A Short History of England, Ireland and Scotland Part 5

Scotland, since the extinction of the line of Bruce, had been ruled by the Stuart Kings. Torn by internal feuds between her clans, and by the incessant struggle against English encroachments, she had drawn into close friendship with France, which country used her for its own ends, in hara.s.sing England, so that the Scottish border was always a point of danger in every quarrel between French and English Kings.

In 1502 Henry VIII. had bestowed the hand of his sister Margaret upon James IV. of Scotland, and it seemed as if a peaceful union was at last secured with his Northern neighbor. But in the war with France which soon followed, James, the Scottish King, turned to his old ally. He was killed at {91} "Flodden Field," after suffering a crushing defeat.

His successor, James V., had married Mary Guise. Her family was the head and front of the ultra Catholic party in France, and her counsels probably influenced James to a continual hostility to the Protestant Henry, even though he was his uncle. The death of James in consequence of his defeat at "Solway Moss" occurred immediately after the birth of his daughter, Mary Stuart (1542).

This unhappy child at once became the centre of intriguing designs; Henry VIII. wishing to betroth the little Queen to his son, afterwards Edward VI., and thus forever unite the rival kingdoms. But the Guises made no compromises with Protestants! Mary Guise, who was now Regent of the realm, had no desire for a closer union with Protestant England, and very much desired a nearer alliance with her own France. Mary Stuart was betrothed to the Dauphin, grandson of Francis I., and was sent to the French Court to be prepared by Catharine de Medici (the Italian daughter-in-law of Francis I.) for her future exalted position.

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In 1561, Mary returned to England. Her boy-husband had died after a reign of two years. She was nineteen years old, had wonderful beauty, rare intelligence, and power to charm like a siren. Her short life had been spent in the most corrupt and profligate of Courts, under the combined influence of Catharine de Medici, the worst woman in Europe,--and her two uncles of the House of Guise, who were little better. Political intrigues, plottings and crimes were in the very air she breathed from infancy. But she was an ardent and devout Catholic, and as such became the centre and the hope of what still remained of Catholic England.

Elizabeth would have bartered half her possessions for the one possession of beauty. That she was jealous of her fascinating rival there is little doubt, but that she was exasperated at her pretensions and at the audacious plottings against her life and throne is not strange. In fact we wonder that, with her imperious temper, she so long hesitated to strike the fatal blow.

Whether Mary committed the dark crimes {93} attributed to her or not, we do not know. But we do know, that after the murder of her wretched husband, Lord Darnley, (her cousin, Henry Stuart), she quickly married the man to whom the deed was directly traced. Her marriage with Bothwell was her undoing. Scotland was so indignant at the act, that she took refuge in England, only to fall into Elizabeth's hands.

Mary Stuart had once audaciously said, "the reason her cousin did not marry was because she would not lose the power of compelling men to make love to her." Perhaps the memory of this jest made it easier to sign the fatal paper in 1587.

When we read of Mary's irresistible charm, of her audacity, her cunning, her genius for diplomacy and statecraft, far exceeding Elizabeth's--when we read of all this and think of the blood of the Guises in her veins, and the precepts of Catharine de Medici in her heart, we realize what her usurpation would have meant for England, and feel that she was a menace to the State, and justly incurred her fate.

Then again, when we hear of her gentle patience in her {94} long captivity, her prayers and piety, and her sublime courage when she walked through the Hall at Fotheringay Castle, and laid her beautiful head on the block as on a pillow, we are melted to pity, and almost revolted at the act. It is difficult to be just, with such a lovely criminal, unless one is made of such stern stuff as was John Knox. The son of Mary by Henry Stuart (Lord Darnley) was James VI. of Scotland.

His pretensions to the English throne were now seemingly forever at rest. But Philip of Spain thought the time propitious for his own ambitious purposes, and sent an Armada (fleet) which approached the Coast in the form of a great Crescent, one mile across. The little English "seadogs," not much larger than small pleasure yachts, were led by Sir Francis Drake. They worried the ponderous Spanish ships, and then, sending burning boats in amongst them, soon spoiled the pretty crescent. The fleet scattered along the Northern Coast, where it was overtaken by a frightful storm, and the winds and the waves completed the victory, almost annihilating the entire "Armada."

