<91>Although it was impossible that Parliament should have any real knowledge of the course of the negotiations with France, April.Details of the negotiations with France not generally known.it can have been no secret that the relations between the two crowns were anything but satisfactory. It was a matter of common conversation that Blainville had for some weeks been refused admission to Court, that English ships and goods had been sequestered in France, and that French ships and goods were still being brought as prizes into English ports. There was enough in this to throw serious doubt on Carleton’s assertion that the King was only waiting for Parliamentary supplies in order to join France in open war. If this had been the whole truth, why did not Charles give further information of the objects at which he was aiming, and of the means by which he expected to attain them?
Such general distrust of a Government is certain to vent itself in personal attacks upon those of whom it is composed. In the course of the past weeks the committees of the Commons had been busily bringing together all kinds of charges against Buckingham, thinking that here was to be found the explanation of that which was otherwise so inexplicable. The House of Lords too, unluckily for Buckingham, had a grievance of its own. Case of the Earl of Arundel.Charles had probably forgotten that by sending Arundel to the Tower whilst Parliament was sitting, he might be accused of violating the privileges of the House of Lords; but the Peers were not disposed to be <92>equally forgetful, and, after no long delay, they demanded an account of Interference of the House of Lords.the absence of a member of their House from his place in Parliament. During the Easter recess Arundel was allowed to exchange his cell in the Tower for confinement in one of his own houses. Agreeable as the change may have been to himself, it did not affect the grievance of the Peers, and on April 19 April 19.Their remonstrance.they drew up a remonstrance vindicating their right to demand the presence of any member of their House who was not accused of treason, felony, or refusal to give security against breach of the peace.[150]
At this juncture a fresh champion raised his voice on behalf of the privileges of Parliament, a champion whose co-operation was Bristol appears on the scene.all the more valuable to the leaders of the Lower House, because he could speak with official knowledge of the actions which he denounced, and was not, as they had been, compelled to extract the truth from the mouths of unwilling witnesses.
When Charles first ascended the throne he had missed the opportunity of putting an end gracefully to his long altercation with Bristol. 1625.May.Charles’s message to Bristol.He assured his father’s late ambassador that, though he was quite aware that he had not offended in any matter of honesty, he could not acquit him of trusting too implicitly to the Spanish ministers. Bristol must therefore acknowledge his error if he wished to be received into favour, though the slightest acknowledgment would be sufficient.
Slight as the acknowledgment required was, it was more than Bristol could give, unless he were first convinced that he had Bristol’s confinement continued.committed an error at all. When once Charles’s overtures had been rejected, and Bristol’s confinement at Sherborne was maintained, a grievance had been established of which that cool and practised disputant was certain sooner or later to avail himself. For, loose as the <93>notions on the right of imprisonment by prerogative had been, it was difficult to argue that the King was justified in depriving a subject of his liberty on the simple ground that the subject thought that he had been right when the King thought he had been wrong.
Even Charles seems to have had the glimmering of a suspicion that everything was not as it should be. He sent directions to Bristol June 10.Bristol forbidden to come to Parliament.to abstain from presenting himself at his first Parliament, but he excused himself on the ground that he had as yet had no time to examine the causes of his restraint.
Months passed away, and there were no signs that the requisite leisure would ever be found. Bristol quietly remained at Sherborne 1626.January.He asks to be present at the Coronation.till the approaching coronation gave him an excuse for asking for liberty. He also reminded the King that the instructions which he had received commanded him to remain in the confinement in which he had been at James’s death. As, however, his late master had ordered his liberation, it was hard to know what was precisely intended.
Charles perhaps thought that Bristol was laughing at him, and flashed into anger. Forgetting that he had already pronounced the Earl to be guiltless of any real offence, he now accused him of having attempted to pervert him from his religion when he was in Spain, and of having given his approval to the proposal that the Electoral Prince should be educated at Vienna.
Violent as the King’s letter was, it contained no intimation of any intention to bring Bristol to trial. The incriminated man Bristol answers that he is ready for a trial.saw his advantage. In his reply he plainly showed it to be his opinion that, though he could not, as a subject, demand from his sovereign a trial as a right, the charges which had been brought against him were such as could only be fairly met in open court.[151]
At any other time Bristol would probably have been <94>compelled to remain quietly at Sherborne without hope of liberty. Parliament, however, being again in session, the Earl, who, for March 22.He petitions the Lords for his writ.a second time had received no writ of summons, forced Charles’s hand by petitioning the Lords to mediate with the King that he might either be brought to trial or allowed his rights as a subject and a Peer.[152]
Here at least Bristol was sure of a favourable hearing. The Peers had already expressed a strong opinion in Arundel’s case that March 30.The Lords support Bristol.the King had no right to deprive their House of the services of any one of its members without bringing him to trial, and a committee to which Bristol’s petition was referred reported that there was no instance on record in which a Peer capable of sitting in Parliament had been refused his writ. The King, answered Buckingham, would grant the writ, but he had intimated to Bristol that he did not wish him to make use of it. So transparent a subterfuge was not likely to be acceptable to the Lords. Lord Saye and Sele, always ready to protest against arbitrary proceedings, moved that it should be entered in the Journal Book that, at the Earl’s petition, his Majesty sent him the writ;— and no more. Saye’s proposal was at once adopted, and no trace of Charles’s unlucky contrivance is to be found in the records of the House.[153]
Bristol had another surprise in store for Charles. As soon as he received the writ from Coventry, with the accompanying letter April.Bristol comes to London.informing him that he was not to use it, he replied with inimitable irony that as the writ, being under the King’s great seal, took precedence of a mere letter from the Lord Keeper, it was his duty to obey the Royal missive by coming to London.[154]
When Bristol reached London he proceeded to lay his correspondence with Coventry before the Peers. For two years, he added, April 17.Attacks Buckingham.he had been a prisoner simply because Buckingham was afraid of him. He therefore desired to be heard ‘both in the point of his wrongs, and of the accusation of the said Duke.’
<95>Charles and Buckingham seemed to be powerless in the hands of the terrible Earl. They had but one move left in a game in which April 17.Is accused by the King of high treason.their adversary had occupied all the positions of strength in advance. Though Charles had emphatically declared that Bristol had committed no actual offence, and had been guilty of nothing worse than an error of judgment, he was now compelled to accuse him of high treason, if he was not to allow him to take his seat triumphantly and to attack Buckingham from the very midst of the House of Lords.
That House had suddenly risen to a position unexampled for many a long year. Its decision was awaited anxiously on the gravest questions. April 29.Was Bristol to take his seat?It was called upon to do justice on Bristol, on Buckingham, and, by implication, on the King himself. By this time too it was becoming evident that the sympathy of the House was not with Buckingham. There was a sharp debate on the question whether Bristol should be allowed to take his seat till his accusation had been read. The supporters of the Government were compelled to avoid an adverse decision by an adjournment, and prevent further discussion by hurrying on the accusation.
