A Child's History of England - Ch. 31-35

A Child's History of England: Chapters 1 - 2
A Child's History of England: Chapters 3 - 6
A Child's History of England: Chapters 7 - 10
A Child's History of England: Chapters 11 - 12
A Child's History of England: Chapters 13 - 16
A Child's History of England: Chapters 17 - 21
A Child's History of England: Chapters 22 - 25
A Child's History of England: Chapters 26 - 30
A Child's History of England: Chapters 31 - 35
A Child's History of England: Chapters 36 - 37

Chapter XXXI - ENGLAND UNDER ELIZABETH

THERE was great rejoicing all over the land when the Lords of the
Council went down to Hatfield, to hail the Princess Elizabeth as
the new Queen of England. Weary of the barbarities of Mary's
reign, the people looked with hope and gladness to the new
Sovereign. The nation seemed to wake from a horrible dream; and
Heaven, so long hidden by the smoke of the fires that roasted men
and women to death, appeared to brighten once more.

Queen Elizabeth was five-and-twenty years of age when she rode
through the streets of London, from the Tower to Westminster Abbey,
to be crowned. Her countenance was strongly marked, but on the
whole, commanding and dignified; her hair was red, and her nose
something too long and sharp for a woman's. She was not the
beautiful creature her courtiers made out; but she was well enough,
and no doubt looked all the better for coming after the dark and
gloomy Mary. She was well educated, but a roundabout writer, and
rather a hard swearer and coarse talker. She was clever, but
cunning and deceitful, and inherited much of her father's violent
temper. I mention this now, because she has been so over-praised
by one party, and so over-abused by another, that it is hardly
possible to understand the greater part of her reign without first
understanding what kind of woman she really was.

She began her reign with the great advantage of having a very wise
and careful Minister, SIR WILLIAM CECIL, whom she afterwards made
LORD BURLEIGH. Altogether, the people had greater reason for
rejoicing than they usually had, when there were processions in the
streets; and they were happy with some reason. All kinds of shows
and images were set up; GOG and MAGOG were hoisted to the top of
Temple Bar, and (which was more to the purpose) the Corporation
dutifully presented the young Queen with the sum of a thousand
marks in gold - so heavy a present, that she was obliged to take it
into her carriage with both hands. The coronation was a great
success; and, on the next day, one of the courtiers presented a
petition to the new Queen, praying that as it was the custom to
release some prisoners on such occasions, she would have the
goodness to release the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and
John, and also the Apostle Saint Paul, who had been for some time
shut up in a strange language so that the people could not get at
them.

To this, the Queen replied that it would be better first to inquire
of themselves whether they desired to be released or not; and, as a
means of finding out, a great public discussion - a sort of
religious tournament - was appointed to take place between certain
champions of the two religions, in Westminster Abbey. You may
suppose that it was soon made pretty clear to common sense, that
for people to benefit by what they repeat or read, it is rather
necessary they should understand something about it. Accordingly,
a Church Service in plain English was settled, and other laws and
regulations were made, completely establishing the great work of
the Reformation. The Romish bishops and champions were not harshly
dealt with, all things considered; and the Queen's Ministers were
both prudent and merciful.

The one great trouble of this reign, and the unfortunate cause of
the greater part of such turmoil and bloodshed as occurred in it,
was MARY STUART, QUEEN OF SCOTS. We will try to understand, in as
few words as possible, who Mary was, what she was, and how she came
to be a thorn in the royal pillow of Elizabeth.

She was the daughter of the Queen Regent of Scotland, MARY OF
GUISE. She had been married, when a mere child, to the Dauphin,
the son and heir of the King of France. The Pope, who pretended
that no one could rightfully wear the crown of England without his
gracious permission, was strongly opposed to Elizabeth, who had not
asked for the said gracious permission. And as Mary Queen of Scots
would have inherited the English crown in right of her birth,
supposing the English Parliament not to have altered the
succession, the Pope himself, and most of the discontented who were
followers of his, maintained that Mary was the rightful Queen of
England, and Elizabeth the wrongful Queen. Mary being so closely
connected with France, and France being jealous of England, there
was far greater danger in this than there would have been if she
had had no alliance with that great power. And when her young
husband, on the death of his father, became FRANCIS THE SECOND,
King of France, the matter grew very serious. For, the young
couple styled themselves King and Queen of England, and the Pope
was disposed to help them by doing all the mischief he could.

Now, the reformed religion, under the guidance of a stern and
powerful preacher, named JOHN KNOX, and other such men, had been
making fierce progress in Scotland. It was still a half savage
country, where there was a great deal of murdering and rioting
continually going on; and the Reformers, instead of reforming those
evils as they should have done, went to work in the ferocious old
Scottish spirit, laying churches and chapels waste, pulling down
pictures and altars, and knocking about the Grey Friars, and the
Black Friars, and the White Friars, and the friars of all sorts of
colours, in all directions. This obdurate and harsh spirit of the
Scottish Reformers (the Scotch have always been rather a sullen and
frowning people in religious matters) put up the blood of the
Romish French court, and caused France to send troops over to
Scotland, with the hope of setting the friars of all sorts of
colours on their legs again; of conquering that country first, and
England afterwards; and so crushing the Reformation all to pieces.
The Scottish Reformers, who had formed a great league which they
called The Congregation of the Lord, secretly represented to
Elizabeth that, if the reformed religion got the worst of it with
them, it would be likely to get the worst of it in England too; and
thus, Elizabeth, though she had a high notion of the rights of
Kings and Queens to do anything they liked, sent an army to
Scotland to support the Reformers, who were in arms against their
sovereign. All these proceedings led to a treaty of peace at
Edinburgh, under which the French consented to depart from the
kingdom. By a separate treaty, Mary and her young husband engaged
to renounce their assumed title of King and Queen of England. But
this treaty they never fulfilled.

It happened, soon after matters had got to this state, that the
young French King died, leaving Mary a young widow. She was then
invited by her Scottish subjects to return home and reign over
them; and as she was not now happy where she was, she, after a
little time, complied.

Elizabeth had been Queen three years, when Mary Queen of Scots
embarked at Calais for her own rough, quarrelling country. As she
came out of the harbour, a vessel was lost before her eyes, and she
said, 'O! good God! what an omen this is for such a voyage!' She
was very fond of France, and sat on the deck, looking back at it
and weeping, until it was quite dark. When she went to bed, she
directed to be called at daybreak, if the French coast were still
visible, that she might behold it for the last time. As it proved
to be a clear morning, this was done, and she again wept for the
country she was leaving, and said many times, ' Farewell, France!
Farewell, France! I shall never see thee again!' All this was
long remembered afterwards, as sorrowful and interesting in a fair
young princess of nineteen. Indeed, I am afraid it gradually came,
together with her other distresses, to surround her with greater
sympathy than she deserved.

When she came to Scotland, and took up her abode at the palace of
Holyrood in Edinburgh, she found herself among uncouth strangers
and wild uncomfortable customs very different from her experiences
in the court of France. The very people who were disposed to love
her, made her head ache when she was tired out by her voyage, with
a serenade of discordant music - a fearful concert of bagpipes, I
suppose - and brought her and her train home to her palace on
miserable little Scotch horses that appeared to be half starved.
Among the people who were not disposed to love her, she found the
powerful leaders of the Reformed Church, who were bitter upon her
amusements, however innocent, and denounced music and dancing as
works of the devil. John Knox himself often lectured her,
violently and angrily, and did much to make her life unhappy. All
these reasons confirmed her old attachment to the Romish religion,
and caused her, there is no doubt, most imprudently and dangerously
both for herself and for England too, to give a solemn pledge to
the heads of the Romish Church that if she ever succeeded to the
English crown, she would set up that religion again. In reading
her unhappy history, you must always remember this; and also that
during her whole life she was constantly put forward against the
Queen, in some form or other, by the Romish party.

That Elizabeth, on the other hand, was not inclined to like her, is
pretty certain. Elizabeth was very vain and jealous, and had an
extraordinary dislike to people being married. She treated Lady
Catherine Grey, sister of the beheaded Lady Jane, with such
shameful severity, for no other reason than her being secretly
married, that she died and her husband was ruined; so, when a
second marriage for Mary began to be talked about, probably
Elizabeth disliked her more. Not that Elizabeth wanted suitors of
her own, for they started up from Spain, Austria, Sweden, and
England. Her English lover at this time, and one whom she much
favoured too, was LORD ROBERT DUDLEY, Earl of Leicester - himself
secretly married to AMY ROBSART, the daughter of an English
gentleman, whom he was strongly suspected of causing to be
murdered, down at his country seat, Cumnor Hall in Berkshire, that
he might be free to marry the Queen. Upon this story, the great
writer, SIR WALTER SCOTT, has founded one of his best romances.
But if Elizabeth knew how to lead her handsome favourite on, for
her own vanity and pleasure, she knew how to stop him for her own
pride; and his love, and all the other proposals, came to nothing.
The Queen always declared in good set speeches, that she would
never be married at all, but would live and die a Maiden Queen. It
was a very pleasant and meritorious declaration, I suppose; but it
has been puffed and trumpeted so much, that I am rather tired of it
myself.

Divers princes proposed to marry Mary, but the English court had
reasons for being jealous of them all, and even proposed as a
matter of policy that she should marry that very Earl of Leicester
who had aspired to be the husband of Elizabeth. At last, LORD
DARNLEY, son of the Earl of Lennox, and himself descended from the
Royal Family of Scotland, went over with Elizabeth's consent to try
his fortune at Holyrood. He was a tall simpleton; and could dance
and play the guitar; but I know of nothing else he could do, unless
it were to get very drunk, and eat gluttonously, and make a
contemptible spectacle of himself in many mean and vain ways.
However, he gained Mary's heart, not disdaining in the pursuit of
his object to ally himself with one of her secretaries, DAVID
RIZZIO, who had great influence with her. He soon married the
Queen. This marriage does not say much for her, but what followed
will presently say less.

Mary's brother, the EARL OF MURRAY, and head of the Protestant
party in Scotland, had opposed this marriage, partly on religious
grounds, and partly perhaps from personal dislike of the very
contemptible bridegroom. When it had taken place, through Mary's
gaining over to it the more powerful of the lords about her, she
banished Murray for his pains; and, when he and some other nobles
rose in arms to support the reformed religion, she herself, within
a month of her wedding day, rode against them in armour with loaded
pistols in her saddle. Driven out of Scotland, they presented
themselves before Elizabeth - who called them traitors in public,
and assisted them in private, according to her crafty nature.

Mary had been married but a little while, when she began to hate
her husband, who, in his turn, began to hate that David Rizzio,
with whom he had leagued to gain her favour, and whom he now
believed to be her lover. He hated Rizzio to that extent, that he
made a compact with LORD RUTHVEN and three other lords to get rid
of him by murder. This wicked agreement they made in solemn
secrecy upon the first of March, fifteen hundred and sixty-six, and
on the night of Saturday the ninth, the conspirators were brought
by Darnley up a private staircase, dark and steep, into a range of
rooms where they knew that Mary was sitting at supper with her
sister, Lady Argyle, and this doomed man. When they went into the
room, Darnley took the Queen round the waist, and Lord Ruthven, who
had risen from a bed of sickness to do this murder, came in, gaunt
and ghastly, leaning on two men. Rizzio ran behind the Queen for
shelter and protection. 'Let him come out of the room,' said
Ruthven. 'He shall not leave the room,' replied the Queen; 'I read
his danger in your face, and it is my will that he remain here.'
They then set upon him, struggled with him, overturned the table,
dragged him out, and killed him with fifty-six stabs. When the
Queen heard that he was dead, she said, 'No more tears. I will
think now of revenge!'

