<342>Whilst Charles was occupied in establishing his authority at home, events on the Continent had taken a turn which demanded his serious attention. The death of Gustavus had left Germany in greater confusion than ever; and when, on April 13, 1633, 1633.April 13.The League of Heilbronn.the League of Heilbronn was signed by the Swedish Chancellor Oxenstjerna with the four circles of Swabia, Franconia, and the Upper and Lower Rhine, the Elector of Saxony and the Northern circles took no part in the alliance. Such a league was too weak to stand alone, and would necessarily fall into dependence upon any power by which the help so much needed should be given.
That power could hardly fail to be France. Richelieu’s ends, as no man had known better than Gustavus, were indeed Increase of French influence.far from being identical with the objects which a patriotic German would desire; but he offered promptly to contribute a large sum of money for the purposes of the league, and in accepting France as a paymaster, it was necessary to accept her counsels as well. It is true that The Duke of Simmern acknowledged as Administrator of the Palatinate.the princes who met at Heilbronn would gladly have balanced the influence of France by the influence of England. They assured Anstruther that they were disposed to do all that Charles could reasonably desire about the Palatinate. As Frederick’s eldest son Charles Lewis was still a boy, they acknowledged his uncle <343>the Duke of Simmern as Administrator of the Palatinate, whilst the Swedes, in return for a small sum of money, engaged to make over to him the strong places which they held in that territory. Charles grumblingly paid the money, May.Charles neglects the League.gave some cheap advice about the wisdom of conciliating the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, and turned a deaf ear to Anstruther’s pressing representations that he must do more than this if he hoped to have any weight in Germany.[483]
Charles, in short, was as undecided as ever as to the means by which his object was to be effected. At the time when his ambassador was negotiating at Heilbronn, he had not yet rejected the proposal of the King of Spain to mediate with the Emperor. Necolalde’s May 31.Necolalde’s comment.comment on his hesitation was as just as it was incisive. “The truth is,” he said to Windebank, “you pull down as fast with one hand as you build up with the other, and my treaty with the Emperor, and Sir Robert Anstruther’s negotiating with the Protestant Princes, the Swedes, and the French in Germany, are diametrically opposite. What appearance can there be of success when you fix upon nothing, but hold a course of neutrality, and, seeking to please both, you are sure of neither?”[484]
Charles had already hit upon a plan which would, as he hoped, benefit his nephew without compromising himself. As he was May 23.A Benevolence proposed.on his journey to Scotland, his sister’s agent, Nethersole, applied to him for leave to raise a voluntary contribution for the recovery of the Palatinate. Charles, without much thought of the consequences, consented; and Nethersole, hurrying back to London, persuaded two merchants to advance 31,000l. on the security of the expected contributions, and in reliance upon an engagement which he offered in the name of the wealthy Lord Craven, Elizabeth’s most enthusiastic champion. Before the legal documents which would authorise the levy of the money were completed, the secret oozed out. Nethersole, finding that all London was <344>talking of the scheme, and that Lord Craven was hanging back, became terrified lest the friends of Spain should throw obstacles in the way of its realisation. One of those to whom his project had been imparted was Goring, and Nethersole’s quarrel with Goring.upon Goring he laid the blame of betraying his confidence. Goring, who was perfectly innocent, defended himself warmly, and complained to the Council. The Queen, in whose household Goring was, took his part, whilst Nethersole, instead of speaking plainly, dropped mysterious hints of the injury which would be done to the King if he told all he knew. By this time Charles had been persuaded by Portland that it was unwise to offer in an underhand way the succour which he was not prepared to give openly. He, therefore, withdrew his permission for the contribution, and compelled Nethersole to make a formal apology to Goring.[485]
The result of the negotiations which were still proceeding in the Netherlands was of far more immediate importance to England than January.The negotiation in the Netherlands.the result of the negotiations at Heilbronn. Before the end of January, 1633, it had become plain that if Spain was to be deferred to there was no likelihood of either peace or truce. The terms which had been admitted in 1609 were taken as a basis of negotiation; but the Dutch asked for express permission to trade in all the dominions of the Spanish monarchy. The Spaniards replied by demanding the restitution of Pernambuco, which had recently been taken by the Dutch, and which gave to the revolted Netherlanders a firm footing in South America.[486]
Under these circumstances the Brussels Estates, or those who professed to act in their name, secretly informed the Dutch ministers that March 21.Proposed revolution.they were at last ready to accept the proposal to which they had so long turned a deaf ear. If the Prince of Orange would come to their aid, they would throw off the Spanish yoke. If all the Flemish and Walloon troops were on his side, he would have no difficulty in making himself master of the six thousand Spaniards <345>and Italians who remained. Those who had opened the negotiation proceeded to stipulate for the rights of their fellow-countrymen as free and allied States, and especially demanded support against the aggressive designs of France. At the same time they applied to the English Government for aid in the maintenance of their independence against the Dutch, if their new allies should attempt to convert the protection offered into an enforced subjection.[487]
Though Charles could not turn away his eyes from a proposal so completely in accordance with English interests, as well as with the real interests of the populations concerned, it was not in his nature to strike boldly for the prize offered to him. He disliked the Dutch too much to communicate frankly to them the terms proposed; whilst he had not scrupulousness enough to abstain altogether from interference. Gerbier was summoned home to lay the whole state of the case before the King and his ministers. May 10.Charles’s offers.When he returned to Brussels in May he carried with him instructions which showed that Charles wished to set up an independent Belgian State in opposition to the Dutch, rather than to aim at limiting their encroachments whilst acting in general co-operation with them. “Albeit,” wrote the King to him, “you are to do nothing in his Majesty’s name to withdraw the subjects of the King of Spain from their natural obedience, nor to violate the treaties betwixt the two crowns; yet, in case their king shall give them so little defence that they be forced either to fall into the subjection of their neighbours, or, for support of their religion, lives, and liberties, to declare themselves free States; in that case, if they desire his Majesty’s assistance and protection, you may assure them in his name that upon such declaration to him by a public minister having power to give fit conditions for safe landing, quarter, and retreat, he will presently send them sufficient forces for their defence, and will protect them in their government, liberties, and religion, and be a means not only to maintain their trade against all men, none excepted, but much increase it.”[488]
<346>Charles’s plan ended in nothing. It would probably have come to nothing in any case. The populations of the Spanish Netherlands were They end in nothing.too distrustful of their neighbours both to the north and south to make it easy to effect a revolution which needed the aid of those neighbours, and Charles had neither the strength nor the character to inspire confidence in his protection. The Prince of Orange took the field, and captured Rhinberg, as well as two important posts in Flanders; but not a single Netherlander from the obedient Provinces lifted a finger to aid him.
Charles probably believed to the end of his life that his secret negotiation with the revolutionary nobles had remained a secret. July.Charles betrayed by Gerbier.It was not so. Of all his envoys he had trusted none like Gerbier. This man had been his special favourite because he had been a favourite with Buckingham. He had been allowed to accept orders directly from the King, and these orders were sometimes in contradiction with those which reached him through a Secretary of State. Gerbier, however, had no real tie to the English people or to the English king, and being very needy, and having many children to support, he resolved to betray his employer.
Before the end of July he intimated to the Infanta that he had secrets of the utmost importance to reveal. For these he expected 20,000 crowns. There was some haggling over the price, and it was Nov. 12.not till November that two friars appeared by night at the house of the English minister, staggering under the load of coined metal which they carried. Gerbier had stipulated beforehand that he would have nothing to say to paper money of any kind. To one of these friars he told the whole story, implicated Charles in the conspiracy, and named the Flemings and Brabanters who had taken part in it.[489]
The Infanta Isabella was overjoyed at the discovery. Much had been suspected before, but nothing had been absolutely proved. Nov. 22.Death of the Infanta Isabella.She herself, however, did not live to take action in consequence of these revelations. She died on November 22. The King’s brother, the Cardinal Infant Ferdinand, was her destined successor. Till <347>he could arrive authority fell into the hands of the Council, mainly composed of Spaniards, of whom the Marquis of Aytona was the leading personage. Aytona acted with firmness and prudence. December.The revolutionists seized.The chief conspirators were seized, and the States-General dissolved. The Northern States broke off the negotiation as soon as they found that they had once more to treat with Spain. The Southern Provinces were bound for eighty years longer as slaves in the train of the Spanish monarchy.
The Belgian provinces had made their choice long ago, and they could not break loose now from the entanglements into which they had fallen by the remissness of their resistance to Spain in the sixteenth century. They must bear whatever their neighbours, in guarding themselves against the revival of Spanish domination, might find it necessary to inflict upon them. Though weakened by a series of adverse campaigns, and by the internal misgovernment from which those adverse campaigns had resulted, the Spanish monarchy was still formidable. If a few years of peace gave it the opportunity of recruiting its strength, its enemies would have to renew the old struggle on more unequal terms. The presence of a Spanish army in the Netherlands was a standing menace to France and to the States-General, and it can cause no surprise that both France and the States were resolved to do all that in them lay to relieve themselves from the danger.
It was hardly possible that the question should be regarded in England from quite the same point of view. Even Roe, who advocated a close alliance with the Dutch, was aware of the danger of allowing Dunkirk to fall into French hands. For the present, however, Dunkirk was in safety. The forces of France were turned in another direction. In August the Duke of Lorraine had given assistance to the Imperialists in his neighbourhood. September.The French in Alsace.In September Richelieu entered his duchy and brought his whole territory under subjection. Rather than submit to the indignity the Duke went forth as an exile, carrying his sword to the service of the Emperor. From Lorraine the French army passed into Alsace. One town after another admitted a French garrison, and it was <348>only in the south of the province that the Duke of Feria still held his own with a Spanish force.
The struggle for Alsace was no mere contention for a single province. The valley of the Rhine was the pathway of the Spaniards November.The struggle for Alsace.through Italy to the Netherlands. If the French could hold that valley whilst Southern Germany was still in the hands of the League of Heilbronn, it would be impossible for Spanish reinforcements to reach Brussels except by sea. Everything seemed to bode well for Richelieu’s plans. There was dissension between Wallenstein and the Spanish commanders. Wallenstein asked for a peace from which he hoped incidentally to acquire large territories for himself, and, with this object in view, he was ready to consent to the complete abandonment of the Edict of Restitution. To gain his ends he betrayed the trust with which he had been invested by the Emperor, by entering into secret negotiations with his master’s enemies the Swedes and the French. He did not, however, inspire confidence enough to obtain a favourable hearing from anyone. In November, whilst these negotiations were being carried on, Capture of Ratisbon.Bernhard of Weimar, who had succeeded to the military position of Gustavus, swooped down upon Ratisbon. The city fell into his hands, and Wallenstein could do nothing to expel him.
With the prospect that the Rhine valley might pass completely into French possession, the maintenance of Dunkirk by Spain acquired Importance of Dunkirk.increased importance. By that gate men and munitions had flowed into the Spanish Netherlands under Charles’s protection. Soon it might be the only gate by which the Spaniards could reach the Netherlands at all.
