Literary Character of Men of Genius Part 36

A popular preacher at the Temple, who was disposed to keep alive a cheerful spirit among the people, yet desirous that the sacred day should not pa.s.s like any other, moderated between the parties. He declared it was to be observed with strictness only by "persons of quality."[C]

[Footnote A: Collier's "Ecclesiastical History," vol. ii. p. 758.]

[Footnote B: Fuller's "Church History," book xi. p. 149. One of the most curious books of this cla.s.s is Heylin's "History of the Sabbath," a work abounding with uncommon researches; it was written in favour of Charles's declaration for reviving lawful sports on Sundays. Warton, in the _first_ edition of Milton's "Juvenile Poems," observed in a note on the lady's speech, in Comus, verse 177, that "it is owing to the Puritans ever since Cromwell's time that _Sunday_ has been made in England a day of gravity and severity: and many a staunch observer of the rites of the Church of England little suspects that he is conforming to the _Calvinism_ of an _English Sunday_." It is probable this gave unjust offence to grave heads unfurnished with their own national history, for in the _second edition_ Warton cancelled the note. Truth is thus violated. The Puritans, disgusted with the levities and excesses of the age of James and Charles, as is usual on these points, vehemently threw themselves into an opposite direction; but they perhaps advanced too far in converting the Sabbath-day into a sullen and gloomy reserve of pharisaical austerity. Adam Smith, and Paley, in his "Moral and Political Philosophy," vol. ii. p. 73, have taken more enlightened views on this subject.]

[Footnote C: "Let servants," he says, "whose hands are ever working, whilst their eyes are waking; let such who all the foregoing week had their cheeks moistened with sweat, and their hands hardened with labour, let such have some recreations on the Lord's-day indulged to them; whilst _persons of quality_, who may be said to keep Sabbath all the week long--I mean, who rest from hard labour--are concerned in conscience to observe the Lord's-day with the greater abstinence from recreations."]

One of the chief causes of the civil war is traced to the revival of this "Book of Sports." Thus it happened that from the circ.u.mstance of our good-tempered monarch discovering the populace in Lancashire discontented, being debarred from their rustic sports--and, exhorting them, out of his _bonhomie_ and "fatherly love, which he owed to them all" (as he said), to recover their cheerful habits--he was innocently involving the country in divinity, and in civil war. James I. would have started with horror at the "Book of Sports," could he have presciently contemplated the archbishop, and the sovereign who persisted to revive it, dragged to the block. What invisible threads suspend together the most remote events!

The parliament's armies usually chose Sundays for their battles, that the profanation of the day might be expiated by a field-sacrifice, and that the Sabbath-breakers should receive a signal punishment. The opinions of the nature of the Sabbath were, even in the succeeding reign, so opposite and novel, that plays were performed before Charles on Sundays. James I., who knew nothing of such opinions, has been unjustly aspersed by those who live in more settled times, when such matters have been more wisely established than ever they were discussed.[A]

[Footnote A: It is remarkable of James I. that he never pressed for the performance of any of his proclamations; and his facile disposition made him more tolerant than appears in our history. At this very time, the conduct of a lord mayor of London has been preserved by Wilson, as a proof of the city magistrate's piety, and, it may be added, of his wisdom. It is here adduced as an evidence of the king's usual conduct:--

The king's carriages, removing to Theobalds on the Sabbath, occasioned a great clatter and noise in the time of divine service. The lord-mayor commanded them to be stopped, and the officers of the carriages, returning to the king, made violent complaints. The king, in a rage, swore he thought there had been no more kings in England than himself; and sent a warrant to the lord-mayor to let them pa.s.s, which he obeyed, observing-- "While it was in my power, I did my duty; but that being taken away by a higher power, it is my duty to obey." The good sense of the lord-mayor so highly gratified James, that the king complimented him, and thanked him for it. Of such gentleness was the arbitrary power of James composed!]

MOTIVES OF THE KING'S AVERSION TO WAR.