Within a day or two, she gained her husband over, and prevailed on
the tall idiot to abandon the conspirators and fly with her to
Dunbar. There, he issued a proclamation, audaciously and falsely
denying that he had any knowledge of the late bloody business; and
there they were joined by the EARL BOTHWELL and some other nobles.
With their help, they raised eight thousand men; returned to
Edinburgh, and drove the assassins into England. Mary soon
afterwards gave birth to a son - still thinking of revenge.

That she should have had a greater scorn for her husband after his
late cowardice and treachery than she had had before, was natural
enough. There is little doubt that she now began to love Bothwell
instead, and to plan with him means of getting rid of Darnley.
Bothwell had such power over her that he induced her even to pardon
the assassins of Rizzio. The arrangements for the Christening of
the young Prince were entrusted to him, and he was one of the most
important people at the ceremony, where the child was named JAMES:
Elizabeth being his godmother, though not present on the occasion.
A week afterwards, Darnley, who had left Mary and gone to his
father's house at Glasgow, being taken ill with the small-pox, she
sent her own physician to attend him. But there is reason to
apprehend that this was merely a show and a pretence, and that she
knew what was doing, when Bothwell within another month proposed to
one of the late conspirators against Rizzio, to murder Darnley,
'for that it was the Queen's mind that he should be taken away.'
It is certain that on that very day she wrote to her ambassador in
France, complaining of him, and yet went immediately to Glasgow,
feigning to be very anxious about him, and to love him very much.
If she wanted to get him in her power, she succeeded to her heart's
content; for she induced him to go back with her to Edinburgh, and
to occupy, instead of the palace, a lone house outside the city
called the Kirk of Field. Here, he lived for about a week. One
Sunday night, she remained with him until ten o'clock, and then
left him, to go to Holyrood to be present at an entertainment given
in celebration of the marriage of one of her favourite servants.
At two o'clock in the morning the city was shaken by a great
explosion, and the Kirk of Field was blown to atoms.

Darnley's body was found next day lying under a tree at some
distance. How it came there, undisfigured and unscorched by
gunpowder, and how this crime came to be so clumsily and strangely
committed, it is impossible to discover. The deceitful character
of Mary, and the deceitful character of Elizabeth, have rendered
almost every part of their joint history uncertain and obscure.
But, I fear that Mary was unquestionably a party to her husband's
murder, and that this was the revenge she had threatened. The
Scotch people universally believed it. Voices cried out in the
streets of Edinburgh in the dead of the night, for justice on the
murderess. Placards were posted by unknown hands in the public
places denouncing Bothwell as the murderer, and the Queen as his
accomplice; and, when he afterwards married her (though himself
already married), previously making a show of taking her prisoner
by force, the indignation of the people knew no bounds. The women
particularly are described as having been quite frantic against the
Queen, and to have hooted and cried after her in the streets with
terrific vehemence.

Such guilty unions seldom prosper. This husband and wife had lived
together but a month, when they were separated for ever by the
successes of a band of Scotch nobles who associated against them
for the protection of the young Prince: whom Bothwell had vainly
endeavoured to lay hold of, and whom he would certainly have
murdered, if the EARL OF MAR, in whose hands the boy was, had not
been firmly and honourably faithful to his trust. Before this
angry power, Bothwell fled abroad, where he died, a prisoner and
mad, nine miserable years afterwards. Mary being found by the
associated lords to deceive them at every turn, was sent a prisoner
to Lochleven Castle; which, as it stood in the midst of a lake,
could only be approached by boat. Here, one LORD LINDSAY, who was
so much of a brute that the nobles would have done better if they
had chosen a mere gentleman for their messenger, made her sign her
abdication, and appoint Murray, Regent of Scotland. Here, too,
Murray saw her in a sorrowing and humbled state.

She had better have remained in the castle of Lochleven, dull
prison as it was, with the rippling of the lake against it, and the
moving shadows of the water on the room walls; but she could not
rest there, and more than once tried to escape. The first time she
had nearly succeeded, dressed in the clothes of her own washer-
woman, but, putting up her hand to prevent one of the boatmen from
lifting her veil, the men suspected her, seeing how white it was,
and rowed her back again. A short time afterwards, her fascinating
manners enlisted in her cause a boy in the Castle, called the
little DOUGLAS, who, while the family were at supper, stole the
keys of the great gate, went softly out with the Queen, locked the
gate on the outside, and rowed her away across the lake, sinking
the keys as they went along. On the opposite shore she was met by
another Douglas, and some few lords; and, so accompanied, rode away
on horseback to Hamilton, where they raised three thousand men.
Here, she issued a proclamation declaring that the abdication she
had signed in her prison was illegal, and requiring the Regent to
yield to his lawful Queen. Being a steady soldier, and in no way
discomposed although he was without an army, Murray pretended to
treat with her, until he had collected a force about half equal to
her own, and then he gave her battle. In one quarter of an hour he
cut down all her hopes. She had another weary ride on horse-back
of sixty long Scotch miles, and took shelter at Dundrennan Abbey,
whence she fled for safety to Elizabeth's dominions.

Mary Queen of Scots came to England - to her own ruin, the trouble
of the kingdom, and the misery and death of many - in the year one
thousand five hundred and sixty-eight. How she left it and the
world, nineteen years afterwards, we have now to see.


SECOND PART


WHEN Mary Queen of Scots arrived in England, without money and even
without any other clothes than those she wore, she wrote to
Elizabeth, representing herself as an innocent and injured piece of
Royalty, and entreating her assistance to oblige her Scottish
subjects to take her back again and obey her. But, as her
character was already known in England to be a very different one
from what she made it out to be, she was told in answer that she
must first clear herself. Made uneasy by this condition, Mary,
rather than stay in England, would have gone to Spain, or to
France, or would even have gone back to Scotland. But, as her
doing either would have been likely to trouble England afresh, it
was decided that she should be detained here. She first came to
Carlisle, and, after that, was moved about from castle to castle,
as was considered necessary; but England she never left again.

After trying very hard to get rid of the necessity of clearing
herself, Mary, advised by LORD HERRIES, her best friend in England,
agreed to answer the charges against her, if the Scottish noblemen
who made them would attend to maintain them before such English
noblemen as Elizabeth might appoint for that purpose. Accordingly,
such an assembly, under the name of a conference, met, first at
York, and afterwards at Hampton Court. In its presence Lord
Lennox, Darnley's father, openly charged Mary with the murder of
his son; and whatever Mary's friends may now say or write in her
behalf, there is no doubt that, when her brother Murray produced
against her a casket containing certain guilty letters and verses
which he stated to have passed between her and Bothwell, she
withdrew from the inquiry. Consequently, it is to be supposed that
she was then considered guilty by those who had the best
opportunities of judging of the truth, and that the feeling which
afterwards arose in her behalf was a very generous but not a very
reasonable one.

However, the DUKE OF NORFOLK, an honourable but rather weak
nobleman, partly because Mary was captivating, partly because he
was ambitious, partly because he was over-persuaded by artful
plotters against Elizabeth, conceived a strong idea that he would
like to marry the Queen of Scots - though he was a little
frightened, too, by the letters in the casket. This idea being
secretly encouraged by some of the noblemen of Elizabeth's court,
and even by the favourite Earl of Leicester (because it was
objected to by other favourites who were his rivals), Mary
expressed her approval of it, and the King of France and the King
of Spain are supposed to have done the same. It was not so quietly
planned, though, but that it came to Elizabeth's ears, who warned
the Duke 'to be careful what sort of pillow he was going to lay his
head upon.' He made a humble reply at the time; but turned sulky
soon afterwards, and, being considered dangerous, was sent to the
Tower.

Thus, from the moment of Mary's coming to England she began to be
the centre of plots and miseries.

A rise of the Catholics in the north was the next of these, and it
was only checked by many executions and much bloodshed. It was
followed by a great conspiracy of the Pope and some of the Catholic
sovereigns of Europe to depose Elizabeth, place Mary on the throne,
and restore the unreformed religion. It is almost impossible to
doubt that Mary knew and approved of this; and the Pope himself was
so hot in the matter that he issued a bull, in which he openly
called Elizabeth the 'pretended Queen' of England, excommunicated
her, and excommunicated all her subjects who should continue to
obey her. A copy of this miserable paper got into London, and was
found one morning publicly posted on the Bishop of London's gate.
A great hue and cry being raised, another copy was found in the
chamber of a student of Lincoln's Inn, who confessed, being put
upon the rack, that he had received it from one JOHN FELTON, a rich
gentleman who lived across the Thames, near Southwark. This John
Felton, being put upon the rack too, confessed that he had posted
the placard on the Bishop's gate. For this offence he was, within
four days, taken to St. Paul's Churchyard, and there hanged and
quartered. As to the Pope's bull, the people by the reformation
having thrown off the Pope, did not care much, you may suppose, for
the Pope's throwing off them. It was a mere dirty piece of paper,
and not half so powerful as a street ballad.

On the very day when Felton was brought to his trial, the poor Duke
of Norfolk was released. It would have been well for him if he had
kept away from the Tower evermore, and from the snares that had
taken him there. But, even while he was in that dismal place he
corresponded with Mary, and as soon as he was out of it, he began
to plot again. Being discovered in correspondence with the Pope,
with a view to a rising in England which should force Elizabeth to
consent to his marriage with Mary and to repeal the laws against
the Catholics, he was re-committed to the Tower and brought to
trial. He was found guilty by the unanimous verdict of the Lords
who tried him, and was sentenced to the block.

It is very difficult to make out, at this distance of time, and
between opposite accounts, whether Elizabeth really was a humane
woman, or desired to appear so, or was fearful of shedding the
blood of people of great name who were popular in the country.
Twice she commanded and countermanded the execution of this Duke,
and it did not take place until five months after his trial. The
scaffold was erected on Tower Hill, and there he died like a brave
man. He refused to have his eyes bandaged, saying that he was not
at all afraid of death; and he admitted the justice of his
sentence, and was much regretted by the people.

Although Mary had shrunk at the most important time from disproving
her guilt, she was very careful never to do anything that would
admit it. All such proposals as were made to her by Elizabeth for
her release, required that admission in some form or other, and
therefore came to nothing. Moreover, both women being artful and
treacherous, and neither ever trusting the other, it was not likely
that they could ever make an agreement. So, the Parliament,
aggravated by what the Pope had done, made new and strong laws
against the spreading of the Catholic religion in England, and
declared it treason in any one to say that the Queen and her
successors were not the lawful sovereigns of England. It would
have done more than this, but for Elizabeth's moderation.

Since the Reformation, there had come to be three great sects of
religious people - or people who called themselves so - in England;
that is to say, those who belonged to the Reformed Church, those
who belonged to the Unreformed Church, and those who were called
the Puritans, because they said that they wanted to have everything
very pure and plain in all the Church service. These last were for
the most part an uncomfortable people, who thought it highly
meritorious to dress in a hideous manner, talk through their noses,
and oppose all harmless enjoyments. But they were powerful too,
and very much in earnest, and they were one and all the determined
enemies of the Queen of Scots. The Protestant feeling in England
was further strengthened by the tremendous cruelties to which
Protestants were exposed in France and in the Netherlands. Scores
of thousands of them were put to death in those countries with
every cruelty that can be imagined, and at last, in the autumn of
the year one thousand five hundred and seventy-two, one of the
greatest barbarities ever committed in the world took place at
Paris.

