JAMES I AND HIS ADMINISTRATION OF DOMESTIC GOVERNMENT.

At one period of his youth James I had been accustomed to vary his application to his lessons with bodily exercises. At that age he had divided his days between learned studies and the chase of the smaller game in Stirling Park, accompanied in both pursuits by friends and comrades of the same age; and he retained during all his life the habits he had then formed.[381] He spent only a couple of months in the year in London, or at Greenwich: he preferred Theobald's, and still more distant country seats like Royston and Newmarket, where he could give himself up to hunting. Even before sunrise he was in motion, surrounded by a small number of companions practised in the chase and selected for that object, amongst whom he was himself one of the most skilful. He thought that he might vie with Henry IV even in field sports; but he was not hindered by his fondness for these amusements from continuing his studies with unwearied application. He was impelled to these not, strictly speaking, by thirst for general knowledge, although he was not deficient in this, but principally by interest in the theological controversies which engaged the attention of the world. He more than once went through the voluminous works of Bellarmin; and, in order to verify the citations, he had the old editions of the Fathers and of the Decrees of the Councils sent him from Cambridge. In this task a learned bishop stood at his side to assist him. He endeavoured with many a work of his own to thrust himself forward in the conflict of opinions. He had the vanity of wishing to be regarded as the most learned man in the two kingdoms, but he could only succeed in passing for a storehouse of all sorts of knowledge; for a man who overestimates himself is commonly punished by disregard even of his real merits. These may not meet with recognition until later times. The writings of James I wore the pedantic dress of the age; but in the midst of scholastic argumentation we yet stumble upon apt thoughts and allusions. The images which he frequently employs have not that delicacy of literary feeling which avoids what is ungraceful, but they are original and sometimes striking in their simplicity. Naturally thorough and acute, he labours not without success to prove to his adversaries the untenableness of the grounds on which they proceed, or the logical fallacy of their conclusions. Here and there we catch the elevated tone of a consciousness that rests upon firm conviction. Even in conversation he sought to turn away from particulars as soon as they came under discussion, and to pass to general considerations, a province in which he felt most at home. In his incidental utterances which have been taken down, he displays sound sense and knowledge of mankind. It is especially worth noticing how he considers virtue and religion to be immediately connected with knowledge—the confusions in the world appear to him for the most part to arise from mediocrity of knowledge[382]—and how highly moreover he estimates a sense for truth. He finds the most material difference between virtue and vice in the greater inward truthfulness of the former. King James delivers many other well-weighed principles of calm wisdom: it is only extraordinary how little his own practice corresponded with them.[383] When in one of his earlier writings we mark the seriousness with which he speaks of the duty incumbent on a king of testing men of talent, of measuring their capacity, and of appointing his servants not according to inclination but according to merit, we should expect to find him in this respect a careful and conscientious ruler. Instead of this we find that he always has favourites, whose merits no one can discover; to whom he stands in the extraordinarily compound relation of father, teacher, and friend, and to whom he allows a share in the power which he possesses. He could never free himself from a ruinous prodigality towards those about him, in spite of resolutions of amendment. How soon were the costly objects flung away which Elizabeth had collected and left behind at her death![384] How many possessions or sources of revenue accruing to the crown did he allow to pass into private hands! Any regulation of his household expenditure was as little to be expected from him in England as in Scotland. Like the princes of the thirteenth century he considered that the royal power assigned him privileges and advantages in which he had a full right to allow his favourites and servants to share. Not seldom the most scandalous abuses were connected with these: for instance, when the court was to be provided with the common necessaries of life during its journeys, it was required that they should be delivered to it at low prices: the servants exacted more supplies than were wanted, and then sold the surplus for their own profit. In grotesque contrast with the disgraceful cupidity of his attendants is the exaggerated conception which James had formed for himself of the ideal importance of the royal authority, which at that time some persons attempted with metaphysical acuteness to lay down almost in the same terms as the attributes of the Deity. He had similar notions about his dignity and the unconditional obligation of his subjects. Even in his Parliamentary speeches he did not refrain from expressing them. He made no secret of them in his life in the country, where he met with unbounded veneration from every one. It was remarked as a point of contrast between him and Elizabeth, that while she had always spoken of the love of her subjects, James on the contrary was always talking of the obedience which they owed him on the ground of divine and human right. And people recognised many other points of contrast between them besides this.[385] When the Queen had formed a resolution, she had never shrunk from the trouble of directing her attention to its execution even in the minutest details. King James did not possess this ardour; for he could not descend from the world of studies and general views in which he lived, to take a searching interest in the business of the government or of justice. He had indeed been known to say that it was annoying to him to hear the arguments on both sides quietly discussed in a question of right submitted to him; for that in that case he was unable to come to any conclusion. The Queen loved gallant men and characters distinguished for boldness: the King was without any sense of military merit, and felt uncomfortable in the presence of men of enterprising spirit. He thought that he could only trust those whom he had chained to himself by favours, presents, and benefits. The Queen served as a pattern of everything which was proper and becoming. James, who restricted himself to the intercourse of a few intimate friends, formed attachments which he thought were to serve as the rule of life. He himself was slovenly; in England, as formerly in Scotland, he neglected his appearance, and indulged in eccentricities which appeared repulsive to others, and were taken amiss from him. Even at that time there was a common feeling in England in favour of what is becoming in good society; and although the feeling was for a long time less deeply engraved on men's minds, and less sensitive to every outrage than it became at a later period, men did not pardon the King for coming into collision with it.