No wonder France and Spain were anxious to gain the alliance of England. Charles still saw in his neighbours’ difficulties an excellent opportunity for regaining the Palatinate Charles courted by France and Spain.without fighting for it. Up to the end of October, though evidently intending to give no aid to France, he had been inclined to look to France rather than to Spain for the assistance which he himself wanted. At <349>that time there seemed little prospect that Spain would again be in a position to dispose of the Palatinate in one way or the other. Charles even listened with a favourable ear to a scheme proposed by the Duke of Simmern for sending the young Charles Lewis at the head of an army to take possession of his dominions.[490]
In November came a change. Necolalde talked loudly of Feria’s successful resistance in Alsace, and assured Charles that if he would Overtures of Necolalde.send his nephew to join the Emperor instead of sending him to join the Swedes, he would contribute greatly to the general repose, and would forward his own interests at the same time. Charles appointed the three men who were most in favour of the Spanish alliance — Portland, Cottington, and Windebank — to treat with Necolalde in secret.
The three who formed this secret committee had already been in close conference with the Spanish minister. An English The Fishing Company.fishing company had been formed of which Portland and his Roman Catholic friends were the principal shareholders, and so weak was Charles at sea that he had proposed to Necolalde that Spanish ships should be sent to protect the fishery against molestation by the Dutch, who had hitherto, through the supineness of the English, enjoyed a monopoly of that lucrative employment.
The prospect of an alliance with Spain for the recovery of the Palatinate and Charles offers to send his nephew to join the Spaniards.the substitution of an English for a Dutch fishing trade had great allurements for Charles. He signified to Necolalde his readiness to send his nephew to join Feria. His only doubt was whether his nephew would be inclined to go.[491]
Charles might well doubt whether his sister would involve <350>herself in these never-ending combinations which took so little account of December.Elizabeth asks for aid.the forces and aims of the world. Elizabeth was indeed of one mind with him in regarding Richelieu with distrust. The French were approaching the Rhine, and it was known that the Elector of Treves, who had lately installed them in Ehrenbreitstein, was ready to instal them in Udenheim, a fortress to which he had lately given the name of Philippsburg, and which was close to the frontier of the Palatinate. Her secretary wrote, by her instructions, to Nethersole, urging him in the strongest terms to demand immediate help from England. “If the Palatinate House,” he asked, “for want of assistance, were constrained, as some of their neighbours have been, to put themselves under the protection of France, who could blame them?”
When this letter reached Nethersole it was accompanied by a rumour, which afterwards proved unfounded, that Philippsburg was actually 1634.Jan. 4.Nethersole offends Charles.in the hands of the French. Hoping that now at least the King would act, he sent to Coke an extract from the secretary’s letter, begging him to request a speedy answer, lest his mistress, in her anxiety to look to her brother alone for help, ‘should thereby come to be hereafter blamed by the friends of that House with which she was married, to have been the second time the ruin thereof, there being a great deal of odds between the said House’s putting itself, or being taken into the protection of France.’
Charles was stung by the suggestion that the Palatinate which had once been lost by dependence on his father might now Jan. 5.Nethersole’s imprisonment.again be lost by dependence on himself. He at once ordered Nethersole into confinement. Nethersole added to his offence by slipping away before the order was executed, with the intention of placing his papers in safe custody. Failing in his attempt, he was captured and sent to the Tower. There he remained for some time, only to be set at liberty after Elizabeth, at her brother’s imperative request, had dismissed him entirely from her service. His public career ended in this moment of impatient zeal.[492]
<351>Coke was now directed to forbid the employment of the young Elector in the Palatinate. It was but a dream, he wrote, ‘to imagine that Jan. 7.The young Elector not to go to the Palatinate.a young Prince with a little army’ could ‘now determine that cause for which King James of happy memory and his Majesty have striven so many years, have engaged themselves in great wars, have spent millions, and in which the King was still employing his counsels and endeavours by stopping enemies and raising friends, and by preparing all fit means to accommodate so great a work.’[493]
The means which Charles considered to be fitting were traced out in fresh consultations Jan. 21.Consultation with Necolalde.between the three ministers and Necolalde. On the English side all that was at first offered was to lend twenty or thirty vessels to the King of Spain upon hire, and to contribute good offices for a general peace. Jan. 30.In return for this shadowy assistance, Charles expected a declaration from the Emperor that his nephew was not affected by the ban under which Frederick had been placed, as well as the immediate restitution of the Lower Palatinate, and some arrangement for the ultimate recovery of the Upper Palatinate and the electoral dignity. Feb. 16.Charles’s offers to Spain.His view of the relations into which he proposed to enter with Spain was more distinctly set down in a despatch to Hopton, the English Resident at Madrid. “In the meantime,” wrote Windebank of the Spaniards, “their affairs in Flanders growing every day into more desperate estate, and his Majesty considering in his princely wisdom how much it concerns him in his own interest to carry a jealous and watchful eye over the growing greatness of the States, by whose insolencies he is every day much awakened, has been pleased to direct the Lord Treasurer to call the Lord Cottington and myself unto him, and to confer with Necolalde upon some course to be held for giving assistance to the King of Spain, such as may stop the current of the Hollanders’ conquests, and peradventure draw them to a peace, yet not plunge his Majesty into a sudden, dangerous, <352>and untimely war with those people. To do this, it is of both sides thought fit that his Majesty should put a strong and powerful fleet to sea, that may open the ports, prohibit all kinds of depredation in those seas, and secure even the coasts of Flanders; and this to be done upon pretence of suppressing and punishing the great liberty which hath of late been taken both by the States and those of Dunkirk, to commit hostilities one upon another, even within his Majesty’s safest harbours, both in England and Ireland. But howsoever his Majesty’s own reason of State, as I have said, doth chiefly move him to this course, yet is it so carried as the motion grows from Necolalde; unto whom it is represented that his Majesty is now at peace with all the world, that he shall hereby hazard a dangerous war with his neighbours, or at least enter into a great and insupportable charge; and therefore it will be necessary for the King of Spain to furnish money toward it; which doubtless he could no way spend more to his advantage, as the case now stands.”[494]
Such an exposition of Charles’s intentions needs no comment. There was something to be said in favour of Roe’s policy of a Futility of Charles’s schemes.strict alliance with the Dutch, and of looking for a guarantee for the special interests of England in the good feeling aroused by a warm co-operation with the States-General, and in the necessity which they would one day or another be under of seeking English aid against the overweening pretensions of France. Something too was to be said in favour of the policy which was advocated by Wentworth of withdrawing altogether from the political complications of the Continent, except so far as interference was demanded by the special interests of England. The schemes of Charles, on the other hand, were so complicated and unreal, that they only serve to make the brain dizzy. Everything was to be gained upon which he had set his heart, yet nothing was to be actually done to obtain his objects. It would be enough to seem to do <353>everything in order that he might impose upon friend and enemy alike. If he was unaware that the secret of his offers to the Low Country revolutionists in the preceding year was in the hands of Olivares, at least he might have taken a lesson by the utter failure of those expectations which his diplomacy had raised in the Netherlands, and have abstained from entering on a similar course in Germany.
If a warning of the inevitable result of a policy which fails to base itself upon the realities of the world was needed, it might have been afforded by Feb. 15.Assassination of Wallenstein.the sudden downfall of Wallenstein. Though it would be an insult to the great strategist to compare his intellect with that of Charles, their mode of operation was the same. There had been the same readiness to intrigue with all parties, the same reliance upon forces which would fail in the day of trial. Wallenstein’s treason was detected at Vienna. In vain he summoned the army to his support. He perished at Eger, the victim of an assassination which he had himself provoked.
The removal of Wallenstein sealed the complete reconciliation of the two branches of the House of Austria; but it was a Renewed alliance between the two branches of the House of Austria.fatal reconciliation for the Emperor. His forces were now at the disposition of the King of Spain, and Germany became but the battle-ground on which was to be fought out the old rivalry between Paris and Madrid. The Cardinal Infant had for some months been waiting at Milan till he could lead an army through Germany to Brussels. Wallenstein had refused him permission to pass. That obstacle was now removed. The Imperialist armies were placed under the command of Ferdinand, King of Hungary, the Emperor’s eldest son, and the husband of that sister of the King of Spain who had once been Charles’s affianced bride.
Such a conjuncture of affairs boded no good to the fortunes of the German Protestants. Whilst their enemies were uniting, Danger to German Protestants.they themselves were divided. All North Germany stood aloof from South Germany and the Swedes. In the army Bernhard was jealous of Horn, the Swedish general, and both had grievances against the civilian administration of Oxenstjerna. Was it likely that a Spanish <354>victory, if it came, would give the Palatinate to Charles? Hopton, March.who had every opportunity of gauging the sentiments of the Spanish ministers, reported that they were certain in the end to consult the interests of Bavaria rather than the interests of England, as well as to do their best to thrust Charles further than he was inclined to go in his opposition to the Dutch.[495]
In the English Council nothing was known of the exact nature of the overtures which Charles was making to Spain, but the fact that Oxenstjerna’s son in England.he was leaning in that direction was well known, and the Queen’s party, which as far as numbers went, predominated in the Council, made every effort to draw him from his resolution, and to urge him to promise help to the Heilbronn League. A son of Oxenstjerna had just arrived in England to beg for aid. He was outwardly treated by the King with respect, but an excuse was found in his want of a formal commission from his father for sending him back without the promise which he desired. Anstruther was April 14.Instructions to Anstruther.ordered to attend a meeting of the members of the League which was about to be held at Frankfort. He was to urge them to a general peace, and to tell them that if they failed to obtain it through the Emperor’s fault, the King of England would then hear what they had to say about an alliance. Such instructions were naturally as unsatisfactory to Oxenstjerna as they were all that Necolalde could desire.[496]
At Madrid no extraordinary eagerness was manifested to accept Charles’s proposals. March.Reception of Charles’s overtures at Madrid.Olivares thought that when the King of England had succeeded in equipping a fleet with Spanish money, he would make use of it to excite the revolutionists in the Low Countries to try their fortunes once more. Necolalde was therefore <355>enjoined to be very cautious, and to try to find out what Charies really meant before engaging himself to anything.[497]
In London accordingly there was much diplomatic fencing. The English negotiators declared their master to be ready to put to sea April.Progress of the negotiation in London.a powerful armament to enable him to repress the excesses of the Dutch, and, if need be, to secure the coast of Flanders against them; but they said that they must first know what the King of Spain was willing to contribute.[498] At last, though no agreement was actually come to, the two parties arrived sufficiently at an understanding to make Charles desirous to take a forward step in the preparation of an armament.
