ON the afternoon of Monday, the 28th of March, 1625, Charles the First was proclaimed at Charing Cross, amid a tremendous shower of rain and hail, so that the commencement of his reign was hailed in a somewhat disagreeable manner. His first care was to turn out the fools and buffoons that his father had kept at Court, or rather, as Buckingham called it, to get rid of the comic and pantomimic company which had been established in the palace. He next determined to send over for his new bride, who appeared to have been forgotten in the hurry of business, and who was waiting at Paris, "to be left till called for." Buckingham was despatched to take charge of the precious cargo; but his behaviour at the French Court was so disreputable that he received some very broad hints as to the propriety of his speedy return to England. He made love to the young Queen Anne of Austria, and flirted with every female member of the royal family, to the extreme disgust of Cardinal Richelieu, who told him, plainly, that such conduct could not be permitted, at any price.
Buckingham took his departure, with the young Henrietta, on the 23rd of May; but there must have been pretty goings on, or dreadful standing stills, during the journey, for it was the 27th of June before they arrived at Dover. Charles, who had naturally begun to wonder what had become of his minister and his bride, set off to meet them, and having slept at Canterbury on the 27th of June, he reached Dover on the 28th, and found his intended, who had "put up" at the Castle.
The first interview was very dramatic, for Charles extended both his arms, and Henrietta, taking a hop, a skip, and a jump, tumbled gracefully into them. Finding her a little taller than he expected, he looked at her feet, when the young Princess coquettishly pulled off her shoe, to prove that there was no imposition practised, and that it was impossible there could be any deception through the medium of high heels, for she and, in reality, a sole above it. The newly married couple started for Canterbury at once, and making another day of it to Rochester, they came via Gravesend to London, where they arrived in the midst of one of those pelting showers which have been graphically compared to a mÊlÉe of cats, dogs, and pitchforks.
Charles being in want of money had assembled a Parliament, which opened for business on the 18th of June, and he at once asked for some supplies; but as he stammered in his speech, there was a sort of hesitation in his demand, which some took for modesty. With real, or affected delicacy, he declined mentioning any specific sum, but requested his faithful Commons to give what they pleased, and they were thus placed in the embarrassing position of a gentleman, who, on asking "what's to pay?" finds it left to that dreadfully sliding scale, his "own generosity." This dishonest manouvre, for such it usually is, succeeds frequently in extracting twice the proper amount from the pockets of him whose liberality is thus artfully invoked; but the Commons, being apparently "up to the dodge," voted Charles £112,000, to meet liabilities to the tune of some £700,000 per annum, for the war, to say nothing of his father's debts and other contingencies. Pocketing this miserably inadequate contribution, he adjourned the Parliament, on account of the Plague, and having met it again at Oxford, in August of the same year, he told the Commons, plainly, that he "must have cash," for he was being dunned by the King of Denmark, who held his promissory note, and that his private creditors would allow him no peace in his own palace. He protested solemnly that he had not the means of paying his way for the subsistence of himself and his family, and, throwing a quantity of tradesmen's accounts, unsettled, before the Speaker's chair, asked, imploringly, if those were the sort of bills that could be got rid of by ordering them to be read that day six months, or by their being suffered to lie on the table? The Commons shook their heads, expressed their regret, buttoned up their pockets, and declared they could do nothing. The matter now became serious, for Charles had changed his butcher already three or four times, and was having his bread of nearly the last of a confiding batch of bakers. "Something must be done," he said, with much solemnity, to himself, and he wrote off a polite note to the Corporations of Salisbury and Southampton, requesting the loan of £3000, which was loyally granted him. Angry at being baffled and left insolvent by his Parliament, he declared that he would, at least, prove himself solvent in one respect, by dissolving the Parliament who had so rudely resisted his demands.