It is called in history, THE MASSACRE OF SAINT BARTHOLOMEW, because
it took place on Saint Bartholomew's Eve. The day fell on Saturday
the twenty-third of August. On that day all the great leaders of
the Protestants (who were there called HUGUENOTS) were assembled
together, for the purpose, as was represented to them, of doing
honour to the marriage of their chief, the young King of Navarre,
with the sister of CHARLES THE NINTH: a miserable young King who
then occupied the French throne. This dull creature was made to
believe by his mother and other fierce Catholics about him that the
Huguenots meant to take his life; and he was persuaded to give
secret orders that, on the tolling of a great bell, they should be
fallen upon by an overpowering force of armed men, and slaughtered
wherever they could be found. When the appointed hour was close at
hand, the stupid wretch, trembling from head to foot, was taken
into a balcony by his mother to see the atrocious work begun. The
moment the bell tolled, the murderers broke forth. During all that
night and the two next days, they broke into the houses, fired the
houses, shot and stabbed the Protestants, men, women, and children,
and flung their bodies into the streets. They were shot at in the
streets as they passed along, and their blood ran down the gutters.
Upwards of ten thousand Protestants were killed in Paris alone; in
all France four or five times that number. To return thanks to
Heaven for these diabolical murders, the Pope and his train
actually went in public procession at Rome, and as if this were not
shame enough for them, they had a medal struck to commemorate the
event. But, however comfortable the wholesale murders were to
these high authorities, they had not that soothing effect upon the
doll-King. I am happy to state that he never knew a moment's peace
afterwards; that he was continually crying out that he saw the
Huguenots covered with blood and wounds falling dead before him;
and that he died within a year, shrieking and yelling and raving to
that degree, that if all the Popes who had ever lived had been
rolled into one, they would not have afforded His guilty Majesty
the slightest consolation.

When the terrible news of the massacre arrived in England, it made
a powerful impression indeed upon the people. If they began to run
a little wild against the Catholics at about this time, this
fearful reason for it, coming so soon after the days of bloody
Queen Mary, must be remembered in their excuse. The Court was not
quite so honest as the people - but perhaps it sometimes is not.
It received the French ambassador, with all the lords and ladies
dressed in deep mourning, and keeping a profound silence.
Nevertheless, a proposal of marriage which he had made to Elizabeth
only two days before the eve of Saint Bartholomew, on behalf of the
Duke of Alen‡on, the French King's brother, a boy of seventeen,
still went on; while on the other hand, in her usual crafty way,
the Queen secretly supplied the Huguenots with money and weapons.

I must say that for a Queen who made all those fine speeches, of
which I have confessed myself to be rather tired, about living and
dying a Maiden Queen, Elizabeth was 'going' to be married pretty
often. Besides always having some English favourite or other whom
she by turns encouraged and swore at and knocked about - for the
maiden Queen was very free with her fists - she held this French
Duke off and on through several years. When he at last came over
to England, the marriage articles were actually drawn up, and it
was settled that the wedding should take place in six weeks. The
Queen was then so bent upon it, that she prosecuted a poor Puritan
named STUBBS, and a poor bookseller named PAGE, for writing and
publishing a pamphlet against it. Their right hands were chopped
off for this crime; and poor Stubbs - more loyal than I should have
been myself under the circumstances - immediately pulled off his
hat with his left hand, and cried, 'God save the Queen!' Stubbs
was cruelly treated; for the marriage never took place after all,
though the Queen pledged herself to the Duke with a ring from her
own finger. He went away, no better than he came, when the
courtship had lasted some ten years altogether; and he died a
couple of years afterwards, mourned by Elizabeth, who appears to
have been really fond of him. It is not much to her credit, for he
was a bad enough member of a bad family.

To return to the Catholics. There arose two orders of priests, who
were very busy in England, and who were much dreaded. These were
the JESUITS (who were everywhere in all sorts of disguises), and
the SEMINARY PRIESTS. The people had a great horror of the first,
because they were known to have taught that murder was lawful if it
were done with an object of which they approved; and they had a
great horror of the second, because they came to teach the old
religion, and to be the successors of 'Queen Mary's priests,' as
those yet lingering in England were called, when they should die
out. The severest laws were made against them, and were most
unmercifully executed. Those who sheltered them in their houses
often suffered heavily for what was an act of humanity; and the
rack, that cruel torture which tore men's limbs asunder, was
constantly kept going. What these unhappy men confessed, or what
was ever confessed by any one under that agony, must always be
received with great doubt, as it is certain that people have
frequently owned to the most absurd and impossible crimes to escape
such dreadful suffering. But I cannot doubt it to have been proved
by papers, that there were many plots, both among the Jesuits, and
with France, and with Scotland, and with Spain, for the destruction
of Queen Elizabeth, for the placing of Mary on the throne, and for
the revival of the old religion.

If the English people were too ready to believe in plots, there
were, as I have said, good reasons for it. When the massacre of
Saint Bartholomew was yet fresh in their recollection, a great
Protestant Dutch hero, the PRINCE OF ORANGE, was shot by an
assassin, who confessed that he had been kept and trained for the
purpose in a college of Jesuits. The Dutch, in this surprise and
distress, offered to make Elizabeth their sovereign, but she
declined the honour, and sent them a small army instead, under the
command of the Earl of Leicester, who, although a capital Court
favourite, was not much of a general. He did so little in Holland,
that his campaign there would probably have been forgotten, but for
its occasioning the death of one of the best writers, the best
knights, and the best gentlemen, of that or any age. This was SIR
PHILIP SIDNEY, who was wounded by a musket ball in the thigh as he
mounted a fresh horse, after having had his own killed under him.
He had to ride back wounded, a long distance, and was very faint
with fatigue and loss of blood, when some water, for which he had
eagerly asked, was handed to him. But he was so good and gentle
even then, that seeing a poor badly wounded common soldier lying on
the ground, looking at the water with longing eyes, he said, 'Thy
necessity is greater than mine,' and gave it up to him. This
touching action of a noble heart is perhaps as well known as any
incident in history - is as famous far and wide as the blood-
stained Tower of London, with its axe, and block, and murders out
of number. So delightful is an act of true humanity, and so glad
are mankind to remember it.

At home, intelligence of plots began to thicken every day. I
suppose the people never did live under such continual terrors as
those by which they were possessed now, of Catholic risings, and
burnings, and poisonings, and I don't know what. Still, we must
always remember that they lived near and close to awful realities
of that kind, and that with their experience it was not difficult
to believe in any enormity. The government had the same fear, and
did not take the best means of discovering the truth - for, besides
torturing the suspected, it employed paid spies, who will always
lie for their own profit. It even made some of the conspiracies it
brought to light, by sending false letters to disaffected people,
inviting them to join in pretended plots, which they too readily
did.

But, one great real plot was at length discovered, and it ended the
career of Mary, Queen of Scots. A seminary priest named BALLARD,
and a Spanish soldier named SAVAGE, set on and encouraged by
certain French priests, imparted a design to one ANTONY BABINGTON -
a gentleman of fortune in Derbyshire, who had been for some time a
secret agent of Mary's - for murdering the Queen. Babington then
confided the scheme to some other Catholic gentlemen who were his
friends, and they joined in it heartily. They were vain, weak-
headed young men, ridiculously confident, and preposterously proud
of their plan; for they got a gimcrack painting made, of the six
choice spirits who were to murder Elizabeth, with Babington in an
attitude for the centre figure. Two of their number, however, one
of whom was a priest, kept Elizabeth's wisest minister, SIR FRANCIS
WALSINGHAM, acquainted with the whole project from the first. The
conspirators were completely deceived to the final point, when
Babington gave Savage, because he was shabby, a ring from his
finger, and some money from his purse, wherewith to buy himself new
clothes in which to kill the Queen. Walsingham, having then full
evidence against the whole band, and two letters of Mary's besides,
resolved to seize them. Suspecting something wrong, they stole out
of the city, one by one, and hid themselves in St. John's Wood, and
other places which really were hiding places then; but they were
all taken, and all executed. When they were seized, a gentleman
was sent from Court to inform Mary of the fact, and of her being
involved in the discovery. Her friends have complained that she
was kept in very hard and severe custody. It does not appear very
likely, for she was going out a hunting that very morning.

Queen Elizabeth had been warned long ago, by one in France who had
good information of what was secretly doing, that in holding Mary
alive, she held 'the wolf who would devour her.' The Bishop of
London had, more lately, given the Queen's favourite minister the
advice in writing, 'forthwith to cut off the Scottish Queen's
head.' The question now was, what to do with her? The Earl of
Leicester wrote a little note home from Holland, recommending that
she should be quietly poisoned; that noble favourite having
accustomed his mind, it is possible, to remedies of that nature.
His black advice, however, was disregarded, and she was brought to
trial at Fotheringay Castle in Northamptonshire, before a tribunal
of forty, composed of both religions. There, and in the Star
Chamber at Westminster, the trial lasted a fortnight. She defended
herself with great ability, but could only deny the confessions
that had been made by Babington and others; could only call her own
letters, produced against her by her own secretaries, forgeries;
and, in short, could only deny everything. She was found guilty,
and declared to have incurred the penalty of death. The Parliament
met, approved the sentence, and prayed the Queen to have it
executed. The Queen replied that she requested them to consider
whether no means could be found of saving Mary's life without
endangering her own. The Parliament rejoined, No; and the citizens
illuminated their houses and lighted bonfires, in token of their
joy that all these plots and troubles were to be ended by the death
of the Queen of Scots.

She, feeling sure that her time was now come, wrote a letter to the
Queen of England, making three entreaties; first, that she might be
buried in France; secondly, that she might not be executed in
secret, but before her servants and some others; thirdly, that
after her death, her servants should not be molested, but should be
suffered to go home with the legacies she left them. It was an
affecting letter, and Elizabeth shed tears over it, but sent no
answer. Then came a special ambassador from France, and another
from Scotland, to intercede for Mary's life; and then the nation
began to clamour, more and more, for her death.

What the real feelings or intentions of Elizabeth were, can never
be known now; but I strongly suspect her of only wishing one thing
more than Mary's death, and that was to keep free of the blame of
it. On the first of February, one thousand five hundred and
eighty-seven, Lord Burleigh having drawn out the warrant for the
execution, the Queen sent to the secretary DAVISON to bring it to
her, that she might sign it: which she did. Next day, when
Davison told her it was sealed, she angrily asked him why such
haste was necessary? Next day but one, she joked about it, and
swore a little. Again, next day but one, she seemed to complain
that it was not yet done, but still she would not be plain with
those about her. So, on the seventh, the Earls of Kent and
Shrewsbury, with the Sheriff of Northamptonshire, came with the
warrant to Fotheringay, to tell the Queen of Scots to prepare for
death.

When those messengers of ill omen were gone, Mary made a frugal
supper, drank to her servants, read over her will, went to bed,
slept for some hours, and then arose and passed the remainder of
the night saying prayers. In the morning she dressed herself in
her best clothes; and, at eight o'clock when the sheriff came for
her to her chapel, took leave of her servants who were there
assembled praying with her, and went down-stairs, carrying a Bible
in one hand and a crucifix in the other. Two of her women and four
of her men were allowed to be present in the hall; where a low
scaffold, only two feet from the ground, was erected and covered
with black; and where the executioner from the Tower, and his
assistant, stood, dressed in black velvet. The hall was full of
people. While the sentence was being read she sat upon a stool;
and, when it was finished, she again denied her guilt, as she had
done before. The Earl of Kent and the Dean of Peterborough, in
their Protestant zeal, made some very unnecessary speeches to her;
to which she replied that she died in the Catholic religion, and
they need not trouble themselves about that matter. When her head
and neck were uncovered by the executioners, she said that she had
not been used to be undressed by such hands, or before so much
company. Finally, one of her women fastened a cloth over her face,
and she laid her neck upon the block, and repeated more than once
in Latin, 'Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit!' Some say
her head was struck off in two blows, some say in three. However
that be, when it was held up, streaming with blood, the real hair
beneath the false hair she had long worn was seen to be as grey as
that of a woman of seventy, though she was at that time only in her
forty-sixth year. All her beauty was gone.

