Oldalképek
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

that the profane, the lascivious, and feeble-minded James, was in reality one of the best of kings, Great Britain's Solomon." 'It is well known,' he says, in narrating an anecdote of Prince Henry, that James I. had a habit of swearing,---innocent expletives in conversation, which, in truth, only expressed the warmth of his feelings; but in that age, when Puritanism had already possessed half the nation, an oath was considered as nothing short of blasphemy.' Doubtless, this apology for swearing still holds good with those who take special care not to be mistaken for persons so possessed in the present day.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

Our Author takes every occasion to vent his anger against those ultra-moralists, the Puritans. He devotes twenty pages to the history of the Theatre during its suppression' by the fanatics, which was the result, he telis us, of an ancient quarrel between the Puritanic party and the whole corps dramatique,' in the reign of Elizabeth. These anti-dramatists were indeed, he admits, the instruments of purifying the stage; we owe them this good;' but then, they wanted,' says this gentleman, the taste to feel that it was also a popular school of morality; that the stage is a supplement to the pulpit!" In this school of morality, the use of innocent expletives' as expressions of warmth of feeling, is among the many things which the Author, perhaps, thinks are to be learned to advantage. He is far, however, from being singular in his opinion of its moral efficiency, as a supplement to the pulpit.' There have been, and still are, clergymen of his way of thinking, who have deemed patronizing the theatre, the best mode of opposition to the meeting-house, the head-quarters of the common enemy. Mr. D'Israeli quotes some lines from Alexander Brome, which illustrate this strange association.

[ocr errors]

'Tis worth our note,

Bishops and players both suffered in one vote:

And reason good, for they had cause to fear them;
One did suppress their schisms, and t'other jeer them.'

[ocr errors]

The actors were, of course, as our Author and Mr. Gifford assert, with one wretched' exception, malignants' (that is to say, royalists) to a man. "Of these men, who had lived in the sunshine of a court, and amidst taste and criticism, many perished in the field, from their affection to their royal mas• ter' !! This touch of sentiment ventures rather too near the ludicrous. However, the actors of those days were doubtless very excellent and elevated characters, and the nation suffered much in its morals, while the stage was silenced; but all was set to rights when that merry fellow Charles II. was brought in. Charles I., Mr. D'Israeli says, had a mind moulded by the

[ocr errors]

Graces;' and he dwells with enthusiasm on his character, which, grave and king-like' as it was, had its softening feature in his passion for the Arts. He was himself a painter and a poet, as well as a patron of artists, though history has not recorded the circumstance, and, as is well known, a great admirer of Shakspeare. For this he was censured, says our Author, 'even by Milton,' alluding, we presume, to the blundering misconstruction of a passage in Milton's Iconoclastes, which has been made, by successive commentators, the ground of so much silly invective against Puritanical bigotry. Charles I was never censured by Milton for having those native poets' as his closet companions.'

[ocr errors]

The secret history of Charles I. and his Queen Henrietta, receives some illustration by the anecdotes adduced for the purpose of shewing that Henrietta had not the share in the transactions of the reign, which Hume and almost every other historian ascribe to her influence over her uxorious husband. The dismissing of her French attendants, which Hume imagines to have originated with Buckingham, appears to have been the determined act of the King himself, in opposition to his favourite, and at. the risk of a war with France, his motive being to quell the Catholic faction which was ruling the Queen.' In proof of this statement, reference is made to two letters from Charles I. to Buckingham, contained in the Hardwicke State Papers, Henrietta, says our Author,

<

6

after all, was nothing more than a volatile woman; one who had never studied, never reflected, and whom nature had formed to be charming and haughty, but whose vivacity could not retain even a state secret for an hour, and whose talents were quite opposite to those of deep political intrigue. No female was ever more deeply tainted with Catholic bigotry; and haughty as she was, the Princess suffered the most insulting superstitions, inflicted as penances by her priests, for this very marriage with a Protestant prince.'

A remarkable and hitherto unnoticed document is referred to, (contained in the "Ambassades du Mareschal de Bassom"pierre," vol. iii.) as throwing further light upon the secret history of this period.

It is nothing less than a most solemn obligation contracted with the Pope, and her brother the King of France, to educate her children as Catholics, and only to choose Catholics to attend them. Had this been known either to Charles, or to the English_nation, Henrietta could never have been permitted to ascend the English throne. The fate of both her sons shows how faithfully she performed this treasonable contract. This piece of secret history opens the concealed cause of those deep impressions of that faith, which both monarchs sucked in with their milk; that triumph of the cradle over

the grave which most men experience. Charles II. died a Catholic, James II. lived as one.'

The conduct of Charles, when he discovered the intrigues of her French household, certainly displayed a firmness the very reverse of the spirit attributed to him by those who represent him as a slave to his queen. This establishment was daily growing in expense and number.

A manuscript letter of the times states that it cost the King 2401. a day, and had increased from threescore persons to four hundred and forty, besides children.

It was one evening that the King suddenly appeared, and, summoning the French household, commanded them to take their instant departure the carriages were prepared for their removal. In doing this, Charles had to resist the warmest intreaties, and even the vehement anger of the Queen, who is said in her rage to have broken several panes of the window of the apartment, to which the King had dragged her, and confined her from them.' When the French Marshal Bassompierre was sent over to awe the King, Charles sternly offered the alternative of war, rather than permit a French faction to trouble an English court. The Marshal has also preserved the same distinctive feature of the nation, as well as of the monarch, who, surely to his honour as King of England, felt and acted on this occasion as a true Briton. "I have found," says the Gaul, “humility among Spaniards, civility and courtesy among the Swiss, in the embassies I had the honour to perform for the King; but the English would not in the least abate of their natural pride and arrogance. The King is so resolute not to re-establish any French about the Queen his consort, and was so stern (rude) in speaking to me, that it is impossible to have been more so.'

