Anonymous

THE REIGN OF JAMES I.

The Stuart Dynasty—Hopes and Fears caused by the Accession of James—The King enters England—His Progress to London—Lavish Creation of Peers and Knights—The Royal Entrance into the Metropolis—The Coronation—Popularity of Queen Anne—Ravages of the Plague—The King Receives Foreign Embassies—Rivalry of the Diplomatists of France and Spain—Discontent of Raleigh, Northumberland, and Cobham—Conspiracies against James—"The Main" and "The Bye"—Trials of the Conspirators—The Sentences—Conference with Puritans—Parliament of 1604—Persecution of Catholics and Puritans—Gunpowder Plot—Admission of fresh Members—Delays and Devices—The Letter to Lord Mounteagle—Discovery of the Plot—Flight of the Conspirators—Their Capture and Execution—New Penal Code—James's Correspondence with Bellarmine—Cecil's attempts to get Money—Project of Union between England and Scotland—The King's Collisions with Parliament—Insurrection of the Levellers—Royal Extravagance and Impecuniosity—Fresh Disputes with Parliament and Assertions of the Prerogative—Death of Cecil—Story of Arabella Stuart—Death of Prince Henry.

With the Stuart dynasty begins a new order of things. The direct line of the Tudors ceased in Elizabeth, and the collateral one of the Stuarts introduced the kings of Scotland to the English throne. After all the ages of conflict to unite the two kingdoms under one crown, it was effected, but in the reverse direction to that in which the monarchs of England had striven. They had not mounted the throne of Scotland, but Scotland sent her king to rule over England. With Elizabeth and the Tudors terminated the reign of almost unresisted absolutism; with James commenced that mighty struggle for constitutional liberty which did not cease till it had expelled his dynasty from the throne, and placed on a firm basis the independence of the people.

With great haste various messengers flew to Scotland to announce the demise of Elizabeth; the winner in the race of loyalty, or, in other words, of self-interest, being, as we have seen, Sir Robert Carey, to whom the artifice of his sister, Lady Scrope, had communicated the earliest news of the queen's decease. He reached Edinburgh four days before Sir Charles Percy and Thomas Somerset, who were despatched officially by the Council. Meanwhile, on March 24th, 1603, Cecil assembled thirty-five individuals—members of Council, peers, prelates, and officers of State—at Whitehall, and accompanied by the lord mayor and aldermen, proclaimed James VI. of Scotland James I. of England, first in front of Westminster Palace, and then at the High Cross, in Cheapside.

There were some who were apprehensive that the accession of James might be opposed by the noblemen who had been so active in the death of his mother. But these had taken care to make their peace with the facile James, whose filial affection was not of an intensity to weigh much in the scales with the crown of England. On the contrary, his accession was hailed with apparent enthusiasm by all parties, for all parties believed that they should reap decided advantages from his government. The persecuted Catholics felt certain that the son of the queen of Scots would at least tolerate their religion, as he had many a time privately assured their agents. The Puritans were equally confident that a king who had been educated in the strictest faith of Calvinism, would place them in the ascendant. The Episcopal church—as it deemed, on equally good grounds—rejoiced in the advent of a prince who had protested to its friends that he was heartily sick of a religion which had domineered over both his mother and himself with an iron rigidity. The populace, in the hope of a milder yoke than that of the truculent Tudors, gave vent to their joy in loud acclamations, by bonfires and ringing of bells, while Elizabeth was lying a corpse, scarcely cold, on her bier.

James, who was in his thirty-seventh year, was transported at the prospect of his escape from the poverty and religious restraint of Scotland, to the affluence of so much more extensive an empire, and one impediment alone checked his flight southward—the want of money for the journey. He sent a speedy message to Cecil for the necessary funds, and also added a request for the transmission of the Crown jewels for the adornment of his wife. The money was forwarded, but the jewels were prudently withheld till he reached his future capital. Once in possession of the means of locomotion, James did not conceal his pleasure at escaping from the control of his Presbyterian clergy and the haughty rudeness of his nobles, to an accession of wealth and power which he imagined would make him as absolute as Henry VIII., a condition for which he had an intense yearning.

On the 5th of April James commenced his journey towards London, but however much he rejoiced in the prospect of his new kingdom, he was in no haste to reach the capital. The moment that he set foot in England he seemed to have realised the full luxury of his new sovereignty, and announced to those about him that they had indeed at last arrived at the Land of Promise. At Berwick he fired a piece of ordnance himself in his joy, which seemed for the moment to have raised him above his constitutional timidity; and he then sate down and wrote to Cecil, informing him of his progress, and of his intention to take York and other places on his way. As he intended to enter York and pass through other towns in state, he pressed on the obsequious minister the necessity of forwarding to him coaches, litters, horses, jewels, and all that was requisite for regal dignity, as well as a lord chamberlain; and he forthwith appointed to that office the lord Thomas Howard. He stayed three days at York, and did not reach Newark till the 21st of the month. Cecil had met him at York, and accompanied his progress; and as he rode forward the people crowded around to welcome their new sovereign with the most hearty acclamations. To express his satisfaction to the gentry, he made almost every man of any standing who approached him a knight; so that by the time he reached London he is said to have created two hundred and fifty, and before he had been in England three months, seven hundred knights, a profusion which much diminished the value of the gift.

JAMES I.

The truth was that James, who made himself very free and easy in his immediate circle, disliked exposure to the mob, and dealt about his smiles and knighthoods to get rid of his throngers as soon as possible. By the time he had reached Berwick he had knighted three persons; at Widdrington he knighted eleven, at York thirty-one, at Worksop in Nottinghamshire eighteen, at Newark eight, on the road thence to Belvoir Castle four, at Belvoir forty-five. Yet gracious as he was and agreeable as he wanted to make himself, his new subjects did not behold his person and manner without considerable astonishment. His ungainly figure and his equally uncouth dialect no little amazed the stately courtiers of Elizabeth, but nevertheless they paid him the most devoted homage, as the dispenser of all honours and of every good.

At Theobalds Cecil had the opportunity of studying James's character and of ingratiating himself with him. A new Council was formed, and whilst James introduced six of his own countrymen, Cecil recommended six of his partisans to balance them. During his correspondence with James Cecil had managed to fix in the king's mind a deep and ineradicable aversion to the men whom he himself regarded with jealous and hostile feelings—Raleigh, Cobham, and Grey. It was in vain that they paid their court; they were treated with coldness, and Raleigh, instead of receiving the promotion to which he aspired, was even deprived of the valuable office of warden of the Stannaries. Northumberland was equally the object of Cecil's dislike, but Bacon was warmly in his favour, and the king received him graciously.

On the 7th of July James set out for his capital, and at Stamford Hill was met by the lord mayor and aldermen in their scarlet robes, followed by a great crowd, and with these he entered the City, and proceeded to the Charterhouse. He immediately caused a proclamation to be made that all licences and monopolies granted by Elizabeth, and which had excited so much discontent, should be suspended till they had been examined by the Council; that all protections from the Crown to delay the progress of justice in the courts of law should cease, as well as the abuses of purveyance, and the oppressions of saltpetre-makers and officers of the household. From the Charterhouse he proceeded, according to routine, to the Tower, and thence to Greenwich and back to Whitehall, at every step making more knights and creating peers. He had sent for the Earl of Southampton to meet him at York, and he now restored both him and the son of his friend the Earl of Essex to their honours and estates. Mountjoy and three of the Howards were raised to the rank of earls; nine new barons were created, amongst them Cecil, who was made Lord Cecil, and afterwards Viscount Cranbourne, and finally Earl of Salisbury. Buckhurst and Egerton were promoted; and eventually, besides his seven hundred spick-and-span new knights, he added sixty-two fresh members to the peerage. So extravagant was his distribution of honours that a pasquinade was affixed to the door of St. Paul's, offering to teach weak memories the art of recollecting the titles of the nobility.

The coronation took place on the 25th of July. James's wife, Anne of Denmark, was crowned with him. The weather had been intensely hot, but it now set in very rainy. To spoil the pleasure of the people, the plague was raging in the City, and the inhabitants were by proclamation forbidden to enter Westminster. No queen-consort had been crowned since Anne Boleyn, nor had any king and queen been crowned together since Henry VIII. and Catherine of Aragon, and therefore the restriction was the more mortifying. Queen Anne went to the coronation "with her seemly hair down hanging on her princely shoulders, and on her head a coronet of gold. She so mildly saluted her new subjects, that the women, weeping, cried out with one voice, 'God bless the royal queen! Welcome to England, long to live and continue!'"

That week there died in London and the suburbs eight hundred and fifty-seven persons of the plague. On the 5th of August James ordered morning and evening prayers and sermons, with bonfires all night to drive away the pestilence, not forgetting to order that all men should praise God for his Majesty's escape that day three years before, from the Gowrie conspiracy; and on the 10th of August he commanded that a fast, with sermons of repentance, should be held, and repeated every week on Wednesday so long as the plague continued.

James's pride was soon gratified by the flocking in of ambassadors from all the great nations of Europe, soliciting his alliance; and on the first intimation of their approach he appointed Sir Lewis Lewknor master of the ceremonies, to receive and entertain these distinguished persons. This was the first establishment of such an office in England. First arrived, from Holland and the United Provinces, Prince Frederick of Nassau son of the Prince of Orange, attended by the three able diplomatists Valck, Barneveldt, and Brederode. James, with equally high notions of the royal prerogative, had not the sympathy of Elizabeth with the struggles of Protestantism abroad, and therefore regarded the revolted Netherlanders as rebels and traitors, and did not fail amongst his courtiers to pronounce them so; the more particularly as they owed the English crown large sums for past assistance, which they were in no hurry to pay. He, therefore, framed various excuses to defer their audiences till the arrival of the envoy of the King of Spain, Count Aremberg, who was not long in appearing, bringing the agreeable news that the Archduke had liberated all English prisoners, as the subjects of a friendly power. Two days after Aremberg's arrival, Henry IV.'s great minister, the Duke of Sully, reached London. Aremberg was in no condition to negotiate on any positive terms till he received instructions from Spain; and Sully seized time by the forelock, by distributing amongst the courtiers sixty thousand crowns, a considerable part of which found its way into the queen's purse. He prevailed on James to make a treaty with Henry IV., in which he engaged to send money to the States in aid against the Spaniards, and join France in open hostilities should Philip attempt to invade that country. Sully, delighted with his success—for Henry feared nothing more than James's making peace with Spain, and leaving him to assist Holland alone—returned to France. But a little time convinced the French court that nothing in reality had been secured by it, for James had no money to send to Holland had he been really so disposed, which is doubtful, and that he merely temporised with them as he had done with different States before.

Meantime the Court of Spain, notwithstanding the activity of France, was slow in deciding the course of policy to be adopted towards England under the new king. After the decided hostility towards it under Elizabeth, and the signal defeats experienced, pride forbade Philip to solicit a peace, lest it should look like weakness. And, indeed, Spain had never recovered from the severe blow received in the loss of its Armada, and the other ravages of its ports and colonies by the English, added to the loss of a great portion of the Low Countries; and this consciousness made it more tardy in its proceedings. But while engaged in prolonged discussions on this head, two Englishmen arrived at the court of Spain, whose mission was of a nature to bring it to a decision. These were Wright and Fawkes, who were soon to assume a conspicuous position in the strife between the Catholics and Protestants of England. Previous to the death of Elizabeth, Thomas Winter had negotiated with the Spanish Court a plan for the invasion of England, which had been abandoned on her decease. Now, however, the scheme was revived, and these two emissaries were despatched to sound the present disposition of the Court of Madrid. This direct appeal from the conspirators seems to have startled the Spanish Government from its wavering policy. It was not prepared for anything so desperate, and replied that it had no cause of complaint against James, but, on the contrary, regarded him as a friend and ally, and had appointed the CondÉ de Villa Mediana as ambassador to his Court.

This was decisive, and the way now seemed open towards a more friendly tone between Spain and England; but at the same moment a secret and mysterious correspondence seems to have been going on between Aremberg, the agent of the King of Spain, and a discontented party in England. Northumberland, Cobham, and Raleigh were ill at ease under the disappointment which they had met with in their hopes of favour at James's Court. Northumberland had been to a certain degree graciously received, and even entertained with promises by James; but he felt that while Cecil was so completely in the ascendant there was little hope of a cordial feeling towards him in the monarch's heart. Cobham and Raleigh were undisguisedly in disgrace, and were shunned by the courtiers as fallen men. The three friends, therefore, entered into intrigues with the Court of France through the resident minister Beaumont, and Sully the envoy extraordinary. For a time their suggestions were listened to, but the apparent success of Sully with James put an end to further overtures, and there Northumberland was prudent enough to desist. But Cobham and Raleigh, disappointed of Court favour and burning with resentment against Cecil—whom they felt to be the cause of their disgrace—plotted for the overthrow of the crafty minister.

Sully, the French envoy, had, while in London, done his best to inspire James with distrust of Cecil; and there is little doubt that this was at the suggestion, or with the co-operation of Cobham, Northumberland, and Raleigh. When Northumberland drew back, these two held communication with Aremberg, to whom they offered their services in promoting the objects he sought on behalf of Spain and the Netherlands. Aremberg, who did not know what was going on at the Spanish Court, communicated the proposal to his master, who instructed him to give a favourable answer. What the scheme proposed by Cobham and Raleigh precisely was seems never to have been known, but we may suppose that in return for aid from the Continent, these ambitious men were to attempt the removal of Cecil by some means, and on their succeeding to power, their influence was to be exerted with the king on behalf of Spain.

This was designated by those in the secret as "The Main" conspiracy; but there was also another going on simultaneously, of which these gentlemen are supposed to have been cognisant, but not mixed up with. This was called "The Bye" conspiracy, and was composed of an extraordinary medley of the discontented, the most determined of whom aimed at nothing less than the seizure of the king, and the government of the country in his name, for their own party purposes.

The grand cause of discontent was the disappointment of both Catholics and Puritans in James. Before his coming to the English crown he had held out the most flattering expectations to the Catholics that he would grant them toleration, whilst the Puritans calculated on his Presbyterian education for a decided adhesion to their views. But no sooner did he reach England than he threw himself into the arms of the High Church party, declaring that it was the only religion fit for a king. To the Catholics he declared he would grant no toleration—rather would he fight to the death against it; and he took no pains to conceal his disgust at the Presbyterian clergy amongst whom he had spent his youth. The antagonism of Catholic and Puritan was forgotten in the resentment against this disclosure of the king's disposition. Instantly plans were cogitated to avenge themselves of the royal perfidy, as it was termed, and to secure themselves against the threatened storm. Sir Griffin Markham, a Catholic gentlemen of no great property or influence, concerted with two priests, Watson and Clarke, the means of raising the Catholics against the Government. Watson had been sent into Scotland, to James, on behalf of the Catholics, before the death of Elizabeth, and he indignantly represented that James had given them, through him, the most solemn promises of toleration, which he had now broken. He, therefore, threw himself with the greatest heat into the conspiracy: he drew up an awful oath of secrecy, and he and Clarke travelled far and wide amongst the Catholic families, calling upon them to come forward in the name of their religion and their property.

But their success was trivial; few or none of the Catholics of weight and station would engage in the enterprise. Failing there, Watson turned his attention to the Puritans; and with them he was more successful, by artfully concealing from them the paucity of the Catholics who had joined the conspiracy, and the full extent of his own intentions. Lord Grey de Wilton, who was a leading Puritan, and had his discontent from the same causes as Cobham and Raleigh, was induced by Watson to join the conspiracy, under the impression that a strong Catholic body was engaged in it. He agreed to furnish a troop of a hundred horse, but he was not long in discovering that he had been imposed upon, and advised the conspirators to defer the execution of their design to a more favourable opportunity.

The conspirators proposed to meet during the darkness of night at Greenwich; but the reflection that there were three hundred armed gentlemen within the Palace, made that appear too hazardous; they, therefore, altered their plan, and concluded to seize James as he was hunting at Hanworth, and where he was accustomed to call for refreshment at a gentleman's house. The plan, as communicated by Watson to the conspirators, was to assemble in a numerous body under pretence of presenting a petition to James as he went out hunting, seize the king, and convey him to a place of safety, where they were to extort from him a declaration of liberty of conscience. With the king in their hands, they would then wreak their vengeance on Cecil and Sir George Howe; and it was afterwards charged against them in the indictment, that they meant to make Watson lord chancellor, Brooke, the brother of Cobham—who was a most unprincipled man, and has been suspected of being Cecil's spy and tool on the occasion—lord treasurer, Markham secretary, and Grey earl marshal. Probably this was the scheme devised for them by the accusers, for it appears too wild for belief; but be that as it may, the 24th of June was the day named for the attempt, when the refusal of Lord Grey caused it to be abandoned, and the party separated with much mutual recrimination.

