Keeper signified to each of them His Majestie's pleasure in that behalfe; shewing them, with all, how gratiously he had bene pleased to deale with them, both in the maner of the restraint, which was only during the time of the examination of the cause (a thing usuall and requisite specially in cases of that consequence), and in that they had bene committed to the custodie of eminent and honorable persons by whom they were treated according to their qualities; and lykewise in the discharge of them now from their restraint that they may have the better convenience and meanes to prepare themselves for the defense of their cause in that legall coursse by which His Majestie had thought fit to call them to an account and tryall. "The like was also signified by his Lordship to Sir Robert COTTON, who was further tolde that although it was His Majestie's pleasure that his Studies' [meaning, that is, his Library and Museum,] 'shoulde, as yett, remaine shut up, yet he might enter into them and take such writtings wherof he shoulde have use, provided that he did it in the presence of a Clerke of the Counsell; and whereas the Clerke attending hath the keyes of two of his Studies he might put a seconde lock on either of them so that neither dores might be opened, but by him and the said Clerke both together.' BOOK I, LIFE OF Chap. II. SIR ROBERT COTTON. Council Register, Chas. I, vol v, ff. 495, 496 (c. o.). A reader who now looks back on this singular transaction-and who has therefore the advantage of looking at it by the stern-lights of history,-will be likely to believe that the chief offence of the pamphlet lay (in a certain CHARACTER sense,) in its truth. It was the much too frank exposition of a policy which clung very close to CHARLES' heart, though he could ill afford-in 1629-to have it openly avowed. The undeniable fact that this Proposition for AND AU THORSHIP OP POSITION TO Book I, LIFE OF COTTON. Your Majesty's Service' was indeed fitter for the latitude of Constantinople, than for that of London, sounds but SI ROBERT awkwardly on the royal lips, when connected with an assertion (in the same breath,) of the 'justice and mildness' of the King's own government. The indictment which his Parliament brought against CHARLES,—and which History has endorsed, could hardly be packed into briefer words than those which the King himself used that day at the Council Board. His notions of kingly rule, like his father's, were in truth much better suited for the government of Turkey than for the government of England. Sir Robert COTTON, however, had no more to do with the authorship of the Proposition' than had CHARLES himself. The author was Sir Robert DUDLEY. The time of its composition was at least fifteen years before the date of the imprisonment of COTTON and his companions in disfavour. The place of its birth was Florence. It cannot even be proved that COTTON had any personal knowledge of the fact that the offensive tract had been found in his own library. He had recently read it, indeed,-in common with BEDFORD, CLARE, and Oliver SAINT-JOHN, and no doubt, like them, had read it with many surging thoughts, -but he had read it in a recent transcript, written by a clerk. Of Robert DUDLEY'S motive in writing his Proposition' we have also no proof. But the presumptive and internal evidence is so strong, as to make proof almost superfluous. The tract bears witness, between the lines, that it was composed to win the favour—or at least to arrest the despoiling hand-of King JAMES. And there is hardly a suggestion in it which might not be backed by some parallel passage in the writings, or the speeches, of JAMES himself, when expatiating on kingly prerogatives in some mood of mind a little more foolish than usual, or when striving-only too successfully—to train up his successor to follow in his own path. It seems like an irony of Fate to find that (in all probability,—for here again the proof is not quite clinching,) the King's informer, against COTTON and the other offenders, was WENTWORTH, who, not many years after 1629, was to sum up views of policy much akin to Robert DUDLEY'S in the memorable word * Thorough.' COTTON himself believed that this apparently trivial incident cost him his life. He said not long before his We shall probably never death, 'It has killed me.' know whether DUDLEY'S tract had anything to do with bringing about in the mind of WENTWORTH that eventful change of political views which is known to have passed over it (about the time when the incriminated manuscript was sent so eagerly from hand to hand), and which, in a few years more, was to work his death also. But one can hardly avoid, in passing, a momentary thought on the curious possibility that a pamphlet, written at Florence, in the hope that it might save, for the writer, some wreck or remnant of a despoiled inheritance,-may have proved fatal alike to the close political friend of ELIOT, and to the close political friend of LAUD. A tract of such potency may well claim a few words about its contents. They bear in line the stamp of mental energy, and also the stamp of moral recklessness. every Book I, LIFE OF Chap. II. SIR ROBERT COTTON. SIR R. AUTHOR). Sir Robert DUDLEY knew well enough that a rooted dis- CAREER OF like of Parliaments was, in JAMES's mind, combined with DUDLEY, a besetting dread of them. He knew that, between hate (THE TRUE and fear, a Parliament was like a nightmare, for ever crouching behind the royal pillow. It is the purpose of his tract to tell the King how to drive the nightmare BOOK I. SIK ROBERT away. He recommends, amongst other and minor measures, The shortsightedness of such advice as this is now obvious enough. But advice quite as shortsighted and far less plausibly couched,-for the eyes that were to read it,— had been fruitful of result, when offered to Stuarts. Nor was the man who now offered it to CHARLES a mere clever talker. He was a man who had already acquitted himself with conspicuous ability in several spheres of action, lying widely apart. Sir Robert DUDLEY possessed many splendid accom BOOK I, Chap. II. SIR ROBERT THE CAREKR OF SIR DUDLEY. plishments. He had been educated by the same ripe scholar who afterwards became tutor to Prince HENRY. LIFE OF At the age of one and twenty, he had put himself into the lists with RALEGH, as navigator and discoverer, by heading an expedition to the Oronoco. In the course of that expedition he had captured nine Spanish ships; one of ROBERT them of twice his own strength. At three and twenty, he had fought, side by side with RALEGH, in the naval battle in the bay of Cadiz; had handled his ship with an ability which won the praise of his rivals; and had then fought, in the land attack, side by side with ESSEX. When his own unbridled passions and resentments gave a fatal opening for the equally unbridled cupidity of JAMES, and of JAMES'S courtiers, to despoil him of a great estate, and to drive him into exile, he showed that he knew how to snatch honour out of defeat. He laid the foundation of a new English trade with Italy and created-it is not saying too much-the maritime prosperity of Leghorn. He drained vast Italian marshes, and made corn to grow where corn had never grown before. The man who, in early life, had won fame at once as a navigator full of pluck and resource, and as an able soldier by sea and land :—and who, on attaining full manhood, had shown himself both a clever diplomatist and a great engineer;-did not go to his foreign grave before he had won literary fame with the pen, and scientific fame at the furnace of the chemist. He had, in its fullest measure, the versatility and the energy of his race. English family biography, I suppose, can scarcely show a stranger group of lives than the. successive lives of the last four DUDLEYS of that line:-Edmund, the Minister of HENRY VII, and author of The Tree of the Commonwealth ; NORTHUMBERLAND, the subduer of EDWARD VI, and the murderer of Jane GREY; LEICESTER, the Favourite of |