Finding that he had got nothing by begging, and very little by borrowing, he was thrown upon the expedient of stealing, as a last resort. With the money lent him by some of his subjects he resolved on fitting out a fleet, under Cecil, to attack some Spanish ships, which he understood were lying at Cadiz, with some valuable cargoes on board. He reached the bay, and being kept at bay by the enemy for a short time, he at last landed very silently, the leaders exclaiming, "Piano, Piano," and took a fort. The troops, finding a quantity of wine in the garrison, partook so freely of it that they lost all their ammunition, and spoiled several pounds of best canister, by making too free with the juice of the grape. Cecil, finding that the longer they remained the more intoxicated they got, resolved on re-shipping as many as could be got to stand upon their legs, and to return to England. The British sailors were, however, in those days, such delicate creatures that half of them died of sea-sickness, and a very few of them returned home alive.
Charles, having been foiled in his last hope of recruiting his exhausted resources by plunder, resolved to try another Parliament, and a new one was manufactured with a view to give every chance to the experiment. He endeavoured to weaken the opposition by putting several of its members into offices which would prevent them from sitting in the House of Commons; but, this artful manouvre having been seen through, only served to put the people more on their guard.
The new Parliament was in its principles the fac simile of its predecessor, and on the 6th of February, 1626, voted to Charles just about one-tenth of what he really wanted, and one-twentieth of what he asked. Notwithstanding the smallness of the subsidy, he took it, and resolved to pay his creditors something on account, as far as the money would go, and trust to the future to enable him to make up the deficiency. Having shown a pretty resolute disposition in dealing with the king, it is not surprising that the Commons should at length have determined to take a turn at the minister. Buckingham had long been very obnoxious, and one Dr. Turner—remarkable for his straightforward conduct, and his determination not to turn—moved a question, "Whether Common Report was a good ground of proceeding?" Though Common Report has generally been accounted a common story-teller, she had been tolerably right about the Duke of Buckingham, and the resolution to proceed against him on the faith of Common Report was at once approved.
On the 8th of May a still more resolute step was taken with reference to the "favourite," as this generally detested person was absurdly called, by articles of impeachment being preferred against him. The duke and his master seemed to treat the matter rather as a joke, and Charles even went down to the House of Lords to speak in favour of Buckingham. These proceedings were so clearly unconstitutional and irregular, that if the British Lion had taken to roaring, and only roared out in time, he might have saved many of the disagreeable consequences that unhappily followed. Considering how very intrusive this animal has sometimes been on occasions when he really was not wanted, it is lamentable to think that "the squeak in time," which might have saved nine times nine hundred and ninety-nine, was not forthcoming at the exact moment when its value would have been extreme.
Notwithstanding the impeachment of Buckingham, he was still loaded with fresh honours, and he became Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, at which the Commons vainly expressed their disgust. They nevertheless continued boldly enough remonstrating against this, and that, and the other, until the king regularly shut them up by a dissolution, without their having passed a single act.
Charles, sympathising with nature in an utter abhorrence of a vacuum, which he found in the royal treasury, devoted all his energies to filling it. "Must have cash," was the motto adopted by his majesty; who was not particular whether he begged, borrowed, or stole, so that he succeeded in replenishing his pockets. He looked up every outstanding liability, and routed out a lot of recusants who had fallen into arrear with their penalties.
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He borrowed money from the nobility—if it can be called borrowing to go up to a person, exclaiming, "Lend me your money," and at the same time take it forcibly away from him. But the most tremendous swindle of all was the demand of ship-money; a tax he laid upon all seaports, under the pretence of their contributing a certain number of ships to the defence of the country. He, of course, pocketed the proceeds without supplying the ships, so that, if the country had been attacked, there would not have been a sail to resist the assailants. Charles and his favourite, Buckingham, declared, with disreputable frivolity, that the ship-money was appropriately applied; for it was, in fact, floating capital, and helped to keep them above water just as much as if it had been devoted to the purchase of a navy.