But Watson had already proceeded to a length which led to the revelation of the plot to Cecil. He had endeavoured to engage in it the Society of the Jesuits, and had communicated his plans to a Jesuit of the name of Gerard. The Society not only refused to sanction the conspiracy, but the archpriest went at once and revealed it to Cecil. The crafty minister kept his information close, and resolved to let the conspirators go on till the very day for the execution of their design, so that he might the more summarily convict them; but the failure of their plan left him no further reason for delay, and Anthony Copley, one of the "Bye," was arrested, as a man well known to be of a timid character and likely in his terror to betray his associates. Cecil had probably plenty of intelligence of both the plan and its agitators from others as well as from Gerard, and most probably from Brooke. But with great judgment he neglected no means of making the conspirators furnish evidence against each other, and thus he kept his own sources of knowledge secret. On the heels of Copley's arrest, followed, as a natural consequence, the arrest of Griffin, Markham, the priests Watson and Clarke, and the rest of Copley's associates. Cecil said that the mere fact of Brooke being in the conspiracy made him feel certain that Cobham, Raleigh, and Northumberland were in it. They were therefore apprehended separately; and, by playing on the fears of the fallen Cobham, Cecil speedily made him incriminate Raleigh.

ST. THOMAS'S TOWER AND TRAITORS' GATE, TOWER OF LONDON.

The coronation of the king, which took place on the 25th of July, being his saint's day, the festival of St. James, and the violence of the plague, which caused the king to flee into the country, postponed the trials of the conspirators. The Court, followed by the judges and their suitors, fled from place to place for several months, pursued by the plague; and it was not till November that the trials took place in the castle at Winchester. Another cause had, perhaps still more than the plague, deferred them. Aremberg was deeply implicated, but his intrigues could not be opened up whilst he was in the country, nor could an order be issued directing him to leave, without embarrassing the public relations with Spain. But in October he left, and on the 15th of November the trials of the conspirators commenced. The accomplices of the "Bye"—Brooke, Brookesby, Markham, Copley, Watson, and Clarke, with others—were all condemned on their own confessions, for they had been so managed that they not only accused each other, but made the most ample confessions of their own guilt, as if each thought he should obtain pardon by discovering most. These confessions, which had been carefully compiled, were put in as evidence against them. Sir Edward Parham only was acquitted, for he pleaded that he joined solely to rescue the king from the hands of those who held him in captivity; Cecil threw in his word in his favour, suggesting that the king's dignity consisted as much in freeing the innocent as condemning the guilty. This conduct gave an air of impartiality—of which no one could estimate the effect more fully than the astute Cecil—to the proceedings.

Sir Walter Raleigh was next put upon his trial. His extraordinary ability, and his knowledge of Court secrets, made it too dangerous an attempt to connect him with the "Bye," and arraign him along with the unhappy and weak members of that part of the conspiracy. He was not placed at the bar even along with Cobham, for the only evidence against him which the Court dared to bring forward, was that of Cobham; and they knew too well that in Raleigh's presence, the wavering Cobham would be worse than useless. Already repenting of his accusation of Raleigh in the surprise of his resentment, Cobham had retracted his accusations; and when pressed and cross-questioned by the Council, had so contradicted himself, that to bring him into public would be to render his evidence worthless. True, the Council had the intercepted letters, which had passed between Aremberg and the Spanish authorities, which were sufficiently criminatory of Raleigh and Cobham; but these could not be produced without an exposure of the fact that the correspondence of ambassadors and their principals was not safe in England. Indeed, Coke, who was of course duly instructed in the particulars of this correspondence, having made some too intelligible reference to Aremberg, Cecil compelled him to apologise to the ambassador, and hastened to assure the other ambassadors of foreign courts that Aremberg had no notion of the purpose for which Cobham and Raleigh had solicited money from Spain.

Coke's device was to mix the two plots. He went into the case at length, and what he lacked in proof he endeavoured to supply by abuse. He described in inflated language the intentions of the agitators of the "Bye," and declared that amongst other things, they meant to make proclamation against monopolies, as if that were absolute treason. Raleigh calmly reminded him that he was not charged with the "Bye." "You are not," replied Coke; "but it will be seen that all these treasons, though they consisted of several parts, closed in together like Samson's foxes, which were joined in their tails, though their heads were separated." Raleigh still insisted that the "Bye" was the treason of the priests, and said, "What is the treason of the priest to me?" "I will then come close to you," said Coke. "I will prove you to be the most notorious traitor that ever came to the bar; you are, indeed, upon the 'Main,' but you have followed them upon the 'Bye' in imitation."

Raleigh in reply demanded that his accuser should be brought face to face with him. He demanded it on the authority of the statute law and the law of God, both of which required that this should be done to prove an offence. But Lord Chief Justice Popham told him that the Statutes of Edward VI. to which he appealed, were cancelled by Philip and Mary; that he must take his trial by the common law, as settled by Edward III., under which a trial by jury and written evidence was as valid as a trial by jury and witnesses; and that at most one witness was sufficient. But Raleigh replied that his case was peculiar, and that there was not a single witness against him; for even the man who had borne testimony against him had retracted his assertions. He, therefore, reiterated his demand for the production of Cobham; declaring that if Cobham dared in his presence to reaffirm a single charge, he would submit to his doom, and would not add another word. When this challenge was passed over without any notice, he produced a letter which Cobham had written to him about a fortnight before, in which he said:—"To free myself from the cry of blood, I protest, upon my soul and before God and His angels, I never had conference with you in any treason, nor was ever moved by you to the things I heretofore accused you of; and, for anything I know, you are as innocent and as clear from any treasons against the king as is subject living. And God so deal with me and have mercy on my soul, as this is true."

This appeared a strong avowal, but Cecil was prepared for this, having, no doubt, already seen this letter on its passage; and Coke produced in defeat of it another letter written by Cobham to the Council but the day before. In this letter Cobham stated that Raleigh had twice sent letters to him in the Tower, which had been thrown into his window-sash in an apple, and that in these letters he entreated him to do him right by denying what he had said as to his wishing him to come from the Continent by Jersey, and in other particulars. Cobham replied that he retracted the assertion about Jersey, but went on to state that Raleigh had been the original cause of his ruin, for that he had no dealings with Aremberg but at Sir Walter's instigation. He added that at Aremberg's coming Raleigh was to receive a pension of fifteen hundred pounds a year, for which he was to keep the king of Spain informed of all designs against the Indies, the Netherlands, or Spain; that he (Cobham) also counselled him (Raleigh) not to be overtaken by preachers as Essex was, and that the king would better allow of a constant denial than of the accusation of any one.

During the reading of this letter Raleigh could not conceal his astonishment and confusion. When it was finished, he admitted that there had been some talk of a pension, but mere talk and nothing more. But the fact made a deep impression on the minds of the jury, and the prisoner probably being conscious of it, repeated his demand for the production of Cobham himself. "My lords," he exclaimed, "let Cobham be sent for; I know he is in this very house! I beseech you let him be confronted with me! Let him be here openly charged—upon his soul—upon his allegiance to the king—and if he will then maintain his accusations to my face, I will confess myself guilty!" But no notice was taken of this appeal: Coke still strove to bear him down by the coarsest brow-beating, shouting fiercely, "I will have the last word for the king!" "Nay," retorted Raleigh, "I will have the last word for my life!" "Go to," said the insolent lawyer; "I will lay thee upon thy back for the confidentest traitor that ever came to the bar." Cecil here interposed, telling Coke that he was too impatient and severe; but Coke cried, "I am the king's sworn servant, and must speak. You discourage the king's counsel, my lord, and encourage traitors."

The jury, but with evident reluctance, returned a verdict of guilty. On being asked, in the usual form, whether he had anything to say why judgment should not be pronounced against him, he replied that he was perfectly innocent of the charges of Cobham, but that he submitted himself to the king's mercy, and recommended to the compassion of his majesty his wife and his son of tender years. After the sentence of high treason, with all its disgusting details, had been pronounced, Raleigh asked to speak privately with Cecil, Lord Henry Howard, and the Earls of Suffolk and Devonshire, entreating them that, in consideration of the position which he had held under the crown, his death might not be so ignominious as the strict sentence required. They promised to use their influence, and he was taken back to his quarters.

The charges of complicity which were made against Arabella Stuart, in the indictment against Raleigh, were of a nature which called for denial on her part. She was present at the trial in a gallery; and Charles Howard, Earl of Nottingham, who was sitting by her, arose, and in her name protested, on her salvation, that she had never meddled in any such matters. There appeared, indeed, no disposition at this moment to implicate the Lady Arabella, though her relation to the Crown made her an object of anxiety to James, as we shall soon have occasion to see. Cecil himself acquitted her of any concern in this treason, admitting that though she had received a letter from Cobham, entreating her to countenance it, she only laughed at it and at once sent it to the king. Of the actual extent of Raleigh's participation, and what was his real object, we have no means of judging, for though James was in possession of the letters between the accused parties and Aremberg, they could not, as already stated, be produced.

Cobham and Grey were arraigned before a tribunal of their peers, consisting of eleven earls and nineteen barons. Nothing could be more striking than the cowardice and meanness of Cobham, and the noble dignity of Grey. They were both condemned.

The two priests were first conducted to execution. They suffered all the bloody horrors of the law at Winchester, on the 29th of November. It was surmised that James was glad to be rid of Watson as one of the individuals to whom, before coming to the English throne, he had promised toleration to the Catholics. There was an attempt to prove the non-existence of such a promise, but it was crude and convinced nobody. At the gallows both Watson and Clarke declared that they were convinced they owed their death to their priesthood. They were cut down alive and their bowels torn out—a revolting practice which but too well illustrates the vindictive spirit of the age.

The next execution was that of Brooke. He was simply beheaded, also at Winchester, on the 5th of December. The people expressed great sympathy for him, under a belief that he had first been employed by Cecil in the troubled waters of these conspiracies, and then victimised by him. Markham, Grey, and Cobham were brought to the scaffold, induced to confess, and, after an interval of suspense, reprieved. Raleigh was imprisoned in the Tower of London for many years.

The effect of this conspiracy was to deepen James's suspicion of the Catholics and his dislike of the Puritans. The Catholics, since his coming to the English throne, had conducted themselves with more policy than their robustious rivals, the Puritans. They had claimed, indeed, the fulfilment of his promises whilst merely King of Scotland, to favour them as the staunch friends of his mother and serious sufferers on her account; but they had preferred their claims with a degree of courtesy and moderation to which the brusque Reformers were strangers. The pope, Clement VIII., probably led by the same expectations, had by two breves addressed to the archpriest and provincial of the Jesuits, strictly enjoined the missionaries to confine themselves to their spiritual duties, and on no account to mix themselves up with the agitators for political change. He condemned unequivocally the conduct of Watson and Clarke, and sent a secret envoy to the English Court, expressing his abhorrence of all acts of disloyalty, and offering to withdraw any missionary from the kingdom who was in any way obnoxious to the king and Council. James appeared so far influenced by this moderation, that though he stoutly refused all application for a free exercise of the Catholic worship, and even committed individuals to the Tower who offended in this respect, yet he invited the Catholics to frequent his Court, he conferred knighthood on some of them, and assured them generally that they should not suffer for recusancy so long as they abstained from a breach of the laws as regarded religion, and from all acts of political insubordination.

From the Portrait by Zucchero

SIR WALTER RALEIGH. (From the Portrait by Zucchero.)

But towards the Puritans he was by no means so courteous. He could never forget that they had kept him in restraint in his infancy and youth; that they had been the defamers and persecutors of his mother; and that to the very hour in which he escaped into the larger field of English power, they had goaded him with their demands and defied his authority. As he drew nearer to the English throne, the charms of the English church increased in his imagination. A church which set up the king as its head was a church as much after James's own heart as after that of Henry VIII. Like that monarch, he dearly loved to shine in polemics, and long before he arrived in England, it required no great shrewdness to perceive where his affections lay.

THE DISSENTING DIVINES PRESENTING THEIR PETITION TO JAMES. (See p. 416.)

No sooner was he in England than he spoke his mind roundly as to his real feelings towards the Puritans. He said to the bishops and courtiers: "I will tell you, I have lived amongst this sect of men ever since I was ten years old; but I may say of myself as Christ said of Himself, though I lived amongst them, yet, since I had ability to judge, I was never of them." And this was at least sincere. He had grown more undisguisedly Episcopalian as he saw Elizabeth sinking, and felt his hold on the throne through her own ministers. He had given seats in parliament to a certain number of clergymen, thus making them bishops without the name; but it was in his "Basilicon Doron"—a manual for the instruction of his son, published in 1779—that he had let loose his deep dislike of the Presbyterians. He tells his son to "take heed to such Puritans, very pests in the church and commonwealth, whom no deserts can oblige, neither oaths nor promises bind, breathing nothing but sedition and calumnies, aspiring without measure, ruling without reason, making their own imaginations, without any warrant of the Word, the square of their conscience. I protest," he added, "before the great God, and since I am here upon my testament, it is no place for me to lie in, that you shall never find with any Highland or Border thieves greater ingratitude, and more lies and perjuries than with these fanatic spirits; and suffer not the principal of them to brook your land, if ye list to sit at rest; except you would keep them for trying your patience, as Socrates did an evil wife."

But whilst the royal Solomon thus plainly enunciated his hatred of Puritanism, he was cautious not to let the English bishops too early into his fixed intention to patronise them. He liked to feel himself the undoubted head of that Church, and to see those dignitaries in fear and trembling prostrate at his feet; and it was not till they had sufficiently humbled themselves before him, that he revived their spirits with the declaration of his real sentiments. The Puritans precipitated this avowal, by urging on James a further reform of the Church, and its purgation from ceremonies. In their millenary petition (so called because it was expected it would have a thousand signatures, but in reality it had only about eight hundred) they demanded a conference, in which to settle the form and doctrines of the Church. This, of all things, delighted James. It was the very arena in which to display his theological knowledge; he gladly consented to it, and appointed it to take place at Hampton Court early in January, 1604. On the 14th of that month the first assembly took place; and the bishops, who were first admitted to the royal presence alone, were so alarmed at the prospect of a conference which had been demanded by Dissenters, that they threw themselves on their knees, and earnestly entreated the king not to alter the constitution of the Church, nor to give the Puritans the triumph in the coming debate, lest the Popish recusants should rejoice over and declare them justly punished for their repulsion and persecution of them. Then James condescended to lift the weight of fear from their hearts. He avowed to them that he was a sincere convert to the Church of England, and thanked God "who had brought him to the promised land, to a country where religion was purely professed, and where he sate among grave, reverend, and learned men; not as before, elsewhere, a king without state, without honour, and without order, and braved to his face by beardless boys under the garb of ministers."

The delight of the bishops and dignitaries at this gracious confession may be imagined. They were nearly twenty in number, whilst the Reformers summoned numbered only four—namely, Doctors Reynolds and Sparkes, divinity professors of Oxford, and Doctors Knewstub and Chatterton, of Cambridge. James somewhat cooled the raptures of the Churchmen, by adding that he knew all things were not perfect, and that, as some modifications of the ritual and the ecclesiastical courts were, in his opinion, needed, he had called them together in the first instance, in order that they might settle what concessions should be made to the Puritans. It was necessary to show some compliance; and after the day's discussion it was agreed that some explanatory words should be added in the Book of Common Prayer to the forms of general absolution and of confirmation; that the Chancellor and the Chief Justice should reform the practice of the commissary court; that excommunication should only be inflicted for particularly serious offences; that the bishops should neither confer ordinations nor pronounce censures, without the assistance and concurrence of other eminent divines; that baptism should not be administered by women or by laymen.

These points being determined, on the 16th the four Puritan divines were admitted, and instructed to state their demands. These embraced a general revision of the Book of Common Prayer, the withdrawal of excommunication, of baptism by women, of the use of the ring in marriage, of bowing at the name of Jesus, of confirmation, of the wearing of the cap and surplice, of the reading of the Apocrypha. They further required that pluralities and non-residence should cease, that obligation to subscribe the Thirty-nine Articles be abrogated, as well as the commendatories held by bishops. The bishops defended such parts of the church service and practices as the king had agreed should remain, and the prelates of London and Winchester argued in their behalf long and vehemently. As the Puritan doctors were not thus to be satisfied, and had by much the best of the argument, James himself took up the debate, and conducted it in that royal style which admits of no contradiction. He was now in his true element: theological discussion was his pride and glory, and he believed himself capable of silencing all Christendom. Dr. Reynolds, however, who was the chief speaker, undaunted by his crowned opponent, insisted boldly on various points; but when he came to the demand for the disuse of the Apocrypha in the Church service, James could bear it no longer. He called for a Bible, read a chapter out of Ecclesiasticus, and expounded it according to his own views; then turning to the lords of his Council, he said, "What trow ye makes these men so angry with Ecclesiasticus? By my soul, I think Ecclesiasticus was a bishop, or they would never use him so." The bishops and courtiers applauded the royal wit. James continued to hold forth on all sorts of topics—baptism, confirmation, absolution, which he declared to be apostolical, and a very good ordinance—and assured the anti-episcopal divines that in his opinion, if there were no bishops, there would soon be no king.