For this purpose it would be necessary for Charles to announce his intentions to the Privy Council. Yet how could he venture May.Opposition to Portland.to inform that body of the real object which he had in view? A close alliance with Spain against the Dutch would have been as unpopular with the majority of the Council as with the nation itself. Nor was Portland, the main supporter of the scheme, likely to be regarded with any sort of favour. Even councillors who seldom troubled their heads about foreign politics, and who had taken little interest in the reception of young Oxenstjerna, declaimed fiercely against Portland’s greed of money, and his habit of postponing public to private interests. The attack was led by Laud and Coventry. They charged him with selling woods belonging to the Crown far below their value, in order to buy them for his own use in the name of a third person. Portland, who was suffering from the disease which put an end to his life in the next year, was too ill to answer the accusation, and his enemies imputed his absence from Court to a consciousness of guilt. Lennox, whose sister was Portland’s daughter-in-law, alone took his part. We can fancy how the youth, whose gay attire and whose handsome face with the mild dreamy eyes are familiar to us on the canvas of Vandyke, and who was ever <356>faithful in adversity, stood up for one whom he was bound to honour and defend, as he had stood up for the young Lord Weston when Holland challenged him, and as in after days he was to stand up for his master when he saw him borne down by the weight of unequalled calamity. In his desperate straits he bethought him of a strange mode of gaining the favour of the King. He brought Buckingham’s widow to Court for the first time since her husband’s murder, to plead for the man whom May 1.her husband had raised to office. Charles was evidently touched at the recollections which the sight of her called up in his mind; but he reserved his decision. Laud then showed the King a letter from Wentworth, who was now Lord Deputy of Ireland, in which he complained bitterly that Portland had never answered his letters, though they contained demands of the highest importance for his Majesty’s service, and declared that under such circumstances he would no longer be responsible for the government of that country. Laud had reason to believe that he had thus produced a great impression on the King’s mind; but the impression soon wore off, and the Archbishop had the mortification of discovering that Portland stood still unshaken in the Royal favour.[499]
Laud knew well how hard it was to induce Charles to give up anyone in whom he had once placed confidence. He did not know The Council to be hoodwinked.the special tie which at that time united the King to the Lord Treasurer. He did not know that the two were fellow-conspirators in a plot to hoodwink the Privy Council, and through the Privy Council to hoodwink the nation itself.
The primary difficulty of discovering a means of equipping a fleet without summoning Parliament to vote a subsidy had Suggestion of ship-money.already been got over. The suggestion of a means of escaping the difficulty had come from Noy. By the constitutional practice of the Plantagenets, the port towns had been called upon to furnish ships manned and equipped for the defence of the realm.[500] As late as in 1626 a fleet had been got together in this manner; and though some <357>objections had been raised by interested parties, those objections had never gained such strength as to cause serious embarrassment to the Government. No doubt there was a difference between that which had taken place in 1626 and that which was now proposed. In 1626 England had been at war with Spain, and the provision of ships might therefore be regarded as part of the general obligation to defend the kingdom in time of war. In 1634 the country was in profound peace, and Charles was therefore under the necessity of showing that in spite of appearances the position of affairs was in some sort equivalent to actual war.
By June 6 Charles had obtained an opinion from Coventry and Manchester that he was legally authorised to carry Noy’s scheme into execution.[501] June 6.Submitted to Coventry and Manchester.He determined to announce his resolution to the Council on the 8th. The whole truth it was impossible to tell. Except the three ministers who had been treating with Necolalde, there was probably not a single member of the Council who would not have felt outraged by hearing that the proposed fleet was to take the part of Spain against the Dutch. The King’s naval preparations must be made to look as if they were simply intended as a defensive measure against all assailants alike.
No better instrument for this work of concealment could be found than Secretary Coke. His known hostility to Spain would June 8.Coke’s statement.give weight to words which, in his ignorance of the real facts, he would speak honestly and from his heart. Coke was accordingly directed to read before the Council a long exposition of the dangers of the kingdom. Englishmen, he said, had to submit to wrongs in every part of the world. They suffered as much from Turkey, Tunis, Savoy, and Spain as from their nearer neighbours in France and the Netherlands. English trade did not meet with fair play anywhere. “There is no hope of obtaining justice,” he said to the King, “but by doing it yourself, which requireth the puissant reinforcing of your guards to recover your undoubted right of sovereignty in all your seas.”[502]
<358>There was much in Coke’s complaint which called for the most serious consideration. With commerce spreading out on every side, Necessity of a fleet.in the face of the predominant maritime force of the Dutch Republic and of the growing maritime force which Richelieu was creating in France, the time was come when England must possess a navy worthy of the name, or must forfeit her place amongst the nations and her power to protect her traders on the seas. The claim, however, which Charles put forward was more than a claim that he might be able to do justice to his subjects. The assertion of the sovereignty of the seas meant nothing less than an assertion that the whole of the English Channel to the shores of France, and of the North Sea to the shores of Flanders and Holland, was as completely under the dominion of the King of England as Kent or Yorkshire. To fish in those waters, or even to navigate them without his permission, was an encroachment on his rights.
Monstrous as the claim was, it appealed too strongly to the English contempt of foreigners to be without an echo in English hearts. In the Council, at least, it found unanimous support.
The argument by which Charles’s claim to the sovereignty of the seas was supported, like the argument by which his claim to use his subjects’ ships was supported, was historical and legal. Some Sir John Borough’s Sovereignty of the Sea.six or eight months before,[503] Sir John Borough, the Keeper of the Records in the Tower, had drawn up an elaborate argument, showing how in the days when England was strong her sovereigns had put forth extravagant claims, and how those extravagant claims had sometimes been acquiesced in by foreign nations, and ending by a triumphant vindication of that authority as an inherent right of the Crown.[504] It was Charles’s misfortune never to know that obsolete precedents would go but a little way to bolster up an authority <359>which was repelled by the feelings of the existing generation. He flung a defiance in the face of all other nations, when, unless urgent necessity arose, he should have contented himself with the defence of his own realms from unwarranted attacks.
The first result of Coke’s statement to the Council was the appointment of a committee to consult with Noy on the mode of A committee of consideration.carrying his suggestion into execution. Noy did not live to see his counsels followed. Though his own proposal departed very little from the ancient custom of the realm, his ‘new writs of an old edition,’ as Roe called them, have handed down his name to a notoriety which Aug. 10.Noy’s death.more distinguished men have failed to reach. A dry technical lawyer, of strong anti-Puritan tendencies, he had no grasp of constitutional principle to enable him to understand the mischief which he was doing.
The death of Noy was quickly followed by the death of the far greater lawyer who, violent and intemperate as he was, had striven hard Sept. 3.Death of Sir E. Coke.in the later years of his life to erect a barrier against absolute government by the help of those very technicalities of the law which Noy was twisting in the opposite direction. Sir Edward Coke had taken no part in the session of 1629, and had lived in retirement at Stoke Pogeys ever since he had raised his voice against Buckingham in the last days of the preceding session. In the solitude of his country house he was still a cause of anxiety to the Government, and upon a rumour of his ill-health in 1631, Charles issued orders that in the event of his death all his papers should be seized, lest some of them which might be directed against the existing system should come into circulation with the authority of his name.[505] July.The old man, however, lingered more than three years longer, and it was not till July 1634 that Windebank received orders to rifle his house.[506] No immediate <360>attempt, however, seems to have been made to carry out these directions. In August August.Coke’s study in the Temple was sealed up, but it was not till he was known to be actually dying or dead that the order of July was put into execution at Stoke Pogeys. September.The papers seized.One of his sons, Roger Coke, a man too mendacious or inaccurate to give any weight of authority to the story which he told, declared long afterwards that Windebank himself ransacked the house while the aged lawyer was lying on his death-bed.[507] Though this statement is probably untrue, it is certain that within a week after his death a trunk full of papers was brought to Whitehall and opened in Charles’s presence. Three months afterwards a fresh seizure was made at the Temple, and though strict orders were given to restore all documents relating to Coke’s private affairs, and his family doubtless recovered with them the jewellery, the old coins, and the ‘paper of precepts to his children,’[508] which were in the trunk which Charles opened, there was much which they afterwards claimed as hawing been wrongfully kept back. Even of those papers which were undeniably of a public nature, there were many the detention of which could only be accounted for by a desire to suppress the publication of legal opinions unpalatable to the Government. Coke, it was true, had been a Commissioner of the Treasury, and papers relating to the working of the Treasury were as legitimately an object of solicitude to the King as the papers which he was rightfully accustomed to seize upon the death of a Secretary of State: but the documents on which Charles laid his hand were legal as well as financial, and he was much more interested in stopping the circulation of Coke’s dews on law than he was in the perusal of a stray series of accounts.
<361>In one respect the judges of Charles’s reign trod in the footsteps of Coke. As far as the administration of justice between Charles’s judges.man and man was concerned they stand in no need of defence. There were no takers of bribes amongst them. They were never charged with incapacity or negligence. In another respect they refused to follow Coke. They never ventured to regard themselves as arbiters between the Crown and the nation. They accepted in the fullest sense the position of defenders of the prerogative. It was their delight to ratify the legal technicalities which men like Noy drew from the stores of the past, and they were well pleased that the Government should go its own way if only it flattered them by referring the legality of its action to the metewand of their learning.
Of all the judges, there was only one who had shown any political qualities. Sir Robert Heath, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, Sept. 14.Dismissal of Chief Justice Heath.joined to a zeal for the maintenance of the prerogative a devotion to the person of the King which in a later age would justly be denominated servile; but he had a love of compromise and moderation which seems to have given offence in high quarters. Above all, he had shown in various ways that his sympathies were not with the ecclesiastical government of Laud.
Suddenly, without a note of warning, Heath was dismissed from the Bench. No reason was assigned for the unexpected blow, and the special grant of professional precedence which was accorded to him after his dismissal excludes the supposition that he had committed any actual offence.[509] It may be that, as some thought, his ecclesiastical tendencies were obnoxious to the archbishop. It is more probable, though not a word of evidence exists, that Charles had reason to think that he was not sound on the question of ship-money. However that may have been, it was impossible for the King to take a more direct <362>way of establishing in the eyes of all men the utter worthlessness of that appeal to the judges which he was always ready to make, and which was no doubt equivalent, in his eyes, to an appeal to the law itself.
Heath’s successor, Sir John Finch, was a man not likely to be troubled with scruples. The Speaker who had once been Oct. 16.Succeeded by Finch.held down in the chair by violence had come to look upon popular influence or control with a bitter detestation. His own character was such as to give offence in any situation. He was arrogant and careless of the rights of others, insolent in prosperity and without dignity in misfortune.
In such a man Charles would possess a useful tool. Finch had lately drawn attention to his serviceableness by the part which June.Malpractices in the Forest of Dean.he had taken in an affair in which, even more than in that of ship-money, the prevailing disposition of the Government to cultivate external legality at the expense of justice was conspicuous. It is probable that the charges which had been brought in May against Portland of malpractices in the sale of woods had instigated his opponents at Court to investigate the proceedings of his clients in the Forest of Dean. His secretary Gibbons had there taken possession of a large tract of land, as was alleged, under false pretences; and Sir Basil Brooke, one of the Lord Treasurer’s Roman Catholic friends, was charged with cutting down trees set apart for the navy, for use in his own iron-works. This abuse, it was further said, had been authorised by Portland without the King’s knowledge.[510]
Such a tale was indeed welcome to Portland’s enemies. As it happened, his chief opponent, the Earl of Holland, was July 12.Holland’s ‘justice-seat’ in the Forest.Chief Justice in Eyre, and was thus officially empowered to investigate all malpractices in the administration of the forests. In setting out to hold a justice-seat, as his judicial visitation was termed, at Gloucester, for the Forest of Dean, he was eager, as contemporaries believed, to find a new blot on the tables of his adversary.[511] He may <363>have had another object in view, and have been anxious to show to Charles that the Lord Treasurer’s rivals were as zealous to uphold the prerogative as the Lord Treasurer himself; though, it may be added, he would thus leave no doubt in the minds of others that it would be as unsafe to leave the rightful claims of the subject in his hands as in the hands of Portland. It is not unlikely that the idea which he intended to realise originated in the mind of Noy, who was already too ill to take an active part in the business. Finch was, therefore, deputed to act as his substitute in enforcing the claim which the Attorney-General had conceived.
