A Student's History of England Volume II Part 7

------- " " Whitgift.

NICOLAS, SIR W. H. Life of Sir C. Hatton.

------- " W. Davison.

SPEDDING, J. Letters and Life of Francis Bacon. Vol. i.-iii. p. 58.

EDWARDS, E. The Life of Sir W. Raleigh.

FISHER, H. A. L. The Political History of England. Vol. v. From the Accession of Henry VII. to the Death of Henry VIII. (1485-1547).

POLLARD, A. F. The Political History of England. Vol. vi. From the Accession of Edward VI. to the Death of Elizabeth (1547-1603).

PART VI

THE PURITAN REVOLUTION. 1603-1660

CHAPTER x.x.xI

JAMES I. 1603-1625

LEADING DATES

Accession of James I. 1603 The Hampton Court Conference 1604 Gunpowder Plot 1605 Foundation of Virginia 1607 The Great Contract 1610 Beginning of the Thirty Years' War 1618 Foundation of New England 1620 Condemnation of the Monopolies and fall of Bacon 1621 Prince Charles's visit to Madrid 1623 Breach with Spain 1624 Death of James I. 1625

1. =The Peace with Spain. 1603-1604.=--At the end of Elizabeth's reign there had been much talk of various claimants to the throne, but when she died no one thought seriously of any one but James. The new king at once put an end to the war with Spain, though no actual treaty of peace was signed till =1604=. James gave his confidence to Sir Robert Cecil, Lord Burghley's second son, whom he continued in the office of Secretary of State, which had been conferred on him by Elizabeth. The leader of the war-party was Raleigh, who was first dismissed from his offices and afterwards accused of treason, on the charge of having invited the Spaniards to invade England. It is most unlikely that the charge was true, but as Raleigh was angry at his dismissal, he may have spoken rashly. He was condemned to death, but James commuted the sentence to imprisonment.

2. =The Hampton Court Conference. 1604.=--The most important question which James had to decide on his accession was that of religious toleration. Many of the Puritan clergy signed a pet.i.tion to him known as the Millenary Pet.i.tion, because it was intended to be signed by a thousand ministers. A conference was held on January 14, =1604=, in the king's presence at Hampton Court, in which some of the bishops took part, as well as a deputation of Puritan ministers who were permitted to argue in favour of the demands put forward in the pet.i.tion. The Puritan Clergy had by this time abandoned Cartwright's Presbyterian ideas (see p. 446) and merely asked that those who thought it wrong to wear surplices and to use certain other ceremonies might be excused from doing so, without breaking away from the national church. James listened quietly to them, till one of them used the word Presbytery. He at once flew into a pa.s.sion. "A Scottish Presbytery," he said, "agreeth as well with a monarchy as G.o.d with the devil. Then Jack and Tom and Will and d.i.c.k shall meet, and at their pleasures censure me and my council.... Until you find that I grow lazy--let that alone." James ordered them to conform or to leave the ministry. He adopted the motto, "No bishop, no king!" Like Elizabeth, he used the bishops to keep the clergy from gaining power independent of the Crown. The bishops were delighted, and one of them said that 'his Majesty spoke by the inspiration of G.o.d.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: Royal Arms borne by James I. and succeeding Stuart sovereigns.]

3. =James and the House of Commons.=--In =1604= Parliament met. The members of the House of Commons had no more wish than James to overthrow the bishops, but they thought that able and pious ministers should be allowed to preach even if they would not wear surplices, and they were dissatisfied with the king's decision at Hampton Court. On the other hand, James was anxious to obtain their consent to a union with Scotland, which the Commons disliked, partly because the king had brought many Scotsmen with him, and had supplied them with English lands and money. Financial difficulties also arose, and the session ended in a quarrel between the king and the House of Commons. Before the year was over he had deprived of their livings many of the clergy who refused to conform.