When he had tired himself out with talking, Dr. Reynolds again ventured to open his mouth, and inquired how ordinances of the Church agreed with Christian liberty. This was touching James closely: it brought back to his memory the harangues on the same liberty which he had heard from his clergy in Scotland. He declared that he would not argue that point, but answer as kings were wont to do in parliament, "Le roy s'avisera." Without pretending to treat the matter as one of conviction, he treated it as one of authority. He exclaimed, "I will have none of that: I will have one doctrine and one discipline, one religion in substance and in ceremony." He was resolved to be as absolute over every man's conscience and understanding as Henry VIII. had been. "If that is what you be at, then I tell you that a Scottish presbytery agreeth with monarchy as well as God with the Devil. Then shall Jack and Tom and Dick meet, and at their pleasure censure me and my council and all our proceedings. Then Will shall stand up and say, 'It must be thus;' then Dick shall reply and say, 'Nay, marry, but we will have it thus;' and therefore, here I must once more reiterate my former speech, and say, Le roy s'avisera."

It was in vain that Dr. Reynolds, who was reputed one of the most able divines and logicians of the age, attempted to state his views and opinions. The king constantly interrupted him and scoffed at him, treating him in the most insolently overbearing manner, and when he paused, asked him, "Well, doctor, have you anything more to say?" Reynolds, perceiving it useless, replied, "No, please your majesty;" on which James told these brow-beaten divines, that had they disputed no better in college, and he had been moderator, he would have had them all fetched up and flogged for dunces; that if that was all they had to say for themselves, he would make them conform, or hurry them out of the kingdom, or worse. With this scandalous treatment they were dismissed till the 18th, when the Conference met again. The greater part of the day was consumed by the king, the Council, and prelates in inquiring into the abuses of the high commission court, and devising means for checking them. At a late hour the Dissenting delegates were again admitted, not to continue the discussion, but to hear the fixed decision of the king. On hearing it they prayed that a certain time might be allowed before the new regulations were enforced. This was granted, but not strictly kept, for the new Book of Common Prayer was immediately prepared and published by authority.

Thus ended this curious Conference, in a complete triumph for the High Church party. The Reformers complained bitterly of this, but James himself was incapable of feeling the force of public opinion. He was inflated with the idea of his own unrivalled eloquence and ability. He boasted that he had "peppered the Dissenters soundly. They fled me," he said, "from argument to argument like schoolboys." The bishops and ministers of his Council added to his absurd egotism, by actually pouring deluges of the most fulsome adulation upon him. Bancroft, Bishop of London, flung himself on his knees before him, and exclaimed "that his heart melted with joy, and made haste to acknowledge unto Almighty God His singular mercy in giving them such a king, as since Christ's time the like had not been"; and Whitgift, the primate, protested "that his majesty spake by the special assistance of God's spirit." The Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, emulating the sycophants of the Church, said that "the king and the priest had never been so wonderfully united in the same person;" and the peers echoed the plaudits, declaring that his majesty's speeches proceeded from the spirit of God operating on an understanding heart. "I wist not what they mean," wrote Harrington, in "NugÆ AntiquÆ"; "but the spirit was rather foul-mouthed."

All parties connected with the Church having thus admitted that the king was acting under the most luminous effusion of the Divine spirit, ought not, therefore, to have murmured when soon afterwards, without waiting for ecclesiastical sanction, he made his own alterations in the Book of Common Prayer, and then issued a proclamation, warning all men neither to attempt nor expect any further alterations in the Church, and commanding all ecclesiastical and civil authorities to enforce the strictest conformity. Whitgift soon after died (1604), and many attributed the acceleration of his death to his mortification at the king's ordering the affairs of the Church by his own will and wisdom, which Whitgift had been one of the first to extol as infallible. Bancroft succeeded him in the primacy, and showed himself a capable instrument of James's bigotry, and ready to enforce whatever cruelty he would attempt.

James spent fully half of his year in hunting, and if any person or party had an urgent matter to prefer, the only opportunity of doing so was by waylaying him in his rides to the forest. The Dissenters, as the time approached for the enforcement of the new canons of the Church, presented a petition to him near Newmarket, praying a prolongation of the time allowed them for conforming. James received them with savage fierceness; told them that it was from such petitions that the rebellion in the Netherlands originated; that his mother and he had been haunted by Puritan devils from their cradles; that he would sooner lose his crown than encourage such malicious spirits; and if he thought his son would tolerate them in his time, he would wish to see him that moment lying in his grave. The Nonconformists complained that he persecuted the disciples whilst he favoured the enemies of the Gospel. This was referring to his reception of Catholics at court, and his promises not to molest them if they abstained from the open prosecution of their worship. But James left them under no mistake on that head. He expressed an equally vehement hatred of Papists; and on the 22nd of February he issued a proclamation enjoining the banishment of all Catholic missionaries. He went to the Star Chamber, framed regulations for the discovery and prosecution of recusants, and issued orders to magistrates to see the penal laws put in force against all persons, of whatever faith, who did not fully conform to the rites and ordinances of the Church. Thus the miseries and oppressions of religious persecution were renewed with all their virulence; and the only consolation for those who refused to conform was that they might persecute one another.

In the midst of this state of things James was compelled to call a Parliament. This assembled on the 19th of March, 1604. It was one of the most remarkable Parliaments in our history, for it came together, on the part of both King and Commons, prepared to contest the great principles of absolutism and constitutional liberty; a contest which never again ceased till the people had triumphed over the Crown, and prescribed for it those limits within which it continues still to exist. The Tudors had made themselves absolute, but rather by acting than talking. They had willed, but had only occasionally boasted of the supremacy of their will. Whenever they had done so, especially in the person of Elizabeth, they received a protest so spirited from Parliament, that they wisely again veiled their pretensions. But James, possessing all their personal vanity and love of unlimited power, had not the policy to keep his pretensions in the background. He obtruded them on the public notice; he vaunted his towering belief of his earthly divinity, declaring that as God killed or made alive, so had He ordained kings to do the same at pleasure. Years before he came to England, he published these imperious and imprudent doctrines in a discourse "On the True Law of Free Monarchies; or, the Reciprogue and Mutual Duty betwixt a Free King and his Natural Subjects." He was, in short, a firm believer in the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings, which had taken such a firm root in Europe.

In the proclamation calling this Parliament, James took care to set forth the supremacy of his prerogative, and commanded the sheriffs and other officers to make no returns of members but such as were wholly agreeable to his views; there were to be no "persons noted for their superstitious blindness in religion one way, or for their turbulent humour the other." That is, neither Puritans nor Catholics were to be elected. Instructions were sent down to the various counties and boroughs, naming such persons for candidates as were agreeable to the Court. But the Puritans were in no humour to comply with such unconstitutional orders. They were justly filled with resentment at the treatment of their representatives at Hampton Court, and put forward their own men and returned them in great numbers in defiance of the Government. One case led to a direct and vehement collision between the Crown and the House of Commons. Sir John Fortescue, a member of the Privy Council, had been named by the Court as a member for the county of Buckingham. The people of Buckinghamshire, afterwards so conspicuous in the struggles between the Stuarts and Parliament, elected Sir Francis Goodwin. The clerk of the Crown refused to receive the return, and sent it back to the sheriff as contrary to the proclamation; for Goodwin had formerly been outlawed, and James had forbidden the return of outlaws. A second writ was issued, and under it Sir John Fortescue was elected. But the Commons refused to admit him, declaring that as Goodwin's outlawry had been reversed, the proclamation did not apply to him, and that his return was good and should stand.

THE OLD PALACE, WESTMINSTER, IN THE TIME OF CHARLES I.

(Showing the Hall, Parliament House, Painted Chamber, and St. Stephen's Chapel.)

The Government, in the name of the Lords, proposed to the Commons that there should be a conference between the two Houses on the subject before any other business was proceeded with; but the Commons, with a clear insight into their privileges, where the constitution and functions of their own body were concerned, replied that it did not consist with the honour of their House to give an account of their proceedings and doings. On this they received a second message, in which they were informed, through Coke, that his majesty being apprised of their objection, conceived that his honour was touched, and desired that there should be some conference between the Houses. On this the Commons sent a deputation of their members, headed by the Speaker, to represent to the king why they could not confer with the Lords on any subject. The king was exceedingly high, and let them know that they held all their privileges by the royal favour; but the members stoutly denied that doctrine, as the House at large had already this session denied it, saying "that new laws could not be instituted, nor imperfect laws reformed, nor inconvenient laws abrogated, by any other power than that of the High Court of Parliament, that is, by the agreement of the Commons, the accord of the Lords, and the assent of the Sovereign; that to him belonged the right either negatively to frustrate, or affirmatively to ratify, but that he could not institute; every bill must pass through the two Houses before it could be submitted to his pleasure."

This was a doctrine that clashed disagreeably with James's absolute notions, and he upbraided the Commons with their presumption. But they stood firmly to their position and, what was extremely humiliating to the new monarch, excused his unconstitutional ideas through ignorance or misinformation of the custom and laws of England; the privileges of their house, they said, were the birthright of Englishmen and could not be surrendered. James claimed that all disputed matters should be referred to his court of chancery; but they claimed to settle all such themselves, as the essential to the government of their estate.

When James found that nothing would induce the Commons to confer with the Lords, he ordered them to confer with the judges, and this command the deputation carried back to the House. But the House, after a warm debate, unanimously refused to refer the question to the judges; they drew up an answer to all the king's arguments, and sent it to the Lords, requesting them to present it to his majesty, and be mediators between them. James, now finding that he could make no impression by express command, sent for the Speaker and endeavoured to coax him over to his views; but that being unsuccessful, he ordered him to deliver to the House his command, "as an absolute king," to confer with the judges. This was a direct challenge to the popular element to try its strength with the royal one—language which was sure to put a high-spirited people on its mettle: the first utterance of that language, which no warning, no experience could teach a Stuart to abandon, till the utterance was quenched in blood.

When the Speaker delivered this command, there fell a profound silence on the House—an augury and foreboding, as it were, of the gigantic struggle which was commencing. At length the ominous silence was broken by a member starting up and exclaiming that "the prince's command was like a thunderbolt; his command over our allegiance," he said, "is like the roaring of a lion! To his command there is no contradiction; but how, or in what manner we should proceed to perform obedience, that will be the question." It was finally agreed to send a deputation to confer with the judges in the presence of the king and Council. At the conference there appeared no better prospect of success, when the king happily proposed that both Goodwin and Fortescue should be set aside, and a new writ issued. The Commons gladly acceded to this proposal. The House was rejoiced at this solution of the difficulty, but out of doors those they represented were far from satisfied, and reproached the House with having yielded the right which they had boldly claimed. But in reality, the Commons had done no such thing, for they proceeded, by their Speaker's warrant, to issue the new writ themselves, and they have ever since exercised the right which they then assumed, of deciding all cases of contested elections.

The king, on his part, was as little satisfied as the people. He laboured under no mistake as to where the victory lay: he felt keenly that he was defeated in his soaring claims of prerogative, and the Commons went on to let him know that they were resolved on an exercise of power still greater. They attacked the monopolies which James had declared by proclamation that he would abolish, but towards which not a step was taken. They complained of the continuance of the feudal grievances of assarts, wardships, aids for royal marriages, and purveyance. The right of guardianship of minors of estate continued a source of vast emolument to the Crown, which received the proceeds of these estates and rendered no account. This was, moreover, a source of equal peculation to the minister for the time being, and Cecil was thought to draw enormous wealth from this abuse; and as for purveyance, it seems to have been as recklessly and insolently pursued as under any of the kings of York or Lancaster. The royal purveyors seized the property of the subject just as they pleased; took horses, carts, carriages, and provisions at will; called out men to labour for the royal pleasure, paying or not as suited them, felling trees, and committing sundry other depredations.

After much debate these grievances were referred to a committee; but as the Lords would have nothing to do with it, the matter was obliged to be dropped. Bacon, who was assiduously climbing into royal favour, played a contemptible part on this occasion in the House. He affected the character of a patriot, and discoursed feelingly of abuses and the sufferings of the people, while in the Council, before the king, he declared that his majesty was the voice of God in man, the good spirit of God in the mouth of man.

The struggle continued between the Crown and the Commons through the whole session. As the Crown would not agree to reform the abuses complained of, the Commons declined to grant the king any money beyond the usual rate of tonnage and poundage. So apprehensive, in fact, was the king of another defeat in the present temper of the House, that he sent a message requesting them not to enter on the business of subsidy, notwithstanding his urgent need of money.

The struggle regarding religious liberty was carried on by the Puritans in the House with equal obstinacy. Convocation sitting at the same time with Parliament occupied itself in framing a new code of ecclesiastical canons. In spite of the resolution of the Conference at Hampton Court, which declared that no excommunication should issue except for very grave offences, these canons—one hundred and forty-one in number—equalled in ecclesiastical despotism anything which had been decreed under Henry VIII. Excommunication was pronounced against all who denied the supremacy of the king or the orthodoxy of the Church; who affirmed the Book of Common Prayer to be superstitious or unlawful, that any one of the Thirty-nine Articles was erroneous, or that the ordinal was opposed to the Word of God. All who should separate from the Established Church, or established conventicles, were equally denounced, and this bigoted code James ratified by letters patent under the Great Seal. But it did not pass without severe comment from the Puritan members of the House, in the midst of which the king prorogued Parliament; and so remained the question of the canon law of England, which in reality was and is a law binding only on the clergy, having received their own sanction and that of their head the king, but not that of the Legislature; for which reason the judges have always held that it binds the clergy who framed, but not the people whose representatives refused it.

No sooner was the canon law promulgated and Parliament prorogued, than Bancroft, the new archbishop, let loose the fury of the Church against nonconformists, whether Catholic or Protestant. All were called on to conform to the new regulations, and no less than three hundred clergymen were forced from their livings. The Catholics, on their part, were equally harassed, fined, and insulted. The legal penalty of twenty pounds a month for recusancy was again enforced, notwithstanding James had promised to overlook this; and it was executed with a new rigour of barbarity, the fines for the whole period during which James had been professing leniency being levied. Thus the sufferers were called on to make thirteen payments at one time, which at once reduced a vast number of families to absolute beggary.

The Puritans did not submit to the outrages perpetrated on them without sturdy resistance and remonstrance. The Catholics, or at least a section of them, proceeded to something more dangerous. Smarting under their renewed persecution, they felt it useless to remonstrate like the Puritans, for both the Church party and Nonconformists were against them. They, therefore, as a body, brooded in silence over their sufferings; but there were amongst the oppressed spirits those who could not thus endure in patience, but planned a desperate revenge. Amongst these was Robert Catesby, the descendant of an ancient Catholic family, seated for centuries at Ashby St. Legers, in Northamptonshire, and also possessing considerable property in Warwickshire. Catesby's father had been a great sufferer for recusancy, having several times been imprisoned, in addition to the plundering of his substance. In his youth, the younger Catesby, who was wild and extravagant, was not disposed to sacrifice his jollity for the maintenance of a persecuted faith. He embraced Protestantism, but in 1598 he returned to his original belief, and, feeling the bitter force of persecution, he became stimulated to an active hatred of the Government. He aided the insurrection of Essex on condition that he should enjoy full religious freedom; and escaping the fate of his leader by the forfeiture of three thousand pounds, he then secretly joined himself to the Spanish party amongst the Catholics, in order to prevent the succession of the Scottish prince. This hope being defeated, and the Catholics not only seeing James prepared to falsify his promises of Catholic indulgence, but all the heads of the Catholic world abroad—the kings of France and Spain, and the Pope himself—seeking the friendship of the king, Catesby conceived the gloomy idea that deliverance could only proceed from the English Catholics themselves. In following out this desperate idea, he gradually evolved a scheme of vengeance and annihilation of all the persecutors of his faith. This was no other than to blow up the king and Parliament with gunpowder.

