Among the favourite diversions of King James was horse-racing. Early in the spring, the Court was aroused by the racing of two footmen from St. Albans to Clerkenwell; “and many came to pass the time,” writes Mr. Chamberlain, merrily, “at[“at] Newmarket, and the running match ranges all over the country, where they be fit subjects to entertain it, as lately they have been at Sir John Croft’s, near Bury, and in requital, those ladies have invited them to a mask of their own invention (all those fair sisters being summoned for the purpose), so that on Thursday the King, Prince, and Court go thither a shroving.”[[224]]
The following extract from one of Mr. Chamberlain’s letters represents another kind of diversion:—“The King came hither the Saturday before Shrovetide, and the two days following there was much feasting and jollity; and the Christmas mask repeated on Shrove Tuesday night. On Saturday last, the Prince made a ball and a banquet at Denmark House, which he had lost at Tennis to the Marquis of Buckingham,[[225]] who invited thither a number of ladies, mistresses, and valentines, a ceremony come lately in request, and grown so costly that it is said he hath cast away this year 2000l. that way, among whom a daughter of Sir John Croft’s that is unmarried, had a carcanet of 800l. for her share; and the King is so pleased with the whole society of those sisters,[[226]] that he extols them before all others, and hath bespoken them for the Court against next Christmas. The banquet at Denmark House was so plentiful that it cost 400l., and all the women came away, as it were, laden with sweetmeats; but supper there was none, save what the Lord of Purbeck made to his private friends.”[[227]]
Another of those aspirants to royal favour, to whom we have referred, and whom the career of Buckingham drew forth from obscurity, was Sir Henry Mildmay, and a son of George Brooke’s, who had been executed at Winchester, on the supposed Raleigh plot. But James soon discovered that both these young courtiers were the tools of factions directed against Buckingham; and they were banished the Court. Some time afterwards, it was thought that the return of young Monson might be effected through the influence of his friends; but, observes a bystander of this game, these Court resolutions do strangely alter, and for the most part, “the day following gives the lie to that which preceded.”
The King, meantime, continued to amuse himself vastly at Newmarket. The following description of one of his days of pleasure presents a singular picture of the homely diversions of the first of the Stuart monarchs that reigned in this country:—
“We hear nothing from Newmarket, but that they devise all the means they can to make themselves merry, as of late there was a feast appointed at a farm-house not far off, where every man should bring his dish. The King brought a great chine of beef; the Marquis of Hamilton four pigs, garnished with sausages; the Earl of Southampton two turkies; another, some partridges; and one, a whole tray full of buttered eggs: and so all passed very pleasantly.”[[228]]
During these diversions, James’s good humour, often interrupted by disease and self-indulgence, was maintained by his partiality for Buckingham. “The King,” writes Mr. Chamberlain, “is never out of tune, but that the sight of the Earl of Buckingham doth settle and quiet all.”
Meantime, one of those meteoric appearances to which the superstition of the day attached some portentous meaning, excited popular alarm, and suspended even the course of public business. “On Wednesday,” writes one of the functionaries of government, “we had no Star Chamber, by reason of the Lord Chancellor’s indisposition; that was the first day we took notice here of the great blazing star, though it was observed at Oxford a full week before. It is now the only subject of discourse, and not so much as little children, but as they go to school, talk in the streets that it foreshows the death of a king or a queen, or some great war towards.”[[229]]
At another time a race of two footmen from St. Albans to Clerkenwell diverted the Court. Many money bets were laid upon the result, and Buckingham won three thousand pounds upon that day. “The story,” as the narrator of it well observes, “were not worth telling, but that you may see we have little to do when we are so far affected with these trifles, that all the Court in a manner, lords and ladies, and some further off, and some nearer, went to see this race, and the King himself almost as far as Barnet; and though the weather was sour and foul, yet he was scant fils de bonne mère that went not out to see, insomuch that it is verily thought there was as many people as at the King’s first coming to London; and for the courtiers on horseback, they were so pitifully bewrayed and bedaubed all over, that they could scant be known one from another, besides divers of them came to have falls and other mishaps, by reason of the multitude of horses.”
On some of these occasions, the lavish disposition of Buckingham was exhibited. On St. George’s Day, a festival observed with much solemnity, he presented forty of his gentlemen with fifty pounds a piece “to provide themselves,” and twenty to ten of his yeomen, besides a hundred pounds to treat them with a supper and a play on the following night at the Mitre in Fleet Street. A retinue of fifty persons appears, in modern days, a tolerable attendance for a nobleman even of high rank; but it had recently been found necessary to limit them to that number, owing to the unbounded ostentation and extravagance of many of the nobility.[[230]]
Whilst this continued round of pleasures was carried on, some adverse events checked the merriment of those who played a part in the revels. Prince Charles, who was his mother’s favourite, was sometimes the object of his father’s jealousy, although, by the gentleness and prudence of his deportment, he had avoided the almost open state of variance with the King, which, in his brother’s days, had divided the Court into two parties. Still there were occasions on which the conduct of the young Prince was misrepresented.