But she was beautiful enough to her little dog, who cowered under
her dress, frightened, when she went upon the scaffold, and who lay
down beside her headless body when all her earthly sorrows were
over.


THIRD PART


ON its being formally made known to Elizabeth that the sentence had
been executed on the Queen of Scots, she showed the utmost grief
and rage, drove her favourites from her with violent indignation,
and sent Davison to the Tower; from which place he was only
released in the end by paying an immense fine which completely
ruined him. Elizabeth not only over-acted her part in making these
pretences, but most basely reduced to poverty one of her faithful
servants for no other fault than obeying her commands.

James, King of Scotland, Mary's son, made a show likewise of being
very angry on the occasion; but he was a pensioner of England to
the amount of five thousand pounds a year, and he had known very
little of his mother, and he possibly regarded her as the murderer
of his father, and he soon took it quietly.

Philip, King of Spain, however, threatened to do greater things
than ever had been done yet, to set up the Catholic religion and
punish Protestant England. Elizabeth, hearing that he and the
Prince of Parma were making great preparations for this purpose, in
order to be beforehand with them sent out ADMIRAL DRAKE (a famous
navigator, who had sailed about the world, and had already brought
great plunder from Spain) to the port of Cadiz, where he burnt a
hundred vessels full of stores. This great loss obliged the
Spaniards to put off the invasion for a year; but it was none the
less formidable for that, amounting to one hundred and thirty
ships, nineteen thousand soldiers, eight thousand sailors, two
thousand slaves, and between two and three thousand great guns.
England was not idle in making ready to resist this great force.
All the men between sixteen years old and sixty, were trained and
drilled; the national fleet of ships (in number only thirty-four at
first) was enlarged by public contributions and by private ships,
fitted out by noblemen; the city of London, of its own accord,
furnished double the number of ships and men that it was required
to provide; and, if ever the national spirit was up in England, it
was up all through the country to resist the Spaniards. Some of
the Queen's advisers were for seizing the principal English
Catholics, and putting them to death; but the Queen - who, to her
honour, used to say, that she would never believe any ill of her
subjects, which a parent would not believe of her own children -
rejected the advice, and only confined a few of those who were the
most suspected, in the fens in Lincolnshire. The great body of
Catholics deserved this confidence; for they behaved most loyally,
nobly, and bravely.

So, with all England firing up like one strong, angry man, and with
both sides of the Thames fortified, and with the soldiers under
arms, and with the sailors in their ships, the country waited for
the coming of the proud Spanish fleet, which was called THE
INVINCIBLE ARMADA. The Queen herself, riding in armour on a white
horse, and the Earl of Essex and the Earl of Leicester holding her
bridal rein, made a brave speech to the troops at Tilbury Fort
opposite Gravesend, which was received with such enthusiasm as is
seldom known. Then came the Spanish Armada into the English
Channel, sailing along in the form of a half moon, of such great
size that it was seven miles broad. But the English were quickly
upon it, and woe then to all the Spanish ships that dropped a
little out of the half moon, for the English took them instantly!
And it soon appeared that the great Armada was anything but
invincible, for on a summer night, bold Drake sent eight blazing
fire-ships right into the midst of it. In terrible consternation
the Spaniards tried to get out to sea, and so became dispersed; the
English pursued them at a great advantage; a storm came on, and
drove the Spaniards among rocks and shoals; and the swift end of
the Invincible fleet was, that it lost thirty great ships and ten
thousand men, and, defeated and disgraced, sailed home again.
Being afraid to go by the English Channel, it sailed all round
Scotland and Ireland; some of the ships getting cast away on the
latter coast in bad weather, the Irish, who were a kind of savages,
plundered those vessels and killed their crews. So ended this
great attempt to invade and conquer England. And I think it will
be a long time before any other invincible fleet coming to England
with the same object, will fare much better than the Spanish
Armada.

Though the Spanish king had had this bitter taste of English
bravery, he was so little the wiser for it, as still to entertain
his old designs, and even to conceive the absurd idea of placing
his daughter on the English throne. But the Earl of Essex, SIR
WALTER RALEIGH, SIR THOMAS HOWARD, and some other distinguished
leaders, put to sea from Plymouth, entered the port of Cadiz once
more, obtained a complete victory over the shipping assembled
there, and got possession of the town. In obedience to the Queen's
express instructions, they behaved with great humanity; and the
principal loss of the Spaniards was a vast sum of money which they
had to pay for ransom. This was one of many gallant achievements
on the sea, effected in this reign. Sir Walter Raleigh himself,
after marrying a maid of honour and giving offence to the Maiden
Queen thereby, had already sailed to South America in search of
gold.

The Earl of Leicester was now dead, and so was Sir Thomas
Walsingham, whom Lord Burleigh was soon to follow. The principal
favourite was the EARL OF ESSEX, a spirited and handsome man, a
favourite with the people too as well as with the Queen, and
possessed of many admirable qualities. It was much debated at
Court whether there should be peace with Spain or no, and he was
very urgent for war. He also tried hard to have his own way in the
appointment of a deputy to govern in Ireland. One day, while this
question was in dispute, he hastily took offence, and turned his
back upon the Queen; as a gentle reminder of which impropriety, the
Queen gave him a tremendous box on the ear, and told him to go to
the devil. He went home instead, and did not reappear at Court for
half a year or so, when he and the Queen were reconciled, though
never (as some suppose) thoroughly.

From this time the fate of the Earl of Essex and that of the Queen
seemed to be blended together. The Irish were still perpetually
quarrelling and fighting among themselves, and he went over to
Ireland as Lord Lieutenant, to the great joy of his enemies (Sir
Walter Raleigh among the rest), who were glad to have so dangerous
a rival far off. Not being by any means successful there, and
knowing that his enemies would take advantage of that circumstance
to injure him with the Queen, he came home again, though against
her orders. The Queen being taken by surprise when he appeared
before her, gave him her hand to kiss, and he was overjoyed -
though it was not a very lovely hand by this time - but in the
course of the same day she ordered him to confine himself to his
room, and two or three days afterwards had him taken into custody.
With the same sort of caprice - and as capricious an old woman she
now was, as ever wore a crown or a head either - she sent him broth
from her own table on his falling ill from anxiety, and cried about
him.

He was a man who could find comfort and occupation in his books,
and he did so for a time; not the least happy time, I dare say, of
his life. But it happened unfortunately for him, that he held a
monopoly in sweet wines: which means that nobody could sell them
without purchasing his permission. This right, which was only for
a term, expiring, he applied to have it renewed. The Queen
refused, with the rather strong observation - but she DID make
strong observations - that an unruly beast must be stinted in his
food. Upon this, the angry Earl, who had been already deprived of
many offices, thought himself in danger of complete ruin, and
turned against the Queen, whom he called a vain old woman who had
grown as crooked in her mind as she had in her figure. These
uncomplimentary expressions the ladies of the Court immediately
snapped up and carried to the Queen, whom they did not put in a
better tempter, you may believe. The same Court ladies, when they
had beautiful dark hair of their own, used to wear false red hair,
to be like the Queen. So they were not very high-spirited ladies,
however high in rank.

The worst object of the Earl of Essex, and some friends of his who
used to meet at LORD SOUTHAMPTON'S house, was to obtain possession
of the Queen, and oblige her by force to dismiss her ministers and
change her favourites. On Saturday the seventh of February, one
thousand six hundred and one, the council suspecting this, summoned
the Earl to come before them. He, pretending to be ill, declined;
it was then settled among his friends, that as the next day would
be Sunday, when many of the citizens usually assembled at the Cross
by St. Paul's Cathedral, he should make one bold effort to induce
them to rise and follow him to the Palace.

So, on the Sunday morning, he and a small body of adherents started
out of his house - Essex House by the Strand, with steps to the
river - having first shut up in it, as prisoners, some members of
the council who came to examine him - and hurried into the City
with the Earl at their head crying out 'For the Queen! For the
Queen! A plot is laid for my life!' No one heeded them, however,
and when they came to St. Paul's there were no citizens there. In
the meantime the prisoners at Essex House had been released by one
of the Earl's own friends; he had been promptly proclaimed a
traitor in the City itself; and the streets were barricaded with
carts and guarded by soldiers. The Earl got back to his house by
water, with difficulty, and after an attempt to defend his house
against the troops and cannon by which it was soon surrounded, gave
himself up that night. He was brought to trial on the nineteenth,
and found guilty; on the twenty-fifth, he was executed on Tower
Hill, where he died, at thirty-four years old, both courageously
and penitently. His step-father suffered with him. His enemy, Sir
Walter Raleigh, stood near the scaffold all the time - but not so
near it as we shall see him stand, before we finish his history.

In this case, as in the cases of the Duke of Norfolk and Mary Queen
of Scots, the Queen had commanded, and countermanded, and again
commanded, the execution. It is probable that the death of her
young and gallant favourite in the prime of his good qualities, was
never off her mind afterwards, but she held out, the same vain,
obstinate and capricious woman, for another year. Then she danced
before her Court on a state occasion - and cut, I should think, a
mighty ridiculous figure, doing so in an immense ruff, stomacher
and wig, at seventy years old. For another year still, she held
out, but, without any more dancing, and as a moody, sorrowful,
broken creature. At last, on the tenth of March, one thousand six
hundred and three, having been ill of a very bad cold, and made
worse by the death of the Countess of Nottingham who was her
intimate friend, she fell into a stupor and was supposed to be
dead. She recovered her consciousness, however, and then nothing
would induce her to go to bed; for she said that she knew that if
she did, she should never get up again. There she lay for ten
days, on cushions on the floor, without any food, until the Lord
Admiral got her into bed at last, partly by persuasions and partly
by main force. When they asked her who should succeed her, she
replied that her seat had been the seat of Kings, and that she
would have for her successor, 'No rascal's son, but a King's.'
Upon this, the lords present stared at one another, and took the
liberty of asking whom she meant; to which she replied, 'Whom
should I mean, but our cousin of Scotland!' This was on the
twenty-third of March. They asked her once again that day, after
she was speechless, whether she was still in the same mind? She
struggled up in bed, and joined her hands over her head in the form
of a crown, as the only reply she could make. At three o'clock
next morning, she very quietly died, in the forty-fifth year of her
reign.

That reign had been a glorious one, and is made for ever memorable
by the distinguished men who flourished in it. Apart from the
great voyagers, statesmen, and scholars, whom it produced, the
names of BACON, SPENSER, and SHAKESPEARE, will always be remembered
with pride and veneration by the civilised world, and will always
impart (though with no great reason, perhaps) some portion of their
lustre to the name of Elizabeth herself. It was a great reign for
discovery, for commerce, and for English enterprise and spirit in
general. It was a great reign for the Protestant religion and for
the Reformation which made England free. The Queen was very
popular, and in her progresses, or journeys about her dominions,
was everywhere received with the liveliest joy. I think the truth
is, that she was not half so good as she has been made out, and not
half so bad as she has been made out. She had her fine qualities,
but she was coarse, capricious, and treacherous, and had all the
faults of an excessively vain young woman long after she was an old
one. On the whole, she had a great deal too much of her father in
her, to please me.

Many improvements and luxuries were introduced in the course of
these five-and-forty years in the general manner of living; but
cock-fighting, bull-baiting, and bear-baiting, were still the
national amusements; and a coach was so rarely seen, and was such
an ugly and cumbersome affair when it was seen, that even the Queen
herself, on many high occasions, rode on horseback on a pillion
behind the Lord Chancellor.