Hence this sovereign appeared in complete contradiction with himself. Careless, petty, and at the same time most unusually proud; a lover of pomp and ceremony, yet fond of solitude and retirement; fiery and at the same time lax; a man of genius and yet pedantic; eager to acquire and reckless in giving away; confidential and imperious; even in little matters of daily life not master of himself, he often did what he would afterwards rather have left undone. With all his knowledge and acuteness, the high flight of his thoughts was often allied to a moral weakness which among all circles did serious injury to that reverence which had hitherto been reserved for those who held the highest authority, and which was partly bestowed even on him. It could not seem likely that such a man should be able to exercise great influence on the fortunes of Britain.

He did however exercise such an influence. He gave the tone to the policy of the Stuart dynasty, and introduced the complication in which the destiny of his descendants was involved.

In the first years of his reign in England, so long as Robert Cecil was alive, King James exercised no deep influence. The Privy Council possessed to the full the authority which belonged to it by old custom. James used simply to confirm the resolutions which were adopted in the bosom of the Council under the influence of the Treasurer: he appears in the reports of ambassadors as a phantom-king, and the minister as the real ruler of the country.[386] After the death of Cecil all this was changed. The King knew the party-divisions which prevailed in the Council: he let its members have their own way, and even connived at the relations they formed with foreign powers for their own interest; but he knew how to hold the balance between them, and in the midst of their divisions to carry out his own views. In those country seats, where no one seemed to take thought for anything except the pleasures of the chase and learned pursuits, the business of the state also was carried on in course of time with ever-increasing ardour.[387] The secretaries about the King were incessantly busy, while the secretaries' chambers in London were idle. Great affairs were generally transacted between the King and the favourite in the ascendant at the time, in conferences to which only a few others were admitted, and sometimes not even these. The King himself decided; and the resolutions which were taken were communicated to the Privy Council, which gradually became accustomed to do nothing more than invest them with the customary forms. If it be asked what the object of the King's efforts was, the answer must be that it was to set the exercise of the supreme power free from the controlling influence of the men of high rank to whom the King had deferred on his first accession. This was generally the aim of the great rulers of that century. This had been the principal end of the policy of Philip II of Spain during his long political life: however the Kings and Queens of France may have differed on other points, they were all, both Henry III and Henry IV, Mary de' Medici while she was regent, and Lewis XIII so soon as he succeeded to the exercise of power, at one in this endeavour. James, who was a new sovereign in one of his kingdoms, and almost always absent from the other, had more difficulties in his way than other monarchs. Wherever it was possible he proceeded with energy and rigour. People were astonished when they reckoned up the number of considerable men who served him in high offices, and were then deprived of them. He laboured incessantly to make way for the impartial exercise of justice in the King's name throughout Scotland, in spite of the privileges of the great Scottish nobles as its administrators. In his ecclesiastical arrangements in that country, he was fond of insisting on his personal wishes: in cases of emergency indeed he made known that all the treasures of India were not of so much value in his eyes as the observance of his ordinances; and he threatened the opponents of the royal will with the King's anger, to which he then gave unbridled indulgence.