Catesby first made a confidant in his terrible project of Thomas Winter, the younger brother of Robert Winter, of Huddington, in Worcestershire. Winter was the intimate friend of Catesby, and had been long associated with him in the plans for the relief of the Catholics. He had been a volunteer in the wars of the Netherlands, and then was sent to Madrid as the secret agent of the Spanish party in England, amongst whom his friend Catesby was an active partisan. But familiar as Winter was with the sufferings and projects of the Catholics, this bloody revelation struck him with horror, and he denounced it vehemently as most criminal and inhuman. But Catesby spared no labour to reconcile his mind to the idea; he painted in vivid colours the long, the pitiless, and the unmerited cruelties inflicted on the Catholics. He enumerated the numbers who had been exterminated by the axe and the rope of the executioner; who had perished in their prisons, or who had been reduced from affluence and honour to beggary by the relentless bigotry of the Government. He demanded whence relief was to come, what hope there was left of effectual intercession from abroad, or of resolute resistance from the dispirited Catholics at home. He appealed to him whether God had not given to every man the right to repel force by force, and whether the whole world besides afforded them any other chance.

GREAT SEAL OF JAMES I.

Winter was staggered but not convinced, and declared that he would not consent to any such frightful measure until fresh attempts had been made to procure a mitigation of their sufferings by milder means. He, therefore, hastened over to the Netherlands, where the Spanish ambassador, Velasco, had arrived, in order to conclude a peace between England and Spain. At Bergen, near Dunkirk, he had an interview with the ambassador, and urged upon him to demand a clause in the treaty for the protection of the Catholics. He was soon convinced that Velasco, though promising to use his influence for that end, would not risk the completion of the peace by the advocacy of such a stipulation.

Indignant at this apathy, he hastened to Ostend on his return, where he accidentally encountered an old comrade in the Netherland wars, of the name of Guido or Guy Fawkes, a native of Yorkshire, and a man of determined courage, as well as of great experience and address. He had been Winter's companion in his mission to Madrid, and he now solicited him to accompany him to England, and unite his endeavours with other friends for Catholic relief. Winter, it would seem, had now made up his mind to enter into Catesby's plot, but did not let Fawkes into the full secret for some time.

Meanwhile, Catesby had been ardently at work in the prosecution of his idea. He had communicated his plan to Percy and Wright. Thomas Percy was of the Northumberland family, and steward to the earl, and John Wright was brother-in-law to Percy, and reputed to be the best swordsman in England. Percy had joined the Catholics about the same time as Catesby returned to them, and like a zealous proselyte had, during the latter days of Elizabeth, gone to James at Edinburgh and endeavoured to draw from him a promise of favour to the Catholics on his accession. James is reported to have assured Percy that he would at least tolerate the mass in a corner. This James afterwards denied, but his denial can go for very little, for it was perfectly in keeping with his king-craft to promise what served to secure his ends for the time; and almost every monarch in Europe had to make that complaint against him. Percy, on the breaking out of the persecution under James, felt that he had been made the dupe of James's duplicity. He presented a remonstrance to the king, to which no answer was deigned, and Catesby found him in a mood of great resentment against the king, and in a favourable temper for his views. He not only agreed to co-operate but brought in his brother-in-law Wright, who was also a recent proselyte to Catholicism.

GUY FAWKES'S CELLAR UNDER PARLIAMENT HOUSE.

Percy appears to have been of a very excitable nature: the embryo conspirators assembled at Catesby's lodging, and Percy demanded whether they were merely to talk and never to act. Catesby said that before he would open his plan to them, he must demand from every one an oath of secrecy. This was assented to, and a few days afterwards, as appears by the confession of Winter, the five—that is, Catesby, Winter, Percy, Wright, and Fawkes—"met at a house in the fields beyond St. Clement's Inn, where they did confer and agree upon the plot, and there they took a solemn oath and vows by all their force and power to execute the same, and of secrecy not to reveal it to any of their fellows but of such as should be thought fit persons to enter into that action." When they had all sworn and perfectly understood what was proposed, Catesby led them into an upper chamber of the house, where they received the sacrament from Gerard, the Jesuit missionary, but who, according to Winter's confession, was not let into the secret.

This dreadful oath was taken on the 1st of May, 1604, but the conspirators resolved to wait for the remotest chance of any good arising out of the negotiations between England and Spain. But the treaty was concluded on the 18th of August, without any clause protective of the Catholics. Peace and commercial relations were restored between the two countries, and James was left at liberty to do as he pleased with the cautionary towns if the States did not redeem them. After the ratification of the treaty, the Spanish ambassador solicited in the name of his sovereign the goodwill of James towards his Catholic subjects; but James assured Velasco that however much he might be disposed to such indulgence, he dared not grant it, such was the terror of his Protestant subjects of any return to power of the Catholics. Velasco took his leave, and fresh orders were issued to judges and magistrates to enforce the laws against the Catholics with all rigour. This put an end to the patience of the conspirators, and they protested that it was but a fitting retribution to bury the authors of their oppressions under the ruins of the edifice in which they enacted such diabolical laws.

They now sought for a proper place to commence their operations, and they soon found a house adjoining the Parliament House in the possession of one Ferris, the tenant of Whinyard, the keeper of the king's wardrobe. This Percy hired, in his own name, of Ferris, on pretence that his office of gentleman pensioner compelled him to reside part of the year in the vicinity of the Court. But the conspirators were debarred from immediate operations, by the commissioners appointed by James to consider a scheme for the union of the two kingdoms, taking possession of this house where they sate for several months. Not wholly, however, to lose time, the conspirators hired another house in Lambeth, on the banks of the river, where they stored up wood, gunpowder, and other combustibles, which they could easily remove by night in boats, as occasion served, to their house in Westminster, as soon as it was in their hands. They confided the charge of this house in Lambeth to Thomas Kay, a Catholic gentleman of reduced means, who took the oath and entered into the plot.

On the 11th of December the conspirators obtained possession of their house, when they again swore to be faithful to each other, and they began their preparations by night. Behind the house, in a garden and adjoining the Parliament House, stood an old building. Within this they began to perforate the wall, one keeping watch while the others laboured. The watching was allotted to Fawkes, whose person was unknown, and who assumed the name of Johnson and appeared as the servant of Percy. Three of the others worked whilst the fourth rested. During the day they toiled at undermining the wall, and during the night they buried the rubbish under the earth in the garden. They had laid in a store of eggs, dried meats, and the like, so that no suspicion should be excited in the neighbourhood by their going in and out, or by there being brought in provisions for so many persons. They thus laboured indefatigably for a fortnight, when Fawkes brought them the intelligence that Parliament was prorogued from the 7th of February to the 3rd of October. On this they resolved to suspend their work till after the Christmas holidays, and to retire to their respective residences, agreeing neither to meet in the interim, nor to correspond or send messages to each other regarding the plot.

During their late labours, as they discussed various matters, Catesby, to his dread and mortification, discovered a strong tendency amongst his associates to doubt the lawfulness of their attempt, because innocent people must perish with the guilty, Catholics amid the persecuting Protestants. In vain he employed all his ingenuity in reasoning; he saw the feeling remain, and he endeavoured to secure a plausible argument before their coming together again. He therefore consulted Garnet, the provincial of the Jesuits, on this point. Catesby had accepted a commission as captain in a regiment of cavalry, to be commanded by Sir Charles Percy, in the service of Spain. He now observed to Garnet in a large company that he had no doubt about the justice of the war on the side of Spain, but as he might be called on to make attacks in which the innocent might fall with the guilty, women and children with armed soldiers, could he do that lawfully in the sight of the Almighty? Garnet replied certainly, otherwise an aggressor could always defeat the object of the party invaded by placing innocent persons amongst guilty ones in his ranks. This was enough for Catesby, the principle was admitted; and on the meeting of the conspirators after the recess, he was prepared to banish their scruple by assuring them that it was decided to be groundless by competent ecclesiastical authority.

On the 30th of January, 1605, they resumed their operations. They found the wall through which they had to dig was no less than three yards thick, and composed of huge stones, so that the labour was intense, and the danger of their blows being heard began to alarm them. They had an accession of force to their numbers, the brothers of Wright and Winter, and one John Grant, of Norbrook in Warwickshire, who had married a sister of the Winters. He had suffered much from persecution under Elizabeth, and his house was large and strongly fortified, offering a good depot for horses and ammunition. Besides these, Catesby had admitted Bates, his confidential servant, into the secret, believing he had more than half guessed it, and sent him with arms and ammunition to Grant's house in Worcestershire.

But at this point the operations of the conspirators received a severe check. There arose a difficulty which seemed to be insurmountable; which so disheartened some of the band that they were in favour of abandoning their project altogether—or at least for a time. This formidable obstacle appeared in the shape of ordinary water, which now began to ooze in from the river, and put a stop to all hope of making the passage. Fortune came to their aid, however. Whilst they were in this state of dejection, they were extremely alarmed by a loud noise, which appeared to come from a room just over their heads. Fawkes went to endeavour to learn the cause of it, and returned with the intelligence that it proceeded from the selling of the stock in trade of Bright, a coal merchant, who was evacuating the cellar, which would be in a few days unoccupied. At this joyful news, the mining of the foundation was abandoned; the cellar, which lay directly under the House of Lords, was immediately taken by Fawkes in the name of his pretended master, Percy. In a short time they had removed thirty-six barrels of gunpowder from the house in Lambeth in the darkness of night, and had covered them over in the cellar with faggots and billets of wood. All being prepared, they once more separated till September, a few days before the assembling of Parliament. They dispersed themselves to avoid all suspicion, and Fawkes went over to Flanders to endeavour to procure a supply of military stores, and to win over Sir William Stanley, Captain Owen, and other officers of the regiment in the pay of the archduke. Catesby was an officer of this regiment; most of these officers were Catholics and his personal friends, and he informed them through Fawkes, that things were come to that pass that it was reported that the Catholics were to be utterly exterminated throughout England, and that if they could not defend themselves by peaceable means, they must do it by the sword; and he enjoined them to engage as many of their brethren as possible to aid them in their deliverance. Sir William Stanley was absent in Spain and Owen promised that he would communicate with him; but little effect appears to have been produced by Fawkes's mission, except that of exciting the attention of Cecil, who received repeated intimations from Flanders that the English exiles had some secret enterprise in agitation, though what it was the informants could not discover.

Catesby at home was in constant activity. He had obtained a fresh accomplice in Keyes, an intimate friend of his, who had been stripped of his property and was prepared for the worst, being a man of determined disposition; and he had his eye on others who appeared in a mood for it. At the same time the growing excitement of Catesby endangered the secret. There was a tone and a restlessness about him which attracted the notice of his friends. He still delayed joining his regiment in Flanders, and Garnet, the Jesuit, came to suspect that he was engaged in some plot and warned him against such attempts. This only excited the anger of Catesby, and Garnet wrote to Rome and obtained letters from the Pope and the generals of his Order, strongly enjoining on the Catholics submission to the Government. Catesby, uneasy in his conscience, at length confessed to Garnet the existence of some plot. The Jesuit refused to hear anything of it, but endeavoured to impress on the conspirator the necessity of obedience to the breves from Rome. At length he prevailed on him to promise that nothing should be done till they had sent a messenger to the Pope fully detailing the condition of the Catholics in England, and had received an answer. But Catesby had no intention of deferring his enterprise on such grounds. Fawkes returned to England in September, and they resolved to proceed. A second prorogation of Parliament, however, from October to the 5th of November, disconcerted the conspirators, and induced them to fear that their designs had become known to Government. To ascertain this, if possible, Thomas Winter was deputed to attend in the House of Lords and watch the countenances and behaviour of the commissioners during the ceremony of prorogation. He returned, assuring them that their secret was still safe, for the commissioners walked about and conversed in the utmost unconsciousness of danger on the very surface of the prepared volcano—the six-and-thirty barrels of gunpowder.

These repeated delays, however, ensured the defeat of the plot. All the conspirators except Catesby were now ruined by fines, exactions, and persecutions on account of their faith. They had depended for support for the last twelve months on the assistance of relations and friends. Catesby had purchased the military stores and other requisites: his means were now exhausted, and yet more money must be in hand against the day of explosion if they meant to take full advantage of it. This induced them to extend the number of their accomplices, a perilous proceeding in anything demanding secrecy; and yet Catesby ventured on divulging the scheme to no less than three fresh associates, men of family and fortune. The first was Sir Everard Digby, of Drystoke in Rutlandshire, Gotehurst in Buckinghamshire, and of other large estates. Digby had been left as a boy a ward of Queen Elizabeth's and had been educated at her court as a Protestant. But a little before the death of the queen he embraced the Catholic faith, and thus abandoning the brilliant prospects before him, retired to his estates in the country. At the time of the conspiracy he had a young wife and two children, was only twenty-five himself, and thus had every imaginable earthly good within his reach. Subtle must have been the persuasion which could have induced such a man to risk all this in a desperate enterprise, and bold the spirit of Catesby who could venture to tempt him to do it. It was not effected without difficulty. Digby could not avoid seeing the hazard and doubting the innocence of such a proceeding, but eventually he gave way, and promised to assemble his Catholic friends on the opening of Parliament to hunt with him on Dunsmoor in Warwickshire, and to advance one thousand five hundred pounds.

The next was Ambrose Rookwood of Coldham Hall, Suffolk, the head of an ancient and wealthy family, who had suffered like his neighbours, but was still affluent. He had a fine stud of horses, which made him a very desirable coadjutor, independent of other considerations. He seems to have had as little ambition as he had motive for conspiracy, being, despite his share of persecutions, able to enjoy a quiet life; but his attachment to Catesby was his snare. Like the rest, he at first recoiled from the prospect of so much bloodshed; but Catesby managed to reconcile him to the idea, and he removed his family to Clopton Hall, near Stratford-on-Avon, in order to be near the Catholic rendezvous at Dunsmoor.

The third new accomplice was Sir Francis Tresham. His father, Sir Thomas Tresham, had long been severely handled on account of his religion, in Elizabeth's reign, and his son Francis, who succeeded him, had been engaged in several plots. He was in that of Essex in conjunction with Catesby and Percy, and escaped by a prompt distribution of three thousand pounds amongst the queen's favourites. His chief seat was at Rushton, in Northamptonshire. The selection of Tresham was especially imprudent, for he had the character of being selfish, reserved, and fickle; but he had money, which induced Catesby to trust him. From the moment, however, that he did so, he had no more peace of mind. Terrible fears and suspicions seized him, dreams as terrible haunted him at night. His comrades had no confidence in Tresham, whose character was well known; but the thing was done, and there was no retracing the step which was to bring destruction upon them. Tresham promised a contribution of two thousand pounds, and Percy also engaging to advance four thousand pounds from the rents of the Earl of Northumberland, whose steward he was, the pecuniary provision appeared ample, and they proceeded to organise their plan of operations.

A list of all the peers and commons who were Catholics, or who had opposed the penal statutes and other harsh measures against the Catholics, was made out, and these were at the last moment on the fatal morning to be called away from the House by some urgent message. Guy Fawkes was appointed to fire the train with a slow burning match, which should allow of his escape before the explosion; and a ship was to lie ready in the river to carry him over to Flanders, where he was to publish a manifesto justifying the deed and calling on the Catholic powers for aid. Percy, as a gentleman pensioner, was to enter the palace and secure the person of the young Prince Charles—it seems they were willing to let Prince Henry perish—and on pretence of placing him in security, convey him away to the appointed rendezvous at Dunchurch. Digby, Tresham, Grant, and others, were to hasten to Combe Abbey, and secure the Princess Elizabeth, whom, if the two young princes should not be saved, they were at once to proclaim queen. Catesby was to proclaim the heir-apparent, whoever it was, at Charing Cross; and on reaching Warwickshire a declaration was to be issued abolishing monopolies, purveyance, and wardships. A protector was to be appointed to conduct the Government during the minority of the sovereign.

LORD MONTEAGLE AND THE WARNING LETTER ABOUT THE GUNPOWDER PLOT. (See p. 426.)

There were circumstances enough in these regulations to have alarmed all but fanatics in the cause. Messages at the last moment to so many members of the two Houses must have created suspicion, and the endeavour to secure the royal children was full of hazard. But there were greater dangers than these. As the time drew nigh, almost every one had friends amongst the members of Parliament, and they were not contented with the general plan of drawing them away at the critical moment. Each wished to convey a particular warning to his own friends or relatives, which should make their safety certain. Every such warning, however, menaced the discovery of the whole scheme. Tresham was excessively anxious to rescue the Lords Mordaunt and Monteagle, who had married two of his sisters. Percy was equally desirous to save his relative, the Earl of Northumberland; Keyes, the old gentleman who had the custody of the house at Lambeth, was importunate to save Lord Mordaunt, who sheltered and maintained his wife and children after his own ruin; and all were eager to warn the young Earl of Arundel.