4. =Gunpowder Plot. 1604-1605.=--Not only the Puritans, but the Catholics as well, had appealed to James for toleration. In the first year of his reign he remitted the recusancy fines (see p.

454). As might be expected, the number of recusants increased, probably because many who had attended church to avoid paying fines stayed away as soon as the fines ceased to be required. James took alarm, and in February =1604= banished the priests from London. On this, a Catholic named Robert Catesby proposed to a few of his friends a plot to blow up king, Lords, and Commons with gunpowder at the opening of Parliament. The king had two sons, Henry and Charles, and a little daughter, Elizabeth. Catesby, expecting that the two princes would be destroyed with their father, intended to make Elizabeth queen, and to take care that she was brought up as a Roman Catholic. Guy Fawkes, a cool soldier, was sent for from Flanders to manage the scheme. The plotters took a house next to the House of Lords, and began to dig through the wall to enable them to carry the powder into the bas.e.m.e.nt. The wall, however, was nine feet thick, and they, being little used to mason's work, made but little way. In the spring of =1605= James increased the exasperation of the plotters by re-imposing the recusancy fines on the Catholic laity.

Soon afterwards their task was made more easy by the discovery that a coal-cellar reaching under the floor of the House of Lords was to be let. One of their number hired the cellar, and introduced into it barrels of powder, covering them with coals and billets of wood.

Parliament was to be opened for its second session on November 5, and in the preceding evening Fawkes went to the cellar with a lantern, ready to fire the train in the morning. One of the plotters, however, had betrayed the secret. Fawkes was seized, and his companions were pursued. All the conspirators who were taken alive were executed, and the persecution of the Catholics grew hotter than before.

5. =The Post-nati. 1606-1608.=--When another session opened in =1606= James repeated his efforts to induce the Commons to do something for the union with Scotland. He wanted them to establish free trade between the countries, and to naturalise his Scottish subjects in England. Finding that he could obtain neither of his wishes from Parliament, he obtained from the judges a decision that all his Scottish subjects born after his accession in England--the _Post-nati_, as they were called--were legally naturalised, and were thus capable of holding land in England. He had to give up all hope of obtaining freedom of trade.

6. =Irish Difficulties. 1603-1610.=--James was the first English sovereign who was the master of the whole of Ireland. He tried to win the affection of the tribes by giving them the protection of English law against the exactions of their chiefs. Naturally, the chiefs resented the change, while the tribesmen distrusted the interference of Englishmen from whom they had suffered so much. In =1607= the chiefs of the Ulster tribes of O'Neill and O'Donnell--known in England as the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell--seeing resistance hopeless, fled to Spain. James ignored the Irish doctrine that the land belonged to the tribe, and confiscated six counties as if they had been the property of the chiefs, according to the feudal principles of English law. He then poured in English and Scottish colonists, leaving to the natives only the leavings to live on.

7. =Bate's Case and the New Impositions. 1606-1608.=--The state of James's finances was almost hopeless. Elizabeth, stingy as she was, had scarcely succeeded in making both ends meet, and James, who had the expense of providing for a family, from which Elizabeth had been free, would hardly have been able to meet his expenditure even if he had been economical. He was, however, far from economical, and had given away lands and money to his Scottish favourites. There was, therefore, a large deficit, and James wanted all the money he could get. In =1606= a merchant named Bate challenged his right to levy an imposition on currants, which had already been levied by Elizabeth.

The Court of Exchequer, however, decided that the king had the right of levying impositions--that is to say, duties raised by the sole authority of the king--without a grant from Parliament--holding that the _Confirmatio Cartarum_ (see p. 221), to which Bate's counsel appealed, only restricted that right in a very few cases. Whether the argument of the judges was right or wrong, they were the const.i.tutional exponents of the law, and when Cecil (who had been James's chief minister from the beginning of the reign, and was created Earl of Salisbury in =1605=) was made Lord Treasurer as well as Secretary in =1608=, he at once levied new impositions to the amount of about 70,000_l._ a year, on the plea that more money was needed in consequence of the troubles in Ireland.