[388] As he looked upon the Church of England as the best bulwark against the influence of the Jesuits which he feared on the one side, and that of the Puritans which he hated on the other, it was naturally his foremost endeavour to fortify his power, and to unite the two kingdoms with one another by the promotion and spread of the forms of that Church. The essential motive of his system of colonisation in Ireland was the wish to establish the Church, by the aid of which he designed to subjugate or to suppress hostile elements. In England he imparted to it a character still more clerical and removed from Presbyterianism than that which had previously distinguished it: he wished it to be as much withdrawn as possible from the action of civil legislation. But in proportion as he supported himself on the Church he fell out with the Parliament, in which aristocratic tendencies and sympathies with popular rights and with Puritanism were blended with a feeling of independence that was hateful to him. He once said that five hundred kings were assembled there, and he thought that he was fulfilling a duty in resisting them. The most momentous questions affecting constitutional rights in regard to the freedom of elections, freedom of speech, the limits of legislative power, and above all the right of granting taxes, were brought forward under King James. And on every other side he saw himself involved in a struggle with hostile privileges and proud independent powers, from whose ascendancy both in Church and State he was careful to keep himself free, while at the same time he did not proceed to extremities or come to an absolute rupture. He was naturally disposed, and was moreover led by circumstances, to make it a leading rule of conduct, to adhere immovably to principles which he had once espoused, and never to lose sight of them; but, having done this, to appear vacillating and irresolute in matters of detail. His position abroad involved the same apparent contradiction. Placed in the midst of great rival powers, and never completely certain of the obedience of his subjects, he sought to ensure the future for himself by crafty and hesitating conduct. All the world complained that they could not depend on him; each party thought that he was blinded by the other. Those however who knew him more intimately assure us that we must not suppose that he did not apprehend the snares which were laid for him; that if only he were willing to use his eyes, he was as clear-sighted as Argus; that there was no prince in the world who had more insight into affairs or more cleverness in transacting them. They say that if he appeared to lack decision, this arose from his fine perception of the difficulties arising from the nature of things and their necessary consequences; that he was just as slow and circumspect in the execution as he was lively and expeditious in the discussion of measures; that he knew how to moderate his choleric temperament by an intentional reserve,[389] and that even his absence from the capital and his residence in the country were made to second this systematic hesitation; that, if a disputed point awaited decision, instead of attending a meeting with the Privy Councillors who were with him, he would take advantage of a fine day to fly his falcons, for he thought that something might happen in the meanwhile, or some news be brought in, and that the delay of an hour had often ere now been found profitable.

It was then through no mere weakness on King James's part that he conceded power to a favourite. In a letter to Robert Carr he describes what he thought he had found in him, viz. a man who did not allow himself to be diverted a hair's-breadth from his service,[390] who never betrayed a secret, and who had nothing before his eyes but the advantage and good name of his sovereign. The greater share that he secured for such a man in the management of affairs the greater the power which he believed that he himself exercised in them. The A.D. 1613. favourite who depended entirely on the will of the king and knew his secrets, he supposed would be both feared and powerful as a first minister, and would pave the way by his influence upon the state for the carrying out of the views of the sovereign. He thought that he could combine the government of the state and the advance of monarchical ideas, with the comfort of a domestic friendship with an inferior.