On May 1, therefore, Bristol was brought to the bar, to listen to the allegations of the Attorney-General. Before Heath could open his mouth May 1.the prisoner appealed to the House, urging that the object of the charge was merely to put him in the position of a person accused of treason, so as to invalidate his testimony against Buckingham. He called Pembroke to witness how, when he first returned from Spain, Buckingham had proposed to silence him by sending him to the Tower. Buckingham, he said, was now aiming at the same object in another way.
If there had ever been any intention of getting rid of Bristol’s charges The charges to proceed simultaneously.upon technical grounds it could hardly be pressed after this. It was finally decided that, though the Attorney-General was to have the precedence, the two cases were to be considered as proceeding <96>simultaneously, so as to allow Bristol to say what he liked without hindrance.[155]
Hitherto the contest had been very one-sided. In Bristol’s hands Charles and Buckingham had been as novices contending The charges against Bristol.with a practised gladiator. In truth they had but little to say. Many of Heath’s charges related to mere advice given as a councillor, and those which went further would hardly bear the superstructure which was placed upon them. The attempt to change the Prince’s religion of course figured in the list, as did also an elaborate argument that if Bristol had not advised the continuance of the marriage negotiations in spite of his knowledge that the Spaniards were not in earnest, Charles would not have been obliged to go to Madrid to test the value of the ambassador’s asseverations. Still more strange was the accusation that Bristol, in expressing a doubt of the accuracy of Buckingham’s narrative in the Parliament of 1624, had thrown suspicion upon a statement which the present King had affirmed to be true, and had thereby given ‘his Majesty the lie.’
Bristol’s charges against Buckingham were then read. His main point was that Buckingham had plotted with Gondomar Bristol’s charges against Buckingham.to carry the Prince into Spain in order to effect a change in his religion, and that Porter, when he went to Madrid in the end of 1622, was cognisant of this plot. When Buckingham was in Spain, he had absented himself from the English service in the ambassador’s house, and had gone so far as to kneel in adoration of the Sacrament, in order ‘to give the Spaniards a hope of the Prince’s conversion.’ Far worse conditions had been imposed by Spain after the Prince’s visit than had been thought of before, and if England was now free from them it was because Buckingham’s behaviour was so intolerable that the Spanish ministers refused to have anything further to do with him. Other charges of less importance followed, and then Bristol proceeded to accuse Conway of acting as a mere tool of the man whom he was accustomed to style his most gracious patron.
<97>Even if Buckingham, as was probably the case, had been the dupe rather than the confederate of Gondomar, and if he had merely Case between Bristol and Buckingham.played with the Spaniards in their hopeless design of converting the Prince, in order that he might gain his own ends the better, the weight of Bristol’s charges against him tells far more heavily than those which he was able to bring against Bristol. Not one of the latter can compare in gravity with that one of his own actions which is known beyond doubt to have actually taken place, namely, that he formed a plan with a foreign ambassador for carrying the Prince to Spain, and that he concealed the design for nearly a whole year from the reigning sovereign.
No wonder that Buckingham and Buckingham’s master had been anxious to avoid the terrible exposure. They were probably aware that Bristol had in his possession the letters which had been carried by Porter to Spain; and, though we have no means of knowing what those letters contained, there can be little doubt that there was much in them which neither Charles nor Buckingham would wish to make public.[156] As soon as it was known that May 2.Interference by the King.the Lords meant to go into the evidence on both sides, Charles sent them a message that Bristol’s charges were merely recriminatory, and that he was himself able to bear witness to their untruth. Though Carlisle did his best to irritate the Peers against Bristol by calling the attention of the House to the Earl’s disrespect to their lordships in sending a copy of his charges to the Commons, they refused to notice an act in committing which the prisoner had evidently intended to secure for himself the publicity of which he feared to be deprived.[157]
The investigation therefore was left to take its course. On the 6th, in the midst of May 6.Bristol’s defence.a defence conducted with consummate ability, and in which Bristol pointed out that whatever he might have said in Spain about the Prince’s conversion was caused by Charles’s deliberate <98>abstention from contradicting the rumours which were abroad of his intended change of religion, the accused Earl extracted from Pembroke an admission that he knew of Buckingham’s proposal to send him to the Tower on his return from Spain. Such an admission, by showing how indifferent Buckingham had been to the wishes of James, went far to strengthen the suspicions which were generally entertained, that he was now no less indifferent to the wishes of Charles.
Every step of this great process was marked by some fresh interference of the King. He now sent to contest the right of the Lords May 8.Question of allowing counsel.to allow Bristol the use of counsel, as being contrary to the fundamental laws of the realm. This and the preceding message, in which Charles had tendered his personal evidence, were very coolly received by the Peers. The question of the propriety of admitting the King’s evidence was referred to the Judges. The question of counsel was debated in the House. In the course of the discussion one of the Peers mentioned that in 1624, when Charles himself was a member of the House, counsel had been allowed to persons accused before the Lords.[158]
The discussion was at its height when fresh actors appeared upon the scene. A deputation from the Commons, with Carleton, Buckingham impeached by the Commons.a most unwilling spokesman, at its head, had come to demand a conference that afternoon, with the intention of proceeding with the long-prepared impeachment of the Duke.
In the afternoon, therefore, eight managers on behalf of the Commons, together with sixteen assistants, appeared to read and to explain the charges. To the surprise of many, though it was not strictly in contravention of precedent,[159] Buckingham himself was present, taking up a position directly opposite to the managers, and even, it is said, expressing his contempt for them by laughing in their faces.[160]
<99>The prologue was entrusted to Digges. “The laws of England,” he said, after a preamble in which he attributed to the Duke Prologue by Digges.all the calamities which had befallen the nation, “have taught us that kings cannot command ill or unlawful things. And whatsoever ill events succeed, the executioners of such designs must answer for them.”
It has been said that no one rises so high as he who knows not whither he is going. Importance of his declaration.Little did the Commons think of all that was implied in these words. By the mouth of Digges they had grasped at the sovereignty of England.
By his constant personal interference Charles had shown that he knew better than the House of Commons how much Meaning of the personal interference of Charles.his own authority was at stake. They fancied that Buckingham had been the author of everything that had been done; had taken advantage of the King’s youth and docility; had deceived him, misadvised him, even plundered him, without his knowing anything about the matter. Charles knew that it was not so; that he had himself been a party to all that had been done, either by agreeing to it beforehand or by approving of it afterwards. As this was so, he would never abandon Buckingham to his adversaries. Everything, he assured the Houses again and again, had been done by him or with his consent. It was not his fault if the Commons would not face the larger question of royal responsibility before entering upon the smaller question of ministerial responsibility. He at least was perfectly clear about royal responsibility. The king, he held, as Laud had taught him, was responsible to God alone. When the king had said that a thing had been well done, there was an end of the matter. The weakness of the position of the Commons was that they would not look this assertion in the face. They maintained that by impeaching Buckingham they were strengthening the King’s hands, whereas they were in reality weakening them, and were making the King indirectly responsible, whilst they would be the first to deny that he was responsible at all.
