Constitutional History of England Volume I Part 26

[556] Commons' Journals, 466, 472, 481, 486. Sir Henry Wotton at length muttered something in favour of the prerogative of laying impositions, as belonging to hereditary though not to elective princes. _Id._ 493.

This silly argument is only worth notice, as a proof what erroneous notions of government were sometimes imbibed from an intercourse with foreign nations. Dudley Digges and Sandys answered him very properly.

[557] The judges having been called upon by the House of Lords to deliver their opinions on the subject of impositions, previous to the intended conference, requested, by the mouth of Chief Justice c.o.ke, to be excused. This was probably a disappointment to Lord Chancellor Egerton, who had moved to consult them, and proceeded from c.o.ke's dislike to him and to the court. It induced the house to decline the conference. Lords' Journals, 23rd May.

[558] Lords' Journals, May 31; Commons' Journals, 496, 498.

[559] Carte, iv. 23. Neville's memorial above mentioned was read in the house, May 14.

[560] Carte, iv. 19, 20; Bacon, i. 695; C. J. 462.

[561] C. J. 506; Carte, 23. This writer absurdly defends the prerogative of laying impositions on merchandise as part of the _law of nations_.

[562] It is said that, previously to taking this step, the king sent for the Commons, and tore all their bills before their faces in the banqueting-house at Whitehall. D'Israeli's _Character of James_, p. 158, on the authority of an unpublished letter.

[563] Carte; Wilson; Camden's _Annals of James I._ (in Kennet, ii. 643).

[564] Carte, iv. p. 56.

[565] 12 Reports, 119.

[566] _State Trials_, ii. 889.

[567] There had, however, been instances of it, as in Sir Walter Raleigh's case (Lodge, iii. 172, 173); and I have found proofs of it in the queen's reign; though I cannot at present quote my authority. In a former age, the judges had refused to give an extra-judicial answer to the king. Lingard, v. 382, from the year-book, Pasch. 1 H. 7, 15, Trin.

1.

[568] _State Trials_, ii. 869; Bacon, ii. 483, etc.; Dalrymple's _Memorials of James I._, vol. i. p. 56. Some other very unjustifiable constructions of the law of treason took place in this reign. Thomas Owen was indicted and found guilty, under the statute of Edward III., for saying, that "the king, being excommunicated (_i.e._ if he should be excommunicated) by the pope, might be lawfully deposed and killed by any one, which killing would not be murder, being the execution of the supreme sentence of the pope;" a position very atrocious, but not amounting to treason. _State Trials_, ii. 879. And Williams, another papist, was convicted of treason by a still more violent stretch of law, for writing a book predicting the king's death in the year 1621. _Id._ 1085.

[569] Bacon, ii. 500, 518, 522; Cro. Jac. 335, 343.

[570] Bacon, ii. 517, etc.; Carte, iv. 35; _Biograph. Brit._, art. c.o.ke.

The king told the judges, he thought his prerogative as much wounded if it be publicly disputed upon, as if any sentence were given against it.

[571] See D'Israeli, _Character of James I._, p. 125. He was too much affected by his dismissal from office.

[572] Camden's _Annals of James I._ in Kennet, vol. ii.; Wilson, _ibid._, 704, 705; Bacon's Works, ii. 574. The fine imposed was 30,000; c.o.ke voted for 100,000.

[573] Fuller's _Church Hist._ 56; Neal, i. 435; Lodge, iii. 344.

[574] _State Trials_, ii. 765.

[575] Collier, 712, 717; Selden's Life in _Biographia Brit._

[576] Carte, iii. 698.

[577] _State Trials_, ii. 23; Lodge's _Ill.u.s.trations_, iii. 217.

[578] Winwood, iii. 201, 279.

[579] _Id._ 178. In this collection are one or two letters from Arabella, which show her to have been a lively and accomplished woman.

It is said in a ma.n.u.script account of circ.u.mstances about the king's accession, which seems ent.i.tled to some credit, that on its being proposed that she should walk at the queen's funeral, she answered with spirit that, as she had been debarred her majesty's presence while living, she would not be brought on the stage as a public spectacle after her death. Sloane MSS. 827.

Much occurs on the subject of this lady's imprisonment in one of the valuable volumes in Dr. Birch's handwriting, among the same MSS. 4161.

Those have already a.s.sisted Mr. D'Israeli in his interesting memoir on Arabella Stuart, in the _Curiosities of Literature_, New Series, vol. i.

They cannot be read (as I should conceive) without indignation at James and his ministers. One of her letters is addressed to the two chief-justices, begging to be brought before them by habeas corpus, being informed that it is designed to remove her far from those courts of justice where she ought to be tried and condemned, or cleared, to remote parts, whose courts she holds unfitted for her offence. "And if your lords.h.i.+ps may not or will not grant unto me the ordinary relief of a distressed subject, then I beseech you become humble intercessors to his majesty that I may receive such benefit of justice, as both his majesty by his oath hath promised, and the laws of this realm afford to all others, those of his blood not excepted. And though, unfortunate woman! I can obtain neither, yet I beseech your lords.h.i.+ps retain me in your good opinion, and judge charitably till I be proved to have committed any offence either against G.o.d or his majesty deserving so long restraint or separation from my lawful husband."