[Ill.u.s.tration: North-west view of Hatfield House, Herts; built for Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury, between 1605 and 1611.]

8. =The Great Contract. 1610-1611.=--Even the new impositions did not fill up the deficit, and Parliament was summoned in =1610= to meet the difficulty. It entered into a bargain--the Great Contract, as it was called--by which, on receiving 200,000_l._ a year, James was to abandon certain antiquated feudal dues, such as those of wards.h.i.+p and marriage (see p. 116). An agreement was also come to on the impositions. James voluntarily remitted the most burdensome to the amount of 20,000_l._ a year, and the House of Commons agreed to grant him the remainder on his pa.s.sing an Act declaring illegal all further levy of impositions without a Parliamentary grant.

Unfortunately, before the details of the Great Contract were finally settled, fresh disputes arose, and early in =1611=, James dissolved his first Parliament in anger without settling anything either about the feudal dues or about the impositions.

9. =Bacon and Somerset. 1612-1613.=--In =1612= Salisbury died, and Bacon, always ready with good advice, recommended James to abandon Salisbury's policy of bargaining with the Commons. Bacon was a warm supporter of monarchy, because he was anxious for reforms, and he believed that reforms were more likely to come from the king and his Council than from a House of Commons--which was mainly composed of country gentlemen, with little knowledge of affairs of State. Bacon, however, knew what were the conditions under which alone a monarchical system could be maintained, and reminded James that king and Parliament were members of one body, with common interests, and that he could only expect the Commons to grant supplies if he stepped forward as their leader by setting forth a policy which would commend itself to them. James had no idea of leading, and, instead of taking Bacon's advice, resolved to do as long as he could without a Parliament. A few years before he had taken a fancy to a handsome young Scot named Robert Carr, thinking that Carr would be not only a boon companion, but also an instrument to carry out his orders, and relieve him from the trouble of dispensing patronage. He enriched Carr in various ways, especially by giving him the estate of Sherborne, which he took from Raleigh on the ground of a flaw in the t.i.tle--though he made Raleigh some compensation for his loss. In =1613= he married Carr to Lady Ess.e.x, who had been divorced from her husband under very disgraceful circ.u.mstances, and created him Earl of Somerset. Somerset was brought by this marriage into connection with the family of the Howards--his wife's father, the Earl of Suffolk, being a Howard. As the Howards were for the most part Roman Catholics at heart, if not openly, Somerset's influence was henceforth used in opposition to the Protestant aims which had found favour in the House of Commons.

10. =The Addled Parliament. 1614.=--In spite of Somerset and the Howards, James's want of money drove him, in =1614=, to call another Parliament. Instead of following Bacon's advice that he should win popularity by useful legislative projects, he tried first to secure its submission by encouraging persons who were known as the Undertakers because they undertook that candidates who supported the king's interests should be returned. When this failed, he again tried, as he had tried under Salisbury's influence in =1610=, to enter into a bargain with the Commons. The Commons, however, replied by asking him to abandon the impositions and to restore the nonconforming clergy ejected in =1604= (see p. 482). On this James dissolved Parliament. As it granted no supplies, and pa.s.sed no act, it became known as the Addled Parliament.

[Ill.u.s.tration: An unknown gentleman: from a painting belonging to T. A. Hope, Esq.]

11. =The Spanish Alliance. 1614-1617.=--James was always anxious to be the peacemaker of Europe, being wise enough to see that the religious wars which had long been devastating the Continent might be brought to an end if only the contending parties would be more tolerant. It was partly in the hope of gaining influence to enable him to carry out his pacificatory policy that he aimed, early in his reign, at marrying his children into influential families on the Continent. In =1613= he gave his daughter Elizabeth to Frederick V., Elector Palatine, who was the leader of the German Calvinists, and he had long before projected a marriage between his eldest son, Prince Henry, and a Spanish Infanta. Prince Henry, however, died in =1612=, and, though James's only surviving son, Charles, was still young, there had been a talk of marrying him to a French princess.

