Whilst all this was going on, Arthur Brett, the supposed rival of Buckingham, was committed to the Fleet. By his examination it appears that, on the Duke’s going into Spain, he had desired this young man to retire to France, and he did so; but on Buckingham’s return, he could not obtain leave to come back to England, and had therefore left France without it. He was ordered back to France by the King; he pleaded his right to stay in his own country, as a free-born subject. Then he was told not to appear within forty miles of London. He had afterwards an interview with Buckingham, who blamed him for returning; but said he was the King’s servant, and might live where he pleased. He had therefore staid in London, and wished to plead for a restoration of favour with the Duke; failing in this, he went to Wanstead to petition the King.[[147]]
This disclosure of Brett’s, and Buckingham’s wish to keep him from the Court, certainly throw a doubt on the genuineness of the Duke’s motives in the prosecution of Middlesex. Brett had imprudently met the King in Waltham Forest, and had seized hold of his Majesty’s bridle and stirrup, a liberty which had greatly offended James, and to punish which Brett was sent to the Fleet Prison, and, though released, was heavily fined.
In the midst of these various harassing affairs, the illness of James began to assume a formidable appearance. The King had frequently, before his last illness, been heard to express his belief that he should not live long. He was a martyr to rheumatism and gout, which he increased by gross feeding, and the continual use of sweet wines. During the whole of the Christmas preceding his death he had kept his chambers, not even going to chapel, or to see the plays, although his known delight in Ben Jonson’s masques would have induced him to attend the representation of the last of those performances played in his reign, the masque of the “Fortunate Isles.” The sole amusement which the dying King permitted himself was to go abroad in his litter, in fair weather, to see some flights at the brook; but all enjoyment of his usual diversion was at an end.
Accounts from the Court became daily worse:--"The King," Chamberlain, on the twelfth of March, wrote to Carleton, “has a tertian ague, but not dangerous, if he would be governed by physicians.”[[148]] His Majesty’s decline was evidently gradual; nor was he the only person in the realm sinking under fever or ague, the “spotted fever”[[149]] being fearfully prevalent. Buckingham was now on the eve of going to France as ambassador, to marry by proxy the young Princess, Henrietta Maria; but so late as the twenty-third of March he was detained by the continued illness of James.
"The King’s fits," Mr. Chamberlain again writes, “diminish; the Duke will not leave him till he is perfectly recovered, of which there is hope, but no assurance.” On the following day, we find, from the same source, that James performed an act of mercy, almost if not quite his last, in excusing Lord Middlesex part of his fine, and reducing it from 50,000l. to 20,000l., which sum was to be repaid to the Crown.
His sickness had now assumed a distinctly intermittent form; even so late as the middle of the month there had been an apparent abatement; on the sixteenth of March, he had his seventh fit of this debilitating disease; but it was, as Mr. Secretary Conway informed the Earl of Carlisle, “less intense hereto than the rest, and left more clearness and cheerfulness in his looks than the former.”[[150]] Yet, in the same letter, Conway speaks of the “double sadness of every face,” and alludes to the "extreme grief suffered for the sharp and smart accesses of His Majesty’s fever."
During the last sufferings of King James, the marriage treaty with France was still diligently carried on, through the agency of Lord Carlisle, ambassador at Paris, and was only delayed on the ground that "it could not be suitable with the good nature of a son, in so dangerous a state of his father’s health, to entertain such jollity and triumph as duly belong to so acceptable a marriage." The Duke of Buckingham, who had entertained some notion of going in person to Paris, and of concluding the treaty himself, directed Lord Carlisle, in a letter written on the fifteenth of March, “to have his eyes open, and to state any course, as much as he could, which might hinder the business of the Palatinate and of the religion,” until he appeared in the French capital.
But the increasing illness of his royal master delayed the Duke’s journey from day to day; and James was not permitted to witness the conclusion of the long-cherished hopes of the union of his son with a Princess of birth equal to his own. “All human things,” wrote Conway, “have something of earth and defect.” Nothing, he added in his letter to Lord Carlisle,[[151]] could exceed the contentment of the “excellent Prince and gracious Duke,” at the sure progress of the treaty, "and there was now no speech but of the speed of the Duke’s going;"[[152]] but in the next letter the journey was spoken of as conditional upon the restoration of His Majesty to health. On the twenty-fourth of March, the tenth night of the King’s fever arrived. The attack, as the same correspondent informed Lord Carlisle, “exercised much violence upon a weak body, which being so much reverenced, and loved with so much cause as His Majesty hath given, struck much sense and fear into the hearts of his servants that looked upon him.” The King, it appeared, nevertheless, had that day slept well, “and taken broths.” “And more to your comfort,” added the secretary, “did, with life and cheerfulness, receive the sacrament in the presence of the Prince and Duke, and many others, and admitted many to take it with him; and in the action and the circumstances of it, did deliver himself so answerable to his writings and his wise and pious professions, and did justly produce much tears between comfort and grief; and now this day, and now this night, he recovers temper and gets, in appearance to us, strength, appetite, and digestion, which gives us great hope of his amendment, grounded not only upon desire, but upon the method of judicious observation.”[[153]]
It may here be remarked, before going more fully into the false and calumnious evidence of poison, afterwards brought forward in this case of the royal sufferer, that the state of the King, his relapses, and his rallyings, imply anything but poison, and convey an impression of a constitution long broken up, and suddenly depressed by the supervening of an accidental attack of a disease then extremely prevalent in this country. The Holy Communion was administered to James, over as before stated, four days before he died: of the King’s professions before that last sacrament, an account, corresponding with that of Secretary Conway, but more distinct and instructive, is given by the Lord Keeper Williams. The monarch, who broke the heart of Arabella Stuart by long imprisonment and blighted hopes, and who beheaded Ralegh, and denied restitution to his son, Carew, died well;--so self-deceived is the spirit of the “rich man,”--so easy is it to substitute professions for practical Christianity.
“Being asked,” said the Lord Keeper, “if he was prepared in point of faith and charity for so great a devotion, he said he was, and gave humble thanks to God for the same.” Being desired to declare his faith, he repeated the articles of the creed, one by one, and said, “He believed them all as they were received and expounded by that part of the Catholic church which was established here in England,” adding that whatever he had written of this faith in his life he was ready to seal with his death. Being questioned in “point of charity,” he answered that he forgave all men that had offended him, and wished to be forgiven by all whom he had offended. Being told that men in holy orders in the Church of England can challenge a power, as inherent in their function, not in their power, to pronounce absolution on such of the penitent as do call on the same, and that they have a form of absolution in the Book of Common Prayer, he answered quickly:--