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England was great and glorious. The revolution, religious, social and political, had ploughed and harrowed the surface which had been fertilized with the "New Learning," and the harvest was rich. While all Europe was devastated by religious wars there arose in Protestant England such an era of peace and prosperity, with all the conditions of living so improved that the dreams of Sir Thomas More's "Utopia" seemed almost realized. The new culture was everywhere. England was garlanded with poetry, and lighted by genius, such as the world has not seen since, and may never see again. The name of Francis Bacon was sufficient to adorn an age, and that of Shakespeare alone, enough to illumine a century. Elizabeth did not create the glory of the "Elizabethan Age," but she did create the peace and social order from which it sprang.

If this Queen ever loved any one it was the Earl of Leicester, the man who sent his lovely wife, Amy Robsart, to a cruel death in the delusive hope of marrying a Queen. We are unwilling to harbor the suspicion {96} that she was accessory to this deed; and yet we cannot forget that she was the daughter of Henry VIII.!--and sometimes wonder if the memory of a crime as black as Mary's haunted her sad old age, when sated with pleasures and triumphs, lovers no more whispering adulation in her ears, and mirrors banished from her presence, she silently waited for the end.

She died in the year 1603, and succ.u.mbing to the irony of fate,--and possibly as an act of reparation for the fatal paper signed in 1587,--she named the son of Mary Stuart, James VI. of Scotland, her successor.--James I. of England.

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CHAPTER VIII

The House of Stuart had peacefully reached the long coveted throne of England in the person of a most unkingly King. Gross in appearance and vulgar in manners, James had none of the royal attributes of his mother. A great deal of knowledge had been crammed into a very small mind. Conceited, vain, pedantic, headstrong, he set to work with the confidence of ignorance to carry out his undigested views upon all subjects, reversing at almost every point the policy of his great predecessor. Where she with supreme tact had loosened the screws so that the great authority vested in her might not press too heavily upon the nation, he tightened them. Where she bowed her imperious will to that of the Commons, this puny tyrant insolently defied it, and swelling with sense of his own {98} greatness, claimed "Divine right"

for Kingship and demanded that his people should say "the King can do no wrong," "to question his authority is to question that of G.o.d." If he ardently supported the Church of England, it was because he was its head. The Catholic who would have turned the Church authority over again to the Pope, and the "Puritans" who resisted the "Popish practices" of the Reformed Church of England, were equally hateful to him, for one and the same reason; they were each aiming to diminish his authority.

When the Puritans brought to him a pet.i.tion signed by 800 clergymen, praying that they be not compelled to wear the surplice, nor make the sign of the cross at baptism--he said they were "vipers," and if they did not submit to the authority of the Bishops in such matters "they should be harried out of the land." In the persecution implied by this threat, a large body of Puritans escaped to Holland with their families, and thence came that band of heroic men and women on the "Mayflower," landing at a point on the American Coast which they {99} called "Plymouth" (1620). A few Englishmen had in 1607 settled in Jamestown, Virginia. These two colonies contained the germ of the future "United States of America."

The persecution of the Catholics led to a plot to blow up Parliament House at a time when the King was present, thinking thus at one stroke to get rid of a usurping tyrant, and of a House of Commons which was daily becoming more and more infected with Puritanism. The discovery of this "Guy Fawkes gunpowder plot," prevented its consummation, and immensely strengthened Puritan sentiment.

The keynote of Elizabeth's foreign policy had been hostility to Spain, that Catholic stronghold, and an unwavering adherence to Protestant Europe. James saw in that great and despotic government the most suitable friend for such a great King as himself. He proposed a marriage between his son Charles and the Infanta, daughter of the King of Spain, making abject promises of legislation in his Kingdom favorable to the Catholics; and when an indignant House {100} of Commons protested against the marriage, they were insolently reprimanded for meddling with things which did not concern them, and were sent home, not to be recalled again until the King's necessities for money compelled him to summon them.

During the early part of his reign the people seem to have been paralyzed and speechless before his audacious pretensions. Great courtiers were fawning at his feet listening to his pedantic wisdom, and humoring his theory of the "Divine right" of hereditary Kingship.

And alas!--that we have to say it--Francis Bacon (his Chancellor), with intellect towering above his century,--was his obsequious servant and tool, uttering not one protest as one after another the liberties of the people were trampled upon!