Chapter XXXII - ENGLAND UNDER JAMES THE FIRST

'OUR cousin of Scotland' was ugly, awkward, and shuffling both in
mind and person. His tongue was much too large for his mouth, his
legs were much too weak for his body, and his dull goggle-eyes
stared and rolled like an idiot's. He was cunning, covetous,
wasteful, idle, drunken, greedy, dirty, cowardly, a great swearer,
and the most conceited man on earth. His figure - what is commonly
called rickety from his birth - presented a most ridiculous
appearance, dressed in thick padded clothes, as a safeguard against
being stabbed (of which he lived in continual fear), of a grass-
green colour from head to foot, with a hunting-horn dangling at his
side instead of a sword, and his hat and feather sticking over one
eye, or hanging on the back of his head, as he happened to toss it
on. He used to loll on the necks of his favourite courtiers, and
slobber their faces, and kiss and pinch their cheeks; and the
greatest favourite he ever had, used to sign himself in his letters
to his royal master, His Majesty's 'dog and slave,' and used to
address his majesty as 'his Sowship.' His majesty was the worst
rider ever seen, and thought himself the best. He was one of the
most impertinent talkers (in the broadest Scotch) ever heard, and
boasted of being unanswerable in all manner of argument. He wrote
some of the most wearisome treatises ever read - among others, a
book upon witchcraft, in which he was a devout believer - and
thought himself a prodigy of authorship. He thought, and wrote,
and said, that a king had a right to make and unmake what laws he
pleased, and ought to be accountable to nobody on earth. This is
the plain, true character of the personage whom the greatest men
about the court praised and flattered to that degree, that I doubt
if there be anything much more shameful in the annals of human
nature.

He came to the English throne with great ease. The miseries of a
disputed succession had been felt so long, and so dreadfully, that
he was proclaimed within a few hours of Elizabeth's death, and was
accepted by the nation, even without being asked to give any pledge
that he would govern well, or that he would redress crying
grievances. He took a month to come from Edinburgh to London; and,
by way of exercising his new power, hanged a pickpocket on the
journey without any trial, and knighted everybody he could lay hold
of. He made two hundred knights before he got to his palace in
London, and seven hundred before he had been in it three months.
He also shovelled sixty-two new peers into the House of Lords - and
there was a pretty large sprinkling of Scotchmen among them, you
may believe.

His Sowship's prime Minister, CECIL (for I cannot do better than
call his majesty what his favourite called him), was the enemy of
Sir Walter Raleigh, and also of Sir Walter's political friend, LORD
COBHAM; and his Sowship's first trouble was a plot originated by
these two, and entered into by some others, with the old object of
seizing the King and keeping him in imprisonment until he should
change his ministers. There were Catholic priests in the plot, and
there were Puritan noblemen too; for, although the Catholics and
Puritans were strongly opposed to each other, they united at this
time against his Sowship, because they knew that he had a design
against both, after pretending to be friendly to each; this design
being to have only one high and convenient form of the Protestant
religion, which everybody should be bound to belong to, whether
they liked it or not. This plot was mixed up with another, which
may or may not have had some reference to placing on the throne, at
some time, the LADY ARABELLA STUART; whose misfortune it was, to be
the daughter of the younger brother of his Sowship's father, but
who was quite innocent of any part in the scheme. Sir Walter
Raleigh was accused on the confession of Lord Cobham - a miserable
creature, who said one thing at one time, and another thing at
another time, and could be relied upon in nothing. The trial of
Sir Walter Raleigh lasted from eight in the morning until nearly
midnight; he defended himself with such eloquence, genius, and
spirit against all accusations, and against the insults of COKE,
the Attorney-General - who, according to the custom of the time,
foully abused him - that those who went there detesting the
prisoner, came away admiring him, and declaring that anything so
wonderful and so captivating was never heard. He was found guilty,
nevertheless, and sentenced to death. Execution was deferred, and
he was taken to the Tower. The two Catholic priests, less
fortunate, were executed with the usual atrocity; and Lord Cobham
and two others were pardoned on the scaffold. His Sowship thought
it wonderfully knowing in him to surprise the people by pardoning
these three at the very block; but, blundering, and bungling, as
usual, he had very nearly overreached himself. For, the messenger
on horseback who brought the pardon, came so late, that he was
pushed to the outside of the crowd, and was obliged to shout and
roar out what he came for. The miserable Cobham did not gain much
by being spared that day. He lived, both as a prisoner and a
beggar, utterly despised, and miserably poor, for thirteen years,
and then died in an old outhouse belonging to one of his former
servants.

This plot got rid of, and Sir Walter Raleigh safely shut up in the
Tower, his Sowship held a great dispute with the Puritans on their
presenting a petition to him, and had it all his own way - not so
very wonderful, as he would talk continually, and would not hear
anybody else - and filled the Bishops with admiration. It was
comfortably settled that there was to be only one form of religion,
and that all men were to think exactly alike. But, although this
was arranged two centuries and a half ago, and although the
arrangement was supported by much fining and imprisonment, I do not
find that it is quite successful, even yet.

His Sowship, having that uncommonly high opinion of himself as a
king, had a very low opinion of Parliament as a power that
audaciously wanted to control him. When he called his first
Parliament after he had been king a year, he accordingly thought he
would take pretty high ground with them, and told them that he
commanded them 'as an absolute king.' The Parliament thought those
strong words, and saw the necessity of upholding their authority.
His Sowship had three children: Prince Henry, Prince Charles, and
the Princess Elizabeth. It would have been well for one of these,
and we shall too soon see which, if he had learnt a little wisdom
concerning Parliaments from his father's obstinacy.

Now, the people still labouring under their old dread of the
Catholic religion, this Parliament revived and strengthened the
severe laws against it. And this so angered ROBERT CATESBY, a
restless Catholic gentleman of an old family, that he formed one of
the most desperate and terrible designs ever conceived in the mind
of man; no less a scheme than the Gunpowder Plot.

His object was, when the King, lords, and commons, should be
assembled at the next opening of Parliament, to blow them up, one
and all, with a great mine of gunpowder. The first person to whom
he confided this horrible idea was THOMAS WINTER, a Worcestershire
gentleman who had served in the army abroad, and had been secretly
employed in Catholic projects. While Winter was yet undecided, and
when he had gone over to the Netherlands, to learn from the Spanish
Ambassador there whether there was any hope of Catholics being
relieved through the intercession of the King of Spain with his
Sowship, he found at Ostend a tall, dark, daring man, whom he had
known when they were both soldiers abroad, and whose name was GUIDO
- or GUY - FAWKES. Resolved to join the plot, he proposed it to
this man, knowing him to be the man for any desperate deed, and
they two came back to England together. Here, they admitted two
other conspirators; THOMAS PERCY, related to the Earl of
Northumberland, and JOHN WRIGHT, his brother-in-law. All these met
together in a solitary house in the open fields which were then
near Clement's Inn, now a closely blocked-up part of London; and
when they had all taken a great oath of secrecy, Catesby told the
rest what his plan was. They then went up-stairs into a garret,
and received the Sacrament from FATHER GERARD, a Jesuit, who is
said not to have known actually of the Gunpowder Plot, but who, I
think, must have had his suspicions that there was something
desperate afoot.

Percy was a Gentleman Pensioner, and as he had occasional duties to
perform about the Court, then kept at Whitehall, there would be
nothing suspicious in his living at Westminster. So, having looked
well about him, and having found a house to let, the back of which
joined the Parliament House, he hired it of a person named FERRIS,
for the purpose of undermining the wall. Having got possession of
this house, the conspirators hired another on the Lambeth side of
the Thames, which they used as a storehouse for wood, gunpowder,
and other combustible matters. These were to be removed at night
(and afterwards were removed), bit by bit, to the house at
Westminster; and, that there might be some trusty person to keep
watch over the Lambeth stores, they admitted another conspirator,
by name ROBERT KAY, a very poor Catholic gentleman.

All these arrangements had been made some months, and it was a
dark, wintry, December night, when the conspirators, who had been
in the meantime dispersed to avoid observation, met in the house at
Westminster, and began to dig. They had laid in a good stock of
eatables, to avoid going in and out, and they dug and dug with
great ardour. But, the wall being tremendously thick, and the work
very severe, they took into their plot CHRISTOPHER WRIGHT, a
younger brother of John Wright, that they might have a new pair of
hands to help. And Christopher Wright fell to like a fresh man,
and they dug and dug by night and by day, and Fawkes stood sentinel
all the time. And if any man's heart seemed to fail him at all,
Fawkes said, 'Gentlemen, we have abundance of powder and shot here,
and there is no fear of our being taken alive, even if discovered.'
The same Fawkes, who, in the capacity of sentinel, was always
prowling about, soon picked up the intelligence that the King had
prorogued the Parliament again, from the seventh of February, the
day first fixed upon, until the third of October. When the
conspirators knew this, they agreed to separate until after the
Christmas holidays, and to take no notice of each other in the
meanwhile, and never to write letters to one another on any
account. So, the house in Westminster was shut up again, and I
suppose the neighbours thought that those strange-looking men who
lived there so gloomily, and went out so seldom, were gone away to
have a merry Christmas somewhere.

It was the beginning of February, sixteen hundred and five, when
Catesby met his fellow-conspirators again at this Westminster
house. He had now admitted three more; JOHN GRANT, a Warwickshire
gentleman of a melancholy temper, who lived in a doleful house near
Stratford-upon-Avon, with a frowning wall all round it, and a deep
moat; ROBERT WINTER, eldest brother of Thomas; and Catesby's own
servant, THOMAS BATES, who, Catesby thought, had had some suspicion
of what his master was about. These three had all suffered more or
less for their religion in Elizabeth's time. And now, they all
began to dig again, and they dug and dug by night and by day.

They found it dismal work alone there, underground, with such a
fearful secret on their minds, and so many murders before them.
They were filled with wild fancies. Sometimes, they thought they
heard a great bell tolling, deep down in the earth under the
Parliament House; sometimes, they thought they heard low voices
muttering about the Gunpowder Plot; once in the morning, they
really did hear a great rumbling noise over their heads, as they
dug and sweated in their mine. Every man stopped and looked aghast
at his neighbour, wondering what had happened, when that bold
prowler, Fawkes, who had been out to look, came in and told them
that it was only a dealer in coals who had occupied a cellar under
the Parliament House, removing his stock in trade to some other
place. Upon this, the conspirators, who with all their digging and
digging had not yet dug through the tremendously thick wall,
changed their plan; hired that cellar, which was directly under the
House of Lords; put six-and-thirty barrels of gunpowder in it, and
covered them over with fagots and coals. Then they all dispersed
again till September, when the following new conspirators were
admitted; SIR EDWARD BAYNHAM, of Gloucestershire; SIR EVERARD
DIGBY, of Rutlandshire; AMBROSE ROOKWOOD, of Suffolk; FRANCIS
TRESHAM, of Northamptonshire. Most of these were rich, and were to
assist the plot, some with money and some with horses on which the
conspirators were to ride through the country and rouse the
Catholics after the Parliament should be blown into air.

Parliament being again prorogued from the third of October to the
fifth of November, and the conspirators being uneasy lest their
design should have been found out, Thomas Winter said he would go
up into the House of Lords on the day of the prorogation, and see
how matters looked. Nothing could be better. The unconscious
Commissioners were walking about and talking to one another, just
over the six-and-thirty barrels of gunpowder. He came back and
told the rest so, and they went on with their preparations. They
hired a ship, and kept it ready in the Thames, in which Fawkes was
to sail for Flanders after firing with a slow match the train that
was to explode the powder. A number of Catholic gentlemen not in
the secret, were invited, on pretence of a hunting party, to meet
Sir Everard Digby at Dunchurch on the fatal day, that they might be
ready to act together. And now all was ready.