The Commons had need to take good care to say no more than they could prove. Yet how was this possible? The records <100>of State affairs were not accessible to them. No Blue Books were Difficulty of reaching the truth.issued in those days to enlighten them on the words spoken and the policy supported by a minister. Since Charles’s accession the acts of Government had been veiled in deeper secrecy than ever before. If James had sometimes changed his mind, he had never failed to speak out the thought which ruled him for the time being. Charles said as little as possible, and no one was commissioned to say much on his behalf.
Besides the difficulty of knowing what had really been done, the Commons had made another difficulty for themselves by their resolution to spare the King. Again and again, in the course of their investigations, they reached the point in which Buckingham’s acts ran into the acts of the King. In such a case silence was their only resource. They could not tell all they knew.
The first charge was entrusted to Edward Herbert, one day to be the Attorney-General who took part in the impeachment of the five members. The first day of the impeachment.He spoke of the danger to the State from the many offices held in one hand; of the purchase of the Admiralty from Nottingham, and of the purchase of the Cinque Ports from Zouch. Selden had then to speak of the failure to guard the Narrow Seas, and of the detention of the ‘St. Peter’ of Havre de Grace. To Glanville was entrusted the tale of the money exacted from the East India Company, and of the ships lent to serve against the Protestants of Rochelle.
Can it be wondered that Buckingham, conscious of his superior knowledge, should smile as he heard each story, told only Criticism on these charges.as these men were able to tell it? Did he not know that in paying money to Nottingham and Zouch he had only conformed to the general custom? Could the failure to guard the seas be judged irrespectively of the wisdom of the other employment to which the ships had been destined in preference, or the exaction of money from the East India Company irrespective of the share which James had had in the transaction? To come to a true conclusion about the seizure of the ‘St. Peter,’ or the loan of the ships for Rochelle, it was <101>necessary to know the whole truth about the relations between England and France; and though the whole truth would have told even more against the Court than the charges brought by the Commons, Buckingham may perhaps be excused for thinking more of the weakness of his opponents’ case than of the weakness of his own. Still more had they missed the mark in charging him with the assumption of many offices in his own person. The Mastership of the Horse was a mere domestic office in the King’s household. There was a direct advantage to the State in the accumulation of the Admiralty and the Wardenship of the Cinque Ports in the hands of one person. The real grievance was not that Buckingham nominally held three offices, but that, although he was incompetent for the task, he virtually controlled the action of the occupants of all other offices.
On May 10 the remainder of the charges were heard. This time the Duke absented himself from the House. Sherland declared that May 10.Second day of the impeachment.Buckingham had compelled Lord Robartes to buy a peerage against his will. He had also sold the Treasurership to Manchester, and the Mastership of the Wards to Middlesex. Pym spoke effectively of the honours dealt out to Buckingham’s poor kindred, entailing upon the Crown the necessity of supporting them. Buckingham had himself received from the Crown lands producing a rental of more than 3,000l., and ready money to the amount of upwards of 160,000l., to say nothing of valuable grants of other kinds. What these grants were worth no man could discover; for the accounts of the revenue were in such confusion that it was impossible to say how much had come into the Duke’s hands by fictitious entries. One last charge remained, that of administering medicine to the late King on his death-bed. Wentworth’s friend, Wandesford, did not venture to allude to the rumours of poison, which were at that time generally credited; but he justly characterised the act as one of ‘transcendent presumption.’
That the facts thus disclosed deserved the most stringent investigation it is impossible to deny. On the other hand it must be remembered that the lavish grants of James to Buckingham and his kindred were a reproach rather to the giver than <102>to the receiver, and, further, that the looseness of the manner in which the accounts were kept, which has been such as to baffle every serious investigator into the financial history of the time, is susceptible of another explanation than that which was given by Pym. Nothing can be asserted positively, but there is every reason to believe that the real accounts, if they were ever to be recovered, would tell more in Buckingham’s favour than against him. Sums were paid into his hands, there can be little doubt, which were used by him not for his personal objects, but for the service of the State, or for purposes to which the King wished them to be applied.[161]
Reform, in short, was absolutely needed, a reform to which the expulsion of Buckingham from power Need of reform.would be the first step. Yet, with all his faults, the Buckingham of history is very different from the Buckingham of the <103>impeachment. Though it would go hard with him if he had to prove that he had any one qualification fitting him for the government of a great nation, he would have no difficulty in showing that much which had been said by the Commons was exaggerated or untrue.
It remained to sum up the different charges, and to embody the general feeling of the House in a few well-chosen words. Eliot sums up.To none could the task better be entrusted than to Eliot, who above all others had urged on the preparation of the charges with unremitting zeal, and who believed, with all the energy of burning conviction, in the unutterable baseness of the man against whom he was leading the attack. The oratorical and imaginative temperament pervaded the conclusions of Eliot’s judgment. The half-measures and compromises of the world had no place in his mind. What was right in his eyes was entirely right; what was wrong was utterly and irretrievably wrong. So too in his personal attachments and hatreds. Those whom he believed to be serving their country truly he loved with an attachment proof against every trial. Those whom he believed to be doing disservice to their country he hated with an exceeding bitter hatred. Such a nature as Buckingham’s, with its mixture of meanness and nobility, of consideration for self and forgetfulness of self, of empty vanity and real devotion, was a riddle beyond his power to read. In his lofty ideal, in his high disdain for that which he regarded as worthless, in his utter fearlessness and disregard of all selfish considerations, Eliot was the Milton, as Bacon had been almost the Shakspere, of politics.
The doctrine that the King’s command relieved the subject from responsibility found no favour in Eliot’s eyes. “My Lords,” he said, Eliot on responsibility.in speaking of the loan of the ships to serve against Rochelle, “I will say that if his Majesty himself were pleased to have consented, or to have commanded, which I cannot believe, yet this could no way satisfy for the Duke, or make any extenuation of the charge; for it was the duty of his place to have opposed it by his prayers, and to have interceded with his Majesty to make known the dangers, the ill consequences, that might follow. <104>And if this prevailed not, should he have ended here? No; he should then have addressed himself to your lordships, your lordships sitting in council, and there have made it known, there have desired your aids. Nor, if in this he sped not, should he have rested without entering before you a protestation for himself, and that he was not consenting. This was the duty of his place; this has been the practice of his elders; and this, being here neglected, leaves him without excuse.”