But this Spanish marriage had aroused a spirit before which a wiser man than James would have trembled. He was standing midway between two scaffolds, that of his mother (1587), and his son (1649). Every blow he struck at the liberties of England cut deep into the foundation of his throne. {101} And when he violated the law of the land by the imposition of taxes, without the sanction of his Parliament, he had "sowed the wind" and the "whirlwind," which was to break on his son's head was inevitable. Popular indignation began to be manifest, and Puritan members of the Commons began to use language the import of which could not be mistaken. Bacon was disgraced; his crime,--while ostensibly the "taking of bribes,"--was in reality his being the servile tool of the King.

In reviewing the acts of this reign we see a foolish Sovereign ruled by an intriguing adventurer whom he created Duke of Buckingham. We see him foiled in his attempt to link the fate of England with that of Catholic Europe;--sacrificing Sir Walter Raleigh because he had given offense to Spain, the country whose friendship he most desired. We see numberless acts of folly, and but three which we can commend. James did authorize and promote the translation of the Bible which has been in use until to-day. He named his double Kingdom of England and Scotland "Great Britain." {102} These two acts, together with his death in 1625, meet with our entire approval.

Charles I., son of James, was at least one thing which his father was not. He was a gentleman. Had it not been his misfortune to inherit a crown, his scholarly refinements and exquisite tastes, his irreproachable morals, and his rect.i.tude in the personal relations of life, might have won him only esteem and honor. But these qualities belonged to Charles Stuart the gentleman. Charles the King was imperious, false, obstinate, blind to the conditions of his time, and ignorant of the nature of his people. Every step taken during his reign led him nearer to its fatal consummation.

No family in Europe ever grasped at power more unscrupulously than the Guises in France. They were cruel and remorseless in its pursuit. It was the warm southern blood of her mother which was Mary Stuart's ruin.

She was a Guise,--and so was her son James I.--and so was Charles I., her grandson. There was despotism and tyranny in their blood. Their very natures made it impossible that they should {103} comprehend the Anglo-Saxon ideal of civil liberty.

Who can tell what might have been the course of History, if England had been ruled by English Kings, which it has not been since the Conquest.

With every royal marriage there is a fresh infusion of foreign blood drawn from fountains not always the purest,--until after centuries of such dilutions, the royal line has less of the Anglo-Saxon in it than any ancestral line in the Kingdom.

The odious Spanish marriage had been abandoned and Charles had married Henrietta, sister of Louis XIII. of France.

The subject of religion was the burning one at that time. It soon became apparent that the new King's personal sympathies leaned as far as his position permitted toward Catholicism. The Church of England under its new Primate, Archbishop Laud, was being drawn farther away from Protestantism and closer to Papacy; while Laud in order to secure Royal protection advocated the absolutism of the King, saying that James in his theory of "Divine right" had {104} been inspired by the Holy Ghost, thus turning religion into an engine of attack upon English liberties. Laud's ideal was a purified Catholicism--retaining auricular confession, prayers for the dead, the Real Presence in the Sacrament, genuflexions and crucifixes, all of which were odious to Puritans and Presbyterians. He had a bold, narrow mind, and recklessly threw himself against the religious instincts of the time. The same pulpit from which was read a proclamation ordering that the Sabbath be treated as a holiday, and not a Holy-day, was also used to tell the people that resistance to the King's will was "Eternal d.a.m.nation."

This made the Puritans seem the defenders of the liberties of the country, and drew hosts of conservative Churchmen, such as Pym, to their side, although not at all in sympathy with a religious fanaticism which condemned innocent pleasures, and all the things which adorn life, as mere devices of the devil. Such were the means by which the line was at last sharply drawn. The Church of England and tyranny on one {105} side, and Puritanism and liberty on the other.

But there was one thing which at this moment was of deeper interest to the King than religion. He wanted,--he must have,--money. _Religion_ and _money_ are the two things upon which the fate of nations has oftenest hung. These two dangerous factors were both present now, and they were going to make history very fast.

On account of a troublesome custom prevailing in his Kingdom, Charles must first summon his Parliament, and they must grant the needed supplies. His father had by the discovery of the theory of "Divine right," prepared the way to throw off these Parliamentary trammels.

But that could only be reached by degrees. So Parliament was summoned.

It had no objection to voting the needed subsidies, but,--the King must first promise certain reforms, political and religious, and--dismiss his odious Minister Buckingham.