But, now, the great wickedness and danger which had been all along
at the bottom of this wicked plot, began to show itself. As the
fifth of November drew near, most of the conspirators, remembering
that they had friends and relations who would be in the House of
Lords that day, felt some natural relenting, and a wish to warn
them to keep away. They were not much comforted by Catesby's
declaring that in such a cause he would blow up his own son. LORD
MOUNTEAGLE, Tresham's brother-in-law, was certain to be in the
house; and when Tresham found that he could not prevail upon the
rest to devise any means of sparing their friends, he wrote a
mysterious letter to this lord and left it at his lodging in the
dusk, urging him to keep away from the opening of Parliament,
'since God and man had concurred to punish the wickedness of the
times.' It contained the words 'that the Parliament should receive
a terrible blow, and yet should not see who hurt them.' And it
added, 'the danger is past, as soon as you have burnt the letter.'

The ministers and courtiers made out that his Sowship, by a direct
miracle from Heaven, found out what this letter meant. The truth
is, that they were not long (as few men would be) in finding out
for themselves; and it was decided to let the conspirators alone,
until the very day before the opening of Parliament. That the
conspirators had their fears, is certain; for, Tresham himself said
before them all, that they were every one dead men; and, although
even he did not take flight, there is reason to suppose that he had
warned other persons besides Lord Mounteagle. However, they were
all firm; and Fawkes, who was a man of iron, went down every day
and night to keep watch in the cellar as usual. He was there about
two in the afternoon of the fourth, when the Lord Chamberlain and
Lord Mounteagle threw open the door and looked in. 'Who are you,
friend?' said they. 'Why,' said Fawkes, 'I am Mr. Percy's servant,
and am looking after his store of fuel here.' 'Your master has
laid in a pretty good store,' they returned, and shut the door, and
went away. Fawkes, upon this, posted off to the other conspirators
to tell them all was quiet, and went back and shut himself up in
the dark, black cellar again, where he heard the bell go twelve
o'clock and usher in the fifth of November. About two hours
afterwards, he slowly opened the door, and came out to look about
him, in his old prowling way. He was instantly seized and bound,
by a party of soldiers under SIR THOMAS KNEVETT. He had a watch
upon him, some touchwood, some tinder, some slow matches; and there
was a dark lantern with a candle in it, lighted, behind the door.
He had his boots and spurs on - to ride to the ship, I suppose -
and it was well for the soldiers that they took him so suddenly.
If they had left him but a moment's time to light a match, he
certainly would have tossed it in among the powder, and blown up
himself and them.

They took him to the King's bed-chamber first of all, and there the
King (causing him to be held very tight, and keeping a good way
off), asked him how he could have the heart to intend to destroy so
many innocent people? 'Because,' said Guy Fawkes, 'desperate
diseases need desperate remedies.' To a little Scotch favourite,
with a face like a terrier, who asked him (with no particular
wisdom) why he had collected so much gunpowder, he replied, because
he had meant to blow Scotchmen back to Scotland, and it would take
a deal of powder to do that. Next day he was carried to the Tower,
but would make no confession. Even after being horribly tortured,
he confessed nothing that the Government did not already know;
though he must have been in a fearful state - as his signature,
still preserved, in contrast with his natural hand-writing before
he was put upon the dreadful rack, most frightfully shows. Bates,
a very different man, soon said the Jesuits had had to do with the
plot, and probably, under the torture, would as readily have said
anything. Tresham, taken and put in the Tower too, made
confessions and unmade them, and died of an illness that was heavy
upon him. Rookwood, who had stationed relays of his own horses all
the way to Dunchurch, did not mount to escape until the middle of
the day, when the news of the plot was all over London. On the
road, he came up with the two Wrights, Catesby, and Percy; and they
all galloped together into Northamptonshire. Thence to Dunchurch,
where they found the proposed party assembled. Finding, however,
that there had been a plot, and that it had been discovered, the
party disappeared in the course of the night, and left them alone
with Sir Everard Digby. Away they all rode again, through
Warwickshire and Worcestershire, to a house called Holbeach, on the
borders of Staffordshire. They tried to raise the Catholics on
their way, but were indignantly driven off by them. All this time
they were hotly pursued by the sheriff of Worcester, and a fast
increasing concourse of riders. At last, resolving to defend
themselves at Holbeach, they shut themselves up in the house, and
put some wet powder before the fire to dry. But it blew up, and
Catesby was singed and blackened, and almost killed, and some of
the others were sadly hurt. Still, knowing that they must die,
they resolved to die there, and with only their swords in their
hands appeared at the windows to be shot at by the sheriff and his
assistants. Catesby said to Thomas Winter, after Thomas had been
hit in the right arm which dropped powerless by his side, 'Stand by
me, Tom, and we will die together!' - which they did, being shot
through the body by two bullets from one gun. John Wright, and
Christopher Wright, and Percy, were also shot. Rookwood and Digby
were taken: the former with a broken arm and a wound in his body
too.

It was the fifteenth of January, before the trial of Guy Fawkes,
and such of the other conspirators as were left alive, came on.
They were all found guilty, all hanged, drawn, and quartered:
some, in St. Paul's Churchyard, on the top of Ludgate-hill; some,
before the Parliament House. A Jesuit priest, named HENRY GARNET,
to whom the dreadful design was said to have been communicated, was
taken and tried; and two of his servants, as well as a poor priest
who was taken with him, were tortured without mercy. He himself
was not tortured, but was surrounded in the Tower by tamperers and
traitors, and so was made unfairly to convict himself out of his
own mouth. He said, upon his trial, that he had done all he could
to prevent the deed, and that he could not make public what had
been told him in confession - though I am afraid he knew of the
plot in other ways. He was found guilty and executed, after a
manful defence, and the Catholic Church made a saint of him; some
rich and powerful persons, who had had nothing to do with the
project, were fined and imprisoned for it by the Star Chamber; the
Catholics, in general, who had recoiled with horror from the idea
of the infernal contrivance, were unjustly put under more severe
laws than before; and this was the end of the Gunpowder Plot.


SECOND PART


His Sowship would pretty willingly, I think, have blown the House
of Commons into the air himself; for, his dread and jealousy of it
knew no bounds all through his reign. When he was hard pressed for
money he was obliged to order it to meet, as he could get no money
without it; and when it asked him first to abolish some of the
monopolies in necessaries of life which were a great grievance to
the people, and to redress other public wrongs, he flew into a rage
and got rid of it again. At one time he wanted it to consent to
the Union of England with Scotland, and quarrelled about that. At
another time it wanted him to put down a most infamous Church
abuse, called the High Commission Court, and he quarrelled with it
about that. At another time it entreated him not to be quite so
fond of his archbishops and bishops who made speeches in his praise
too awful to be related, but to have some little consideration for
the poor Puritan clergy who were persecuted for preaching in their
own way, and not according to the archbishops and bishops; and they
quarrelled about that. In short, what with hating the House of
Commons, and pretending not to hate it; and what with now sending
some of its members who opposed him, to Newgate or to the Tower,
and now telling the rest that they must not presume to make
speeches about the public affairs which could not possibly concern
them; and what with cajoling, and bullying, and fighting, and being
frightened; the House of Commons was the plague of his Sowship's
existence. It was pretty firm, however, in maintaining its rights,
and insisting that the Parliament should make the laws, and not the
King by his own single proclamations (which he tried hard to do);
and his Sowship was so often distressed for money, in consequence,
that he sold every sort of title and public office as if they were
merchandise, and even invented a new dignity called a Baronetcy,
which anybody could buy for a thousand pounds.

These disputes with his Parliaments, and his hunting, and his
drinking, and his lying in bed - for he was a great sluggard -
occupied his Sowship pretty well. The rest of his time he chiefly
passed in hugging and slobbering his favourites. The first of
these was SIR PHILIP HERBERT, who had no knowledge whatever, except
of dogs, and horses, and hunting, but whom he soon made EARL OF
MONTGOMERY. The next, and a much more famous one, was ROBERT CARR,
or KER (for it is not certain which was his right name), who came
from the Border country, and whom he soon made VISCOUNT ROCHESTER,
and afterwards, EARL OF SOMERSET. The way in which his Sowship
doted on this handsome young man, is even more odious to think of,
than the way in which the really great men of England condescended
to bow down before him. The favourite's great friend was a certain
SIR THOMAS OVERBURY, who wrote his love-letters for him, and
assisted him in the duties of his many high places, which his own
ignorance prevented him from discharging. But this same Sir Thomas
having just manhood enough to dissuade the favourite from a wicked
marriage with the beautiful Countess of Essex, who was to get a
divorce from her husband for the purpose, the said Countess, in her
rage, got Sir Thomas put into the Tower, and there poisoned him.
Then the favourite and this bad woman were publicly married by the
King's pet bishop, with as much to-do and rejoicing, as if he had
been the best man, and she the best woman, upon the face of the
earth.

But, after a longer sunshine than might have been expected - of
seven years or so, that is to say - another handsome young man
started up and eclipsed the EARL OF SOMERSET. This was GEORGE
VILLIERS, the youngest son of a Leicestershire gentleman: who came
to Court with all the Paris fashions on him, and could dance as
well as the best mountebank that ever was seen. He soon danced
himself into the good graces of his Sowship, and danced the other
favourite out of favour. Then, it was all at once discovered that
the Earl and Countess of Somerset had not deserved all those great
promotions and mighty rejoicings, and they were separately tried
for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, and for other crimes. But,
the King was so afraid of his late favourite's publicly telling
some disgraceful things he knew of him - which he darkly threatened
to do - that he was even examined with two men standing, one on
either side of him, each with a cloak in his hand, ready to throw
it over his head and stop his mouth if he should break out with
what he had it in his power to tell. So, a very lame affair was
purposely made of the trial, and his punishment was an allowance of
four thousand pounds a year in retirement, while the Countess was
pardoned, and allowed to pass into retirement too. They hated one
another by this time, and lived to revile and torment each other
some years.

While these events were in progress, and while his Sowship was
making such an exhibition of himself, from day to day and from year
to year, as is not often seen in any sty, three remarkable deaths
took place in England. The first was that of the Minister, Robert
Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, who was past sixty, and had never been
strong, being deformed from his birth. He said at last that he had
no wish to live; and no Minister need have had, with his experience
of the meanness and wickedness of those disgraceful times. The
second was that of the Lady Arabella Stuart, who alarmed his
Sowship mightily, by privately marrying WILLIAM SEYMOUR, son of
LORD BEAUCHAMP, who was a descendant of King Henry the Seventh, and
who, his Sowship thought, might consequently increase and
strengthen any claim she might one day set up to the throne. She
was separated from her husband (who was put in the Tower) and
thrust into a boat to be confined at Durham. She escaped in a
man's dress to get away in a French ship from Gravesend to France,
but unhappily missed her husband, who had escaped too, and was soon
taken. She went raving mad in the miserable Tower, and died there
after four years. The last, and the most important of these three
deaths, was that of Prince Henry, the heir to the throne, in the
nineteenth year of his age. He was a promising young prince, and
greatly liked; a quiet, well-conducted youth, of whom two very good
things are known: first, that his father was jealous of him;
secondly, that he was the friend of Sir Walter Raleigh, languishing
through all those years in the Tower, and often said that no man
but his father would keep such a bird in such a cage. On the
occasion of the preparations for the marriage of his sister the
Princess Elizabeth with a foreign prince (and an unhappy marriage
it turned out), he came from Richmond, where he had been very ill,
to greet his new brother-in-law, at the palace at Whitehall. There
he played a great game at tennis, in his shirt, though it was very
cold weather, and was seized with an alarming illness, and died
within a fortnight of a putrid fever. For this young prince Sir
Walter Raleigh wrote, in his prison in the Tower, the beginning of
a History of the World: a wonderful instance how little his
Sowship could do to confine a great man's mind, however long he
might imprison his body.