It was characteristic of Eliot to approach the subject from the moral rather than the political side. It was nothing to him that he was lightly dashing into ruin the whole scaffolding upon which the Tudor monarchy had rested — the responsibility of ministers to the sovereign alone. He called upon every man to profess openly, in the eye of day, his personal conviction of right as the basis of action. With such a faith, whatever mistakes Eliot might commit in the immediate present, he had raised a standard for the future which could never be permanently dragged in the dust. Not in fidelity to constitutional arrangements, not in obedience to the orders of a king or in obedience to the votes of a Parliament, lay the secret of political capacity. The ideal statesman was to be the man who had the open eye to discern his country’s wants, the tongue to speak freely the counsel which his mind had conceived, and the heart and the resolution to suffer, if not to die, in the defence of his belief.
To such a man as Eliot the faults of Buckingham — his heedlessness, his wanton profusion — must have seemed infinitely mean, Attack upon Buckingham’s power and wealth.altogether meaner than they really were. Buckingham’s power, he said, was in itself a wonder; it needed a party to support it. To that end ‘he raised and preferred to honours and commands those of his own alliance, the creatures of his kindred and affection, how mean soever.’ Having thus got all power into his hands, he ‘set upon the revenues of the Crown, interrupting, exhausting, and consuming that fountain of supply.’ “What vast treasures,” cried Eliot, “he has gotten; what infinite sums of money, and what a mass of lands! If your lordships please to calculate, you will <105>find it all amounting to little less than the whole of the subsidies which the King hath had within that time. A lamentable example of the subjects’ bounties so to be employed! But is this all? No; your lordships may not think it. These are but collections of a short view, used only as an epitome for the rest. There needs no search for it; it is too visible. His profuse expenses, his superfluous feasts, his magnificent buildings, his riots, his excesses, — what are they but the visible evidences of an express exhausting of the State, a chronicle of the immensity of his waste of the revenues of the Crown? No wonder, then, our King is now in want, this man abounding so. And as long as he abounds the King must still be wanting.”
Worse was still to come. Eliot had to make reference to the administration of medicine to the late King, perhaps too in some covert way to the graver suspicions which attached to that act even in the eyes of men who, like Bristol, had little sympathy with mere popular rumour. “Not satisfied,” Eliot continued, “with the wrongs of honour, with the prejudice of religion, with the abuse of State, with the misappropriation of revenues, his attempts go higher, even to the person of his sovereign. You have before you his making practice on that, in such a manner and with such effect as I fear to speak it, nay, I doubt and hesitate to think it. In which respect I shall leave it, as Cicero did the like, ne gravioribus utar verbis quam natura fert, aut levioribus quam causa postulat. The examination with your lordships will show you what it is. I need not name it.
“In all these now your lordships have the idea of the man; what in himself he is, and what in his affections. You have seen his power, and some, I fear, have felt it. What hopes or expectations then he gives To whom is he to be compared?I leave it to your lordships. I will now only see, by comparison with others, where I may find him paralleled or likened; and, so considering what may now become him, from thence render your lordships to a short conclusion.
“Of all the precedents I can find, none so near resembles him as doth Sejanus, and him Tacitus describes thus: that he <106>was audax; sui obtegens, in alios criminator; juxta adulatio et superbia. If your lordships please to measure him by this, Parallel with Sejanus.pray see in what they vary. He is bold. We have had experience lately; and such a boldness I dare be bold to say as is seldom heard of. He is secret in his purposes, and more; that we have showed already. Is he a slanderer? Is he an accuser? I wish this Parliament had not felt it, nor that which was before. And for his pride and flattery, what man can judge the greater? Thus far, I think, the parallel holds. But now, I beseech your lordships, look a little further. Of Sejanus it is likewise noted amongst his policies, amongst his arts, that, to support himself, he did clientes suos honoribus aut provinciis ornare. He preferred his clients to second, to assist him. And does this man do the like? Is it not, and in the same terms, a special cause in our complaint now? Does not this kingdom, does not Scotland, does not Ireland speak it? I will observe one thing more, and end. It is a note upon the pride of Sejanus, upon his high ambition, which your lordships will find set down by Tacitus. His solecisms, his neglect of counsels, his veneries, his venefices; these I will not mention here:[162] only that particular of his pride, which May 10.thus I find. In his public passages and relations he would so mix his business with the prince’s, seeming to confound their actions, that he was often styled laborum imperatoris socius. And does not this man do the like? Is it not in his whole practice? How often, how lately have we heard it? Did he not, in this same place, in this very Parliament, under colour of an explanation for the King, before the committees of both Houses, do the same? Have not your lordships heard him also ever mixing and confusing the King and the State, not leaving a distinction between them? It is too, too manifest.
“My Lords, I have done. You see the man. What have been his actions, whom he is like, you know. I leave him to your judgments.”
<107>Eliot had one other parallel to draw. “And now, my Lords,” he said, “I will conclude with a particular censure given on Comparison with the Bishop of Ely.the Bishop of Ely in the time of Richard I. That prelate had the King’s treasures at his command, and had luxuriously abused them. His obscure kindred were married to earls, barons, and others of great rank and place. No man’s business could be done without his help. He would not suffer the King’s council to advise in the highest affairs of State. He gave ignotis personis et obscuris the custody of castles and great trusts. He ascended to such a height of insolence and pride that he ceased to be fit for characters of mercy. And therefore, says the record of which I now hold the original, per totam insulam publice proclametur, Pereat qui perdere cuncta festinat; opprimatur ne omnes opprimat.”[163]
Such was the terrible invective, glowing with the fire of inmost conviction, and strong with the roused indignation of How far was this portrait true?an angry people collected into one burning focus, which poured that day from the lips of the great orator. Much, if not all, that he said went true to the mark. The vanity and self-confidence of the man, the assumption of almost regal dignity, the immense wealth heaped up when the royal exchequer was drained of its last resources, were depicted with unerring accuracy. And yet the portrait, as a whole, was untrue to nature. It was false that Buckingham was a Sejanus. It was false that he had been guilty of sordid bribery. It was false that he had used the powers of government in his own hands simply for his own private ends, and not for that which for the time he believed to be the best interest of the State.
If this is now plain to anyone who will carefully and dispassionately study the records of Buckingham’s misdeeds, what Anger of Charles.must have been the effect of the speech upon Charles, who believed as implicitly in the wisdom as in the innocence of his minister, and who felt that he was himself attacked through Buckingham. “If the Duke is Sejanus,” <108>he is reported to have said, “I must be Tiberius.”[164] The next day, May 11.The King’s speech to the Lords.in a speech prepared for him by Laud, he tried to enlist the sympathies of the Peers in his favour. In the attack upon Buckingham, he told them, their honour had been wounded. He had himself taken order for the punishment of the offenders. If he had not done so before, it was because Buckingham had begged that the impeachment might proceed, in order that his innocency might be shown. Of his innocency there could be no doubt whatever, ‘for, as touching the occasions against him,’ he could himself ‘be a witness to clear him of every one of them.’
