the conduct of the Spanish negotiation, and imbibing the popular enmity against Spain, gave its willing assent to the account fabricated by the duke, and came to a resolution which declared that the honour and safety of the country demanded that the treaties respecting the marriage and the Palatinate should be at once abandoned. This resolution was followed by a royal proclamation, which described the said treaties as at an end, and the sum of 300,000l. was voted to carry on a war against Spain, and for the restoration of the Elector.

These seasons of peculiar excitement with respect to catholicism abroad were generally marked by loud demands for the more severe Proceedings in parliament- execution of the repressive laws at home. Buckingham, in Impeachment his present career of hypocrisy and resentment, urged on of Middlesex. in the commons what James called "a stinging petition on this subject, but by the assistance of the lords it was rendered harmless. The house next directed its attention to those grievances which were rescued from the scrutiny of the last parliament by its sudden dissolution. But the object which chiefly occupied its vigilance and energy, was the prosecution of Cranfield, earl of Middlesex, on the charges of deficiency, bribery, and oppression, in his office as lord treasurer and master of the court of wards. Middlesex owed his public station to the favour of the duke, but having recently offended his patron, he was now surrendered as a peace-offering to the resentment of his enemies. Lord Belfast, and the lord-keeper Williams, had also fallen under the displeasure of the favourite; but these sought and obtained a reconciliation, the former by disclosing a somewhat successful intrigue on the part of the Spanish ambassador with a view to injure the duke in the esteem of the monarch, and the latter by exercising his ingenuity to remove the suspicions which had been thus infused into the royal mind *. Middlesex was less fortunate, and found almost his only friend in his sovereign. James informed the house of lords, that the accused, instead of having advised the dissolution of the last parliament, as was alleged, had opposed that proceeding with the most earnest entreaties; and added, that as in many parts of his official conduct the treasurer had only to execute the will of his sovereign, so in others it was impossible that the discharge of his duties should be found in all respects free from error, or that his decisions, however justifiable in themselves, should fail to make him an object of enmity.

The charges preferred against him were six in number, on four of which the lords pronounced him guilty, though it was the persuasion of many that his hands were clean, if compared with those of some who held similar offices in that corrupt age. James deplored the proceeding on several accounts, and with some passion admonished both Charles and the duke, that they would live to have their fill of parliamentary im

* Hacket's Life of Williams, 69-76, Cabala, 13, 14. 300, 301.

peachments. The occurrence, no doubt, did much to confirm the newlyrecovered right of the commons in this respect. It also led to an improved mode of conducting such prosecutions. Middlesex complained that his adversaries had not allowed him more days to prepare for his trial than they had themselves occupied weeks, and that while his opponents assailed him in extended succession, and might all of them avail themselves of counsel, he had to meet them alone through eight hours in the day, without the assistance of any one capable of rendering him legal aid. It was from this time provided, that the accused should be allowed copies of the depositions, both in his favour and against him, and that, on claiming it, he should have the benefit of counsel *.

Failure of the

Mansfield.

That the war to recover the Palatinate might be prosecuted with vigour, treaties either offensive or defensive were formed with Sweden, Denmark, and the United Provinces ;--and, influ- enterprise unenced by their jealousy with respect to the political power der count of Austria, even France, Venice, and Savoy joined the protestant confederacy. Count Mansfield, whose reputation and ability as a general were the elector's principal dependence, came to England, and it was settled that, besides receiving the sum of 20,000l. per month, his troops of mercenaries should be reinforced by 12,000 Englishmen. With this force the count appeared before the island of Zealand, on his way to the Palatinate, but the jealousy and inhumanity of the Dutch prevented his landing, until a disease, generated in the crowded ships, had swept off 9000 of his followers. With the remainder he still directed his course toward the Rhine, but at length found his numbers so diminished, as to be obliged to restrict himself to the defensive t.

Henrietta.