And this mention of Sir Walter Raleigh, who had many faults, but
who never showed so many merits as in trouble and adversity, may
bring me at once to the end of his sad story. After an
imprisonment in the Tower of twelve long years, he proposed to
resume those old sea voyages of his, and to go to South America in
search of gold. His Sowship, divided between his wish to be on
good terms with the Spaniards through whose territory Sir Walter
must pass (he had long had an idea of marrying Prince Henry to a
Spanish Princess), and his avaricious eagerness to get hold of the
gold, did not know what to do. But, in the end, he set Sir Walter
free, taking securities for his return; and Sir Walter fitted out
an expedition at his own coast and, on the twenty-eighth of March,
one thousand six hundred and seventeen, sailed away in command of
one of its ships, which he ominously called the Destiny. The
expedition failed; the common men, not finding the gold they had
expected, mutinied; a quarrel broke out between Sir Walter and the
Spaniards, who hated him for old successes of his against them; and
he took and burnt a little town called SAINT THOMAS. For this he
was denounced to his Sowship by the Spanish Ambassador as a pirate;
and returning almost broken-hearted, with his hopes and fortunes
shattered, his company of friends dispersed, and his brave son (who
had been one of them) killed, he was taken - through the treachery
of SIR LEWIS STUKELY, his near relation, a scoundrel and a Vice-
Admiral - and was once again immured in his prison-home of so many
years.

His Sowship being mightily disappointed in not getting any gold,
Sir Walter Raleigh was tried as unfairly, and with as many lies and
evasions as the judges and law officers and every other authority
in Church and State habitually practised under such a King. After
a great deal of prevarication on all parts but his own, it was
declared that he must die under his former sentence, now fifteen
years old. So, on the twenty-eighth of October, one thousand six
hundred and eighteen, he was shut up in the Gate House at
Westminster to pass his late night on earth, and there he took
leave of his good and faithful lady who was worthy to have lived in
better days. At eight o'clock next morning, after a cheerful
breakfast, and a pipe, and a cup of good wine, he was taken to Old
Palace Yard in Westminster, where the scaffold was set up, and
where so many people of high degree were assembled to see him die,
that it was a matter of some difficulty to get him through the
crowd. He behaved most nobly, but if anything lay heavy on his
mind, it was that Earl of Essex, whose head he had seen roll off;
and he solemnly said that he had had no hand in bringing him to the
block, and that he had shed tears for him when he died. As the
morning was very cold, the Sheriff said, would he come down to a
fire for a little space, and warm himself? But Sir Walter thanked
him, and said no, he would rather it were done at once, for he was
ill of fever and ague, and in another quarter of an hour his
shaking fit would come upon him if he were still alive, and his
enemies might then suppose that he trembled for fear. With that,
he kneeled and made a very beautiful and Christian prayer. Before
he laid his head upon the block he felt the edge of the axe, and
said, with a smile upon his face, that it was a sharp medicine, but
would cure the worst disease. When he was bent down ready for
death, he said to the executioner, finding that he hesitated, 'What
dost thou fear? Strike, man!' So, the axe came down and struck
his head off, in the sixty-sixth year of his age.

The new favourite got on fast. He was made a viscount, he was made
Duke of Buckingham, he was made a marquis, he was made Master of
the Horse, he was made Lord High Admiral - and the Chief Commander
of the gallant English forces that had dispersed the Spanish
Armada, was displaced to make room for him. He had the whole
kingdom at his disposal, and his mother sold all the profits and
honours of the State, as if she had kept a shop. He blazed all
over with diamonds and other precious stones, from his hatband and
his earrings to his shoes. Yet he was an ignorant presumptuous,
swaggering compound of knave and fool, with nothing but his beauty
and his dancing to recommend him. This is the gentleman who called
himself his Majesty's dog and slave, and called his Majesty Your
Sowship. His Sowship called him STEENIE; it is supposed, because
that was a nickname for Stephen, and because St. Stephen was
generally represented in pictures as a handsome saint.

His Sowship was driven sometimes to his wits'-end by his trimming
between the general dislike of the Catholic religion at home, and
his desire to wheedle and flatter it abroad, as his only means of
getting a rich princess for his son's wife: a part of whose
fortune he might cram into his greasy pockets. Prince Charles - or
as his Sowship called him, Baby Charles - being now PRINCE OF
WALES, the old project of a marriage with the Spanish King's
daughter had been revived for him; and as she could not marry a
Protestant without leave from the Pope, his Sowship himself
secretly and meanly wrote to his Infallibility, asking for it. The
negotiation for this Spanish marriage takes up a larger space in
great books, than you can imagine, but the upshot of it all is,
that when it had been held off by the Spanish Court for a long
time, Baby Charles and Steenie set off in disguise as Mr. Thomas
Smith and Mr. John Smith, to see the Spanish Princess; that Baby
Charles pretended to be desperately in love with her, and jumped
off walls to look at her, and made a considerable fool of himself
in a good many ways; that she was called Princess of Wales and that
the whole Spanish Court believed Baby Charles to be all but dying
for her sake, as he expressly told them he was; that Baby Charles
and Steenie came back to England, and were received with as much
rapture as if they had been a blessing to it; that Baby Charles had
actually fallen in love with HENRIETTA MARIA, the French King's
sister, whom he had seen in Paris; that he thought it a wonderfully
fine and princely thing to have deceived the Spaniards, all
through; and that he openly said, with a chuckle, as soon as he was
safe and sound at home again, that the Spaniards were great fools
to have believed him.

Like most dishonest men, the Prince and the favourite complained
that the people whom they had deluded were dishonest. They made
such misrepresentations of the treachery of the Spaniards in this
business of the Spanish match, that the English nation became eager
for a war with them. Although the gravest Spaniards laughed at the
idea of his Sowship in a warlike attitude, the Parliament granted
money for the beginning of hostilities, and the treaties with Spain
were publicly declared to be at an end. The Spanish ambassador in
London - probably with the help of the fallen favourite, the Earl
of Somerset - being unable to obtain speech with his Sowship,
slipped a paper into his hand, declaring that he was a prisoner in
his own house, and was entirely governed by Buckingham and his
creatures. The first effect of this letter was that his Sowship
began to cry and whine, and took Baby Charles away from Steenie,
and went down to Windsor, gabbling all sorts of nonsense. The end
of it was that his Sowship hugged his dog and slave, and said he
was quite satisfied.

He had given the Prince and the favourite almost unlimited power to
settle anything with the Pope as to the Spanish marriage; and he
now, with a view to the French one, signed a treaty that all Roman
Catholics in England should exercise their religion freely, and
should never be required to take any oath contrary thereto. In
return for this, and for other concessions much less to be
defended, Henrietta Maria was to become the Prince's wife, and was
to bring him a fortune of eight hundred thousand crowns.

His Sowship's eyes were getting red with eagerly looking for the
money, when the end of a gluttonous life came upon him; and, after
a fortnight's illness, on Sunday the twenty-seventh of March, one
thousand six hundred and twenty-five, he died. He had reigned
twenty-two years, and was fifty-nine years old. I know of nothing
more abominable in history than the adulation that was lavished on
this King, and the vice and corruption that such a barefaced habit
of lying produced in his court. It is much to be doubted whether
one man of honour, and not utterly self-disgraced, kept his place
near James the First. Lord Bacon, that able and wise philosopher,
as the First Judge in the Kingdom in this reign, became a public
spectacle of dishonesty and corruption; and in his base flattery of
his Sowship, and in his crawling servility to his dog and slave,
disgraced himself even more. But, a creature like his Sowship set
upon a throne is like the Plague, and everybody receives infection
from him.

Chapter XXXIII - ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES THE FIRST

BABY CHARLES became KING CHARLES THE FIRST, in the twenty-fifth
year of his age. Unlike his father, he was usually amiable in his
private character, and grave and dignified in his bearing; but,
like his father, he had monstrously exaggerated notions of the
rights of a king, and was evasive, and not to be trusted. If his
word could have been relied upon, his history might have had a
different end.

His first care was to send over that insolent upstart, Buckingham,
to bring Henrietta Maria from Paris to be his Queen; upon which
occasion Buckingham - with his usual audacity - made love to the
young Queen of Austria, and was very indignant indeed with CARDINAL
RICHELIEU, the French Minister, for thwarting his intentions. The
English people were very well disposed to like their new Queen, and
to receive her with great favour when she came among them as a
stranger. But, she held the Protestant religion in great dislike,
and brought over a crowd of unpleasant priests, who made her do
some very ridiculous things, and forced themselves upon the public
notice in many disagreeable ways. Hence, the people soon came to
dislike her, and she soon came to dislike them; and she did so much
all through this reign in setting the King (who was dotingly fond
of her) against his subjects, that it would have been better for
him if she had never been born.

Now, you are to understand that King Charles the First - of his own
determination to be a high and mighty King not to be called to
account by anybody, and urged on by his Queen besides -
deliberately set himself to put his Parliament down and to put
himself up. You are also to understand, that even in pursuit of
this wrong idea (enough in itself to have ruined any king) he never
took a straight course, but always took a crooked one.

He was bent upon war with Spain, though neither the House of
Commons nor the people were quite clear as to the justice of that
war, now that they began to think a little more about the story of
the Spanish match. But the King rushed into it hotly, raised money
by illegal means to meet its expenses, and encountered a miserable
failure at Cadiz, in the very first year of his reign. An
expedition to Cadiz had been made in the hope of plunder, but as it
was not successful, it was necessary to get a grant of money from
the Parliament; and when they met, in no very complying humour,
the, King told them, 'to make haste to let him have it, or it would
be the worse for themselves.' Not put in a more complying humour
by this, they impeached the King's favourite, the Duke of
Buckingham, as the cause (which he undoubtedly was) of many great
public grievances and wrongs. The King, to save him, dissolved the
Parliament without getting the money he wanted; and when the Lords
implored him to consider and grant a little delay, he replied, 'No,
not one minute.' He then began to raise money for himself by the
following means among others.

He levied certain duties called tonnage and poundage which had not
been granted by the Parliament, and could lawfully be levied by no
other power; he called upon the seaport towns to furnish, and to
pay all the cost for three months of, a fleet of armed ships; and
he required the people to unite in lending him large sums of money,
the repayment of which was very doubtful. If the poor people
refused, they were pressed as soldiers or sailors; if the gentry
refused, they were sent to prison. Five gentlemen, named SIR
THOMAS DARNEL, JOHN CORBET, WALTER EARL, JOHN HEVENINGHAM, and
EVERARD HAMPDEN, for refusing were taken up by a warrant of the
King's privy council, and were sent to prison without any cause but
the King's pleasure being stated for their imprisonment. Then the
question came to be solemnly tried, whether this was not a
violation of Magna Charta, and an encroachment by the King on the
highest rights of the English people. His lawyers contended No,
because to encroach upon the rights of the English people would be
to do wrong, and the King could do no wrong. The accommodating
judges decided in favour of this wicked nonsense; and here was a
fatal division between the King and the people.

For all this, it became necessary to call another Parliament. The
people, sensible of the danger in which their liberties were, chose
for it those who were best known for their determined opposition to
the King; but still the King, quite blinded by his determination to
carry everything before him, addressed them when they met, in a
contemptuous manner, and just told them in so many words that he
had only called them together because he wanted money. The
Parliament, strong enough and resolute enough to know that they
would lower his tone, cared little for what he said, and laid
before him one of the great documents of history, which is called
the PETITION OF RIGHT, requiring that the free men of England
should no longer be called upon to lend the King money, and should
no longer be pressed or imprisoned for refusing to do so; further,
that the free men of England should no longer be seized by the
King's special mandate or warrant, it being contrary to their
rights and liberties and the laws of their country. At first the
King returned an answer to this petition, in which he tried to
shirk it altogether; but, the House of Commons then showing their
determination to go on with the impeachment of Buckingham, the King
in alarm returned an answer, giving his consent to all that was
required of him. He not only afterwards departed from his word and
honour on these points, over and over again, but, at this very
time, he did the mean and dissembling act of publishing his first
answer and not his second - merely that the people might suppose
that the Parliament had not got the better of him.