James himself brought about the alliance, which we noticed, between Robert Carr, whom he raised to the earldom of Somerset, and the house of Howard. By the union of the hereditary importance of an old family that had almost always held the highest and most influential offices, with the favour of the King which carried with it the fullest authority, a power was in fact consolidated which for a while governed England. Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, the Lord Treasurer Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, and Robert Carr were considered the triumvirs of England.[391] In the midst of this combination appears Lady Frances Howard, the daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, whose divorce from Essex and marriage with Somerset had sealed the political alliance between the two families. She was young and beautiful, with an expression of modesty and gentleness, but at the same time stately and brilliant, a fit creature to move in a society that revelled in the enjoyment of life, in the culture of the century, and in the possession of high rank. But what an abyss of dark impulses and unbridled passion sometimes lies hid under such a shining exterior! The Lady Frances had once sought to draw Prince Henry into her net. Many said that she had employed magic for this purpose; indeed they assumed that the early death of the Prince had been brought on partly by this means.[392] Her marriage with the king's favourite was, if this be true, only a secondary satisfaction of her ambition, but yet a satisfaction which she could not forego. Somerset had an intimate friend, whose advice and services at a former period A.D. 1615. had been very useful to him, but who opposed this marriage and fell out with him on account of it—his name was Overbury.[393] Lady Frances swore to effect his death. We are revolted at the licence which personal hate enjoyed of misusing the power of the state, when we read that Overbury was first brought to the Tower, and then had creatures who could be relied on set about him there, with whose help the victim was removed out of the way by means of poison. Lady Frances was not the only female poisoner among the higher classes of society. This mode of assassination had spread in England as it had done in Italy and at times in France. In these transactions the most abandoned profligacy allied itself with the brilliancy and the advantages of a high position, but they foreboded a speedy ruin. The authority of Somerset awakened discontent and secret counterplots. He was naturally turbulent, obstinate, and insolent, and had the presumption to behave in his usual manner even to the King whom he set right with an air of intellectual superiority which revived in the King's breast bitter recollection of the years of his childhood. James put up with this conduct for a while; he then, against the will of the favourite, set his hand to raise to a level with him another young man, for whom he entertained a personal liking: at last the misunderstanding came to an open rupture. And at the same time an accident brought to light the circumstances of Overbury's death.[394] All Somerset's old enemies raised their heads again, and proceedings were instituted against him and his wife which terminated in their condemnation.[395] The King pardoned them, to the extent of allowing them to lead a life secluded from the world; they resided afterwards in the same house, but, as far as is known, in complete separation without even seeing one another.

Shortly before this event Henry Howard had died. Thomas Howard, whose wife was accused of exercising a pernicious and corrupt influence upon affairs, lost his office of High Treasurer. The place of Carr was occupied by the young man above referred to, whom Carr's adversaries had combined to push forward, George Villiers, a native of Leicestershire, where his family had lived upon their own ancestral property from the time of the Conquest. After the early death of his father, his mother, a Beaumont by birth, a lady still young and full of ambition and knowledge of the world, had educated him not only in the training of English schools but in French ways and manners, and had then brought him to court. He differed from Carr in being naturally good-tempered, and of a courteous obliging disposition, which won the heart of every one.[396] Although no one doubted that he would be spoilt by a higher position, yet people thought that he could never become malicious like Somerset. Lord Pembroke and Archbishop Abbot both gave him a helping hand in his rise: the latter moved the Queen also, although she was not without scruples, to aid in it. Villiers was a man after the King's own heart, well-formed, capable of intellectual cultivation, devoted: in consequence of the favour and confidence of the King the youth, who after a time was created Duke of Buckingham, acquired a ruling position in the English state. The old Admiral Effingham, Earl of Nottingham, resigned his office in order to make room for him: some other high officials were appointed under his influence and according to his views; in a short time the white wands of the royal household and the A.D. 1617. under-secretaryships and subordinate offices had been transferred to the hands of his adherents and friends.

But foreign as well as domestic relations were affected by this change. Somerset had stood in the most confidential relations with the Spanish ambassador: he was accused of having betrayed to him the secrets of the state from his office.[397] His wife, if not himself, was thought to have drawn money from Spain. Probably the intelligence of this behaviour, which came to the King's ears, contributed most to the downfall of Somerset. This event did not in itself involve a change of policy. In the advice which was given to the young favourite from a well-informed source, it is presupposed that the good understanding with Spain would continue: but it was now possible for the adversaries of this power to bestir themselves again. Some of the most conspicuous men of the other party, such as Winwood, the Secretary of State, would even have been glad if open war with Spain had immediately broken out.

The mutual opposition between these powerful tendencies, and the men who made them their own, brought the career of Walter Ralegh to a close.

