Relying upon the cordial sympathy of the English nation, an expectation in which he was not disappointed, the Prince Palatine, believing himself equally sure of the co-operation of King James, accepted the tempting offer of royalty without waiting for the approval of his father-in-law. But he looked to him for support in vain. It was one of King James’s most cherished notions, that monarchs should support monarchs in case of disturbance, how just soever the cause, how unanimous soever the voice of the people by whom a sovereign was deposed. His natural timidity, also, operated in inducing a line of conduct towards his son-in-law and his daughter as pusillanimous as was every other trait of his character and action of his life--and, above all, his project of accomplishing a union between his son Charles and a daughter of Spain militated against a real and effective interference in the affairs of the Palatinate, except, indeed, to confuse and ruin them. He was contented, therefore, with sending ambassadors to Germany, not only to mediate between contending parties, but to induce the new King of Bohemia to relinquish a throne which James pretended to assert that his son-in-law had no right to retain.[[289]]
The King of Poland, the Elector of Saxony, and the Duke of Bavaria, who was at the head of the Catholic League, sided with Ferdinand, Emperor after the death of Mathias, and the result was the reduction of Bohemia, the loss of the Palatinate, and the flight of the Elector Palatine, or, as he was called, the King of Bohemia, to Holland. The King of Spain, also, sent an army under Spinola into the field, and it was that circumstance which rendered the scheme of marrying Prince Charles to the Infanta so unpopular in England, and which brought so much odium on Buckingham.
The treaty for that match had been originally carried on through the agency of the Earl of Bristol, and hence the jealousy which had already broken out on various occasions between the Duke of Buckingham and that able and experienced ambassador; whilst the failure of the negotiations, which were undertaken with the pretext of gaining the restoration of the Palatinate, was the origin of the rash war with Spain, which Charles, without the usual form of a proclamation, resolved on commencing.
The English, however, delighted as they had been at the rupture of the treaty, were indignant at this informality, as well as averse to a war which seemed to be the result of private passions rather than the well-considered act of a monarch anxious for the dignity of his subjects.
But a worthy representative of James’s style of policy remained in his unhappy son. Supplies for the war with Spain were refused in the first Parliament that Charles called; a compulsory loan was exacted. Whilst the country was burning with resentment at this unequally imposed burden, a fleet of eighty sail, English, and twenty sail supplied from Holland, carrying ten thousand men, was sent to the coast of Spain. This grand armament, raised by the energy of the Lord High Admiral, was an object of pride to the nation, who had never before beheld so glorious a fleet; yet it was entrusted, not to Sir Robert Mansel, a distinguished commander, but to Cecil, Viscount Wimbleton, a favourite of Buckingham’s, and a man neither of talent nor experience. Thus, the fatal vice which has obtained the popular name of jobbery was exhibited at this most critical period.
A signal failure was the result; the fleet reached Cape St. Vincent, and landed the troops; a fort was taken, but there was neither discipline nor decision to restrain the troops, who rushed into a store of wine, and soon abandoned themselves to the most disgraceful excesses. Sickness was the consequence, and the expedition returned ingloriously to England, with the additional discredit of its being known that a stay of two days longer would have sufficed to take all the shipping collected into the bay of Cadiz, and thus to have struck a grand blow, at the very commencement of the war, against the power of Spain.
The blame of this unfortunate attempt rested chiefly on the head of Buckingham, as the undertaking was known to have originated in his advice. Lord Clarendon well observes, in his life of himself, speaking of the Stuart family, that it was their “unhappy fate and constitution” to trust to the “judgments of those who were as much inferior to themselves in understanding as they were in quality, before their own, which was very good, and suffered even their natures, which disposed them to virtue and justice, to be prevailed upon, and altered and corrupted by those who knew how to make use of some one infirmity that they discovered in them, and by complying with that, and cherishing and serving it, they, by degrees, wrought upon the mass, and sacrificed all the other good inclinations to that single vice.”
Parliament was accordingly summoned, and at Candlemas, in 1625, the coronation was celebrated. This ceremonial, which might have assisted in re-establishing good feeling, proved, unhappily, the source of bitter dissension and cavilling. The coronations of Edward VI. and of Queen Elizabeth had been performed according to the rites of the Romish Church. That of James I. was done in haste; and “wanted,” says the biographer of Laud, “many things which might have been considered in a time of leisure.”[[290]] Amongst the alterations suggested by the prelates who were appointed as commissioners to settle the form, it was decreed that anointing was to be performed in the form of a cross, a point established, which was at that time as fertile a source of invective as the use of that most holy and touching symbol in our churches has since been in these days, even amongst well-intentioned and pious Christians.
Even the ritual of the coronation, therefore, performed as it was, almost for the first time, according to the mode which it has since retained, contributed indirectly to the unpopularity of Buckingham. To Laud, that prelate to whose memory so much injustice has been done, in imputing to him designs and motives of which no proof exists, and yet whose errors bring pain to every thinking mind, was allotted the performance of the great ceremonial.
Formerly it had been the office of the Abbot of Westminster to celebrate the rite; then, for a century, the Dean had held the guardianship of the regalia used by Edward the Confessor, and had kept them in a secret part of Westminster Abbey. These valuables were now disinterred from their hiding-place by Laud, who, finding also the old crucifix, set it up on the altar, as in former times. Everything relating to this coronation wore an ominous appearance; in the first place, it was fixed for the day of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, and the King, whether from compliment to the faith of his wife, or from taste, or, from the supposed influence of Laud, it does not transpire, was dressed in white, instead of purple, used always by his predecessors. “Not,” says Heylyn, with quaint simplicity, “for want of purple velvet enough to make him a suit (for he had many yards of it in his outer garment), but from choice, to declare that virgin purity with which he came to be espoused unto his kingdom.” His laying aside the purple was, however, looked upon as an “ill omen.”[[291]]