Something having been said during the sitting of Parliament about a subsidy, which had never been granted, Charles thought he might as well collect it at any rate, though the Commons had declined voting it. Promises were held out that it should all be paid back out of the next supplies, or, in fact, that though the king helped himself from the right-hand pockets of his subjects, he would return the money out of their left-hand pockets—some day or another. A great many of the people, who objected to this remote reversionary interest, were thrown into prison, or sent to serve in the navy, where they became British Tars in spite of themselves, and some of them having received a classical education, introduced, no doubt, the College Hornpipe into the fleet, as an elegant and scholarly pastime.
Even the church was made the medium of extortion, for the popular preachers recommended from their pulpits the propriety of cashing up to any extent that the sovereign might require. By way of economising at home, Charles went one afternoon to the queen's apartments and dismissed every one of her tribe of French servants, who were dancing and curvetting in the presence of their mistress. This ballet of private life was summarily brought to a close by a general chassez of the whole crew, who had been dancing attendance on her majesty since her marriage, and she was so enraged at their dismissal that she broke the windows with her fist, which shows the panes she was at to mark her displeasure. The French women howled very piteously, so that, between their lamentations in broken English, and the queen's expostulations in broken glass, the hubbub was truly terrible. These disturbances fomented the ill-feeling between France and England, which Buckingham desired to increase, and he actually had the excessive vanity to put himself at the head of a fleet, which sailed to Rochelle, where he "carried himself nobly," to use the words of the king, but where, in fact, he carried himself off as speedily as his legs would allow, for he ran away after having made a desperate failure. Charles was now, once more, as completely cleaned out as a young scamp in a farce, who arrives "without sixpence in his pocket," just like "love among the roses;" and Buckingham was the roguish valet who is usually in attendance on the eccentric light comedian under the circumstances alluded to. The worthy couple discussed the best method of raising the wind, and it was agreed that there was nothing left but to try it on again with a Parliament. "We shall have writs out against ourselves," said Charles, "if we do not get the writs out for summoning the Commons." They met on the 17th of March, 1628, and several of the most determined opponents to ship-money were found in the new house, which included Bradshaw, the brewer, who was ready to brew the storm of revolution, as well as Maurice, a grocer, who suited the times to a T with his liberal sentiments. The king made a haughty speech, but the Parliament determined to proceed with address, and, upon the grand piscatorial principle of throwing a sprat to catch a herring, five subsidies were hinted at for the purpose of securing concessions of the utmost value to English liberty. The Petition of Right was accordingly drawn up, which declared the illegality of collecting money except by the authority of Parliament. It next referred to our old friend, your old friend, and everybody else's old friend, Magna Charta, or Carter, as some people call it—perhaps because a broad-wheeled waggon has been frequently driven through it—and this document was recited to prove that people could not be imprisoned without cause; though, unfortunately for them, they had been imprisoned very frequently, in spite of the arrangement that made such a circumstance quite impossible. The Petition of Right next alluded to the billeting of soldiers on private houses, which had grown into such an abuse, that scarcely a family could sit down to tea without half a dozen troopers dropping in during the meal, and pocketing the spoons, cribbing the cups, or saucily appropriating the saucers, when the entertainment was concluded.