The king's aversion to war has been attributed to his pusillanimity--as if personal was the same thing as political courage, and as if a king placed himself in a field of battle by a proclamation for war. The idle tale that James trembled at the mere view of a naked sword, which is produced as an instance of the effects of sympathy over the infant in the womb from his mother's terror at the a.s.sa.s.sination of Rizzio, is probably not true, yet it serves the purpose of inconsiderate writers to indicate his excessive pusillanimity; but there is another idle tale of an opposite nature which is certainly true:--In pa.s.sing from Berwick into his new kingdom, the king, with his own hand, "shot out of a cannon so fayre and with so great judgment" as convinced the cannoniers of the king's skill "in great artillery," as Stowe records. It is probable, after all, that James I.

was not deficient in personal courage, although this is not of consequence in his literary and political character. Several instances are recorded of his intrepidity. But the absurd charge of his pusillanimity and his pedantry has been carried so far, as to suppose that it affected his character as a sovereign. The warm and hasty Burnet says at once of James I.:--"He was despised by all abroad as a pedant without true judgment, courage, or steadiness." This "pedant," however, had "the true judgment and steadiness" to obtain his favourite purpose, which was the preservation of a continued peace. If James I. was sometimes despised by foreign powers, it was because an insular king, who will not consume the blood and treasure of his people (and James had neither to spare), may be little regarded on the Continent; the Machiavels of foreign cabinets will look with contempt on the domestic blessings a British sovereign would scatter among his subjects; his presence with the foreigners is only felt in his armies; and they seek to allure him to fight their battles, and to involve him in their interests.

James looked with a cold eye on the military adventurer: he said, "No man gains by war but he that hath not wherewith to live in peace." But there was also a secret motive, which made the king a lover of peace, and which he once thus confidentially opened:--

"A king of England had no reason but to seek always to decline a war; for though the sword was indeed in his hand, the purse was in the people's.

One could not go without the other. Suppose a supply were levied to begin the fray, what certainty could he have that he should not want sufficient to make an honourable end? If he called for subsidies, and did not obtain, he must retreat ingloriously. He must beg an alms, with such conditions as would break the heart of majesty, through capitulations that _some members would make, who desire to improve the reputation of their wisdom, by retrenching the dignity of the crown in popular declamations_, and thus he must buy the soldier's pay, or fear the danger of a mutiny."[A]

[Footnote A: Hacket's "Life of Lord-Keeper Williams," p. 80. The whole is distinguished by italics, as the king's own words.]

JAMES ACKNOWLEDGES HIS DEPENDENCE ON THE COMMONS. THEIR CONDUCT.

Thus James I., perpetually accused of exercising arbitrary power, confesses a humiliating dependence on the Commons; and, on the whole, at a time when prerogative and privilege were alike indefinite and obscure, the king received from them hard and rigorous usage. A king of peace claimed the indulgence, if not the grat.i.tude, of the people; and the sovereign who was zealous to correct the abuses of his government, was not distinguished by the Commons from him who insolently would perpetuate them.

When the Commons were not in good humour with Elizabeth, or James, they contrived three methods of inactivity, running the time to waste--_nihil agendo_, or _aliud agendo_, or _male agendo_; doing nothing, doing something else, or doing evilly.[A] In one of these irksome moments, waiting for subsidies, Elizabeth anxiously inquired of the Speaker, "What had pa.s.sed in the Lower House?" He replied, "If it please your Majesty-- seven weeks." On one of those occasions, when the queen broke into a pa.s.sion when they urged her to a settlement of the succession, one of the deputies of the Commons informed her Majesty, that "the Commons would never _speak_ about a subsidy, or any other matter whatever; and that hitherto nothing but the most trivial discussions had pa.s.sed in parliament: which was, therefore, a great a.s.sembly rendered entirely useless,--and all were desirous of returning home."[B]

[Footnote A: I find this description in a MS. letter of the times.]