Somerset was Ralegh's personal enemy, and had gained possession of his best estate. After his fall Ralegh was liberated from the Tower. He still lay under the weight of a sentence which had been pronounced against him on the occasion of the plot which bears his name. He might have purchased its removal; but he was assured by the most influential voices that he had nothing more to fear from it; and he thought that he could apply the money more profitably to the execution of the great design which he had long ago formed, and which he had never for an instant lost sight of during his captivity. A story was then afloat that after the destruction of the kingdom of Peru the descendants of the Incas had founded another kingdom between the Amazon and the Orinoco, the Dorado of the Spaniards. It was Ralegh's ambition to open to his countrymen this region which would be easily accessible from the coasts, of which he had formerly taken possession in the name of England. The old reputation of Ralegh's name procured him sufficient support for his expedition, not only from the merchants, but also from wealthy private individuals; and the King gave him a patent which empowered him to sail to the ports of America still in possession of the heathen, in order to open commercial intercourse with them, and to spread the Christian, especially the Reformed, faith among them.[398] In July 1617 Ralegh set sail from Plymouth harbour for this object, with seven ships of war and a number of small transports carrying about 700 men.

It was presupposed that in such an enterprise all hostilities against the Spaniards would be avoided. When the Spanish ambassador complained of this expedition undertaken by a man who had already on one occasion been very troublesome to the Spanish colonies, the Privy Council answered that Ralegh was pledged by his instructions to do no damage to the Spaniards; and that 'if he violated them his head was there to pay for it.'[399] The King himself repeated this answer to him.

Ralegh in fact guarded against any collision with the Spaniards on his voyage. He was said not to have taken a single Spanish vessel, and he directed his course without stopping to Guiana, the goal which he had set before himself. But the Spaniards had become powerful there, although not until after his former visit. From Caraccas they had conquered the natives, who were engaged in internal wars, and had firmly established themselves at a short distance from the coast. What was likely to happen if they opposed the forces which Ralegh landed to search for the gold mines which he had formerly seen there? Ralegh remembered full well what a danger he ran if he engaged in a struggle and fought with them: he knew that he was thereby forfeiting his life. But on the other side, was he to return without fulfilling his purpose, and to burden himself with the reproach of not having told the truth? Worst of all, was he to fail in effecting the object which he had entertained all his life long, and not to achieve the discovery on which he staked the future glory of his name? It was perhaps the greatest moment in a life that almost always lifts itself above the ordinary level, when the thirst for discovery gained the victory over considerations of legality and the danger involved in discarding them. And well might he have hoped that not only pardon but praise would have been accorded him, if he had actually obtained possession of the gold mines, by whatever means. He commanded his men when they advanced inland to behave to the Spaniards as the Spaniards behaved to them. A collision was thus unavoidable. It took place at S. Thomas, which was destroyed, but the Spaniards nevertheless had completely the superiority: Ralegh's only son was killed; and the captain who had the charge of the expedition was so disheartened that he committed suicide. These disasters involved the utter failure of the expedition. His crews, who were naturally insubordinate, quarrelled among themselves, and on the voyage home the fleet dispersed. Ralegh came back to England without an ounce of gold, and without having effected any result whatever: he appeared in the light of an adventurer who had wantonly desired to break the peace with Spain. And when the ambassador of this power asked for full and signal satisfaction, in order to restore the good understanding which Ralegh's enterprise had at once interrupted, was it to be expected that the King should take under his protection the man who had not complied with the conditions prescribed to him, and whom for other reasons he did not love? And moreover the pulse of free generosity which befits a sovereign did not beat in the breast of King James. He A.D. 1618. consented that the old sentence of condemnation, for fifteen years suspended over Ralegh's head, should now be enforced against him. It had been pronounced against him for entering into a secret alliance with Spain; an attack on Spain led to its execution. Ralegh and the King exhibit a contrast between ambition that scorns danger on the one side, and caution that supports itself by the forms of law on the other, such as even in England has hardly ever been so sharply drawn. The King could not possibly get any good by his conduct. The position of England in the world depended upon the resistance that she offered to the preponderance of Spain in both the Indies and in Europe. The King detached himself from one of the chief interests of the nation when he allowed a felon's death to be inflicted on the man of lofty genius, who had undertaken, by an ill-advised attempt it is true, to give effect in America to this feeling of world-wide opposition. James thought that his welfare lay in maintaining the peace with Spain. But we know that at an earlier date he had entered on a course adverse to Spain, and that even now he had not entirely renounced it. What confusion must eventually follow from this divided policy!