Catesby, extremely alarmed by these proposals, declared that means enough were in operation to keep those that they wished to save away; but that rather than endanger the result, he would have all blown up, though they were as dear to him as his own son. He and Fawkes, as the day drew near, retired to a solitary house in Enfield Chase, called White Webbs, where, as they were in consultation with Thomas Winter, Tresham suddenly made his appearance. He appeared excited and embarrassed, and demanded that he should be allowed to put Lord Monteagle, on his guard. When Catesby and his associates protested against it, he advanced reasons for delay, declaring that he should not be prepared with the promised advance of money till he had sold some property. He pleaded that the explosion would be as effectual at the end of the session as at the beginning; that in the meantime the conspirators might live in Flanders, whither his ship should convey them, and where he would supply them with the necessary funds for maintenance. Catesby was confirmed in his fears of Tresham by these proposals, but thought it best to dissemble and appear to acquiesce. Tresham returned to town, and would seem to have warned not only Monteagle but others, most likely including Lord Mordaunt. Digby and others of the conspirators are supposed to have warned their own friends, so that the danger of discovery was hourly increasing. Tresham, in his examination, alleged that his real object at this moment was not to delay but to put an end to the plot, as the only means he could devise to save the lives of all concerned, and to preserve his own life, fortune, and reputation.

The movements of Lord Monteagle warranted the belief that he had received a warning of some kind that there was danger in town, for he removed from his house in London to one which he had at Hoxton, and on the 26th of October, six days before the proposed opening of Parliament, he, much to the surprise of his own family, ordered a good supper to be prepared there. Monteagle had formerly been engaged in the Spanish treason, and had written to Baynham, who was the emissary at Rome, and therefore was probably aware of some plot in agitation, but he had latterly obtained the confidence of the king and was one of the commissioners for the late prorogation.

As he sat at table about seven o'clock in the evening, a page handed to him a letter, which he said he had received from a tall man whose features he could not recognise in the dark. Monteagle opened the letter and seeing that it had neither date nor signature, he handed it to Thomas Ward, a gentleman of his establishment, to read aloud. It was as follows:—"My lord out of the love i beare to some of youer frends i have a caer of your preservacion therefor i would advyse yowe as yowe tender youer lyfe to devyse some exscuse to shift of youer attendance at this parleament for god and man hath concurred to punishe the wickednes of this tyme and think not slightlye of this advertisement but retyere to youre self into youre contri wheare you may expect the event in safeti for thowghe theare be no apparance of anni stir yet i saye they shall receyve a terrible blowe this parleament and yet they shall not seie who hurts them this cowncel is not to be contemned because it may do yowe good and can do yowe no harme for the danger is passed as soon as yowe have burnt the letter and i hope God will give yowe the grace to mak good use of it to whose holy protecion i comend yowe."

The astonishment of the guests at the hearing of this letter may be imagined. Lord Monteagle immediately hastened to town, and laid the letter before Cecil and some of the other ministers, the king being away still at Royston, hunting. Cecil determined that nothing should be done till the king's return. The next morning Ward, who had read the letter publicly at the supper-table, communicated the circumstance to Thomas Winter, and said the letter was in the possession of Cecil. Winter was thunderstruck, but put the best face upon the matter that he could, and pretended to laugh at the whole affair as a hoax on the credulity of Lord Monteagle; but no sooner was Ward gone than he flew to White Webbs and imparted the news to Catesby. Catesby at once attributed the letter to Tresham, and the more so as he had absented himself for several days on the pretence of having business in Northamptonshire. The question was whether he had revealed the particulars of the plot and the names of the conspirators. To ascertain the extent of the mischief and of the guilt of Tresham, he sent him an imperative message to come to White Webbs. Tresham obeyed the summons on the 30th of October, and met Catesby and Winter at this lonely house in Enfield Chase. They had made up their minds if they found him guilty, to shoot him on the spot. They charged him point blank with the discovery of the plot, and kept a searching gaze upon his countenance as he received their declaration. Had he faltered or shown any confusion, his doom would have been instant. But he exhibited the utmost calmness and firmness of expression, protesting most solemnly that he was innocent of the charge.

That Tresham was the writer of the letter, and that he had entered into a confidential understanding with Monteagle for the defeat of the plot, there appears every reason to conclude. His own avowal on the examination that such was his intention is borne out by all the examinations. The delivery of the letter whilst Monteagle was at supper with his friends, if it was done by Tresham, shows an intention that it should thus be made irrevocably public. The instant communication of Lord Monteagle's servant with Winter the conspirator, in order to warn them, confirms the idea that all this was planned between Tresham and Monteagle; but there is no reason to believe that Tresham had betrayed the names of his accomplices.

Catesby and Winter returned with Tresham to town, and Guy Fawkes was despatched to the cellar under the Parliament House to discover whether all was right there. Not a thing or a secret mark was disturbed. They then first told him why they had sent him, on which Fawkes complained of their distrust of his courage, and said he would visit the cellar every day till the 5th of November. Had Cecil not been still more cunning than the conspirators, had he made a stir and an inquisition, the aim of Tresham would have been effected, the conspirators would have escaped, and the plot have been put an end to without any catastrophe. But the artifice of Cecil lulled their suspicions and lured them on to their doom.

On the 31st of October James returned to town, and the letter was laid before him, with the particulars of its delivery. The king was struck by the account, read the letter several times over, and discussed the matter for two hours with his ministers. He boasted to Parliament on its opening, that it was his own bright suggestion that the receiving of the letter sent to Lord Monteagle implied that they were all to be blown up, and that he in consequence ordered the search of the cellars under the Parliament House. But this was a piece of consummate flattery on the part of his ministers, to make it appear the result of his superior sagacity; for we have direct evidence in the circular of the Earl of Salisbury, that the ministers were in possession of the secret, but he observes, "we all thought fit to forbear to impart it to the king until some three or four days before the sessions." In fact, the intelligence that the letter was in the hands of the king, and that the Council was consulting on it, was immediately conveyed to Winter by Monteagle's servant. Upon this Winter waited on Tresham at his house in Lincoln's Inn Walks, where Tresham, in great agitation, assured him that the existence of the mine was known to the ministers; that he knew certainly, but denied any knowledge of the person by whom the discovery had been made. He declared that they were all lost if they did not escape at once. From the moment the affair was known, Tresham had avoided further intercourse with the conspirators, meaning to appear ignorant of their concerns, for which reason he went about openly, and even offered his services to the Council.

The conspirators met to decide on their plan of action. Some of them advised instant flight to the Continent; Catesby, Winter, and others were perfectly convinced that Tresham was in communication with Monteagle, and perhaps with Cecil; but some of them would not believe such treason, and the arguments of Percy finally nailed them to their fate. This discussion took place on the 3rd of November. Percy conjured them to wait and see what the next day would bring forth, the very last day before the grand crisis. He represented all the labour, the anxieties, the plannings they had gone through, the costs they had incurred, the difficulties they had overcome, and he demanded whether, on the very point of complete success, they were to abandon their enterprise through the fears of a recreant colleague, who probably described what only his affrighted fancy pictured to him. He reminded them that his vessel still lay in the Thames at their service, and on the first positive proof of danger, they had only to hasten on board and drop down the river out of reach of their enemies.

These arguments prevailed, but they changed their plan of operations. Fawkes was still to keep guard in the cellar, Percy and Winter to superintend the necessary operations in London; but Catesby and John Wright were to hasten to Dunchurch and put Sir Everard Digby and the party on their guard.

On the evening of Monday the 4th of November, the Earl of Suffolk, in prosecution of his duty as Lord Chamberlain, to see all necessary preparations made for the opening of Parliament, went down to the House accompanied by Lord Monteagle.

After they had been some time in the Parliament chamber, on pretence that some necessary articles were missing, they went down to the cellars to make a search. They entered the vault where the mine was prepared and where Fawkes was at his post. The Lord Chamberlain, casually casting his eyes round the place, inquired by whom it was occupied, and who Fawkes was. The staunch traitor replied that it was occupied by Mr. Percy, whose servant he was; on which Suffolk observed in a careless manner, "Your master has laid in a good stock of fuel;" and he and Monteagle left the cellar. No sooner were they off the ground, than Fawkes hastened to inform Percy of what had occurred, but the warning was lost upon him. He persuaded himself that all was yet undiscovered, and Fawkes returned to the cellar to await the fatal hour.

A little after midnight, being now actually the 5th of November, Guy Fawkes had occasion to open the door of the vault, and he was immediately seized by Sir Thomas Knevett a magistrate of Westminster, who, with a party of soldiers, had silently invested the place. Fawkes was found to be booted and spurred, ready for a precipitate flight after lighting the train; three matches were found in his pocket, and a dark lantern containing a light was placed behind the door. The least delay in seizing the desperado, and he would have blown himself and the guard all into the air together. But he was instantly pinioned, bound hand and foot, and conveyed to Whitehall, where the Council had assembled in the king's bed-chamber by four o'clock to interrogate him. Fast fettered as he was, the determined look of the undaunted traitor struck terror into the spectators. He appeared quite self-possessed, calm in aspect, and bold, though respectful in speech. Nothing could be drawn from him regarding the conspiracy. He said his name was Johnson, and that Percy was his master. He avowed that his object was to annihilate King and Parliament, as the only possible means of ridding the Catholics of their persecutions. When asked who were his accomplices, he replied that should never be known from him. Finding that nothing could be extracted from the conspirator, on the morning of the 6th of November he was sent to the Tower, accompanied by orders that the secret was to be extorted from him by torture. The instructions of James directed that the gentle tortures were to be tried first, with gradual resort to the severer forms if necessary. For three or four days this man of iron nerve and will endured the utmost agony they could put him to, without divulging a syllable, nor did he relax till he learned for certain that the conspirators had proclaimed themselves by appearing in arms.

Catesby and John Wright had left on the evening of the 4th for Dunchurch as agreed; Percy and Christopher Wright maintained their watch in London till they heard of the arrest of Fawkes, when they mounted and rode after Catesby and John Wright. Keyes and Rookwood still waited till morning, when finding the whole known and all London in a state of terror, Keyes got away after the rest. Rookwood lingered in town till near noon, as he had a relay of vigorous horses ready, and when mounted, he rode furiously, overtook Keyes on Finchley Common, whence they rode to Turvey in Bedfordshire. Rookwood still pursued his gallop till he overtook first Percy and Christopher Wright, and then Catesby and John Wright, and the whole troop rode on together till they came to Lady Catesby's, at Ashby St. Legers, in Northamptonshire. They arrived there at six o'clock in the evening, Rookwood having ridden the whole eighty miles from London in little more than six hours. A party of conspirators, with whom was Winter, were just sitting down to supper when the fugitives came in, covered with mud and sinking with fatigue. Yet no time was to be lost. After a hasty refreshment, the whole company got to horse, and rode with all speed to Dunchurch.

The strange, haggard, and dejected appearance of the conspirators, and their eager closeting with Sir Everard Digby, awoke the suspicions of the hunting party. Before midnight, a whisper of treason and its failure flew amongst them, and they quickly got to horse and rode off each his own way. In the morning there remained only Catesby, Digby, Percy, the Wrights, Winter, and a few servants.

Catesby now advised that they should strike across Worcestershire for Wales, where he flattered himself they might assemble the Catholic gentry and make a formidable stand. In pursuance of this romantic plan, they mounted and rode to Warwick, whence, after obtaining fresh horses for their jaded ones, they made for Grant's house at Norbrook, and thence rode on through Warwickshire and Worcestershire to Holbeach House, on the borders of Staffordshire. All the way they had called on the Catholics to arm and join them for the rescue of their faith, but not a man would listen to the appeal. On this decided failure, instead of pushing for the mountains of Wales, they resolved to make a stand at Holbeach.

Meanwhile Sir Richard Walsh the sheriff of Worcestershire, with the whole posse comitatus and a number of volunteer gentlemen, was in chase of them. They had diverged from their original route in the hope of being joined by the gentry, who only drove them from their doors; and now, no sooner did Stephen Littleton, the owner of Holbeach, learn the real facts, than, horrified at the certain destruction impending over these desperate men, he escaped at the earliest opportunity from the house. He was soon followed by Sir Everard Digby, on the plea of endeavouring to muster assistance. The remaining conspirators—who, with servants, did not amount to more than forty men—put the house in a state of defence; but as they were drying some powder before the fire, it exploded, scorching Catesby and some others of the bystanders.

This accident so appalled them, impressing them with the idea that their enterprise was displeasing to God, that Robert Winter, Bates the servant of Catesby, and others got away. About noon Sir Richard Walsh came up with his troop, surrounded the house, and summoned them to surrender. But preferring death in arms to the gallows, they defied their assailants, and resolved to fight to the last. On this the sheriff ordered one part of his followers to set fire to the house, and the other to batter in the gates. Catesby, blackened and nearly blinded by the powder, called on the rest to make a rush and die hand to hand with their assailants. In the courtyard, Catesby, the two Wrights, and Percy were mortally wounded. Catesby crawled on hands and knees into the house to a crucifix, which he seized in his hands and expired. Rookwood, dreadfully burnt and wounded, was seized as well as Winter, whose arm was broken. Percy died the next day. The rest of them were soon taken. Robert Winter had overtaken Stephen Littleton in a wood, and together they made their way to the house of a Mrs. Littleton, near Hagley, where they were secreted, without her knowledge, by her cousin Humphrey Littleton, but were betrayed by a servant of Mrs. Littleton. Sir Everard Digby was pursued and taken in a wood near Dudley. They were all captured, with Keyes and Bates Catesby's servant, who was taken in Staffordshire. Four days after the seizure of the captives at Holbeach, Tresham was arrested in London, notwithstanding his affected innocence and his offers of assistance to the Council; and thus were the authors of this conspiracy destroyed, or safe in the hands of Government. Soon afterwards Garnet was discovered hiding at Hendip in a secret chamber.

The trials, of course, excited intense interest, and the king, queen, and prince were said to be present, where they could see and hear without attracting public notice. The prisoners were eight, Sir Everard Digby, Robert and Thomas Winter, Rookwood, Grant, Guido Fawkes, Keyes, and Bates. Sir Everard Digby pleaded guilty, all the rest not guilty, on the ground that many things were included in the indictments which were not true. There were no witnesses called, but the written depositions of the prisoners and of a servant of Sir Everard's were taken as sufficient proof. The accused, for the most part, denied that the three Jesuits (Garnet and two others who had been implicated) had any part in the plot, though they might more or less be aware of it; nor was there any proof brought forward or admission made which affected the Catholic body generally. On the contrary, it was too notorious that the Catholics had everywhere shrunk from the conspirators with horror; and Sir Everard Digby, in his letters to his wife, written from the Tower, pathetically laments that the Catholics so far from supporting the conspiracy, shunned and condemned them, and adds that he would never have engaged in it if he had not thought it lawful. The prisoners who pleaded not guilty, excused their conduct by the cruelty of the persecutions which they were enduring, the ruin and sufferings of their families, the violated promises of the king, and their consequent despair of any other termination of their oppressions, as well as their natural desire to effect the restoration of what they deemed the only true church. The Earls of Salisbury and Northampton denied, on the part of the king, the breach of any promises; and the prisoners were condemned to the death of traitors, which they endured, in all its revolting severity, at the west end of St. Paul's Churchyard. Digby, Robert Winter, Grant, and Bates, on the 31st of January, and Thomas Winter, Fawkes, Rookwood, and Keyes, next day.

The Jesuits Garnet and Oldcorne and their two servants, Owen and Chambers, who had been captured in Worcestershire, were lodged in the Tower, and there underwent the strictest examination, and Oldcorne, Owen, and Chambers were placed upon the rack. Garnet was not racked, but was threatened with it, to which he replied, "Minate ista pueris"—"Threats are only for boys." As it was probably thought that nothing was to be hoped from Garnet through torture, a stratagem worthy of the Inquisition was resolved on. The warder in whose custody the Jesuits lay, received an order from the lieutenant of the Tower to assume a friendly demeanour towards them; to express his sympathy for their sufferings, and his respect for their undaunted maintenance of their faith. Having made a favourable impression, he proceeded to offer them all the indulgence in his power, consistent with their safe custody. The Jesuits fell into the snare. The warder offered to take charge of any letters that they wished to convey to their friends. His sincerity seemed so genuine that the offer was accepted; a correspondence with several Catholics was commenced, and the letters each way were regularly carried to the commissioners, opened, and copied before delivery. Many of the letters being found to have secret notes appended in lemon juice, which only became visible when heated, were retained, and exact copies sent. Some of these letters still remain in the Public Record Office. But this correspondence, notwithstanding the sympathetic ink, was so guarded, that it furnished no new facts and another plan was adopted. The warder, as if growing more willing to serve them by longer acquaintance, showed them that by leaving an intermediate door unlocked between their cells, the two Jesuits could meet and converse at freedom. Still confiding entirely in their apparent friend the warder, who recommended extreme caution, Garnet and Oldcorne gladly embraced this opportunity of intercourse. But in secret recesses in the passage were placed Lockerson the private secretary of Cecil, and Forsett a magistrate of the Tower, who heard and noted down the conversations of the prisoners. Five times were these treacherous interviews permitted, and the reported conversations of four of them are still preserved.