[Footnote B: From a MS. letter of the French amba.s.sador, La Mothe Fenelon, to Charles IX., then at the court of London, in my possession.]

But the more easy and open nature of James I. endured greater hardships: with the habit of studious men, the king had an utter carelessness of money and a generosity of temper, which Hacket, in his Life of the Lord-Keeper Williams, has described. "The king was wont to give like a king, and for the most part to keep one act of liberality warm with the covering of another." He seemed to have had no distinct notions of total amounts; he was once so shocked at the sight of the money he had granted away, lying in heaps on a table, that he instantly reduced it to half the sum. It appears that Parliament never granted even the ordinary supplies they had given to his predecessors; his chief revenue was drawn from the customs; yet his debts, of which I find an account in the Parliamentary History, after a reign of twenty-one years, did not amount to 200,000_l._[A] This monarch could not have been so wasteful of his revenues as it is presumed. James I. was always generous, and left scarcely any debts. He must have lived amidst many self-deprivations; nor was this difficult to practise for this king, for he was a philosopher, indifferent to the common and imaginary wants of the vulgar of royalty.

Whenever he threw himself into the arms of his Parliament, they left him without a feeling of his distress. In one of his speeches he says--

"In the last Parliament I laid open the true thoughts of my heart; but I may say, with our Saviour, 'I have piped to you, and you have not danced; I have mourned, and you have not lamented.' I have reigned eighteen years, in which time you have had peace, and I have received far less supply than hath been given to any king since the Conquest."

[Footnote A: "Parliamentary History," vol. v. p. 147.]

Thus James, denied the relief he claimed, was forced on wretched expedients, selling patents for monopolies, craving benevolences, or free gifts, and such expedients; the monopolies had been usual in Elizabeth's reign; yet all our historians agree, that his subjects were never grievously oppressed by such occasional levies; this was even the confession of the contemporaries of this monarch. They were every day becoming wealthier by those acts of peace they despised the monarch for maintaining. "The kingdom, since his reign began, was luxuriant in gold and silver, far above the scant of our fathers who lived before us," are the words of a contemporary.[A] All flourished about the king, except the king himself. James I. discovered how light and hollow was his boasted "prerogative-royal," which, by its power of dissolving the Parliament, could only keep silent those who had already refused their aid.

[Footnote A: Hacket's "Life of Lord-Keeper Williams."]

A wit of the day described the Parliaments of James by this ludicrous distich:

Many faults complained of, few things amended, A subsidy granted, the Parliament ended.

But this was rarely the fact. Sometimes they addressed James I. by what the king called a "stinging pet.i.tion;" or, when the minister, pa.s.sing over in silence the motion of the Commons, pressed for supplies, the heads of a party replied, that to grant them were to put an end to Parliament. But they practised expedients and contrivances, which comported as little with the dignity of an English senate, as with the majesty of the sovereign.

At a late hour, when not a third part of the house remained, and those who required a fuller house, amid darkness and confusion, were neither seen nor heard, they made a protest,--of which the king approved as little of the ambiguous matter, as the surrept.i.tious means; and it was then, that, with his own hand, he tore the leaf out of the journal.[A] In the sessions of 1614 the king was still more indignant at their proceedings. He and the Scotch had been vilified by their invectives; and they were menaced by two lawyers, with a "Sicilian vespers, or a Parisian matins." They aimed to reduce the king to beggary, by calling in question a third part of his revenue, contesting his prerogative in levying his customs. On this occasion I find that, publicly in the Banqueting-house at Whitehall, the king tore all their bills before their faces; and, as not a single act was pa.s.sed, in the phrase of the day this was called an _addle_ Parliament.[B]