The Bill of Rights, having been drawn by the Commons, and endorsed by the Lords, was offered to Charles for his acceptance. Without either rejecting it or adopting it, he wrote under the petition a few vague generalities, which meant nothing at all, and the Commons, retiring to their Chamber, vented their indignation in a very spirited manner. Sir Robert Phillips uttered several severe Philippics against the sovereign; Sir D. Digges followed, with some tremendous digs at the throne, declaring it was quite infra dig. for the Commons to sit still and do nothing; while Mr. Kurton, or, as that miscreant Strype calls him, Curtain, * threw off the veil; and even old Coke gave symptoms of having caught the revolutionary flame. Selden, whose table-talk is much more amusing than his talk at the table of the House of Commons, proposed a strong declaration under four heads, and was in the midst of a powerful harangue, when Finch, the Speaker, who had got the name of Chaff-Finch, from the badinage in which he indulged, ran breathless into the House with a message from the king, recommending, as well as his puffing and blowing would permit, an adjournment until the next morning. Notwithstanding the valour that had been displayed in words, the Commons had not yet learned how to act with courage, and they quietly adjourned at the suggestion of the sovereign. The next day, however, they met again, and having plucked up all their pluck, they continued to demand an explicit answer to the Petition of Right, to which the assent of Charles was, one fine afternoon in June, 1628, somewhat unexpectedly given. Buckingham, who could never keep quiet, resolved to make another warlike venture at Rochelle, and had got as far as Portsmouth, where, on the 23rd of August, says Howell, "he got out of bed in good-humour, and cut a caper or two" in his nightcap and dressing-gown. These capers were soon destined to be cut very short, for as the duke was passing to his carriage in the course of the day, he received a stab from somebody in a crowd of gesticulating Frenchmen, who were all suspected of being the assassins, and instead of being taken into custody were, oddly enough, kicked down stairs. Buckingham was as dead as the British and Foreign Institute, when a number of captains and gentlemen rushed into the kitchen of the house, exclaiming—"Where is the villain?"
* We regret to say, that the motive of Strype in calling
this person Curtain, instead of Kurton, is too obvious. A
jeu de mot is at the bottom of this baseness. We forbear
from saying more, and, according to the accounts of the
period, his majesty rolled himself about on his bed in an
agony of tears, until nothing but a wet blanket seemed to
hang over all his prospects. He nevertheless continued his
attention to business, but he never had another favourite
like Buckingham, whom his majesty used to apostrophise
familiarly as "my Buck," and hence that term of amiability
no doubt has its origin. He admitted Laud to be in many
respects laudable; and of Wentworth he acknowledged the
worth, while Noy, whose maxims contain the maximum of
wisdom, was so far appreciated as to get the place of
Attorney-General.
"Ou est le boucher!" Upon this a gentleman of the name of Felton, who had been screening himself in the meat-screen, stood forth, and struck an attitude, vociferating "Here I am."
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He then handed over his hat, in the crown of which he had stitched the full and true particulars of his own crime, which he requested might be read out, while he did the appropriate pantomime to the confession in the centre of a group of listeners. Felton gloried in the act he had committed, and when put upon his trial there was a good deal of badinage between himself and Judge Jones, whom the prisoner politely thanked for the announcement that he was to be hanged until he was dead, at Tyburn.
The king was greatly affected on hearing of Buckingham's death.
On the 30th of January, 1629, the Parliament met once more, and Charles turning out both his pockets, urged the necessity of supplies. He declared that as to his balance at his bankers, it had become like "linked sweetness," for it had been "long drawn out," and the public treasury had been swept up several times, in the hope of finding an odd coin or two; but there was not a shilling to be found, and Charles was running up bills in all directions with his tradespeople. The Commons, instead of giving him the money to pay his debts, brought against him all their own old scores, and there were several stormy discussions, the storminess of which may be accounted for by the long-windedness of many of the orators.
Among those who took part in these debates, was a clownish-looking person of about thirty years of age, with a slovenly coat, and a hat so bad that Strype hints it was perhaps without a crown, to mark the republican objection to crowns which was entertained by the owner. This individual was Mr. Oliver Cromwell, the new member for Huntingdon, who brewed beer and political storms until the country itself became Cromwell's entire, the Crown his butt, and the Constitution his mash-tub.
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Charles finding the Parliament in a very unaccommodating humour, desired Sir John Finch, the Speaker, to adjourn the House, but the House refused to be adjourned, and when he was about to leave the chair, he found himself suddenly knocked back into it, with his arms pinioned, which rendered him incapable of putting any motion whatever, for he was quite motionless. A few privy councillors rushing in, endeavoured to release him, but the opposite party bound him again to the chair, and the trial of strength between the two factions ended in a tie—as far as poor Finch was concerned—for he remained fastened in the seat of dignity. At length the Speaker, who could not dissolve the House, began dissolving himself in tears, and the king who had been waiting for him to come and tell the news, was so impatient, that messengers were dispatched to know what had become of him. Hearing that Finch was caged, or in other words locked in, the king could only leave the poor bird to his fate; but he despatched a messenger to tell the sergeant to slip out of the House quietly with his mace, which would dissolve the sitting. The sergeant may perhaps have forgotten the right cue, but he had got the right mace, and had walked nearly to the door, when he was stopped and pushed back, the key of the House taken from him and placed in the hands of one of the members, who promised to keep tight hold of it.
