15. The Beginning of the Thirty Years' War. 1618-1620.—As yet, however, these small beginnings of a colonial empire attracted little attention in England. Men's thoughts ran far more on a great war—the Thirty Years' War—which, in 1618, began to desolate Germany. In that year a revolution took place in Bohemia, where the Protestant nobility rose against their king, Matthias, a Catholic, who was at the same time Emperor, and, in 1619, after the death of Matthias, they deposed his successor, Ferdinand, and chose Frederick, the Elector Palatine, James's Calvinist son-in-law, as king in his place. Almost at the same time Ferdinand became by election the Emperor Ferdinand II. James was urged to interfere on behalf of Frederick, but he could not make up his mind that the cause of his son-in-law was righteous, and he therefore left him to his fate. Frederick's cause was, however, popular in England, and in 1620, when there were rumours that a Spanish force was about to occupy the Palatinate in order to compel Frederick to abandon Bohemia, James—drawing a distinction between helping his son-in-law to keep his own and supporting him in taking the land of another—went so far as to allow English volunteers, under Sir Horace Vere, to garrison the fortresses of the Palatinate. In the summer of that year, a Spanish army, under Spinola, actually occupied the Western Palatinate, and James, angry at the news, summoned Parliament in order to obtain a vote of supplies for war. Before Parliament could meet, Frederick had been crushingly defeated on the White Hill, near Prague, and driven out of Bohemia.
King James I.: from a painting by P. van Somer, dated 1621, in the National Portrait Gallery.
16. The Meeting of James's Third Parliament. 1621.—Parliament, when it met in 1621, was the more distrustful of James, as Gondomar had returned to England in 1620 and had revived the Spanish marriage treaty. When the Houses met, they were disappointed to find that James did not propose to go to war at once. James fancied that, because he himself wished to act justly and fairly, every one of the other Princes would be regardless of his own interests, and, although he had already sent several ambassadors to settle matters without producing any results, he now proposed to send more ambassadors, and only to fight if negotiation failed. On learning this, the House of Commons only voted him a small supply, not being willing to grant war-taxes unless it was sure that there was to be a war. Probably James was right in not engaging England in hostilities, as ambition had as much to do with Frederick's proceedings as religion, and as, if James had helped his German allies, he could have exercised no control over them; but he had too little decision or real knowledge of the situation to inspire confidence either at home or abroad; and the Commons, as soon as they had granted a supply, began to criticise his government in domestic matters.
Civil costume about 1620: from a contemporary broadside.