But if the attempt to recover the Palatinate proved thus disastrous, to supply the place of the Infanta was less difficult. The hand of the French princess Henrietta Maria was now solicited Negotiation concerning the for the English heir-apparent. Charles had obtained a marriage of glance at Henrietta in the course of the single day which Charles to he passed in Paris, when on his journey to Madrid, but without appearing to have derived any impression from it at the time. Whatever had been conceded to the court of Spain in favour of the Infanta was now claimed by the court of France in favour of the Bourbon princess. This, as it respected the concessions to be made with regard to the English catholics, had become a point of greater difficulty than ever. Charles had lately sworn, that whensoever it should please God to bestow on him any lady professing the catholic faith, she should have * Parl. Hist. i. 1372-1477. Journals of Commons, 768. Clarendon, i. 41. Hacket, 66, 67.

Rushworth, i. 152-154. This is sometimes described as the only warlike enterprise in the reign of James I. But in 1621 his majesty had been cajoled by the Spaniards to attempt the taking of Algiers. The failure of that ill-conducted undertaking taught the pirates to direct their depredations against the vessels of Eng. land, as well as against those of the people from whom they had suffered so much wrong-the Spaniards. Anderson's Hist. tom. ii. 8, 9.

no further liberty than for her own family, and no advantage to the recusants at home;—the king was pledged to the same effect, and the judges had received new instructions to enforce the existing laws against catholics. It was at first agreed, that this part of the engagement should be secret, that it should be signed by the king, the prince, and the secretary of state, and that it should secure to the English catholics an exemption from all injury in their persons, property, or conscience, on account of their religion. But these provisions were deemed on reflection much too vague, and it was in the end distinctly required by the French cabinet, that all catholics recently imprisoned should be released; that the fines imposed on such persons should be remitted, and that in future the private exercise of their worship should be without molestation. The English monarch and the prince began to dread a second failure; and on these terms a marriage was accomplished, the influence of which on the destiny of the house of Stuart, and on the constitution of these realms, was to be of no small amount *.

It was in the November of 1624 that James brought the long-agitated

Death of
James.

Character of
James I.

question of the marriage of his son to this conclusion. On the twenty-seventh of March in the year following, the king breathed his last, after an illness of fourteen days. His malady consisted partly of a tertian ague, and partly of gout, aggravated by unskilful treatment and an aversion to medicine. Two children only survived him, Charles and Elizabeth :-his death was in the twentythird year of his reign, and the fifty-ninth of his age. The authority, and still more the influence possessed by the sovereign at this period were such as to produce an intimate connexion between his personal character and the complexion of his reign. What the character of James was has appeared, on the whole, in what has already passed before us. It is not only true, as stated even by his apologists, that all the virtues of this monarch suffered from the contagion of the neighbouring vices, but that they were all so uustable, that no one of them which seemed to affect him to-day could be relied upon as certain to possess any decided influence over him tomorrow t. Nor is it enough to say that his generosity bordered on profusion,-it should be added, that it had scarcely the slightest connexion with principle, and that it often flowed in one direction, at the cost of

*Hardwicke Papers, i. 523-548-551-570. Rushworth, i. 152-168-169.

The partial account of the character of James I. here adverted to, is that given by Hume. This uncertainty of temper and conduct was so much a part of the character of James, that nothing can be more delusive than to judge of it by particular incidents. "When, for example, I believe myself to have brought him and those around him to the conclusion that they should not endeavour to effect anything in France in favour of the Huguenots; nay, when the king goes so far as to speak slightingly of them, and to treat them as rebels, I suddenly receive information from those who carefully observe his words and actions, that he is as if utterly altered, is calling on his subjects to stand by the Huguenots, and swearing he would rather lose all his three crowns than suffer Rochelle to be taken." Tillieres, Dispatch, June, 1621. Raumer, ii, 256.

justice and of the ordinary feelings of humanity in another. It may be admitted that his native temperament did not incline him towards cruelty; but when under the influence of persons who had acquired an ascendency over him, or when opposed in some of his favourite projects or speculations, he was found capable of breaking through laws already arbitrary and severe, for the sake of still greater severity. judgment, applauded as it has sometimes been, and, on a partial view of it, not without reason, was really not much less frail than his temper; his shrewdness at one hour, or on one topic, appearing wholly to fail him as the next occurred, and some portion of almost every speech which fell from him being in this respect not a little at issue with the rest. It is remarkable that of all his favourite schemes,-and he had many, there was no one which he did not live to see a failure, those concerning which he was most sanguine proving, in the end, the most hopeless. Thus the union of the two kingdoms, the suppression of English puritanism, the reconciling of his catholic subjects, the extension of protestantism over Ireland, and of episcopacy over Scotland, the establishment of certain arbitrary maxims in the place of acknowledging the rights demanded by the people, and the marriage alliance with Spain, all were matters which lay near the heart of the English monarch, and all were long prosecuted, but no one of them accomplished. It is true, the failure of the negotiation with Spain is not to be attributed altogether, if at all, to the want of judgment in the king; but the commencement and the obstinate prosecution of that affair, so unacceptable to his subjects, must be regarded in this light. His discernment was rather acute than comprehensive or profound, and much more adapted to the small matters of private life, than to the complex relations of a great empire. We need not dwell on the pedantry and general vanity of this monarch, nor on his want of personal courage; in all these respects he was without an equal, and almost without a resemblance in the race of English princes.

