Notwithstanding the unpopularity of his minister, disregarding the public notion that, as the patron and personal friend of Laud, Buckingham was the patron of Roman Catholics, and in direct defiance of the impeachment, all the influence of the Crown was employed to procure the Duke’s election to the office of Chancellor.
That dignity was considered then, as it now is, one of the highest tributes to personal character, as well as to political eminence, that the nation could offer. It happened that Doctor Mew, the Master of Trinity College, was the King’s Chaplain. No fewer than forty-three votes were obtained by his means; nevertheless, there was a powerful opponent in Lord Thomas Howard, son of the late Chancellor; a hundred and three votes against the Duke were secured by him, and with more exertion, it is supposed, that he might have defeated the Duke’s partisans.[[1]]
Buckingham therefore was elected: thus did Charles, to use the words of Sir Henry Wotton, “add to the facings or fringings of the Duke’s greatness the embroiderings or listing of one favour upon another.” But the King, in point of fact, was doing his favourite the greatest injury, by thus marking him out as an object for the justly-aroused indignation of the public.
His doom was, however, at hand. Whatsoever he may have intended to do for Cambridge was cut short by the hands of destiny. There remains, however, a very characteristic memorial of Buckingham in that University. The silver maces still in use, carried by the Esquire Bedells, were a present from the ill-fated Duke,[[2]] whose presiding office was of so short continuance.
It was to be expected that the House of Commons would receive with great anger this fresh proof of the King’s contempt for their body. Regarding this election as a reflection upon them, a resolution was passed to send to the University a remonstrance against their choice. Charles, however, considering--and with some justice--that this remonstrance would be an invasion of the privileges of the University, despatched a message to the House, by Sir Richard Weston, desiring them not to interfere; inditing, at the same time, a letter to the University, expressing his approbation of their election of the Duke.[[3]]
The Duke’s answer to the impeachment was put in on the tenth of June: on the fourteenth the Commons presented a petition, praying for liberty to proceed in the discharge of their duty--and entreating that Buckingham might, during the impeachment, be removed from the royal presence.
Had the King yielded to a prayer so reasonable and equitable, the fury of the public might have been appeased. But he viewed the most important question of this early period of his reign, as between man and man, not as between a monarch and his subject. Buckingham’s great fault, he considered, was being his favourite. No criminality could be proved in any department of his conduct as minister.[[4]] Nor could Charles, who had hung over the death-bed of his father, treat with anything but contempt the accusation of poison. The King believed that all the other articles of the impeachment were prompted by a resolution, after attacking his minister, to assail his own prerogative. He had been reared in the greatest jealousy on that one point, and with the strongest and most conservative value for the sovereign authority. Charles, accomplished as a man, was profoundly ignorant and prejudiced as a king: his views were narrow, and his knowledge of the constitution of his country limited. His notions had been warped by a residence at the courts of France and Spain. The immediate effects of a despotic rule are to a superficial observer imposing. It is only to those who look into the interior circumstances of a people, and who well consider the tendencies of an arbitrary government to blight honest ambition, to cramp and weaken the national character, that its real misery and degradation are apparent.
In Spain, with Buckingham ever at his side; in a court full of picturesque splendour; in youth, with hope and love before him, Charles had probably forgotten the aching hearts in the prisons of the Inquisition. In France, the irresistible fascinations of Richelieu had not, it is reasonable to suppose, been wanting to bias the mind of one likely to be so nearly allied to the royal family of France. Most of all those influences that betrayed Charles to his ruin must, however, be ascribed to the dogmatic fallacies of his father. James had educated according to his own contracted opinions not only his son, but the favourite who was hereafter, as it is expressed by Sir Henry Wotton, to be “the chief concomitant” of the future sovereign of England.[[5]]
Of late years, before the quarrel with the Commons, the popularity of Buckingham had increased. The whole scene of affairs had been changed from Spain to France; the alteration was satisfactory to many, and was ascribed to the Duke--and he had not only become suddenly a favourite with the public, but had been extolled in Parliament.[[6]] This was, indeed, says Wotton, “but a mere bubble or blast, and like an ephemeral fit of applause, as eftsoon will appear in the sequel and train of his life.” The contrast, therefore, between a success so recent and the present odium into which he had fallen, was no doubt the cause of much chagrin to the harassed favourite, who seems, like most men of sensitive natures, to have valued popularity, and to have been fully aware that his political life depended upon it. He knew that no man could long resist the force of public opinion in this country. Even in those days, suppressed as it was by a fettered press, and by the gaunt spectre of injustice in Star-chambers, it had exploded into one burst of forcible indignation in the House of Commons. Somewhere the dauntless spirit of an Englishman must speak out, and it then began to make itself heard in that great assembly which had hitherto been almost as subservient to Court influence as the French Chamber of the present day.
The answer of the Duke to the Impeachment was drawn out with much skill by Sir Nicholas Hyde,[[7]] the uncle of Edward Hyde, afterwards Lord Clarendon. Sir Nicholas was considered to be a sound lawyer, and a man of honourable character. He was a “staunch stickler,” says Lord Campbell, “for prerogative; but this was supposed to arise rather from the sincere opinion he formed of what the English constitution was or ought to be, than from a desire to recommend himself for promotion.”[[8]] He succeeded Sir Randolf Crewe, who was suddenly removed from his seat to make room for one who had no objection to the arbitrary acts by which Charles endeavoured to support Buckingham, and who was ready to conduct the war with France without the aid of parliament.