This claim was nothing short of monstrous. For more than three hundred years the boundaries of the forests in the whole of England had been Claim to an extension of the forest boundaries.fixed in accordance with the perambulation made after the great confirmation of the Charters by which Edward I. had consented after a hard struggle to limit his powers for the benefit of the nation. Finch now asked, on behalf of the Crown, that this perambulation should be declared invalid,[512] and in this contention he was supported by the three judges who had come down to act as legal accessors to Holland. The grand jury[513] reasonably urged that it was hard to disturb a settlement of three centuries; but the legal question was not one which came within their sphere, and it was impossible to deny that the dry facts of the case were as they had been represented to them. A verdict was therefore of necessity given for the Crown. No fewer than seventeen villages had sprung up on the land claimed for the forest, and the sudden transference from the common law to the forest law was no slight misfortune. Special restrictions would be placed upon every action which might be in any way prejudicial to the preservation of deer,— the very existence of which upon the lands of these unlucky townsmen and <364>farmers was purely imaginary,— and these restrictions would be vindicated against them not in the ordinary courts, but before a special Forest Court gathered under the influence of persons occupying situations in the forest and interested by every possible motive in maintaining the King’s rights, however obsolete they might be. Unless Charles could be induced to mitigate in practice the cruelty of this sentence, a gross injustice would be committed.
Portland’s dependents met with as little favour as the men of Gloucestershire. Sir Basil Brooke and his partner Mynn were fined 12,000l. July 14.Fines on Gibbons and Brooke.on the ground that their authorisation proceeded from the Treasury, not from the King. No less a fine than 35,000l. is said to have been imposed upon Gibbons,[514] in whose grant a technical informality was discovered, and orders were also given for his prosecution in the Star Chamber.[515] The fines on Brooke and Mynn were raised by subsequent inquiry to no less than 98,000l. Fines of such magnitude were not intended to be levied. Two years afterwards Brooke and Mynn were pardoned, on payment of 12,000l. and the surrender of the iron-works.[516] For the present the main question of interest at Court was whether the Treasurer August.Attempt to implicate Portland.could be implicated in his secretary’s delinquencies. Portland defended himself stoutly. He dismissed Gibbons from his service, and professed entire ignorance of all that had passed. The King accepted his explanations, but there were not wanting those who expressed their pity for the servant who had been sacrificed, as they said, to save the credit of his master.[517]
If Charles was resolved to listen to nothing against Portland, he was highly satisfied with Holland’s work in the Forest of <365>Dean. All other forests were to be dealt with in the same way. Oct. 1.Justice-seat in Waltham Forest.Waltham Forest, of which the Epping Forest of the present day forms a part, was the next to be visited. On October 1 Holland came down to hold his justice-seat in Essex. The next day Finch produced an old record of Edward I. upon which Oct. 2.Enormous claims of Finch.he based a claim to an enormous extension of the forest, saying that ‘he would know how his master had lost every inch of it.’ He ‘would not stir from thence till he had a verdict for the King.’ The Earl of Warwick, Holland’s brother, who was a large proprietor in the county, rose to demand time to answer him. He doubted not, he said, that he could give such satisfaction to the Court as to enable the landowners of Essex to continue in the enjoyment of the possessions of their ancestors ‘which had been out of the forest for three hundred and thirty years.’ Finch replied that he would only give him time till the next morning.
The next morning Finch again produced his records, fell into a rage with the jury, and swore that he would have a verdict Oct. 3.Finch threatens the jury,for the King ere he stirred a foot. Some of the jurymen asked to be allowed to see the records. Finch told them they should not see a word. They must be satisfied with what he had read to them already. Under this pressure and obtains a verdict.a verdict was returned in accordance with the utmost demand made on the part of the Crown; but Holland, influenced perhaps by his brother’s presence, refused to accept the verdict as conclusive. He adjourned the court for some months, and promised to do the aggrieved persons ‘all the right he might.’[518]
To raise such a man as Finch to the Bench was to provide that the King’s wishes should in every case be carried out under the veil of legal forms. Against the subject some arrow out of Legal character of Charles’s absolutism.the quiver of obsolete precedents was always to be found; some reason was always at hand to prove that precedents were inapplicable when they made against the King. Charles’s encroachments upon the <366>rights and liberties of his subjects were made in the most insidious form possible, for they were made under the cloak of the law and under the sanction of those who should have been its guardians.
It is only fair to acknowledge that men whose character stands higher than that of Finch, gave their support to this evil system. Legal promotions.Sir John Bankes, who followed Noy as Attorney-General, was an honest and respectable lawyer; and Lyttelton, who replaced the inefficient Shilton as Solicitor-General, had been one of the supporters of the Petition of Right, and was a man equally respected for his legal knowledge and for the uprightness of his character. The truth seems to be that the lawyers wore most inclined of all classes of Englishmen to recognise the advantage of the observation of legal forms, and the least ready to notice the hardships inflicted under cover of those forms. There was something flattering to their pride in being outwardly regarded as the main pillars of the throne, and they did not care to ask themselves whether the reality corresponded with the appearance. At a later period the lawyers were thrown into opposition by jealousy of the increasing power of the clergy.
Like the forest claims the proposed demand for ship-money was either technically according to law, or could easily be argued to be so. July.The committee on ship-money.Coventry and Manchester, who were busily employed in giving to the new impost a shape which would raise as little objection as possible, were, however, left in complete ignorance of the consultations which Portland, Cottington, and Windebank were carrying on Necolalde The negotiation with Necolalde.behind their backs. Charles, indeed, was more out of humour with the Dutch than ever. He had discovered that a secret treaty had been signed in April between the King of France and the States-General, by which Louis engaged to make a large annual payment to the Republic towards the expenses of the war. At last July 11.The intercepted despatches.Necolalde sent Charles a bundle of intercepted despatches from the Prince of Orange to his agents in France, urging them to obtain the consent of the Cardinal to a joint attack upon Dunkirk. A letter from the <367>Dutch statesman Aerssens, in the same packet, pressed Richelieu to undertake the siege. “The capture of Dunkirk,” he wrote, “will extend the French frontier at the only point where England and Spain can join hands. If that port be once closed, France will have nothing more to apprehend from their alliance. The sea will then be divided between you and us.”[519]
Charles could not fail to feel the application of the well-directed lash. If he had openly declared that he meant to join Spain August.Charles rejects the overtures of France.against France and the Dutch Netherlands, his policy, whether commendable or not, would at least have been frank and intelligible. It is no matter of surprise that he felt little inclined to listen to the fresh overtures which were made to him by a new French ambassador, the Marquis of Pougny, who had come to invite him to take part in the league against Spain.[520] He told the Dutch ambassador, Joachimi, that he was at peace with Spain, and that he would not attack a friendly nation without a good reason. He did not wish to see any of the combatants in the existing war overpowered, and it must be acknowledged that the fortunes of the House of Austria were at a very low ebb just then. He intended to be the master of the English sea, and to keep the Flemish ports open to trade.[521]
Such words, however, conveyed but a small part of the projects which were floating in Charles’s brain. Articles of a treaty The secret treaty with Spain.between England and Spain were drawn up in concert with Necolalde, and, after being discussed during some weeks, were finally altered so as, to some extent, to suit the requirements of the Spaniards.
The articles thus prepared were kept from the knowledge <368>of all the Privy Councillors, excepting the three trusted ministers. In these articles the plan of keeping open the Flemish ports and overthrowing the mastery of the Dutch at sea was made The Partition Treaty to be taken up.to lead up to a scheme still more portentous. The partition treaty signed by Cottington and Olivares in 1631 was once more to be brought forward and made the subject of negotiation. The negotiations set on foot were to receive their completion in the league which had been signed by Cottington at Madrid, the object of which was to attack and overwhelm the Dutch Republic, and to divide with the King of Spain the soil which had been bedewed with the blood of the victims of Alkmaar and Haarlem, and had been guarded by the strong arms which had broken the dykes of Leyden and the cunning brains which had reduced Hertogenbosch and Maestricht to surrender. With this purpose in view the King of England was to put a fleet of twenty vessels to sea; five of which were to be at the charge of the King of Spain.
As usual with Charles, much space was devoted to the elaboration of pretexts which might keep all men, including his own Council, Pretexts discovered for concealing it.in the dark concerning his real intentions. “The pretext of this arming,” it was distinctly said, “shall be to secure the coasts of Great Britain and Ireland, and to free them from pirates and others that commit hostilities and insolencies there.” As soon as the fleet was at sea, Charles’s minister at the Hague was to demand from the Dutch the restitution of some Spanish prizes which they had taken in English waters. In the meanwhile the English fishing-boats were to be protected, as well as the trade between England and Dunkirk. Any attempt of the Dutch to enforce the blockade of Dunkirk was to be resisted by the combined fleets of England and Spain. If the English men-of-war found an engagement in progress between a Dutch and a Spanish ship in his Majesty’s seas, they were to take care that the Spaniards should ‘receive no wrong.’ The promise to convoy Spanish vessels with soldiers and money for Dunkirk was more conditional, as the King of England’s consent was to be specially obtained on each occasion. If, however, a direct <369>attempt were made to besiege Dunkirk, the English fleet was Payments to be made by the King of Spain.to come to the help of the town. The last article related to an advance of 50,000l. by the King of Spain, to be deducted hereafter from the monthly contribution which Philip was bound to make under Cottington’s partition treaty,[522] as soon as the attack upon the Dutch was finally resolved on. If, however, the English fleet for any reason did not put to sea for the purposes agreed on, Charles would have to repay the money.
Such was the treaty which, on October 16, was sent to Madrid for the approval of the Spanish Government.[523] Much to Charles’s surprise, Oct. 16.It is sent to Spain for approval.Necolalde had shown no inclination to forward an arrangement which seemed so favourable to his master, and had occupied many weeks in cavilling at various expressions which might have been brought into The Spaniards distrust Charles.a satisfactory form in a few hours. The truth was that neither Necolalde nor Olivares had the slightest confidence in anything that Charles could say. The Spanish minister wrote home that nothing would come of it all, as Charles had but little courage and little money,[524] and Olivares cordially agreed with Necolalde.
Four days after the despatch of the courier to Madrid, the ship-money writs were issued. Unlike those which followed in the succeeding year, Oct. 20.The ship-money writs issued.these first writs were directed only to the authorities of the port towns, and of places along the coast. The ostensible reason for demanding the money was set forth in the writs themselves. “We are given to understand,” said the King to his too-credulous subjects, “that certain thieves, pirates, and robbers of the sea, as <370>well Turks, enemies of the Christian name, as others, being gathered together, wickedly taking by force and spoiling the ships and goods and merchandises, not only of our subjects, but also of the subjects of our friends in the sea which hath been accustomed anciently to be defended by the English nation, and the same at their pleasure hath carried away, delivering the men in the same into miserable captivity; and forasmuch as we see them daily preparing all manner of shipping further to molest our merchants and to grieve the kingdom, unless remedy be not sooner applied, and their endeavours be not more manly met withal; also the dangers considered which in these times of war do hang over our heads, that it behoveth us and our subjects to hasten the defence of the sea and kingdom with all expedition or speed that we can; we willing by the help of God chiefly to provide for the defence of the kingdom, safeguard of the sea, security of our subjects, safe conduct of ships and merchandises to our kingdom of England coming, and from the same kingdom to foreign parts passing; forasmuch as we and our progenitors, kings of England, have been always heretofore masters of the aforesaid sea, and it would be very irksome unto us if that princely honour in our time should be lost or in anything diminished; and although that charge of defence which concerneth all men ought to be supported by all, as by the laws and customs of the kingdom of England hath been accustomed to be done;[525] notwithstanding, we considering that you constituted in the sea coasts — to whom by sea as well great dangers are imminent, and who by the same do get more plentiful gains for the defence of the sea and conservation of our princely honour in that behalf, according to the duty of your allegiance — against such attempts are chiefly bound to set to your helping hand, we command firmly” that you cause certain ships of war to be brought to the port of Portsmouth on March 1, “and so that they may be there the same day at the farthest, to go from thence with our ships and the ships of other faithful subjects <371>for the safeguard of the sea and defence of you and yours, and repulse and vanquishing of whomsoever busying themselves to molest or trouble upon the sea our merchants and other subjects, and faithful people coming into our dominions for cause of merchandise or from thence returning to their own countries.”