As might be expected, the conversations chiefly turned on the best mode of conducting their defence. In these conversations Garnet admitted that though he had denied it, he had still been at White Webbs, in Enfield Chase, with the conspirators, and would still maintain that he had not been there since Bartholomew-tide. On another occasion he let fall things which still further betrayed his knowledge of the plot. It is possible that he might even yet have escaped had he not, at his trial, avowed that he considered equivocation and mental reservation on any point that might incriminate him, perfectly justifiable. After that declaration popular sympathy was no longer in his favour. A verdict of guilty was pronounced against him, and he was hanged, drawn and quartered on the 3rd of May, 1606.

A Parliament was summoned for the double purpose of raising money and of extending additional punishment over the Catholics generally. The whole country was in that state of alarm and hostility to them, that James found it necessary to restrain rather than encourage the mania. Such was the public excitement, that even he was not exempt from blame on account of this lenity. He had chosen this inauspicious moment to make overtures to Spain for the Infanta as a wife for Prince Henry, and the Puritans at once ascribed his moderation to this cause, and declared that he was little better than a secret Papist himself. James was alarmed and obliged to give way. It was in vain that Henry IV. of France remonstrated against a bigotry which had already driven some of the Catholics to such desperate lengths. His ambassador represented that the king his master had learnt from experience that persecution only stimulated zealots to a temper in which they gloried in suffering, and that far more could be effected by kindness than by severity; that James should, if he loved peace, make himself their protector instead of their persecutor. But Parliament soon showed how useless at the moment was such advice. Both Houses appeared to be carried beyond all reason by their fears and their resentment. On the 3rd of February every member of the Commons was ordered to stand up in his place and propound such measures as appeared to him most desirable. The most extravagant propositions seemed the most acceptable, and after impetuous debates upon them, they were communicated by conferences to the other House, and in both Lords and Commons motions of the severest description were made and carried by triumphant majorities. Catholic recusants were now forbidden to appear at Court, to dwell within its boundaries, or within ten miles of the boundaries of London; or to remove on any occasion more than five miles from their homes, under particular penalties, unless in the latter case they had a licence from four neighbouring magistrates. They were rendered incapable of practising in surgery, physic, or common or civil law; of acting as judges, clerks, officers, in any court or corporation; of presenting to church livings, schools, or hospitals in their gift; or of exercising the functions of executors or guardians; where persons were married by Catholic priests, the husband, if a Catholic, could not claim the property of the wife, nor the wife, if a Catholic, that of the husband; and if a child born was not baptised by a Protestant minister within a month, the penalty was one hundred and fifty pounds; and for every corpse not buried in a Protestant cemetery, the penalty was twenty pounds. All existing penalties for absence from church were retained, with the addition that whoever received Catholic visitors, or kept Catholic servants, must pay for each such individual ten pounds per lunar month. Every recusant was declared to be excommunicated; his house might be broken open and searched at any time, his books and any articles belonging to "his idolatrous worship" might be burnt, and his arms and horses seized by the order of a single magistrate.

A new oath of allegiance was framed recognising absolute renunciation of the right of the Pope to interfere in the temporal affairs of the kingdom. The Catholics who submitted to take this oath were to be liable only to the penalties now enumerated; but they who refused were to be imprisoned for life, and to suffer forfeiture of their personal property and the rents of their lands.

The publication of these terrible enactments carried astonishment and dismay through the nation; many Protestants as well as Catholics condemned them. The French minister Villeroy declared that they were characteristic of barbarians rather than of Christians. Many Catholics made haste to quit their native country, and the rest prepared to sacrifice both property and personal liberty. The Pope Paul V. despatched a secret emissary to James, imploring him to relax the rigour of the new laws, but without success. And the Pontiff, resenting the repulse, then published a breve, denouncing the oath of allegiance as unlawful, "because contrary to faith and salvation." The publication of this imprudent breve only made matters worse. The Catholic clergy were before its arrival divided in their opinions as to the lawfulness of taking it; the archpriest Blackwall himself, with many of his brethren, were prepared to take it. The authority of the Pope extinguished theirs and decided the majority; yet Blackwall took the oath himself, and advised the Catholics, by a circular letter, to take it.

But no submission on the part of a portion of the Catholics could mitigate the wrath of James at the conduct of the Pope. He ordered the bishops in their several dioceses to tender the oath, and to enforce the penalties on all recusants. Three missionaries lying under sentence of death for the exercise of their priestly functions, were called upon to take it; they refused. Two of them were saved by the earnest intercession of the Prince de Joinville and the French ambassador. The third, named Drury, was hanged, drawn, and quartered. Blackwall the archpriest himself was thrown into prison, though he had both taken the oath and advised the rest of the Catholics to take it; and though James pitied him, he could do nothing more in his behalf than prevent him from being brought to trial and capitally condemned. The case of Blackwall was extremely hard, for, on the other hand, he had excited the resentment of the Pope by his concession. He was called on by letters from Cardinals Bellarmine and Arrigoni, and the Jesuits Parsons and Holtby to retract; but as he would not, he was superseded by Birket. He was then in his seventieth year, and remained in prison till his death, in 1613.

A second breve from the Pope roused the spirit of James; he determined to try whether he could not silence the clamour of the papal party by his pen. He abandoned even the pleasures of the chase, refused to listen to his ministers, and calling his favourite divines around him, he shut himself up with them, and produced a tract called "An Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance," which was immediately translated into French and Latin. But as the royal brochure did not convince the Catholics, six priests were condemned for refusing the oath, and three of them were executed, one at York and two at Tyburn. Moreau, Bellarmine, and Parsons, published replies to the royal treatise; and again James closeted himself with his divines, revised his publication, and prefaced it with a "Premonition to all Christian Princes." It was in vain that the kings of Denmark and France counselled him to desist from a contest so unworthy of a great monarch, in vain that the queen urged the same advice. He condescended to declare that the fittest answer to Parsons would be a rope; and as for Bellarmine, who had written under a feigned name, he dubbed him "a most obscure author, a very desperate fellow in beginning his apprentisage, not only to refute, but to rail at a king." The flatterers of the king applauded his "immortal labours," as they were pleased to call them; and James continued to toil at them, revise, and remodel his arguments till 1609. The Catholic peers, with the exception of Lord Teynham, all took the oath on different occasions in the Upper House.

To dismiss for the present the religious controversies which kept the kingdom in a ferment of bitterness, we have a little overstepped the progress of general events. In the spring of 1606 James called together Parliament, for he was in much distress for money. As usual, the Commons had their list of complaints to set off against his demands and as James showed no eagerness to redress no less than sixteen subjects of grievance, the Commons made no haste with the supplies. At length, in the month of May, whilst the question of the subsidy was dragging its slow length along, and Cecil was endeavouring in vain to quicken the motion of the House, by making promises which meant nothing beyond inducing the members to vote, a sudden rumour ran through the court that the king was assassinated at Oaking in Berkshire, where he was hunting along with his favourites, the Earl of Montgomery, Sir John Ramsay, and Sir James Hay. The mode of his death was variously reported. One version was that he had been stabbed with a poisoned knife, and another that he had been shot with a pistol, and a third that he was smothered in his bed. The murderers were differently represented to be the Jesuits, Scotsmen in women's clothes, Frenchmen, and Spaniards. There was great consternation both in the City and the Parliament. The Lords displayed the utmost loyalty; and the Commons suddenly closed their money debate by voting three subsidies and six fifteenths. In the midst of the panic James arrived safe and sound in London, and was received with proportionate enthusiasm. As the sensation went off, many began to suspect that Cecil, and perhaps the king himself, could have explained the origin of the ruse—that it was but a spur to the tardy liberality of the Commons. At all events, James, having obtained his supplies, prorogued Parliament to the 18th of November.

The great business of Parliament now for several sessions—that is, from 1604 to 1607—was that of discussing James's suggestion for the union of the two kingdoms. This very suggestion, so immediately brought forward, was a glaring proof of James's want of solid judgment. The least reflection might have satisfied the least reflecting mind, that two nations which had for so many ages been inflamed against each other by wars, injustice, mutual cruelties, political jealousies, and the taunts which embittered passions had caused them to fling at each other, would require a long time to reconcile them to the idea of entire amalgamation. The centuries of attempted usurpation on the part of the English, and the determined resistance, even to death, of the Scots, made the latter sensitively apprehensive of the union. They saw in it only the accomplishment of the same end by different means. They were the less disposed to it in consequence of the foolish boastings of James of his absolute power. His high notions of prerogative appeared to have grown wonderfully since his accession to the English throne. He compared himself to a god upon earth, and had already given out his style and title as king of Great Britain. The Scots were, therefore, naturally suspicious of a union which would very largely augment his powers. Still more, his new and excessive leaning towards Episcopacy alarmed the Scots. They saw nothing but its attempted imposition on them in the union of the kingdoms, and they were not inclined thus easily to give up their freedom of conscience which they had fought out at so much cost. On the other hand, James's imprudent bestowal of posts and honours on Scotsmen in England, offended and disgusted the English. They asked whether they were to be overrun by a regular inundation of proud and hungry adventurers from the North. In the Commons the expressions of contempt and aversion to the Scottish race grew to the height of insolence and insult, and were sure to excite the most indignant feeling in that people. Sir Christopher Pigot, the member for Buckinghamshire, especially distinguished himself by the vituperation of Scotsmen. He professed the utmost horror at the idea of union between a rich and fertile country like England, and a sterile and poor one like Scotland; between a people wealthy, frank, and generous, and one at once haughty, beggarly, and penurious. This put the climax to the patience of Scotland, and James declared he could no longer tolerate language which insulted himself as a Scot.

Cecil at the command of the king took up the matter warmly, and the House of Commons, persuaded by him, expelled Pigot, and he was committed to the Tower. Defeated in the Commons, James betook himself to the courts of law. He had proposed to the Commons to pass an Act naturalising all Scots, even those born before his accession to the English throne; but when they rejected this, he obtained a decision from the judges sanctioning the admission of the inhabitants of each kingdom to all the rights of subjects in both. This would in a few years have made the Scots as much subjects of the English Crown as the English themselves, but James was not content with this. He used very angry and impudent language, threatening to leave London and fix his court at York or Berwick; telling his English subjects to remember that he was a king, who had to govern them and to answer for their errors; who was made of flesh and blood like themselves, and might be tempted to do what they would not like.

The Commons resented this language: they sent their Speaker to desire that the king would receive no reports of their proceedings except from themselves, and that they might be permitted to feel that they were at liberty to deliver their opinions in their own House without restraint or fear. James, who was easily alarmed, professed to have no desire to encroach on their liberty of speech, but no sooner did they put him to the test than he renewed his interference. A petition being presented to the House complaining of the oppressions upon the Puritans, and the abuses of the Church, James sent an order to the Speaker to inform the House that they were meddling with what belonged alone to him. The members declared this to be a violation of their privileges, but the Speaker informed them that there were plenty of precedents for such restraint on the House by the Crown. The House on this proposed to appoint a committee to inquire into these precedents, and how far they were founded in constitutional right; but here again, James, fearing he had gone too far, sent them word that although the matter in question properly belonged to him, he should not object to their reading the petition.

But the Crown and the House very soon came into collision on the subject of the powers of the Commons. A petition was presented from the merchants, representing the injuries their ships and commerce received from Spain, particularly on the coasts of South America, the ports of which the Spanish were endeavouring to close against all other nations. The Commons thought it a subject of that national character that they should have the co-operation of the Peers with them, and therefore sent to the Upper House proposing a conference. But the Lords demurred, thinking it a subject which the Commons were scarcely authorised to enter upon. The difficulty, however, was mutually obviated; the Lords agreed to the conference. But it proved only an occasion for the Crown to deliver a lecture to the Commons on their aspiring to deal with subjects too high for them. James was, in fact, contemplating an alliance with Spain, and was by no means disposed to offend its rulers. Cecil, therefore, and Lord Henry Howard, now Earl of Northampton, read the Commons a very plain lecture, instructing them that all matters appertaining to peace or war, and all such topics as led to these results, belonged especially to the Crown; which indeed occasionally consulted the Commons, not out of right or necessity but as a matter of favour and also of policy, when it was advisable to have the sympathy and active support of the representatives of the people. But the declaration of war or concession of peace was the absolute prerogative of the Crown; the business of the Commons was more private and local, such as the furnishing of funds—and when money was wanted, they never failed to hear of it.

The Commons allowed the petition of the merchants to stand over for the time, but out of doors the spirit of dissatisfaction rose high, and the leaning of James towards Spain was narrowly watched and commented upon.

While the Government and the Commons were engaged in this discussion, a serious insurrection called the attention of the Council another way. The lucky courtiers who had obtained amongst them the estates of the gentlemen who had forfeited them for their share in the Gunpowder Plot, whilst dividing and enclosing, like their predecessors who had obtained the estates of the Church, cast greedy eyes on the adjacent common lands, and enclosed as much as they could of them with the rest. The people, deprived of their right of pasturage, rose in resistance, as they had done in the reign of Edward VI. They had the statutes regarding enclosures in their favour, and assembling in numbers from one to five thousand, they broke down the new fences, filled up the ditches, and restored the usurped fields to their ancient state as common. Like the agrarian reformer, Ket of Norfolk, they confined themselves strictly to their legitimate object. They conducted themselves with perfect order, committed no depredations on really private property, nor perpetrated any excesses, to which their numbers might have tempted them. They appeared in great force at Hill Morton, in Warwickshire, an estate of Tresham's, and in their largest force of five thousand at Coleshill. Their leaders, whoever they were, appeared in masks, except one man of the name of Reynolds, who was an enthusiast and set all danger at defiance; declaring that he was sent of God to satisfy men of all degrees, and had, moreover, authority from the king to level all the new fences. He acquired the name of Captain Pouch, from a large pocket which he wore at his side, and in which he boasted that he carried a charm which not only made him invulnerable to sword or bullet, but which would protect them from all harm.

The insurgents broke out about the middle of May, having in vain previously presented their memorials to the Council, the members of which were too much interested in the lands in question to pay any attention to them. At first James and the Court were greatly alarmed, supposing it to be a demonstration of Catholics or Puritans. The guards at Westminster palace were doubled, and orders were issued to the Lord Mayor to watch the movements of the apprentices in the City. A little time, however, revealed the real nature of the rising, and the insurgents were ordered to disperse; but they stood their ground, assuring the magistrates that they were only executing the statutes against enclosures, and were under orders not to violate the law in any manner, nor even to indulge in swearing. The lieutenants then endeavoured to raise the counties, but the yeomanry displayed no desire to interfere in such a cause; and many gentlemen even contended that it was best to concede the matter to the poor, advice which, if followed, would no doubt have ensured speedy quietness without bloodshed. But this did not suit the views of the interested Council, and the Earls of Huntingdon and Exeter and Lord Zouch were sent with a considerable force to quell them. Sir Edward Montague and Sir Anthony Mildmay came upon a number of them busy levelling the enclosures at Newton, another estate forfeited by Tresham. They found them well armed with bills and bows, pikes and stones. The officers commanded them to disperse, but they refused, and after twice reading the Riot Act in vain, a charge was ordered. The trained bands showed no relish for the business; but the regular cavalry, and the servants of Mildmay and Montague, attacked them briskly. The insurgents returned the attack with much bravery, but at the second onset broke and fled. Forty or fifty of them were killed, and a great number wounded. Sir Henry Fookes, who led on the infantry against them, was severely wounded. After this defeat "the levellers," as they were called, were pursued in all directions and everywhere put down and dispersed. Many prisoners were made and a commission, with Sir Edward Coke at its head, was appointed to try them.

James, with a feeling that did him honour, instructed the Commission to use moderation in punishing the prisoners, declaring that the Council had been more to blame than they, for neglecting their petitions. Had they not intercepted them, he pretended to say that they would have received redress from him. He maintained that they had been oppressed and driven to resistance by the rapacity of the gentry and the neglect of ministers. Pouch and some of his associates were condemned and executed as traitors on the 28th of June; and some of the others were hanged as felons because they had not dispersed on the reading of the Riot Act.