Charles, hearing that the door was bolted, went down, determined to force it open; but happily, he found the Commons had bolted instead of the door, or at least, they were on the point of doing so. The king, nevertheless, ordered several of the ringleaders to be arrested, and he intimated pretty plainly to the Commons that he would not trouble them again for a very considerable period. He had, in fact, resolved to take all matters of Government entirely into his own hands; and though Magna Charta, with a few other trifles of the kind, stood in his way, he did not scrapie to trample on rights and liberties, which he knew were being continually renewed, as occasion required.
On the 10th of March, 1629, the day to which the Commons had adjourned themselves, Charles came down to the House of Lords with the proclamation of dissolution in his pocket. His majesty began by saying, that this was "really a very unpleasant business," that "he had no fault to find with the Lords," but "there were some vipers among the Commons"; whom, according to the unhappy Strype, he expressed his determination of "viping out"—observe the paltry evasion of the W for the sake of the pun—"with the utmost energy." Thus, by flattering the Lords and threatening the Commons, or, to continue the language of Strype, "soaping the Upper House, and lathering the Lower," did Charles dissolve his Parliament. Several members had already been placed in custody, among whom were Eliot, Holies, and Selden, the last of whom was such an inveterate table-talker, that his tongue was always getting him into scrapes of the most serious character. An information was exhibited against them in the Star-Chamber, but they were subsequently offered their release, on promising to be of good behaviour, which they refused to do, for they felt they would have been good for nothing had they entered into such a disgraceful compact. Eliot died in prison, and the rest were adjudged to be detained during the pleasure of the king, and as he took great pleasure in persecuting his refractory Commons, there was every chance that their "durance vile" would be unpleasantly durable.
The 29th of May, 1630, was signalised by the birth of Prince Charles, and it is said that a bright star shone in the east at midday, which some have considered ominous. To us, the appearance of the star by daylight, on the birth of this dissolute scapegrace, denotes nothing more than a propensity for not going home till morning, or till daylight did appear. About the same time that severities were being practised on the Commons, one Richard Chambers refused to pay more than legal duty on a bale of silk, and the Custom-house officers going at him rather fiercely, he declared that "merchants were more screwed in England than they were in Turkey." His audience hearing him use the word "screwed," at once nailed him to the expression, and he was fined £2000 for the lapsus lingua he had fallen into. Unhappily, political martyrdom was not, in those days, so good a trade as it has subsequently become, and poor Chambers had neither a subscription opened to pay his fine, nor a testimonial to reimburse him for the expense of resistance. A struggle for principle was then a struggle indeed, and not an eligible medium for advertisements. A Chambers of the present day would have made his principles pay him an enormous percentage, and would have made a handsome fortune for himself by what he would have termed his exertions for the happiness and liberty of the people. Poor Chambers, however—the real martyr of 1630—died in a prison at last, after waiting for redress from the Long Parliament, which was a little too long in making reparation to the victim of oppression, Charles had apparently made up his mind to get on as well as he could without any Parliament at all, and having bribed some of the cleverest fellows in the kingdom, he thought that as one fool proverbially makes many, one or two knaves would also be found to fructify. Among the shameless apostates of that day were of course many who had been mouthing most energetically on the popular side; and Wentworth, who had been originally one of the very noisiest of the people's friends, became the meanest and most inveterate of the people's enemies. Having brawled for some years against aristocracy, his purpose at length peeped out in his acceptance of a peerage for himself, and the man who had been continually bullying the Court, became its fawning favourite. Digges, who had been, as we have already intimated, digging away most energetically at the constituted authorities, accepted the post of Master of the Bolls, for he had, as he said, made the discovery on which side his bread was buttered.