The sum needed for fitting out the ships and for maintaining them and their crews for six months was to be assessed upon the inhabitants by the local authorities.[526]
Between these writs and the articles sent to Spain there is a marvellous contrast. In the writ every word speaks of commerce and Contrast between the writs and the articles.peace and legitimate self-defence. The articles breathe a spirit of defiance and aggression. No doubt a Government is not even in these days expected to conduct its diplomacy in public. It is perfectly justified in veiling the means by which it hopes to accomplish its objects from the eyes of those who are interested in thwarting its policy; but it is bound under the severest penalties openly to acknowledge the general tendency of its action, and above all, openly to acknowledge it to its own people, without the support of whom its utmost vigour will be but as the steel point of a lance of which the shaft has been broken away. Confidence inspired by the ability and rectitude of a Government is in the long run a reserve of power stronger than a well-disciplined army, stronger than a well-filled treasury. If there were many in England who still felt confidence in Charles, it was merely because as yet they had no inkling of the truth. The language of the ship-money writs, which led even the English Privy Council astray, only served to render the Spanish statesmen still more suspicious. Necolalde inclined to the opinion that Charles’s intentions were after all better represented by the writs than by the articles. He thought that the King’s real object was to act against both the Spaniards and the Dutch, and to bring the commerce of the world into the hands of his own subjects.[527]
Charles’s schemes would have been far too complicated for practical service even if he had confined his attention to the war <372>in the Low Countries. All that he did, however, was done with a reference, tacit or expressed, to Charles does not forget the Palatinate.the recovery of the Palatinate, and when the secret articles were sent to Madrid, he knew that whether the King of Spain were willing to forward his wishes or not, his power to do so was greater than it had been at any time since the landing of Gustavus.
Freed from all risk of opposition from the commander of the Emperor’s forces, the Cardinal Infant had crossed the Alps, and had June.The Cardinal Infant in Germany.joined his forces to those of the King of Hungary. The united armies fell upon Ratisbon, Bernhard’s prize in the preceding autumn. On July 18 the city surrendered. On August 27 a great battle was fought at Nördlingen. The Swedes and their allies of the Heilbronn League were Aug. 27.Battle of Nördlingen.utterly routed. Since the day of Breitenfeld, three years before, no such victory had been won. Its political consequences were immense. One by one the fortified towns of Southern Germany fell into the hands of the Imperialists. Breitenfeld had decided irrevocably that the Protestant lay-bishoprics of the North should not be distributed amongst Catholic prelates. Nördlingen decided no less irrevocably that the Catholic bishoprics of the South should not be converted into principalities and duchies for the enrichment of Protestant soldiers of fortune. It was a victory for Spain even more than for the Emperor. It enabled the Cardinal Infant to carry his troops unmolested to the Netherlands. It did more than this. It gave to the Spanish statesmen a predominating influence in the council at Vienna. German interests would fall into the background in order that the paramount interest of Spain in keeping open the passage to the Netherlands might be consulted.
On the English people, and September.Reception of the news in England.more especially on the English Puritans, the news of the battle could not fail to leave a profound impression.[528] D’Ewes was roused from his learned labours to lament that ‘all the <373>victories the glorious King of Sweden had acquired, and all the good successes his armies had gleaned up since his decease, were all dashed at one blow, and as it were unravelled by the fatal and never-enough-to-be-lamented defeat of the Protestant army.’ In the immediate circle round the King the feeling was one of October.the highest satisfaction. Portland took a high tone with Joachimi. “No harbours,” he told him, “can be blockaded in the British sea. The lawyers have pronounced that an attack upon Dunkirk would interfere with his Majesty’s rights, and be contrary to all law both civil and international.” He challenged the Dutch ambassador to controvert their reasoning.[529]
It was impossible to doubt that the results of the battle would compel the French to interfere in Germany more directly than they had hitherto done. Charles regarded the prospect with imperturbable self-satisfaction. Though he acknowledged Oct. 27.Charles’s advice to his sister.to his sister that he had no forces to send to ‘oppose at once the Imperialists and the French,’ he was ready to try once more the old game of balancing one against the other with as much assurance as if it had never been tried in vain before. This time, as Coke informed Boswell, he could not fail, ‘the rather because the French themselves do now propound to treat with him on their behalf, and then if they shall insist upon unfitting conditions, the King of Spain was as forward to draw his Majesty to their side, and this balance in all probability may produce good effects, though otherwise there appeareth little cause to be confident in either. Yet surely by this way either fair conditions of a general peace will be obtained, or at least such a party be framed which will be fit for his Majesty to apply himself unto, being so strong that there may be the more hope for good success. The best service’ Boswell could ‘perform to his Majesty and to the Princess’ was ‘to persuade them to rest upon his Majesty’s counsels for treaties or for force, as he shall see just cause.’ Windebank added a special message to Elizabeth, imparting <374>to her, in strict confidence, the information that Spain had promised that Oct. 28.Windebank’s message.its triumphant army should abstain from molesting the Palatinate, and that its ambassador should do all good offices at Vienna on behalf of the son of the late Elector.[530] Elizabeth, it need hardly be said, December.Elizabeth’s reply.received these assurances with entire incredulity. If, she replied, the Spaniards and the Emperor were so ready to restore the Palatinate now, why had they done nothing during the years when it had been in their power to restore it if they had wished to do so.[531]
Charles’s messages were an object of scorn to others besides his sister. When Anstruther repeated his master’s hollow promises to Oxenstjerna, September.The French in Germany.the Swedish chancellor rode off to negotiate with the French ambassador without vouchsafing a word in answer.[532] He had no choice now but to accept Richelieu’s predominance. The King of France took Bernhard and his shattered army into his pay. The Administrator unwillingly admitted French garrisons December.into the fortresses of the Palatinate. Before the end of the year, a French army had crossed the Rhine, had occupied Mannheim, and had compelled the Imperialists to raise the siege of Heidelberg.
The occupation of the Palatinate by the French confirmed Charles in his preference for a Spanish alliance. Yet it is no wonder that there were Roe’s opinion of ship-money.honest and clear-sighted men in England who failed to discover the workings of his mind. “His Majesty,” wrote Roe, “has directed new writs of an old edition to the ports and maritime counties to maintain a proportion of shipping for the safeguard of the Narrow Seas according to the law and custom of England, which is very needful, for the French have prepared a fleet, and challenge a dominion in the seas where anciently they durst not fish for gurnets without licence.” “The inquisition <375>into our own forests,” he added, “will for the present bring money, and secure our timber to posterity.”
Coming from a warm opponent of the general tendencies of the Government, such words may serve as an indication how How far was ship-money a tax?little disposition there was as yet in England to question the constitutional legality of Charles’s demands upon the nation. In one respect indeed, the call upon the port towns was perilously near to the imposition of a tax. In 1626 each town had been called upon to furnish such vessels as were to be found in its harbour, and the mode in which the burden was to be divided amongst the community had been left to be settled by the local authorities. This time the vessels were required to be of a size not to be found in any port in England except in London, and when the King offered to find the ships out of his own navy if the towns would find the money, the idea of personal service, upon which the whole fabric of the claim had been raised, was thrust into the background, and all that appeared was a direct demand for money, to be paid over to a collector appointed by the Crown, and to be expended on the equipment and maintenance of the navy. Charles and his ministers would doubtless have argued that the difference was merely technical, but they had themselves taken too great advantage of technicalities to have a fair claim to such a plea, and after all, constitutional technicalities are of value so far as they are the guardians of the great principle that a ruler can no more permanently cut himself off from the support of his people than a commander can permanently cut himself off from the opportunity of receiving supplies from his base of operations.
Sooner or later, as the entire isolation of Charles’s position and the extreme folly of the wisdom on which he prided himself Dec. 2.The London petition.showed themselves more clearly, the technical objections to his proceedings would become the watchwords of an excited nation. The only direct word of remonstrance as yet heard proceeded from the City of London. From the other towns came petitions complaining that the burden had been unfairly adjusted; London alone asserted that it should not have been imposed at all. Upon the shoulders of <376>the great commercial capital one-fifth of the whole weight rested. Out of 104,252l. London had to provide 20,688l.[533] London alone had no need to seek ships in the Royal Navy. Its quota to the projected armament was to be furnished from its own resources. No doubt, in case of any enterprise appealing to the national sentiment no excuses would have been made. Even now, the objection taken did not go to the root of the matter. The citizens were satisfied with asking exemption for themselves, ‘conceiving that by their ancient liberties, charters, and Acts of Parliament, they ought to be freed and discharged of those things.’
The Lord Mayor was summoned before the Council, and reprimanded for his coldness in the King’s service. He was told that The Lord Mayor before the Council.the arguments of the City petition had already been refuted by the lawyers. In vain he offered to make excuses. He was ordered to return at once and to bring his fellow-citizens to a better frame of mind. Thoroughly intimidated, he professed his readiness to obey orders. The City lawyers were next sent for, and were warned ‘to take heed how they advised the City in a case so clear for the King.’ To an objection that the guardianship of the seas was already provided for by tonnage and poundage, Manchester answered curtly. “It is true,” he said, “this writ hath not been used when tonnage and poundage was granted. Now it is not, but taken by prerogative, therefore this writ is now in full force.”[534] Illogical as the argument was, the citizens Submission of the City.did not venture to dispute it. There was a stormy meeting of the Common Council, which resulted in a resolution to submit to the King’s orders.
Though the neck of the opposition was broken for the time, the feelings by which it was prompted were not conciliated. “In this way,” Ill-feeling provoked.wrote the Venetian ambassador, “did this most important affair begin and end. If it does not altogether violate the laws of the realm, as some think it does, it is certainly repugnant to usage and to the forms <377>hitherto observed.” Charles, he further remarked, was highly pleased. The step which he had gained was most essential to his projects, if he desired to free himself from the necessity of ever summoning a Parliament again. It was on the Lord Treasurer, however, and not upon Charles, that the blame was cast in the opinion of those who were most dissatisfied.[535]
The attacks upon Portland by Laud and other Privy Councillors had not ceased during the autumn. In October he had been Oct. 21.Portland’s irregular receipts.compelled to produce a list of the irregular receipts of his office, for the acceptance of which he had obtained the King’s permission when he had been appointed to the treasurership. The sum amounted to 44,000l.[536] There can, however, be little doubt that this formed but a very small portion of his receipts, and it was the opinion of those who had the best opportunities of judging, that he had raised a princely fortune by means which would not bear the light. Portland as a financier.As a financier and politician, Portland’s recipe for every ill was to leave matters alone. With the help of the subsidies and the compositions for knighthood he had paid off the more pressing debts of the Crown; and if we hear much of the grievances of the creditors whose claims were still unsatisfied, it must be remembered that the contentment of those whose claims had been extinguished has left no trace. Scarcely anything, however, was done by him to open new sources of revenue, or to place the finances on a sounder basis. A few thousand pounds obtained in various ways were all that could be placed to his credit.[537] Yet it is probable that even his inertness saved the Crown from unpopularity. For it is certain that a moderate deficit at the end of every year would be less dangerous to the throne than a surplus gained by the febrile activity with which Noy and Finch had launched the forest claims and ship-money upon the world. The forest claims <378>were owing to the motion of Portland’s rivals, and though ship-money was invented to carry out the foreign policy to which he gave his approval, there is no evidence to show that Noy was set to work by him. It may even be doubted how far that foreign policy was really his. The deliberate preparation for an aggressive war with the Dutch bears rather the stamp of his master’s mind, and it may well be that he lived in the hope that this warlike project would come to nothing, as so many warlike projects of Charles’s had come to nothing before.