Arabella did not profess the Roman catholic religion, but that party seem to have relied upon her; and so late as 1610, she incurred some "suspicion of being collapsed." Winwood, ii. 117.

This had been also conjectured in the queen's life-time. _Secret Correspondence of Cecil with James I._, p. 118.

[580] _State Trials_, ii. 769.

[581] Sir Charles Cornwallis's _Memoir of Prince Henry_, reprinted in the Somers Tracts, vol. ii., and of which sufficient extracts may be found in Birch's life, contains a remarkably minute detail of all the symptoms attending the prince's illness, which was an epidemic typhus fever. The report of his physicians after dissection may also be read in many books. Nature might possibly have overcome the disorder, if an empirical doctor had not insisted on continually bleeding him. He had no other murderer. We need not even have recourse to Hume's acute and decisive remark that, if Somerset had been so experienced in this trade, he would not have spent five months in bungling about Overbury's death.

Carte says (vol. iv. 33) that the queen charged Somerset with designing to poison her, Prince Charles, and the elector palatine, in order to marry the electress to Lord Suffolk's son. But this is too extravagant, whatever Anne might have thrown out in pa.s.sion against a favourite she hated. On Henry's death the first suspicion fell of course on the papists. Winwood, iii. 410. Burnet doubts whether his aversion to popery did not hasten his death. And there is a remarkable letter from Sir Robert Naunton to Winwood, in the note of the last reference, which shows that suspicions of some such agency were entertained very early.

But the positive evidence we have of his disease outweighs all conjecture.

[582] The circ.u.mstances to which I allude are well known to the curious in English history, and might furnish materials for a separate dissertation, had I leisure to stray in these by-paths. Hume has treated them as quite unimportant; and Carte, with his usual honesty, has never alluded to them. Those who read carefully the new edition of the _State Trials_, and various pa.s.sages in Lord Bacon's _Letters_, may form for themselves the best judgment they can. A few conclusions may, perhaps, be laid down as established, 1. That Overbury's death was occasioned, not merely by Lady Somerset's revenge, but by his possession of important secrets, which in his pa.s.sion he had threatened Somerset to divulge. 2. That Somerset conceived himself to have a hold over the king by the possession of the same or some other secrets, and used indirect threats of revealing them. 3. That the king was in the utmost terror at hearing of these measures; as is proved by a pa.s.sage in Weldon's _Memoirs_, p. 115, which, after being long ascribed to his libellous spirit, has lately received the most entire confirmation by some letters from More, lieutenant of the Tower, published in the _Archaeologia_, vol.

xviii. 4. That Bacon was in the king's confidence, and employed by him so to manage Somerset's trial, as to prevent him from making any imprudent disclosure, or the judges from getting any insight into that which it was not meant to reveal. See particularly a pa.s.sage in his letter to c.o.ke, vol. ii. 514, beginning, "This crime was second to none but the powder-plot."

Upon the whole, I cannot satisfy myself in any manner as to this mystery. Prince Henry's death, as I have observed, is out of the question; nor does a different solution, hinted by Harris and others, and which may have suggested itself to the reader, appear probable to my judgment on weighing the whole case. Overbury was an ambitious, unprincipled man; and it seems more likely than anything else, that James had listened too much to some criminal suggestion from him and Somerset; but of what nature I cannot pretend even to conjecture; and that through apprehension of this being disclosed, he had pusillanimously acquiesced in the scheme of Overbury's murder.

It is a remarkable fact, mentioned by Burnet, and perhaps little believed, but which, like the former, has lately been confirmed by doc.u.ments printed in the _Archaeologia_, that James in the last year of his reign, while dissatisfied with Buckingham, privately renewed his correspondence with Somerset, on whom he bestowed at the same time a full pardon, and seems to have given him hopes of being restored to his former favour. A memorial drawn up by Somerset, evidently at the king's command, and most probably after the clandestine interview reported by Burnet, contains strong charges against Buckingham. _Archaeologia_, vol.

xvii. 280. But no consequences resulted from this; James was either reconciled to his favourite before his death, or felt himself too old for a struggle. Somerset seems to have tampered a little with the popular party in the beginning of the next reign. A speech of Sir Robert Cotton's in 1625 (_Parl. Hist._ ii. 145) praises him, comparatively at least with his successor in royal favour; and he was one of those against whom informations were brought in the star-chamber for dispersing Sir Robert Dudley's famous proposal for bridling the impertinences of parliament. Kennet, iii. 62. The patriots, however, of that age had too much sense to enc.u.mber themselves with an ally equally unserviceable and infamous. There cannot be the slightest doubt of Somerset's guilt as to the murder, though some have thought the evidence insufficient (Carte, iv. 34); he does not deny it in his remarkable letter to James, requesting, or rather demanding, mercy, printed in the Cabala and in Bacon's Works.