Such unhappy proceedings indicated the fatal divisions of the succeeding reign. A meeting of a different complexion, once occurred in 1621, late in James's reign. The monopolies were then abolished. The king and the prince shed reciprocal tears in the house; and the prince wept when he brought an affectionate message of thanks from the Commons. The letter-writer says, "It is a day worthy to be kept holiday; some say it shall, but I believe them not." It never was; for even this parliament broke up with the cries of "some tribunitial orators," as James designated the pure and the impure democratic spirits. Smollett remarks in his margin, that the king endeavoured to _cajole_ the Commons. Had he known of the royal tears, he had still heightened the phrase. Hard fate of kings! Should ever their tears attest the warmth of honest feelings, they must be thrown out of the pale of humanity: for Francis...o...b..rne, that cynical republican, declares, that "there are as few abominable princes as tolerable kings; because princes must court the public favour before they attain supreme power, and then change their nature!" Such is the egotism of republicanism!

[Footnote A: "Rushworth," vol. i. p. 54.]

[Footnote B: From a MS. of the times.]

SCANDALOUS CHRONICLES.

The character of James I. has always been taken from certain scandalous chronicles, whose origin requires detection. It is this mud which has darkened and disturbed the clear stream of history. The reigns of Elizabeth and James teemed with libels in church and state from opposite parties: the idleness of the pacific court of James I. hatched a viperous brood of a less hardy, but perhaps of a more malignant nature, than the Martin Mar-prelates of the preceding reign. Those boldly at once wrote treason, and, in some respects, honestly dared the rope which could only silence Penry and his party; but these only reached to _scandalum magnatum_, and the puny wretches could only have crept into a pillory. In the times of the Commonwealth, when all things were agreeable which vilified our kings, these secret histories were dragged from their lurking holes. The writers are meagre Suetoniuses and Procopiuses; a set of self-elected spies in the court; gossipers, lounging in the same circle; eaves-droppers; pryers into corners; buzzers of reports; and punctual scribes of what the French (so skilful in the profession) technically term _les on dit_; that is, things that might never have happened, although they are recorded: registered for posterity in many a scandalous chronicle, they have been mistaken for histories; and include so many truths and falsehoods, that it becomes unsafe for the historian either to credit or to disbelieve them.[A]

[Footnote A: Most of these works were meanly printed, and were usually found in a state of filth and rags, and would have perished in their own merited neglect, had they not been recently splendidly reprinted by Sir Walter Scott. Thus the garbage has been cleanly laid on a fashionable epergne, and found quite to the taste of certain lovers of authentic history! Sir Anthony Weldon, clerk of the king's kitchen, in his "Court of King James" has been reproached for gaining much of his scandalous chronicle from the purlieus of the court. For this work and some similar ones, especially "The None-Such Charles," in which it would appear that he had procured materials from the State Paper Office, and for other zealous services to the Parliament, they voted him a grant of 500_l_. "The Five Years of King James," which pa.s.ses under the name of Sir Fulk Greville, the dignified friend of the romantic Sir Philip Sidney, and is frequently referred to by grave writers, is certainly a Presbyterian's third day's hash--for there are parts copied from Arthur Wilson's "History of James I.," who was himself the pensioner of a disappointed courtier; yet this writer never attacks the personal character of the king, though charged with having sc.r.a.ped up many tales maliciously false. Osborne is a misanthropical politician, who cuts with the most corroding pen that ever rottened a man's name. James was very negligent in dress; graceful appearances did not come into his studies. Weldon tells us how the king was trussed on horseback, and fixed there like a pedlar's pack or a lump of inanimate matter; the truth is, the king had always an infirmity in his legs. Further, we are told that this ridiculous monarch allowed his hat to remain just as it chanced to be placed on his head. Osborne once saw this unlucky king "in a green hunting-dress, with a feather in his cap, and a horn, instead of a sword, by his side; how suitable to his age, calling, or person, I leave others to judge from his pictures:" and this he bitterly calls "leaving him dressed for posterity!" This is the style which pa.s.ses for history with some readers. Hume observes that "hunting,"

which was James's sole recreation, necessary for his health, as a sedentary scholar, "is the cheapest a king can indulge;" and, indeed, the empty coffers of this monarch afforded no other.