If such were Portland’s hopes, he did not live to see how just his previsions were. He had long been suffering from a 1635.March 7.Portland’s illness.painful disease, which had been gaining ground for some months. On March 7 he was told that he was dying. On the 9th ‘the King visited him, but stayed a very little while in his chamber; he breathed with so much pain and difficulty that the King could not endure it.’ Laud offered to ‘do him the last offices, to pray with him, give him the sacrament, and assist him now approaching to his end.’ The dying man sent Cottington to thank him, and to ask his forgiveness if he had offended him in anything. He begged him to ‘spare the pains of coming to him. God be thanked, March 13.His death.he was at peace in his conscience.’ On the 13th he died. It was soon rumoured that he had died a Roman Catholic.[538] The rumour was true; but so long had he delayed the acknowledgment of his belief, that though his wife and daughters and most of his friends were Roman Catholics, it was only at the last that his true sentiments were known even to them. When all was over, one of his physicians hurried to an eminent ecclesiastic of the Church to the authority of which he had in the end submitted. “You may pray for his soul,” he said, “for I believe that he died a Catholic.”[539]
So passed away, unregretted, this ‘man of big looks and of a mean and abject spirit.’ “After six or eight years spent in outward opulency, and inward murmur and trouble that it was not greater; after vast sums of money and great wealth gotten, <379>and rather consumed than enjoyed, without any sense or delight in so great prosperity, with the agony that it was no greater, he died unlamented by any, bitterly mentioned by most who never pretended to love him, and deserved best of him; and left a numerous family, which was in a short time worn out and yet outlived the fortune he left behind him.”[540]
The Treasury was put into commission. Laud, Cottington, Windebank, Manchester, and Coke were the commissioners named. March 15.The Treasury in commission.Laud, too, was put at the head of the Committee of the Privy Council for Foreign Affairs. Men began to look upon him as Portland’s successor Laud regarded as Portland’s successor.in Charles’s favour. “The Archbishop’s ability and integrity,” wrote a news-collector of the day, “both make him capable of as much employment as may be for his honour, but to manage all can be no better than a glorious burthen.”[541] “This,” wrote Roe, “is the great man, made now of the Commission of the Treasury and the first of the Junto of Foreign Affairs, and in the greatest esteem with his Majesty of any in my observance; and I will hope, whatsoever the world hath sinistrously conceived, that he will prove a happy instrument of the public, both at home and abroad; for upon less than great actions he is not set, and being now so great, he cannot be eminent and show it to the world by treading in beaten paths and the exploded steps of others. But he must choose and make new ways to show he knows and can do more than others, and this only hath made the Cardinal Richelieu so glorious.”[542]
It was not in Laud to be a Richelieu, and even if he had had the ability and desire to launch England upon a new Charles his own foreign minister.course of foreign policy, he would never have been permitted to do so. Charles would continue to be as, in the main, he had been before, his own Foreign Minister. He would have, as before, a double policy — one practical and appealing to the vulgar instincts, to be pursued openly in the eyes of the world, and representing the least <380>upon which he was prepared to insist; the other tentative and hopeful, beyond the limits of possibility, to be veiled in the profoundest secrecy. Of the first Laud was to be the instrument. Cottington and Windebank would be the sole confidants of the second.
Charles therefore deliberately placed Laud in a false position. His negotiations with Spain were still in a critical state. Jan. 24.Charles urges Spain to conclude the treaty.In January, weary with Necolalde’s constant objections, he had sent orders to Hopton to beg for a direct answer from the Government at Madrid. “The money itself, were it a great deal more,” wrote Windebank, “is not considerable, but, taken as a pledge of a straiter alliance between the two Crowns, and considering the consequences thereupon, it might have produced effects of great weight in Christendom; which, if they come to nothing now, his Majesty nevertheless is in the same condition he was, and the fault and loss must be theirs. The opening of the ports, freeing of trade, disassieging the coast of Flanders, which the Hollanders glory they hold beleaguered, but, above all, the friendship and alliance of the King of Great Britain, and the countenance and protection of his royal fleet, were he to treat with merchants, would be worth the loan of 200,000 crowns; and, as little as they seem to value it now, they would heretofore have bought it at another rate.”[543]
Whilst Spain was apparently turning a deaf ear to Charles’s overtures, France and the States-General were drawing closer to one another. Jan. 20.Treaty between France and the States-General.On January 20 a treaty was signed between them for an invasion and partition of the Spanish Netherlands, and though Charles was unable for a long time to come to a knowledge of its terms he had every reason to suspect that they were not to his taste.
Foreseeing Charles’s annoyance, Richelieu had sent the Seneterre in England.Marquis of Seneterre to England as an extraordinary ambassador, to join with Pougny in urging the King to take part in the alliance against Spain. Richelieu, it is true, knew Charles too well to expect his consent, but he thought <381>that by asking for his alliance he might at least secure his neutrality.[544]
Charles, who was at the moment nettled at the Spanish delays, named Commissioners to treat with Seneterre and Pougny. March.His negotiation.The Commissioners — Laud, Arundel, Carlisle, Holland, Windebank, and Coke — were allowed to say that their master was inclined to listen favourably to the enemies of Spain; especially as the Dunkirkers had just seized a herring-boat belonging to Pembroke, and had captured an English vessel laden with tobacco, on the plea that that ‘noxious superfluity,’ as Charles called it, was to be reckoned amongst ‘munitions of war.’[545] Before, however, the negotiation was fairly on foot, Boswell, though he had been unable to gain a sight of the treaty of partition itself, contrived to send over a copy of a secret article which bound the Dutch and the French Governments to unite in resisting any attempt to break off the blockade of the Flemish ports.[546] If Charles had more than a momentary inclination to come to terms with France, that inclination was April.now at an end. He ordered the Commissioners to spin out time without coming to a conclusion.[547] To the French themselves he continued to speak as if he wished to remain on good terms with their master, but some who thought they knew his mind doubted whether these were, indeed, his real sentiments. “Although,” wrote Necolalde, “he conceals his feelings, he detests these people and the shamelessness with which they talk and make a display. He knows that they merely wish to cheat him and to prevent his alliance with us.”
Whether the French wished to deceive Charles or not, it is plain that he wished to deceive them and his own subjects as well. April 11.He pressed the French ambassadors to give him fitting assurances about the Palatinate. On April 11, apparently in order to give a more serious aspect to his <382>overtures, he directed that a rumour should be raised that he was about to levy land forces, and instructed the Council to issue letters requiring special attention to be paid to the musters.[548] A fortnight later April 25.Charles obtains a copy of the Partition Treaty.his agent at Paris sent him a copy of the Partition Treaty between France and the States.[549] He now learned that by this treaty Dunkirk, Ostend, and Bruges were assigned to Louis. At the same time he learned that a French fleet was preparing to enter the Channel, doubtless with the intention of joining the Dutch in besieging Dunkirk.
There was a strong feeling in England that it would be unsafe to allow Dunkirk to pass into French hands; and a call upon the people, made loyally and openly, could hardly have failed to bring to the surface whatever patriotic impulse was in them. Charles, however, had not that definite grasp upon his own policy which would have enabled him to speak loyally or decisively. He preferred to keep as many questions open as possible, and to avoid committing himself to any special line of policy. April 27.The musters to be attended to.Unusual attention was to be paid to the musters. All untrained men between the ages of sixteen and sixty were to be enrolled. The beacons along the coast were to be looked to. The reason given for all this preparation to resist invasion was that it was necessary to secure the realm in the face of the great armaments on the Continent.[550]
The musters were therefore to serve to deceive Charles’s subjects into thinking that England was in danger of invasion. Charles’s object.He knew perfectly well that there was as little chance of a French invasion of England as there was of an English invasion of the Palatinate. In truth he was anxiously waiting for a final answer from Madrid. Already in March.Olivares’s resolution.the Spanish Council of State Olivares had declared that he saw no reason to change his opinion of the uselessness of the proposed treaty. Yet though there was little chance of seeing Charles engaged in an actual <383>war with the Dutch, so small a sum as 50,000l. might be worth risking to gain his goodwill. Necolalde was especially charged to urge Charles to sign the proposed treaty for the partition of the Netherlands.[551]
Before the end of April, Necolalde informed Cottington of the favourable despatch which he had received. On May 1 May 1.The treaty with Spain agreed to.the articles of the treaty for the employment of the fleet were put into a final shape, and according to orders from Madrid a courier was despatched to Brussels for the money which was to be paid by Spain towards its expenses. Charles, however, had, as Olivares suspected, not shown himself very eager about the further treaty binding him to attack the Dutch, and had asked that, at all events, its terms might not be committed to writing.[552]
All this while the greatest anxiety had been expressed in England to know what was the King’s intention in setting forth a fleet. What is to be done with the fleet?The Queen, who had again been won to the side of France by the civil speeches of Pougny and Seneterre, had used all her wiles to lure the secret from her husband. Charles only broke his usual silence to assure both her and all other inquirers that he merely meant to protect his coasts and the freedom of his subjects’ traffic.[553] In this spirit were couched the instructions issued to the Admiral of the fleet, the Earl of Lindsey, the day after the agreement May 2.Instructions to Lindsey.with Spain had been completed. Lindsey was further informed that he must exact from all passing ships an acknowledgment of his Majesty’s sovereignty, and that this sovereignty extended to the opposite coasts.[554]
To rouse all the landsmen in England to resist an imaginary invasion, and to send out a magnificent fleet to compel a few <384>passing vessels to dip their flags and lower their mainsails was hardly a result worthy of the effort that had been made. Charles himself probably did not know his own intentions. The duplicity with which he was treating all around him had its root in the incoherence of his own ideas. He made different professions to different men, but in each case the profession answered to some fleeting purpose in his own mind.
Whilst Charles was scheming, Richelieu and Frederick Henry were acting. On May 9 a French herald rode into Brussels and May 9.France declares war against Spain.formally declared war against Spain. The French army had already crossed the frontier and had defeated a Spanish force. On the 20th a junction was effected with the Prince of Orange. Under stress of war, the Cardinal Infant wrote to inform Necolalde that May 23.No money to be found for Charles.it was out of his power to send the expected contribution to the English fleet.[555] Necolalde accordingly adopted Charles’s favourite device of spinning out the time, as he knew that it was unlikely that even such a sum as 50,000l. could be provided at Madrid for many months.