It was only in words that Charles attempted to conciliate the Peers. Two days before they had petitioned for ‘a gracious present answer’ His answer about Arundel.to their request for the liberation of Arundel. At these words he had taken fire. “I did little look,” he replied, “for such a message from the House, and did never know such a message sent from the one House to the other. Therefore, when I receive a message fit to come from you to your sovereign, you shall receive an answer.”
Before a reply could be given by the House, Sir Nathaniel Rich appeared, on behalf of the Commons, to ask that Buckingham might be The Commons demand Buckingham’s imprisonment.put under restraint during the impeachment, a request with which the Lords refused for the present to comply, on the ground that the charges against him had not yet been formally reported. But this concession to the Court, if concession it was, was more than counterbalanced by the reply returned to the King’s message. As soon as The Lords’ reply about Arundel.it was understood that Charles’s special objection was to the demand of a ‘present answer,’ Saye and Sele proposed that it should be explained to him that the word ‘present’ only meant ‘speedy.’ Manchester, catching at the suggestion, moved that the petition might be amended so as to ask for ‘a gracious speedy answer.’ “Leave out the word ‘speedy’ also,” cried <109>Buckingham. Yes, was the reply, but leave out the word ‘gracious’ too. The House accordingly voted that they would merely ask for ‘your Majesty’s answer.’[165]
It was but a little thing in itself, but it indicated plainly the temper into which the Lords had been brought.
The claim of the King to imprison members during the session, maintained as yet in the face of the Lords, was to receive Imprisonment of Eliot and Digges.a more daring application in the face of the Commons. When Rich returned after delivering his message, he found the Lower House in great commotion. It was discovered that neither Eliot nor Digges were in their places, and on inquiry it appeared that they had been sent for to the door, and had been hurried off to the Tower. Shouts of Rise! Rise! sounded on all sides. In vain Pym, not yet aware of the true state of the case,[166] did his best to quiet the tumult. The House broke up in discontent. In the afternoon an informal assembly gathered in Westminster Hall, and serious words were interchanged on this unexpected attack upon the liberties of Parliament.
The next morning, when the Speaker rose, as usual, at the commencement of business, he was at once interrupted. “Sit down!” was May 12.Carleton defends the King.the general cry. “No business till we are righted in our liberties.” Carleton attempted to defend his master’s conduct. He had much to say of the tartness of Eliot’s language. But the main offence, both of Digges and Eliot, was that they had pressed ‘the death of his late Majesty, whereas the House had only charged the Duke with presumption.’ Eliot had hinted that more had taken place than he dared to speak of. Digges had even suggested that the present King had had a hand in his father’s murder. In speaking of the plaister given to James, he had added, ‘that he would therein spare the honour of the King.’ It was for the House to consider whether they had authorised such a <110>charge as this. The two members, in short, were punished as having gone beyond the directions of the House.
Carleton had something yet more startling to add. “I beseech you, gentlemen,” he said, “move not his Majesty with trenching upon his prerogatives, lest you bring him out of love with Parliaments. In his message he hath told you that if there were not correspondency between him and you, he should be enforced to use new counsels. Now I pray you to consider what these new counsels are, and may be. I fear to declare those that I conceive. In all Christian kingdoms you know that Parliaments were in use anciently, until the monarchs began to know their own strength; and, seeing the turbulent spirit of their Parliaments, at length they, by little and little, began to stand upon their prerogatives, and at last overthrew the Parliaments throughout Christendom, except here only with us.” Then he went on to speak of the scenes which he had lately witnessed in France, of the peasants looking like ghosts rather than men, of their scanty covering and wooden shoes, as well as of the heavy taxation imposed upon them. “This,” he ended by saying, “is a misery beyond expression, and that which yet we are free from.”[167]
With great difficulty the Commons were restrained from calling Carleton to the bar. The danger with which they had been threatened was, Answer of the Commons.in their opinion, best met by a firm pursuance of the course which they had already chosen. On the one hand they ordered a protest to be signed by every member disclaiming all part in the imputation upon the King in relation to his father’s death, which had been attributed to Digges. On the other hand they prepared a vindication of their own liberties to be laid before Charles.[168]
Carleton’s speech had neither made nor deserved to make the slightest impression; but it was not, as it is usually <111>represented, either ridiculous or illogical. If it had been possible to Remarks on Carleton’s speech.grant his premises, and to allow that the Commons were factiously taking advantage of the danger of their country to advance their own position in the State, Carleton’s warnings might well have been listened to with respect, in their substance, if not in their form. There is no law of nature to save Parliaments any more than kings, when they forget the interests of the nation which they are appointed to protect. If Carleton and his master were in the wrong, it was because whatever mistakes the Commons might have committed, the interests of the nation were safer in their hands than in those of the King.
If Charles erred in his general view of the case, it soon appeared that he was no less wrong in his knowledge of the May 15.The Lords question Digges’s words.particular circumstances. As soon as the report of the proceedings at the Conference was read in the Upper House it was seen that, if that report could be trusted, Digges had said something different from that which was alleged against him. Buckingham, however, was not satisfied. With a warmth which may easily be excused in a man against whom a charge of having poisoned his benefactor had been brought, he protested his own innocence, and then expressed an opinion that the report was not altogether correct. Manchester, by whom that portion of the report had been drawn up, admitted that, as his notes had been rapidly taken, he had afterwards consulted Digges on their accuracy, and that Digges had ‘mollified’ the wording. According to the notes, Digges had said that he wished ‘not to reflect upon the person either of the dead or of the present King.’ That is to say, cried Buckingham, ‘on the dead King touching point of government; upon this King touching the physic.’ A protest was at once raised by North and Devonshire. “This,” added Saye, “may trench on all our loyalties.” Each Peer, it was then suggested, should be called upon to declare whether he had heard anything ‘that might be interpreted treason.’ In spite of an interruption from Buckingham, that he wanted Digges’s words, not his meaning, Saye rose and protested that Digges had not spoken the words alleged, nor did he <112>conceive that he had the intention ascribed to him. The great majority of the Peers followed Saye’s example. A few only, on various grounds, refused to make the declaration. In the end, thirty-six Peers, Buckingham’s brother-in-law Denbigh amongst them, signed a protest that Digges had said nothing contrary to the King’s honour.