The character of the Duke of Buckingham, the favourite equally of James I. and of Charles I,, furnished our Author with a topic of illustrative anecdote in one of the former volumes, and he there speaks of his audacity and abandoned profligacy, in much the same terms as all honest historians have spoken of them. From some eccentric motive, which we care not to divine, he seems, however, in the present volume, solicitous to efface as much as possible this unfavourable pression. Hume is now accused of throwing into the shade the fascinating qualities of the Duke's better nature. His 'errors and infirmities' were those, it seems, of a man of sensation, acting from impulse,' and sprung from a sanguine, but generous spirit. Buckingham was the decided enemy of the Puritan party: this, in our Author's estimation, would be a palliative of the lowest vices; and he tells us a story, from the Lansdowne MSS., which was told by Thomas Baker to Mr. Wotton as coming from one well versed in the secret history of that time,' about a Dr. Preston's being the most servile adulator of the Duke, at the very time that

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

he was speaking of him to his Puritan correspondents, as 'a vile and profligate fellow," of whom, nevertheless, it was necessary for the glory of God to make use as an instrument. Some of ficious hand, it is said, conveyed this letter to Buckingham, who, after exposing it to Dr Preston, on his denying the charge, turned from him, and from that moment abandoned the Puritan party!! A very good story, if it did but bear the marks of veracity, but not quite sufficient even then, to prove all that our Author intends it should imply.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

Felton the assassin, is the subject of a distinct disquisition, evidently for the purpose of bringing in the Republicans and Puritans as sanctioning the act of the conscientious' assassin. Felton's mind had passed, he says, through an evangelical process: four theological propositions struck the knife into the 'heart of the Minister. Never was a man murdered with more Gospel than the Duke.' The curious document' which our Author introduces in order to substantiate this malicious misrepresentation, gives at once the lie to his assertion. It is remarkable that it does not contain one proposition strictly theological, and is wholly free from what would in those times have been deemer an evangelical character. It is completely the reasoning of a disorder d mind, and corresponds well enough to his ingenuous confession, on his arguments being overturned by the King's attorney, that he had been in a mistake.

[ocr errors]

Propositions found in Felton's trunk, at the time he slew the

Duke.

1. There is no alliance nearer to any one than his country.
2. The safety of the people is the chiefest law.

3. No law is more sacred, than the safety and welfare of the Commonwealth.

4. God himself hath enacted this law, that all things that are for the good profit and benefit of the Commonwealth, shall be lawful.'

That Felton' had imbibed the religious enthusiasm of the times, is an assertion purely gratuitous. He was one of those thousand officers, who had incurred disappointments, both in promotion and in arrears of pay from the careless Duke.' His immediate motive was inconceivable even to his contemporaries, but it is evident that there was more of the Roman than of the Puritan in him. Buckingham, on being advised to wear some secret defensive armour, had slightingly replied, "It needs 66 not, there are no Roman spirits left." He did not calculate upon meeting with a Brutus in a lunatic.

Rushworth's account of Felton's manly behaviour before the council, is corrected in some particulars, on the authority of the Harleian MSS. It was to my Lord Dorset, not to Laud, that, when threatened with the torture if he did not confess his accomplices, he replied with admirable presence of mind: 3 B

VOL. X. N.S.

My Lord, I do not believe that it is the King's pleasure, for he is a just and gracious Prince, and will not have his subjects tortured against law. I do affirm upon my salvation that my purpose was not known to any man living; but if it be his Majesty's pleasure, I am ready to suffer whatever his Majesty will have inflicted upon me. this I must tell you by the way, that if I be put upon the rack, I will accuse you, my Lord of Dorset, and none but yourself.'

Yet

This firm and sensible speech silenced them.' The Judges were consulted, and came to a decision condemnatory of the continual practice of the Government, namely, that Felton ought not to be tortured by the rack, no such pu'nishment being known or allowed by Law: so much more 'exact reasoners with regard to Law,' had the Judges, says Hume, become from the jealous scruples of the House of Commons.' The rack, as our Author shews, on several authorities, had been much more frequently used as a state engine, than has reached the knowledge of our Historians.' Both Elizabeth and her successor had recourse to this terrible instrument of arbitrary cruelty.

The prognostics' which preceded the assassination of Buckingham, were enough, one would have imagined, to alarm the most rash and dauntless spirit.

About a month before the Duke was assassinated, occurred the murder by the populace of the man who was called "The Duke's Devil." This was a Dr. Lambe, a man of infamous character; a dealer in magical arts, who lived by shewing apparitions or selling the favours of the devil, and whose chambers were a convenient rendezvous for the curious of both sexes. This wretched man, who openly exulted in the infamous traffic by which he lived, when he was sober, prophesied that he should fall one day by the hands from which he re ceived his death; and it was said he was as positive about his patron's. At the age of eighty, he was torn to pieces in the City, and the City was imprudently fined £6000, for not delivering up those, who, in murdering this hoary culprit, were heard to say that they would handle his master worse, and would have minced his flesh, and have had every one a bit of him. This is one more instance of the political cannibalism of the mob. The fate of Dr. Lambe served for a ballad, and the printer and singer were laid in Newgate. Buckingham, it seems, for a moment contemplated his own fate in his wretched creature's, more particularly as another omen obtruded itself on his attention; for on

'Rushworth has preserved a burthen of one of these Songs.
Let Charles and George do what they can,

The Duke shall die like Dr. Lambe.

And on the assassination of the Duke, I find two lines in a as. letter.

The Shepherd's struck, the sheep are fled!

For want of Lamb, the Wolf' is dead.'

« ElőzőTovább »