Charles, indignant at this outrage, dissolved the body, and appealed to the country for a loan. The same reply came from {106} every quarter.

"We will gladly lend the money, but it must be done through Parliament." The King was thoroughly aroused. If the loan will not be voluntary, it must be forced. A tax was levied, fines and penalties for its resistance meted out by subservient judges.

John Hampden was one of the earliest victims. His means were ample, the sum was small, but his manhood was great. "Not one farthing, if it cost me my life," was his reply as he sat in the prison at Gate House.

The supply did not meet the King's demand. Overwhelmed with debt and shame and rage, he was obliged again to resort to the hated means.

Parliament was summoned. The Commons, with memory of recent outrages in their hearts, were more determined than before. The members drew up a "_Pet.i.tion of Right_," which was simply a reaffirmation of the inviolability of the rights of person, of property and of speech--a sort of second "Magna Charta."

They resolutely and calmly faced their King, the "Pet.i.tion" in one hand, the {107} granted subsidies in the other. For a while he defied them; but the judges were whispering in his ear that the "Pet.i.tion"

would not be binding upon him, and Buckingham was urging him to yield.

Perhaps it was Charles Stuart the gentleman who hesitated to receive money in return for solemn promises which he did not intend to keep!

But Charles the King signed the paper, which seven judges out of twelve, in the highest court of the realm, were going to p.r.o.nounce invalid because the King's power was beyond the reach of Parliament.

It was inherent in him as King, and bestowed by G.o.d. _Any infringement upon his prerogative by Act of Parliament was void_!

With king so false, and with justice so polluted at its fountain, what hope was there for the people but in Revolution?

From the tyranny of the Church under Laud, a way was opened when, in 1629, Charles granted a Charter to the Colony of Ma.s.sachusetts. With a quiet, stern enthusiasm the hearts of men turned toward that refuge in America. Not men of broken fortunes, adventurers, and criminals, but {108} owners of large landed estates, professional men, some of the best in the land, who abandoned home and comfort to face intolerable hardships. One wrote, "We are weaned from the delicate milk of our Mother England and do not mind these trials." As the pressure increased under Laud, the stream toward the West increased in volume; so that in ten years 20,000 Englishmen had sought religious freedom across the sea, and had founded a Colony which, strange to say,--under the influence of an intense religious sentiment,--became itself a Theocracy and a new tyranny, although one sternly just and pure.

The dissolute, worthless Buckingham had been a.s.sa.s.sinated, and Charles had wept pa.s.sionate tears over his dead body. But his place had been filled by one far better suited to the King's needs at a time when he had determined not again to recall Parliament, but to rule without it until resistance to his measures had ceased.

It was with no sinister purpose of establishing a despotism such as a stronger man might have harbored, that he made this {109} resolve.

What Charles wanted was simply the means of filling his exchequer; and if Parliament would not give him that except by a d.i.c.ker for reforms, and humiliating pledges which he could not keep, why then he would find new ways of raising money without them. His father had done it before him, he had done it himself. With no Commons there to rate and insult him, it could be done without hindrance.

He was not grand enough, nor base enough, nor was he rich enough, to carry out any organized design upon the country. He simply wanted money, and had such blind confidence in Kingship, that any very serious resistance to his authority did not enter his dreams. It was the limitations of his intelligence which proved his ruin, his inability to comprehend a new condition in the spirit of his people. Elizabeth would have felt it, though she did not understand it, and would have loosened the screws, without regard for her personal preferences, and by doing it, so bound the people to her, that her policy would have been their policy. Charles was as wise as the {110} engineer who would rivet down the safety-valves!

Sir Thomas Wentworth (Earl Strafford), who had taken the place of Buckingham, was an apostate from the party of liberty. Disappointed in becoming a leader in the Commons he had drawn gradually closer to the King, who now leaned upon him as the vine upon the oak.

This man's ideal was to build up in England just such a despotism as Richelieu was building in France. The same imperious temper, the same invincible will and administrative genius, marked him as fitted for the work. While Charles was feebly scheming for revenue, he was laying large and comprehensive plans for a system of oppression, which should _yield_ the revenue,--and for a.r.s.enals and Forts--and a standing Army, and a rule of terror which should hold the nation in subjection while these things were preparing. He was clear-sighted enough to see that "absolutism" was not to be accomplished by a system of reasoning. He would not urge it as a dogma, but as a fact.