Whatever Charles did, therefore, he would have to do alone. On May 27 Lindsey took the command of his fleet in the Downs. May 27.Lindsey takes command of the fleet.He remained there long enough to convoy to Dunkirk twelve vessels laden with men and munitions of war. The Dunkirkers showed their gratitude by chasing a Dutch ship into Dover roads, where, but for the active intervention of the crew of an English merchantman, they would have captured her under the very guns of the town and castle.[556] On June 6 Lindsey weighed anchor, and June 6.He sails down Channel.sailed down Channel to compel the combined French and Dutch fleets, which were expected to reinforce the blockading squadron before Dunkirk, to salute the English flag.
<385>Four days after Lindsey sailed from the Downs a rumour spread over London that a sea-fight had taken place in the Channel. June 10.False news of a sea-fight.A violent cannonade, it was said, had been heard on the English coast. Charles, who had done his utmost to bring about a collision, looked anxious and moody. At last it turned out that the fleet had fired the guns in salute of a Danish squadron going peaceably on its way.[557]
If the false rumour of a conflict was not speedily succeeded by a true one, it was owing to Richelieu, not to Charles. The June 15.Richelieu averts a conflict.French minister would never permit the lilies of France to be lowered before the banner of St. George, but neither was he ready to provoke a neighbouring nation to war, to gratify a punctilio. On the 13th the combined fleet of France and the States was lying in Portland Roads. On the 15th, whilst Lindsey was still at St. Helen’s, Richelieu sent instant instructions to the French Admiral to retire with three of his smallest vessels to Belle Isle, putting the other ships of his squadron under the orders of the Dutch Admiral, and giving directions that they should carry no flags at all. The Dutch had never made any scruple about saluting the English flag, and the French ships, without their Admiral, might count as Dutch for the occasion. The next day Richelieu heard that the Spanish transports had already been convoyed into Dunkirk by Lindsey, and at once ordered both the Dutch and the French ships to the coast of Spain. There was no longer any need of their presence in the Channel, and it was better that even the slightest risk of an unnecessary collision should be avoided.[558] June 25.Lindsey finds no enemy.Lindsey’s operations were thus reduced to a mere display of naval force. Charles and his ministers, eager for more than this, urged on the commander the necessity of doing something for the King. “You must command the seas,” wrote Coke, “or be commanded. Wisdom seeks not danger when with honour it may be shunned, but where honour and dominion lie at stake, brave men will set up <386>their rests.”[559] Lindsey did not need such encouragement to execute his orders; but he could do no more than ply up and down between Plymouth and the Lizard in the hope that the French Admiral would again appear in the Channel. Even Charles did not claim a salute in the Bay of Biscay, and as England was not at war with France, it was useless to pursue the French ships to waters undeniably their own.
Richelieu was naturally anxious that no risk of a conflict should occur in the future. He instructed Seneterre to propose a compromise. June 16.Richelieu proposes a compromise.Let the flag of each nation receive a salute when within sight of the shore to which it belonged. In mid channel the smaller fleet might pay respect to the larger, whatever its nationality was. If Charles was not satisfied with this proposal, any reasonable expedient would be accepted in its place.[560]
Charles would not hear of a compromise. He replied that Philip II. had saluted the English flag when he came to marry Queen Mary. July 2.Charles rejects it.Elizabeth had told Henry IV. plainly that if he pretended to authority on her sea she would sink his ships. Charles had yet to learn that stubborn facts would not give way before the most ample store of precedents. Seneterre answered reasonably that Louis was not bound to repeat the concessions which his father had made to a useful ally at a moment when he was struggling for existence. Richelieu, however, was unwilling to push the controversy to extremities, and directed the ambassadors to say as little about the dispute as possible.[561]
Richelieu, in truth, had more serious matters to consider. The attack upon the Spanish Netherlands, from which so much had been expected, had ended in failure. On May 29 the <387>allies stormed Tirlemont. The French troops sacked the town, and committed the most horrible outrages upon the inhabitants. The cry of the victims resounded from one end of the country to the other. The grievances which had led to such bitter complaints of the Spanish Government were forgotten in a moment. Burgher and nobleman joined to protest that they would be neither Frenchmen nor Dutchmen. The townsman left his shop to keep guard upon the wall, gentlemen hurried into Brussels to place their swords at the disposal of the Cardinal Infant. The invaders June.Failure of the French attack upon the Spanish Netherlands.strove in vain to stem the torrent of the national uprising. They laid siege to Louvain on June 15, only to abandon the attempt on the 24th. A body of Imperialist troops from Germany threatened to take them in the rear. The French regiments especially were in evil case. Their commissariat was deficient, and their discipline lax. They melted away under hunger and sickness as Mansfeld’s troops had melted away ten years before. But for the timely offer of bread from the Dutch stores, they would have been starved outright. As it was, they deserted their standards by two or three hundred at a time.[562] It was therefore necessary to beat a hasty retreat. On July 26 the Dutch, July 26.Loss of Schenck’s Sconce.long unused to failure, learned that a party from Gueldres had seized on Schenck’s Sconce, the fortification which commands the two great arms of the Rhine at their point of separation.
One object of Charles’s wishes had thus been obtained without his co-operation. Dunkirk was not likely to fall into Charles without allies.French hands for some time to come. If he had never put a single armed vessel to sea, never levied a single penny of ship-money, the result would have been precisely the same as it was. His own position was seriously affected by his miscalculation. His irritating, hesitating aims, his arrogant pretensions, his contemptuous ignorance of the requirements of other states, had left him without a friend in Europe. France and the States-General had no reason to <388>thank him. The offer of the Spanish alliance had not been renewed, nor did it seem probable that it ever would be renewed. In the midst of the stirring events of the early summer Charles’s hopes of regaining the Palatinate by negotiation had received May 20.The Peace of Prague.an unexpected shock. On May 20 the Emperor and the Elector of Saxony signed the Peace of Prague. Ferdinand at last consented to abandon the Edict of Restitution, though such ecclesiastical lands as had been recovered by the Roman Catholic Church before 1627 were still to be retained by it. The remaining stipulations were a sad blow to Charles’s wishes. Whatever terms were made were made for the Lutherans alone. Calvinism was not acknowledged as a recognised religion. The Palatinate was not to be restored. If the children of the late proscribed Elector made their submission in humble form some sustenance might be granted them out of charity, but they were to claim nothing as of right. The Emperor, the closest ally of that Spain for the sake of which the King of England believed himself to have done so much, had definitely pronounced against the wish which, next to the maintenance of his own authority, was nearest to Charles’s heart.
If Charles had done nothing to attach the Spanish Government to himself, he had done much to exasperate the Dutch. July.The fleet in the Channel.He spoke openly of his purpose to vindicate the right of his subjects to trade freely with Dunkirk.[563] His fleet was doing no good in the west. There was no enemy to fight, and the victualling officers had proved as roguish or incompetent as they had proved in the days of Buckingham. The sailors complained that whenever a cask of salt beef was moved, the smell which issued from it was bad enough to breed a plague.[564] Sickness broke out amongst the crews and carried off 600 men.
<389>In August, when Lindsey returned to the Downs to revictual,[565] he found that his master’s sovereignty of the seas was being questioned in another way than by a mere refusal to dip the sail. English merchant vessels pillaged.English vessels had been pillaged in the very Straits of Dover. Even the post-boat, which had hitherto passed unquestioned between Dover and Dunkirk, had been rifled by a vessel from Calais.[566] The Dutch were still more exasperated than the French. The Dunkirk privateers had broken the blockade, and had dashed at their fishing-boats The Dunkirk privateers seize the Dutch fishing-boats.in the North Sea. A hundred large herring busses, as they were called, were destroyed or captured. English sailors passing along the coasts of Northumberland and Durham saw the sky red with the flames of burning vessels. The Dutch ships of war hurried to protect or avenge their countrymen. The privateers fled for refuge into English waters. It was hard for the Dutch captains, in their mood of exasperation, to see their prey escaping. One of them followed a Dunkirker with his prizes July 13.Fights at Scarborough.into the port of Scarborough. The quarrel was fought out close to the shore. Shot and bullets flew about, and some of the townsmen were wounded. The Dutchmen gained the upper hand, and sailed away triumphantly with the vessels which they had captured. A fortnight later July 26.another Dutch ship which had chased a privateer into the same port, sent sixty or eighty men on shore, vowing that they would have the ship or lose their lives.[567]
Lindsey was ordered to detach three ships to the north to repress these outrages.[568] Aug. 15.The Dutch land at Blythe.Before they reached their destination a fresh violation of neutrality was reported from Blythe. To make sure of capturing a Dunkirk privateer, a Dutch captain had landed his men, had pursued his enemies two miles inland, and had robbed them before he let <390>them go. Lindsey’s ships did not succeed in meeting with the offender, but they seized another Dutch man-of-war which ran under their guns in hot pursuit of an enemy, and sent it as a prize to Hull on the mere chance that it might prove to be one of those which had done the mischief at Scarborough or Blythe.[569] End of Lindsey’s employment.Lindsey himself remained for some time in the Downs despatching vessels from time to time to convoy English merchants to Dunkirk or Ostend.[570] Before the end of September he weighed anchor once more and steered down Channel. September.He did not get beyond the Isle of Wight. The autumn storms checked his course, and his provisions were again running short. On October 8 he Oct. 8.struck his flag. The great fleet upon which the eyes of Europe had been fixed had succeeded in capturing one Dutch vessel, had convoyed a few English traders and some Spanish transports to the Flemish ports, and had compelled a large number of merchantmen of various nations to lower their sails in token of respect. Beyond this it had accomplished nothing.[571]
It is undeniable that the knot of foreign policy which lay before Charles in the autumn was not easy to untie. To give Difficulties of the situation.active support to Spain was to prop up a decaying and unintelligent rule against the living powers of the world. To give active support to Richelieu and the States-General was to impose a foreign yoke upon a people by whom it was detested. Neutrality, too, had its own risks. Dunkirk in the hands of France would be truly formidable to England, whilst its maintenance in the hands of Spain by direct or indirect aid from England implied the maintenance of a nest of privateers which sent forth havoc and destruction upon <391>the fishermen and traffickers of Holland and Zealand. It may be that the best solution of the difficulty was to be found in a prudent adaptation of Roe’s policy to the circumstances of the case, and that a firm intimation that while England would resist to the utmost any attempt to establish a French garrison in Dunkirk, she would not oppose an increase of the Dutch territory in that direction, would have been the wisest course to have adopted. However that may have been, no word of condemnation is too strong for the manner in which Charles treated the whole subject of his relations with the Continent. It had all the weakness of a purely selfish policy, without any of the apparent and momentary strength which a selfish policy receives from vigour of conception and boldness of action.
One man alone in Charles’s service was capable of applying to the problem the qualities which for a time at least might have given weight to the defence of English interests on the Continent. But Wentworth was hard at work in Dublin, and even if Charles had wished it, he could never have found another servant fit to replace him there.
End of the seventh volume.
[483] Anstruther to Coke, April 6, 26, S. P. Germany; Coke to Anstruther, May 22, S. P. Holland.
[484] Windebank to Portland, May 31, S. P. Dom. ccxxxix. 71.
[485] Numerous papers relating to this affair are scattered over S. P. Dom. ccxxxix.–ccxlii.