The king on the 4th of July prorogued Parliament till November, but having got a considerable amount of money from it, and little other satisfaction, he did not summon it again till February, 1610. Could he have found sufficient funds any other way, it is quite certain that he would never have called it any more. In his suit of Lincoln green, with a little feather in his hat, and a horn by his side instead of a sword, he followed his hounds through the forest, happy as Nimrod himself, so long as the means lasted. But James's Court was altogether on an extravagant scale. Like a youthful heir whose guardians have kept him close, and who makes up for a long abstinence by tenfold profuseness on coming to his estate, James, escaped from the poverty of his Scottish establishment where he had mainly lived on his pension from Elizabeth, now gave rein to extravagance as if nothing could exhaust the affluence of England. He had a most expensive household, and he gave money to his favourites as though he had the wishing-cap of Fortunatus.

Not only was his own household lavishly managed, but even those of Henry and Elizabeth, two of his children, consisted of one hundred and forty personages. In 1610, but three years after this period, that of Prince Henry was increased to four hundred and twenty-six individuals, of whom two hundred and ninety-seven were in receipt of salaries, besides a number of workmen employed under Inigo Jones, the architect.

But above all the presents to his favourites would have given the idea that his resources were interminable. At the marriage of Sir Philip Herbert with Lady Susan Vere, he gave him an estate valued at £500 a year. At the marriage of Ramsay, Viscount Haddington, with Lady Elizabeth Ratcliffe, he paid his debts, amounting to £10,000, having already endowed him with an estate of £1,000 per annum; and he presented to the bride a gold cup containing the patent of a grant of lands worth £600 a year. His gifts at different times to Lord Dunbar amounted to £15,262; to the Earl of Mar, to £15,500; and to Viscount Haddington, to £31,000.

This Viscount Haddington was the Sir John Ramsay who stabbed the Earl of Gowrie, at the time of the singular Gowrie conspiracy; and James went on promoting him till he became Earl of Holderness, with many grants of lands, gifts, and pensions. The second in James's regard, in the early part of his reign, was another Scotsman, James Hay, whom he successively created Lord Hay, Viscount Doncaster, and Earl of Carlisle. Clarendon says that this man, in the course of a very licentious career, spent above four hundred thousand pounds and left neither house nor child to be remembered by. James, in England, also chose several English favourites. The first of those was Sir Philip Herbert, brother of the Earl of Pembroke and son of the sister of Sir Philip Sidney. He was created Earl of Montgomery, and was especially agreeable to James because he despised learned men—for James was jealous of all such—and took pleasure only, like his royal master, in dogs and horses. Montgomery was in the ascendant till the king's eye fell on one Robert Carr, destined to a strange history; and the English and Scottish favourites, by their mutual hatred of each other, their quarrels and duels, gave James sufficient trouble. Haddington and Montgomery had an affray in which Montgomery showed the white feather, and James sent Haddington for a short time to the Tower. Douglas, the Master of the Horse, was killed in one of these squabbles; and some years later Lord Sanquhar had an eye thrust out by a fencing master, for which his lordship killed him, and was executed for the deed. Such was the disgraceful condition of the court of the British Solomon.

JAMES AND HIS COURTIERS SETTING OUT FOR THE HUNT. (See p. 436.)

During the years 1608 and 1609, negotiations were pending between the United Provinces of the Netherlands and Spain. James, who had a claim on these Provinces for above eight hundred thousand pounds on account of advances and services by Elizabeth, for which he held the towns of Flushing, Brell, and Rammekens, would have been glad to obtain possession of the money. So well was this known, that there were rumours that, as he could not obtain the sum due, he was intending to sell the towns to Philip III. of Spain. The Archduke Albert was still in Flanders, not having abandoned the hope of recovering the revolted States; and Catholics from England were in the habit of volunteering to assist him in undoing what Queen Elizabeth had done there. But much as James was pressed for money, he was scarcely daring enough to aid Spain in its views. The spirit of Protestantism was too strong in England tamely to witness such an anti-Protestant policy; and, in fact, James himself was rather afraid of an attack from Spain, than hoping for a coalition with it. The Earl of Tyrone had fallen under suspicion of fresh rebellion, and had fled to the Spaniards in the Netherlands for security. Cecil apprehensive that Philip might be disposed to attempt his restoration, instructed Sir Charles Cornwallis, at Madrid, to use bold language on the occasion. This appears to have had effect, for Tyrone retired to Italy. But a new danger presented itself in the rumour of negotiations for peace between Holland and Spain. Cecil dreaded a pacification between these Powers, as it would allow Philip more opportunity to turn his attention to Ireland, if so disposed.

The English Government was surprised and mortified to learn that such negotiations were actually proceeding, and that the King of France had been invited to join in them. At length James, who had so deep a stake in the Netherlands, received a formal notice to the same effect, soliciting his co-operation. These negotiations were conducted at the Hague, but it was not till March, 1609, that they were brought to a conclusion. The result was a truce for twelve years, which was, in fact, equivalent to a peace, acknowledging the independence of the Dutch States, after a brave conflict for liberty of forty years. The debt of James, amounting to eight hundred and eighteen thousand pounds, was acknowledged, and engagements entered into for its payment by annual instalments of sixty thousand pounds. But the first payment was not to be made till the end of two years, and James was still to retain the cautionary towns till the whole was discharged.

The postponement of the payment of the debt of Holland was extremely embarrassing to Cecil. On the death of the Earl of Dorset, in 1608, he succeeded to the office of Treasurer, and to the clamorous demands which had been made upon Dorset. His carriage had been stopped in the streets by the servants of the king's household, who were loud in their demands for their long arrears of wages, and the purveyors refused to bring in any more supplies till they were paid their advances. Cecil, on examining the accounts, found James one million three hundred thousand pounds in debt, and exceeding his income at the rate of upwards of eighty thousand pounds per annum. He set to work resolutely to curtail this expenditure and to devise means of raising money. James always claimed an authority paramount to all laws; and Cecil ventured to put in practice the idea of prerogative in raising the necessary funds. He called in rigorously the unpaid remains of the last voted subsidies, and then proceeded to lay on duties and impose monopolies of the most odious nature, without any sanction of Parliament. His predecessor Dorset had set him the example by levying an import duty on currants by letters patent. This illegal demand had been resisted, and Bates, a Turkey merchant, was proceeded against for refusal to pay, in the Court of Exchequer. This court was base enough to decide in favour of this unconstitutional stretch of power, and James was delighted at so auspicious a concession of the justice of his doctrine of prerogative. Cecil pressed on in the path thus opened, and laid on import and export duties on various articles by orders under the Great Seal. He imposed a feudal aid towards the knighting of the Prince Henry, of twenty shillings on each knight's fee; but this produced only twenty-eight thousand pounds. He then extended his duties to almost every species of imported and exported goods, at the rate of five pounds per cent. on the value of the goods, which he calculated would produce three hundred thousand pounds per annum; and he sold to the Dutch a right of fishing on the coasts of England and Scotland. Cecil himself was the farmer of these duties. They were, however, of a character to excite the utmost dissatisfaction; trade fell off under their influence, fewer ships came into the English ports, and there was at length no alternative but to summon a Parliament, which met on the 24th of February, 1610.

The great topics which occupied this Parliament were, of course, the king's want of money and his continual violations of Magna Charta. Cecil, seeing the desperate state of the royal finances, made a bold demand that six hundred thousand pounds should be at once voted to liquidate his debts, and that an annual addition of two hundred thousand pounds should be consented to as a permanent pension, to prevent him from getting into debt again. But Cecil committed a great blunder both in routine and in sound policy, by proposing this money measure to the Lords instead of to the Commons, whose proper business it was. The Commons resented this course, and were more determined than ever in demanding an abandonment of the unconstitutional practice of imposing duties without their consent. They declared that the imprisonment of Bates for opposing this practice, though sanctioned by the Exchequer, was nevertheless illegal. Francis Bacon and Sir John Davis endeavouring to justify the despotic proceeding, only increased the exasperation of the House. It was declared that if the taxing of merchandise by prerogative was permitted, the taxing of their lands would soon follow. James sent them word to desist from such discussions; but the Commons were not to be thus silenced, whereupon James sent for both Houses to Whitehall, and delivered a most blasphemous speech in vindication of his inflated notions of kingly authority. "Kings," said he, "are justly called gods, for they exercise a manner or resemblance of divine power upon earth. For if you will consider the attributes of God, you shall see how they agree in the person of a king. God hath power to create or destroy, to make or unmake, at His pleasure; to give life or send death, to judge all, and to be judged of nor accountable to none; to raise low things, and to make high things low at His pleasure; and to God both body and soul are due. And the like power have kings. They make and unmake their subjects; they have power of raising and casting down, of life and of death; judges over all their subjects, and in all cases, and yet accountable to none but God only. They have power to exalt low things and abase high things, and make of their subjects like men of chess—a pawn to take a bishop or a knight; and to cry up or down any of their subjects as they do their money. And to the king is due both the affection of the soul, and the service of the body of his subjects." To resist the king in any of his acts or impositions, he declared was sedition; for the king was above all law, and laws were, in fact, but granted by kings to the people as a matter of favour.

The Commons would not listen to such insane language. They told the king that in extolling the power of kings, he forgot the existence of Magna Charta, which set eternal and impassable bounds to that power; and they appointed a committee to search for the legality or illegality of all the practices complained of. The Crown lawyers in committee argued that "the reverence of past ages, and the possession of present times," sanctioned the king's doctrine; and that the right of imposing duties had been exercised by the three first Edwards by their own will, and independent of Parliament; and that if it had been interrupted from Richard II. to Mary, yet that princess had reassumed the royal privilege, and that it was continued by Elizabeth. But the Commons replied that in all these cases the monarchs had violated Magna Charta, the Statute de tallagio non concedendo, and twelve other Parliamentary enactments; that no time or practice could establish a right against those great bulwarks of popular liberty. And the Commons therefore demanded that a law should be made during this Session, declaring that all such impositions of duties or taxes, without consent of Parliament, should be pronounced for ever void. And they accordingly passed such a Bill, which, however, was rejected by the more subservient Lords.

James writhed under this plain and direct denial of his assumed authority, and refused to surrender the question. He found in the bishops a body, on the whole, ready to co-operate with him in his attempt to destroy the Constitution; and Bancroft, the Primate, led the way with unblushing baseness. Under his leadership the whole High Church party echoed the king's most absolute dogmas, and claimed for him all the divinity which he professed to possess. The king, according to their creed, being divine, so were the bishops who were appointed by him, and therefore this divine Crown and Church were above all law. The ecclesiastical courts carried this theory into daily practice, and encroached on the temporal courts as pertinaciously as the king did on Parliament. There was a grand struggle between the common and the civil law. The judges, who saw this arrogance of the clergy with jealousy and disgust, began to relax their enmity against the Puritans and to regard them as the natural allies of law against absolutism.

On the other hand, the king and bishops sought out fresh means in support of their doctrine, and one of these was to bring forward Dr. Cowell who, in his "Interpreter, or Law Dictionary," broached unmitigated maxims of despotism. He declared that the king inherited all the powers which had been exercised by the Emperors of Rome; as if the empire of the Romans had never ceased in England, or as if the civil law being still used by the Church, it became in all its forms imperative on the nation. This work was dedicated to Bancroft, and he and the king eulogised it as maintaining all the rampant maxims of absolutism which James had ever uttered. The king, Cowell declared, was "solutus À legibus," "freed from all restraint of laws;" and though he took an oath at his coronation to maintain all the laws unchanged, yet he was at full liberty to quash any laws that he pleased; and, in a word, he contended "that the King of England is an absolute king."

The Commons called upon the Lords to unite with them in punishing this apologist, who, not content with selling his own birthright for a mess of pottage, was endeavouring to sell that of the nation too. The case was so flagrant that the Lords could not decline the challenge. And Bacon, who had shortly before been the advocate of the royal prerogative, now conducted the case for the Commons in the conference against Cowell, who was sent to prison for a time; his book was suppressed by the king's proclamation, poor James himself being obliged to condemn his own champion.

Having triumphed in this particular, the Commons proceeded to much older grievances. They demanded the abolition of that den of injustice and extortion, the Court of High Commission, in which the king exercised that unrestrained despotism which he claimed over the whole kingdom; where men were sentenced and fined at the arbitrary will of the king and its council, without jury or evidence admitted in their defence: but this was an institution so dear to James's heart, that he would not listen to any abatement of its power. They next complained of the growing abuse of substituting royal proclamations for established law, "by reason of which," said the Commons, "there is a general fear conceived and spread amongst your majesty's people, that proclamations will, by degrees, grow up and increase to the strength and nature of laws." To this James simply replied that his proclamations should not exceed the warranty of law. They further complained of the delay of the courts in granting writs of habeas corpus and prohibition, and of the encroachment of the Council of Wales, which extended its jurisdiction over neighbouring counties where it had no real authority; as well as of various monopolies, taxes on public-houses and on sea-coal.

The licenses to public-houses he agreed to revoke, but he demanded a perpetual revenue in lieu of the income thence derived. This the Commons refused, alleging that he had no right to impose that tax in the first instance; and they further demanded that the feudal burthens of tenure by knights' service, wardships, and purveyance, should cease. As to the first, James absolutely refused compliance, on the plea that he would not reduce all his subjects, "rich and poor, noble and base, to hold their lands in the same ignoble manner;" but as to wardships, the marriages of infants and widows, and other odious services, including purveyance, he was willing to barter them for a sum of money. The sum which he demanded was three hundred thousand pounds per annum. The Commons only offered one hundred thousand pounds, but after a long course of haggling, like chapmen in a fair, the king descended to two hundred and twenty thousand pounds, and the Commons rose to one hundred and eighty thousand pounds. Here the matter paused till James moved a dissolution, when the Commons advanced to two hundred thousand pounds, and the king accepted the sum. But here again the king and his advocates had boasted so much of his being above the law, and of his power to quash, of his own will, any statute to which he had consented, that the Commons were cautious in their proceedings, and they had moreover to determine out of what funds this revenue should be raised. These discussions had now driven on the Session to the middle of July, and it was agreed that they should vote one subsidy, and one tenth and fifteenth for the present Session, and defer the final settlement of the other grant till the next.

The interval was utilised by James and his ministers in attempts to corrupt some of the members of the Opposition, and thus to enable him to concede less and obtain more; but the Commons had employed the time in weighing the slippery nature of the man with whom they had to deal. His continual boasts of his superiority to all laws, and of an actually divine power of dispensing with his most solemn obligations, made them doubtful of the possibility of binding him to any terms; and the growing extravagance and rapacity of both king and courtiers deepened their fears.

When they met they were in a far less compliant humour than when they separated. They insisted on seeing the promised reforms before they voted the two hundred thousand pounds. James was growing desperate for money; his coffers were empty, and the officers of the Crown were clamorous for their arrears of salary. He therefore sent for them to Whitehall, and a deputation of about thirty members attended. The king demanded of them whether they thought that he was really in want of money, as his Treasurer and the Chancellor of the Exchequer had informed them? "Whereto," says Winwood, "when Sir Francis Bacon had begun to answer in a more extravagant style than his majesty did delight to hear, he picked out Sir Henry Neville, commanding him to answer according to his conscience. Thereupon Sir Henry Neville did directly answer that he thought his majesty was in want. 'Then,' said the king, 'tell me whether it belongeth to you, that are my subjects, to relieve me or not?' 'To this,' quoth Sir Henry, 'I must answer with a distinction: where your majesty's expense groweth by the commonwealth, we are bound to maintain it, otherwise not.'" Sir Henry reminded the king that in this one Parliament they had already given four subsidies and seven fifteenths, which was more than any Parliament at any time had given, and yet they had no relief of their grievances. James demanded what these grievances were—as though he had not heard them enumerated often enough before—and desired Sir Henry to give him a catalogue of them. Sir Henry adverted to the difficulties of obtaining justice in courts of law, to the usurped jurisdiction in the marches of Wales, and would have gone through the whole list had not Sir Herbert Croft interrupted him.

The end of Cecil has been supposed to have been hastened by these anxieties; but probably he was worn out by the incessant cares which have pulled down other ministers besides him; for in his last moments he said to Sir Walter Cope, "Ease and pleasures quake to hear of death; but my life, full of cares and miseries, desireth to be dissolved." He had sought benefit at Bath, but without effect, and died at Marlborough on his return. Like his father, he had great talents, applied in a cold and ungenerous manner; but with all his faults he was a great minister.