Before they parted, the Peers took another step in opposition. They replied to the King’s message urging that to allow Bristol Question of counsel for Bristol.the use of counsel was contrary to the fundamental laws of the realm, by respectfully assuring him that he was altogether mistaken. On the other question of the King’s right to tender evidence against a subject, May 13.which had been referred to the judges, Charles himself had already seen fit to waive his pretensions for the present. He had directed the judges to give no resolution on that point, ‘not knowing how dangerous it may be for the future.’[169]
After what had passed in the Lords, it was impossible to keep Digges any longer in the Tower, and the next morning he reappeared May 16.Digges released.in his usual place. Charles could not be so easily induced to relax his hold upon Eliot, the guiding spirit of the attack upon his government. If he should plead the precedents of Elizabeth’s reign, he would New ground taken in Eliot’s case.none the less find in the Commons the same bitter opposition which his treatment of Arundel had raised in the Lords. It seemed to him better to evade the difficulty; and, dropping the original complaint, he ordered Weston to acquaint the Commons that Eliot was charged ‘with May 17.Weston’s explanations.things extrajudicial to the House.’ Weston, who was directed by the Commons to inquire what was the meaning of the word ‘extrajudicial,’ informed them that Eliot’s crimes had been committed out of the House.
It was not likely that the Commons would be beguiled by so transparent a subterfuge. The feeling of the House was unmistakeable. In vain Carleton urged that they should clear Eliot of all that he had done as a member, and ask the King to <113>release him out of favour to themselves. It was the very thing which they absolutely refused to do. They were well aware that a member might have done things which no Parliamentary privilege could cover. He might have committed high treason, or highway robbery; but they wished to have an opportunity of judging for themselves whether anything so unlikely had really happened. The Commons suspend their sittings.When, therefore, Carleton, pushed to the wall, entreated them to give his Majesty time to prove his accusation, they at once complied with his request and suspended their sittings till the 19th. It is hardly likely that anyone present took Charles’s explanations seriously. “The King,” wrote one of the members to a friend, in speaking of Eliot’s imprisonment, “hath sent him to the Tower for some words spoken in Parliament, but we are all resolved to have him out again, or will proceed to no business.”[170]
Charles, in fact, had still to discover the charges upon which he had elected to take his stand. That Eliot had been May 18.Fresh charges against Eliot.instigated by Blainville to prefer the complaints relating to the ‘St. Peter’ was too probable a solution of all that had passed not to present itself to him; but it was a long step from mere suspicion to actual evidence. In vain Eliot’s study was searched for proof. In vain Eliot was himself subjected to an examination. Not one scrap of evidence was producible to show that the slightest intercourse between him and the ambassador had ever taken place. Charles had forgotten that the very imperfect manner in which that part of the charge against Buckingham had been produced was in itself the strongest evidence that the French ambassador had not been consulted. With Blainville’s assistance Eliot would have drawn up a far more telling case than he had succeeded in doing.
There was therefore nothing for it but May 19.Eliot released,to set Eliot at liberty. When the Commons re-assembled they were informed by Carleton that his imprisonment was at an end. The House, however, was not to be so easily <114>contented. The next morning Carleton was compelled to go over one by one the objections which he had originally taken to the epilogue delivered before the Lords. With a mixture of sarcasm and pleasantry, May 20.and cleared by the House.Eliot answered them in detail. One reply was peculiarly felicitous. He had been accused of speaking slightingly of the Duke as ‘the man.’ The word, he answered, had been commonly applied to Alexander and Cæsar, ‘which were not less than he.’ It was therefore no dishonour to the Duke to be so called, ‘whom yet he thinketh not to be a god.’ In the end, both Eliot and Digges were unanimously cleared of the imputations brought against them.
The attempt and its failure were alike characteristic of Charles. Prone to act upon impulse, he had been thrown off his balance by Charles’s failure.the suggestion, which the words reported to him seemed to convey, that he had himself been implicated in his father’s murder. Taking it for granted that the facts were as he supposed them to be, taking it for granted too that he had the right, by the precedents of Elizabeth’s reign, to punish the offenders, he had been startled when the House of Lords denied his facts, and the House of Commons denied his right. The whole opposition of the protesting Lords and the sternly resolute Commons which started up before him, was thoroughly unprovided for in his plan of action. Like an inexperienced general who has forgotten to allow for the independent action of the enemy, he had no resource but to take refuge in the first defence which offered itself as a means of prolonging the contest. The new device shivered in his hands, and he stood unarmed and discredited in the face of the nation.
In the House of Lords, too, the tide was running strongly against his hopes. Already he had been driven to withdraw May 17.Bristol’s case in the Lords.his pretension to deprive Bristol of the help of counsel; and as soon as the accused Earl had had time to bring in his answer to the charges against him, the Lords warmly took up their claim to see Arundel restored to their House. Nor was it only the exclusion of their members that they dreaded. Grandison had just been <115>created Baron Tregoze in the English Peerage, and Carleton had been May 19.snatched away from the assaults of the champion of the Commons to sit on the benches of the Upper House as Lord Carleton of Imberville. The independent Lords regarded these promotions as a preliminary to an attempt to pack the House by a creation on a far larger scale, and some were even heard to suggest the extreme measure of depriving the new Peers of their votes till the end of the session.[171]
In vain, therefore, Charles alleged, as he had alleged against Eliot, that he had fresh June 5.Liberation of Arundel.charges to bring against Arundel. The Peers would listen to no excuses. On June 5 the Earl recovered his entire liberty,[172] and on the 8th he was in his place amongst the Peers.
In the meanwhile the Commons May 24.Tonnage and poundage declared illegal unless granted by Parliament.had been busy reinforcing their attack upon Buckingham by a simultaneous declaration of the illegality of the collection of tonnage and poundage, unless voted by themselves, and of their own readiness to settle an ample revenue upon the King if he would conform to their wishes.
Before long, however, an incident occurred which must have convinced the most reluctant that it was in vain to hope that May 28.The Cambridge Chancellorship.either fear or persuasion would induce the King to abandon Buckingham. On May 28 Suffolk died, leaving the Chancellorship of the University of Cambridge vacant. “I would Buckingham were Chancellor,” said Charles, when he heard the news. The idea took firm possession of his mind, and the next morning a chaplain of the Bishop of London[173] carried to Cambridge an intimation of the royal pleasure. The Bishop himself soon followed; and the whole party which had seen with displeasure the continued attacks of the Commons upon Montague and his book rallied round the Duke. The Masters of Trinity, of <116>Peterhouse, and of Clare Hall used all their influence in his favour; and the influence of the Head of a house, who thought more of the object to be gained than of his own character for impartiality, was no slight weight in the scale. Yet, discouraging as the prospects of the Calvinists were, they chose at the last moment a candidate in the person of the Earl of Berkshire, the second son of the late Chancellor; and so strong was their party numerically, that though there was no time to obtain assurance of their candidate’s consent, they secured no less than June 1.Election of Buckingham.103 votes in his favour. Buckingham, it was true, obtained 108; but it was known that many had voted for him sorely against their wishes, and it was whispered amongst Berkshire’s supporters that, even as it was, an impartial scrutiny would have converted their opponents’ victory into a defeat.[174]
Deep offence was taken by the Commons at this new honour conferred upon a man June 5.Displeasure of the Commons.whom they had charged with holding too many offices already. Venturing upon unsafe ground, they resolved to send for a deputation from the University and to demand an June 6.account of the election, a resolution which was met by positive orders from the King to proceed no further in that direction, as the University was entitled to elect anyone it pleased.[175] The June 8.reply of the House was the conversion of the remonstrance upon freedom from arrest into a general statement of grievances.