It would be tedious to the reader, and difficult to ourselves, to give a catalogue of the exactions and impositions which were practised by Charles between the years 1629, when the Parliament was dissolved, and 1640, the year marked by the assembly of a new one. He revived, among other cruelties, the old practice of making knights of all persons possessing forty pounds a year, and either charging ruinous fees for imposing the so-called honour, or imposing a heavy fine for declining it. Knighthood became such a fearful drug in the market of dignities, that it is not surprising it should even up to this day have failed to recover its position. The cry of "Dilly, dilly," was never more ferociously addressed to the ducks who were invited to "come and be killed," than was the command to "come and be knighted," enforced against the unwilling victims, who were selected either to pay the penalty for declining, or the fees on receiving this unenviable distinction.
While guilty of wholesale persecution, Charles did not, however, neglect the retail branch, and a Puritan preacher named Leighton—a blind fanatic, but, notwithstanding his blindness, no relation we believe to Leighton Buzzard—was exposed to the utmost cruelty for writing some ad captandum trash against the queen and the bishops; a bombastic little work, which neither repaid perusal, nor repaid the printer who brought it forward. Poor Leighton was fined for his coarseness, and flogged for his flagellation of the authorities, besides being compelled to undergo a variety of other barbarisms, the narration of which we would have attempted, but we found our very ink turning pale at the bare prospect of our doing so. The Puritans now began to emigrate in great numbers to America, and they no doubt laid the foundation of that drawl which has ever since distinguished the tone of the model republicans.
We now arrive at the tragical story of poor Mr. William Prynne, a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, who, in the utter absence of briefs, finding himself at a dead stand-still for want of a motion, had started a trumpery little work with one Sparkes, a publisher. The volume had the unattractive title of "Histrio Mastric, the Players' Scourge, or Actors' Tragedie," in which he made an attempt to write down the stage in particular, and all amusements in general. He denounced all who went to the play as irredeemably lost, and he neither exempted the free list, the half-price, or those who went in with the orders of the Press, from the anathema, which he hurled indiscriminately against the "brilliant and crowded audiences" nightly honouring such-and-such an establishment with a succession of overflows. The queen not only patronised the drama, but sometimes appeared herself as a distinguished amateur, and the whole of Prynne's book was taken to apply to her, though she was not even mentioned in any part of it. Poor Prynne was declared to be a wolf in sheep's clothing, and, considering that he was a barrister who had turned author, the alleged mixture of wolfishness and sheepishness may be fairly attributed to his character. He was found guilty, of course, and upon sentence being passed, the Chief Justice expressed his regret that a gentleman, who had handed in on two or three occasions a compute, and was a promising junior of twenty years' standing—without ever being on his legs—should have brought himself into such an unpleasant predicament.
He was condemned to be degraded from the profession, or in fact to be dishonoured; to pay a fine of £5000, which was by no means feasible, when we consider his fees, and to be kept from the use of pen, ink, and paper, which was perhaps the most humane part of the sentence, for he was thus prevented from proceeding with his wretched trade of authorship. The poor fellow, however, contrived to write humorous articles on the soles of his boots; and "Prynne on the Understanding," though it was rubbed out as mere rubbish by the man who cleaned his boots, might have taken its place by the side of many more lofty productions of the period. His sentence was exceedingly cruel, and comprised "branding on the forehead," as if his enemies would have it believed "there was nothing inside to hurt," while his nose was savagely maltreated, to prevent its being again poked into that which did not concern its owner. His ears were cropped under the pretext of their being a great deal too long, and indeed Prynne was so altered, as a punishment for rushing into print, that his own clerk would not have known him again in the abridged edition which the Government reduced him to.
We have now to treat of the great civil war; but the magnitude of the subject requires us to take breath, which we cannot do unless we break off and begin a fresh chapter.