence of his book of reports, to which objections had been made, which were the plea of his suspension from his usual judicial duties, “assuring his Lordship that never any book was written of any human learning that was not in some part or other subject to exception.”[[183]]
This remonstrance was dispatched to Buckingham at a time when the heart of the favourite might have been softened by his own elevation, and by the general joy. It reached him just before the creation of Charles, Prince of Wales, and contained a request that the deeply-humbled Coke might be permitted to attend that ceremonial.[[184]] There is no record that the entreaty was acceded to.