We must now introduce the story of a lady whose fate was very hard—Arabella Stuart. Lady Arabella (born in 1577) was descended from Henry VII.'s eldest daughter Margaret, like James himself, and therefore was to him an object of suspicion. Her proximity to the Crown had drawn upon her the attention of both princes and conspirators at various times. When she was only about ten years of age, Elizabeth used to show her at Court as the person she meant to make her heir. This she did to provoke James, whose pretensions were nearly as odious to her as those of his mother. But in after years Elizabeth treated her with extreme severity. James, indeed, contributed to this, by asking her in marriage for his favourite, EsmÉ Stuart, Duke of Lennox, who was Arabella's cousin, also of the same royal descent. Elizabeth was extremely chagrined at such a proposal, reprimanded James sharply, forbade the marriage, and imprisoned the unoffending maiden. Again, Raleigh and Cobham were accused on their trial of having designed to depose James and place her on the throne in his stead. Lady Arabella did not wait to be questioned on the subject, but on receiving a letter of such purport from Cobham, immediately sent it to the king, and only laughed at the proposal. Again her name was mentioned in the Gunpowder Plot. James does not seem to have had any fear of her on these occasions. But he was more afraid of aspirants to her hand than of conspirators; and had, no doubt, settled in his mind that she should never marry. Like Elizabeth, he repulsed all offers of the kind, both from subjects and foreign princes, lest from the marriage should issue claimants to his throne. Cecil took care, on the death of Elizabeth, to secure the person of Arabella till James had been proclaimed and had taken possession of the throne. The king himself appeared disposed to act liberally towards her, except in not permitting her to marry. He settled a pension upon her, allowed her apartments in the palace, and she was recognised while the Princess Elizabeth was in her tutelage as first lady of the Court. The year after James's accession, the King of Poland sent an ambassador to demand her in marriage; but even Poland was not distant enough for royal fears. Next came a proposal from Count Maurice, titular Duke of Guelders, but James would not listen to it; and Lady Arabella, who was a clever woman, made it her policy—both under Elizabeth and James—to appear averse from any marriage whatever. She devoted herself to literature, poetry, and even theology, which became fashionable at Court from the predilections of James.

Queen Anne appears to have had a great regard for the Lady Arabella, who was handsome, of a lively and affectionate disposition, and ready to enter into all the taste for masques and pageants which distinguished her royal mistress. She was, in fact, the great ornament of the Court of James; but her attractions were only the more dangerous to her safety, considering her descent. The feeling that she excited increased James's alarm, and she was kept under the close surveillance of Elizabeth Cavendish the Countess of Shrewsbury, who was her aunt. The countess appears to have treated her with much harshness, and James to have paid her salary very badly. On the whole, no situation, with all its splendour, could be more miserable than that of Lady Arabella. No wonder, then, that she sought to escape from it. In her childhood she had been acquainted with Sir William Seymour, the son of Lord Beauchamp. They met again at Court, and their early attachment was renewed and rapidly grew into love. The Lady Arabella was now watched and harassed more than ever by her shrewish guardian Lady Shrewsbury, and matters came to such a pass between them that James was obliged to interfere. He paid up the arrears of her pension to enable her to discharge her debts, and to soothe her made her a present of a cupboard of plate, worth two hundred pounds. The chief cause of Lady Arabella's discontent was supposed to arise from her pressing necessities; but there was a deeper cause—the restraint upon her affections; and it was not long before some officious Court spy conveyed to James the alarming intelligence that there was an engagement of marriage plighted between Seymour and Lady Arabella. Seymour was also descended from Henry VII., and such a marriage in prospect was enough to terrify James beyond conception. He instantly summoned the offenders before his Council, where they were severely snubbed and forbidden to marry without the king's permission. They both promised to abandon the idea, but this was only to disarm suspicion till they could effect their marriage. In July, 1610, it was discovered that they were already wedded, and James issued an immediate order for their arrest. Seymour was committed to the Tower, and Arabella to the keeping of Sir Thomas Parry at Lambeth.

The youthful couple were so much pitied that they did not find it difficult to meet. Seymour bribed his keeper so effectually that he suffered him frequently to go out of the Tower, and he met Lady Arabella in the garden at Lambeth, and even in the house, unknown to Sir Thomas Parry. Meanwhile the friends of the young people were not inactive. They used all the means they could imagine to soften the mind of the king towards them; and the queen, who loved Arabella and received the most eloquent letters from her, praying her to exert her influence in her behalf, did her utmost to procure the liberation of her and her husband. Unfortunately, whispers of their stolen interviews reached James, and he sent instant orders to guard Seymour better, and to remove Lady Arabella to Durham, where she was to be in the keeping of the bishop. When the order reached Lady Arabella, she positively refused to go; but the officers carried her forcibly out in her bed, placed her in a boat, and rowed her up the river. In spite of her resistance, her keepers set forward on their journey; but by the time that they reached Barnet, her agitation of mind had thrown her into a fever, and the doctor declared that nothing but the discontinuance of the journey could save her life. He waited on the king himself and assured him of this. But though James confessed that carrying her away in her bed was enough to make her ill if she had been well, he was peremptory in his commands that she should proceed. To Durham she should go, he said, if he were king. To this the physician replied that the lady would obey if the king required it. "Obedience!" repeated James; "is that required?" But when his first anger was over he relented, and allowed her to remain for a month at Highgate in the house of the Earl of Essex. There she was closely watched; but on the 3rd of June, 1611, the very day that the Bishop of Durham set out northward to prepare for her reception, she effected her escape.

The plan of flight to the Continent had been carefully concerted between herself and her husband in the Tower, through the medium of two of Seymour's friends. It was arranged that Arabella should get away in male attire, and Seymour in the garb of a physician. A French vessel was engaged to lie off Gravesend to receive the fugitives, and carry them to the Continent. All was in readiness, and Arabella, says Winwood, "disguising herselfe by drawing a great pair of French-fashioned hose over her petticoats, putting on a man's doublet, a man-lyke peruque, with long locks over her hair, a black hat, black cloake, russet bootes with red tops, and a rapier by her syde, walked forth between three and four o'clock with Mr. Markham. After they had gone on foot a mile and a halfe to a sorry inne, where Crompton attended with their horses, she grew very sicke and fainte; so as the ostler that held the styrrup said that gentleman would hardly hold out to London. Yet being set on a good gelding a-stryde in an unwonted fashion, the stirring of the horse brought blood enough into her face, and so she rode on towards Blackwall."

Lady Arabella found boats and attendants ready to row her down to Gravesend, where she expected to find her husband. But Seymour had not been quite so expeditious in making his way out of the Tower. He had indeed effected it, and was on his way, but Lady Arabella, on getting on board, found that he had not arrived; and the French captain, aware of the serious nature of his commission, grew afraid, and in spite of Arabella's entreaties dropped down the river towards its mouth. Seymour, on finding that the vessel had sailed without him, engaged the captain of a collier for forty pounds to land him in Flanders.

No sooner was the news of Arabella's flight from Highgate conveyed to Court, than the utmost consternation prevailed. A messenger was despatched to the Tower to order the strictest surveillance of Seymour, but the man brought back the appalling tidings that he also had escaped. The terrors of a new conspiracy seized James and the courtiers. It was soon asserted that it was a design of the King of Spain and the Papists; that the fugitives were to be received in the Netherlands by the Spanish commander, and were to be brought to London at the head of a Catholic host.

Couriers were hurried off in all likely directions to intercept the culprits, and the Thames was astir with ships and boats to discover them on board any vessel there. In spite of this sharp pursuit, the collier put Seymour safe on shore in Flanders; but Lady Arabella was not so fortunate. The French vessel was chased and brought to in mid-channel. After some resistance it was boarded, and the unhappy princess seized, brought back, and secured in the Tower. Meanwhile James had written very angry letters to the archduke of Austria and the authorities of the Netherlands, as well as to the king and queen-regent of France, accusing them roundly of being accessory to the plot, and demanding them to send the fugitives back.

For a time Lady Arabella bore imprisonment better than could have been expected. She declared that she did not mind captivity for herself, so that her husband had escaped. Yet not the less did she appeal to the generosity of James for her liberty, nor relax her efforts to that end through the kind offices of the queen. But all such endeavours were useless: James had had too great a fright to risk anything more. He sent the lady word that as she had eaten of the forbidden fruit, she must now pay the penalty of it. All hope of moving the relentless soul of the royal pedant gradually forsook her, and then her splendidly sensitive mind gave way. She became a pitiable lunatic, and died in her prison on the 27th of September, 1615. James had thrown the Countess of Shrewsbury into the Tower at the same time with the Lady Arabella, on suspicion of being a party to the scheme; but that high-spirited lady refused to give an answer to any interrogatories put to her, notwithstanding menaces of the Star Chamber and heavy fines. On the death of Lady Arabella she was set at liberty.

In pursuing the fate of this ill-used lady to its close, we have passed over another tragedy, that of the popular but dissipated King Henry IV. of France. Notwithstanding his adoption of Catholicism, from motives of policy, it was believed that his heart was still with the Protestant cause, and the death of John, Duke of Cleves, Juliers, and Berg, which occurred in 1609, gave him an opportunity of serving that interest under the plea of political necessity. The Duke of Cleves had died without issue, and the Emperor of Germany seized it as a fief of the imperial crown. The Electors of Brandenburg and Saxony, and the Duke of Neuburg, also laid claim to it. Jealousy of the already too powerful and ambitious house of Austria combined against it the Protestant princes of Germany and Holland, and they were joined by Henry of France on the same political ground, whilst the King of Spain, the archduke, and other Catholic and kindred princes, supported the claims of Austria. James of England engaged to furnish four thousand infantry, and the King of France the same. The Protestant princes of Germany and Holland were to supply nine thousand foot and two thousand horse, and it was agreed that the Elector of Brandenburg should be acknowledged as the real heir.

Meanwhile Henry IV. did not confine himself to his quota of four thousand infantry. The moment appeared to him favourable for extending his own territory and power, and he appeared at the head of a splendid army of thirty thousand men, with a great train of artillery and camp supplies. Rumour was very busy on the appearance of this great force, that Henry was for apostatising a second time, or rather now going back to his original faith; and the priests diligently propagated the belief that he meant to make war on the Pope and restore Protestantism. These representations seem to have excited the brain of a mad young friar, of the name of Francis Ravaillac, who stabbed him in the streets of Paris, three days before his intended departure for the campaign (May 14, 1610). The murderer was put to the torture to force from him the names of his accomplices or instigators; but he persisted to the last in denying that he had any. Three times before had the life of Henry IV. been attacked by assassins: in 1593 by Pierre BarriÈre, in 1597 by Pierre Ouen, and in 1605 by Jean de l'Isle. Ravaillac succeeded, and suffered the reward of his deed in a terrible death. This horrible tragedy renewed the terror of the Catholics in England, and both the Parliament of England and the Council of Scotland called on James to secure himself by fresh persecution of them. The Scottish Council saw in the French assassins the frogs foretold in the Revelation, to be sent out by the devil against the head of the Church, and prayed the king to protect his precious life by fresh guards while he indulged himself in hunting.

Whilst James was earnestly engaged in suppressing any rival claims to the Crown by persecuting to death the Lady Arabella, he was equally busy in endeavouring to secure a succession in his own family. Though he persecuted the Catholics as a dangerous, sinful, and abominable body, he had no objection whatever to marry his children to Catholic princes, because they were by far the most considerable in Europe. Accordingly he made overtures for the marriage of his son Henry, and his daughter Elizabeth, both to France and Spain. Queen Anne was most bent on the Spanish matches for both son and daughter, and was therefore vehemently suspected of Popery, though her motives were the same as those of her husband—the rank and prestige of the alliance.

Prince Henry was the darling of his mother and of the nation. In appearance, temper, and aspirations the very opposite of his father. All persons, and especially all princes, who die young, are remembered with a peculiar affection; their virtues are exaggerated and live in memory as the roots of brilliant hopes cut off by fate. Time has not allowed the adverse influences of life and of royal power to corrupt them. Had Henry VIII. died young, he would have left a regretted name as a model of chivalric spirit and generous enthusiasm; yet we have no right to infer that Henry Prince of Wales, the eldest son of James, would have developed into such a character as the eighth Henry. He was a handsome, brave, and right-minded youth of eighteen, possessed of none of the timidity or the bookishness of his father, and very fond of all sorts of martial exercises—pitching the bar, handling the pike, riding, and shooting with the bow. Though extremely fond of horses, he was not, like his father, addicted to the chase, revolting from its cruelty. He seemed to have set before him as models Henry V. and the Black Prince; models which might have led him to inflict serious evils on his country had he lived, by the spirit of conquest. Young as he was, he displayed all the tastes of such a hero. He fired off cannon with his own hands, and had new pieces cast on improved models. He conversed with unceasing pleasure with engineers and men who had seen distinguished service, and he imported the finest horses from the Continent that could be procured. In his private character he was serious, modest, and devout. He attended the best preachers, and listened with a quiet sobriety in striking contrast to his father, who was always excited when listening to a preacher and wanting to preach himself. Henry abhorred profanity and swearing, and had a box in each of his houses at Richmond, Nonsuch, and St. James's to receive the fines for swearing from his household, which were rigorously levied, the money being given to the poor.

As these traits became known, the people flocked after the prince in a manner which much piqued his father, who could not help exclaiming—"Will he bury me alive!" The Reformers conceived great hopes of him, and there was a prophecy regarding him in every one's mouth:—

Had James succeeded in obtaining the Spanish Infanta for Henry, he would have effectually neutralised this popularity. But though Henry did not stubbornly oppose his father's plans, he is said to have declared amongst his own friends that he had made up his mind never to marry a Popish princess, and the Puritans had the firmest faith that he never would.

It was regarded as a good sign that the young prince was extremely averse from his father's favourites, and especially from Carr, who was rapidly rising, and had now been created Viscount Rochester. The queen, who shared this aversion, strengthened him in it with all her influence. But he was not destined to wear the crown of England: he was now attacked with symptoms of premature decay. It was supposed that he had grown too fast for his strength, having reached the stature of six feet at seventeen, and his chivalrous exercises had been too violent and imprudent for such rapid growth. He was accustomed to take his exercises in the greatest heat of summer, to expose himself to all sorts of weather, and to bathe for a long time together after supper. While James was planning marriages for him, the prince was fast hastening out of the world. The Spanish match still lingering, after years of negotiation, James listened to a proposal of Mary de Medici, the widow of Henry IV., and now Queen-Regent of France, for a wedding between Prince Henry and the Princess Christine, the second daughter of France, on the understanding that she should be educated as a Protestant. About the same time James agreed to a marriage between his daughter Elizabeth and the Protestant Elector Palatine. These marriages had been in accordance with the policy of Cecil, who wished to make them the basis of a Protestant alliance against the Catholic Powers. But the first of them was never to take place. In the spring of 1612 the health of Prince Henry began to fail. In the October of that year the Elector Palatine arrived in England to complete his marriage with Elizabeth, who was still only sixteen. Henry roused himself to receive his proposed brother-in-law; he rode to town from Richmond, and most imprudently, in his infirm state of health, engaged in the sports and pastimes of the occasion. On the 24th of October he played a great match at tennis with the Count Henry of Nassau in his shirt. He had been suffering from typhus already, and this brought it to a crisis. He was seized in the night with a violent pain in his head, and an oppressive languor; yet the next day, being Sunday, he would rise and attend two services, one in his own chapel at St. James's, and another at the king's in Whitehall. The text of the preacher at St. James's was remarkable:—"Man, that is born of a woman, is of short continuance and full of trouble." In the afternoon, after dinner, he was compelled to yield to the complaint, and hastened home to bed. By the 29th he was so ill that there was great dismay amongst the people, and this was immensely aggravated by a lunar rainbow, which appeared to span that part of the Palace of St. James's where the sick prince lay. The most fatal auguries were drawn from this phenomenon.

The fever now assumed a putrid form, and was declared by the medical men highly infectious; and his parents and sister were debarred from entering his room. He grew daily worse, was highly delirious, calling for his clothes and his arms, and saying he must be gone. On the 5th of November, the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, James was informed that all hope was extinct. Unable to bear his feelings so near the scene of sorrow, the king hastened away to Theobalds; but the queen would only retire to Somerset House, whence she sent continual messengers to inquire after her son's symptoms. The prince had entertained a romantic admiration of Sir Walter Raleigh, declaring that no prince but his father would keep such a bird in a cage, and he had joined with his mother in entreating for his liberty. To Sir Walter the life or death of the prince was life or death to himself. The agonised mother was now seized with a desperate desire to obtain from Raleigh a nostrum which he possessed, and which she had herself formerly taken in a fit of ague. Sir Walter sent it, with the assurance that it would cure any mortal malady except poison. After taking Raleigh's nostrum he seemed to revive for a time, but again became worse, and expired at eight o'clock on Friday night, the 6th of November.

Perhaps a more extraordinary 5th of November was never passed than the one preceding Henry's death. The people were assembled in dense crowds around the palace, eagerly listening for news of the prince's condition, while all around them were the noises—the firing, and the bonfires—of the celebration of the Gunpowder Plot. They were still remaining there the following day, and when the cry of the prince's servants was heard in the palace on beholding him dead, the people groaned and wept in agony. The Catholics, on their part, regarded the death of the first-born of the royal house as a manifest judgment for the persecution of their Church.