But in the character of James I. there were vices more censurable than have yet been described. It was an evil of serious magnitude, that a prince should have made it the great object of his reign to substitute the despotic theory of the old civil law, in the place of the free principles of the English constitution; and that to gratify the men who flattered him in this meditated wrong against his people, and to be avenged on those who endeavoured, though with the most studied decorum, to counteract this evil purpose, he could be guilty of frequent acts of oppression. But this was not all. The monarch who, while pursuing this course, betrayed weaknesses which must have made him an object of pity, was prone to faults which deserved a stronger reprobation, and a slave to vices which could not fail to make him an object of disgust. The contemporary writers complain equally of his utter faithlessness, and his habitual profaneness

Beaumont's Reports, Sept. 1603, in Raumer, ii. 202. "He would make a great deal too bold with God in his passion, both in cursing and swearing, and one strain

those who knew him most intimately, being but too well apprized that his most solemn asseverations were not to be trusted *; and they express themselves astonished that a monarch claiming precedence of all princes in matters of religion, should be found so much wanting with regard to ordinary integrity, and an apparent reverence for sacred things. The great source of these vices, and others, was intoxication, in which James indulged to a most degrading extent. A few months after his accession, the English monarch gave the ambassadors of Denmark and Brunswick a banquet, at which his majesty took charge of the honours of his house, and having drunk for the space of five hours, fell senseless on the table in the presence of his guests +. The propensity of the king in this respect was noticed by the queen as leading necessarily to "an early and an evil result," and was the principal reason assigned by her when urging that the young prince of Wales should be committed to her care. In 1606, James was represented on the stage as cursing and swearing, because he had been robbed of a bird; as beating a gentleman who had happened to call off the hounds from the scent; and as being drunk, at least, once a day. The monarch interposed to prevent a repetition of these exposures, but continued to scandalize his subjects by a still freer indulgence in the excesses to which they referred. Indeed the licentiousness of his language and behaviour became such towards the close of his career as not to admit of being described. The residence of the Duke of Buckingham was the place where strange orgies were often celebrated. "But I have too much modesty," says the French ambassador, "to describę in the terms of strict truth things which one would rather suppress than commit in writing to ambassadorial dispatches, destined for the perusal of exalted persons. They are such as even friends touch upon only with reluctance in confidential letters. I have nevertheless sought out for the most decent expressions which I can make use of to convey to you some of the particulars, but I have not succeeded, whether because I am deficient in adroitness, or that it be actually impossible to lay these histories before chaste ears." Subsequently, the ambassador was induced to become more communicative, and the translator of his description, forbearing to proceed, remarks, that the passage omitted adds a lamentable proof to the many before extant of James's disgusting indecencies, and observes that it is hard to read it, "without deriving the worst opinion of his habits, and those of his favourites §." The language in which the king's friendship for Buckingham is described by the authority adverted to we shall not venture to transcribe. It must be sufficient to say that an

higher, verging on blasphemy, but would, in his better temper, say, he hoped God would not impute them as sins." Weldon, pp. 23, 181, 186.

*See pages 88, 160.

Raumer, ii. 200, 220, 259-261, 266, 269, 274, 276, 278, 279. The sort of repentance which sometimes followed the king's bursts of passion and profaneness, generally succeeded his fits of inebriation. Boderic, iii. 196, 197. Raumer, ii. 219, 220.

Villeroi to La Boderic, April 1606.

§ See Tillieres in Raumer, ii. 260, 261, English Translation. London, 1835.