The breaking-up of the Parliament of =1614= left James in great want of money; and, as he had reason to believe that Spain would give a much larger portion than would be given with a French princess, he became keenly eager to marry his son to the Infanta Maria, the daughter of Philip III. of Spain. Negotiations with this object were not formally opened till =1617=, and in =1618= James learnt that the marriage could not take place unless he engaged to give religious liberty to the English Roman Catholics. He then offered to write a letter to the king of Spain, promising to relieve the Roman Catholics as long as they gave no offence, but Philip insisted on a more binding and permanent engagement, and, on James's refusal to do more than he had offered to do, Gondomar, the very able Spanish amba.s.sador who had hitherto kept James in good humour, was withdrawn from England, and the negotiation was, for the time, allowed to drop.

12. =The rise of Buckingham. 1615-1618.=--In =1615= Somerset and his wife were accused of poisoning Sir Thomas Overbury. There can be no doubt that the Countess was guilty, but it is less certain what Somerset's own part in the matter was. In =1616= they were both found guilty, and, though James spared their lives, he never saw either of them again. He had already found a new favourite in George Villiers, a handsome youth who could dance and ride gracefully, and could entertain the king with lively conversation. The opponents of the Spanish alliance had supported Villiers against Somerset, but they soon found that Villiers was ready to throw himself on the side of Spain as soon as he found that it would please the king. James gave him large estates, and rapidly advanced him in the peerage, till, in =1618=, he created him Marquis of Buckingham. He also made him Lord Admiral in the hope that he would improve the navy, and allowed all the patronage of England to pa.s.s through his hands.

Statesmen and lawyers had to bow down to Buckingham if they wished to rise. No wonder the young man felt as if the nation was at his feet, and gave himself airs which disgusted all who wished to preserve independence of character.

13. =The Voyage and Execution of Raleigh. 1617-1618.=--In =1617= Raleigh, having been liberated through Buckingham's influence, sailed for the Orinoco in search of a gold-mine, of which he had heard in an earlier voyage in Elizabeth's reign (see p. 464). He engaged, before he sailed, not to touch the land of the king of Spain, and James let him know that, if he broke his promise, he would lose his head. It was, indeed, difficult to say where the lands of the king of Spain began or ended, but James left the burden of proving this on Raleigh; whilst Raleigh, imagining that if only he could find gold he would not be held to his promise, sent his men up the river, without distinct orders to avoid fighting. They attacked and burnt a Spanish village, but never reached the mine.

Heart-broken at their failure, Raleigh proposed to lie in wait for the Spanish treasure-s.h.i.+ps, and, on the refusal of his captains to follow him in piracy, returned to England with nothing in his hands.

James sent him to the scaffold for a fault which he should never have been given the chance of committing. Raleigh was the last of the Elizabethan heroes--a many-sided man: soldier, sailor, statesman, historian, and poet. He was as firmly convinced as Drake had been that there was no peace in American waters, and that to rob and plunder Spaniards in time of peace was in itself a virtue.

James's unwise attempt to form a close alliance with Spain made Raleigh a popular hero.

14. =Colonisation of Virginia and New England.