On the day when this new appeal to the King was to be drawn up, Buckingham laid his defence before the Lords. Prepared, Buckingham’s defence.it is said, by Nicholas Hyde, in all probability under Heath’s supervision, and submitted to the friendly criticism of Laud,[176] the Duke’s answer displayed no common ability. Rebutting — as with their <117>superior knowledge its authors were well able to do — many of the accusations, in the form at least in which they had been brought, they were able to assert that in other respects the Duke had either acted by the King's orders, or that, if he had gone wrong, he had done so either from inadvertence or through compliance with customs already established when he came to Court “Who accused me?” said Buckingham — “Common fame. Who gave me up to your Lordships? — The House of Commons. The one is too subtle a body, if a body; the other too great for me to contest with. Yet I am confident neither the one nor the other shall be found my enemy when my cause comes to be tried.”
The confidence thus expressed was doubtless a genuine expression of feeling. Buckingham could not hope to have the Buckingham’s confidence.issue tried on more favourable ground. He knew that he had witnesses to prove that on many important points the Commons had been in error;[177] and he had only to close his eyes to the political antagonism which he had aroused, to imagine that an acquittal would be the probable termination of the affair.
The news, however, that the Commons had embarked upon a general remonstrance cannot have been without effect even upon Buckingham. To Charles it must have been absolutely decisive. Believing as he did that his minister was the victim of a factious combination, he had submitted to wait till the worthlessness of the evidence against him had been proved; but if the Commons were about to demand that, whether their charges were proved or not, he should dismiss his minister, he would June 9.The King demands supply.only be strengthened in his opinion that the honour of his crown was at stake. He therefore peremptorily demanded that, happen what might, the Subsidy Bill should be passed before the end of the following week. If it were not, he should be forced ‘to use other resolutions.’[178]
<118>Before the Royal message was taken into consideration, the Commons took a further step, which indicated plainly enough June 10.Further steps of the Commons.the spirit by which they were animated. They ordered the committee to which the framing of the remonstrance had been entrusted to send for the Parliament roll containing the declaration made by Buckingham after his return from Spain, and to require the young Lord Digby, by whom his father’s charges against the Duke had formerly been communicated to the House, to prove, if he was able, that June 9.Bristol’s case taken up by the Lords.Parliament had been abused on that occasion.[179] On the previous day the Lords had given a similar indication of their feeling by ordering the Attorney-General to take charge of Bristol’s case, so as to give to it those official advantages which had been accorded to the King’s accusations.
The Commons probably intended to incorporate Bristol’s charges in their remonstrance; but time pressed, and it was doubtful whether, June 12.The remonstrance to precede supply.if they embarked upon such a work, they would be allowed to finish it. The question which they met to discuss on the morning of the 12th was whether the remonstrance or the supply should be presented first. After a long and stormy debate, a large majority voted that the remonstrance should have the precedence.[180]
From the ground thus taken up by the Commons it would in the long run be found impossible to drive them. After running over Substance of the remonstrance.the charges which they had brought against the Duke, they expressed their reprobation of those new counsels which had been held before their eyes by Carleton, and denied that tonnage and poundage could be lawfully raised without their consent. Then, turning upon Buckingham, they declared that the articles which they had sent up to the Lords were not the measure of their objections to his ‘excessive and abusive power.’ These they had <119>been ‘enforced to insist upon, as matters’ lying under their ‘notice and proof;’ but, beyond them, they believed him to be an enemy to both Church and State. It was therefore grievous to them to find that he had ‘so great power and interest in’ the King’s ‘princely affections,’ so as, under his Majesty, ‘wholly in a manner to engross to himself the administration of’ the realm, ‘which by that means is drawn into a condition most miserable and hazardous.’ They therefore begged that he would remove the Duke from his presence, and would not ‘balance this one man with all these things and with the affairs of the Christian world, which all do suffer, so far as they have relation to this kingdom, chiefly by his means.’
“For we protest,” they went on to say, “before your Majesty and the whole world, that until this great person be removed from intermeddling with the great affairs of State, we are out of hope of any good success; and do fear that any money we shall or can give will, through his misemployment, be turned rather to the hurt and prejudice of this your kingdom than otherwise, as by lamentable experience we have found in those large supplies formerly and lately given.”
The Commons, in short, had again taken up the position which they had occupied at the close of the Oxford meeting. What this implied.They would give no money where they could place no confidence. No impartial reader of the long story of the mishaps of the Government can deny that they were thoroughly in the right in refusing their confidence to the man who was mainly responsible for these misfortunes.
In one respect indeed the Commons were slow to perceive the whole consequence of their change of position. If they had been able to substantiate the criminal charges which they had brought against Buckingham, if they could have proved him to be false, corrupt, and venal, Charles could have parted with him without loss of honour. To ask the King to abandon his minister on the ground that the Commons could not trust him, though the acts at which they took umbrage had been done, always nominally and often really, by the authority of Charles, was to ask him to surrender himself as well as Buckingham. Neither Elizabeth nor even his father had allowed <120>anyone to dictate the choice of counsellors. If the advisers of the Crown and the officers of State were to be accepted or dismissed at the will of the House of Commons, the supremacy of that House would soon be undisputed. Would such a change carry with it merely a constitutional re-arrangement? Could a popular body form a government? Would not anarchy and confusion ensue to the nation, personal danger to the King? To yield now might be to launch the barque of Royalty without chart or compass on that sea of violence and intrigue which was to be descried by the anxious king in those annals of the Middle Ages to which the Commons so cheerfully appealed. To him the precedents of Eliot spoke not of justice executed, but of riot and disorder. “Let us sit upon the ground,” they seemed to say,
“And tell sad stories of the death of kings:How some have been deposed, some slain in war,Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed,Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping, killed,—All murdered.”
To acknowledge Buckingham’s responsibility was indirectly to acknowledge his own. Where was that to end? Perhaps it was too late for him now to learn a better way, and to discern that alike behind the despotism of the Tudors and the violence of the Middle Ages a deeper principle had been at work — a principle which called upon rulers to guide, and not to force, the national will. Precedents might be quoted for almost any iniquity on either side; but the great precedent of all, from which all worthy precedents received their value, the tradition of a healthy national life handed down by father to son from the remotest days, was guarded in the heart of the English nation by defences against which Charles would dash himself in vain.