[486] Henrard, Marie de Médicis dans les Pays Bas, 344.
[487] Gerbier to the King, March 30⁄April 9, S. P. Flanders.
[488] Gerbier’s instructions, May 10, ibid.
[489] Henrard, 439.
[490] Coke to Boswell, Oct. 8, S. P. Holland.
[491] Necolalde to Philip IV., Oct. 27, Oct. 30⁄Nov. 6, Nov. 9, Nov. 1, 8⁄11, 18. Necolalde to the Cardinal Infant, Nov. 22⁄Dec. 2, Brussels MSS. Necolalde’s Memoir, Clar. S. P. i. 77. Brasser to the States-General, Nov. 2, 10⁄12, 20. Add. MSS. 17,677 O, fol. 142, 143.
[492] Nethersole to Coke, Jan. 4. Statement by Nethersole, Jan. 9, S. P. Dom. cclviii. 1338.
[493] Coke to Boswell, Jan. 7, S. P. Holland.
[494] Answer to Necolalde, Jan. 30; Windebank to Hopton, Feb. 16, Clar. S. P. i. 79, 74. Necolalde to Philip IV., Jan. 15⁄25, Simancas MSS. 1520.
[495] Hopton to Windebank, March 28⁄April 7, Clar. S. P. i. 80.
[496] Necolalde to the Cardinal Infant, March 7⁄17, March 28⁄April 7, Brussels MSS. Draft of instructions to Anstruther, April 3; Instructions to Anstruther, April 14; Anstruther to Coke, June 30. S. P. Germany. Necolalde to Philip IV., April 25⁄May 5, Simancas MSS. 2564.
[497] Consulta of the Council of State, March 20⁄30; Philip IV. to Necolalde, March 27⁄April 6, Simancas MSS. 2520, 2574.
[498] Necolalde to Philip IV., April 16⁄26, ibid. 2520.
[499] Zonca’s despatches, May 2, 9, 16⁄12, 19, 26, May 23⁄June 2, June 6⁄16, Venice MSS.
[500] Extracts from the public records, S. P. Dom. cclxxvi. 65.
[501] Windebank to Portland, June 6, Clar. S. P. i. 94.
[502] Coke’s declaration, June 8, S. P. Dom. cclxix. 51.
[503] A MS. copy of Sir J. Borough’s book (Harl. MSS. 4314) has the date of 1633, and there is internal evidence to the same effect. This means before March 25, 1634. It would hardly be begun before the King’s return from Scotland in August, and probably not till December or January.
[504] The claim is to be found in an order of the Admiralty Commissioners as early as Jan. 21, 1634, S. P. Dom. cclix. 17.
[505] Mr. Bruce is mistaken in saying in the preface to the Calendar of 1634–5, xvii. that Charles ordered the papers to be destroyed. The word is ‘suppressed.’ Holland to Dorchester, Jan. 24, 1631, S. P. Dom. clxxxiii. 18.
[506] The King to Windebank, July 26, ibid. cclxxii. 62.
[507] Coke’s Detection, 253. He also says that Coke’s will was carried off. There is no mention of it in the list of papers preserved. As the trunk was broken open before the King on Sept. 9, the probability is that it was seized after, not before, Coke’s death on the 3rd.
[508] List of papers in the trunk, Lambeth MSS. 943, fol. 369. The original is as given above. I am sorry to have to dispel Mr. Bruce’s little romance. He read it a ‘paper of poetry.’ The list of the papers seized in December is S. P. Dom. cclxxviii. 35.
[509] In a short autobiographical memoir, apparently written without any view to publication, which has been printed by the Philobiblon Society (Bibliographical and Historical Miscellanies, vol. i.), Heath says, “I was on a sudden discharged of that place of Chief Justice, no cause being then nor at any time since showed for my removal.”
[510] Jones’s Reports, 347. Zonca’s despatch, Aug. 15⁄25, Venice MSS.
[511] This is distinctly stated by Zonca.
[512] On the ground that this perambulation had disforested land newly attached to the forest in the reign of Henry II. which it was beyond its power to touch.
[513] The grand jury must not be confounded with the Verderers, &c., who attended the Court. It was no doubt composed of the neighbouring gentry.
[514] The latter sum rests on Zonca’s statement that the fines on the two together reached 47,000l. Zonca’s despatch, Aug. 15⁄25, Venice MSS.
[515] Pardon to Brooke and Mynn, July 22, 1636. Pat. 13, Charles I. Part 4. See Jones’s Reports, 347.
[516] Breviates of the Exchequer, 1636–7.
[517] Correr’s despatch, Oct. 24, Oct. 31⁄Nov. 3, Nov. 10, Venice MSS.
[518] Statement by Warwick, Oct. 5, S. P. Dom. cclxxv. 21. Printed in full in Mr. Bruce’s Introduction to the Calendar of 1634–35.
[519] Windebank to Hopton, July 11, Clar. S. P. i. 103. The letters are in S. P. Holland, and also in Aitzema, Saken van Staet en Oorlogh, ii. There seems to be no doubt that they are genuine. Necolalde in his despatch of July 16⁄26 speaks of them as such. Simancas MSS. 2520.
[520] Instructions to Pougny, July, Arch. des Aff. Étr. xlv. 316.
[521] Joachimi to the States-General, Aug. 20⁄30, Add. MSS. 17,677 O, fol. 217.
[522] By the sixth article of that treaty Philip would have to furnish 25,000l. a month, and it is to this that reference is made. In the first draft the future league to be negotiated is described as a defensive one. In the second draft the partition treaty is directly referred to. I suspect that Charles did not fully realise to himself how far these articles were a step to the carrying out of the partition treaty. There were still to be negotiations, and he might draw back in the end. Clar. S. P. i. 109, 112, 126.
[523] Windebank to Hopton, October 16, Malet MSS., recently purchased by the British Museum.
[524] Note of Necolalde’s despatch, July 31⁄Aug. 10, Simancas MSS. 2520.
[525] Here is the principle on which Charles acted in the following year. Of the other principle, that what concerned all should be consulted on by all, he took no account.
[526] Writ, Oct. 20, Rushworth, ii. 257.
[527] Necolalde to Philip IV., Nov. 21⁄Dec. 1, Simancas MSS. 2520.
[528] It was received, Salvetti says, ‘con assai generale dispiacere.’ News-Letter, Sept. 26⁄Oct. 6.
[529] Joachimi to the States-General, Oct. 11⁄21, Add. MSS. 17,677 O, fol. 240.
[530] Coke to Boswell, Oct. 27. Windebank to Boswell, Oct. 28, S. P. Holland.
[531] Boswell to Windebank, Dec. 2, ibid.
[532] Anstruther to Coke, Sept. 30, S. P. Germany.
[533] Russell’s account, April 1, 1635, S. P. Dom. cclxxvi. 8.
[534] Garrard to Wentworth, Jan. 11, Strafford Letters, i. 357. Rushworth, ii. 265.
[535] Correr’s despatch, Dec. 26⁄Jan. 5, 1634⁄5, Ven. MSS.
[536] Clar. S. P. i. 158.
[537] Ranke’s account of Portland’s finance, derived from the Venetian despatches, is far too flattering. It is necessary to bring general statements about revenue and expenditure to the test of figures, whenever it is possible to do so.
[538] Garrard to Wentworth, March 12, 17, Strafford Letters, i. 387, 389.
[539] Panzani’s despatch, March 13⁄23, Roman Transcripts, R. O.
[540] Clarendon, i. 54.
[541] M. Nicholas to Nicholas, S. P. Dom. cclxxxv. 11.
[542] Roe to Elizabeth, April 5, ibid. cclxxxvi. 34.
[543] Windebank to Hopton, Jan. 24, Clar. S. P. i. 226.
[544] Seneterre’s instructions, Feb. 15⁄25, Arch. des Aff. Étr. xlv. 395.
[545] Correr’s despatch, March 13⁄23, Ven. MSS. Gerbier’s despatches, Feb., March, 1635, S. P. Flanders.
[546] Boswell to Coke, March 12, S. P. Holland.
[547] Windebank’s notes, April 3, 11, 13, 18, S. P. France.
[548] Windebank’s notes, April 11, S. P. France.
[549] The copy in S. P. France is indorsed as received at this date.
[550] The Council to the Lords Lieutenants, April 27, S. P. Dom. cclxxxvii. 55.
[551] Consulta of the Council of State, March 15⁄25. Philip IV. to Necolalde, March 28⁄April 7, Simancas MSS. 2520.
[552] Necolalde to the Cardinal Infant, April 24⁄May 4, May 1⁄11, Brussels MSS.
[553] Necolalde to the Cardinal Infant, April 3⁄13, ibid.
[554] Lords of the Admiralty to Lindsey, May 2. Lindsey to the King, with Coke’s marginal reply, May 14 (?), S. P. Dom. clvii. fol. 135 b., cclxxxviii. 85.
[555] The Cardinal Infant to Necolalde, May 23⁄June 2, Brussels MSS.
[556] Correr’s despatch, June 3⁄13, Ven. MSS. Lindsey to the Lords of the Admiralty, May 30, June 6. Conway to Coke, June 5, S. P. Dom. cclxxxix. 75, ccxc. 25, 34.
[557] Correr’s despatches, June 10, 12⁄20, 22, Ven. MSS.
[558] Richelieu to De Manty, June 15, 16⁄25, 26, Lettres de Richelieu, v. 66.
[559] Coke to Conway, June 25, S. P. Dom. ccxci. 59.
[560] Louis XIII. to Seneterre and Pougny, June 16⁄26, Bibl. Nat. Fr. 15,933. Compare S. P. Dom. ccxci. 80.
[561] Coke to De Vic and Augier, July 2, S. P. Dom. ccxciii. 12; Seneterre to Bouthillier, July 3, 8⁄13, 18. Bouthillier to Seneterre, July 10⁄20, Bibl. Nat. Fr. 15,993.
[562] Boswell to Coke, July 2, S. P. Holland.
[563] Joachimi to the States-General, July 30⁄Aug. 9, Add. MSS. 17,677 O, fol. 363.
[564] Lindsey to the Lords of the Admiralty, July 21, S. P. Dom. ccxciv. 20. Correr’s despatch, July 30⁄Aug. 9, Ven. MSS.
[565] Pennington to Nicholas, Aug. 3. Windebank to Coke, Aug. 6, S. P. Dom. ccxcv. 18, 37.
[566] Examinations of Perkins and Redwood, July 8, ibid. ccxciii. 70, 71.
[567] Atmarr to Osborne, July 14 (?). Bailiffs of Scarborough to Osborne, July 26, ibid. ccxciii. 107, i. ccxiv. 46, i.
[568] The Council to Lindsey, July 29, ibid. ccxciv. 55.
[569] Information of Cramlington and others, Aug. 16, S. P. Dom. ccxcv. 71; Joachimi to the King, Aug. 25. Answer to Joachimi, Aug. 27, S. P. Holland. Joachimi to the States-General, Aug. 25, 31⁄Sept. 4, 10, Add. MSS. 17,677 O, fol. 378, 382.
[570] Lindsey to Windebank, Aug. 27; Pennington to Nicholas, Aug. 31, S. P. Dom. ccxcvi. 30, 55.
[571] Lindsey to Coke, Sept. 25. Lindsey’s relation, Oct. 8, ibid. ccxcviii. 45, ccxcix. 28.