These pseudo-histories are alluded to by Arthur Wilson as "monstrous satires against the king's own person, that haunted both court and country," when, in the wantonness of the times, "every little miscarriage, exuberantly branched, so that evil report did often perch on them." Fuller has designated these suspicious scribes as "a generation of the people who, like _moths_, have lurked under the carpets of the council-table, and even like _fleas_, have leaped into pillows of the prince's bed-chamber; and, to enhance the reputation of their knowledge, thence derived that of all things which were, or were not, ever done or thought of."--_Church History,_ book x. p. 87.]

Such was the race generated in this court of peace and indolence! And Hacket, in his "Life of the Lord-Keeper Williams," without disguising the fact, tells us that the Lord-Keeper "spared not for cost to purchase the most certain intelligence, by his fee'd pensioners, of _every hour's occurrences at court_; and was wont to say that no man could be a statesman without a great deal of money."

We catch many glimpses of these times in another branch of the same family. When news-books, as the first newspapers were called, did not yet exist to appease the hungering curiosity of the country, a voluminous correspondence was carried on between residents in the metropolis and their country friends: these letters chiefly remain in their MS. state.[A]

Great men then employed a scribe who had a talent this way, and sometimes a confidential friend, to convey to them the secret history of the times; and, on the whole, they are composed by a better sort of writers; for, as they had no other design than to inform their friends of the true state of pa.s.sing events, they were eager to correct, by subsequent accounts the lies of the day they sometimes sent down. They have preserved some fugitive events useful in historical researches, but their pens are garrulous; and it requires some experience to discover the character of the writers, to be enabled to adopt their opinions and their statements.

Little things were, however, great matters to these diurnalists; much time was spent in learning of those at court, who had quarrelled, or were on the point; who were seen to have bit their lips, and looked downcast; who was budding, and whose full-blown flower was drooping: then we have the sudden reconcilement and the antic.i.p.ated fallings out, with a deal of the _pourquoi_ of the _pourquoi_.[B]

[Footnote A: Mr. Lodge's "Ill.u.s.trations of British History" is an eminent and elegant work of the _minutiae historicae_; as are the more recent volumes of Sir Henry Ellis's valuable collections.]

[Footnote B: Some specimens of this sort of correspondence of the idleness of the times may amuse. The learned Mede, to his friend Sir Martin Stuteville, chronicles a fracas:--"I am told of a great falling out between my Lord Treasurer and my Lord Digby, insomuch that they came to _pedlar's blood_, and _traitor's blood_. It was about some money which my Lord Digby should have had, which my Lord Treasurer thought too much for the charge of his employment, and said himself could go in as good a fashion for half the sum. But my Lord Digby replies that he could not _peddle_ so well as his lordship."

A lively genius sports with a fanciful pen in conveying the same kind of intelligence, and so nice in the shades of curiosity, that he can describe a quarrel before it takes place.

"You know the _primum mobile_ of our court (Buckingham), by whose motion all the other spheres must move, or else stand still: the bright sun of our firmament, at whose splendour or glooming all our marygolds of the court open or shut. There are in higher spheres as great as he, but none so glorious. But the king is in progress, and we are far from court. Now to hear certainties. It is told me that my Lord of Pembroke and my Lord of Rochester are so far out, as it is almost come to a quarrel; I know not how true this is, but Sir Thomas Overbury and my Lord of Pembroke have been long jarring, and therefore the other is likely."

Among the numerous MS. letters of this kind, I have often observed the writer uneasy at the scandal he has seasoned his letter with, and concluding earnestly that his letter, after perusal, should be thrown to the flames. A wish which appears to have been rarely complied with; and this may serve as a hint to some to restrain their tattling pens, if they regard their own peace; for, on most occasions of this nature, the letters are rather preserved with peculiar care.]

Such was this race of gossipers in the environs of a court, where, steeped in a supine lethargy of peace, corrupting or corrupted, every man stood for himself through a reckless scene of expedients and of compromises.