That pestilent Buckingham, to gratify his own wounded vanity, had
by this time involved the country in war with France, as well as
with Spain. For such miserable causes and such miserable creatures
are wars sometimes made! But he was destined to do little more
mischief in this world. One morning, as he was going out of his
house to his carriage, he turned to speak to a certain Colonel
FRYER who was with him; and he was violently stabbed with a knife,
which the murderer left sticking in his heart. This happened in
his hall. He had had angry words up-stairs, just before, with some
French gentlemen, who were immediately suspected by his servants,
and had a close escape from being set upon and killed. In the
midst of the noise, the real murderer, who had gone to the kitchen
and might easily have got away, drew his sword and cried out, 'I am
the man!' His name was JOHN FELTON, a Protestant and a retired
officer in the army. He said he had had no personal ill-will to
the Duke, but had killed him as a curse to the country. He had
aimed his blow well, for Buckingham had only had time to cry out,
'Villain!' and then he drew out the knife, fell against a table,
and died.

The council made a mighty business of examining John Felton about
this murder, though it was a plain case enough, one would think.
He had come seventy miles to do it, he told them, and he did it for
the reason he had declared; if they put him upon the rack, as that
noble MARQUIS OF DORSET whom he saw before him, had the goodness to
threaten, he gave that marquis warning, that he would accuse HIM as
his accomplice! The King was unpleasantly anxious to have him
racked, nevertheless; but as the judges now found out that torture
was contrary to the law of England - it is a pity they did not make
the discovery a little sooner - John Felton was simply executed for
the murder he had done. A murder it undoubtedly was, and not in
the least to be defended: though he had freed England from one of
the most profligate, contemptible, and base court favourites to
whom it has ever yielded.

A very different man now arose. This was SIR THOMAS WENTWORTH, a
Yorkshire gentleman, who had sat in Parliament for a long time, and
who had favoured arbitrary and haughty principles, but who had gone
over to the people's side on receiving offence from Buckingham.
The King, much wanting such a man - for, besides being naturally
favourable to the King's cause, he had great abilities - made him
first a Baron, and then a Viscount, and gave him high employment,
and won him most completely.

A Parliament, however, was still in existence, and was NOT to be
won. On the twentieth of January, one thousand six hundred and
twenty-nine, SIR JOHN ELIOT, a great man who had been active in the
Petition of Right, brought forward other strong resolutions against
the King's chief instruments, and called upon the Speaker to put
them to the vote. To this the Speaker answered, 'he was commanded
otherwise by the King,' and got up to leave the chair - which,
according to the rules of the House of Commons would have obliged
it to adjourn without doing anything more - when two members, named
Mr. HOLLIS and Mr. VALENTINE, held him down. A scene of great
confusion arose among the members; and while many swords were drawn
and flashing about, the King, who was kept informed of all that was
going on, told the captain of his guard to go down to the House and
force the doors. The resolutions were by that time, however,
voted, and the House adjourned. Sir John Eliot and those two
members who had held the Speaker down, were quickly summoned before
the council. As they claimed it to be their privilege not to
answer out of Parliament for anything they had said in it, they
were committed to the Tower. The King then went down and dissolved
the Parliament, in a speech wherein he made mention of these
gentlemen as 'Vipers' - which did not do him much good that ever I
have heard of.

As they refused to gain their liberty by saying they were sorry for
what they had done, the King, always remarkably unforgiving, never
overlooked their offence. When they demanded to be brought up
before the court of King's Bench, he even resorted to the meanness
of having them moved about from prison to prison, so that the writs
issued for that purpose should not legally find them. At last they
came before the court and were sentenced to heavy fines, and to be
imprisoned during the King's pleasure. When Sir John Eliot's
health had quite given way, and he so longed for change of air and
scene as to petition for his release, the King sent back the answer
(worthy of his Sowship himself) that the petition was not humble
enough. When he sent another petition by his young son, in which
he pathetically offered to go back to prison when his health was
restored, if he might be released for its recovery, the King still
disregarded it. When he died in the Tower, and his children
petitioned to be allowed to take his body down to Cornwall, there
to lay it among the ashes of his forefathers, the King returned for
answer, 'Let Sir John Eliot's body be buried in the church of that
parish where he died.' All this was like a very little King
indeed, I think.

And now, for twelve long years, steadily pursuing his design of
setting himself up and putting the people down, the King called no
Parliament; but ruled without one. If twelve thousand volumes were
written in his praise (as a good many have been) it would still
remain a fact, impossible to be denied, that for twelve years King
Charles the First reigned in England unlawfully and despotically,
seized upon his subjects' goods and money at his pleasure, and
punished according to his unbridled will all who ventured to oppose
him. It is a fashion with some people to think that this King's
career was cut short; but I must say myself that I think he ran a
pretty long one.

WILLIAM LAUD, Archbishop of Canterbury, was the King's right-hand
man in the religious part of the putting down of the people's
liberties. Laud, who was a sincere man, of large learning but
small sense - for the two things sometimes go together in very
different quantities - though a Protestant, held opinions so near
those of the Catholics, that the Pope wanted to make a Cardinal of
him, if he would have accepted that favour. He looked upon vows,
robes, lighted candles, images, and so forth, as amazingly
important in religious ceremonies; and he brought in an immensity
of bowing and candle-snuffing. He also regarded archbishops and
bishops as a sort of miraculous persons, and was inveterate in the
last degree against any who thought otherwise. Accordingly, he
offered up thanks to Heaven, and was in a state of much pious
pleasure, when a Scotch clergyman, named LEIGHTON, was pilloried,
whipped, branded in the cheek, and had one of his ears cut off and
one of his nostrils slit, for calling bishops trumpery and the
inventions of men. He originated on a Sunday morning the
prosecution of WILLIAM PRYNNE, a barrister who was of similar
opinions, and who was fined a thousand pounds; who was pilloried;
who had his ears cut off on two occasions - one ear at a time - and
who was imprisoned for life. He highly approved of the punishment
of DOCTOR BASTWICK, a physician; who was also fined a thousand
pounds; and who afterwards had HIS ears cut off, and was imprisoned
for life. These were gentle methods of persuasion, some will tell
you: I think, they were rather calculated to be alarming to the
people.

In the money part of the putting down of the people's liberties,
the King was equally gentle, as some will tell you: as I think,
equally alarming. He levied those duties of tonnage and poundage,
and increased them as he thought fit. He granted monopolies to
companies of merchants on their paying him for them,
notwithstanding the great complaints that had, for years and years,
been made on the subject of monopolies. He fined the people for
disobeying proclamations issued by his Sowship in direct violation
of law. He revived the detested Forest laws, and took private
property to himself as his forest right. Above all, he determined
to have what was called Ship Money; that is to say, money for the
support of the fleet - not only from the seaports, but from all the
counties of England: having found out that, in some ancient time
or other, all the counties paid it. The grievance of this ship
money being somewhat too strong, JOHN CHAMBERS, a citizen of
London, refused to pay his part of it. For this the Lord Mayor
ordered John Chambers to prison, and for that John Chambers brought
a suit against the Lord Mayor. LORD SAY, also, behaved like a real
nobleman, and declared he would not pay. But, the sturdiest and
best opponent of the ship money was JOHN HAMPDEN, a gentleman of
Buckinghamshire, who had sat among the 'vipers' in the House of
Commons when there was such a thing, and who had been the bosom
friend of Sir John Eliot. This case was tried before the twelve
judges in the Court of Exchequer, and again the King's lawyers said
it was impossible that ship money could be wrong, because the King
could do no wrong, however hard he tried - and he really did try
very hard during these twelve years. Seven of the judges said that
was quite true, and Mr. Hampden was bound to pay: five of the
judges said that was quite false, and Mr. Hampden was not bound to
pay. So, the King triumphed (as he thought), by making Hampden the
most popular man in England; where matters were getting to that
height now, that many honest Englishmen could not endure their
country, and sailed away across the seas to found a colony in
Massachusetts Bay in America. It is said that Hampden himself and
his relation OLIVER CROMWELL were going with a company of such
voyagers, and were actually on board ship, when they were stopped
by a proclamation, prohibiting sea captains to carry out such
passengers without the royal license. But O! it would have been
well for the King if he had let them go! This was the state of
England. If Laud had been a madman just broke loose, he could not
have done more mischief than he did in Scotland. In his endeavours
(in which he was seconded by the King, then in person in that part
of his dominions) to force his own ideas of bishops, and his own
religious forms and ceremonies upon the Scotch, he roused that
nation to a perfect frenzy. They formed a solemn league, which
they called The Covenant, for the preservation of their own
religious forms; they rose in arms throughout the whole country;
they summoned all their men to prayers and sermons twice a day by
beat of drum; they sang psalms, in which they compared their
enemies to all the evil spirits that ever were heard of; and they
solemnly vowed to smite them with the sword. At first the King
tried force, then treaty, then a Scottish Parliament which did not
answer at all. Then he tried the EARL OF STRAFFORD, formerly Sir
Thomas Wentworth; who, as LORD WENTWORTH, had been governing
Ireland. He, too, had carried it with a very high hand there,
though to the benefit and prosperity of that country.

Strafford and Laud were for conquering the Scottish people by force
of arms. Other lords who were taken into council, recommended that
a Parliament should at last be called; to which the King
unwillingly consented. So, on the thirteenth of April, one
thousand six hundred and forty, that then strange sight, a
Parliament, was seen at Westminster. It is called the Short
Parliament, for it lasted a very little while. While the members
were all looking at one another, doubtful who would dare to speak,
MR. PYM arose and set forth all that the King had done unlawfully
during the past twelve years, and what was the position to which
England was reduced. This great example set, other members took
courage and spoke the truth freely, though with great patience and
moderation. The King, a little frightened, sent to say that if
they would grant him a certain sum on certain terms, no more ship
money should be raised. They debated the matter for two days; and
then, as they would not give him all he asked without promise or
inquiry, he dissolved them.

But they knew very well that he must have a Parliament now; and he
began to make that discovery too, though rather late in the day.
Wherefore, on the twenty-fourth of September, being then at York
with an army collected against the Scottish people, but his own men
sullen and discontented like the rest of the nation, the King told
the great council of the Lords, whom he had called to meet him
there, that he would summon another Parliament to assemble on the
third of November. The soldiers of the Covenant had now forced
their way into England and had taken possession of the northern
counties, where the coals are got. As it would never do to be
without coals, and as the King's troops could make no head against
the Covenanters so full of gloomy zeal, a truce was made, and a
treaty with Scotland was taken into consideration. Meanwhile the
northern counties paid the Covenanters to leave the coals alone,
and keep quiet.

We have now disposed of the Short Parliament. We have next to see
what memorable things were done by the Long one.


SECOND PART


THE Long Parliament assembled on the third of November, one
thousand six hundred and forty-one. That day week the Earl of
Strafford arrived from York, very sensible that the spirited and
determined men who formed that Parliament were no friends towards
him, who had not only deserted the cause of the people, but who had
on all occasions opposed himself to their liberties. The King told
him, for his comfort, that the Parliament 'should not hurt one hair
of his head.' But, on the very next day Mr. Pym, in the House of
Commons, and with great solemnity, impeached the Earl of Strafford
as a traitor. He was immediately taken into custody and fell from
his proud height.

It was the twenty-second of March before he was brought to trial in
Westminster Hall; where, although he was very ill and suffered