[583] Raleigh made an attempt to destroy himself on being committed to the Tower; which of course affords a presumption of his consciousness that something could be proved against him. Cayley's _Life of Raleigh_, vol. ii. p. 10. Hume says, it appears from Sully's _Memoirs_ that he had offered his services to the French amba.s.sador. I cannot find this in Sully; whom Raleigh, however, and his party seem to have aimed at deceiving by false information. Nor could there be any treason in making an interest with the minister of a friendly power. Carte quotes the despatches of Beaumont, the French amba.s.sador, to prove the connection of the conspirators with the Spanish plenipotentiary. But it may be questioned whether he knew any more than the government gave out. If Raleigh had ever shown a discretion bearing the least proportion to his genius, we might reject the whole story as improbable. But it is to be remembered that there had long been a catholic faction, who fixed their hopes on Arabella; so that the conspiracy, though extremely injudicious, was not so perfectly unintelligible as it appears to a reader of Hume, who has overlooked the previous circ.u.mstances. It is also to be considered, that the king had shown so marked a prejudice against Raleigh on his coming to England, and the hostility of Cecil was so insidious and implacable, as might drive a man of his rash and impetuous courage to desperate courses. See Cayley's _Life of Raleigh_, vol. ii.; a work containing much interesting matter, but unfortunately written too much in the spirit of an advocate, which, with so faulty a client, must tend to an erroneous representation of facts.

[584] This estate was Sherborn Castle, which Raleigh had not very fairly obtained from the see of Salisbury. He settled this before his conviction upon his son; but an accidental flaw in the deed enabled the king to wrest it from him, and bestow it on the Earl of Somerset. Lady Raleigh, it is said, solicited his majesty on her knees to spare it; but he only answered, "I mun have the land, I mun have it for Carr." He gave him, however, 12,000 instead. But the estate was worth 5000 per annum.

This ruin of the prospects of a man far too intent on aggrandis.e.m.e.nt impelled him once more into the labyrinth of fatal and dishonest speculations. Cayley, 89, etc.; _Somers Tracts_, ii. p. 22, etc.; _Curiosities of Literature_, New Series, vol. ii. It has been said that Raleigh's unjust conviction made him in one day the most popular, from having been the most odious, man in England. He was certainly such under Elizabeth. This is a striking, but by no means solitary, instance of the impolicy of political persecution.

[585] Rymer, xvi. 789. He was empowered to name officers, to use martial law, etc.

[586] James made it a merit with the court of Madrid, that he had put to death a man so capable of serving him merely to give them satisfaction.

_Somers Tracts_, ii. 437. There is even reason to suspect that he betrayed the secret of Raleigh's voyage to Gondomar, before he sailed.

Hardwicke, _State Papers_, i. 398. It is said in Mr. Cayley's _Life of Raleigh_ that his fatal mistake in not securing a pardon under the great seal was on account of the expense. But the king would have made some difficulty at least about granting it.

[587] This project began as early as 1605. Winwood, vol. ii. The king had hopes that the United Provinces would acknowledge the sovereignty of Prince Henry and the infanta on their marriage; and Cornwallis was directed to propose this formally to the court of Madrid. _Id._ p. 201.

But Spain would not cede the point of sovereignty; nor was this scheme likely to please either the states-general or the court of France.

In the later negotiation about the marriage of Prince Charles, those of the council who were known or suspected catholics, Arundel, Worcester, Digby, Weston, Calvert, as well as Buckingham, whose connections were such, were in the Spanish party. Those reputed to be jealous protestants were all against it. Wilson, in Kennet, ii. 725. Many of the former were bribed by Gondomar. _Id._ and Rushworth, i. 19.

[588] The proclamation for this parliament contains many of the unconst.i.tutional directions to the electors, contained, as has been seen, in that of 1604, though shorter. Rymer, xvii. 270.

[589] "Deal with me, as I shall desire at your hands," etc. "He knew not," he told them, "the laws and customs of the land when he first came, and was misled by the old counsellors whom the old queen had left;"--he owns that at the last parliament there was "a strange kind of beast called undertaker," etc. _Parl. Hist._ i. 1180. Yet this coaxing language was oddly mingled with sallies of his pride and prerogative notions. It is evidently his own composition, not Bacon's. The latter, in granting the speaker's pet.i.tions, took the high tone so usual in this reign, and directed the House of Commons like a schoolmaster. Bacon's Works, i. 701.

[590] Debates of Commons in 1621, vol. i. p. 84. I quote the two volumes published at Oxford in 1766; they are abridged in the new _Parliamentary History_.

[591] _Id._ 103, 109.

[592] The Commons in this session complained to the Lords, that the Bishop of London (Stokesley) had imprisoned one Philips on suspicion of heresy. Some time afterwards, they called upon him to answer their complaint. The bishop laid the matter before the Lords, who all declared that it was unbecoming for any lord of parliament to make answer to any one in that place; "quod non consentaneum fuit aliquem procerum praedictorum alicui in eo loco responsorum." Lords' Journals, i. 71. The lords, however, in 1701 (_State Trials_, xiv. 275), seem to have recognised this as a case of impeachment.