The year succeeding the nuptials of the Marquis was passed by him and his bride in a constant round of courtly revels. During these festivities, various incidents, of little import in themselves, marked the determination of James to accomplish the marriage which he now had at heart between his son and the Infanta of Spain. The slightest objection to that desired event was dangerous to the meanest of his subjects. A man named Almed, who held a subordinate situation, having presented the Marquis of Buckingham with a treatise against the match, was cast into prison by the King’s express commands.[[304]] Secretary Naunton was suspended from his situation for treating with the French ambassador concerning a union between the Prince and Henrietta Maria, and was obliged to write an humble acknowledgment of his errors to Buckingham, and to address to James an epistle penned, as he expressed it, “in grief and anguish of spirit.”[[305]] Buckingham interposed in his behalf, and prevented the secretary’s being turned out of his lodgings at Whitehall, by which many, looking upon Naunton as a ruined man, for having lent an ear to the proposal of France, were already intriguing.[[306]] The infatuation of James, promoted, it was believed, by the counsels of Buckingham, brought infinite disgrace upon the English court, and was repaid by the haughty Spaniards, acting through the crafty Gondomar, with contempt.
Even the pulpits were tuned, as Queen Elizabeth would have said, to one key. “The King,” Mr. Chamberlain wrote to Sr Dudley Carleton, “ordered the Bishop of London to warn his clergy not to preach against the Spanish match, but they do not obey.”[[307]]
The resolution taken by James to withhold assistance to the Bohemians in their revolt against the power of Austria, and his determined refusal to give to his son-in-law, who had been made King of Bohemia, any higher title than that of Prince Palatine, were resented by the jealous people whom James was so incapable even of comprehending, and his English subjects regarded his neutrality with disgust. “The happiness and tranquillity of their own country,” remarks Hume, “became distasteful to the English when they reflected on the grievances and distresses of their Protestant brethren in Germany.” Prince Charles besought his father on his knees, and with tears, to take pity upon his sister Elizabeth and her family, and to suffer himself no longer to be abused with treaties. The young and generous Prince entreated the King, since His Majesty was himself old, to allow him to raise a royal army, and to permit him to be the leader of it, being assured that his subjects would be ready to follow him. To this James replied, “that he would hear once more from Spain, and that if he had not satisfaction, he would give his son and the state leave to do what they would.”[[308]]
Still James was deaf alike to arguments and to parental affection, and defended his pacific measures upon the notion that Austria, swayed by his justice and moderation, would restore the Palatinate, which had been wrested from Frederic, his son-in-law, by Spinola, especially if his son’s marriage with the Infanta were effected. He was blind to the fact that his powers of negotiation would be wholly unable to achieve this end, nor when it was achieved, would the result be such as his hopes anticipated. His reluctance to engage in war, his want of courage in avowing to his subjects the measures which he meant to pursue, were alike indicative of that pusillanimous spirit which exposed him to the contempt of foreign courts, and rendered him unpopular at home.
Not having called a parliament for seven years, he now sent forth a writ of summons in the beginning of the year 1621; an event from which all men “who had any religion,” as Sir Symonds D’Ewes expressed it, “hoped much good, and daily prayed for a happy issue; for both France and Germany needed support and help from England, or the true professions of the Gospel were likely to perish in each nation under the power and tyranny of the anti-Christian tyranny.”
The opening of Parliament was graced by a splendid procession from Whitehall to Westminster; but although the progress was short, it was varied by several significant circumstances. Prince Charles appeared, on this occasion, riding on horseback between the Sergeants-at-arms and the Gentlemen Pensioners, with a rich coronet on his head. Next before his Majesty rode Henry Vere, Earl of Oxford, Lord Great Chamberlain of England, with Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, Earl Marshal. These noblemen were bare-headed. Then appeared James, with a crown on his head, “and most royally caparisoned.” But the personage who excited the most general interest was Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, a man only sixty-three years of age, but accounted in those days—such is the increased value of life in ours—“decrepit with age.” This nobleman, the son of the Protector Somerset, was dear to the people as the relative of Lady Jane Grey, whose sister, the Lady Catherine, he had married; an act for which he had incurred a long and unmerited imprisonment in the time of Elizabeth. He died shortly after the opening of parliament.
The King was now manifestly broken and infirm; the disease, then deemed incurable, which caused him intense agony, softened his petulance, and produced a courtesy that touched the bystanders with pity. As he rode along, he spoke often and lovingly to the crowd three-fold thick; calling out, with more good-will than kingly dignity, “God bless ye, God bless ye”—a striking contrast to his usual practice, or, to use the words of D’Ewes, to his “hasty and passionate custom, which often, in his sudden distemper,” would bid a plague upon those who flocked to see him.
Such was one of the remarks made on this day. Another was, that whilst the windows of Whitehall were crowded by the great and fair, James saluted none of them as he passed along, except the Marchioness of Buckingham and her mother-in-law.
He was observed to speak often and particularly to Gondomar, and his whole demeanour was, for some time, kindly and cheerful.
On a sudden, however, his gracious countenance became overcast. On gazing up at one window, he observed it to be full of gentlewomen and ladies, all in yellow bands: this fashion had been discountenanced at Court ever since the trial of the Countess of Somerset; her accomplice, Mrs. Turner, having been hanged, by sentence, “in her yellow tiffany ruffs and cuffs,” she being the first inventor of the yellow starch.[[309]] But certain “high-handed women,” as King James termed them, chose, it seems, perhaps out of despite to Buckingham, to retain what was conceived to be a memento of the Somerset faction. No sooner did the King perceive them than he cried out “a plague take ye—are ye there?” and immediately the ladies, in alarm, vanished from the window. James was so much exhausted by his exertions this day, and by a speech of an hour long, in which nevertheless he commended brevity, that he was obliged to be carried in a chair from the Abbey, where he attended service, to the Parliament House.