FALKLAND AND HIS TIMES

BOOK I

CHAPTER I

THE MAN

ALKLAND'S place in the politics of the seventeenth

FAL

century is unique. In popular estimation he scarcely ranks with Strafford or Pym, with Hampden or Cromwell. But to the philosophical historian the career of Falkland presents problems of exceptional interest and importance, while every student of humanity must rejoice in the revelation of a character which combined in no ordinary degree the intellectual luxuriance of the Greek and the moral austerity of the Puritan. A man of culture surrounded by narrow-minded fanaticism; a lover of truth beset by bigots; a farseeing statesman reduced to despair by party spirit, Falkland, distracted by the difficulties of the present, has a special claim upon the future..

The period in which he lived lacked neither great issues nor great men, and some preliminary attempt must be made to disentangle the issues and to explain Falkland's relation thereto.

The problems bequeathed by the sixteenth century to the seventeenth were at once supremely significant and

exceptionally complex. The men called upon to solve them were of no mean stature. Unfortunately, those who were most conspicuous in place were not most conspicuous in wisdom. James I. might, in ordinary times, have taken fair rank among English sovereigns, but the times were not ordinary, and James I. was not an EnglishHe was a shrewd and not unkindly Scotch pedant, with intellectual interests above the common, but curiously devoid of political tact. The son who succeeded him was more of a Churchman but even less of a statesman than his father. In a humbler station he might have lived a blameless and a useful life. Possessed of considerable personal attraction, a devoted son of the Anglican Church, an exemplary husband, and an affectionate father, Charles I. had many of the gifts and qualifications which make for domestic happiness. But he was called to play a part of exceptional difficulty, and he was unequal to it. There was no lack of men well qualified to supply the deficiencies of the first two Stuart kings. The "stacks of statutes" under which Lambarde and his fellow-magistrates groaned had at least provided an admirable political training for the Tudor country gentleman; but neither James I. nor Charles I. had sufficient sagacity to avail themselves of the material ready to hand. Where his personal passions were not involved James I. was a shrewd judge of men; but in matters of State he preferred to rely upon the help of a favourite like Essex or Buckingham, rather than listen to the sage counsels of a Bacon, a Digby or an Eliot. Charles I. was no wiser in this respect. It is not indeed easy to imagine Coke and Dudley Digges except in opposition; but neither Eliot nor Hampden were in any sense opposed to monarchical institutions; and John Pym, one of the greatest statesmen of that or any other age, was perhaps the one man in the century who had a clear and firm grasp of the

principles which might even then have reconciled the strength and decorum of monarchy with an adequate measure of popular control. Nay, had Wentworth been admitted to the confidence of his Sovereign in 1625 instead of in 1628, the whole course of subsequent events might have been radically different. Of the men who played a leading part in the later acts of the drama it is not necessary now to speak. Lilburne and the younger Vane, Ludlow and Hazelrig were unequivocal Republicans, but Ireton and Cromwell, even if they had leanings originally in that direction, discovered their mistake before the death of the King, and did their utmost to repair it.

In the long gallery of seventeenth-century portraits, what special place are we to assign to that of Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland? As to the position of the statesman and the thinker there has been infinite dispute; as to the lineaments of the man there are none. Clarendon painted the portrait of his friend in colours which will never fade. "At the battle of Newbury was slain the Lord Viscount Falkland; a person of such prodigious parts of learning and knowledge, of that inimitable sweetness and delight in conversation, of so glowing and obliging a humanity and goodness to mankind, and of that primitive simplicity and integrity of life, that if there were no other brand upon this odious and accursed civil war than that single loss it must be most infamous and execrable to all posterity." Clarendon, it may be urged, wrote under a sense of recent and irreparable personal loss. But Bishop Burnet, who is under no suspicion of partiality, has supplied testimony to Falkland's character which, if less emphatic than Clarendon's, is, from its casual and unpremeditated nature, even more remarkable. "Bishop Morley," he writes, "first became known to the world as a friend of Lord Falkland's, and that was enough in itself to raise a man's character."

Such is the testimony of personal friendship and recent tradition.

But for nearly two hundred years the fame of Falkland suffered complete eclipse, or, at best, suggested an opportunity for a passing sneer at a character compounded of genial amiability and political ineffectiveness. Horace Walpole was remarkable rather for incisive malignity than for profoundity of historical research. But the sketch of Falkland in his Royal and Noble Authors is important as having struck the note of historical criticism for several generations. Walpole bluntly suggests-ignoring such unimpeachable testimony as Burnet's-that nothing but the literary skill of a partial friend had rescued the memory of an undistinguished but amiable nobleman from wellmerited oblivion. Royal and Noble Authors has fallen into deserved neglect, but a passage which apparently inspired the judgment of not Hallam only, but Carlyle and Macaulay may perhaps justify quotation :—

"There never was a stronger instance of what the magic of words and the art of an Historian can effect, than in the character of this Lord, who seems to have been a virtuous, well-meaning Man with a moderate understanding, who got knocked on the head early in the civil war, because it boded ill: And yet by the happy solemnity of my Lord Clarendon's diction, Lord Falkland is the favourite personage of that noble work. . . . That Lord Falkland was a weak man, to me appears indubitable. We are told he acted with Hampden and the Patriots, till He grew better informed what was Law. It is certain that the ingenious Mr. Hume has shewn that both King James and King Charles acted upon precedents of prerogative which they found established. Yet will this neither justify them nor Lord Falkland. If it would, where ever tyranny is established by Law, it ought to be sacred and perpetual. Those Patriots did not attack King