1607-1620.=--Gradually Englishmen learned to prefer peaceable commerce and colonisation to piratical enterprises. In =1585= Raleigh had sent out colonists to a region in North America to which he gave the name of Virginia, in honour of Elizabeth, but the colonists either returned to England or were destroyed by the Indians. In =1607= a fresh attempt was made, and, after pa.s.sing through terrible hards.h.i.+ps, the Colony of Virginia grew into a tobacco-planting, well-to-do community. In =1608= a congregation of Separatists emigrated from England to Holland, and, after a while, settled at Leyden, where, anxious to escape from the temptations of the world, many of them resolved to emigrate to America, where they might lead an ideally religious life. In =1620= the emigrants, a hundred in all, 'lifting up their eyes to heaven, their dearest country,' crossed the Atlantic in the 'Mayflower,' and found a new home which they named Plymouth. These first emigrants, the Pilgrim Fathers, as their descendants fondly called them, lost half their number by cold and disease in the first winter, but the remainder held on to form a nucleus for the Puritan New England of the future.

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 n.o.bility 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 crus.h.i.+ngly defeated on the White Hill, near Prague, and driven out of Bohemia.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 amba.s.sadors to settle matters without producing any results, he now proposed to send more amba.s.sadors, 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.

17. =The Royal Prerogative. 1616-1621.=--Elizabeth had been high-handed enough, but she had talked little of the rights which she claimed, and had set herself to gain the affection of her subjects. James, on the other hand, liked to talk of his rights, whilst he took no trouble to make himself popular. It was his business, he held, to see that the judges did not break the law under pretence of administering it. "This,"

he said in =1616=, "is a thing regal and proper to a king, to keep every court within its true bounds." More startling was the language which followed. "As for the absolute prerogative of the Crown," he declared, "that is no subject for the tongue of a lawyer, nor is it lawful to be disputed. It is atheism and blasphemy to dispute what G.o.d can do: good Christians content themselves with His will revealed in His word; so it is presumption and high contempt in a subject to dispute what a king can do, or say that a king cannot do this or that; but rest in that which is the king's will revealed in his law." What James meant was that there must be in every state a power above the law to provide for emergencies as they arise, and to keep the authorities--judicial and administrative--from jostling with one another. At present this power belongs to Parliament. When Elizabeth handed on the government to James, it belonged to the Crown. What James did not understand was that, in the long run, no one--either king or Parliament--will be allowed to exercise powers which are unwisely used. Such an idea probably never entered into James's mind, because he was convinced that he was himself not only the best but the wisest of men, whereas he was in reality--as Henry IV. of France had said of him--'the wisest fool in Christendom.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: Civil costume about 1620: from a contemporary broadside.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Banqueting Hall of the Palace of Whitehall (from the north-east): built from the designs of Inigo Jones. 1619-1621.]

18. =Financial Reform. 1619.=--James not only thought too highly of his own powers of government, but was also too careless to check the misdeeds of his favourites. For some time his want of money led him to have recourse to strange expedients. In =1611= he founded the order of baronets, making each of those created pay him 1,080_l._ a year for three years to enable him to support soldiers for the defence of Ulster. After the first few years, however, the money, though regularly required of new baronets, was invariably repaid to them. More disgraceful was the sale of peerages, of which there were examples in =1618=. In =1619=, however, through the exertions of Lionel Cranfield, a city merchant recommended to James by Buckingham, financial order was comparatively restored, and in quiet times the expenditure no longer much exceeded the revenue.

19. =Favouritism and Corruption.=--Though James did not obtain much money in irregular ways, he did not keep a watchful eye on his favourites and ministers. The salaries of Ministers were low, and were in part themselves made up by the presents of suitors.

Candidates for office, who looked forward to being enriched by the gifts of others, knew that they must pay dearly for the goodwill of the favourites through whom they gained promotion. In =1620= Chief Justice Montague was appointed Lord Treasurer. "Take care, my lord,"

said Bacon to him, when he started for Newmarket to receive from the king the staff which was the symbol of his office, "wood is dearer at Newmarket than in any other place in England." Montague, in fact, had to pay 20,000_l._ for his place. Others, who were bachelors or widowers, received promotion on condition of marrying one of the many penniless young ladies of Buckingham's kindred.

20. =The Monopolies Condemned. 1621.=--The Commons, therefore, in looking for abuses, had no lack of subjects on which to complain.