The King’s choice was soon made. As he had said earlier in the session, he would give liberty of counsel, not of control. June 14.A dissolution resolved on.In vain Heath, with lawyer-like appreciation of the weakness of the articles of impeachment, pleaded hard for delay. In vain the Peers begged earnestly for a prolongation of the situation by which they were <121>constituted supreme arbitrators between the nation and the Crown. To their urgent entreaty that Charles would grant them but June 15.The dissolution.two days more, he replied impatiently, “Not a minute.” On June 15 the Parliament of 1626 ceased to exist.[181]
“Let compounds be dissolved.”[182] The words with which Wotton had closed the epitaph of the great philosopher and statesman Future of the constitution.who had passed away from his earthly work almost unnoticed amidst the contentions of the session now brought to a close, might fitly be inscribed over the tomb of the constitutional theories which Bacon had striven hard to realise. The King and the House of Commons no longer formed constituent parts of one body. On either side new counsels would prevail. The King would demand to be sole judge of the fitness of his own actions, and to compel the nation to follow him whithersoever he chose to lead. Parliament would grasp at the right of control as well as the right of counsel, and would discover that the responsibility of ministers could only be secured by enforcing the responsibility of kings. At last, after a terrible struggle, teeming alike with heroic examples and deeds of violence, a new harmony would be evolved out of the ruins of the old.
[150] Joachimi to the States-General, April 15⁄25, Add. MSS. 17,677, L, fol. 184 b, Lords’ Journals iii. 558, 564, 566.
[151] The whole correspondence is printed in the sixth volume of the Camden Miscellany.
[152] Lords’ Journals, iii. 537.
[153] Elsing’s Notes, 1624–1626, p. 135.
[154] Earl of Bristol’s Defence, Camden Miscellany, vi. Pref. xxxv.
[155] Elsing’s Notes, 1624–1626, p. 154.
[156] In the Sherborne MSS. are the interrogatories which Bristol, in his subsequent trial in the Star Chamber, put to Porter, asking him whether each of these letters, of which the first words were quoted, was genuine or not.
[157] Elsing’s Notes, 1624–1626, p. 163.
[158] Elsing’s Notes, 1624–1626, p. 128. Charles afterwards argued that Middlesex, in whose case the order was made, was not accused of high treason, whereas Bristol was.
[159] The theory which seemed likely to prevail in Bristol’s case, was that the accused person might keep his seat till his accusation had been read.
[160] Meade to Stuteville, May 13, Ellis, ser. 1, iii. 266.
[161] This seems to have been the case with the money received from Manchester and Cranfield (Middlesex). Robartes’s money was paid to Buckingham, but it does not follow that it was not used for the fleet or some other public object. See Robartes’s petition, March (?) 1626, and the depositions of Robartes and Strode, S. P. Dom. xxiii. 118, lxvii. 40, i. Thus, too, in Pym’s charge we have a statement that amongst moneys employed for his own use, the Duke had the 60,000l. which were paid to Burlamachi on Oct. 7, 1625 (Lords’ Journals, iii. 614). The Declared Accounts, Audit Office (Agents for Special Services, roll 3, bundle 5), show us that 60,000l. was ordered to be paid to Burlamachi out of the Queen’s portion money by a Privy Seal of August 5, and that of this, 52,313l. 15s. were paid before Michaelmas, 1625, and 6,300l. between Michaelmas and Easter, 1626. It also appears that Burlamachi was ‘allowed for monies paid to the Duke of Buckingham, and such as be appointed to receive the same for secret services, and by him issued, most part upon his warrants and the rest upon his verbal significations, as by several acquittances of those who received the same may appear, the sum of 58,689l. 13s.’ Nothing can be looser than this, but does it follow that the money was not employed by Buckingham upon the public service? Probably this is the same money as that mentioned in Buckingham’s defence (Lords’ Journals, iii. 666), as 58,880l. Of the sum there named, 26,000l. is said to have been spent on the Navy, and the rest by his Majesty’s directions. Again, Buckingham stated that on the 15th and 28th of January, he received of free gift 50,000l.; but it was for the fleet, and that the ‘Duke’s name was only used for that his Majesty was not willing to have that intention publicly discovered at that time.’ This seems a very probable explanation.
[162] “Such expressions,” Mr. Forster observes, “could not of course have been directly applied to Buckingham. They are insinuated only through Sejanus.”
[163] Forster, Sir J. Eliot, i. 324–330.
[164] D’Ewes gives the words (Harl. MSS. 383, fol. 32) apparently as part of the King’s speech which follows in the text. But, though this seems to be incorrect, Charles may very likely have used the words in private.
[165] Elsing’s Notes.
[166] Which shouts ‘Mr. Pym, not well understanding, stood up,’ &c. Meade to Stuteville, May 13, Harl. MSS. 390, fol. 57. This seems more likely than that Pym should have objected, if he had known what happened.
[167] Though no country is named, I have no doubt that his last visit to France was intended. Such scenes were not to be witnessed amongst Dutch or Venetian peasants. Besides, the subsequent words about men taxed to the King, show what Carleton was thinking of.
[168] Rushworth, i. 360.
[169] Elsing’s Notes, 1624–1626, p. 193; Lords’ Journals, iii. 627.
[170] Forster, Sir J. Eliot, i. 561.
[171] Joachimi to the States-General, May 31⁄June 10, Add. MSS. 17,677 L, fol. 225.
[172] Conway to Arundel, June 5, S. P. Dom. Addenda.
[173] i.e. Bishop Montaigne; not Laud, as Mr. Forster stated by an oversight.
[174] Meade to Stuteville, June 3, Ellis, ser. 1, iii. 228. Certain Considerations, &c., Harl. MSS. 161, fol. 134.
[175] ——— to Meade, June 9, Harl. MSS. 390, fol. 73.
[176] Of Laud’s part there is no doubt. See S. P. Dom. xxvii. 25. Hyde’s part we learn from Whitelocke’s Memorials, 8. For Heath, see the King’s warrant to assist Buckingham, S. P. Dom. Addenda.
[177] Nicholas, for instance, seems, from the notes prepared by him (S. P. Dom. xxvii. 105–111), to have been ready to tell the truth, and to call upon Pennington to tell the truth, about the ships lent to the French.
[178] Lords’ Journals, iii. 670.
[179] Commons’ Journals, i. 870. Digby may be a slip for Bristol; but the young lord, having presented his father’s complaint, had a locus standi before the House.
[180] Meddus to Meade, June 16, Court and Times, i. 110.
[181] Heath to Buckingham, June 14 (?), S. P. Dom. Addenda. Lords’ Journals, iii. 682. ——— to Meade, June 15, Harl. MSS. 390, fol. 776.
[182] “Composita dissolvantur.”